awkward harvesting

For everything under the sun there is a time.

This is the season of your awkward harvesting,

When the pain takes you where you would rather not go…

 

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide

Who can accompany you through the fear and grief

Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.

 

As your tears fall over that wounded place,

May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.

May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound

 

So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,

Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,

And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.

          John O’Donohue, For Someone Awakening to the Trauma of His or Her Past

          To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

 

As you have often heard me say, if you do not transform your pain, you will most assuredly transmit it. Healthy religion on the practical level tells us what to do with our pain—because we will have pain. We can’t avoid it; it’s part of life. If we’re not trained in letting go of it, transforming it, turning crucifixion into resurrection, so to speak, we’ll hand it off to our family, to our children, to our neighborhood, to our nation.

          Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation 12/18/2020, Letting Go is Liberation

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The day has not yet fully begun

The sun has not yet risen

 

It is the dawning time

When one’s heart and soul and mind slowly rouse

And prepare to face to day

 

It is that time when one stares into the darkness

Watching as the light slowly dawns

And the world is slowly revealed

And wonders

 

What will this day bring?

 

As the darkness dissolves what will be revealed?

 

What I have come to learn is that my day will be profoundly shaped

by what I carry into it

by what clings to me

 

if I carry into this day resentment and anger

this day will be full of affronts and outrage

my soul will be dis-eased

and I will be one who spreads the virus

hurt and fear

 

if I walk into the day

having taken the time to connect with Sacred Presence

Having drunk deeply from the spring of living Water

that is God’s love

 

If I have let Love wash through me,

And empower me

So that I have let go

Of hurt and fear and resentment

 

If I have faced my pain, touched it

And let God transform it, heal it

If I have let the power of Life turn death into life

Pain into forgiveness

Crucifixion into resurrection,

 

Then I will be healed and freed

And I will find, in this day

Every day

Hope, Peace, Joy, and yes, Love

 

This day is just being born

The light is just beginning to dawn

The world is taking shape

 

What kind of a day is it going to be?

 

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It’s Heaven all the way to Heaven and it’s Hell all the way to Hell. We are in Heaven now by falling, by letting go, and by trusting and surrendering to this deeper, broader, and better reality that is already available to us. We’re in Hell now by wrapping ourselves around our hurts, by over-identifying with and attaching ourselves to our fears, so much so that they become our very identity.

                     Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation 12/18/2020