Food for the Soul | April 8th, 2020

4/8/2020

Dear Friends,

As we remember this week Jesus’ pilgrimage to Golgotha, we join him in our own pilgrimage through this virus-riddled world. And we have questions, and we have pain and sadness, and fears, and yearning for better times. I have no answers, but I encourage you to be open-minded and trust the Divine Spirit.

A PRAYER   –   A PRACTICE   –   A POEM

A PRAYER

Only as a child am I awake

and able to trust

that after every fear and every night

I will behold you again.

However often I get lost,

however far my thinking strays,

I know you will be here, right here,

time trembling around you.

To me it is as if I were at once

infant, boy, man and more.

I feel that only as it circles

is abundance found.

I thank you, deep power

that works me every more lightly

in ways I can’t make out.

The day’s labor grows simple now,

and like a holy face

held in my dark hands.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours)

 A PRACTICE

I offer you today a spiritual practice developed by Mary Mrozowski during the 20th century. The Welcoming Prayer is a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. It helps to dismantle the emotional programs of the false-self system and to heal the wounds of a lifetime by addressing them where they are stored – in the body. The Welcoming Prayer is for emotions and feelings, not what triggered them. Focus on the particular emotion or feeling that comes up (anger, fear, rage, sadness) and try to identify where in your body you are feeling this. Then gently accept and welcome this emotion into yourself by slowly praying the following:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,
situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God’s action within.

A POEM

On Pain

By Kahlil Gibran

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses

your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its

heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily

miracles of your life, your pain would not seem

less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,

even as you have always accepted the seasons

that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the

winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within

you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy

in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by

the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has

been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has

moistened with His own sacred tears.