Sacred Rhythms Quotes

Sometimes it’s only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure — symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other.

One thing we can know for sure is that when we are confessing our sin to God but not to the people around us in ordinary, nitty-gritty life, there is not much real spiritual transformation going on

Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life. It is the journey from spiritual blindness (not seeing God anywhere or seeing him only where we expect to see him) to spiritual sight (finding God everywhere, especially where we least expect it).

I worry that when our gathered worship looks like a rock show or an entertainment special, we are being formed as consumers - people after a thrill and a rush - when what we need is to learn a way of being-in-the-world that transforms us, day by day, by the rhythms of repentance and faith.

The purpose of journeying together in spiritual friendship and spiritual community (whether there are just two of you or whether you are in a small group) is to listen to one another's desire for God, to nurture that desire in each other and to support one another in seeking a way of life that is consistent with that desire.

Most of us are more tired than we know at the soul level. We are teetering on the brink of dangerous exhaustion, and we cannot do anything else until we have gotten some rest...we can't really engage [any spiritual disciplines] until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work.

Am I witch? I don't know. That's what they call me. They say it's because I follow the rhythms of the earth, honor the seasons, dance under the moon and seek the ancient herbal wisdom of our ancestors. "Folk Lore, poppycock, myths," they say as they sneer at the rosemary in my cup, the comfrey brewing on the stove and turmeric stains on my hands. "Western medicine and science have replaced all that nonsense," they say. They make witches out to be evil and then call me a witch because I am seeking the knowledge & ancient wisdom that the world seems hell bent on forgetting. Well, they can call me what they like, but I know I am not evil. This is what I know: I am an intuitive woman who instinctively knows that this sacred earth holds healing that western medicine will never be able to replace. I will be here holding space. I will be their witch. So, here I am- A kitchen witch sipping her Rosemary tea, mixing up her herbal potion, dancing under the moon, and fighting for the knowledge & wisdom of our grandmothers to not be forgotten.

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But, in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.

Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. The simple act of reading poetry alters thought patterns and the shuttle of the breath. Poetry induces trance. Its words are chant. Its rhythms drumbeats. Its images become the icons of the inner eye. Poetry is more than a description of the sacred experience; it carries the experience itself.

Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself. At once he is and is not. He catches a glimpse of Infinity, but words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue. Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm of things. It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and ennobles mankind. It is this which makes a masterpiece something sacred. In the old days the veneration in which the Japanese held the work of the great artist was intense. The tea-masters guarded their treasures with religious secrecy, and it was often necessary to open a whole series of boxes, one within another, before reaching the shrine itself--the silken wrapping within whose soft folds lay the holy of holies. Rarely was the object exposed to view, and then only to the initiated.

Now he reduced his progress to the rhythm of his boots -- he walked across the land until he came to the sea. Everything that impeded him had to be outweighed, even if only by a fraction, by all that drove him on. In one pan of the scales, his wound, thirst, the blister, tiredness, the heat, the aching in his feet and legs, the Stukas, the distance, the Channel; in the other, I'll wait for you, and the memory of when she had said it, which he had come to treat like a sacred site. Also, the fear of capture. His most sensual memories -- their few minutes in the library, the kiss in Whitehall -- was bleached colorless through overuse. He knew by heart certain passages from her letters, he had revisited their tussle with the vase by the fountain, he remembered the warmth from her arm at the dinner when the twins went missing. These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality. But these heresies died when he read her last letter. He touched his breast pocket. It was a kind of genuflection. Still there. Here was something new on the scales. That he could be cleared had all the simplicity of love. Merely tasting the possibility reminded him of how much had narrowed and died. His taste for life, no less, all the old ambitions and pleasures. The prospect was of rebirth, a triumphant return.

When we merge our internal rhythms with the rhythms of creation, we develop grace in our movement, and without thought or effort we are able to slide into the perfectly choreographed dance of life.

Because drumming was recognized as an ancient source and symbol of the power of female technicians of the sacred, drumming was banned. Henceforth divinity was to be exclusively masculine. The suppression of women was directly linked to the suppression of the goddess.” - Layne Redmond, When the Drummers were Women

As Robert Mulholland says: “Our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised to God into the wholeness of life in the image of Christ. . . . So the process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place right there at that point of our unlikeness to Christ.

… the sacred principles of life have never been written down: they belong to the heartbeat, to the rhythm of the breath and the flow of blood. They are alive like the rain and the rivers, the waxing and waning of the moon. If we learn to listen we will discover that life, the Great Mother, is speaking to us, telling us what we need to know.“ —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We think that somehow we will fall into transformation by accident.

Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement - as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary...

To be human is to be born into a dance in which every animate or inanimate, visible or invisible being is also dancing. Every step of this dance is printed in light; its energy is adoration, its rhythm is praise. Pain, desolution, and destruction in this full and unified sacred vision are not separate from the dance, but are instead essential energies of its transformative unfolding. Death itself cannot shatter the dance, because death is the lifespring of its fertility, the mother of all its changing splendor. If we could bring ourselves to open to this vision, we would undergo a revolution of the heart.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

In Jewish culture, days begin in the evening with the setting of the sun. (We see this in Genesis 1 with the repetition of “And there was evening and there was morning.”) The day begins with rest. We start by settling down and going to sleep. This understanding of time is powerfully reorienting, even jarring, to those of us who measure our days by our own efforts and accomplishments. The Jewish day begins in seemingly accomplishing nothing at all. We begin by resting, drooling on our pillow, dropping off into helplessness. Eugene Peterson says, “The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep and God begins his work.

The perspective changes completely when the sense of the religiousness of the Cosmos becomes lost. This is what occurs when, in certain more highly evolved societies, the intellectual élites progressively detach themselves from the patterns of the traditional religion. Periodical sanctification of cosmic time then proves useless and without meaning. The gods are no longer accessible through the cosmic rhythms. The religious meaning of the repetition of paradigmatic gestures is forgotten. But repetition emptied of its religious content necessarily leads to a pessimistic vision of existence. When it is no longer a vehicle for reintegrating a primordial situation, and hence for recovering the mysterious presence of the gods, that is, when it is desacralized, cyclic time becomes terrifying; it is seen as a circle forever turning on itself, repeating itself to infinity.

At the end, as at the beginning, stands the archetypal power of the Divine Feminine—the goddess. She is our future as she was our past. With her drum in hand, playing her sacramental rhythms, women can once again take their place in the world as technicians of the sacred. In the pulse of my drum, in the beat of my heart, I erect an alter to her forever.

The truth is that spiritual transformation takes place as we embrace the challenges and opportunities associated with each season of our life.

good. Over time, as we surrender ourselves to new life rhythms, they help us to surrender old behaviors, attitudes and practices so that we can be shaped by new ones.

And in our search for greater insight and deeper meaning, the busyness of acquiring solutions keeps us from entering into the sacred space where life springs forth

These boys bent over their food, intense as harmless cubs feeding, rapt with every morsel melting in their mouths—feral rhythm moves their very breath, their strong young teeth chomping, grinding the gristle of meat. So little it takes to pleasure them— they eat what they can get, savoring a fine fillet with equal fervor as the bits stuck to a bone or clinging to a plate. Watching them feed, I seem to see them under my very eyes growing, bones lengthening, muscle stretching, their very skulls thickening around each one’s own danger zones of memory.

Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art. At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself. At once he is and is not. He catches a glimpse of Infinity... Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm of things. It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and ennobles mankind. It is this which makes a masterpiece something sacred.

Periods of silent solitude spent in introspective reflecting are sacred and a source of great strength and comfort. We can learn from listening to the rhythms of nature and from appreciating the eternal hush of the cosmos.

Our bodies align with these rhythms of life in our footsteps (slow tiptoe or urgent stomp), the sleeping rise-fall breath of your baby on your chest, or a row of oak trees mirrored in a rippling lake. A butterfly’s wings flap every second—flapflapflap—to keep it free-floating through the sky, dipping now and again to kiss sweet flowers. Rhythms benefit from variety too; a gentle spring rainstorm turns dramatic with an unexpected thunderclap.

But my parents understood that the world that they made within the walls of our house was what constituted home. So I grew up in spaces framed by art and color, filled with candlelight, marked by beauty. I grew up within a rhythm of time made sacred by family devotions in the morning and long conversations in the evening. I grew up with the sense of our daily life as a feast and delight; a soup-and-bread dinner by the fire, Celtic music lilting in the shadows, and the laughter of my siblings gave me a sense of the blessedness of love, of God's life made tangible in the food and touch and air of our home. It was a fight for my parents, I know. Every day was a battle to bring order to mess, peace to stressful situations, beauty to the chaos wrought by four young children. But that's the reality of incarnation as it invades a fallen world....What my parents-bless them-knew...is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.

I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place, by developing and maintaining a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep me open and available to God.

The course of training of the yogī was divided into eight stages, reminding us of the eightfold path of Buddhism, but far less practical: (1) Self-control (yama), the practice of the five moral rules: non-violence, truthfulness, not stealing, chastity, and the avoidance of greed. (2) Observance (niyama), the regular and complete observance of the above five rules. (3) Posture (āsana), sitting in certain postures, difficult without practice, which are thought to be essential to meditation. The most famous of these is padmāsna, the “Lotus Posture”, in which the feet are placed on the opposite thighs, and in which gods and sages are commonly depicted. (4) Control of the Breath (prānāyāma), whereby the breath is held and controlled and the respiration forced into unusual rhythms, which are believed to be of great physical and spiritual value. (5) Restraint (pratyāhāra), whereby the sense organs are trained to take no note of their perceptions. (6) Steadying the Mind (dhāranā), by concentration on a single object, such as the tip of the nose, the navel, an icon, or a sacred symbol. (7) Meditation (dhyāna), when the object of concentration fills the whole mind. (8) Deep Meditation (samādhi), when the whole personality is temporarily dissolved.

Desire has its own rhythms. Sometimes it ebbs and sometimes it flows. But in the end it is the deepening of spiritual desire and the discipline to arrange our life around our desire that carries us from the shallow waters of superficial human wanting into our soul’s movement in the very depths of God. Sometimes the tide brings us closer in to the shore and the soul frolics in the waves. But increasingly we find our life to be hidden in the depths of God, and whatever is seen on the surface springs up from those depths full of beauty and grace.

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.

Dazed, he went through his ablutions. Then Ali stepped back, letting the crowd sweep him away as he surrendered to the familiar rhythm and movement of prayer. It was like slipping into oblivion, into bliss, muscle memory and the murmured song of sacred revelation relaxing his tightly wound emotions and offering a brief escape.

The first prick stung—holy gods, with the salt and iron, it hurt. She clamped her teeth together, mastered it, welcomed it. That was what the salt was for with this manner of tattoo, Rowan had told her. To remind the bearer of the loss. Good—good, was all she could think as the pain spiderwebbed through her back. Good. And when Rowan made the next mark, she opened her mouth and began her prayers. They were prayers she should have said ten years ago: an even-keeled torrent of words in the Old Language, telling the gods of her parents’ death, her uncle’s death, Marion’s death—four lives wiped out in those two days. With each sting of Rowan’s needle, she beseeched the faceless immortals to take the souls of her loved ones into their paradise and keep them safe. She told them of their worth—told them of the good deeds and loving words and brave acts they’d performed. Never pausing for more than a breath, she chanted the prayers she owed them as daughter and friend and heir. For the hours Rowan worked, his movements falling into the rhythm of her words, she chanted and sang. He did not speak, his mallet and needles the drum to her chanting, weaving their work together. He did not disgrace her by offering water when her voice turned hoarse, her throat so ravaged she had to whisper. In Terrasen she would sing from sunrise to sunset, on her knees in gravel without food or drink or rest. Here she would sing until the markings were done, the agony in her back her offering to the gods. When it was done her back was raw and throbbing, and it took her a few attempts to rise from the table. Rowan followed her into the nearby night-dark field, kneeling with her in the grass as she tilted her face up to the moon and sang the final song, the sacred song of her household, the Fae lament she’d owed them for ten years. Rowan did not utter a word while she sang, her voice broken and raw. He remained in the field with her until dawn, as permanent as the markings on her back. Three lines of text scrolled over her three largest scars, the story of her love and loss now written on her: one line for her parents and uncle; one line for Lady Marion; and one line for her court and her people. On the smaller, shorter scars, were the stories of Nehemia and of Sam. Her beloved dead. No longer would they be locked away in her heart. No longer would she be ashamed.

...It drifts in from somewhere far away - a mirage of sound - a dream music that is both heard and imagined; that seems to be both itself and its own echo; a sound so alluring and so mesmeric that the afternoon is bewitched, maybe haunted, by it. And, what is so strange about that memory is that everybody seems to be floating on those sweet sounds , moving rhythmically, languorously, in complete isolation; responding more to the mood of the music than to its beat. When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement - as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary...

the rhythm of the phases of action and stillness has an intelligence of its own. If we tune in, we can hear that rhythm, and the organ of perception is the desire, the nudge of excitement or the feeling of flow, of rightness, of alignment. It is a feeling of being alive. To listen to that feeling and to trust it is a profound revolution indeed.

Although I wouldn’t have known how to talk about it then, slowly but surely the Scriptures were becoming a place of human striving and intellectual hard work. Somehow, I had fallen into a pattern of using the Scriptures as a tool to accomplish utilitarian purposes rather experiencing them primarily as a place of intimacy with God for my own soul’s sake.

The sad truth is that many of us approach the Scriptures more like a textbook than like a love letter. In Western culture in particular, we are predisposed to a certain kind of reading. We have been schooled in an informational reading process that establishes the reader as the master of the text. As the reader, I employ key techniques that allow me to use the text to advance my own purposes. With this kind of reading, the intent is to cover as much ground as possible as quickly as possible. Our emphasis is primarily on mastery, that is, controlling the text for our own ends—gathering information, interpreting or applying the information, proving our point about something, gaining a ministry tool or solving a problem.

Castles, rocks, mountains, sacred sites all have a very different kind of energy. These are places where time shifts, creating portals almost. Every so often time folds back on itself. Words, rhythms, stories echo through them across the centuries. If you start going down certain paths you start waking ghosts. Sometimes you set in motion things you have no idea about.

From the point of view of the history of religions, the Incarnation represents the last and most perfect hierophany ... To accept the possibility of the Absolute becoming incarnate in a historical person ... is to recognize that the countless pre-Christian generations were not victims of an illusion when they proclaimed the presence of the sacred, i.e., of the divine, in the objects and rhythms of the cosmos.

The depth of desire has a great deal to do with the outcome of our life. Often, those who accomplish what they set out to do in life are not those who are the most talented or gifted or who have had the best opportunities. Often they are the ones who are most deeply in touch with how badly they want whatever they want; they are the ones who consistently refuse to be deterred by the things that many of us allow to become excuses.

Every day I took some time outside where I forged new connections with the animals in my yard, including the spiders who came to spin at night, the plants, trees, and mosses, the sky shifting with the seasons. Such moments grounded me. They caused me to feel the slow rhythm of the earth, to surrender to it and to honor my own natural rhythms. And in such awareness there is always healing. Ultimately nature heals because it reminds us that as humans, we are nature.

The feminine energy represents the inner world. This is demonstrated by the anatomy of our bodies. A woman’s reproductive organs are internal, and her creative impulse is held within her center, in her womb. A woman creates in concert with the energy of the heart. The life that is nurtured and cultivated within a woman’s body sits just below the heart and is attuned to its rhythm. A woman’s body is a bridge between worlds. Within a woman’s body, there exists a direct link to the source of creation.

His breath fell in a warm, even rhythm on the curve of her cheek. “Some people think of the bee as a sacred insect,” he said. “It’s a symbol of reincarnation.” “I don’t believe in reincarnation,” she muttered. There was a smile in his voice. “What a surprise. At the very least, the bees’ presence in your home is a sign of good things to come.” Her voice was buried in the fine wool of his coat. “Wh-what does it mean if there are thousands of bees in one’s home?” He shifted her higher in his arms, his lips curving gently against the cold rim of her ear. “Probably that we’ll have plenty of honey for teatime. We’re going through the doorway now. In a moment I’m going to set you on your feet.” Amelia kept her face against him, her fingertips digging into the layers of his clothes. “Are they following?” “No. They want to stay near the hive. Their main concern is to protect the queen from predators.” “She has nothing to fear from me!” Laughter rustled in his throat. With extreme care, he lowered Amelia’s feet to the floor. Keeping one arm around her, he reached with the other to close the door. “There. We’re out of the room. You’re safe.” His hand passed over her hair. “You can open your eyes now.” Clutching the lapels of his coat, Amelia stood and waited for a feeling of relief that didn’t come. Her heart was racing too hard, too fast. Her chest ached from the strain of her breathing. Her lashes lifted, but all she could see was a shower of sparks. “Amelia … easy. You’re all right.” His hands chased the shivers that ran up and down her back. “Slow down, sweetheart.” She couldn’t. Her lungs were about to burst. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t get enough air. Bees … the sound of buzzing was still in her ears. She heard his voice as if from a great distance, and she felt his arms go around her again as she sank into layers of gray softness. After what could have been a minute or an hour, pleasant sensations filtered through the haze. A tender pressure moved over her forehead. The gentle brushes touched her eyelids, slid to her cheeks. Strong arms held her against a comfortingly hard surface, while a clean, salt-edged scent filled her nostrils. Her lashes fluttered, and she turned into the warmth with confused pleasure. “There you are,” came a low murmur. Opening her eyes, Amelia saw Cam Rohan’s face above her. They were on the hallway floor—he was holding her in his lap. As if the situation weren’t mortifying enough, the front of her bodice was gaping, and her corset was unhooked. Only her crumpled chemise was left to cover her chest. Amelia stiffened. Until that moment she had never known there was a feeling beyond embarrassment, that made one wish one could crumble into a pile of ashes. “My … my dress…” “You weren’t breathing well. I thought it best to loosen your corset.” “I’ve never fainted before,” she said groggily, struggling to sit up. “You were frightened.” His hand came to the center of her chest, gently pressing her back down. “Rest another minute.” His gaze moved over her wan features. “I think we can conclude you’re not fond of bees.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points. If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.

ESTABLISHING A DAILY MEDITATION First select a suitable space for your regular meditation. It can be wherever you can sit easily with minimal disturbance: a corner of your bedroom or any other quiet spot in your home. Place a meditation cushion or chair there for your use. Arrange what is around so that you are reminded of your meditative purpose, so that it feels like a sacred and peaceful space. You may wish to make a simple altar with a flower or sacred image, or place your favorite spiritual books there for a few moments of inspiring reading. Let yourself enjoy creating this space for yourself. Then select a regular time for practice that suits your schedule and temperament. If you are a morning person, experiment with a sitting before breakfast. If evening fits your temperament or schedule better, try that first. Begin with sitting ten or twenty minutes at a time. Later you can sit longer or more frequently. Daily meditation can become like bathing or toothbrushing. It can bring a regular cleansing and calming to your heart and mind. Find a posture on the chair or cushion in which you can easily sit erect without being rigid. Let your body be firmly planted on the earth, your hands resting easily, your heart soft, your eyes closed gently. At first feel your body and consciously soften any obvious tension. Let go of any habitual thoughts or plans. Bring your attention to feel the sensations of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths to sense where you can feel the breath most easily, as coolness or tingling in the nostrils or throat, as movement of the chest, or rise and fall of the belly. Then let your breath be natural. Feel the sensations of your natural breathing very carefully, relaxing into each breath as you feel it, noticing how the soft sensations of breathing come and go with the changing breath. After a few breaths your mind will probably wander. When you notice this, no matter how long or short a time you have been away, simply come back to the next breath. Before you return, you can mindfully acknowledge where you have gone with a soft word in the back of your mind, such as “thinking,” “wandering,” “hearing,” “itching.” After softly and silently naming to yourself where your attention has been, gently and directly return to feel the next breath. Later on in your meditation you will be able to work with the places your mind wanders to, but for initial training, one word of acknowledgment and a simple return to the breath is best. As you sit, let the breath change rhythms naturally, allowing it to be short, long, fast, slow, rough, or easy. Calm yourself by relaxing into the breath. When your breath becomes soft, let your attention become gentle and careful, as soft as the breath itself. Like training a puppy, gently bring yourself back a thousand times. Over weeks and months of this practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. There will be many cycles in this process, stormy days alternating with clear days. Just stay with it. As you do, listening deeply, you will find the breath helping to connect and quiet your whole body and mind. Working with the breath is an excellent foundation for the other meditations presented in this book. After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend your range of meditation to include healing and awareness of all the levels of your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for all you do.

We must learn to modulate our exposure, allowing things to ripen and mature in the container of the heart before revealing our secret inside flesh to others. In so doing, we will be better able to hear the subtle character and nuanced complexities of our inner life. This is delicate work, requiring a watchful attention to the rhythms of the soul. It is important to distinguish it from isolation and withholding—those are strategies devised early in our lives to keep hidden what had been shamed or wounded. Many of us had our expressions of suffering silenced. We heard the voices of those we looked to for comfort saying, “We’ve heard you say this all before. Stop repeating yourself.” “Get over it! Stop whining.” Or we heard nothing at all. Rarely did we find a refuge for our grief. Similarly, many of us found ourselves isolated in times of loss, shamed by the absence of someone who cared.

Dear God, I love this tree. I love the light filtering through the moss and the leaves. I love all your earth songs—the breeze rustling through the grass, the rhythm of crickets, the beating of wings. I love the rain water in the bird bath and the dragonflies that flit over it. I love the air so laden with moisture that the dew rains out of the tree and bathes my face. I love the artistic little prayers that the spiders weave through the woods. I love the way you blend daylight into darkness, how dusk softens the sharp edges of the world. I love the way the moon changes shape every night. I love the slope of your hills—horizons inside and out. I feel that I’m part of it, that it’s part of me. Here, surrounded and permeated by your creation, I feel you. I feel life. I know myself connected. O God, is there anything you’ve made that can’t pour life and healing into me? When I think of the simplicity and extravagance of creation, I want to bend down and write the word yes across the earth so that you can see it.

The traditional Islamic worldview is totally opposed to the prevalent modern paradigm of the relation between human beings and nature, which has caused unprecedented harm to the natural environment, has led to the loss of many species, and now threatens the very future of human life on earth. Islam sees men and women as God’s vicegerents on earth. Therefore, in the same way that God has power over His creation but is also its sustainer and protector, human beings must also combine power over nature with responsibility for its protection and sustenance. The Quran is replete with references to nature, and the phenomena of nature are referred to as God’s signs and are therefore sacred. In traditional Islamic society human beings lived in remarkable harmony with their natural environment, as can be seen in the urban design of traditional Islamic cities and also in the life in the villages, which, as in other premodern parts of the world, is still based on remarkable harmony with the rhythms of nature and makes full use of what is now called recycling.

To not be cut off, however, we need to be moving in a rhythm that is syncopated with that of the oaks and willows, heartbeats and touch. We must recall the original cadence of the soul. One of my most memorable teachings about slowing down came from my mentor, Clarke Berry, a Jungian analyst with whom I apprenticed, following licensure. I was young, and I knew I was in need of a mentor, someone who could teach me the art of sitting with others in therapy. The Jung Institute in San Francisco referred me to Clarke along with other analysts, but when I met him, I knew I was in the right place. Our first meeting, over thirty years ago, was unforgettable. When we sat down, Clarke reached to his left, placed his hand on a large rock lying on a table, and said, “This is my clock. I operate at geologic speed. And if you are going to work with the soul, you need to learn this rhythm, because this is how the soul moves.” Then he pointed to a small clock also sitting there and added, “It hates this.” What an amazing thing to tell this young therapist. It is the single most important thing I ever learned about therapy, about working with the soul. I share this story with every person I work with; I use it as a means of calming the urgency to change and helping patients return to a rhythm that enables them to listen once again to their own soul.

Prince Wen Hui’s cook Was cutting up an ox. Out went a hand, Down went a shoulder, He planted a foot, He pressed with a knee, The ox fell apart With a whisper, The bright cleaver murmured Like a gentle wind. Rhythm! Timing! Like a sacred dance, Like “The Mulberry Grove,” Like ancient harmonies! “Good work!” the Prince exclaimed, “Your method is faultless!” “Method?” said the cook Laying aside his cleaver, “What I follow is Tao Beyond all methods!” “When I first began To cut up an oxen I would see before me The whole ox All in one mass. “After three years I no longer saw this mass. I saw the distinctions. “But now, I see nothing With the eye. My whole being Apprehends. My senses are idle. The spirit Free to work without plan Follows its own instinct Guided by natural line, By the secret opening, the hidden space, My cleaver finds its own way. I cut through no joint, chop no bone. A good cook needs a new chopper Once a year–he cuts. A poor cook needs a new one Every month–he hacks! “I have used this same cleaver Nineteen years. It has cut up A thousand oxen. Its edge is as keen As if newly sharpened. “There are spaces in the joints; The blade is thin and keen: When this thinness Finds that space There is all the room you need! It goes like a breeze! Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years As if newly sharpened! “True, there are sometimes Tough joints. I feel them coming, I slow down, I watch closely, Hold back, barely move the blade, And whump! the part falls away Landing like a clod of earth. “Then I withdraw the blade, I stand still And let the joy of the work Sink in. I clean the blade And put it away.” Prince Wan Hui said, “This is it! My cook has shown me How I ought to live My own life!” Chuang Tzu, The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton

Even as the feminine principle was venerated for its fertile, life-giving properties, there are also many examples of Goddesses who embodied the entire life process: birth, life, death, and regeneration. This is important because it can be tempting to romanticise the Goddess as a sort of angelic Fairy Godmother or abundant Good Mother. The feminine principle is more complex and more powerful than that. There are many stories from mythology that tell of the different faces of the Goddess. One such myth tells of the ancient Sumerian goddess who “outweighed, overshadowed, and outlasted them all . . .Inanna, Queen of Heaven.”[xxvi] This story originated in ancient Mesopotamia, five or six thousand years ago. In the myth, Inanna, who rules as queen over the upper world (birth and life), decides to visit Ereshkigal, queen of the Underworld (death and transformation). As Inanna descends into her sister’s realm, she is stripped of all the symbols of her upper world sovereignty, so that she comes before Ereshkigal naked and bowed low. Her enforced stay in the Underworld and the return after three days predates the Christian story by thousands of years. It is one of the first stories of ritual descent from the realm of life to the realm of death and the return to life after a time of incubation in the Underworld. This is also the theme of most ancient initiation rituals like the Orphic mysteries, the Eleusinian mysteries, and of much of the Egyptian sacred teachings. At the time when the story of Inanna’s journey first appeared, the increasingly male dominated Sumerian culture was separating from earlier matrilineal forms. Before the descent myth, another story tells how Inanna, in order to rule, had to take power from the God, Enki, assuming his symbols of sovereignty as her own. Ereshkigal, queen of the Underworld, represents the archaic feminine, the dark mysteries of the older religion which had been sent underground. The descent story can, therefore, be understood as Inanna balancing her heroic victories in the upper (masculine) world by reconnecting with the rhythms and cycles of the under (feminine) world. Based on clinical experience, one analyst called this a “pattern of a woman’s passage from cultural adaptation to an encounter with her essential nature”.

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger. In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic. At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves. From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness.

Jerusalem, ----How cruel it was, after all, that the geographical center of their faith was not actually located within the confines of the Christian world at all -----It was not a lusting after the stranger’s territory but a desire to properly embody one’s own, to make it animate, to animate the sacred within it. Wasn’t this, after all, a much more noble impulse, not to conquer Jerusalem but merely to build one’s own? Or Life’a tragedies could be written and engaged over and over like waves. But the rhythms contained the all.

When we don’t honor our rhythms and neglect caring for ourselves, then the luxury of sabbatical ends up being wasted on recovery.

O sacred heart of Christ...you know all my troubles and worries...heal my soul...bring counsel of healing to my heart...touch my life with your Sacred goodness…Sacred heart of Christ, you came for me...you live for my sake...cover my heart with your strength...fight for me...shield me in perfect power...heal my heart from being broken and shattered...shield my heart with your strong might…Sustain my body...protect me from brain damage...be forever living and active in my body...embrace me...shield my heart...safeguard my life...O heart of Christ...impart your sacred love to my body, soul and mind. Keep me safe...you are the source of my life...O heart of Christ be my everlasting lifeline...be in me Sacred heart of Christ...I love you...I honour you...I worship you...O gentle and Sacred heart of Christ...most holy heart of Christ, save my heart, body and soul from perishing...

I made peace with my religious past. I took responsibility for my spiritual journey. I stopped dividing up the world into “sacred” and “secular.” I began listening to and trusting my inner voice. I started looking past the externals, and relating to the deepest reality I knew was present in every human being. I quit making my humanity the enemy. I resisted the need to build a persona around being an enlightened person. I opened myself to the rhythm and flow of life in nature. I explored what it meant to truly be “present” in life and became a student of my spiritual aura and energy. I focused on addressing the root of my

Even very good activities can become very exhausting activities when we do them to convince ourselves and others that we are worthy of being loved.

Routine was death of the worst kind, a slow, insidious stripping of soul. Rarely could I even bring myself to run the same route on subsequent days; more rarely did I run at the same time every day. Sometimes I'd venture out first thing in the morning, other times during midday, still others in the evening or at night. I wasn't made to fit the modern industrialized world; my natural rhythms ran contrary to the nine-to-five business cycle. And I didn't always find people the preferred company. Not that I was antisocial, but being by myself wasn't unpleasant. Running alone was something I relished most of my life, even more so as I'd become older. Most runners prefer to run alone, so these habits are not entirely aberrant. The world and its institutions engulf and suffocate us. We runners find our sanctuary in retreating to the roadways and trails, our sacred reprieve. The wonder isn't that we go; it's that we come back. Our daily outings become purgings and resurrections. We move through this world as spirits, the air and the ground and the sky above absorbing us into something grander, and we disappear from the unbearable heaviness of being. These moments of transcendence cleanse our soul and liberate us from the manufactured and superficial. For a brief, beautiful instant we are as a human is meant to be, free and unencumbered, and this restores us and makes us fresh once more. And then it's on to the follies of being a citizen, of being a useful and contributing member of society. Back to the fickleness and irrationality of human nature and the roller coaster of modern living, with its spirals and twists, letdowns and disappointments. As soon as there are people involved, things get complicated, and rarely do they go the way you want them to. Over a lifetime, nos greatly outnumber the yeses. But the strong endure. The lessons you learn from running translate to life. The runner has a strong body and a strong heart. You get knocked down, you pick yourself back up, dust off, and keep going, only to get knocked down again, only to pick yourself back up once more and continue on, arising one time greater than toppling. And in this persistent enduring you acquire endurance. Your permanence is established in this way because you do not unseat easily, you have what it takes to withstand setbacks. You may waver and misstep, but you never give up. No matter how daunting the obstacle, you forge onward and keep chipping away until that barrier is eventually obliterated and overcome. p97

Awareness of the cycles of the moon is a way of attuning to and feeling connected to the rhythms of nature and to the cosmos. The new moon astronomically is when the Sun and Moon unite in the sky

Life on this planet has been evolving and transforming itself since the beginning of time as we know it. It is not poetry, but science when I say this: we are descendants of fish that crawled out of the ocean. We breathe air exhaled from trees whose leaves are made of starlight. We have oxygen thanks to the primordial kelps that created this biosphere. The mushrooms we eat come from space; they strengthen both the communications networks in our brains as well as between the plants and soil. We have stardust in our bones. Our veins echo the patterns of rivers, branches, and root system. The moon moves the blood in women’s wombs to the same rhythm as the tides of the oceans. We are not a part of Nature. We are Nature.

In the realm of spiritual transformation, the questions we are willing to ask ourselves are more important than the answers we think we know. At

You ought to enjoy the rhythm of the sacred ride.

Dance with your sacred rhythm.

Ask me not where I live      or what I like to eat. . . .      Ask me what I am living for      and what I think is keeping me      from living fully for that. THOMAS MERTON, Thoughts in Solitude

When a Japanese woman disrupts the powerful sequence of natural movement with her jerky little steps, we ought to experience the disquiet that troubles our soul whenever nature is violated in this way, but in fact we are filled with a unfamiliar blissfulness, as if disruption could lead to a sort of ecstasy, and a grain of sand to beauty. What we discover in this affront to the sacred rhythm of life, this defiant movement of little feet, this excellence born of constraint, is a paradigm of Art.

Without a balanced approach to spiritual disciplines, we run the risk of cultivating a one-sided spirituality that will disintegrate under pressure from the part of us we have left undeveloped.

We have come to be danced not the pretty dance not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance but the claw our way back into the belly of the sacred, sensual animal dance the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance the holding the precious moment in the palms of our hands and feet dance We have come to be danced not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance but the wring the sadness from our skin dance the blow the chip off our shoulder dance the slap the apology from our posture dance We have come to be danced not the monkey see, monkey do dance one, two dance like you one two three, dance like me dance but the grave robber, tomb stalker tearing scabs & scars open dance the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance WE have come to be danced not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance the strip us from our casings, return our wings sharpen our claws & tongues dance the shed dead cells and slip into the luminous skin of love dance We have come to be danced not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance the mother may I? yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance the everyone can come to our heaven dance We have come to be danced where the kingdom’s collide in the cathedral of flesh to burn back into the light to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray to root in skin sanctuary We have come to be danced WE HAVE COME

  MANTRAS: These are often referred to as sacred sounds because they are part of the practice of different religious traditions. Mantra is a Sanskrit word whose literal meaning is “that which protects and purifies the mind.” Here mind represents not only thought but also feelings. These sounds, each of which is a kind of germinating seed (in Sanskrit bija) that is implanted in the mind, are catalysts for ridding ourselves of traits that impede our spiritual unfoldment. Like toning and chanting they are sounded repetitively in a steady rhythm. They can be sounded either inwardly or aloud. Done inwardly within the mind, no tone is needed. Only the rhythm is necessary. This inner repetition is useful because it can be set in motion at any time and in any situation.   CHANTING: This is actually a form of singing characterized by the repetition of short phrases of tones, fairly narrow in range, often wedded to some kind of sacred text and done as part of a

None of us exists in this world apart from being one gender or another, and in fact our existence as male and female is one of the most complete ways God has revealed the diverse aspects of his own being.

Practically, major musings will be centred on and then reflected in your heart, which you will grasp to get a heavenly light with many gravitational potentials. You will find all the pastimes in their rhythm and tune in the absence of any unformed and minor freaks of vigorous energy. It is a mythological consolidation that is descried as very tender and full of providential, supernal and sanctified impressions. Its resignation is impossible; it is important and a comfort zone for admissible lifemanship. This is not a living depiction created from an imaginary world; it is an inside reliance on the elevation of absolute complacent and encouragement. This encompasses empyreal orgasm without undeceased delusion, and it is an engraving entity being sacred world and penetrated feck in ethereal balanceness. 

To walk a soulful path is to step into the hidden, luminous undercurrents of life, where the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary and the mundane into the sacred. It is a journey of attunement, where the soul finds its true rhythm, moving in harmony with the pulse of the earth, the dance of the seasons, and the silent conversations of the stars. In this journey, there is no rush, no need to arrive anywhere, for the path itself is the destination—a living, breathing landscape where each step is a prayer, each moment a revelation.

May you awaken each day with a heart attuned to the sacred rhythms of your becoming, a heart that knows how to listen for the quiet, steady whisper of growth that lies hidden beneath the surface of your daily life. As the butterfly emerges from its cocoon, transformed and radiant, so too may you honor the tender and intricate process by which your soul unfolds, ever towards the light of its true essence.

As you step into the unfolding day, may your journey be light and your heart open, attuned to the soft whisper of wings aloft, the silent communion of trees, and the sacred rhythm of the earth beneath your feet. Let the slow, patient grace of nature teach you the deep art of stillness, where every leaf, every stream, speaks of a wisdom older than time.

As the moon glides through its sacred dance of light and shadow, so too will you move through the varied rhythms of your days. There will be times when your light is full, when you stand in your radiance, casting a gentle glow that reaches far and wide. And there will be moments when shadows gather, when your light seems to fade into the quiet, hidden places of your soul.

The earth is our first and most foundational relationship of nurturance, anchorage, and agency that secures livelihood forward. Earth is our first mother—the generous lifeline every human and nonhuman on this planet shares in common without exception. Our relationship with the earth is a material, unwavering truth that determines our fundamental existence on this planet. In separating us from this relationship or reconfiguring and exploiting it on the occupiers’ terms, colonialism interrupts our deeper contract as sacred living beings of a sacred living planet, and the practical ways we have evolved to navigate and mutually sustain life. It fractures our sovereignty in a multifaceted way. We are the earth. An embodied relationship with the land imbues innate reverence for life, an embedded knowledge of its inherent dignity. We understand all beings have a consciousness, and we are a fundamental part of the ecosystem. It teaches us how to steward life and land, through intimacy with its natural cycles. Our specific landscapes have sustained our bodies and provided for our societies generationally; they have also informed every aspect of our social structures, inspired our ancestral cosmologies, narrated our stories, animated our foods and agricultural practices, intonated our languages and the rhythms of our songs, revealed our gods, and inspired every aspect of our relationships, rituals, beliefs, and identities. These places have guided every aspect of our self-determined livelihoods and cultural formation, including our understanding of ourselves and each other in the universe.

In the quiet spaces between us, love finds its truest expression. To let go is not to lose, but to honor the sacred rhythm of freedom that the heart yearns to dance within.

when applied to Scripture, this approach does not serve the deeper longing of our heart—the longing to hear a word from God that is personal and intimate and takes us deeper into the love that our soul craves.

study of Scripture is important, but if we stop there, we will eventually hit a wall spiritually. Information

Prayer is meant to respect the natural rhythms of our energy. Praying is like eating, and, as we know from experience, you do not always want a banquet.

Lorel once told me that fate is a poet, organizing beauty out of chaos. I believed that for a long time—that life happens to a person, buoying them along on its tide whichever way it pleases, instead of bending and shaping itself around my will. And even now I’m not sure that I can entirely discard the idea, because God knows my life has spiraled into gothic prose, and even in the depths of my insanity I could not have thought up the repeating rhythms of horrible motif. Blood as oil, oil as sacred chrism, the suffocating paradox of its sacred and sensual nature, and can oil really run in a person’s blood? Because when I think of one, I think of the other—they are inseparable in my mind. When I think of the times I dipped my fingers in green-gold oil, memory calls forth the image of blood on a warehouse floor, and blood mixed with oil in the creases of my hands.

Lying in state now in an exhibit case at London’s National Maritime Museum, H-4 draws millions of visitors a year. Most tourists approach the Watch after having passed the cases containing H-1, H-2, and H-3. Adults and youngsters alike stand mesmerized before the big sea clocks. They move their heads to follow the swinging balances, which rock like metronomes on H-1 and H-2. They breathe in time to the regular rhythm of the ticking, and they gasp when startled by the sudden, sporadic spinning of the single-blade fan that protrudes from the bottom of H-2. But H-4 stops them cold. It purports to be the end of some orderly progression of thought and effort, yet it constitutes a complete non sequitur. What’s more, it holds still, in stark contrast to the whirring of the going clocks. Not only are its mechanisms hidden by the silver case enclosure, but the hands are frozen in time. Even the second hand lies motionless. H-4 does not run. It could run, if curators would allow it to, but they demur, on the grounds that H-4 enjoys something of the status of a sacred relic or a priceless work of art that must be preserved for posterity. To run it would be to ruin it.

Home-run hysteria peaked in 1998 when the Cards’ Mark McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa battled to break perhaps the most sacred record in all of baseball, Roger Maris’s sixty-one home runs in a single season. Both players didn’t just break it; they shattered it: McGwire hitting seventy home runs and Sosa sixty-six. La Russa managed McGwire when he broke the record, and McGwire admitted that during the season he had taken a steroid precursor known as “Andro,” short for androstendione. Andro was available over the counter at the time, although the NFL and the Olympics had banned it. McGwire made no attempt to hide his use of it. He kept a bottle on the shelf of his locker in plain view, and La Russa does not believe that McGwire ever used anything other than Andro (he also stopped taking it in 1999 and still hit sixty-five home runs). He was big when he came into the league in 1986 and over time became dedicated to working out as often as six days a week in order to prevent further injuries. In the early 1990s, he actually lost weight to take pressure off a chronically sore heel; weight loss runs counter to the bloated look of someone on steroids. But the same could not be said of Canseco. Despite a body that ultimately metamorphosed into an almost cartoonish shape—Brutus meets Popeye—he denied throughout his career that he ever had taken steroids, until his playing days ended in 2002. Two weeks later, ever the performer, he admitted with much ballyhoo that he had indeed been on the juice. Rickey Henderson was another high-profile player who moved to his own brooding rhythms. In all of La Russa’s years of managing, no player in baseball has ever been more dangerous than Henderson with his combination of on-base percentage and base-stealing skills and power. Impervious to pressure unlike any player La Russa had ever seen before, he became a marked man around the league because he could beat you in so many ways, and he still starred for almost the entire decade of the 1980s.

Life, like the sacred Ganga, flows from the divine to the mundane. Cherish your family as the banks that guide your path, and friends as the currents that propel you forward. In the dance of existence, each step is a blessing, each beat a prayer. Embrace all with love, for we are all part of the cosmic rhythm.

People with wombs have always known that bodies and consciousness are cyclical, tied to a rhythm that is larger than the individual. The cycle is twenty-eight days, full moon to full moon. Moon sounds like a name or a noun. But let us remember that moon is a gerund. Always moving. Always moon-ing. It is time to give the masculine back its lunar knowledge. Wombs swell, yearn, mulch, and release in twenty-eight days. But a womb is not just an organ. It is an invitation that anyone of any physicality and any gender expression can accept. It is an invitation to dance inside change for twenty-eight days. To practice softness for a cycle. The masculine has a womb, too. A moon. All it need do is look up at the night sky. What is lunar wisdom? Even on a new moon night, the moon is still present: replete and whole, while also void and occluded. This is a completion that holds loss tenderly inside its body. It is neatly summed up by Octavia Butler’s powerful words: “God is change.”1 The moon is every gender, every sexuality, mostly both, always trans: waxing and waning. The moon only ever flirts with fullness or emptiness for a brief, tenuous moment before slipping into change. Here is our blended, androgynous Dionysus. Wine-drunk, love-swollen, wind-swept, in ecstatic union with the holy, the moon encourages us to dissolve our edges rather than affirm them. Lunar knowledge keeps us limber. Keeps us resilient. Awe, whether somatic or spiritual, transforms us. The alternative to patriarchy and sky gods is not equal and opposite. It is not a patriarchy with a woman seated on a throne. The Sacred Masculine isn’t a horned warrior bowing down to his impassive empress. The divine, although it includes us, is mostly inhuman. Mutable. Mostly green. Often microscopic. And it is everything in between. Interstitial and relational. The light and the dark. Moonlight on moving water. The lunar bowl where we all mix and love and change.

a religion steeped in the feminine mysteries of blood and childbirth, we might expect religious activity to be largely the province of women, as was the case in later goddess-centered cultures, yet most research takes for granted that the word shaman usually indicates a male. In Dawn Behind the Dawn, Geoffrey Ashe cites evidence from Russian anthropologists and linguists suggesting that, in some parts of the world, the original shamans were women. The clues are hidden in tribal languages. Among the Siberian and Altaic tribal peoples with a long tradition of shamanism, the words for a female shaman are very similar, showing that they derive from the same root. But the words for a male shaman are unrelated. Ashe concludes, "We can infer that these tribes are descended from groups that were ... in close touch, and then all shamans were women, known by a single term." Later, when men insinuated themselves into the sacred rituals, each tribe had to invent its own word to describe them. Male shamans to this day often dress in the clothing of women.

Our worship together as a church forms us in a particular way. We must be shaped into people who value that which gives life, not just what’s trendy or loud or exciting. I worry that when our gathered worship looks like a rock show or an entertainment special, we are being formed as consumers—people after a thrill and a rush—when what we need is to learn a way of being-in-the-world that transforms us, day by day, by the rhythms of repentance and faith. We need to learn the slow habits of loving God and those around us.

In the realm of spiritual philosophy, where the sacred and the mundane converge, where the mystical dances with the ordinary, there exists an enchanting archetype that beckons us to explore the depths of our souls—the Divine Rabbit. This ethereal creature, a symbol of fertility, rebirth, and spiritual illumination, invites us to embark on a profound journey of self-discovery and transcendence. The Divine Rabbit, with its gentle countenance and nimble grace, embodies the essence of the divine feminine, representing the nurturing and creative aspects of existence. It is a messenger of the cosmic forces, whispering ancient wisdom and guiding us towards the realization of our true nature. With each hop, it traverses the sacred landscapes of our consciousness, leaving in its wake the seeds of transformation and spiritual awakening. This mystical creature, adorned with the symbols of abundance and growth, teaches us the profound truth that spirituality is not confined to lofty realms or esoteric knowledge, but is deeply rooted in the tapestry of our everyday lives. The Divine Rabbit invites us to cultivate a sense of presence and mindfulness, to embrace the magic of the present moment, and to recognize that every breath we take is an opportunity for divine communion. In the Divine Rabbit, we find a profound reflection of our own spiritual journey. Like the rabbit, we too navigate the maze of existence, encountering both obstacles and opportunities along the way. The Divine Rabbit reminds us to approach these challenges with grace, agility, and an unwavering trust in the divine plan. It teaches us that even in the face of adversity, we possess the innate resilience to overcome, to rise above our limitations, and to embrace the boundless potential that resides within us. The Divine Rabbit also serves as a catalyst for profound transformation and rebirth. Just as the rabbit sheds its old fur to make way for new growth, we too are called to release the layers of conditioning, limiting beliefs, and attachments that no longer serve our highest good. The Divine Rabbit encourages us to step into the fullness of our authentic selves, to embrace our innate gifts and talents, and to allow the light of our divine essence to illuminate the world around us. Moreover, the Divine Rabbit invites us to honor the interconnectedness of all beings and the sacredness of every living creature. It teaches us to tread lightly upon the Earth, recognizing that our actions have far-reaching consequences. The Divine Rabbit reminds us of the importance of compassion, kindness, and love towards all beings, for in their eyes, we catch a glimpse of the divine spark that resides within us all. As we embark on our spiritual journey, let us heed the wisdom of the Divine Rabbit. Let us cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity, allowing ourselves to be guided by the synchronicities and signs that pepper our path. Let us embrace the cycles of life and honor the sacredness of both beginnings and endings. And above all, let us remember that within the heart of the Divine Rabbit resides the eternal flame of our own divine essence, waiting to be kindled and expressed in all its radiant glory. May we follow the path of the Divine Rabbit, awakening to the depths of our being, embracing our divine nature, and embodying the transformative power of love, compassion, and spiritual illumination. In doing so, we dance in harmony with the rhythm of the universe, honoring the sacredness of life, and fulfilling our highest purpose.

The real surprise was not that this happened but the fact that the shift was so subtle. After all, the purposes for which I was using the Scriptures were not bad in and of themselves. It’s just that over time, without my awareness, those purposes had trumped the greater purpose for which the Scriptures have been given: to allow my own heart and soul to be penetrated by an intimate word from God. My mind remained engaged, but my heart and soul had drifted far away.

Communicating--the act of speaking and listening--has its own rhythm, its own dance steps. You and your partner each have your own style. Are you dancing together?....Are you always the leader in the dance or are you often a follower? Are you timid and afraid of stepping on your partner's toes or do you gracefully flow and glide together across the dance floor of life?

For some of us, the idea of repentance can bring to mind a particular emotional experience, or the minor-key songs of an altar call at a revival meeting. But repentance and faith are the constant, daily rhythms of the Christian life, our breathing out and breathing in.

What shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies - and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others, and the world. The habits and disciplines we use to shape our desire form the basis for a spirituality.

Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways— style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement. We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty. To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had the long, white, Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 221 fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyes, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia. Love is a fault; so be it. Fantine was innocence floating high over fault.

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Dave had carried the Zen bell, and rang it every few minutes with the tap of a small hammer. The sound was clear and beautiful. The tone was harmonious and rung out as the sun rose over the water. Some thought the sacred arose when a local action mirrored a more universal rhythm—like that morning. The sun rose. The bell rang out. The druids walked a pattern which resembled the sun’s movement. All one event.

But repentance and faith are the constant, daily rhythms of the Christian life, our breathing out and breathing in.

Ceremony, whether or not it’s shamanic, is typically magical, creative, and healing, and provides a bridge between the material and spirit worlds. It’s a felt demonstration of how the power of the universe works, and it provides an excellent way to honor all those events in our lives that we want to sanctify. Participating in sacred ceremony helps us bring our being into alignment with the natural flow and rhythm of life.

Venus was rising, holding her own in the sky that was beginning to brighten. As I left the docks and warehouses behind, I came to a marshy shoreline, thick with water reeds. Though the sky above was clear, the water's surface swirled with little mists. I began to sing a song to Isis, made up on the spot, which caught the rhythm of the oars. A breeze sprang up and the reeds sang with me. Then as the first rays of sun dimmed the stars, birds everywhere lifted their voices and rose in line after line into the sky. On the outskirts of the city, I came to what looked like it might have been an abandoned villa or farmstead. I decided to sit down and watch the lake changing colors with the light. That's when I heard it. Not the soft lapping of the water against the shore, but the sound of flowing water. I looked and in the glowing light, I saw a small stream, eally just a trickle washing down a pebbly incline towards the lake. Something prompted me to follow the stream inland. I made my way though brambly thickets of brambling roses. The way seemed to open for me, the thorns all but retracting so as not to catch my cloak or scratch my arms and legs. At the source, I knelt down and parted the thicket, and there it was. The spring at the base of the hill so steep, it was almost a cliff. The water bubbled up from the darkness of earth, giving back the brightness of sky. Like all springs, a way between worlds. I was no stranger to sacred springs and magic wells. I was raised to revere them. I had first glimpsed my beloved on the well of wisdom on Tir n mBan. But this spring. I closed my eyes to listen to its sound, and I knew I had heard it before. The wind picked up, washing over me, scented with fish and roses. When it quieted again, I opened my eyes and gazed at the clear surface of the pool, and for an instant, I saw a tower, and the dawn sky, and the two people standing there. Then the image vanished, but I had seen all I needed to see. Alright, I said to myself, my goddess, to Miriam's know it all angels, Magala is is. And by the way, I added, my name is Maeve.