Dear WIDS group friends,
This is for both the Tuesday and the Thursday WIDS groups this week, July 28 and 30.
As my e-mail to you noted, we have a special topic this week: praying with the earth. This is partly because I am on vacation near the ocean this week and wanted to do a little something different, and partly because if I had to write When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life again, I would pay even more attention to the earth and the environment, perhaps with an additional chapter.
I have in the last several years led retreats on the earth and the environment, in person but also online (not on video, but on a blog restricted to retreatants). I originally wrote these posts as a full week of a six-week online retreat called "Hurry Up and Slow Down," but am offering them to you here all at once.
Usually blog posts post automatically in reverse chronological order, i.e. with the last (most recent) post at the top. But I did a little technical fiddling with the times of posting to make things easier for you. You can read these four posts from the top of the bottom of the blog here, 1 through 4.
The four posts look at the practice of praying, meditating, and reflecting on the earth through the lenses of
1. awareness
2. inspiration
3. practice (this is the "spiritual exercise" part of our week) and
4. wisdom
Enjoy. Talk to you Tuesday evening and Thursday morning.
Feel welcome also to make written comments here. You will see each post has a comments option: just click at the appropriate place at the bottom of the post and a little pop-up comment thing will appear in which you can write. You can comment any time, e.g. before and after our sessions.
This is also a backup measure: I am staying in a studio with wifi, but if by chance we encounter technical problems with our video conversations, we'll still have this blog and we can converse here in writing.
Jane
Monday, July 27, 2020
EARTH: (1) Awareness
Praying with the Earth
Earth as the ground beneath our feet.
Earth as our environment.
Earth as our teacher.
What is your daily relationship to the earth--and its waters and skies-- and to Earth, the vast-small, fragile-strong planet on which we live?
How does earth enter into your prayer and practice?
Are there images of the elements --earth, water, air, fire-- in your prayers or the prayers or scriptures of your religious or spiritual tradition?
Do the rituals of your tradition involve elements that come from nature? Water, oil, earth, stone, food, drink, fire, light, darkness, directions or points of the compass, salt, ocean, river, lake, flowers, fields, forest, stones, cave, rain, bonfire?
Are there reminders of earth on your home altar, your dresser, your coffee table? A bowl of water, a shell, stone, pebbles, flowers, pottery?
Do you know where your food comes from?
Where is your local farmers' market? Your local public park? Your local landfill?
What is your daily environment like -- not just nature but the "built environment"?
How are you dependent on the earth?
When you hear "earth," what do you think?
Write it down.
What images come to mind?
What feelings?
1. Awareness
Earth as the ground beneath our feet.
Earth as our environment.
Earth as our teacher.
What is your daily relationship to the earth--and its waters and skies-- and to Earth, the vast-small, fragile-strong planet on which we live?
How does earth enter into your prayer and practice?
Are there images of the elements --earth, water, air, fire-- in your prayers or the prayers or scriptures of your religious or spiritual tradition?
Do the rituals of your tradition involve elements that come from nature? Water, oil, earth, stone, food, drink, fire, light, darkness, directions or points of the compass, salt, ocean, river, lake, flowers, fields, forest, stones, cave, rain, bonfire?
Are there reminders of earth on your home altar, your dresser, your coffee table? A bowl of water, a shell, stone, pebbles, flowers, pottery?
Do you know where your food comes from?
Where is your local farmers' market? Your local public park? Your local landfill?
What is your daily environment like -- not just nature but the "built environment"?
How are you dependent on the earth?
 |
| White Street Landfill, Greensboro, NC |
When you hear "earth," what do you think?
Write it down.
What images come to mind?
What feelings?
 |
| Adelynrood, Byfield, MA Photo (c) by Jane Redmont 2011 |
EARTH: (2) Inspiration
Week Five: Earth
2. Inspiration
Our mentioning of the weather--our perfunctory observations on what kind of day it is, are perhaps not idle. Perhaps we have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, to see it and feel it, to know how the sky is grey, paler in the south, with patches of blue in the southwest, with snow on the ground, the thermometer at 18, a cold wind making your ears ache. I have a real need to know these things because I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place, and a day in which I have not shared truly in all this is no day at all. It is certainly part of my life of prayer.
Thomas Merton
When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature
ed. Kathleen Deignan
 |
| Rainstorm, Hilo, Hawaii Photo by Donald B. MacGowan |
EARTH: (3) Practice
Week Five: Earth
Robert M. Hamma, an editor at Ave Maria Press and Sorin Books (full disclosure: they're my publishers), is also a writer and the author of the wonderful little book Earth's Echo: Sacred Encounters with Nature. Hamma quotes science and nature writer Chet Raymo in that book and challenges his readers to go deeper into their appreciation of nature. Nature, Hamma writes, "is not simply the setting in which the presence of God is encountered, it is, in itself, a form of divine presence."
Hamma renames the four stages. He calls them:
1. Paying attention
3. Practice
All my life as been a relearning to pray --a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and vain repetition "Me Lord, me," instead of watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart.
Chet Raymo
Natural Prayers
 |
| (c) Jane Redmont, Orcas Island, 2011 |
Robert M. Hamma, an editor at Ave Maria Press and Sorin Books (full disclosure: they're my publishers), is also a writer and the author of the wonderful little book Earth's Echo: Sacred Encounters with Nature. Hamma quotes science and nature writer Chet Raymo in that book and challenges his readers to go deeper into their appreciation of nature. Nature, Hamma writes, "is not simply the setting in which the presence of God is encountered, it is, in itself, a form of divine presence."
Hamma continues: "For many of us, this appreciation of the sacred dimension of nature requires a change of perspective. Although we may have an appreciation for the role of nature in our spirituality, it is often limited. Nature may serve as a refuge for us, a place to go to get away from the pressures and distractions of our ordinary lives. We may find that nature's beauty or grandeur inspires us, that the beauty of creation reminds us of the Creator. But is there more to it than that?"
Hamma reminds us of two pieces of traditional wisdom:
1. Christianity (other traditions too, but we expect this less of Christianity somehow) in some of its most ancient traditions understands that there are two holy books: the book of scripture and the book of nature or creation.
Hamma tells the story of the ancient hermit Anthony, living in the Egyptian desert in the 3d and 4th centuries, who was asked by a philosopher (desert hermits did have visitors) what he would do if he could no longer read the scriptures. Anthony replied: "My book, sir philosopher, is the nature of created things, and it is always on hand when I wish to read it."
2. There is an ancient practice with which some of you are familiar, lectio divina or holy reading, which can lead us to deeper prayer and relationship with the divine. Originally a monastic practice, lectio (as it is sometimes called these days) is now practiced not just by vowed monastics but by laity in various settings and across several Christian communions.
2. There is an ancient practice with which some of you are familiar, lectio divina or holy reading, which can lead us to deeper prayer and relationship with the divine. Originally a monastic practice, lectio (as it is sometimes called these days) is now practiced not just by vowed monastics but by laity in various settings and across several Christian communions.
This practice of sacred reading involves four stages or movements: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. (In Latin, as the monks of the Western Christian tradition described them, lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.)
What Hamma then does --and this is our spiritual practice this week-- is to invite his readers to what he calls a sacred reading of nature.
In other words, he combines the ancient understanding of the "book of nature" with the ancient practice of lectio divina to make a new, contemporary spiritual practice for us.
 |
| (c) Jane Redmont, Orcas Island, 2011 |
Hamma renames the four stages. He calls them:
1. Paying attention
2. Pondering
3. Response
4. Surrendering
In his book, Hamma takes his readers to five different regions: shore, forest, desert, river, mountain. He then guides them through the four stages above in ways related to those regions.
You can use Hamma's four-step method with any of these regions or you can use them simply with your neighborhood, your street, your daily walk with the dog, your garden, a city errand down the street. I used it the first time I practiced the exercise with yard work near my house in North Carolina, knowing I was going to be moving back to Boston within months. (I noted then, as I first wrote this post, that I was still in the process, somewhere between stages 2 and 3.) This week I will be practicing this method by the ocean on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
So take any part of nature you wish and apply lectio divina to it.
Let me say more about the four stages which we are applying this week (and beyond) to our reading of nature.
In his book, Hamma takes his readers to five different regions: shore, forest, desert, river, mountain. He then guides them through the four stages above in ways related to those regions.
You can use Hamma's four-step method with any of these regions or you can use them simply with your neighborhood, your street, your daily walk with the dog, your garden, a city errand down the street. I used it the first time I practiced the exercise with yard work near my house in North Carolina, knowing I was going to be moving back to Boston within months. (I noted then, as I first wrote this post, that I was still in the process, somewhere between stages 2 and 3.) This week I will be practicing this method by the ocean on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
So take any part of nature you wish and apply lectio divina to it.
Let me say more about the four stages which we are applying this week (and beyond) to our reading of nature.
Reading is a broad term, of course: we read visual texts when we gaze at an icon or a painting, we read the look on someone's face, and we read books, essays, poems, on paper and online, in a variety of ways. Hamma reminds us that the ancient monks read often by hearing or by memorizing or repetition; books were scarce. The word and the Word, capital W, came to monks through chanting and reciting of Psalms, through listening to scripture at worship, through hearing books read at meals in the refectory. Our relationship to reading is different. Here our practice is to read nature around us --or if you would like, to read nature in its relationship to the build environment (you decide - adapt your practice to your living environment, urban, suburban, rural)
1. Paying attention
Prayer, really, is mindful attention. Can you, can we, pay attention to nature --in whatever small or large setting we have chosen for our practice of lectio, the bit of nature that we are going to "read"-- in a new, different, fresh way? What is there? What do you see?
2. Pondering
2. Pondering
What happens when you being to ponder what you see? Is a memory awakened? Or your imagination? Do you see the grass between the cracks of sidewalk more clearly? Does the rising of the tide speak to something going on in you? Or is the response a moral response? A righteous anger? A call to compassion? Or do you simply, in Hamma's words, "want to be in that place at that moment without any active use of [your] mind or stirring of emotion"? One monastic writer Hamma quotes calls meditation the "rocking of the heart," as in the gentle rocking of a boat on swells of water. Another monk compares the process of meditation to a cow chewing her cud. "The cow," Hamma explains, "is not looking for any insights, not feeling great consolation, not making any plans; she's just chewing."
3. Response
Hamma describes this as a response "to the One whose voice we have heard." Our aim is not a particular response: it is to recognize the movement of our heart in response to the "word" to which we have paid attention and which we have pondered. You response may not be verbal prayer, though it certainly can be. It can be art, dance, music, going for a run --these four are Hamma's examples-- or tears or sitting still. Your response doesn't seek resolution or insight. It is your heart's response to what you have seen and heard. Make room for it.
4. Surrendering
"Contemplation begins," Hamma writes, "where all our efforts at meditation and prayer end and we find ourselves caught up in the movement and presence of God. Such experience is a gift, not something we can cause or accomplish. We can engage in spiritual practices that open us to such experiences, but we cannot create them."
Hamma calls this step surrendering rather than contemplation. Here the call, beyond the response, is to let go into the loving heart of the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
This fourth stage is not something you can construct. Simply, slow down, move through the other stages, slow down some more, and make room.
Hamma writes: "All we can do, as the mystics say, is dry the wood and stack it carefully so that when the match is laid, it catches fire."
3. Response
Hamma describes this as a response "to the One whose voice we have heard." Our aim is not a particular response: it is to recognize the movement of our heart in response to the "word" to which we have paid attention and which we have pondered. You response may not be verbal prayer, though it certainly can be. It can be art, dance, music, going for a run --these four are Hamma's examples-- or tears or sitting still. Your response doesn't seek resolution or insight. It is your heart's response to what you have seen and heard. Make room for it.
4. Surrendering
"Contemplation begins," Hamma writes, "where all our efforts at meditation and prayer end and we find ourselves caught up in the movement and presence of God. Such experience is a gift, not something we can cause or accomplish. We can engage in spiritual practices that open us to such experiences, but we cannot create them."
Hamma calls this step surrendering rather than contemplation. Here the call, beyond the response, is to let go into the loving heart of the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
This fourth stage is not something you can construct. Simply, slow down, move through the other stages, slow down some more, and make room.
Hamma writes: "All we can do, as the mystics say, is dry the wood and stack it carefully so that when the match is laid, it catches fire."
EARTH: (4) Tradition(s)
Week Five: Earth
4. Tradition(s)
Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory,
and the honour and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong
and no human is worthy to mention Your name.
Praised be you, my Lord,
with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who is the day,
and through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful
and radiant with great splendour;
and bears a likeness of You, Most High one.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven You formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather
through which you give sustenance to your creatures.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Sister Water,
who is very useful and humble
and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night,
and he is beautiful and playful
and robust and strong.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains and governs us,
and who produces various fruit
with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death
will find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.
The Zen Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has, since writing the essay below, developed the notion of "interbeing" and it has become a major byword of the "engaged Buddhism" movement. This Zen Buddhist meditation applies to this week's theme of "earth," but equally well to next week's theme of "community."
We are reading these words on a screen, but as you will see, they were written originally for people who read them in a book made of sheets of paper. You might want to read this with a piece of paper next to you and look at or touch the piece of paper, or the notebook or book nearest to you.
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter-" with the verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter-be.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here--time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. "To be" is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of "non-paper elements." And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without "non-paper elements," like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.
This is a version of Francis of Assisi's "Canticle of the Creatures." We have already encountered it in our group. (It's not the only resource on this post, so keep scrolling.)
Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory,
and the honour and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong
and no human is worthy to mention Your name.
Praised be you, my Lord,
with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who is the day,
and through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful
and radiant with great splendour;
and bears a likeness of You, Most High one.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven You formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather
through which you give sustenance to your creatures.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Sister Water,
who is very useful and humble
and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night,
and he is beautiful and playful
and robust and strong.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains and governs us,
and who produces various fruit
with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death
will find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.
The Zen Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has, since writing the essay below, developed the notion of "interbeing" and it has become a major byword of the "engaged Buddhism" movement. This Zen Buddhist meditation applies to this week's theme of "earth," but equally well to next week's theme of "community."
We are reading these words on a screen, but as you will see, they were written originally for people who read them in a book made of sheets of paper. You might want to read this with a piece of paper next to you and look at or touch the piece of paper, or the notebook or book nearest to you.
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter-" with the verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter-be.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here--time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. "To be" is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of "non-paper elements." And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without "non-paper elements," like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (1991)
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