Meditation November 9 and 10: Co-creating wholeness While Waiting

Ah, yesterday! 
(I love quoting from Sam Beckett's Happy Days.)  

Yesterday I meditated for 5 minutes twice while waiting for Amy to arrive for our Monday morning worship session.   I set the gongs to ring on my cell phone between 7 and 8AM.   I felt so good melting into non-stress and then rising into mindfulness of breath and body and sound, falling and rising again.  I did it first lying down and then sat up after reading Richard Rohr's meditation.  Lots to think about this week on the topic of "Co-creating wholeness."

Today was even better.  This time I was waiting for the cleaning ladies: 

Mindfulness meditation while waiting

takes care of stress.  I root instead, become

an elm, an oak—depending on my mood—

and rest to soft-sap rising harmonies,

and trees don't pace, no, they don't squawk or nag,

no, they don't talk nor walk nor watch a clock,

they grow real slow the more they're left alone . . .

I've always hated waiting.  Why?  It used to give me opportunity—for 37+ years—to smoke cigarettes, which I came to see as a slow kind of suicide based on self-loathing.  But if there ever was self-loathing, it is gone.  It is gone with forgiveness of those who I imagined had abused me.   Abuse and waiting are instances of being out of control, are times it seems that I have no choice.  But I have a choice, and now I choose to meditate. This is a choice that helps me feel good about myself.   This is a choice that allows me to accept my relationship with God as well, to accept love and to love, to answer the vast call yearning towards me, to be aware of it more often.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Hildegard von Bingen, "The Universe" (detail), Scivias Codex, c. 1165.

Science: Week 2

The Great Turning  Monday, November 9, 2015

I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life.  -- Deuteronomy 30:19 Eco-philosopher, Earth elder, friend, and spiritual activist Joanna Macy, now in her eighties, has been promoting a transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-sustaining Society for most of her life. She calls it the Great Turning, a revolution of great urgency: "While the agricultural revolution took centuries, and the industrial revolution took generations, this ecological revolution has to happen within a matter of a few years." She is hopeful as she sees individuals and groups participating in "1) actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings; 2) analysis of structural causes and creation of structural alternatives; and 3) a fundamental shift in worldview and values." [1, emphasis mine] . . . . and more . . . .