fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: May 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, May 18, 2014. I am home but a few minutes when the call comes. In the half hour since I left, Dad’s oxygen has dropped to 47% and he has begun Cheyne Stokes breathing, a sign that death is near. After a few moments, we give the word. The machine is turned off. And Dad breathes on his own for 20 more minutes. These breaths are not frantic or gasping, but automatic, shallow, moving only his shoulders. Such breathing does not oxygenate blood, ...This energy i...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: May 2015
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, May 17, 2015. One of those principles is ayni (pronounced EYE-nee), a tiny word that goes straight to the heart of how the Q'ero, like most indigenous cultures, are able to live in harmony with one another and with their surroundings. In her book Masters of the Living Energy,. Level They teach, according to Wilcox, that “we are fundamentally energy beings.in a world of living energy.” They tell us that this vital force is an “impl...And in the spirit of ay...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: October 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, October 5, 2014. I might have appeared to be deep in meditation. Inside, though, my mind careened from one inane topic to another. As I was bringing it back to center yet again, the title phrase of that rollicking Mary Chapin Carpenter song popped into my head Shut Up and Kiss Me. I laughed out loud! St Teresa of Avila encouraged us to let God “settle into our bones,” and to allow our souls “to sing, dance, praise and love.” St. My pager goes off, signalin...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: December 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, December 28, 2014. Our Life, Our Prayer. A small rug, round and woven in a mandala like pattern, has been placed in the center of the room. Adorned with a single candle, a vase of flowers, and sacred images, it stands as an altar to the Source, the true center from which everything arises. All is ready. The first line urges us toward an enacted. Spirituality. Each day and every action is an offering that could rightly be called prayer. It's our cho...Has l...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: January 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, January 26, 2014. In The Monk and the Rabbi. An online video, Benedictine monk, author and lecturer Brother David Steindl Rast defines mysticism as, “an experience of communion…with the Ultimate,” one so complete that, at least for a few moments “an annihilation of the self” occurs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the term peak. No, the Ultimate holds me. Cradled in that silence, I experience the truth of Rumi’s words, “Silence is the la...Which has lot...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: August 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, August 10, 2014. Today, I had planned to write about Love, imagining an exuberant piece on its joys and glories. But yesterday arrived and brought with it a swell of sadness. By noon, work had taken me to a far away mountain town to sit with five grieving women and tell them that their beLoved coworker died, not in an accident as they had been informed, but of suicide. Yet even when we're alone, Love is there, too. This morning, amid an avalanche of te...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: February 2015
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, February 22, 2015. With dinner dishes rinsed and stacked, we moved to the living room. Jonathan had brought a book of poetry, and we took turns opening to a random page and reading aloud the words found there. When it came into my hands, the book offered us Kindness. By Naomi Shihab Nye. I read the first lines…. 8220;Before you know what kindness really is. You must lose things,. Feel the future dissolve in a moment. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Ross,...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: September 2014
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, September 7, 2014. Around five am, I wake from a sound sleep. A power outage has shut off our white noise machine, and it was this sudden silence that awakened me. It lasts but a few seconds. With power restored, the steady hum lulls me back into sleep, ignorant of a small tragedy that has just occurred a block away. As neighbors tell it later, there was a bright flash, a loud boom, and this magnificent creature dropped to the ground. My husband's grief an...
fromthezafu.blogspot.com
Living In Awe: July 2015
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Supporting a soulful approach to living. Sunday, July 12, 2015. 2015, a young white man was welcomed into a Bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. A short time later, nine people were dead, victims of hate. The shooter, 21 year old Dylann Roof, reportedly said afterward that he almost didn't go through with the murders because the people he killed had been so nice. How do we remain open hearted in the face of atrocities such as this? Things began to change following the Civil War. In ...
