Water: This week it is water and Water. Whenever I capitalize a word in a sentence it is usually as a way to describe God and the Nature of God.
Wherever there is water there is life.
This is God's Intention -
when encountering Living Water, water alive.
stand in awe of God's Creations.
---------------------------------------
There is a story of a group of fish in the Ocean talking to a turtle who tells the fish that she is going to the land to see what is going on there.
"Let us know what is happening in the water called land" they asked. And the turtle went on her way.
Several weeks later she returned to where the fish lived. "Well tell us about the land!" they asked.
"Well, the land is dry and I walked on it." replied the turtle.
"What is walking? What do you mean by dry? The world is only water!" the fish exclaimed.
After much arguing and attempts at explanation the turtle had enough of the fish and said,
"Enough! You are perfectly welcome to your perceptions about the world, here and there. I am going back to the land." And she disappeared.
The story can easily be reversed to indicate where we may be with others after we have been called to the Ocean, swam and breathed there. In our spiritual development we will be brought places by God that seem beyond belief to those we are surrounded with, friends, family, etc.
What God has done for me I can relate to some, but not to everyone, as it seems to unthinkable to most that experiences given by Grace can exist in their perceptions of how things are. All that is important is what I have experienced and thereby know to be real and from God. These Gifts are indelible and are as real today as some were 25-30 years ago. That is all the proof of their validity I need.
Water, the Ocean, years spent moving closer to the Water past the shores leave me in awe of the power of the Living god who created the universe, and yet has come into my life with force and gentleness in ways that leave me with no illusions as to where and who my life belong to. It all started with water, the breaking of my mother's water, the water of baptism, the waters of many renewal of baptismal vows over the years, the Call of the Water of the Ocean, and my many responses to get to the shoreline and immerse my self in God's Love for me and the direction my life has taken.
Baptism has been the going to the small stream at the top of the mountain, being carried on its small currents to larger streams which eventually lead to the sea - the Ocean. What a journey my life has been on these past 30 plus years!
Walking with Lee, my wife, down the Jordan Stream in Acadia National Park earlier today I talked again that if I were to die before Lee she was to scatter my ashes from a beautiful bridge there and let the current carry my remains the final mile to its terminus - the ocean. A symbol of returning to God to give thanks for this life in all its aspects - a symbol of returning Home, the place where I started out from years ago.
-------------------------------
At many places along the journey to the Sea, if we stop to be mindful and aware, we will find tranquil spots that will offer serenity and the promised Peace that is ever offered to hands that reach out to embrace these marvelous Gifts.
----------------------------------
In the following song hold on to the paradox above and see if in your quiet you can hold both the discordant and the divine.
Click on: http://www.box.com/s/7l9147tcovkmr2jd2oxy It is named "A Drop Of Water"
And for further meditation with music, "Returning Home" which is the journey we are on as the river we flow with on our journey finally meets the Ocean, God's Self.
Click on: http://www.box.com/s/e44b032ab4c2ab7f4d03
-------------------------------------------
What can we do if life seems to throw tidal waves of grief at us?
Stay the path. Keep walking.
God will not allow us to drown no matter what may happen.
---------------------------------------------
Teresa Of Avila, the great Catholic Mystic, spoke of four methods of watering the garden of our heart and soul. The following is taken directly from her writings and may seem a little convoluted to some. She is speaking in the language of the 1400's in Spain during the Inquisition and a stilted verbiage was necessary to get past the censors. Although, many scholars believe that this is what she believed. The more important thing is the four stages of watering she outlines.
Teresa depicts different stages of the life of prayer in metaphorical terms taken from the manner of securing water to irrigate a garden. The "first water" is laboriously obtained from a well and carried in a bucket to the garden; this is in reference to beginners who, liberated from the more flagrant mortal sins, apply themselves to discursive prayer of meditation, although they experience fatigue and aridity from time to time. After speaking at length of meditation in its stricter meaning, Teresa made a brief reference to "acquired" contemplation before beginning her discussion of the "second water." In this second stage, the gardener secures water through use of a windlass and bucket; here Teresa refers to the "prayer of quiet, a gift of God through which the individual begins to have a passive experience of prayer. The third method of irrigation is the employment of water from a stream or river; the application made by Teresa is to the "sleep of the faculties." Although Teresa considered this an important stage in the evolution of prayer when she wrote her autobiography, she later relegated it to a simple intensification of the "prayer of quiet" in the Interior Castle. The fourth method of irrigation is God given: the rain; Teresa employs this metaphor to describe a state of union in prayer in which the soul is apparently passive.
---------------------------------------------------------
Until next Week, Peace, Bill lagerstrom
