Scripps Sundays

Anna- I read this over the past week and thought of conversations we've had. This is so good as I learn better boundaries and so empowering. May it be so...  Stop Absorbing What Isn't Yours There’s a skill many of us were never taught but desperately need:  Not being emotionally porous. Most of us learn empathy early. But few of us learn boundaries with the same clarity. So we absorb everything—students’ fear, colleagues’ urgency, a family member’s frustration—and then wonder why we’re exhausted before noon. Holding a yes/and lens can transform your experience: Yes—you can care deeply. And—you can stay rooted in yourself. Yes—someone else may be in turmoil. And—you can remain steady. Yes—others may move with urgency. And—you can keep your own pace. This discernment is what allows you to stay present without being pulled under. It’s the ability to say, in your body and your mind:  “I see what’s happening. I’m here with you. And I’m choosing who I will be in this moment.” B...

  This was on one of the resident's bulletin boards at Harborview,  and I immediately thought of you when I saw it.  May it be so... 💕

The following post is from  The Book of Belonging Substack: Weekly Sabbath Practice: Mother, May I :  This week’s practice was inspired by conversations in my real life. It’s February - arguably the bleakest month of the year- and I can’t name a single friend who is not on the struggle bus. And I would know: I am the driver and I take roll call. We all have our different ways of coping and - having loaded my bus with a ragtag gang of spiritual hooligans ranging from deeply liturgical to fantastically woo-woo - prayer is a coping mechanism often discussed. If you’re new here, that term might not mean what you expect : as Rumi says,  there are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground.  We’ve explored  Scream Prayer  and something I now refer to as  Bug Prayer , based on Rachel’s iconography. And this week, one of my fellow riders on the struggle bus shared  this video  of Tracee Eliss Ross talking about her personal prayer practice. In short, she...

  I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It sings, and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song. After days of labor, mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it. As we sing, the day turns, the trees move. -Wendell Berry  Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger... -David Wagoner,  "Lost" 

  This is so very beautiful...  and this piece below was written by one of my former colleagues at SPU:  In 1840, the composer Robert Schumann wrote a  lieder  (art song) for his soon-to-be wife, Clara (herself an accomplished musician). He took his lyrics from the poet and linguist Friedrich Rückert. The result was a piece called  Widmung  (“Dedication”), considered to be one of the most lush and profound love songs ever written. It went like this: “You are my soul, you are my heart, You give me joy, or pain impart, You are my world – The world I gladly live in. You are my grave, My very heaven! …Your eyes transfigure me and raise me high. …[You are] my very soul, my better self!” Schumann and Rückert lived and worked during the period of European culture we call “Romantic.” The meaning of the word “Romantic,” of course, has changed over time. Originally, it denoted something “ancient-Roman-ish,” evoking bygone, heroic, and mythic things. Tempestuous ...

Loving is always risky, because we cannot enter into it without being changed. Altered. Transformed. In the face of this, we might well ask,   Do I really want this?   Do we really desire to be so undone? Loving is never just about opening our heart. It is about being willing to have our heart become larger as we make room for people and stories and experiences we never imagined holding. It is about being willing to have our heart become deeper as we move beyond the surface layers of our assumptions, prejudices, and habits in order to truly see and receive what—and who—is before us. It is about being willing to have our heart continually shattered and remade as we take in not only the brokenness of the world but also the beauty of it, the astounding wonder that will not allow us to remain the same. Blessing That Meets You in Love It is true that every blessing begins with love, that whatever else it might say, love is always precisely its point. But it should be noted that thi...