Tag: Practice of the Presence

Clover

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

Yesterday I picked a white clover flower and smelled it. I hadn’t done that in a while. A long while. I highly recommend it, if, like me, it’s been a while for you. Just an ordinary clover, wonderful fragrance.

Then this morning I pulled out the weeds around our few and struggling succulents beside the sidewalk and the grass there that’s extra lush because fed on the abundant rain we had in January and March. I started weeding yesterday, finished today. Lots of weeds. Often I think how much attention it takes not to, with the weed, also pull up a plant from a blown poppy seed that’s grown into an orange flower. This morning, again, a tenacious weed was in the exact same spot with a gently rooted poppy, bright as the sun. I had to be so careful not to bring the poppy up with the weed. There’s a lesson there to me.

Sean cut the grass and I weeded, and the front yard benefited and now looks like someone lives here who cares deeply about flowers.

After weeding, I walked to the marsh. Thinking I haven’t looked for 4 leaf clovers in so long. The weather was the kind that is the reason the word “perfect” exists. I was walking down the sidewalk and enjoying the blue sky thinking how my mom often says I am good at finding 4 leaf clovers. I’m very happy to be known to her as good at that.

Beside the sidewalk near a park, I bend to look. Cars are whizzing by. Just looking is a joy. It feels true self connecting. I did this so often as a kid, before so much in life had happened. Just looking is great, I think, and yet, I also think, Finding one would be super.

I’m doing this, bending to the 3-leaved green, much chopped in places by a lawn mower, when I heard a voice, “Are you okay?” I’d seen a fit woman in her 40s wearing a shirt advertising a race on it and running down the sidewalk toward me. “Are you okay?” sounds like she’s asked that before, as if she might be a doctor. In a moment, I stand up, considered how I look with my silver hair and beat up, silvering favorite jeans.

How kind, I thought, answering, “Yes,” then thought to add, “Looking for 4 leaf clovers,” now face-to-face with her, still running.

Also, how interesting that looking for 4 leaf clovers is so uncommon.

Not finding any, I went to another park, trusting my gut, where I thought I might find more chances to spot a four leaf. In a couple of minutes, I had, in fact, finding two almost beside each other. I put them between two leaves and into my back pocket, carefully pressed and held together with an old receipt also in my back pocket and that I wrapped around the two leaves holding the clovers.

The secrets I decided to finding 4 leaf clovers are these:

  1. Remembering to look.
  2. Enjoying seeing all of the 3 leaf clovers and their beauty. Aka enjoying looking. Being in the green.
  3. Stopping looking for 4 leaf clovers as you’re looking. Just glance over the patch. You’ll find one! Maybe two!

Peace to everyone.

CÆDMON’S HYMN

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

“Cædmon’s Hymn” is a very early Old English poem, from around 650 to 680 CE, so 7th century. Our only source for it and for Cædmon’s life is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede describes Cædmon very much like the wealthy churchmen of Brother Lawrence’s day described the “uneducated” friar. Bede says Cædmon was an illiterate herdsman who lived at the Whitby monastery on the northeast shore of North Yorkshire. If that is true, we know for sure that he suffered very cold winters there, taking care of livestock.

The story of Cædmon has many versions. One says he couldn’t make music and so never played the harp or sang during gatherings. But one day he had a dream, and in it a man ordered him to “SING” something. Cædmon protested, saying he didn’t know how to sing, but the man in his dream insisted and Cædmon then sang about the Creator and in praise of God. The song he sang very much reminds me of my early childhood days of being in a church choir, and we sang “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and round me rings, the music of the spheres.” I wish it had included “Mother’s world” and “Parents’ world.”

Cædmon had miraculously received the gift of religious song and became (like Brother Lawrence) widely known to the monks as a faithful, singing, and inspiring “lay brother.” According to Bede, Cædmon also composed other religious stories and poems which demonstrated his gift to the monks. But the only surviving one today is “Cædmon’s Hymn.”

Because no tape recorders existed in the 7th century, I created a melody for it two decades ago (while swinging my children on the playground), and I’ve been singing it very often ever since. As meditation. It is calming and I love its theme of gratitude for nature. Every day I’m grateful for the miraculous gift of nature.

You can listen to me sing it on my YouTube Channel here.

After I sing “Cædmon’s Hymn” in Old English, I sing it in my modern English translation.

Nu sculon herigean      heofonrices Weard,                                           

Meotodes meahte     ond his modgeþanc,                                             

weorc Wuldorfæder,     swa he wundra gehwæs,                     

ece Drihten,     or onstealde.                            

He ærest sceop     eorðan bearnum                              

heofon to hrofe,     halig Scyppend.                                                      

þa middangeard     monncynnes Weard,                                               

ece Drihten,     æfter teode                   

firum foldan,     Frea ælmihtig.

Now let’s sing everyday Mystery,

Maker’s matter and kind mindfulness,

our Parent’s gift of Creation and their Presence.

Our Friend made each wonder’s beginning,

first they shaped skies as a roof

for all the earth’s children.

Then sacred Shaper, present Friend

made the middle-world,

the solid ground

for everyone.

For these gifts we thank the kind Beloved!

This was recorded during an atmospheric river. So you hear the sump pump go off for a few seconds and also at the end you slightly hear some rain pattering down.

My translation makes the language more inclusive while cleaving to the original spirit and the words’ etymological roots. You can see the literal translation below if you wish.

Literal Translation:

Now we should praise the heavenly kingdom’s guardian!

The Creator’s power and His thoughts.

The work made by the Glory Father,

the eternal Lord, who established the beginning.

He first shaped, for earth’s children,

Heaven as roof, holy Maker.

Then the eternal Lord, mankind’s guardian,

next made the solid ground, almighty Lord!

Chant

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

Chant. We could sing more.

I sing everyday. It’s my name. Carmen means “song or poem.” Even on days of challenging ways, I sing. I’ve always been thankful to live under and with and through a name that means “song or poem.” It’s like my very name reminds me, “Did you sing today?”

Kindness. We could be kind more.

Every true religion has kindness as its core. Same for every true philosophy and wisdom tradition. One way I listen to the Mystery at the heart of the Heart is I sing. While my brain swirls and loops and careens, like winds in March, my song holds my heart against love and I deepen into tenderness, as I sing.

A friend shared with me the Medicine Buddha Chant. Some 1400 years young, it’s as old as Beowulf. And totally otherwise has nothing in common with Grendel’s poem. It’s a prayer for healing from the fakery of duality. It’s a prayer for the dissolving of negative thoughts. It’s a prayer for the healing of past traumas. It’s a prayer for bringing calm energy.

A friend shared it with me. He’s a Buddhist teacher. I sing it often. Through the marsh. Down sidewalks. Folding clothes. Sitting at the computer. And in bed at night, quietly.

I think of the billions of souls and bodies and selves who’ve sung it before me and who sing it now with me and I with them, together. You see it spelled many different ways when transliterated. Here is what I am singing:

“Teyata om bekanze bekanze maha bekanze radza samudgate soha.”

Here is my meditative translation of that, with my friend’s approval:

“It’s like this. Om, sacred tone of the universe, holy body, holy speech, holy mind. Medicine Buddha, King, Supreme Healer. Eliminate and remove the pain of illness of mind and body, eliminate and remove the pain and illness of spiritual suffering, and greatly eliminate and remove any slightest imprints left on my consciousness by disturbing thoughts, Ocean of goodness and wisdom, may my prayer go to the highest, widest, deepest, in sincere intention, blessing, I offer this prayer and let it go out.”

I also made a short translation and a melody for the original and the English version, and I sing both:

“Teyata om bekanze bekanze maha bekanze radza samudgate soha.”

“Sacred Song of the Universe, heal me, heal us | Deeply heal us where our mind-heart wanders from Love.”

I’m posting these, sung, on my YouTube Channel, if you want to listen, sing with silently, or sing along aloud: https://www.youtube.com/@CarmenAcevedoButcherPresence

Remember, you’re singing for yourself, not as a performance.

The way life really is, for yourself, not performance.

Blessings on you, with love.

Friends

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

I translated Brother Lawrence. I entered some dusty and beautiful books from the 1600s, and they brought me the gold in my shadow and new friends. Something similar happened with Cloud.

Many of these new friends I kind of knew already. If you count having read all of Mirabai Starr’s books friendship. Isn’t it though, in a way? Do you do that, too? You find one book by someone that really resonates, so you find all they’ve written and devour it?

So here are a few kind friends whom I’m grateful for and whom I met through translation. Here they are in no particular order, each in a few lines, that like the tip of an iceberg just suggest rather than represent the richness they bring into my life and into the world’s. Some hyperlinked URLs are here for those who want to delve deeper into the richness these wise friends contribute to the global community. Today, we can be grateful for their helpful videos, too, that we can find on the internet.

Mirabai Starr, whose way of living teaches me more about beyond-binary life than even any of her amazing books, acclaimed translations, creative non-fiction works, Wild Mercy, and one on-the-way.

Mark Dannenfelser of Contemplative Outreach International, a wise storyteller who also introduced me to David A. Treleaven’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.

Rev. SeiFu Anil Singh-Molares of Spiritual Directors International, who brings new life to conversations surrounding translation, spiritual companionship, and trying to live a life of tranquility and kindness.

Jon M. Sweeney, who cultivates meaningful conversations in “Off the Page” at Spirituality & Practice, and in his many books–I’m joyful anticipating his and Mark Burrows’s next Meister Eckhart translation!

Lama Yeshe Rose, who shared with me about her adventures translating Tibetan scriptures, and I’ll never gladly be the same, for what I learned in two hours of our talking.

Aurelia Dávila Pratt, whose A Brown Girl’s Epiphany: Reclaim Your Intuition and Step into Your Power is a wise, powerful book, asking all of us to honor the sacred voice within us and be kind to others.

Renée Roden, a freelance reporter and writer, also member of St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago, whose deep listening and writing skills inspire me, and I hope for future books from her.

Josh Patterson and Greg Farrand who interviewed me for the podcast (Re)Thinking Faith and who gave me such grace of listening and who share their own journeys in ways that give me great hope and joy.

Annmarie Sanders, IHM, who interviewed me for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and shared such wisdom with me about what women religious are thinking and experiencing today.

Clifford Brooks III, who publishes The Blue Mountain Review, hosts the NPR podcast Dante’s Old South, and cultivates community through The Southern Collective Experience in the best, most lasting ways.

Cassidy Hall, Kevin Johnson, and Carl McColman, who through the Encountering Silence podcast, and in countless other ways teach us all what it looks like to really, really, really pay attention and listen.

Cynthia Bourgeault, a kind friend since Cloud days, is much cherished for how she creates newness from ancient wisdom and listens into the mysteries and brings us all back joy and new ways of seeing.

Shima Bagheri Ahranjani, is also my friend because of the Cloud. She emailed me a few years ago to say she loved the Cloud. Shima is a dear friend, she has a Ph.D. in Persian literature, and she has given me one of the greatest gifts I always yearned for–friendship with someone who knows Rumi in Farsi, inside and out.

And so many many more. Making me so grateful. Little wonder. From the last section of my Introduction to Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, we encounter the amazing friend Brother Lawrence, who has a way of cultivating friendships wherever he goes:

The best description I know of him is, unsurprisingly, by his good friend and mentee Joseph of Beaufort. It’s from the Profile:

The virtue of Brother Lawrence never made him harsh. His goodness made him gentle. He was a warm, welcoming person. He gave others confidence. When you met him, you felt you could tell him anything. You knew you’d found a friend. As for him, once he knew the person he was dealing with, he spoke freely and showed great kindness. He said simple things, but these were always to the point, and full of common sense and meaning. Once you got past his rough exterior, you discovered a unique wisdom, an openness of mind and a spaciousness beyond the reach of an ordinary lay brother. His depth of insight exceeded all expectation. . . . And you could consult him on anything.

On the pages that follow, you will meet this genuine soul who lives in these words. His authenticity flowed from his friendship with the Presence. His gentleness and warmth, great kindness and common sense, wisdom and openness of mind, which made him a wonderful friend, are the spiritual muscles that his practice of the presence prayer developed, over time.

Brother Lawrence is the reason this wise book has stayed alive through centuries of plague, famine, inequity, inhumanity, religious strife, wars, floods, and our ever-present human fragility. He extends friendship and wisdom to you.

Enjoy becoming friends, and spending time with him, returning now and again for conversation.