Tag: trueself

The Nod

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

I hope you are well and taking good care of yourself. You can also listen to this piece on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/rT2JueVFKwQ

It is a hard time to be a human, in many ways. My spring semester of teaching was one of the hardest I have known. Students are both wonderful and truly struggling, and I am trying to be there for them. That, after years of trying to be there for students during the pandemic peak. So many students experienced the deaths of those they love, and there has been so much illness for students, of all kinds, including Covid, mental wellness struggles, and other significant life issues like being without a place to live and food precarities. Their lives have been upended over and again. Like many teachers, I try to be a steady presence of kindness for them.

After translating Practice the Presence by Brother Lawrence, the 17th-century sage I call the Friar of Love for his kindness and calmness, and living with him through his traumatic, precarious days of despot Louis the XIV and the friar’s being part of the 98% of non-privileged persons without access to education, a regular supply of nourishing food, and other human necessities, I am haunted by the feeling that that is where the system and those in power are taking us, wittingly or unwittingly.

After publishing and promoting a book (the two are synonymous now), after giving full-time teaching my all which includes co-designing and co-teaching a 200-seat asynchronous public speaking course, after doing many podcasts and interviews and workshops, and after spending last summer booked to the gills by hosting the Mystics Summit for Shift and by participating in the Bay Area Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute, both amazingly wonderful communities and growth opportunities, I decided sometime in April that I would make this summer my fallow time, and I am, outside family obligations.

On my desk here, I have a few, well, really, quite a few, note cards on which I write reminders and chants. One has a reminder of my microphone type for when I am on Zoom and needing to adjust it, and another has the Buddha Medicine Chant. Others here and there say various things: “CALM & CONFIDENT,” “BE AUTHENTIC.” and “What do you need?”

That last one gathers more meaning lately. I invite you to ask it with me. “What do you need?” When was the last time you asked yourself, “What do I need?” I hear Love asking me, when I see this card: “What do you need, Carmen?”

I need to be kind to myself, even more and more. I need more kindness in the world. Both of these things I can in many ways control. I can definitely and gently increase my kindness to myself and to others.

One way I am kind both to myself and to others is I notice the kindness all around me and work with it to contribute further to it. It’s what stitches the world together. Here are a few examples from my life recently when I went to the grocery store.

My brief exchange with the woman in her 50s whom I love getting as cashier because she always offers a little extra bag for the meat that might drip and wears a mask and is a decent kind human. I have hypogammaglobulinemia, so I wear a mask wherever I go.

During an earlier grocery store trip, she noticed how I put down first breakables like eggs then light, squishable breads then frozen items and then canned goods, and she appreciated it, saying something like, “I do that too.”

The last time I went, I said as I unloaded to the belt: “You’re always so efficient—I’ll  try to keep up with you.”

She laughed, breezy like, that let me know she appreciated it.

Then when I got done unloading the cart, I went down to the end since the two teenaged guys with aprons on had stood around chatting and then left in a moseying kind of way. And I picked up one of my cloth bags, and without slowing or missing a beat, she said like a sister would, “How about I’ll finish these and you do bread.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and we made short work of it together.

Those things make the world go round.

When I almost let gravity take my cart into the road in front of the grocery store as I back-pocketed my receipt, I looked up to stop the cart and saw a young teenager driver in a car going past perpendicular to me. I waved appreciatively as they slowed a little and the teenager did the slightest and clearest head tilt up no smile. That was something.

We had communicated community. My wave of thanks, the teenager’s nod.

When I told a friend about this, she texted me back:

Yeah. Decency. 

Not difficult and yet so powerful 

The head nod is one of my favorite things ever 

So my aim in life is to give myself as many kind head nods as possible as well as to give others as many kind head nods as possible, in diverse ways.

May you be blessed.

May you be free from fear.

May you be safe from harm.

May you be strong and healthy.

May you have a calm, clear mind.

May you love yourself as you are.

May you know your own goodness.

May you experience love, joy, and wonder.

May you give yourself the compassion you need.

Thank you for reading.

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.

Come

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

This blog pairs well with my YouTube channel meditation / video where you can spend 6 calm minutes listening to it, watching birds fly over blue water in a blue sky, seeing a rivulet flow, and enjoying a container ship slowly entering the horizon. To view, go here.

The practice of Lectio Divina is ancient and simple, and it exists in diverse forms across faith traditions and wisdom traditions. It means sacred reading. It’s a kind of steeping that creates a web of mental associations, sometimes broken up into four non steps.

I think of these as a web.

We read or bite some wise words, and then we chew on them like a cow chewing her cud. And for those of us from the country who’ve seen cows chewing their cud, that’s some very, very excellent chewing. Very serious nourishing chewing and re chewing.

And then the next non step or spot on the web is savoring.

So read or bite, reflect or meditate or chew, and then comes the respond or oratio or prayer. What is it saying to me? And then the final non step is contemplatio, or contemplation, resting, simply letting go of thoughts or finding that thoughts let go of you, of us, and resting.

Sometimes the fourth non step is sort of separated away and packaged as centering prayer. And that can be, as I’ve experienced it and many others, very nourishing.

Also the cloud of unknowing’s author Anonymous says in chapter 35 and elsewhere that Lectio Divina is where we start as contemplatives.

And in my experience, this kind of food or eating is needed throughout the journey of life. And the wise Jesus said, we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of love or God or mystery, the ultimate source, however a person thinks. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. What from this seems to be highlighted in your consciousness?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

What would you feel is speaking to you in this in these wise words from Jesus? What might it make you feel and what might it make you realize you would like to have more of in your life? Or what kind of a relationship is it calling you to with yourself, with God, or love and with others in whatever non aggressive way you wish?

Let this passage of wise words that have meant so much to so many over millennia speak to us, and then we rest.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Kindness

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Kindness

This past weekend the Very Reverend Gary Jones, Interim Dean at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, invited me to give some talks, lead an experiential, I did Centering Prayer, and preach twice at 9 and 11. So I did. Gary is exceptionally kind and wise, also brilliant and a contemplative. Those are a combination the world needs more of. Thank you, Gary. He and his wife, Cherry, are so welcoming, as was the whole community. Thank you, everyone, for giving me such a warm welcome. I can’t (yet) say in words how much it meant and means—thank you for gifting me with such genuine dialogue, much appreciated.

So I took a copy of the Cloud of Unknowing and of Practice of the Presence with me. It was the fifth Sunday in Lent, where the community reads about Lazarus being raised from the dead, and I’m always happy to consider resurrections, personal and societal, and for nature, injured as this wonder is by greed.

At another time I will write about my time behind the rood screen and among the mirrored skyscrapers where the blue sky and white clouds were reflected. It was a kind of resurrection for me, for diverse reasons. First I want to have digested the experiences fully. I’m still ruminating on them gratefully.

Right now I want to sing again what I did in the 11am service, known to me as the Prayer for the Preface to the Cloud of Unknowing. For a long time I’ve sung it in Middle English, over ten years now, in fact. But I’d never sung my Modern English translation of it. If you want to see me sing it there in Modern English and listen to my 15-minute sermon, you can go to vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/809526246 “3/26/23 Acevedo Butcher: The Fifth Sunday in Lent.” I so appreciate that they included both my last names.

The song or tune for this prayer was inspired by my preparing as I do by reading and thinking, watching CCC’s third week in Lent’s service (where Bradley read it, in fact, from the communal prayerbook, and that sparked in me), and many times praying “What should I do?” as I walked through the marsh, holding this prayer.

How that song came about was the same as with the Middle English. I start out saying it in lectio divina, on a note card on which I’ve written it. And eventually somehow it becomes singing, sung, a song. Sometimes it sounds one way and then another and eventually it settles into a sort of way that is repeated and now I can sing it in that settled version.

It started, this song, in the marsh. Among egrets flying and squawking plus ducks, geese, red-tailed hawks, swallows, pelicans, too. I sing it first in Modern, then in Middle English, and after that read the two footnotes from my translation of the Cloud. You could also substitute for “God” here “Love” or even “Kindness,” since that’s the heart of all major religions and wisdom traditions—kindness, to ourselves and to others—connecting with our True Self, which is/who is Kindness.

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Here are the footnotes from my translation:

1. The Cloud author uses the Middle English entent (“intent”) often, reminding us that his theme is the exercise of “stretching” towards God. See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, line 3. With his background in Latin, he well knew that the word entent (our intent)comes from the Latin in-, “toward,” and from tendere, “to stretch,” so to be “intent” on something is literally “to stretch towards it.” This anonymous monk shows us how we can “stretch” our minds towards God in contemplation and grow spiritually, becoming people who “make peace” (James 3:18). Intense, tendon, attention, attend, attentive,and extend share this Latin root for “to stretch.” 

2. In Middle English, this prayer reads: “God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.” See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, lines 2-5. Here we find a splendid example of the author’s play on the words “speak” and “unspeakable,” highlighting that God listens to us when “alle wille” (“all longings”)“spekith” (“speak”) to himand that he answers our articulated or “spoken” longings with “the unspekable gift” (“the unspeakable gift”) of his grace. We “speak” and in return are given an “unspekable” (“ineffable”) gift, his grace. This word play deftly suggests the mystery of a dialogue between our chatter and a profound silence. This prayer is also the short opening prayer (or collect) before the epistle in the Roman Catholic votive Mass of the Holy Spirit (Ad postulandam gratiam Spiritus Sancti), with one difference. The anonymous author has slightly changed the original Latin version. Originally, the prayer addressed the unspeakable gift “of your Holy Spirit,” not “of your grace.” The author revised it to focus on God’s grace. His use and revision of this liturgical prayer reveal his belief that grace and the Holy Spirit are closely related, that the Holy Spirit informs contemplative prayer, that grace is the sine qua non of contemplation, and that communal prayer is central to spiritual growth.

God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions1 of my heart through the unspeakable2 gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen

Thank you for being here and I hope these bring peace and joy to you.