Yourself Flowering Itself

Would you stop to contemplate if you sensed the Mystery was answered Here, each and every Here? If you intuited the Realization sought was Now, each and every Now? What if each flower, each cloud, each clod of earth - each bird, each animal, each creature of the earth - each brook, each inlet, each drop of rain - each child, each face you meet, each memory of someone known who died: What if each of these held within them the very essence of clarified life, Sacred Spirit Itself?

Would this realization stun us into stillness, simplicity, solitude, service, and silence?

So, come to rest, stop awhile, look out over the water, look up to the mountains. Breathe in and breathe out. Let the loving light and compassionate silence of your own very spirit be still a while within the Sacred Spirit Itself.

Your spirit and the Sacred Spirit are not two. The air you breathe is your breath, and, the breathing of the Sacred Spirit Itself is your very breathing - not separate, not just outside you and not just inside you.

This interchange, this interesting interconnection, this inter-being is the vital awareness and realization of the integrity/wholeness of our selves and the world. Not two, Not one - But whole and full of light. This is who you are. This is what you are. This is where you are. Perhaps our job is simple, perhaps our task is easy: Be who you are; Do what you are doing; Enter fully where you are every moment you live.

May Christ mind/heart be your safety and direction! May Buddha mind/heart be your guide and refuge! May What-Is-Sacred-Spirit-Itself (the One we call God), and True-Nature (Dharma) - be your core and root reality!

May you find yourself in a community of support - whether church or sangha - to practice! May your hermitage be solitary, and, shared well! This is what August brings us to; this is all we have.

If the Mystery of Christ is Here, the mystical rose has flowered a blossom embodying love itself! If the Realization of Buddha is Now, the hand holding the flower & the eye seeing it is joy itself smiling!

Our prayer is that you arrive at who, and what, and where you are. Our delight is that you come to rest with that profound, joyous, and loving spirit. The rest is silence!

Best,

1Aug2000

Special Hermitage Update, 17August 2000

On 15 Aug 2000, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, our dear friend and elder Janet Rhodes at age 80 died on her beloved Beach Island located in Penobscot Bay. After finishing breakfast with her son Jim and wishing to sit on her bench swing on the porch of her small cabin, she said she didn't feel well and took ill. Friends and relatives on the island at the time were called. They assisted her to her bed and began the process of getting to the mainland. But Janet was not to leave the sanctuary of her island until one last event occurred. In her cabin, surrounded by dear ones holding her in embrace Janet weakened and went within. Then her eyes closed and her heart stopped. Janet was home.

A Mass of Resurrection was held for her on Monday 21 Aug 2000, 1PM at Our Lady of Good Hope Church, Union Street, Camden, Maine. Proclaimed boldly by the homilist as the Quaker-Catholic "Saint Janet of Camden" and acclaimed in the tradition of Sts Lawrence (Aug 10), Francis of Assisi, and Dorothy Day, Janet was then feted by her son Paul with a quiet Quakerly account full of wit and loving detail of her life as mother and wife, haircutter and gravy maker, island keeper and singer-without-ceasing.

The small wood Buddha and bronzed wood 2ft high statue of St. Francis of Assisi given us by Janet now sit and stand in silent vigil in her loving memory in Meetingbrook's chapel/meditation room. Her perennial singing, of course, is heard everywhere. This along with the clear image of her smile is a joy given us, and -- humbly, gratefully -- received.