July 9--Re-Centering

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.  --Elbert Hubbard

    It is taking a lot of breathing, centering, and patience to get through the frustration of the challenging trip home and re-entry into "regular" life. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation of July 3 offers soothing relief:

Mystic and theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) writes of the contemplative practice of making time to “center down”:

How good it is to center down!

To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!

The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;

Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,

While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still

moment and the resting lull.…

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—

what are the motives that order our days?

What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?…

Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.

As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes

of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—

A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart

makes clear.

It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are

answered,

Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of

our daily round

With the peace of the Eternal in our step.

How good it is to center down!

    Peace be with us all.
        Leta

Monarch on hibiscus, The Butterfly House, Chicago