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Tune-Up @ Dawn
Meditation is too big a word. Conversation too small. Somewhere in between there's the perfect word for it. I guess spiritual comes close. It happens in the early morning hours. Jim and I have accidently... okay, so there are no accidents with God! ... bumped into a ritual that feeds us both. Most mornings, outside on the newly paved patio that's surrounded by clusters of hushed green growing things and two cats lounging close, we begin. One or another of us opens one from the waiting pile of books, friends of long standing. Between sips of coffee, and pauses to register what's striking us, we enjoy a simple chat.
We pick randomly, altho again, random's hardly the word when it comes to the divine; the Universe is offering some kind of nourishment from that particular book on that particular page at that particular moment. We never know what jumps out to grab us. It's always a delight.
Listen to this morning's lesson: Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes real happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. - Helen Keller And so we ask ourselves: what's our purpose?
Our readings never cease to amaze and inspire. Never! Who are these author friends? Well, as I look at the pile sitting nearby, they include Kathleen Norris' The Cositer Walk, with its reflections on monastic retreats. Another is Robert Ellsberg's All Saints, crisp bios of everyday people, some pretty contemporary like the beloved Hindu Mohandas Gandhi. Then there is Catholic Social Worker, Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, or Etty Hellisum, the deeply God connected Jewish writer who perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, bringing us into her soul with her diary, An Interrupted Life. Morning time, we are exposed to heroic and outrageous honesties of what it means to serve God, people whose lives go outside the lines, whose examples end up perfect inspirations for the day.
One little green book I unquestionably call gift is Twenty Poems To Nourish Your Soul by Judith Valente and Charles Reynard; he's a Chicago circuit court judge, she's a free lance writer. The book weaves around twenty poems that inspire them both. And, as with the best poems, what speaks to them says volumes to us as well.
These readings put us on our way for the day. Often, when stressed in the long afternoon hours, I turn again to the solid grounding that motivated us during a pregnant daybreak.
At dawn too our garden's colors emerge from the night. When one particular morning a cattleya orchid finally bloomed before our eyes, it was as if one more friend had joined us for the day's opening ritual. Look, it seemed to say: a new day has begun!
--Meandering$: Where Spirit & Money Find Each Other, by Adele Azar-Rucquoi, The Sanford Herald, Sanford, FL, Oct 1, 2008
Noted Spiritual writer and motivational speaker, Adele Azar-Rucquoi is the author of "Money As Sacrament, Finding the Sacred in Money." In her weekly column at her hometown Florida newspaper, as in her life-changing workshops, she helps women & men, wealthy & poor, uncover a holy and healthy relationship with themselves and with their money.
www.MoneyAsSacrament.com
Published: Dec 11,2008 14:39
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