From Richard Rohr's Daily on-line Meditations:  (highlight mine)

“Peace of Mind” Is a Contradiction in Terms  Meditation 43 of 52

“Beginner’s mind” is actually someone who’s not in their mind at all! They are people who can immediately experience the naked moment apart from filtering it through any mental categories. Such women and men are capable of simple presence to what is right in front of them without “thinking” about it too much. This must be what Jesus means by little children already being in the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:3-4). They don’t think much, they just experience the moment—good and bad. That teaching alone should have told us that Christianity was not supposed to be about believing doctrines and moralities. Children do not believe theologies or strive for moral certitudes. They respond vulnerably and openly to what is offered them moment by moment. This is pure presence, and is frankly much more demanding than securing ourselves with our judgments.

Presence cannot be easily defined. Presence can only be experienced. But I know this: True presence to someone or something allows them or it to change me and influence me—before I try to change them or it!

Beginner’s mind is pure presence to each moment before I label it, critique it, categorize it, exclude it, or judge it up or down. That is a whole new way of thinking and living. It is the only mind that has the power to actually reform religion.

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Be a child today...and if possible be WITH a child, too.

In a mother's womb were two babies. One asked the other: "Do you believe in life after delivery?" The other replies, "why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later. "Nonsense," says the other. "There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?" "I don't know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths." The other says "This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short." "I think there is something and maybe it's different than it is here." the other replies, "No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere." "Well, I don't know," says the other, "but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us." "Mother??" You believe in mother? Where is she now? "She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world." "I don't see her, so it's only logical that she doesn't exist." To which the other replied, "sometimes when you're in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her." I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality....

(Source: current.com)

Play...find time...let your inner child develop fully.

Thanks for the reminder, Friedrich Froebel.

Look for magic!

SPRING FIREWORKS

By Kathie Houchens April 22, 2013

Awed by the colors, surprised by the bright blooms of spring exploding from trees, shrubs, bulbs and bushes,

I drive down an ordinary street and it seems a floral Fourth of July. 

The white cherry blossoms burst bold and full in round formation,

             like a million lights against cerulean skies.

Cascades of delicate pink from the weeping varieties follow. 

Their drooping branches drip with fresh petals like sparklers sending showers to the ground.

The chartreuse contrast of new foliage on early maples

impacts the eyes like a sonic boom the ears. 

Tulip magnolias mix cream and purple,

 draw me into the fragrance as well as the fullness of their flowers.

 In succession an arboreal parade along the avenue lifts me out of everyday mode

 into a spirit of holiday. 

Celebratory  ground displays of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths

punch out gutsy red, orange, yellow, blue and purple.

Festive Spring, you excite and delight!

DORCAS

Dorcas

By Kathie Anderson Houchens, April 15, 2013

This week’s lectionary readings include the passage in Acts 9:36-43 that recounts the resurrection of Dorcas, also called Tabitha and meaning Gazelle.  Just a couple of weeks after Easter, resurrection is a word that haunts my comprehension.  Yes, I believe, but, Lord, help my unbelief.  This is, to the logical grown-up mind, a great mystery.  Even more so as we watch our friends and acquaintances meet death and leave us wondering, “How can this be?”  Perhaps, once again, it takes the childlike willingness to trust in Truth not yet fully revealed, to trust that in time “when we grow up” we will understand, even embrace the ultimate “Good News.” 

Clear images surface each time the story of Dorcas comes around for me.  I played the part of Dorcas in a church play when I was a child.  I can remember the green and black pattern of the cotton fabric that my grandmother had made into a skirt and a head scarf that I wore.  We took our places in the organ loft at the front left of the sanctuary.  As in the scriptural account there was much loud crying by the “widows” when I fell lifeless to the floor.   The physical involvement created a visceral memory for me as I first “played dead” and then “arose” after “Peter” prayed over me.

I was probably about nine at the time.  When I was five I had been quite ill with an extended period of fever, strep throat, ear infections, achy joints and other unrelenting symptoms.  I spent months in bed with twice daily visits from our family doctor.  The hushed conversations in the hallway outside my bedroom and then the visits from well-meaning clergy introduced me to the limbo-world of expecting to die.  Friends brought coloring books about missionaries, boxes of little “open one a day” gifts to cheer me, simple embroidery projects and art-oriented games to play in bed.  There were prayers said over me by family and local pastors, and the doting attention of my “Nanny” (maternal grandmother who lived with us, or rather we with her.)  After a long siege of treatments, medicines, and a tonsillectomy (a topic for another day)I was healed!

So the “Dorcas” story cycles into my awareness yet again.  I remember the ease with which I accepted the “resurrection” story as a child; yet I am challenged in my “adult world of thinking” to believe without seeing.  So I return to another childhood memory that has served me well, Psalm 23, also in this week’s lectionary.  So good to have memorized these precious promises…..of goodness and mercy and forever dwelling with LOVE eternal!

I wonder if the rising of Dorcas (who in many ways IS the grandmother who loved so warmly, who sewed so expertly, who baked so deliciously, who shared so generously) happens when I invite those same passions and gifts to expression through me?  Let the Creator keep on creating and bringing us to life anew and renewed.