Next In-person walk: Saturday, November 8, 9-10 a.m.
Covenant Presbyterian Church back parking lot, 2222 at Mo-Pac, Austin
Next Zoom discussion: Saturday, November 8, 10:30 a.m. Central Time (U.S. and Canada) Zoom link
By Janet Davis
Walk In: Losing Our Lives by Fostering Our Own Loss, Integrating Suffering
“A tree is a perfect presence. It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution. The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss. It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it. The tree shelters and minds the loss. Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree presence. Trees stand beautifully on the clay. They stand with dignity. A life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak times into a dignity of presence. Letting go of old forms of life, a tree practices hospitality towards new forms of life. It balances the perennial energies of winter and spring within its own living bark…”
Eternal Echoes, John O’Donohue
Questions
What losses are you being asked to foster? What suffering are you being invited to integrate?
Do you have a vision for how integrating loss and suffering can increase the dignity of your presence in the world rather than diminish it? What possibilities lie within a life of such dignity?
Center: Meeting the Holy One in Deep Belonging
“The tree is wise in the art of belonging. The tree teaches us how to journey. Too frequently our inner journeys have no depth. We move forward feverishly into new situations and experiences which neither nourish nor challenge us, because we have left our deeper selves behind. It is no wonder that the addiction to superficial novelty leaves us invariably empty and weary. Much of our experience is literally superficial; it slips deftly from surface to surface. It lacks rootage. The tree can reach towards the light, endure wind, rain, and storm, precisely because it is rooted. Each of its branches is ultimately anchored in a reliable depth of clay. The wisdom of the tree balances the path inwards with the pathway outwards.”
Eternal Echoes, John O’Donohue
“May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.”
Eph 3: 17-19 The Living Bible
Questions
What would it mean to move more deeply rather than more quickly right now for you? To refuse to leave your deeper self behind?
What “root work” is calling to you? What choices or practices or people help sink your roots more deeply into the soil of God’s love?
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Planting Ourselves Near Flowing Rivers
PSALM 1
Blessed are the man and the woman
who have grown beyond their greed
and have put an end to their hatred
and no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are
and keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.
A Book of Psalms by Stephen Mitchell
Questions
What might it look like for you presently to no longer nourish illusions and instead find refuge in reality, delight in the way things are?
Practically speaking, how might you grow beyond greed (which can feel like simple self-preservation or survival) or put an end to hatred (including self-hatred)? What choices or practices help keep your heart open in both day and night? (For me, it’s easier in the day!)
What flowing rivers do you have access to today? How can you plant and root yourself there?