Reflection by Linda Lundquist Crowe
Yes. To sit quietly and let one’s self pass by is a good way to spend time. Necessary even, for some like me, to get out of my own way. But does it answer my questions? Rarely. Does it make it alright not to have answers? Often. It allows me to envision, if not to receive, the peace of the eternal and reminds me that I get closer to it every day. That whether in the next breath or the next 100,000 breaths, I will soon join the vast numbers of us who know that peace. That thought in itself brings me peace.
Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. I want it more than anything. I believe it is possible that we are created in God’s image. I believe that good and evil resides in us all. Look around. If God is all knowing, and all present, then she can’t be all good. I sit quietly to connect with the divine presence in me. In that way, perhaps God is us.
Why is a broken spirit the sacrifice that is acceptable to God? Why not the offering of a bold spirit? A rebellious spirit? A strong, whole one? Nelson Mandela said, “your playing small does not serve the world.” Yes – there are times when I crawl to God with a broken spirit. But I believe that all spirits serve the world, and therefore God.
Reflection by Kevin Crowe:
Centering Down. I have spent my life moving from the stark certainty of Catholicism and the military into the eternal complexity that Thurman’s poem engages with simple grace. Why are we here and how do we find our footing? The many faces of meditation offer the possibility of glimpsing for a moment the divinity at the core of hope, loss, black despair and the gift of this next breath, as Brother David Steindl-Rast reminded me and my wife as we listened to “On Being,” with coffee mugs in hand and a practiced stillness.
Thomas Merton explored the difficulty of sitting in meditation and the impossibility of knowing – actually knowing – God; that the purpose of sitting with stillness is to let God’s voice come through you and only then can we know who we are and why we are here. We Center Down. I found such relief in Merton’s description of meditation. Pressure was off. On a good day, I can’t remember algebra or how electricity works. So I sit knowing I can’t know. I show up and embrace stillness, grateful for this moment to get it right enough; realizing that centering down is not a goal but a starting. The impossible questions concerning the evil in the world, the wild varieties of raw injustice circle and increase the difficulty in centering but the centering down always reminds me to breathe, to be kind and that the path will be a bit more clear and that it matters. Perhaps this is faith for me now. This breath, these mugs of coffee, my wife.
Kevin Crowe and Linda Lundquist Crowe individually or together consider themselves a potter, writer, songwriter, poet, quilter and conservationist. A lapsed Catholic and lapsed Methodist, respectively, they no longer identify with a denomination and consider themselves kindness and world peace aspirants.