Whenever you can you should try to never waste time. Yes, it is precious.
I remind myself of this after feeling frustration at a lengthy interruption of one of my purposes.
As early as I'm able I will awaken to the moment as a gift of 60 seconds, I bow down and enter into it renewed.
Growling.
Call to mind someone whose behavior you would like to see change.
They should never have done that!
More growling?
Are we bloodthirsty creatures by nature or might we be capable of a more patterned life-giving way throughout our lives? Have we the capacity to learn our way as a species out of violence? And into harmonious community from one hemisphere to the other?
It was a perfect morning for him to reflect upon things like this, it having been as quiet as it was now. Eggs and toast, juice and coffee and then to the notebook where he would give himself reflection time before heading out in the Honda for afternoon rides. He wore his Cubs hat and was looking forward to opening day against Milwaukee. The Sox were also going to look pretty good this year again.
The globe was getting smaller and smaller for him. Of course, he dreamt of his military missions back in the Czech Republic, it was right over there. He did everything that he wanted on his mission as you will soon hear but for now theological questions drew him in more deeply.
Without
doing too much labeling or assuming, he kindled an inspiration to keep questions
like this in front of himself and others along with the course of
day-to-day flow.
He remembered the practice called Transforming Enemy Images:
Upon being triggered by what someone says or does, what thoughts erupt and flood the mind? Write an exhaustive list.
What emotions are present? Can you name them? Check your list.
Can you connect to a deep and human longing underlying the upset? Name it. Claim it as your own longing.
These are a few of the steps he used to teach at the seminary.
Conflict happens, person-to-person and tribe to tribe. How does it all operate? Why such a constant throughout human history?
What makes harmony? What breaks harmony? How do we envision, how do we visualize the widest and broadest of our shared experience, how do we hold one enormous WORLD before ourselves…? How do we see all the people at once, and take in as much of the whole of the earth with its mammoth oceans and towering continents and prairie lands and deserts?
With its treaties… With its bombs…?
I create… I destroy… I imagine. We are such beings who can imagine and singularly give shape to what comes into being. To create is to actively imagine first and foremost, I look ahead, I futurize. I invite my full presence and a loving willingness to witness.
I
understand there are thousands of Ukrainian civilians who are now
being held in "filtration camps" – we all cry out
WE SEE YOU!
More growling. A voice is heard. It is vicious: They will die remembering us. We will be there among their last thoughts on earth.
