People often ask me, what is your practice? How are you getting through these days? Many encourage resistance and endurance. As I ponder the questions, their good words help. Mostly though, I feel sad and helpless. I want to be bold and creative. I remember when those wonderful words described me, at least from time to time. Not now.
The word “helpless” is upsetting. It seems synonymous with “faithless.” Yet that doesn’t fit. Thankfully, my faith is strong. I feel helpless because I am navigating many layers of troubling, unknown waters: husband in hospice, all decisions up to me, children surrounded by California wildfires, country and world torn apart in too many disturbing ways.
What does today’s Gospel offer today? * What strikes me most are the stunning lines preceding the beatitudes. Jesus is standing on level ground and heals a great multitude of diseases and unclean spirits. Everyone. I want that to happen here, now. I am struck by the crowd seeking Jesus, reaching out to touch him, needing his help. And they receive it. Apparently limitless healing power lavishly flows from him, penetrates every one of them. Then Jesus speaks, offering the inside-out wisdom of the beatitudes to those newly healed and receptive. Healing preceded the wisdom sayings of his teaching.
The image of Jesus standing “on level ground” is evocative and invites me to stay with it. He is grounded. Grounded in Earth’s overflowing energies, the unifying design of the Universe connecting with his deepest being, he stands strong and confident. After all, he was the Word in the beginning, and nothing came into being without him. (John 1) Now, the incarnate One pours out that same creative power for healing the brokenness of the crowd.
Jesus is on level ground. He is balanced and steady in his truth and purpose. What is a balancing practice? What is his practice? Demonstrating the divine way of being human, perhaps Jesus gives us the key in the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Aramaic scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz translates this beatitude: “Happy and aligned with the One are those who find their home in the breathing; to them belong the inner queendom and kingdom of heaven.”
Find home in breathing. One breath. Is this the key to Jesus being steadily open, illuminating divine unity in his being and action? Jesus appears to be aligned with the One, at home with the One in every circumstance. Breath is the gift of life. And it a practice, too, of healing and hope. It even has the gift of divine silence in the pause at the end of every breath.
So, breathe. Find rest and balance, humbly at home in the unity of the spirit, Holy Breath. Breathing happens naturally of course. The practice is to be aware of uniting with the gracious Source with every breath. Hold fast to being at home in that unity. At home, trust the beloved One’s breath is mysteriously energizing truth, goodness, and beauty in every moment. Perhaps imperceptible, but real.
-- Ann Dean, Dayspring Church
For More
From Prayers of the Cosmos, page 47, from Neil Douglas-Klotz in translating the Aramaic of the first beatitude:
Resisting corruption, possessing integrity are those whose breath forms a luminous sphere; they hear the universal Word and feel the earth’s power to accomplish it through their own hands.
Healed are those who devote themselves to the link of spirit; the design of the universe is rendered through their form.
