November 2011 Newsletter

This newsletter is published monthly by the Mystical Order of the White Rose, a cyber-monastic order. We support-- and share information about-- mystical, monastic, contemplative and creative ways of living. We encourage prayer, the reading of sacred scripture(s), lectio divina, meditation, journaling, solitude, fasting, silence, sacred movement (dance, mudras, yoga), kindness, hospitality, worship, simplicity, creativity, active involvement in spiritual and religious communities, and loving service to others. You can view past issues here and you can subscribe to the newsletter by clicking here.

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Theme: Suffering

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

- Helen Keller (1880-19680

Table of Contents

-- Personal Update by Cynthia Kiteley Lee, MOWR's Founder & Administrator

-- Article: Letting Go--So Comes Love by Amy McTear

-- Poem: Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden

-- Article: The Four Noble Truths (Buddhist)

-- Article: To Love and to Suffer--The Science of the Saints (Christian)

-- Poem: I Sit and Look Out by Walt Whitman

-- Links of Interest

-- Multi-Faith, Multi-Media Daily Devotionals for November

-- Additional Resources

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

- Louise Bogan

Personal Update

by Cynthia Kiteley Lee

I thought about canceling this issue of the MOWR Newsletter because of the shattering nature of recent events and the topsy turvy nature of my life these last three weeks. I decided to go ahead, as late in the month as it is, and send out the newsletter. I apologize for its lateness

A little over three weeks ago my husband Johnny had a massive stroke and was rushed by ambulance to the local hospital's emergency room. Shortly after arriving there his heart stopped. Electroshock and cardio-pulmony resuscitation were used to bring him back to life. In addition to the stroke and heart seizure/attack, it was discovered that Johnny had a urinary tract infection and that vomit had entered his left lung.

The stroke damaged Johnny's ability to manage basic functions like breathing, eating, speaking, and walking. The area of the brain that controls memory and personality was fairly intact.

After six days in the local hospital, on a respirator and heavily sedated, Johnny was moved an acute care hospital in a nearby town. Within 48 hours of his arrival, he was weaned off of the sedative medication. His urinary tract infection was healed shortly after that.

Johnny is still on a respirator, but the tube for it was placed in his throat; a feeding tube was placed in his stomach. The overarching goal re: Johnny's treatment is to wean him off his respirator. Until that is done, he will be unable to speak, eat and drink (other than from a tube). His left side is stronger than his right side. Johnny's left arm, the only one he can use normally, has been tied down to keep him from pulling the respirator tube from his throat.

I spend a great deal of time driving to and from the acute care hospital, by myself or with Johnny's mother and/or daughter, neither of whom drive. It takes me 45 minutes to drive to the hospital; it's closer to two hours when I pick up my mother-in-law and stepdaughter.

I still going to work, but my boss has been kind and flexible about my schedule. Some days Johnny is alert and interactive--mostly using "yes" and "no" nods to communicate. Other days he is sunk in depression. He knows his visitors and responds well to specific requests from doctors and nurses. It is likely that Johnny will need two to six weeks to phase out his respirator.

Recovery, if it happens, will be slow. Johnny will need to learn to speak, eat and walk "all over again." Although Johnny is on life support, his mental functions and awareness are such that he is far from being a "vegetable," so there is no question of removing it.

We have been blessed by a tremendous outpouring of prayer support, caring and assistance. Each day has sorrows and joys.

Bright Blessings,

Cynthia

Letting Go - So Comes Love

by Amy McTear

        E.E. Cummings in his poem Let it Go, persuades us to let it all go...'it was born to... sworn to go...' he says, 'so comes love'.

      The human spirit in its fully realized state prefers to live in peaceful union with the dissolve, welcoming opportunities to let go, shed heaviness and density, die and be reborn repeatedly.

      But most of us are unwittingly aligned with a different creed, a popular mentality that we should hold on for dear life, avoid death, fight for our lives, battle illness... and terrorism... and environmental disaster...

      But all this avoiding, fighting and battling spends a great amount of our life force and keeps us in a rigid posture of anticipating the next threat or danger, unable to fully engage with joy, love and beauty in the present.

      We can hold ourselves apart, in preparation for what might 'get' us or destroy us next, or we can make our daily practice one of no resistance, of letting in and letting go.

       Really it is about our choices in the moment to let in pleasure, to choose to be with thoughts that feel well in our bodies rather that disturb us, to focus on simple beauty, rather than horror, to let go of our compulsion to suffer.

      The divide or internal split occurs when the spirit longs for the dissolve, and the mortal fearfully defends against it. This holy letting go into love and joy, this knowing of our boundless nature and our part in some greater oneness, threatens the survival of the individual ego; the separate self.

      To love the dissolve and embrace our full humanity fulfills a profound dimension of our purpose.   It is wholeheartedly human to weep at the comings and goings, the end of the flowering, the aging, the apparent loss of a loved one returning to the nonphysical realm... the surrendering of our own lives when the time comes...

      We have selected this human incarnation to experience the full spectrum. We have the capacity to hold two seemingly opposing states of being. We can be tender and mournful and simultaneously celebratory of life, and realize that the inevitable dissolving is, in reality, no threat whatsoever to our overall nature.

Article Source: http://www.unencumberedbeing.com/2011/08/so-comes-love.html

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smalaler and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

- Thomas Merton (Catholic monk, author, interfaith dialogue practitioner)

Painting entitled: Icarus by Breughel

Musee des Beaux Arts

by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. Life means suffering.

To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.

Source of Article: http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html

Image of Our Lady of Sorrows courtesy of: One Tiny Violet

I understood that to become a saint one had to suffer much, seek out always the most perfect thing to do, and forget self. I understood, too, that there are many degrees of perfection and each soul was free to respond to the advances of the Our Lord, to do little or much for Him, in a word, to choose among the sacrifices He was asking. Then, as in the days of my childhood, I cried out: 'My God I choose all!' I do not want to be a saint by halves, I'm not afraid to suffer for You, I fear only one thing: to keep my own will; so take it, for I choose all that You will!"

-- St. Theresa of Lisieux (French Carmelite nun)

To Love and To Suffer -- The Science of the Saints

We live in a world that runs from suffering. Since the time of our youth, we have been conditioned to view suffering as an impediment to happiness. This worldview, which is so imbued in our culture, tells us, that the less we suffer, the happier we will be. Yet, in the writings of the Saints, we find an entirely different reality; that it is precisely suffering that strengthens us, humbles us, and forges us into saints. But more than this, we discover that suffering is of such inestimable redemptive worth, that nothing equals it in heaven or on earth. As Our Lord told Saint Faustina; "If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering." (p.1805) But why is this so? Why has the motto of the Saints down through the centuries always been; "to love and to suffer"? Why is it not;"to love and to do good works", or "to love and to preach"?

According to the Saints, when we seek to deny our wills and offer sufferings in love for Our Lord, we draw down from heaven more grace than any other action we can possibly make.

In fact, the saints teach us that suffering is of such great merit, that it is greater than external works such as preaching, writing, or even working miracles. The defining moment of redemption for the human race was not when Our Lord healed the sick or preached in the synagogues. It was when the God-Man was nailed to a cross and drained of His blood out of love for mankind.

We see then that there is no greater measure of our love than our willingness to follow in the footsteps of Our Redeemer, that is; our willingness to be affixed to a cross and to suffer, just as the apostles (Acts 5:41, 14:21, Rom 8:18, 2 Corinthians 12:10, etc.). By doing so, we join in the redemptive work of Christ through our sufferings (Col 1:24). We become little co-redeemers, and merit the conversion and sanctification of souls. This is the final end of suffering; the salvation of mankind.

As Our Lady told the world at Fatima; "Many souls go to hell because there is no one to sacrifice themselves and pray for them." And if this is so, should it then be any coincidence that that which is so cherished by Our Lord, is that which is most feared and misunderstood by the world?

Article Source: http://www.religious-vocation.com/redemptive_suffering.html

I Sit And Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these-all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

- Walt Whitman

Links of Interest

The Pain Passes but the Beauty Remains

Our Lady of Sorrows -- History and Devotions

Video-Song: Blessings by Laura Story

One of a kind images of St. Theresa of Lisieux

Binaural Blog

Interrupting the Silence Blog

Universal Monk

Screenr - Super Easy Screencasts

Unemcumbered Being

Gratefulness.org

Mind Power News

The Holy Season of Advent

Video: Plains Milky Way - stunning time lapse images of milky way; music perfect complement.

A Holy Experience

Daily Multi-faith, Multi-media Devotionals for November 2011

Each day we should expose ourselves to the inspiration of others. Thousands of saints and wise men and women have left us messages of hope and encouragement. Read what is honest. Read the scriptures and the commentaries. Read great literature and poetry. Read the psalms. Read that which expresses the anguish and the exhilaration of experience, and teaches us that we are not alone.

- John McQuiston II, p. 88, Always We Begin Again--The Benedictine Way of Living

November 1 All Saints Day (Christian)

November 2 All Soul's Day (Christian) Guru Nanak Dev Sahib birthday (Sikh)

November 11 Veterans' Day (civil - military)

November 12

November 13 John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople (Christian-Orthodox)

November 24 Thanksgiving Day --- Guru Tegh Bahadur Martyrdom (Sikh)

November 30 St. Andrew's Day (Christian)

The Mystery of Pain

by Emily Dickinson

Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain.

Additional Resources

Moon Phases for October 2011

Living In Season

“Living in Season” is for anyone who is weary of the frantic pace of modern life, who wants to slow down, connect with the natural world, and live a life filled with heart and meaning. Each season has its own flavor, captured in the folklore of seasonal holidays, preserved in rituals and recipes, ceremonies and songs. This quarterly “Living in Season” e-zine helps you connect with the seasons through our articles, online courses (with suggestions on spiritual practices and creative pursuits that match the energy of each season), books and e-books on time management and the seasons.

Daily Celebrations

Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Writer's Almanac:-- Poems, prose, and literary history. Delivered daily.

Interfaith Calendar

Calendar of the Episcopal Church

Episcopal Liturgical Calendar

Church of England Calendar of Saints

Celtic and Old English Saints Calendar

2011 Online Catholic Liturgical Calendar

Calendar of Franciscan Saints and Blesseds

Carmelite Calendar

Celtic Wheel of the Year