Wednesday, November 27, 2013
In the midst of famine in Sudan in the 1980’s, everything was dry – grasses and foliage. To keep from focusing on hunger and distress, the women began to weave baskets from the dry grasses, beautiful baskets. This weekend I heard, live, a beautiful piece of music. The Famine Song, by Vida, arranged by Mathew Culloton, that describes this. I find listening to this song deeply soothing somehow. It touches within me places of injury and distress and provides a healing balm.
Here is a link to a group singing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKZN3JeyCPc

Some of the beginning words of the song are :
Ease my spirit
Ease my soul
Please free my hands from this barren soil
Ease my mother
Ease my child
Earth and sky be reconciled
And at the end :
Weave my mother
Weave my child
Weave your baskets of rushes wild
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

art by lynn
One of the questions in my Spiritual Connections book asks how often you find yourself being thankful for your blessings. When something horrible that I might have expected doesn’t happen, I find myself especially thankful. For example, when I have a close shave in traffic, and I come out unscathed. Or I find myself thankful when something that seems particularly nice happens to me. But I see people who are in such difficult circumstances still being thankful – circumstances of poverty or disease that I don’t think I could bear. I am amazed at their continual appreciation of small things in life, and it is important for me to have that reminder.
Just think of the close shaves we all have each day that we are unaware of – the escapes from trouble that we don’t even see. And even buried within the tough times are blessings we may never completely comprehend. What looks like disaster can somehow pave the way for future good for ourselves or others.
And we are alive: we taste food, we feel the softness as we touch a cat’s fur, we hear music that touches us. All the lovely little things of each day. Being alive, even when life is tough, has lovely moments – more of them than we can keep track of. They often go by unnoticed, like unwrapped presents. I am going to unwrap a few more today.

drawing by lynn
“The encounter between two people which leads to mutual recognition and the serious exchanges of friendship or love abolishes between them the third person which is the normal form of regard for another, and each becomes for the other a second person, a thou, and thenceforth they are together in the first person, a we. Each is present to the other and promises to be with the other always. The intimate being of each is present to the other, and fidelity is the active cultivation and enjoyment of that presence always. Absence and even death does not destroy this presence, but is rather the proof of its veritability. For when one dies whose presence I have enjoyed in friendship or in love, either he becomes less than an object or else his presence (not a mere image or memory) remains as active within me as before. It depends on my willingness to continue to be truly present to him.”
Blackham, H. J. (1983). Six Existentialist Thinkers (Reprint.). Routledge. Chapter on Gabriel Marcel. P 76. Artwork Lynn Underwood
This summer I was invited to give a presentation on the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. One of the uses of the 16 Daily Spiritual Experience Questions is in opening conversations to bridge differences in beliefs, and help in community building. After the presentation and the lively discussion, Jacqueline Greiff, the Executive Director of their Center for Peacemaking Practice, invited me to be interviewed. You can listen to a podcast of this by scrolling to the bottom of the page at http://scar.gmu.edu/cpp/podcast
It excites me to see how useful the 16 DSES questions are for those from so many religions, as well as those who are not comfortable with religion. The specific experiences that people have can bridge differences in belief and culture, often creating connections at a deep level between people. The resulting conversations do not reduce spiritual experience to mush, but create space for the marvelous variety and depth of experiences that sustain and enrich so many different people’s lives.