Reflections on rebirth, renewal & resurrection

Themes from holy week … what part of you must die, or be let go, to make space for that part that seeks rebirth, renewal, and resurrection? In what ways do you strive to be re-connected or given a second chance?

For a New Beginning — John O’Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Of Beginnings

What we call the beginning is often the end, And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. — TS Eliot, Four Quarters

And all I can think of is “Do I think it so possible that God can raise the dead that I am willing to see that possibility even in the person who’s hurt me or who I’ve written off so completely. Can I believe it so possible that God can raise the dead that I am willing to see it in even the most despicable parts of myself that I’ve written off completely?” — Nadia Bolz-Weber

There’s no beginning and no end. You don’t need to wait until the total dissolution of this body to continue—you continue in every moment. … If you think that I am only this [points to himself], then you have not seen me. But when you see me in my speech and my actions, you see that they continue me. — Thich Nhat Hahn

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. … Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

Love, love, love, it was the core of my life, from which, of course, comes the word for the heart.  … trees. Or places. Or music flying above the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun which was the first, and the best, the most loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning. So I imagine such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine this is how it began.— Mary Oliver, From New and Selected Poems

Resurrection Day — Rumi

On Resurrection Day
God will say,
“What did you do
with the strength and the energy
that your food gave you
on Earth?
How did you use your eyes?
What did you make with your five senses
while they were dimming and playing out?
I gave you hands and feet as tools
for preparing the ground for planting.
Did you, in the health I gave,
do the plowing?”
You will not be able to stand
when you hear those questions.
You will bend double with shame,
and finally acknowledge the glory.

Then you will turn to the right looking to the prophets
for help, as though to say,
I am stuck in the mud of my life.
Help me out of this!

And they will answer,
those kings,
“The time for helping is past.
The plow stands there in the field.
You should have used it.”
Then you will turn to the left,
where your family is,
and they will say,
“Don’t look at us!
This conversation is between you
and your creator!”