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In This Issue:
You can hear Terry read featured articles on our website. See the complete index of newsletters, online Audio, MP3 downloads.
FEATURE ARTICLE
Sanctuary
A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened.
Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Silence is a refuge, offering a sanctuary of renewal.
The question we were to debate. . .was whether it is theologically accurate to say that wild salmon are holy. The trouble with this plan was, I've spent thousands of days on rivers awestruck and in love with the very holiness she wished to see debated.
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
The parts of the Christian story that had drawn me into the Church were not the believing parts but the beholding parts.
Absolute unmixed attention is prayer.
Sedona, Arizona is famous for its red-rock. And a golf course that should be named Heaven-on-Earth. And a sanctuary called The Chapel of the Holy Cross.
The Chapel juts out from sheer red-rock. From a parking area below, there is a hike up a winding pathway. At the top, a discreet wood sign greets us, “A quiet welcome.” (http://www.chapeloftheholycross.com/ or http://www.redrockrealty.net/chapel.html) I take a deep breath and look around me. There is a 360 degree vista. It takes something special to make me say “Holy Toledo,” but this did it. Out of the rock, grows Utah Juniper, Sugar Sumac and Mtn. Laurel. There are scattered Pinon Pines, solitary and elegant. Some are dead, but their skeleton remains, equally exquisite. And a seriously thorny bush called Cat’s claw, or as the locals call it, the “wait-a-minute-bush.” My arm can testify. The red-rock is terra cotta in color, and smooth. In the shadows and creases, I see a shape. And I have to laugh, feeling some kindred spirit with the woman who saw the Blessed Virgin Mary’s silhouette in a cheese sandwich. But when I squint at the red rock, I see only a barking dog. (By the way, that woman sold that sandwich on eBay for $28,000. Makes you want to take a closer look at your lunch next time, doesn’t it?) I asked one of the docents at the Chapel, “Do you ever get used to this view?” He waited before he answered. “Eventually,” he told me. I understand. It doesn’t make sense, but I understand. Eventually, we do not see the glory around us. How is this possible? If I lived here, I tell myself, I would be amazed daily. But then, is that not true for wherever we may live?
Thomas Merton wrote, Okay. I get it. But here’s the conundrum: If the world is full of the divine presence, why do we need a sanctuary to see it? And why did Jesus, often (emphasis on often) withdraw to a sanctuary space to pray? Because sanctuary spaces remind us. I do know that as long as we take our cues from cultural messages, we work, race, fret, stew and live distracted. And that when we stop, to withdraw, to pay attention, to have Sabbath, that hunger is momentarily quenched. It is in my racing and distraction that I lose track of what grounds me. I lose track of what is vital to my soul, and my sanity. As a result of my racing and distraction . . . . . . it is more difficult to say no, . . . it is easier to find solace in multi-tasking, . . . it is possible to live absent, . . . it is too easy to give way to anxiety and fear, . . . it is too easy to find solace in perpetual activity.
Here’s the odd part. In the middle of the muddle, we are tempted to ratchet up the activity and the noise. We do more. Speak more. Seek more (or other, or better) solutions. Is there a problem? Off we race. . . searching for explanations, answers, and resolutions. We trade in these moments of quiet, for a full blown armada of noise, lights and entertainment. This happens when I see everything in my life as a path toward self-improvement, which implies that I must keep adding something else to my life. So, I walked through Barnes and Noble the other day looking for an answer. On the front table, a display with diet and exercise books. I pause long enough to count 60 titles and to marvel at some of the bodies on the book jackets (which made my head hurt and sends me to the Café for a chocolate brownie). And now I need another book on how to choose the right diet book. Beyond this display, is another table, its sign more enticing, “Start your year right.” Now we’re talking. Books with answers. I buy a book called A Perfect Mess (which talks about the Hidden Benefits of Disorder – How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place). On my way out of the store, I was tempted to take a copy of Soul Gardening (by Terry Hershey), and put it on the front table with the diet books. . .just to balance the perspective. . . and to see if anyone noticed. . . but the picture on the book jacket didn’t fit.
In January, I spent time at a Retreat Center in the Tucson Mountains. I walked the pathways near my room. Around me, a 360 degree vista of the Tucson, Tortellina and Catalina mountains. In this desert landscape, the lines or outlines of rock outcroppings are precise, distinct and clear. This is a drawing in pen and ink. The sky is a hope-filled blue. The clouds are random and sparse. The air is dry and crisp, invigorating. There is no sound save the splashing water at the Retreat Center’s fountain, a cluster of desert rock. There are no trees, or at least none compared to where I live, so the sound of the wind is shaped by sand and stone. Their Pala Verde Tree is unlike our trees in the Pacific Northwest which all sport great leaves having no fear of a searing summer sun. Our forests are luxuriant and abundant. Here the landscape is minimalist. Stripped down. In the Pacific Nothwest, our sky and landscape meld, and the tree tops look like great slashes of green paint, as if the Creator’s hand and broad brush left the canvas there. Here, in the desert, the colors are reduced, distilled to their basic, simple essence. This much is true: My heartbeat slows here. The elements here conspire to slow me. A part of me wants to know why, and figure it all out. Another part of me just accepts the magical elixir of this place, this sanctuary. On this morning, before the heat of the day, the sun still low in the sky, I am still. I let this sanctuary be a reprieve, a container, a breathing space. So. What are the elements that make a sanctuary? A good bench or pathway. Air. Quiet. And the permission to let time recede, or slow. In a sanctuary space, time is not compelled by the urgent. There are no constraints on the moment. So worry, the fuel that moves me into the day or into tomorrow, holds no sway. Or, at least less sway. If I’m lucky, it dissipates. It lets go. Or I let go. And there is no compulsion. I round a corner in the path, and there is a stab in my chest. The cliff, the outcropping stands in an eerie light. Behind it, a steel blue sky. In the dusk light, Saguaro Cactus stand, like grand pincushions, or sentinels, or long ago abandoned May poles.
A sanctuary is that place where I receive. The Celtic church called them thin places. “A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened,” writes Marcus Borg. “They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts and we behold (the “ahaah of The Divine”)... all around us and in us.” (http://www.embody.co.uk/index.php/category/thin-places/) Sanctuaries are about remembering who we already are. And to whom (or what) we belong. A friend sent me this story. About the little girl who, upon the arrival of her baby brother, insisted that she spend some time alone with him. Her parents agreed, but listened in on the baby monitor as the sister closed the door and walked over to her brother’s bed. After a minute of silence, she told her baby brother, quite firmly: “Please tell me about God. I have almost forgotten.” If you are bent on requiring an assignment for all of this, here it is. Find a sanctuary today. Or make one. This from a children’s guide to Joshua Tree National Park, “Sit quietly in an oasis for 10 minutes. How does this place make you feel? What did you like about it? What don’t you like? What did you notice that surprised you?” It is late morning when I finally step inside The Chapel of the Holy Cross. Before I enter, I read that the chapel’s doors will be open to one and all, regardless of creed. Candles are lit and Panis Angelica fills the air. I sit a spell. Sanctuary indeed.
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Poster – a few things that matter For a gift, or a reminder.
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| Sabbath Moment | |||||||||||||||||||||
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"Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church, or closet, not exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in Thy presence."
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'"
"I’m even convinced that my lone Sunday mornings are more than a habit; they fill a profound need in my by no means exotic nature–again, a need for private engagement with ultimate mystery. The rest of my week, I plow my worship into writing my books, teaching my students, and living with friends and enemies in whatever decency I can muster (which is not enough). Am I bound for Hell in a swift handbasket? Many think so. But sure as I am of a lifetimes’ errors, I never feel more deeply at home on this blue planet–in the whole universe–than in those solitary moments, trying to face the mind of God in a grove of trees."
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| Poems | |||||||||||||||||||||
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We simplify our lives. We live gladly with less. We let go the illusion that we can possess. We create instead. We let go the illusion of mobility. We travel in stillness. We travel at home. By candlelight and in stillness, In the presence of flowers, We make our pilgrimage. We simplify our lives. Amen. When I talk to you. Michael Leunig
Softest of Mornings
Softest of mornings, hello. And what will you do today, I wonder, to my heart? And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder, before it must break? This trivial, or nothing: a snail climbing a trellis of leaves and the blue trumpets of its flowers. No doubt clocks are ticking loudly all over the world. I don’t hear them. The snail’s pale horns extend and wave this way and that as her finger-body shuffles forward, leaving behind the silvery path of her slime. Oh, softest of morning, how shall I break this? How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers? How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life? Long Life. Mary Oliver
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| Words to Live By | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm but to add color to my sunset sky.
Prayer only looks like an act of language; fundamentally it is a position, a placement of oneself. Focus. Get there, and all that's left to say is the words. They come: from ancient times, from the surprisingly eloquent heart, from the gush and chatter of the day's detail longing to be rendered. So what is silence? Silence speaks, the contemplatives say. But really, I think, silence sorts. An ordering instinct sends people into the hush where the voice can be heard.
Let's not make such a habit of hurry and work that when we leave this world we will feel impelled to hurry through the spaces of the universe using our wings for feather dusters to clean away the star dust.
Thomas Merton wrote: “Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through us all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, forget ourselves, we see it.” But, of course, for most of us, myself included, it is hard to see these thin places, much less travel through them. How can we set aside the worries of our lives, the very real concerns of money, relationships, stresses and strains and “be” one with the Divine. Fine we might say for a monk sitting alone without a care in the world but hardly possible for the rest of us ‘dirt dwellers’. I believe that in order to sense and travel through these thin places towards what we may not know, we must see our world in a different ways. Its not that our world changes but we change how we see our world.
The Chapel of the Holy Cross: The first conception came to Marguerite Bruswig Staude in 1932 in New York City while observing the newly constructed Empire State Building. When viewed from a certain angle a cross seemed to impose itself through the very core of the structure. She wanted to build a structure that would glorify her Creator and in thanksgiving for all that her family had received. She traveled throughout Europe looking for the ideal location. She returned to the United States and while her and her husband Tony traveled through Sedona, she was struck by the beauty of the area and decided that this chapel should be built here. . “This would be a monument to faith, but a spiritual fortress so charged with God, that it spurs man's spirit godward". Built on a twin pinnacled spur about 250 feet high, jutting out of a thousand foot red rock wall, "solid as the Rock of Peter" the building of the Chapel was completed in April 1956. Just the physical construction was a physical miracle, overcoming difficult conditions to construct this chapel. The message of the Chapel "That the Church may come to life in the souls of men and be a living reality is renewed and observed each day. Even as we speak it invites all to come to spend time to get connected with their creator.
The Diocese of Phoenix and St John Vianney parish has maintained and administered the Chapel since 1969. We are only caretakers of this most spiritual structure, where all are welcomed to come, meditate, pray and be reconnected with their Creator. We are here to pass this on to those who come after, so the Chapel may glorify the great gifts God has given us. In our transient existence, in good times and bad, we are here to be united with all in faith and purpose. To live in peace and unity with all our brothers and sisters.
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...for more go to Our Guestbooks
Dear Mr. Hershey: I am very much impressed with you web site and would like to get information as how you built yours or who designed yours. This may not be the type of information that should come through this email, but I'm taking a chance. I'm a flower that is starting to sprout and at this moment I'm following my heart to do the things that are arriving. My certification for life coaching will be completed soon and I also hope to venture into being an inspirational speaker. I very much resonate with what is on your web site and I thank you very much for your words of wisdom. With every foot step that I take, I trust that my path is being lit to uncover the talent that lies within me in order to satisfy my wants and to help others. I'm glad my steps have taken me down your road. Any information will be very much appreciated. With many thanks, DG
Terry, Your most recent "Things That Matter" was enjoyed. Your wondering and needing to be nourished in soul, and a parking time at the ferry landing did some of that. I've been wondering about that myself and relating that to my taking multi-vitamins tablets regularly. I am awed that each vitamin or mineral knows exactly where it needs to go to nourish the proper part of the body. Maybe a certain vitamin is needed by a part of the brain, or one needs to fine itself to the prostate to keep it healthy. How all that happens is a wonderment. Well, our soul-body needs nourishment by certain thoughts and experiences. And when we park at the ferry landing looking at a scene our loul-body is nourished to experience peace!!! Right? Give this your wisdom. Blessings and peace, Arthur
This way of living begins. . .when we realize that peace means literally living from the inside out. I really liked this quote & wondered where it is from. Thanks! M W Chapelwood Singles P.S. We at Chapelwood in Houston are on an interesting journey as singles lately. I think we are growing in love as well as in number.
Terry, I'm not surprised that you sent me this email on the very day that I spent with you, listening (finally) to the 2 CDs I purchased at our Tucson retreat. I drove to our cabin in the mountains to spend a few days writing, and listened to one CD on the way up, and the other on the way back a few days later, through the beauty of the Colorado Rockies. I enjoyed them so. When you got to the part of God reading from the book and He called "Terry!" I was wiping tears from my face as I drove. I'm struck by the similarity in our messages, as I encourage secular audiences to take time to be still, to listen to their deep inner voice of Divine guidance, not be "owned" by their material "stuff," to say "no" so they can truly live their priorities.... I have some plans for how the proceeds from Chicken Soup for the Catholic Soul can give a lot of money to Catholic charities. I'd love to share some of those thoughts with you. I can see this is a Divine assignment, that He is using me as a vessel to make a big difference. Hope to see you again soon, In His Joy, LeAnn Thieman Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Caregiver's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Father and Daughter Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul 2 and Chicken Soup for the Mother and Son Soul!
NOTE: LeAnn is asking for submissions for her newest book – Chicken Soup for the Catholic Soul. If you have a story to contribute, contact LeAnn on her website at www.LeAnnThieman.com or call 1-877-844-3626
I enjoyed one of your audio article this morn. It renewed my faith and that is what I was I was seeking today. Aaron, my 21 yr. old, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's last Friday. His surgery is today. He is handling it well. My understanding is that this is the most treatable type of cancer. I will know more this afternoon. I considered thinking that this might be some sort of karmic punishment, however, upon reflection, I decided that life is complex, and that looking for the blessings in this will assist me much more than searching my soul for a fictitious foible or flaw that could have caused my child to be in harm's way. It was tempting to dive into the pity pot and list all the troubling events of my recent past, but I refused the invitation to wallow. Instead, of searching my soul, I searched for God's goal. Finding your voice on your site ( I had not listened before today) was an additional comfort...and challenge. So thanks Terry, for the comfort AND the challenge.
Dear Terry, I used to wonder where all the really cool people went and now I know! They all work for you, reading all the great books, listening to the right CD's, meditating in quiet gardens AND coming up with the stuff for your newsletters! You are the coolest, Friend! Sincerely, Lee
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| Truth is stranger than fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Rule of thumb: Lawyers should never ask a Southern grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer.
In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?" She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you." The lawyer was stunned! Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?" She again replied, "Why, yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state, not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him." The defense attorney turned white. The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you idiots ask her if she knows me, I'll send you to the electric chair."
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