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  • Making It Sacred
  • Sanctuary of the Heart... Daily Prayers
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                                     Making it sacred... is an awakening, slow and gentle like, into the
                          real possibility that meaning and purpose are not distant, shiny objects, but the
                             very stuff of an ordinary life... Do you sleep? Do you dream? Do you eat?
                            Do you read? Do you pray? Do you work? Do you play? Do you pleasure?

                                             Making it sacred is cooking the life of your dreams!

                                 Donning the "apron of sacred intention" and studying the recipes of
                       world spiritualities, philosophies, poets, artists, misfits, bohemians, film makers,
                                      contemplatives and visionaries of the radical notion that it is
                             possible to be happy, to be wanted, to be healthy, and to be safe in this
                        world of constant change, heartache, sadness, harm, and painful loneliness.

                           Making it sacred is the daily process of applying the sacred to the ordinary. 

                                          "Goddess is the name we put on the great processes of
                                birth, growth, death, and regeneration that underlie the living world...
                      Goddess is the presence of consciousness in all living beings... Goddess is the 
                                great creative force that spun the universe out of coiled strings of
                     probability and set the stars spinning and dancing in spirals that our entwining
                                                 DNA echoes as it coils, uncoils, and evolves."
                                                                     -- Starhawk
                                         
                                The great Jewish mystic-philosopher, Abraham Heschel, wrote:
                                               "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."
                                               Oftentimes, this is something that we forget...

                                    "Beauty is all about us, how many are blind to it! People
                                 take little pleasure in the natural and quiet and simple things
                                                             of life." -- Pablo Casals

                          Making it sacred is our adoption of a delightful Franciscan spirituality:
                                         "All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth,
                           our mother, Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces various
                                 fruits and colored flowers and herbs. -- St. Francis of Assisi

                                             "The soul loves the body." -- Meister Eckhart

                                "Our faith imposes on us a right and duty to throw ourselves
                                   into the things of the earth." -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

                                   "Do you have a body? Don't sit on the porch! Go out and
                                                      walk in the rain!" -- Kabir

                         "a touch is enough to let us know / we're not alone in the universe,
                                                     even in sleep" -- Adrienne Rich

                  Making it sacred is the great Eastern Orthodox mystic insight that the Divine
                      became human that the human would become or recognize her divinity...

                                    "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love."
                                                                -- Simone Weil

                            
And so we sit in contemplative silence, aware of the mystic
                                    blessing of the Beloved... we gather in intentional
                                community... we work and play... we cook and eat... we
                        clean together... we share in mutual aid and responsibility... we
                              bless our bodies with attention and pleasure... we discuss
                                  and plan and organize for festivals and for resistance...
                          we tribe, we family, we make children, we raise and serve our
                            children...
in short, we live so as to increase our capacity for life! 
Copyright (c) Michelle Smith   All Rights Reserved  2017