Contemplative Prayer

Dear Guests,

Here we are at the apex of the summer and I now many are suffering from the immense heat and drought in some parts of the nation. Here in Ohio it has been hot and humid, but a lush and green summer. Our vegetable garden is yielding gigantic zuchinnis and tomatoes, along with beautiful vines and brilliant flowers blooming all over my deck. 

But gardening has been minimal because myself and our expanding staff at the ministry have been working all summer. Our Aug blog posting is minimal, because of our many new launches about to happen. We will be posting an entirely new blog, web site, and prayer site very soon and I can't wait for all of you to see it. 

We will also have new online educational and retreat programs, new art, new prayer cards, and an introduction to some of our new "flock"!!

Our prayers and blessings of God's abundant beauty in your life. Please remember to pray for us too.

Debra and the Mute Swan Ministry 

Posted by Debra Classen at 8/14/2011 7:08 PM | Add Comment

God Alone Prayer by Debra Classen

I recently had a friend say to me, "God is so mysterious, I wish He would shout his answers to us." I think God does shout His answers and they are simple, but so difficult. I find that I will hear something very clearly, but I don't want to accept it. My 16th year down to Kentucky and I arrived on a hot afternoon and noticed, with a particular attention to it, the words inscribed in stone over the monastic gate, "GOD ALONE."

Two words, but that is God's message to me. I need people and I have been frightened by the very thought of losing loved ones, but if we hang on to God Alone, He will take us through "the valley of the shadow of death." 

Death and loss, very much a part of the months of this summer, but God is consoling and comforting us through the losses and I see new beginnings too.

GOD ALONE PRAYER
Lord, For today, in each moment of this day
May I see Your beauty and surrender my will to You alone
Be my vision, my breath, the beating of my heart.

If today I meet poverty, deprivation, or darkness of sin,
May I reflect the richness of Your goodness to the world, and the light of faith.

If today I come across hatred, ugliness or selfishness,
May I introduce Your love, beauty and compassion.

If today I am imprisoned by lies, addiction, or violence,
May I seek freedom in Your truth, serenity, and peace.

If today I encounter rejection, betrayal, or abandonment,
May I embrace Your acceptance, steadfast love, and presence.

If today I know doubt, despair, or death,
May I find hope in my faith and eternal life.

Today, may I be still.
May I have the vision to see You in everyone and everything,
And to reflect Your Beauty, truth, and goodness,
In merciful and humble love.
Amen.

debra, August 2011

Posted by Debra Classen at 8/14/2011 7:08 PM | Add Comment

Your capacity to care if God, it is your beauty. By John O'Donohue

...for all who are fighting cancer, for those who mercifully care for loved ones, for those who have lost the fight, and for those who now grieve their loss...


Your capacity to care is God, it is your beauty.
Our love for our friends and family,
Our concern for the world and for earth,
Our compassion for the pain and the desperation of others,
issues forth from the strain of God
in us that prizes above everything,
the kindness, compassion and beauty that love brings.

-John O'Donohue


Posted by Debra Classen at 8/14/2011 6:10 PM | Add Comment

Psalms 42 Poster, artwork by Debra Classen

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/26/2011 4:26 PM | Add Comment

Thomas Merton Retreats by Debra Classen

Debra is currently booking retreats/ workshops/speaking engagements for 2012. Please contact us now for your upcoming event. (retreats prices out of state will include travel expenses).   

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/26/2011 4:17 PM | Add Comment

Dear Guests,

Welcome to summer and the month of July, the hottest month of the year in the northern hemisphere. According to the Gregorian calendar, July is the seventh month and in our family it is also the month of the only summer birthday, our oldest daughter's-Tegan. This meant Tegan had birthday swim parties and it also meant a tradition which began on our first birthday and continued until her twenty-first birthday. Each year I planted mammoth sunflowers on our deck from tiny seeds. On her first birthday a sunflower seed was accidentally planted and it bloomed, bright and big right on her birthday, and so began the tradition.

By Tegan's twenty-first birthday I had pots lining our deck where the summer beats down for most of the afternoon. Over twenty of those giant sunflowers bloomed, and most of them bloomed the week of her birthday, bringing smiles, yellow finches, bees and beauty.

My daughter is now married and lives far away in Texas. I miss her and I miss all the sunflowers. Sometimes I miss her being a little girl and I miss being a young mother. I feel nostalgic for those summer days when we planted sunflowers, caught fireflies, went swimming at Grandpa and Grandma's, and ate popcicles.

I just finished a wonderful retreat last weekend on Contemplative Prayer and I am working on a new journal on the same topic. I am reminded that the contemplative life is being present to the present moment. Memories are wonderful, but I have a tendency to look back and remember it perfectly. With prayer we can begin to have an awareness of our life right now, and all the beauty that is before us in this moment. We have only the moments, strings of pearls where we glimpse the mystery, the glory, and God's radiance before us. More often we are working really hard to manufacture good times, either through a lot of busyness and 'props', or we editing the past memories.The real gift is to be present to your present life.

Enjoy these summer days, whatever they may bring. Even in the midst of financial struggles, health concerns, relationships problems, and work stress, stay in your life, and look for the presence of God.

Even if you don't have the time or inclination to plant sunflowers or 'gaze' upon them, I pray that a glimpse of God's beauty in  your life is revealed to you and gives you a reason to hope today.

Enjoy our summer blog and our new projects, outreach and people.


Be blessed with beauty,

Debra and the volunteers at the Mute Swan Ministry

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/7/2011 11:38 PM | Add Comment

Adding things Up

by Father James Stephen Behrens, O.C.S.O.
at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit,
Conyers, Georgia

     I had an uncle whose name I cannot recall--he was actually my mom's uncle and he lived in New Orleans. I can ask my sister Mary and am sure she would remember his name. What I do remember about him is a gift that he had and I heard stories about him when I was growing up.
    The gift had to do with counting number and doing so in a flash. He would sit in a bar in New Orleans and not far from the bar were railroad tracks. He would gather patrons around him and boast that he could walk to the tracks and as a freight train passed, he would be able to look at all the freight car numbers as the train moved by and count them without need of pen and paper. The bets were on and off marched the group to the tracks, where they waited for the next train. When the train came, everyone looked at my uncle as he stared at the passing numbers. When the caboose faded into the distance, they all marched to an area where the train always stopped and several counted the numbers, which must have been a painstaking task. They jotted won the sum on a piece of paper and asked my uncle the final number he came up with. He told them and they reportedly gasped as the number matched the one they had. The bets were collected and off they went back to the bar, perhaps waiting for the next train in the hope of recovering their losses. I do not think that train ever came.
     My uncle could apparently 'read' numbers and as the numbers lumbered by he 'read' them up without the need to 'carry over numbers' and the like. His brain worked like a calculator--it seemed to have a chip that most of us do not have or perhaps do not know how to access. I like the story because it brings to mind the face that we all have gifts. Some may be admittedly unusual and can be quite profitable if we know how to summon the wagers. But, for the most part, our gifts tend to be of the ordinary kind. Some folks have a gift for putting people at ease. They are simply accepting people, and others sense this and feel comfortable in their presence. Intimacies are more readily shared. I one knew a bartender named Owen who worked at a place called 'Jimmy's' in Manhattan. His nickname was Father Owen the Confessor.
    Others are gifted with a positive nature. You simply feel better in their presence. A positive nature can be like sunshine on a wet road. It dries what we can so easily slip on--making the walk a lot easier.Mechanical know-how is another gift. I remember a man named Claude Zarang, from New Orleans, who had an uncanny gift for locating the problems in a malfunctioning car engine and fixing it with a smile and a very reasonable fee. He was known all over the city.
     People write songs, or poetry, or a novel. Words come easy, at times with a catchy melody. Some folks can prepare a meal fit for a King. Others can make a dress fit for a Queen. I recently read of a woman who spent most of her life in an iron lung. She was so loved by all who knew her. Her gift was her ability to move into the hearts of many people. She was deeply missed when she died. Her gift was one of making inroads of love into the hearts of people even though her body was confined to a machine. The iron lung enabled her to breathe air. Her heart inhaled people and their stories.
     Everyone has a gift. If you have trouble seeing the gift of someone, seek out one who loves him or her. They will tell you. And I will bet that you will make some wondrous discoveries. We can go near the tracks of life and do our addition. The sum of the gifted will always be the same.

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/7/2011 10:09 PM | Add Comment

Mindfulness by Megan Furman

Yellow Finch by Debra ClassenLife is lost in the frenetic
but gained in the deliberate
contemplative revelry
Go slowly
 
My grandfather use to sit and
watch as hummingbirds sipped cider
from the necks of flowers
How could one be content, so silent, so still
 
I want to cook breakfast
to feed the five thousands
work wonder into whole wheat
slice heaven in an omelet
 
But the planning, shopping, chopping, dicing
inevitably turns to work
between errands and essays and tax returns
Where went the worship?
 
And when they slam it all down
nevermindful of the quiche’s crust
the perfectly peaked meringue turns to sawdust
But never mind
 
The day, I breathe, is fixed
My expectations, sigh, are not
Which is more malleable:
 what Is, or what I Say?
 
To live in the interstices,
the spaces in between:
it is a right—or—what’s more,
perhaps, a duty?
 
In the gaps between the seams,
it seems,
the unplanned pregnant moments
full of concentrated emptiness
dwell the glimmers of heaven.

-Megan Furman

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/7/2011 10:02 PM | Add Comment

Living at God's Speed, Healing in God's Time

Living at God's Speed; Healing in God's Time, by Charles W. Sidoti

Most of us have a difficult time allowing God to work on God’s time and to put aside our personal time line. God listens to our wants and needs and He is faithful in His own time, however, trusting God is one of the hardest things we can do in our lives. His timing is definitely not our timing!

We must continue to be spiritually prompted and reminded to be aware of the difference between chronos (the time of clocks and calendars) and kairos (the appointed time in the purpose of God-in short God’s time). And most importantly, to understand that chronos and kairos do not run concurrently!

So, how do we strive to keep our time schedule and time frame under God’s while trying to reduce our stress level? The self help book market is overflowing with tools and techniques to transform our lives. However, the methodology of Sidoti and Feinstein is not based on new age philosophies.  This becomes apparent to the reader as the book opens with a beautiful prayer:

 

Free me, Lord, from the inner bondage and endless cycle of what I think needs to happen before I can be happy. Free me, Lord, from my idea of the solution. Help me to wait with open-ended joyful expectation; and help me to experience your peace. –Charles Sidoti

 

Living at God’s Speed, Healing in God’s Time is arranged into four sections representing key aspects of spiritual growth. Following each reflection is a short “Connecting Point” which helps the reader to relate what they have read to their personal life. This is followed by a short prayer. Sidoti and Feinstein, writing in everyday language with the use of amusing anecdotes, have put together an impressive work. It makes for an engaging and thought-provoking read!

 

In this simple, yet beautifully written book the proclamation that God is at work in the everyday world permeates the pages. The authors challenge the reader to “see things differently” and urge us to open our eyes and our hearts to see irrefutable evidence that we can let go of our worries if we only become aware of God’s presence in our lives and in the universe and to live in kairos.

Book Review by Carol Ann Gall

Moving forward I choose to live on God’s clock. I pray you do the same also!

Posted by Debra Classen at 7/7/2011 9:48 PM | Add Comment

Photo by Tara Marcic


Posted by Debra Classen at 7/7/2011 9:43 PM | Add Comment
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