Category: Heart

Premium Deluxe Home Insurance

4/8/2015

Premium Deluxe Home Insurance

Dear old and new friends,

     Springtime is when the evening news shows graphic pictures of homes tragically destroyed by tornadoes in Oklahoma or Kansas or elsewhere in the Midwest. A husband and wife, having come from a neighbor’s basement, stand in shock as they look at what once was their home, now just a concrete foundation surrounded by debris. The same homeowner’s tragedy is replayed over and over in California when brush fires fueled by drought consume entire homes leaving only a grayish ash-covered concrete pad and a lone, fireplace chimney.

     Through our hearts streaks a shiver when we see such devastated pictures and wonder what it would be like if that was our home! We take some comfort in the fact we have home insurance, but why we find comfort in that is a mystery. No matter how large your home insurance policy, when your home is destroyed you only get money equal to the home’s current value…but never your home back again.

     The best home insurance in the world is to have the following words tattooed on your heart, “Home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere….” These are the words of the author Pico Iyer (British born Indian; Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer). Here I suggest you stop reading any further and ponder the meaning of his potent statement.

     Pico Iyer’s original saying was, “Home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere, and not the things that tie you down.” I intentionally interrupted his words after “everywhere,” feeling his use of “tie you down” implied restricted freedom to roam, wander or be gypsy-like. Personally, I prefer rephrasing his words: “Home lies in the things you carry with you and not the ‘stuff’ (belongings or objects), regardless how precious because of memories.”

     The next time you are departing from your home to go to work, to the store or on a vacation, pause a moment. Before walking or driving away look back with loving fondness at your home. Pause for a micro-moment to consciously recall that you are carrying in your heart all the loving, deep affection expressed there, all the beautiful memories made there and all the memorable events that have happened under its roof.

     The world’s most excellent Home Insurance: Never leave home without it!

Home Health Care

4/30/2014

Home Health Care

Dear old and new friends,

    Four Jewish physicians, after having several drinks, began to quarrel about which part of the body was the most important for life. Not being able to agree among themselves they decided to consult the rabbi.

    The first physician began, “Of course the heart and blood vessels are the most important since life depends upon them.”

    “Not at all,” replied the second physician, “the brain and nervous system is the most vital.”

    The third physician said, “You are both wrong, it is the stomach and digestive passages that are essential for life.”

    The fourth physician declared, “The lungs are the most important since without air the body surely will die.”

    “You are all wrong,” said the rabbi. “Two vessels of which you have no knowledge are the most important part of the body!”

    Surprised, the doctors asked, “Illuminate us rabbi, what are they then?”

    “The channel that runs from the ear to the soul,” the rabbi replied, “and the one that runs from the soul to the tongue.”

                                                        ~~~~~

    Many take their own blood pressure daily as a way to check on their health. The wise rabbi suggests we should check daily to see if our ear-to-soul channel is open or clogged. Too much noise and insufficient periods silence in our lives clog that essential ear-to-soul canal resulting in us not hearing what we say when we speak. It is imperative for reforming our unconscious attitudes and prejudices to be able hear what we say. Our ears allow us to hear what others say to us, while we can be deaf to what we ourselves are expressing in our speech.

    Next, frequently check your other vital channel from the soul-to-tongue since it can easily become blocked in our urgency to reply or speak. The need to give an instantaneous reply puts pressure on the delicate sides of the soul-to-tongue conduit squeezing them together. So pause a split second before speaking and say to your soul what you are eager to say with your lips. In a thousandth of a second your soul will critique and if needed urge censure of any words that might cause pain or offense. This simple practice also insures this spirited channel remains open.

    These two simple spiritual practices help to maintain a healthy heart, for our own Rabbi Teacher Jesus reproached the accusing Pharisees, “It is from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Open Palm Loving

3/12/2014

Open Palm Loving

Dear old and new friends,

    Our instruction of this Lenten romantic revolution is to strive to learn how to become more ardent and holy lovers. Its focus isn’t the usual Lenten self-punishing denials but to build a pre-spring sizzling fire in your heart for God and others (since who desires to be loved lukewarmly?). So check your heart thermostat to see at what temperature it is set: Are you a mild or mad lover of the Holy One?

    True, an affectionate relationship with God is a stretch since it requires loving what can’t be embraced or even seen. Two thousand years ago that Galilean wandering troubadour and lover of God went about singing the same song: “Whatever you do to others, including loving, you do unto God.” That’s nonsense to us who are entrenched in the illusion of duality, that Grand Canyon size divide between you and me, friend and enemy, male and female. Yet contrary to the human mind’s convoluted workings we know at the quantum level everything that exists is interconnected in an unbroken seamless web of life. Mutiny against your old mind, and love intensively, confident all love shown to others is simultaneously shown to God.

    Holy loving requires a conversion of our human need to cling onto that which we passionately love. Young first-time lovers are instantly recognized by how they walk together in public affectionately holding hands. Young and old love needs to make tangible the robust energy of love that while beautiful needs some reform, needs to evolve.

                                                Two easy exercises

    (1) Open your hand palm up visualizing in it whoever you love, and then close your fingers around her or him, clutching this treasure you never want to lose. (A) Yet change is the only constant thing in the cosmos, and someday the one you love will die. So strive today to love passionately and openhandedly. (B) With that desire, unclench your fingers opening wide your palm, allowing life to be whatever life will be. Frequently engage in this practice.

    (2) Repeat the above exercise, only placing God in the palm of your hand and close your fingers together. (A) When deeply loving God we inadvertently clutch tightly what is in our clenched fist as “my” God. Yet God can’t be yours! The Divine One can’t be the possession of any religion or manipulated by any holy voodoo of praying some prayer for nine days.
(B) Open wide your palm releasing God to be God of Muslims, atheists, Christians, doubters, and totem worshiping pagans…all peoples and all creation.

    Revolutionaries of heart, let us strive to love passionately without clinging which requires affectionately caring and yet not caring. This loving madness doesn’t require the balancing skill of a circus acrobat but the grace of God. So trust, and love as outrageously as the village idiot, and that divine gift of energy to accomplish the impossible will be given to you.

The Shaker-Upper

5/23/2012

The Shaker-Upper

Sunday is the Fiesta of the Spirit, the feast of Pentecost when Christians longingly pray, Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up thy rest. But one would have to suffer from dementia to sincerely pray that pious petition. To desire the Holy Spirit come to you would require forgetting the chaotically disturbing visits from Holy Spirit that turned lives upside down, made unmarried maidens pregnant and changed destinies.

A white dove, blazing tongues of fire and strong winds are among the symbols of the Spirit of the Holy, yet for those living in the center of the country a more accurate symbol would be a tornado! Powerful twisters appearing out of nowhere uproot trees, level buildings and destroy everything in their path best visualize how the Spirit uproots lives and topples the antiquated. A more accurate invitation to the Spirit could be:

                “Come, Holy Twister, shaker-upper blest.
                Strip away comforts, leave us holy unrest.
                O Divine Wind, destroy the decaying old.
                Create again your House, youthful and bold.”

Such a destructive-quaking Pentecost is what is needed for today’s churches—and it was just such a crucial trembling-awakening that was called for by Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Before he was hanged in 1945 he wrote, “There is nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Rather than live in an utterly false and counterfeit security, we need to allow our inmost spirit to be moved by God so that we might begin to live in that movement and disquiet of heart that results when we are faced by God.”

The Spirit gifted him with a message for us about the urgent need in our religious lives to be to shaken up! Atheism is not the most dangerous enemy of religion. It is the Soft-Trinity of comfort, complacency and “counterfeit security” that saintly Alfred Delp denounced. We are comfortably cocooned from life’s harsh realities by multiple public and private security systems.

So the next time you’re shaken up by some minor disaster, consider it the blessing of a visitation of the Spirit shaking you up to examine what truly is your security. As for praying “Come, Holy Spirit,” certainly do so. And should you hear a roaring sound like an approaching freight train—run for the basement and pray for a miracle.

Premium Deluxe Home Insurance

Premium Deluxe Home Insurance

Home Health Care

Home Health Care

Open Palm Loving

Open Palm Loving

The Shaker-Upper

The Shaker-Upper

Edward Hays

The Haystack

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