A Practice For The Broken Hearted

This practice is for the broken-hearted. There are many reasons a heart may be broken - maybe something that happened or is happening to you. Maybe for someone else. Maybe the world. And all of it, maybe for all of it. Whatever you bring here, there is room for it.

You will need a few pieces of paper and some writing utensils that are colorful - markers, pens, crayons.

Seated, close your eyes for just a moment and feel yourself grounded in your chair. Feel your feet planted firmly. Breathe in and out, following the natural rhythm of your breath.

When you are ready, open your eyes, place your hands over your heart. One on top of another. Gaze softly in front of you and see your heart before you. Imagine it. Acknowledge, just for a moment, that your heart is keeping you alive - right now. Gazing softly at whatever image comes to you when you imagine your heart, say thank you.

Choose a color of pen that will represent the feeling you have inside of you right now. Choose a color that represents the feeling of brokenness you carry.

Draw your heart.

Add color to represent that which is inside your brokenness. You may have one color, representing a broken relationship. You may have many colors, representing the broken promises you made or made to you. You may choose a color to represent the one for whom you pray. However you see it, draw it. Patterns. Lines.

Hands over your heart, gaze at your image. Breathe in the feeling you’ve had as you’ve drawn your heart. As you breathe out, imagine light going out through your breath and imagine that this light carries your feelings through your heart and out to the world.

Let the world hold your brokenness.

Now, writing over your drawing (or around it so you can read it), write a prayer of gratitude to the world for holding your broken heart. Thank the trees for rooting themselves enough to hold your brokenness in their branches. Thank your best friend for listening and carrying your brokenness along with you. Thank the clouds for receiving your brokenness with the moisture they inherit and thank them for the rain that falls to cover your brokenness with the promise of growth. Thank God for creating the world that can hold all brokenness and still create new life.

Whomever you want to thank, write a prayer of gratitude for them.

(If you have no one to thank, I will loan you my gratitude for the lemon tree in my backyard that takes my brokenness and ripens grace-lemons so that I can make healing-hope-lemonade.).

Put your hands over your heart and let your heart know that you would like to read it a prayer of gratitude. Trust that this prayer will nudge something inside of your heart that will, in the end, take some of the brokenness away.

Hands over your heart, read your prayer out loud.

One more time, breathe in and breathe out.

You may have to do this exercise over and over again. Broken hearts need tending. If you cannot imagine yourself doing this now because of pain or separation or fear, ask someone to do it for you. They can draw their heart, hold their heart in their hands, write their prayer of gratitude and you can know that our connection is so deep - like those roots - that any shift of energy, no matter whose breath it is - shifts your energy too.

May it be so.

A Practice for Womyn

For Womyn

Close your eyes, place your hands on your heart. One on top of the other, feeling warmth, feeling warmth.

Breathe into that warmth. In. Out.

And breathe again. In. Out. Heart open.

Imagine a womyn you love. Someone you know well. Hold her as spirit in your heart. To do that, imagine her as a color. And feel the warmth of that color under your hands. Breathe in love-aqua. Breathe out buttercream-compassion. Whatever her color, breathe it in and out. Into the warmth of your heart, held just below your hands.

Imagine a womyn walking into planned parenthood for an abortion. It may even be someone you know. Hold her as spirit in your heart. To do that, imagine her as a color. And feel the warmth of that color under your hands. Breathe in courage-scarlet or fear-azure. Breathe out strength-cobalt. Whatever her color, breathe it in and out. Into the warmth of your heart, held just below your hands.

Imagine a womyn in Afghanistan wanting to work. To go to school. To live. Hold her as spirit in your heart. To do that, imagine her as a color. And feel the warmth of that color under your hands. Breathe in hope-gold. Breathe out despair-ebony. Breathe in fire-coral. Breathe out death-silver. Whatever her color, breathe it in and out. Into the warmth of your heart, held just below your hands.

Imagine womyn. Hold them as spirit in your heart. To do that, imagine the color green - the color of life, the color of the earth, the color of creativity and possibility. Breathe into that warmth. In. Out. Hands over your heart. Hold them. Hold us all. Women and Womyn and Womxn.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Heart open.

Come back to your space. Be grateful.

Now, do whatever you can do - whatever you have to do - to make this world better for womyn.

Right now. Breathe in. Act. Breathe out. Act.

Heart open.

A prayer for holding grief

God of ceramic bowls, hear us we pray.

Grieving God.

I don’t know what to ask for. I’m numb and at the same time being crushed with pressure on my chest. I’m anxious and at the same time sleeping, always sleeping.

I do not need to list for you the trauma, the tragedy, the brokenness, the fire and flood and bombings, the deaths - a litany of human catastrophe, a liturgy of deep rooted pain.

And so I pray for a bowl to hold my grief. Maybe a ceramic bowl - the robins egg blue bowl that Rene painted for me so long ago. Maybe that very bowl, chipped and worn and well loved but now stuck in the back of the cubbord what with the move and time passing and all.

I pray that this very blue bowl be big enough to hold my grief as it was big enough to hold halloween candy for bright eyed children and dry ingredients for bread before I burned the crust-edges and decided to stick with stir-fry. I pray that this very blue bowl be big enough to hold all my stir-fry for my friends as they come over to eat and pray and be together. I pray that this very blue bowl be big enough for my despair, dusted though it may be with flour, salted though it may be with soy, sweet though it may be with an unwrapped tootsie-roll, fallen to the bottom.

I pray, that the simple act of digging it out from the shelf behind the flower vase and laying it in the middle of my kitchen table, I will also open up to the dusty, salty, sweetness of life and life taken away. Of life and life given.

And so this is my prayer for holding grief.

Robin’s egg blue bowl of life, may you hold all of us, all of it, all of who we are and who we are meant to be. May you hold it long enough and with love enough that, when we make it to Halloween this year (if we make it to Halloween this year) we will find you fit for a perfect dinner with friends and a night of doorbell ringing.

But, grieving God, even as I type these words I am sure, deep within the pressure of my chest, that the end of October won’t look any different than this beginning of September. I will still be at home and the world will still crash around me.

And so I hold the grief and mix the flour, sugar and salt in the bowl. If it can’t hold the grief, at least it can make some cookies.

Sweet God, I’ll take chocolate chip. Amen.

A practice in the time of COVID

Connect with your heart - breathe love into the world.

Checking In Pay attention to your breath.

Breathe deep three times. In through your nose, out thorough your mouth.

Put your hands over your heart. One on top of another. Feel their warmth. Notice how they draw your attention.

As I read these categories of people aloud, find where they rest in your heart – or, if they’re not there, that’s ok. Get curious to what it might be like today for you to hold them there with compassion and God’s love.

Today we hold in our heart:

The dying

The vaccinated

The breakthrough cases

The ones struggling with COVID right now

The ones who spread COVID to others

The unvaccinated by choice

The children with no vaccination choice

The ones in populations that don’t have access to the vaccine

The Scientists

The Doctors

The nurses

The health care workers

The first responders

The ones who walk by people on beds in hospital parking garages

The families who cannot hold their loved ones hands

The mask wearers

The anti-mask wearers

The students caught up in dangerous politics and held hostage by politicians

The politicians who are making mandates

The teachers and the parents who have become teachers

The ones who beg for the vaccine as they lie dying

The newsmakers

The ones sheltering in place again

The breakthrough cases.

The ones who go to events as if nothing is wrong

The dying

Us

From 1 Corinthians 14:

9-24 For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary.

25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

Go ahead and breathe three times