Dear Friends ~ Rainbows may seem a rather glib focus for a March newsletter, but stick with me. Overplayed as they are in early Spring, I have the compounding factor of rainbow-enthusiast housemates; children pushing me to the next level of septacolored semicircles, selecting every story rendering a rainbow. As my spiritual directors, my children implore me to read and reread favorite picture books ad nauseum; a Lectio Devina of a bedtime reading ritual.
In truth, and not at all disingenuously, I find a deep well in children's literature. And rainbows, as both a physical phenomenon and illustrative image, offer seemingly endless edification, reaching back into our ancient stories and traditions around the globe and ahead into our scientific understanding of how we perceive our world on a narrow spectrum of visible light, with much to see beyond our means.
And so, drawing from the authors that write hope and aspiration into the lives of my children, alongside sonneteers and seekers of spirit and science whose words have made their way to me this waning winter, may we take a moment to hold these simple images and ideas with the same care and respect as the complex realities that often occupy our minds. May we all find something so trite and so radiant on which to ruminate, from which to luminate. ~ Katie
Conscious labor and intentional suffering are not so much separate practices as twin pillars of what amounts to essentially a single spiritual obligation.
Conscious labor is basically any intentional effort that moves against the grain of entropy, i.e., against that pervasive tendency of human consciousness to slip into autopilot. It means summoning the power of conscious attention (in our era perhaps more widely known as 'mindfulness') to swim upstream against that pervasive lunar undertow drawing us toward stale, repetitive, mechanical patterns, the siren call of World 96.
If conscious labor increases our capacity to stay present, intentional suffering radically increases the heartfulness of that presence. Intentional suffering goes head-to-head with that well-habituated pattern to move toward pleasure and away from pain. It invites us to step up to the plate and willingly carry a piece of that universal suffering, which seems to be our common lot as sentient beings in a very dense and dark corner of the universe. The size of the piece does not matter. It can be as small (though not easy!) as "bearing another human being's unpleasant manifestations," or as vast as "greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his neighbor."