Meditation Readings

During meals we are listening to the CD version of Clarissa Pinkola Estes' wonderful book Untie the Strong Woman.
I am now pulling out charcoal pieces that look like the Black Madonna and putting them in my garden!

Readings include: Give Us this Day, a Catholic Daily Office Reader (especially St. Barlaam and Josephat) and today St. Andrew -

Ponder this - this morning's reading:
In the Spirit of the Earth by  Calvin Luther Martin.

" It is not so much that something is conjured up in speech and art or artifice as it is that connections .... are made between things, or better yet, between beings.
There is a handshake.
Mythology maintains that all of creation existed first as thought, which was then uttered as speech, by which powers the primal beings took shape... Hunters think of humankind as the keepers of these formulaic stories, the narrators and symbolizers of the blueprint of creation. They believe themselves responsible for repeating these tales in order to keep them alive and further, to regenerate the system. Mankind, in fine, has the mind uniquely capable of imaging the vast yet interconnected network of creation and rendering it in language and material structure. In this sense, hunters view themselves as the historian-regenerators and artist-regenerators.
This, for them, is the great calling of our kind."

Monks in retreat this week

Even in retreat, the animals need to be fed, herbs need to be harvested, soap cut, and we still need fire wood upstairs in the barn. Chaz is bringing up a load on a frosty morning. It is a challenge to be completely silent at home - not away at a retreat center or monastery but in our very own hermitage. it takes some new skills to negotiate comfortable terrain in total silence. Third day now, of 3 - 4 hours of sitting a day, deepening our interior silence.

This is our schedule: 6:30 - 7:30 a.m., 11 - 11:30 a.m., 5 -6 p.m., 8 - 9 p.m. 

Preparation begins for 12-12-12 through Winter Solstice

                                                                                                                                                            11-12-12

The Procession of the Equinox

It is a glorious fall day at Hazelbrand Forest Hermitage, with red and gold leaves whispering  like rain as they dance their annual pilgrimage to the feet of the very trees from which they sprung.  Now they are a magnificent multicolored carpet  spread out before us as an invitation to contemplate the beauty of this Earth, this Life, this very time in our history which has captured our imaginations and given birth to every possible scenario. Whatever your thoughts about 2012, it is evident that a psychic event is emerging in the Collective Mind, what Teilhard De Chardin called the Noosphere. What would we have it be? Doom and Gloom? Or the coming of the Cosmic Christ (Christ Consciousness)?  Our greatest prophets and visionaries, both ancient and modern, tell us we have a choice in this. Repent, turn back, purification and preparation, the 5 wise virgins (matt 25), new wine in new skins…  

Here at Hazelbrand, we will be joining thousands of meditators around the world in a prayer for peace and unity. Beginning on 12-12-12, we will be preparing for our gathering on 12-21-12, the last Winter Solstice of a 26,000 year cycle of the Procession of the Equinox through the 12 constellations of our Milky Way Galaxy, and ending with the alignment of the Earth with the Galactic Center. It is the beginning of the Third Millenium and a New Humanity.

We will be spending the day in meditation and sacred work, making incense and prayer flags. We will raise our prayer flags upon hand hewn cedar poles and set them into place with native white quartz rocks. Just above our humble pond and the central fire circle, they will wave to the Noosphere in greeting and profound anticipation of the coming of the Bridegroom. We are ready with lamps and extra oil. The geese are coming in already to join with us. The donkeys -- Moose and San Juan, are frisky and nervous. They are new here, less than a year, but Lance, our horse, is a veteran. They will all participate with us. The trees, the Alcovy River, the birds, the Earth herself, will be connected in the Nooshere in the most powerfully focused moment in the history of this planet.   

If you are a student of a spiritual path…the Four Agreements, The Celestine Insights, the Seth Books, mystical Christianity, Buddhism, metaphysics… all traditions… and you are drawn to inquire, please feel welcome to contact us on our blog at Hazelbrand Forest Hermitage.

-          Namaste,  Margaret

Vigil of All Soul’s Choral Evensong

                                                          

Vigil of All Soul’s Choral Evensong: 

On the Other Side of Language

Nov 4 2012 E. Church of the Epiphany, Atlanta, Ga

The Rev. Cynthia Hizer

The First Lesson  Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the LORD has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.

This is the LORD for whom we have waited;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Some years ago the old Indian Jusuka was dying. His family and friends came close to say good bye. Friends who had been his helpers and teachers and protectors. Friends like wind and rain, and fox.

Wind had come to Jusuka when he was a nine-year old boy, and had taught him the wisdom of weather. Fox too, had found the young boy freezing in the woods, and took him back to the fox den until he warmed up and then guided him back home.

It might seem strange to be able to communicate with such noble beings who we love but who don’t speak our language.

Remembrance, is a kind of language, like feeling; it is primal language.

In the same way, the circle of life that we honor tonight is not unbroken by death. Jusuka, and now we, are able to communicate on the other side of language.

So tonight, we set out pictures and light candles and sing songs and invoke the mystical journey of our lives.

On this night we pause from our grief over the natural rhythm of things, we pause to remember, to unbind our minds

This All Soul’s remembrance,  – Sanhain it is called in the Celtic language, or Halloween.

This holiday is found in so many places that it cannot be ignored, it cannot be reasoned away. We can dress up in costumes and go to parties, we can make light of it with goblins and witches, but beneath that veneer our true work, waits.

In this metanoia, this remembering, we return to a scene of life with our beloved, and stop there, and relive it.

Enter into it and allow time to stop. The moment becomes eternal. We start with our grief, and the silent space there where we stop holds the seeds of our healing.

I had one of these moments this weekend, remembering my grandmother, Anna, who gardened barefoot, and planted peanuts in northern Indiana. I didn’t really appreciate this until I moved to the South.

I remember her rough garden hands, her old Indian hands, and her focus on the soil, and her focus on me. And me covered with mud, like her. Mud to mud, earth to earth, dust to dust, we were. This mud we shared, was a communication, a language on the other side of language. And I knew that she lived.

 Our reading from John tells us this clarity is for those who see and hear and believe – and they will pass from death to life. Right now, the veil between this world and the next is thin, so we have a particular clarity.  It is a veil removed, a gossamer sheet of silk or maybe a rough piece of linen that that covered all the nations all the worlds all the peoples and tonight,

it opens for us.

and yet, while the veil the sheet the cloth that is lifted, covers all the people all the nations, it is on this mountain that the lord stands with us in this moment. This mountain, this ICU unit this hospice room where death seemed so real. It is on our very own mountain that God brings this clarity of life.

Tonight, our candle lighting and music help open the portal, lift the veil to hear this voice and see  things larger than hearing and seeing -

What do we find in this opening tonight?

We find our Beloveds – doing fine.

Eating a feast and drinking well-aged wine and rich food filled with marrow. We see them not in sadness, or loneliness or coldness of winter, but luxuriating in the warmth and glow of the resurrected light  - with that warmth spreading and enveloping them in the clarity of this night.

And on this mountain we see our own tears being wiped away by this Lord who has spoken across time and space, in a different kind of language.

We see this Light enveloping us also. As we enjoy the rich fare and remember the mud the love the connection. In this remembering, the shroud, the veil, the sheet that was cast over all the peoples, over all the nations, is destroyed.

It is destroyed by the power to remember.[i]

Because our love is stronger than death.

On the other side of language, like Jusuka speaking to fox and wind speaking to him, anyone who remembers will swallow up death forever.

Amen

---

[i] Inspiration derived from the creative work of Elizabeth Cunningham in her song “Resurrection” in her rendering Passion of Mary Magdalen; www.elizabethcunninghamwrites.com

first fire

We are ready for winter - good fire and plenty of tea and cups - and M just brought up the first of the frankincense soap!

Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm
Song of Songs 8:6

As we honor the triduum of All Hollow's Eve, All Saints and All Souls. this song from Elizabeth Cunningham, one of my favorite authors and songwriters (you can buy the music below):

13. Resurrection Song

from The Passion of Mary Magdalen

Set me like a seal on your heart,

like a seal on your arm.

For love is strong as death,

passion as relentless as Sheol.

The flash of love is a flash of fire

a flame of Yahweh himself.

Love no flood can quench

no torrents drown.

For the river that flows from my heart is a flame

that will carry me over the seas

and I will unbind you from the tree

from the tamarisk tree and the oak

yes I will unbind you from the tree

the bare tree and the leafless one.

For love is as strong as death

passion relentless as Sheol.

No flood can quench my love

For I am the queen of all rivers

who makes the waters rise and recede

and I will seek you among the reeds

I will find you forever.

For mine is the power to remember

and I will re-member you.

I will kiss you with the kisses of my mouth

I will fill you with the breath of life.

Set me as a seal on your heart

like a seal on your arm

For love is as strong as death

passion as relentless as Sheol.

The flash of love is the flash of your fire

and you shall rise with the sun.

From Elizabeth Cunningham:
www.elizabethcunninghamwrites.com
CD Baby Resurrection Song from The Passion of Mary Magdalen
http://ElizabethandMaeve@blogspot.com

Traveling toward Sanhein

we start the first of the Sanhein fires tonight at Hazelbrand with our guest, Barbara from the Sanctuary of 7Seven Good Days.

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes  you
into a world you were never in.

new strangers on other paths await.
new places that have never seen  you
will startle a little at your entry.
old places that new you well
will pretend nothing
changed since your last visit.

when you travel, you find yourself
alone in a different way,
more attentive now
to the self you bring along,
your more subtle eye watching
you abroad; and how what meets you
touches that part of the heart
that lies low at home....

poem by John O'Donohue

in from a lovely garden day, harvested Tulsi, Holy Basil, and sipping hot tea. i should feel radiant, balanced, virtue and joy soon. 

Tulsi, or "the incomparable one", is thought to embody a powerful purifying radiance that refines body, mind and spirit. It brilliantly boosts immunity, generates wellness and can be used as a preventative to maintain a resilient body. Used as an herbal tea it is an adaptogen, a master balancer of physical systems, improving resistance to daily stress. In Ayurvedic terms, holy basil is considered a sattvic plant which (increases prana), maintains harmonious balance within the body and thereby produces virtue and joy in humans. 

taken from http://www.floracopeia.com/

Labor Day 2012
In a cloud of fog hovering over Hazelbrand, this morning we are harvesting elephant garlic, mint, daikon radishes, collards, pears and our first-ever Brussels sprouts. Planted and nourished in the way Masanobu Fukuoka's "do-nothing farming."

I dedicate this Labor Day harvest to my mentor, Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One Straw Revolution.
   "I was aiming at a pleasant, natural way of farming which results in making the work easier instead of harder...  ....To be here, caring for a small field, in full possession of the freedom and plentitude of each day, every day - this must have been the original way of agriculture."

Homily: Community Practicing Peace

Proper 16B aug 30 2012                                                                          1

The Rev Cynthia Hizer

Episcopal Church of the  Epiphany, Atlanta, GA

Kings 8:1,6,10-11, 22-30, 41-43

Ps 84

Ephesians 610-20

John 6:56-69

                                                           

In the name of the One Holy and Living God.

What if we came into church each Sunday like this:

First, we take off our shoes at the door and place them on a rack.

Then we walk in the door and bow to the sanctuary candle, or the altar, or both.

Then we walk to our pew, turn around and bow to the pew. Then we stand and wait till everyone else gets in the room,

then we turn toward the center aisle and each side of the church bows to the other side. we bow to each other.

And then we sit down.

This is what happens in a Buddhist meditation hall. They take off shoes, come in the door, bow to the Buddha,

their teacher who teaches them how to bring peace, to end suffering in the world.

Then they bow to their meditation cushion, the place where they hear the teachings, the place of their journey, and then they bow to the community, the place where they practice the teachings of their beloved teacher.

So we can do this too. Bowing means reverencing, or revering, or honoring.

We already bow to our great and beloved teacher, Jesus, who teaches us how to end suffering, how to live in compassion and peace and hope.

We already bow to the cross and the gospel book as they process into the church.  Then we could also bow to our pew, the place where we will listen and learn and pray,

and then we could bow to each other – our fellow pilgrims with whom we will practice the teachings we have just heard.

We already pass the peace of Christ – what if when we do that, we remember we are also practicing peace with each other.

The importance of this place –  this community, this altar, this sanctuary light, this pew, this room, the importance of this dwelling place –

is infused throughout our readings today.

King Solomon stands before the altar of the Lord and spreads out his hands to the dwelling place.

Our psalmist longs for the courts of the Lord, as a place of home, nest for the sparrow, a place of springs of water. The courts of the Lord –  all of this -  is a landing pad for pilgrims on a spiritual journey.

That is why we are here isn’t it?

For a spiritual journey? To learn how to pray, to learn who to pray to. To learn how to be a good person, for our children to grow up to be good people, to have a moral compass, to respect the dignity of all people, which we say in our Baptismal Covenant,

to get peace in our lives and peace in the world, to end the suffering and violence and cruelty. To find unity and meaning with all that is.

We come here to learn something different than what we learn outside of here. To learn the skillful means to practice peace when we do leave here, this place of springs of water, this nest for the sparrow, these courts of the Lord.

Paul is writing a letter to the Ephesians – a Gentile mission church he established on his way back to Jerusalem after a long mission trip. After Pentecost the new Christian church spread rapidly throughout Gentile territory, mostly thanks to Paul. He stayed in Ephesus for three years, and later wrote this letter to them, or one of his followers might have written it.

It is a letter of encouragement.

How to act, how to live in the family, in marriage, and in worship. It is a letter of totality – surrounding, immersing us in what he calls the whole armor of Christ.

What we might call attuning ourselves to the teacher, the teachings, the community - the courts of the Lord.

So to be surrounded, immersed, attuned, we bow and reverence the Christ, the candle, the altar.

We bow to our journey, our pew, the place of hearing the teachings that matter so much to the world. We bow to each other for support, for remembrance, and we make ourselves ready to proclaim, as Paul says in his letter, to proclaim the gospel of peace.

What if we loved this work, this practice, these skillful means, so much, that we were compelled to take off our shoes at the door? to be in a state of vulnerability rather than a state of readiness to run? To be vulnerable, to put on this armor that Paul speaks of: belt, breastplate, sword, shield, helmet – and radically bow to the practice of peace.

It is so radical, it doesn’t seem natural. It seems man is wired to react, retaliate, defend. Yes, in the ancient part of our brain, the reptilian brain it is called, where duality and separateness reign.

But Jesus operated out of the front of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex, I think that is what the scientists call it. It is the place of higher thinking, complex thinking, the place of unity and compassion and love.

It is so radical we need a place to practice before we go out of this place and proclaim the gospel of peace.

So this letter today is a letter of encouragement to you.

A letter of how we make ourselves ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

By being vulnerable.

By bowing to each other – those who will help us in this difficult journey. And bowing to the teacher, to the altar, to the sacrament of bread and wine that are life, and hope that we might be able to make the whole world

a place of springs of water,

a nest for the sparrow,

the inner sanctuary

and the courts of the Lord.    Amen

August 29

Pears are falling off the tree, time to can and store for winter! Comfrey ready to dig, strawberries to weed, collards, carrots, peas and rye grass to plant (and Johnson Grass to dig out). Painting meditation room, we are calling it our Beauty Room because it is so beautiful. Come sit with us! Come gather pears and can and store for winter! Come plant! Come sit by a morning fire in the late summer garden and enjoy the low bank of fog that covers the farm in early morning. The Hermitage is glorious now.

FOR COMPOSTING
compost
waits
for deposits,
the thrown away,
refuse gathered in pots and buckets and pastures of manure shaped into a pod
opening wide
for mature audiences only,
this fermenting organic mess
of soiled fruit,vegetable parts, and naked waste
roots into our earth
and from out of its soaking stench
and starchy entrails, egg shell fragments and intwined wormy inner weaving
new
life smokes and pleasantly
rises green and soon flowers in the thicket.

c. hill from the ground zero of forest hermitage recreation. 2012. 08.09 Thursday night

Introduction to Buddhist Meditation

One of our favorite teachers, Shirley Banks, will be holding a study and practice course at her home in Decatur on the Five Precepts (Non-harm, Right Speech, Not Taking, Ethical Sexual Expression, and Keeping the Mind Clear). Here are the specifics. 

Meditation is a key skill for spiritual, psychological, physical health.  In this short course, we will explore a few meditative techniques as taught in Western Theravada Buddhist meditation centers.  Classes include background information, instruction, practice, and reflection.  We will sample meditative forms of sitting, lovingkindness, mindfulness, walking, standing, and lying down.  To maximize benefit from the class, participants are asked to read a book before the first class meeting, read chapters from a second book before the second and third class meetings, practice between classes, and attend all three sessions.

                                 The link to Shirley's blog is http://dharmapalian@wordpress.com - where you can sign up.

Summer Blues
still open my eyes slowly
forest monastery
shadows lift high lighted wings
Forest Hermitage (natural psalter)*

though long grown a haiku blisters up,
it's a sudden thing,
like a fresh surprising rain drop in clear air against forehead
looking up at a perfect hit;
white like blue sky coming down from green heaven, like pieces of paper glide
gently crossing space folded

no rock unturned, no tree left stands alone.

wings skidding
landing in the dark, side by side
stirring yellow sunburst dust
fall felt in the red like blood on rosary beads.

we are monastery
we are forest
we are prayer
we are wings brightly
filling darkness with songs of light.

so as not to be forgetful of how the sacred heart bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds,
the one for the many,
the many for the one,
we make our beds without a sound and then we stay awake watchful, mindful,
for
we are monastery
we are forest
we are prayer.

-chaz hill 2012. 30 july *You make me sing like a natural psalter.

Forest Tradition Hermitage at Hazelbrand

Late summer at Hazelbrand - back from travels to Upaya Zen Center, Navajoland, Puerto Rico, Haiti. Now simmering in mist in the southern forests of the Piedmont. Late morning white light- the Dawn Holy One - is  growing into mid-day gold. The trees in the forests surrounding us sending a still-cooling breeze toward the barn.

Our community of monks at Hazelbrand

士 人 里 香心 米

   the scholarly man 

           who has come to live in our community 

Chaz 

has a heart like fragrant rice.

                                      Merry Christmas Chaz!

to the one who keeps us balanced with humor and grace!
Margaret, Merry Christmas!

DECEMBER:

10 bales of straw
10 bags of leaves from Atlanta
1 bag greensand
3 wheelbarrows of composted horse manure
laid out t-tape and tubing for drip irrigation - had on hand
priced submersible pump for river
Jason exploring a possible used greenhouse


Christmas:
the coolest 2-foot shovel ever!
new Felco pruners
great garden gloves

Why God Loves Dirt

Advent 4B 2011 Attar of the Lord Krishna

The Rev. Cynthia Hizer

Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Atlanta, GA

“You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and he will be great.”                       

Last week, when the Bishop visited, he asked us “what would your neighborhood

miss, if your church closed?”

and I also wonder, this week, this fourth week of Advent,what would we miss if we didn’t have the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

What would we miss, without the womb of Mary?

I wait for this Sunday, the fourth and final Sunday of Advent, all year long.

I finally get to talk about Mary!

During Advent, until today, we get the apocalypse; we get John the Baptist,

the voice crying out in the wilderness, locusts and wild honey, watchfulness

and waiting. But we don’t get Mary.

So today I come crawling, parched and thirsty for a little feminine divine. 

What would we miss if we didn’t have the story of Mary? When we come crawling, limping, thirsty for the earthiness of Mary, I want that which we have been waiting for, that our parched throats and worn-out hearts are longing for,

a drop of rain on parched earth.

I want the manger and the straw and the sheep and the shepherds, I want a home birth with no medical professionals or birth certificate,

but mostly I want the dark, moist, earthy, loamy material, the medicine, the material life force, the matter – the mother - essence of the universe welling up from the clay of which we are formed, the part of the incarnation that Mary gave to Jesus. 

“You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and he will be great”

Why does Jesus, our savior, need to be conceived in a womb, made of clay,

made of earth?

Zeus didn’t need a womb – he gave birth to Athena through his head.

Jupiter did the same thing. Why is it that the thing that will end our thirst

and heal our hearts, and truly save us, Jesus, is made of the same clay as us, as Mary?

We have Mary not as a symbol of obedient or devout women.

We have Mary, we need Mary, for the womb, the belly in the solar plexus,

the part of our bodies that knows truth, smells justice, knows mercy, instinctively. Jesus had to come from this part of her body, not her head, not her rib, but her gut.

We don’t get the Song of Mary, the song of justice,

 the Magnificat, we don’t get that greatness, from the head.

We get it from the heart, from the gut. We get healing and salvation and a

longing for justice from the belly, from the womb.

This justice is intoxicating, scattering the proud from their conceit, lifting up the

lowly, filling the hungry with good things.

Intoxicating, like the first drop of rain on parched ground.

===

In India, there is a group of perfumes called At-tars. They are the finest perfumes in the world, made with great labor. The flowers – rose, champa, jasmine, blue lotus - are infused into a base of sandalwood.

So their fragrance is deep and resinous and intense.

But there is one At-tar, the most sacred of them all,

called Mitti. It is the At-tar of the Lord Krishna.

The Mitti is a distillation not of flowers, but of earth.

To make it the perfumers take big mounds of mud and dry them into flat,

parched cakes and stack them in the distiller.

Then they add steam.

And the moment the first drop of moisture hits the hot, dry parched cakes

of mud, the aroma that is emitted is the same fragrance

as the first drop of rain on the hot, parched earth of India at the beginning

of the monsoon season.

This is an electric moment when the heat is still intense but anticipation is in the air, it is the most intoxicating scent for the people,

knowing rain is coming,

that the earth will live again, that they will live.

This fragrance stands for salvation.

We know this smell.

It is the fragrance of the garden on our hands.

It is the fragrance we know in our gut, in our belly,

Because it is the fragrance that God loves.

We know that God loves us because God loves dirt.
we know God loves dirt because God loves justice.
God loves justice and God loves dirt enough to make us from it, and make justice from it and make Jesus from it.

Korea has a love story about a beautiful woman named

Choon-Hyang - spring fragrance,

this beautiful woman is named for the first rain on dry soil.

And for her, Choon-Hyang, it also means the fragrance of justice. Her story is one of justice for the women of Korea.

Lord Krishna says, “I am the fragrance of the earth.”

Choon-Hyang says “I am the fragrance of justice.”

Could this be our Lord Jesus born of clay, born of the womb of Mary, destined to be great?

amen

winter solstice fire 2011

kept vigil in the garden.
laid on the ground to feel the earth pulse and rhythm.
felt the well being.
prayed for peace.

Winterizing

straw for mulching: check

wearing orange to protect from hunters: check

collards luxuriating in cool misty weather: check

garden ready to nap for a couple of months: check