Stephanie Rutt

You would never find it unless you knew just where to look. The old logging road is now grown up and the waterway is stealthily guarded by rocky boulders. But such is the way when in search of the sacred. Lucky for us, we stumbled upon it some twenty-five years ago – this sacred piece of wilderness my husband and I would come to call our special place.

At the time, I can’t say we were in search of the sacred. No, it was much more like a desperate search to escape the bugs. My husband had convinced me to try wilderness camping – a far cry for me who’d never been campground camping. But, he was so enthusiastic and insisted, without doubt, it was going to be wonderful. So, off we went in search of that dream wilderness campsite somewhere hidden deep in the Maine woods.

About forty miles in on dirt logging roads we arrived, right at dusk, and saw what looked like a path heading straight into those dense, now ominous looking, woods. But, darkness loomed so we had no choice. In we went. After some distance, we saw the remains of a campsite long cold. My husband rushed to make a fire and we set up our tent. As night settled around us, I remember he kept fanning the smoke my way (sweet guy that he is) to deter the thick veil of bugs now eagerly circling us. I was not smiling.

And I heard God laughing (Hafiz) I don’t remember much about that first night but the next morning we decided to hike up the path. Soon we noticed a very narrow opening leading through some dense bushes. Curious, we followed. Within just a few feet we emerged out onto a wide open area. Perched high, we found ourselves looking out over a lake, a small waterfall to the side and, at the other end, a beautiful pond merging into a river downstream. I’m not sure we took in all the natural beauty at first. Mainly, we were just relieved to feel a cool breeze and to, finally, not be swatting the bugs.

But, no doubt, heaven had arrived.

For many years we would return to canoe, bathe and frolic in the pond and to just rest in the sound of the rushing waters. For me, there has been no place more sacred. Then, in 2000 I started going to New Mexico each summer for yoga teacher trainings and over the years family events and health issues kept us from our sacred site – that is until last week.

How my heart was pounding as we quickly made our way down the vaguely familiar path, past the mosquito pit, as we have come to affectionately call that first site, and then – no bushes – just suddenly we were there and – What? A picnic table! No! I had to laugh as I was the one most perturbed that it made our site look so domesticated! Then, as we paused, we noticed that our beloved friends the pine trees had all grown up and had gently scattered their needles across the ground. Looking through their boughs, we saw the lake, waterfall and pond just as we remembered. And, slowly, the familiar sound of the water came rushing into our memory inviting us to step deeply and release softly into its cool, dark, depths. We were Home. Gratefully, our site is now protected by a Down East Land Trust, whom we assume added the picnic table, but also assures this earthly treasure will be protected. Still, even more remote now, it was clear no one had been there in a very long time.

Being much older, for this return visit we decided to stay in a rustic cabin on a nearby lake at a lovely lodge called The Pines. This was a treat all to itself with gas lights in our cabin and a view from our porch that was so pristine I had to continually remind myself it was real. The ringing of the bell for breakfast and a delectable dinner, packed lunches, as well as access to an actual bathroom and shower were also special treats to round out the wilderness edges. Ahhhhh, but during the day we journeyed over to our site and each time we arrived I felt like we’d just re-discovered that hidden treasure, hallowed secret, waiting just for us.

And, how the discovery of the outer sacred mirrors the inner sacred, does it not? Approaching the adventure of our spiritual walk and practice, we are often drawn out of our comfort zone into what can feel like those ominous woods of our inner territory. It’s dark in there! What will I find? And, of course, our first encounter is the mosquito pit – those impinging fears, the cloaked emotions hiding in the light of day and all those pesky aches and pains. Yikes! This is not what I thought!

But, if we persevere, go even deeper, the Beloved will lay before us a narrow opening For strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life (Mat. 7:14) inviting, no compelling, us into a Love that knows no resistance. But, we must pay attention to see and make the decision to follow. For this is no ordinary Path. Here we are re-routed to points unknown that, ultimately, lead straight into a beauty well beyond the wild of our imagination.

Of course, the Path to the inner sacred is not so linear. It’s more like a labyrinth. Many times we find ourselves circling out into the pit of our beloved (yes, beloved) mosquitoes whose job it is to carve even deeper into the roots of our resistance. And, blessedly, recalling those moments we have circled back in, to stumble upon that which is beyond our understanding, we find, again, it is rarely what we could have imagined.

You see the Beloved loves to play hide and seek…

Peeking though the lofty swaying tree boughs…
Whispering on the waves of the gushing water…
Nestling in the soft beds of pine needles…

To, suddenly, surprise us…catching our soul with some unnamable joy…

And, we hear a silent giggle, “Your It!”

Indeed.

Unless you know a child with special needs, it may be hard to relate. Mostly, it may be hard to imagine just what you’re missing. Every parent prays for a healthy normal child. Every parent wants their child to look and act like all the other children. Difference is the greatest fear. Please God, not my child. And then, graciously, God decides not to answer your prayers – or so you think. This is how our family became blessed with my grandson who has autism. And recently, celebrating his tenth birthday, we got to see, a little more clearly, just what God had in mind.

As his friends and classmates arrived, my daughter greeted each one. She’s like a mamma bear to my grandson, his number 1 advocate and protector. I am always amazed at how she handles the most common tasks for him, like haircuts and dentist appointments, because, for him, nothing is common. Better you than me I always say. Lucky for me, I just get to hand out the strawberry syrup, his favorite.

As I introduced myself to one of the parents, her son said with a sweet bright smile, Thank you for inviting me. His mom explained how she gets a full report on my grandson daily: Good day today! Or, Had a rough time today. Later I would see he was one of two boys who had brought a handmade card – yes, handmade.

Many of the kids have been with my grandson for years now. They know and accept him. But, this past year something happened to connect them all in a new way. At one of the children’s school birthday parties, my grandson spontaneously took out a portable keyboard and started playing Happy Birthday! – not with single notes but in full chords. No one even knew he could play! After that, he started playing more and more and, over the months, had become a bit of a rock star, complete with all the cool moves, attracting quite a following!

Watching my grandson open gifts, I spoke with the mom whose son had brought the other handmade card. He’d gone looking for a keyboard on line so he could draw one special. He and several others sat close right in front. Then suddenly, it happened. In that unforeseen moment, I simply knew my beautiful grandson was one of them and that he was going to be ok. You see, the fear at the other end of life for those who love such a child is who will care for them when we are gone? It felt to me like the first signs to an answer had just appeared in those cards arriving special delivery by those young, boyish, hands.

Connection. Something had stirred my grandson to play music that day and his friends had responded. Now, difference was not being erased but, rather, celebrated. Now, together, some new song was being created – not just for the keyboard. And, I remembered the one I’d sung to him since he was born borrowed from Bernadette Farrell, God made me as I am…part of creation’s plan…no one else could ever be the part of God’s plan that’s me.

Perhaps all the beautiful souls, from God’s so-called unanswered prayers, are here to awaken in each of us a new song, a new way of looking, seeing, loving, connecting. Perhaps they are God’s special emissaries sent to engrave upon our own unsuspecting hearts a slightly irregular keyboard with unlined, multi-colored, block lettering. How perfect.

And, just think…we would have prayed not to have this…!

So often difference hides in the shadows of our fear. At his party, I saw my beautiful grandson standing wide open in the sun. He had found his place, a home, etched on the faces of his friends and especially…on those handmade cards.

I didn’t know what would happen. Initially, I wasn’t even sure why. But, I just had to ask. And, so many of you came, last Saturday, to our first retreat offered for all lovers of the Tree of Life. And, so many more let me know how much you had wanted to come but just could not on that particular day. For you, we placed your names into our sacred circle so you too could be lovingly held in our collective heart.

Then, on that day, I realized fully that, whether you have enjoyed the Tree of Life Interfaith Temple services and events, the Tree of Life School for Sacred Living’s spiritual studies programs, the Tree of Life Interfaith Seminary program or the many past yoga classes and related events, we are all woven together by a common thread – interfaith spirituality. T. S. Elliot said, We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time. For me, dear community, this is what has happened. This was why I was drawn to invite us together.

I have been largely away this past year at Andover Newton Theological School immersed in doctoral studies. I knew I would learn a lot and I certainly have. But, the most extraordinary thing I have discovered is that what we have right here, at the Tree of Life, is unique. Together, we are touching the heart of the world’s faith traditions as we immerse ourselves in their spiritual practices. When we say, Many are the Ways We Pray to One God, it is not just a nicely held belief but a visceral knowing born of our experience – an experience branded on our collective soul. We know to Whom we belong – the One to whom all religions point but could never contain. We are less likely to get hooked on names for God, beliefs about God, or stories revealing God for we seek that which is common, unifying, amongst what could be polarizing and divisive. With our collective heart, we hoist bridges from one faith tradition to another leading through and beyond the stories of religion to the One Divine Essence animating all. And, blessedly, as a result, we often find ourselves dancing, ecstatic and breathless, into the heart of the Divine Trinity – touched by the Lover, informed by the Love to become the Beloved, silent with awe.

Such blessing, grace, is not received without responsibility. We, as a community, have a contribution to make to the task of forging unity across divides. We are called to demonstrate, as living examples, just what it looks like to see our neighbor – indeed, love our neighbor, everywhere – across religious, race, gender, ethnic difference. Having found and experienced God echoing in the depths of silence across faith traditions, we carry the innate knowledge needed to authentically effect change and promote awareness in an increasingly polarized world. I have arrived home (yes, Home) and this is what I see.

And so, we will continue to gather, dance together, chant together, journey together, onto that field of wonder of which Rumi spoke as we dare to live the charge of Jesus to love one another – yes, all others. And, together, we will rise up as Arjuna to confront evil and injustice with the living sword of Truth. From our blessed community, we will gather spiritual sustenance and nourishment to hold the sweet unity that sets all of us free from the hateful bondage of evil. For it is together that we walk into our destiny – to humbly, yet courageously, offer back to the Beloved the outgrowth of the seed planted in our collective heart at birth.

Whether you are near or far, may we share the blessed fruits from our Tree of Life and, with joy everlasting, be something beautiful for God – the God looking back at us though the eyes of friend and foe, saint and sinner, rich and poor, the loved and unloved. It is our duty, our charge, but most of all…our blessing.

Until we dance again, Beloveds, until we dance again…

In my book, Doorway to the Sacred: Transform Your Life with Mantra Prayer, I talk of the essence of spiritual practice occurring to us in the silence that follows our mantra chanting. The mantra, having honed our minds to a deeper state of equanimity, can now lead us to a kind of portal, in that silence that follows, through which we may experience ourSelves at deeper levels. This same sacred silence, of course, occurs as a result of practices across faith traditions. In Christianity, the contemplative practice is called Centering Prayer. Here, much like with mantra practice, we engage what is called a sacred word but the whole of the practice is done in silence. Moreover, the intention is not so much to transcend the finite nature of the mind to merge with the infinite nature of the soul as it is to become spacious enough to experience the presence of God within. This allows for what Father Thomas Keating called the false self to emerge for transformation so that the true self may be experienced – one’s personal union with God. Two distinctly beautiful paths leading to the One Beloved.

Over the past year, I have been spending more time in Centering Prayer and I have noticed, quite unexpected, a kind of settling within me. I call it a deeper capacity to wait and it reminds me of Tagore’s saying, Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we have the capacity to receive it. As I recently shared on my Author Facebook page, this is why we practice – to cultivate the capacity to receive what already belongs to us and why our ability to wait is so integral and sacred to our journey.

Recently I wrote a poem about this…I hope, in some way, it will bless your journey. It’s called Waiting…

You have paused me.
And I wait now with only the sweet scent of some unknowing, holding me,
as I flutter aloft like one of those hummingbirds outside my window.
Suspended, now, I can only wait in wonder.

And wait I do for Your direction even as I steadily march forward.
I can feel Your hand carving away what I am ready to surrender.
I resist imagining what may be emerging.
It seems best not to know.
For in not knowing I remain more anchored in Your Grace.

Your presence now is my only path; Your fragrance my only compass.
I have no destination. You are my Home.
Paused now, I rest, gladly, at Your feet.
Content to wait for Your command, now, my only wish.

I have always known Your steadfast, Grace filled, love for me.
What I didn’t know till now,
until Your piercing gaze ever-so-tenderly blossomed my heart
and claimed all of me, suddenly, decisively, as Your own…
was just how much I could find myself
loving You

As the snow melts, I am smiling thinking of my granddaughter and one of her favorite things to do in the summer sun. “Come on Grandma!” I hear, and then before I know it, she’s off – off to run, run, run, round her house, over and over again. Scrambling to keep up, I’m always just slightly behind her. “Run Grandma! You can do it!” she coaches giggling back at me. Then, I’m giggling in spite of myself and my furled brow! But, I always notice that while I’m racing, huffing and puffing, she’s just having a grand old time, swaying side to side, even as she’s moving quite purposefully forward. Clearly, she seems a woman on a mission – right there in her two-year old body – no doubt about that.

But, it’s that run. How I love that run. Decisive, focused yet so carefree and utterly playful. Just the memory of it leaves me pondering. Hummmmmm. How many untold words have been written by spiritual teachers, expounded upon by the sharpest minds, about how to best cultivate such a state of consciousness carefully balanced in the equanimity of single-pointed expansion, motion and rest, structure and freedom, discipline and play? Yet, there it is, in its purest form, playing out right before my eyes.

Was I like that? Where did mine go? I think I best go on a mission to find my inner two year old! After all, I need lots of help cultivating such advanced states of consciousness.

“Come on Grandma! Run!”

Ooops, gotta go. Lucky for me I have a great teacher and the best playground ever to train in this most serious and disciplined of practices…

Another run around the house.

Hello Everyone,

In response to my earlier post The Beloved’s Doodling, it was requested that I show some of my tangles. Here are a few samples below. Enjoy!

I have felt it in the stillness of a zikr turn. I have felt it in the spacious silence following mantra meditation. I have felt its guidance on a journey to the Shaman’s drum. But, never, before today, have I felt it doodling.

Ahhhhh, to be fair, this was no ordinary doodling. As part of my The Word Made Fresh January class, we were invited to tangle (also known as Zen tangling), or doodle, the Hebrew script. Having practiced Psalm 23 in Hebrew, I already knew the power of the language so I was intrigued to investigate further.

My process began with reading about each letter in one of our texts, The Book of Letters, by Lawrence Kushner. As I read about each one, a word emerged that seemed to me a kind of portal into that letter’s infinite wisdom. Then soon, short prayers started to emerge. Then, I felt ready to start tangling – but not before my mind got in some good commentary. You’re not as artist! How can you possibly make those letters beautiful?

But, Just start, I heard. And, so I did. Hummmmm, this is not so bad…kinda cool really. Ooooop!!!! Mistake!!!! I wonder what would happen if I just followed that line? Where does it want to go? What is this corner space wanting? This curve? This angle? What shape? What figure? What IS that? Boy, THAT was amazing. That long curved line just rolled into something I didn’t even see coming!

And as I continued to tangle, it was as if I had stepped over some threshold right into the portal of each letter. Alef…is this what you were wanting? How can I see your Oneness everywhere? Bait? Gimmel? All twenty-two of you are so beautiful! I can hardly believe it. Now I can see how you helped to create heaven and earth. Thank you, each of you, for being my Teacher. Thank you for showing the way…one stroke at a time.

Oh my…who IS doodling here, anyway?

And then, after many hours of what seemed like no time, my book of prayers was complete and I could only marvel with tender, quiet, gratitude at what had been created…

One Blessed doodle at a time.

As the New Year dawns we begin to think of letting go of the past and ringing in the new. It can feel both joyous and well as challenging. It always reminds me that death and birth are inextricably linked – one always opening to the other. This past semester in school, I was blessed to dive deeply into St. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle and titled my final paper An Ecstatic Death. Then, over the holidays, I was gifted with Andrea Bocelli’s The Lord’s Prayer accompanied by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Somehow, from the merging alchemy of both, the poem below emerged.

May Love transform us…so we may die to self and be reborn in glory…

An Ecstatic Death

I hear you now my Love…hallowed…singing my barely audible pulse.

I feel you now my Love…mercifully…catching my awe-filled breath.

I see you now my Love…everywhere…lighting my blinded sight.

 ———————–

You have silenced my surest knowing.

You have unarmed my best guess.

You have emptied my will.

You have pierced my heart and left me bleeding …only love…for You.

 ———————–

I am silent now…sensing only the moist touch of You on my lips.

 ———————–

I am dying now…in sweet ecstasy…

Feeling only the kiss of your Love birthing me…lifting me…onto your Grace…

 ———————–

To soar…glorious and free…

Home to you my Beloved…

Home to you.

Happy Blessed New Year to All!

As I held in loving memory the 148 slain, mostly children, by the Taliban on Tuesday, it struck me that this was also the day that, at sundown, Jews all around the world would begin to celebrate Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. And, this reminded me of a story told by Elie Wiesel in his book Night of a young boy who was hanged in Auschwitz for a minor infraction of the camp rules. As the boy dangled from the rope, Wiesel was asked by someone, “Where is God now?” And, a voice deep within him replied, “Here He is – He is hanging here on the gallows.”

Mother Teresa said, ”We look but we don’t see.” When the unspeakable happens, when we nakedly witness our inhumanity to one another, we cringe in horror. And, perhaps, from some seething anger aching to explode, we may cry out in vengeful rage, “Where is God? Where are you?” But, perhaps, if we can adjust our vision just enough, we too might be able to see God right before us and to quietly hear the answer: “I am right here – holding you in your rage, grief and despair. I am here among the shattered glass, the small crumpled jacket, the broken eyeglasses, the tiny shoe, the pools of blood. Yes, I am here. I am here when you feel there is nothing left. I am here – the song that will not be silenced from your most wounded heart, clinging like a wingless bird to a withered branch. I am here – an eternal flicker of Light in this unspeakable darkness. Adjust your vision. Look. I am here.”

Is this not our charge as a community of faith? Is it not both our great challenge as well as blessing to learn to adjust our vision to see God just where we may not have thought to look? Let us rise up dear community and join our collective vision to march in solidarity affirming the Truth that will make ‘all’ of us free, that only that which is born of goodness is lasting. I invite us to join in spirit with our Jewish brothers and sisters to light a candle in our hearts everyday in remembrance of this truth for in the great words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Let us not be defeated nor be left disheartened by untruth. As Krishna tells Arjuna on the great battlefield of life when he is wavering in his duty, Stand up scorcher of foes!! Let us do the same – to fight for the victory of compassion and connection among all peoples and against hatred and evil.

Let us pause, adjust our vision, and see. And then, let us light a candle in our hearts so bright that all may see our good works…so, just perhaps, those in great despair may be able to hear the voice of God, ever so softly, whispering through us… Here I am. I am here.