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Beloved One,
Once again, we meet here. In these days of turmoil and intensity the prayer I am sharing, by Pádraig Ó Tuama, eloquently speaks to what’s on my heart. It was offered to me by a dear friend and I am grateful.
“May we—separated peoples, estranged strangers,
unfriended families, divided communities—
turn toward each other,
and turn toward our stories,
with understanding and listening,
with argument and acceptance,
with challenge, change
and consolation.
Because if God is to be found,
God will be found
in the space
between.”
—A Prayer for Reconciliation by Pádraig Ó Tuama
I sit with this prayerfully
and I wonder …
What is the nature of a true turning toward another?
Where is my starting point; that first small step that I’ve resisted taking?
I realize I cannot bring to another what I have not been willing to bring to myself
and I ask myself …
Where am I separated from myself?
How do I hold a conversation that embraces the messiness of confusing paradoxes that live in me?
How do I turn toward the one in me that is exiled, misunderstood and judged? Can I offer her deep listening and understanding?
I’m marinading in these questions; not answering them with mental gymnastics or a figuring out; but breathing and living into them with a quality of curiosity and openness, inviting them to slowly simmer their way into the heart and belly of my being.
May we meet in that holy space of between.
With love,
Sharon
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