Hey,
Take a moment to land in your body,
To settle in your breath.
Inhale,
Let it go with an exhale.
Inhale,
Using the breath to let go of the thoughts and arriving here in this quiet space.
And exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
Where I live,
You can often find the Virgin Mary in a half-buried bathtub.
People will put one end of a bathtub in the ground to create a sort of makeshift grotto.
Inside her porcelain altar,
The Virgin stands serenely and stares benevolently at the earth in front of her.
Another piece of statuary that you often find around here is St.
Francis of Assisi,
Who considered all nature as the mirror of God.
Statues of him dot yards and gardens,
And often he holds seeds to feed the birds of the air.
It's easy to sing the praises of birds.
Harder to sing the praises of a pig,
And yet that's exactly what the poet Galway Connell does in his poem,
St.
Francis and the Sow.
In it,
Connell says that everything flowers from within of self-blessing.
The problem is that sometimes we forget that we flower from within.
In a culture that is quick to remind us of all our shortcomings,
We feel less like a bird and,
Well,
To put a fine point on it,
More like a sow.
We forget how to do self-blessing.
When that happened,
Connell says that we have to re-teach a thing,
Its loveliness.
The rest of the poem is re-teaching a sow with thick length and earthen snout,
Its loveliness.
Connell has the saint putting his hands on the sow's forehead and in words and touch,
Bestowing the blessings of the earth on the sow,
All the way from the spiritual curl of the tail through the great broken heart.
Metta and meditation have a way of self-blessing and it is called meta.
Metta is a practice of repeating phrases of goodwill or loving kindness and sending those thoughts first to the self,
Then outward from there.
Metta is a way of re-teaching a thing,
Its loveliness.
One of the most common ways to work with this practice is to say things like,
May I be safe?
May I be happy?
May I be free from fear?
You could expand these things to something like,
May I live with a warm heart and a kind spirit?
May I remember the sacredness in myself and others?
May I flow easily around life's obstacles?
Or you might prefer something simpler and more direct.
I am enough.
I am worthy.
I deserve love.
Basically with meta,
The idea is that you want to be like the Virgin Mary,
Standing serenely and gazing benevolently at your own self.
You also want to be Galway Canals,
St.
Francis of Assisi.
Can you prime your eyes to magnify the good?
Can you be your own cheerleader?
Can you lift up and celebrate the best parts of you?
Can you self-bless and re-teach yourself your own loveliness?
Because how can you love and bless others if you can't love and bless yourself?
You are enough.
You are worthy.
You deserve love.
Once you believe that,
And that might take days,
Weeks,
Years,
Hence why it is called a practice,
But once you believe that,
You can turn your attention outward and bless those you love.
Then maybe bless those you feel neutral about.
Then maybe bless those who trouble you.
Until finally you bless all beings everywhere,
Bestowing the blessings of the earth upon them so that they can move past their great,
Broken hearts into love and joy and peace.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Namaste.
