”Goldengrove Unleaving”

Posted on October 10, 2023 by rita kowats

Spring and Fall 
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

This poem has echoed in the recesses of my soul since 1978, so I resurrect it this autumn as I do every year. In October forty-five years ago while on retreat, Hopkins’ masterpiece brought me face to face with the truth that I had rejected the child I had been because I was ashamed of her. That was a valuable intellectual conversion. Three years later a spirit-inspired experience moved it out of my head into my whole being. I was led in meditation to enter my sacred space, lie down on the floor before the altar, and in a fetal position, wrap my arms around my body, gently rocking that little girl. Sobbing with years of pent up shame, I told her I loved her and would never leave her again. No more regret for “goldengrove unleaving.”

I don’t mourn for Margaret. I celebrate her courage and tenacity, she who made it out. And on the days when old age is not daunting, I am glad for the inevitable unleaving, the stripping down day by day that leads to authentic life.

My prayers are with you too in all of the unleaving that comes your way today.

Life In Three Acts

Posted on July 22, 2023 by rita kowats

 I. Light Bearing

Souls are stars conceived by light,
Blazing, bright-shining beacons
Casting assurance on pilgrim paths.

Bear the light- don’t covet it.
Light expansive,
Light exhaustive.

II. Light Lacking

…can become light birthing
When we befriend the dark.
Raise your arms in protest but cradle 
the shadow created by despair.

Call it by name and reignite it
With your love.

III. Light Birthing

Like the phoenix
We rise and rise again 
faithful sentries sensing,waiting
For Time to strike the match.

Don’t miss it.

C. Rita H Kowats 7/22/2023


Photo Credit

SoulCards” by Deborah Koff-Chapin. The technique Deborah has created is called “touch drawing.” The cards come in two decks of 60 images and can be used alone or with others as reflection tools. They have enriched my meditation for years and have helped those I companion with. www.soulcards.com

Used with permission from the artist.

In This Moment

Posted on July 21, 2023 by rita kowats

As so many of you throughout the world endure such disastrous weather conditions, I hold you in presence and send you spiritual energy for coping and surviving. May you experience relief soon.

This morning a brief episode of Krista Tippet’s On Being downloaded and feeling bereft of her once frequent offerings, I jumped on it immediately. This is what she offers us today:

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.

Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.

To withstand your own end is difficult.

The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.

Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.

If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.

What if we convince her to stay?

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.

What if we stun existence one more time?

When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin

with her ruptured belly tags along.

Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins
and the violent shape of their drinking water.

The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we
are nobodies.

Been born from so many apocalypses, what's one more?

Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.

But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over

Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.

I’d follow love into extinction.

by Ayisha Siddiqa

Ayisha Siddiqa is a 24-year-old Pakistani-American climate justice and human rights advocate from Coney Island, New York City. She is the co-founder of Fossil Free University and PollutersOut! She calls herself a storyteller and uses poetry as a form of protest. She read one of her poems about climate justice at COP27 and she was one of TIME’s Women of the Year in 2023. Find her on Instagram. (https://www.theecojusticeproject.com/submissions/all-ive-got-is-another-love-poem)

photo credits: pexels.com

“Be Still and Know That I Am God”Ps. 46:10

Posted on June 18, 2023 by rita kowats

The Messenger hovers before a vivid red bulb
On the outdoor Christmas tree,
Then rests for a nano second
On the evergreen branch,
Tiny heart rat-a-tat-tatting 
An innate soul-tune.
Recharged and ready 
She flies 
And hovers 
And rests.

fly  
hover 
rest

Are you listening, Sister Soul?



Rita Hemmer Kowats
June 18, 2023

Stay With Me, Remain With Me Here

Posted on April 13, 2023 by rita kowats

The chant, “Bleibet hier, Stay With Me,” has been a haunting backdrop for me this week. Serious illness and painful life transitions in my faith community and family have called me to hold vigil with those whom I love. With Marge Piercy in her poem, “Gracious Goodness” I ask, “Why is there nothing/I have ever done with anybody/that seems to me so obviously right” than to hold vigil with others? Stay with me. Remain here with me. Watch and pray. Watch and pray.

And now my sister-in-law is finally at the end of her agonizing journey through Alzheimer’s. She is in hospice at a memory care facility three short miles from me. Stay with me, remain here with me. My vigil candle ablaze, I look toward her care unit and send light. An adaptation of the Loving Kindness prayer finds its way to Phyllis on each breath I send:

May you be safe from harm.
May you be free from fear.
May you be released from pain.
May you pass into light in peace.
I love you, Phyllis.
May I let you go with joy.

There is solace for me in this commingling of spirits.

Long Time No See

Posted on April 2, 2023 by rita kowats

Dear Faithful Readers,

…and a heartfelt welcome to newcomers. It’s been a long while since we’ve mused together. COVID and it’s fallout have taken a great deal of energy, hasn’t it? It’s good to come home.

Things I have been learning:

I’d rather get through old age with a cat companion than without. She reminds me that life is more than about me.
How to let go of friends and their dear ones as they transition to another life.
I have clay feet.
There is hope in a new generation of spiritual companions.

Things I look forward to learning: Stay Tuned

“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” ~ Meister Eckhart

Caring And Letting Go

Posted on November 12, 2022 by rita kowats

“I want to be disturbed. When I read about or see dismaying things, I want to be dismayed. To be cooled out and indifferent to what is going on around me seems like a bad idea. If I am burying my emotions, it is probably unhealthy, and even if not, disengagement is inhumane. I want to be a human being like other human beings, who feel bad when conditions are bad, cry when there is something to cry about, and whose compassionate emotions spur them to act to make things better. In the Buddhist analysis of the kleshas, the key element is clinging, holding on. What makes a klesha a klesha is that it compels you—it contains an element of clinging that produces even more disturbing emotion, and it takes you over. So my anxiety, or anger, or attachment, isn’t necessarily a klesha if I am not compelled or controlled by it—if I can experience it fully and let go of it.”

“Disturbed But Not Disturbed”By Norman Fischer
Lion’s Roar November 2022

And so goes my struggle to deal spiritually with the horror of war; the shame and fear of violent rhetoric and action in my home country. The ebb and flow of ocean waves has become my spiritual touchstone lately. I breathe grace on an in-breath and send it out where it needs to go on an out-breath. Breathing in divine movement and sending it out to my companion humans. Grace in, Grace out. Grace. Grace. In. Out.

If I am faithful to the breath, I live into hope. May it be so.

Spiritual Practice For A Frantic World

Posted on August 13, 2022August 22, 2022 by rita kowats

Yesterday I had a very painful procedure done by a nurse in my oral surgeon’s office. Her competency evoked trust but her communication style frustrated me. Immediately upon completing the procedure she started shooting rapid-fire instructions at me. I was still coming down from the pain and somewhat shocked by it. I retained none of her instructions. “Wait, please,” I said. “I need a few minutes to come back from this.” I did breath work until the pain subsided and I could concentrate. Then I said, “Ok, give it to me again slowly.” She was great.

Can you just give us a few minutes, World? I am struggling with the reality that I no longer fit out there and I want to stay in here. So, I’m creating a spiritual coping process that some of you may also find helpful:

Before leaving the house I will cleanse myself of negative energy I might impose on others, and I protect myself from possible frenetic or negative energy I may encounter.
Because I tend to lash out when encountering these situations, I will develop a habit of intentionally taking a breath before I respond.
As I did with the nurse (Ahh. I’ve done one right thing lately!) I will try not to support frenetic behavior by actively stating my need. Done with compassion, this could create a little awareness and compassion in a segment of my community.
Returning to my little anchorage-home I will cleanse myself of any frenetic or negative energy I picked up. I will send light to those persons whom I encountered.
Difficult experiences “out in the world” lately have evoked tears of utter frustration. Not wanting to heap rant after rant on those close to me, I’ve held it in. Creating this process just now has been so helpful. Now I need to get a hold of that one person who can receive my rant, and get it out of my system. Thanks to you too, for your witness to this process. I imagine you’re relieved I didn’t get started on the quality of some Uber driving.

You are all persons who take your spiritual lives seriously, or you wouldn’t be dropping by. If you have helpful thoughts on this topic, please, share them below. We’re in this together. Peace be with you.

One Heart, One Mind

Posted on July 1, 2022 by rita kowats

“The eye with which God sees me 
is the same eye with which I see God.
God’s eye and my eye are one eye.
one seeing, one knowing, one loving.”

Meister Eckhart

This morning I picked up Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Energy of Prayer: How to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice. The essay that caught me up is from Chapter 2, “Collective Consciousness.”

In this moment I miss our holy teacher profoundly. It occurs to me that by reading his words again, I have come into his presence. His consciousness lives on in his words. I think he would say that this is essentially what happens in prayer when we become present to one another in the collective consciousness, or in Buddhism, the “one mind.”

Thich Nhat Hanh says, “…with a Sangha [community], whether of two or five or one hundred people like us, when we simultaneously practice sending spiritual energy, then that energy is magnified and much more effective….if we have a Sangha that is free and solid then the energy we can send together will certainly be greater.”

In another life I was a Catholic sister. In the days before the Vatican II reforms I knew this experience of the “one mind” to be true, and I relished common meditation, even at 5 a.m. Years after the younger members had abandoned the practice, I visited a convent of traditional, older members with whom I was expected to meditate- at 5 a.m. I entered the chapel with a good book to read, unconvinced of the efficacy of this archaic practice. “I might as well read the scripture text for the day,” I thought. I read, and immediately was lost in meditation on the passage; indeed, soon lost in contemplation. My silent connection with the meditators beside me was palpable. In our everyday lives we had little in common, but in this sacred space we were one.

Cyber Community, shall we meditate together with the intention of sending the power of peace where it is needed?

Breathing in peace
Releasing violence.
May it be so.

A Plea

Posted on June 26, 2022 by rita kowats

A Plea 

Some struggle to restrain the storm 
that broods in every soul-cell.
They struggle to quell the looming eruption
Or the gut-wrenching whimper that rumbles 
and hiccups on the crest of unstoppable sobs.
Their fear demands, “Just how supreme will this court get?”
Others teem with pent up joy released and celebrated.

I hear the preacher pray:

May  we respect one another.
May  we listen deeply.
May  we refuse violence of word and body.

Respect
Listen 
Refuse.

c. Rita H Kowats
June 26, 2022