Ilia Delio
Power to the Matriarchy ❁
May 8, 2022M
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D A Y 2022
Arise, all women who have hearts!
P l o u g h:
“In the United States, the origins of the official holiday go back to 1870, when Julia Ward Howe – an abolitionist best remembered as the poet who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – worked to establish a Mother’s Peace Day. Howe dedicated the celebration to the eradication of war, and organized festivities in Boston for years.
In 1907, Anna Jarvis, of Philadelphia, began the campaign to have Mother’s Day officially recognized, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson did this, proclaiming it a national holiday and a “public expression of our love and reverence for all mothers.”
This the proclamation Ward-Howe wrote in 1870, which explains, in her own impassioned words, the goals of the original holiday.”
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
https://www.plough.com
Chapter 3, let’s go!
“For Mother’s Day, my mom would like the activism of her youth to not be for nothing.”
Wisdom is the mother of all good things.
“In this time of excessive patriarchy, may wisdom prevail over folly, love over fear, compassion over hate, justice over injustice, the mammal brain over the reptilian brains so that future generations may thrive.” -Matthew Fox
Rilke:
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Anne Baring:
“The Latin word for ‘Mother’ comes from ‘mater’ (matter)…Divine Wisdom…Holy Spirit.”
Ilia Delio
“The biggest step in the evolution of human morality was the move from interpersonal relations to a focus on the greater good.”
On Children
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them
But seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday. -Kahlil Gibran
jai
Friday, February 18th, 2022
February 18, 2022
From the Flourish Foundation:
‘With this shift in feeling, we soften the illusory crust of independence and begin to sense a natural belonging with all of life—interdependence. From this place of infinite belonging a deeper sense of care awakens and inspires us to consider our role in the co-creation of reality. More simply, we may choose clothes that support humane working conditions, foods that replenish the planet, a circular economy, and love toward those of a different race, country, or political party.’
“Only the grace of Spirit can enable us to let go of our fears. True prayer (spiritual dialogue) is fundamental for life in Spirit. It is that grace of conversion that opens up our hearts to realize the humble presence in our lives. Prayer of the heart is unceasing prayer, where Spirit breathes in us and our hearts are turned. This deepening of our lives in the divine life is the path to self-discovery. In and through prayer we discover our true selves, the self that Spirit has created each of us to be. . . .
Life in <Divine Presence> should be a daring adventure of love but often we settle for mediocrity. We follow the daily practice of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally…to settle on the plain of mediocrity is to settle for something les…”
-Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio
The right to say it, but…
May 14, 2020
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“In the U.S., the First Amendment certainly protects your right to speak. But there’s no absolute protection from the effects of what you say — particularly when those words may put a specific person in fear of injury or death.” — Gene Policinski, senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute |
“Humankind’s combined achievements are forming a global network of collective mind, a new intersubjectivity.
The noosphere is a new stage for the renewal of life and not a radical break with biological life. If there is no connection between oogenesis and biogenesis, according to Teilhard de Chardin, then the process of evolution has halted and (wo)man is an absurd and ‘erratic object in a disjointed world.’
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Judith Hanson Lasater:
‘When we open to life, we are helping people we will never meet.
We make decisions every day, and they have an effect on the world. When we are present and make choices from this state of mind, the effect of what we choose creates ever-widening ripples that will help beings we may never meet. Be present as we make decisions.’
And the words we speak. The messages we share. Yes, we are given the right of free speech in this country, how are we using it? Ethical, moral speech…to do no harm.
-dayle
Read aloud.
April 17, 2020
Starlight. Ancient, starlight.
Hope is the main impulse of life. —Ilia Delio
Mystical hope. -Cynthia Bourgeault
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The Great Turning
November 4, 2019I have set before you life and death . . . therefore choose life.
—Deuteronomy 30:19
R. Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation:
Eco-philosopher, Earth elder, friend, and spiritual activist Joanna Macy, now ninety years old, has been promoting a global transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society for most of her life. She calls it the Great Turning, a revolution of great urgency: “While the agricultural revolution took centuries, and the industrial revolution took generations, this ecological revolution has to happen within a matter of years.” [1] She is hopeful as she sees individuals and groups participating in “1) Actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings; 2) Analysis and transformation of the foundations of our common life; [and] 3) A fundamental shift in worldview and values.” [2]
Macy understands that the third type of action—essentially, a new way of seeing— “require[s] a shift in our perception of reality—and that shift is happening now, both as cognitive revolution and spiritual awakening.” [3] While the shift may not be obvious in my own generation, we need look no further than the ongoing powerful and prophetic presence of young leaders, like indigenous teenagers Tokata Iron Eyes (a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe who plays a key role in the “Rezpect Our Water” campaign) and Autumn Peltier (also a water protector and a citizen of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation); they have been joined recently by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who spoke at the United Nations Climate Action Summit and helped inspire Climate Strikes around the world. In the face of criticism, Greta calls her Asperger’s syndrome a “superpower” that gives her a clear perspective on the climate crisis. May we be motivated by these committed young advocates and lend our voices and strength to heal our wounded world.
Macy explains:
The insights and experiences that enable us to make this shift may arise from grief for our world that contradicts illusions of the separate and isolated self. Or they may arise from breakthroughs in science, such as quantum physics and systems theory. Or we may find ourselves inspired by the wisdom traditions of native peoples and mystical voices in the major religions; we hearken to their teachings as to some half-forgotten song that our world is a sacred whole in which we have a sacred mission. [4]
St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), a Germanic nun, mystic, and healer, was doing this 800 years ago. In her book Scivias she wrote, “You understand so little of what is around you because you do not use what is within you.” [5] Somehow, she already understood what science is now affirming: “The macrocosm is mirrored in the microcosm.” Science is finding that the world is an integrated whole rather than separated parts. Nothing in the cosmos operates independently. We are all holons, which are simultaneously whole in themselves, and at the same time part of a larger whole. This understanding is moving us from a narrow, mechanistic, Newtonian view of the universe to a holistic/ecological view. [6] Nothing is static, and if you try to construct an unchangeable or independent universe for yourself, you will be moving against the now obvious divine plan and direction.
Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
[1] Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects (New Society Publishers: 2014), 4.
[2] Ibid., 6. Emphasis mine.
[3] Ibid., 14.
[4] Ibid., 14.
[5] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 1.2.29. Translation from Avis Clendenen, “Hildegard: ‘Trumpet of God’ and ‘Living Light’” in Chicago Theological Seminary Register, vol. 89, no. 2 (Spring 1999), 25.
[6] Ilia Delio explores the concepts of holons and moving toward a holistic view in CONSPIRE 2014: A Benevolent Universe (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2014), MP4 video download.
Mark Nepo:
‘…to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. -Rilke
Ilia Delio:
‘Creation is not a demonstration of God’s boundless power but of God’s boundless love, a love so great that creation is drenched in it.’
‘Out of a long history of cosmic cataclysms and mass extinctions, we human emerge. We are born out of stardust, cousins of daffodils and bonobos; we are the conscious voice of a fragile earth.’
