February 1, 2016
Interfaith Harmony Week
Interfaith Journeys

ALWAYS RIGHT HERE

After more than sixty years in this body, I watch yellow-breasted wrens dip their beaks into my patio’s water fountain, then flit away only to return moments, maybe hours later. I watch, returning to a home of stillness first revealed by my Tibetan Buddhist teachers over twenty years ago. I return to the bible stories from my childhood in Oklahoma’s First Baptist Church with a burgeoning understanding how they were an initiation into this silent world of paradox.

In my thirties, after six years living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in New York, receiving the core teachings of Mahamudra, becoming a nun, I left – still seeking. The Buddhists teach we overlook truth because it’s too simple, too close, too profound. It took another fourteen years immersed in the non-dual teachings of Hinduism’s Advaita for me to begin to recognize what had never been lost – a fundamental essence that cannot be spoken – a truth pointed to, at the core of every religion. Truth, God, that is always right here.

Paldron Collins

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To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.
Steven Levine
(Jewish) 

True love is both loving and letting oneself be loved.
It is harder to let ourselves be loved than it is to love.
Pope Francis
(Catholic)

God is love
and the one that has learnt to live in the Spirit of love
has learnt to live and dwell in God.
William Law
(Episcopalian)

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HESED SHALOM

Mercy’s Wisdom, Way of Peace
Opening hearts, and hands unfold
Immersing stream, returning flow
Revealing Love and Light behold

Creative image bearing likeness
Through each other’s words and ways
Yearning wholeness, Communion sharing
Common ground, conspiring days

Reconciling Love and Freedom
Creative Source of soul and Earth
Healing wounds of separation
Embodying and embracing birth

Mercy’s Climate, Culture’s Care Acts of
Justice, making Peace Joining hearts and
hands together New Creation, form, release

Prodigals and pilgrims journey
Mystery guiding, All in all
Divine and human, home abiding
Dwelling place, envisioning call.

                                                                        Randy Thomas