14. Awareness

Today, we consider the simple practice of awareness, which has the power to initiate transformation. We cannot shift how we live if we are not aware of how we live. We are living through a time that is demanding that we shift and change our worldview - how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive others, what the very nature of being human is all about. 

In our Christian tradition, this is part of our sacrament of communion: awareness. When Jesus gathered his disciples for dinner before his trial and arrest, he asked them to remember him in their daily lives. He was asking them to stay awake, to be aware, to look around and see if things could be done differently. He was asking them to work towards the arrival of the kingdom of God, not in some far away place, but in the here and now.  So, gather up a drink and something to eat as your own elements of communion and if you wish you can follow along in the order of service provided below.

Our podcast today covers Jeff Gibb's controversial film Planet of the Humans, the new normal — as proposed by the Latin American Council for Peace and Research, The Examin — the prayer of awareness, and the work and thought of Gregory Baum, the Canadian theologian and author of the Massey Lectures, Compassion and Solidarity, the Church for Others.

“What lifts the heron learning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare, 
A long stroke through the cumulus of trees, 
A shaped thought at the sky – then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees, 
Would have cried Father! Cry anything you please, 
But praise. By any name or none. Bur praise
The white original burst that lights 
The heron on his two soft kissing kites. 
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays, 
I sit by pond scums till the air recites 
It’s heron back. And doubt all else. But praise”

— John Ciardi, as quoted in Seven Sacred Pauses, by Macrina Wiederkehr