A Bath in the Mystery for the Holidays

A reminder from a beautiful teacher Stephen Schwartz for this holiday:

The prayer of the breath, the prayer of the heart, is the prayer of the gracious yes. The body in gratitude accepts a deep and enduring nourishment.

If we hurt, then we allow the hurt to be there. We give it rhythm, space, and conscious care. This is how we bless that which blesses us.

It is not wrong to hurt. The hurt is an opening, a door. It is not a cause for shame or a reminder of our ugliness. It is simply a wounded passageway in a radiant space. It requires only that we attend to it with care.

We return our attention to the breath to find the space at the source of all things. Into this space we go, and from this space we return.

That is what it means to be born again. It’s the washing we receive as we stay in the body and breathe, and move for a while in the mystery. Then we return again, cleansed.

All of us are confronted with a stark choice: whether to bless this life or attempt to break it; whether to trust the mystery of it all or to call it names and hate it; whether to be with our experience or to be against it.

–STEPHEN SCHWARTZ