Christ Plays & Sings – In the Joy of the Earth Divine
Each week of Advent and into Epiphany, we’re offering practices and invitations of becoming, as we have this year following each of our articles.
The last two years, we’ve had written reflections throughout advent with the themes of Adventing Christ Consciousness and the Divine Feminine. We’ll be drawing upon those writings (and sharing the links) to be the source material for our Becoming invitations.
you are invited, if you like, to read the articles informing these practices for the Third week of Advent:
We invite you to consciously and intentionally engage in the following processes for your personal lives, WeSpace groups or other spiritual communities, and global participation.
“Grounded, At Last” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
How Do We Find Joy in These Times?
This advent season, we are receiving the invitation into the womb of the Divine Mother. We are welcoming our place as the Christ child to come into this world anew, nurturing and gestating our divine becoming.
From the deep hope of new life being born of the womb of God, and from the peace that passes all understanding, we are invited this week into the fullness of joy.
Joy can sometimes be a tricky and elusive thing.
It is not the same as temporal happiness that is found in pleasing circumstances. Nor is it even the delight that we may experience in spiritual moments of rapture, bliss, or ecstasy.
The joy we are being invited into from within the womb of the Divine Mother is rooted in Mother Earth. It is seen expressed in the play of creation and the overflowing abundance of nature. It is sourced from deep time and woven throughout the cosmic cycles of life: birth and death, fading and blooming, joining and separating, grief and glory.
How do we tap into this joy? Especially when our emotions or life circumstances aren’t in harmony with any feeling or expression of joy?
I can’t say that I have the ultimate and complete answer to that question. I’m not sure it’s even the type of question with a singular answer we can define.
Rather, we may meet this type of fundamental question with much more than our mind.
Receiving again our invitation into deeper space of being and ways of knowing.
In the world womb, and in the womb of the Divine Mother, in the deepest substance of matter and the cosmos, we abide. We remain Christ. We remain in love. That my joy may be made complete, full and overflowing.
The fullness of joy flowing from the depths of our divine fullness. From the innate power and cosmic force of divine life arising into being in us; God-Being-Us birthed in unending and unyielding ways. In the form of you and me—and many others. In the new life of the earth.
For such a time as this.
We are being made for these times.
Let heaven and nature sing, repeating the sounding joy of wonderous love imbued and arising in the whole of creation.
An Earth-Engaging Practice with the Divine Mother
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Touching into Nature through Tactio Divina
We are each wired in different ways. Some of us respond best to the written word, some to the spoken word, some to music, some to art, some to dance. We can connect to God through each of these ways. Though we may have a preferred sense through which to pray, the richest prayer life will come through experiencing God through all our senses.
Tactio divina is translated as “divine touching.” It’s a practice of praying with the sacredness of a physical object or the sacred earth. By incorporating nature and the physical world into prayer, tactio divina invites us to bring our sense of touch and embodiment into relationship with earth as incarnate divinity.
The earth and the physical objects in our lives are not just dead matter, separated from spirit. But rather, they are alive both with the energy of spirit and in our engagement with them. It is a living relational dynamic we can enter more fully and consciously into—especially with nature, of which we are a part. Our sense of touch brings us into physical contact and can be a circuit of deep connection and spiritual knowing.
We are letting the richness of the textures, smells, plant medicines, clean air, soil, and flesh become layer upon layer of the richness of God…surrounding us, birthing us, nurturing us. Tactio divina embraces our incarnational nature, affirming the goodness of how we encounter the world differently when we touch into the flow of our divine participation in and as nature.
“The Divine Mother” – Artist unknown
Here are steps you can take to enter into a practice of Tactio divina:
1. Find a time when you can go outdoors. If you’re able, choose a place of nature you feel particularly drawn to for this practice. This might be your yard, a nearby park, a body of water, a grove of trees, or any place accessible and resonant with you. As you go, ask God/the Divine to enter into this time of contemplation with you and to speak to you through this time.
2. Begin by grounding yourself to the Earth of this place through your feet center. Open your heart and mind to receive. And welcome the embrace within the womb of Mother Earth, the Divine Mother holding you in this practice.
3. Walk or move through the space with a posture of deep receptivity. You may even feel an inner guidance to go in a certain direction. As you traverse, be open to the draw of Christ energy through nature toward something calling for your touch. It may be a tree, a patch of soil, a flower, a flowing stream, a bed of pine needles, a holly bush. Whatever it is, go toward it and touch it with your hand (if you’re wearing gloves, remove them to have your skin in direct contact).
As you touch, receive the energy and spirit connecting in your body. You may feel an arising of spiritual knowing coming to your mind or heart. Or it may take the form of deeper felt intuitions that reside underneath our conscious thoughts. Or simply your body knowing in the immediacy of direct contact. We can welcome any way of spiritual knowing, which may or may not include mental recognition, description, or emotion.
Give yourself as much time with the touch as you like. Let yourself embrace the connection, savoring it, treasuring up and pondering in your depths.
4. When you feel ready, release the touch. As you make your way back to where you came from, open to any inner response in prayer as you savor the physical sensations, thoughts, and/or emotions that have surfaced.
If you’re alone, remain in silent contemplation afterward for as long as you like. Or if you are sharing this practice with a group, come back together to offer what has come forth from your experience.
If you like, you can also end the practice by opening to any action or intention arising in you from this practice.
An Advent Blessing of Joy in Grief & Glory
The following blessing is shared as an invitation and an offering. As an invitation, for us to receive and to be blessed—and, as an offering, for us to become this blessing ourselves. Welcome it first for yourself, today. Then, throughout the week, look for ways you might inhabit this blessing and offer it to others through your actions, words, and presence.
Beannacht/Blessing
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
by John O’Donohue
Walking in Joy from our Enlivened Feet
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An Invitation to Being Present in our Spheres of Influence
So then how do we live?
The phrase “Spheres of Influence” refers to the areas of our life we may not have control over but nonetheless are able to make a difference and impact through our presence and actions.
As we seek for our spiritual practices and learnings to impact our lives and make a difference in the world, we can intentionally and consciously consider how we might integrate these lessons, practices, and ways of being in our everyday lives.
In this season of Advent, we’ll invite you to consider how you want to live out these practices of becoming in your daily lives, impacting others in your spheres of influence, whether they be in person locally, unbound by geographical space online, or throughout the mystical cosmos!
As we consider and welcome the advent of the fullness of joy this week, we also seek to walk in the world as people of joy—to be wombful bearers of this joy in the world.
What will this look like in our lives? In our day-to-day actions?
This week, with special attention on cultivating a rooted and earthy joy sourced from deep within, you are invited to consider the following reflection questions:
1. What does it mean to you to be “a wombful bearer of joy”? How might you carry joy deep within in a way that influences your daily interactions? Perhaps choose one specific upcoming encounter this week to intentionally bring deep joy in through your presence, however that might look.
2. One of our primary spheres of influence is in our own lives. What would it look like in your life if you decided to make joy a priority? What changes might you make in the coming year? How might you receive more joy from the earth, from your guides, and from your life?
3. As we welcome both the waiting and the arrival of Christ in this season, in many forms, in what ways do you feel inspired to co-arrive in the joy of Christ? Is there someone or some situation in your life that is waiting for the arrival of joy, the arrival of Christ? How might you be a WeCreator of that arrival?
Join Us in Practice and Commuion During Advent!
This Sunday at 11am Eastern, come partake in a time of shared engagement with these themes and practices:
Join on Fridays at 11:45am Eastern for a weekly advent meditation with the theme of the week:
(if you’re not already a member of our online community page, the Mystical Garden, click here to join)
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN