Again and again, it comes:

The time of Recollection,

The Season of Remembrance.

Empty vessels of hope fill up again;

Forgotten treasures of dreams reclaim

their place;

Long-lost memories come trooping back to me.

This is my season of remembrance,

My time of recollection.

Into the challenge of my anguish

I throw the strength of all my hope:

I match the darts of my despair

with the treasure of my dreams;

Upon the current of my heart

I float the burdens of the years;

I challenge the mind of death

with my love of life.

Such to me is the Time of Recollection,

The Season of Remembrance.

Genuine faith is born of the ability to trust in what is most fundamentally true within ourselves. Circumstances will change, and all manner of things pleasant and unpleasant will arise and fall away: sometimes our lives will be touched with joy, and at other times we will be given tremendous pain and sorrow. Many times we will be afraid. But the object of faith is not to eliminate difficult circumstances, nor is faith about trusting in a God who will rescue us from hurt, or who - if we only believe strongly enough - will make everything better. The real question of faith is when pain and loss inevitably come our way, do we withdraw in fear that we will be destroyed, or do we deepen our trust in our innate capacity to endure them? Can we find a strong and courageous heart, a place of clarity and wholeness within ourselves in which we can place our ultimate trust, gently allowing both the fear and the pain to simply move through us?

. . . . The search for faith is a search for our true nature, for the spirit within, the divine strength that lives in our deepest heart. . . . We begin to see that true safety is not the absence of danger but rather the presence of something else - the presence of a sense of faith, born in the heart and sustained by a spirit of serenity, trust and courage. If we seek our safety within ourselves and not in the manipulation of environment and circumstance, then our practice becomes a pilgrimage to uncover a deep and abiding faith in our own gifts, our own strengths, and our own spirit.

God's presence is there in front of me, a fire on the left,

a lovely stream on the right.

One group walks toward the fire, into the fire, another

toward the sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.

A head goes under on the water surface, that head

pokes out of the fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire,

and so end up in it.

Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion

are cheated with this reversal.

He suggests from the very heart of a life turned toward the spirit that moving toward the fire we enter the pain that ends pain, cultivating the profound joy of an unobstructed awareness. But, that in what appears ot be the waters of pleasure, we enter the pain that perpetuates pain and cultivates the thirst of our ordinary grief, protecting old mind's denial and grasping, leaving us waterlogged, wrinkled, and swollen, unloved and unlovely, bereft of life and living.

He affirms that the truth is always available but seldom regarded.

The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth saying, I am not fire.

He urges us to explore the painful hindrances to the heart which arise in the mind. He reminds us to open to the discomfort that may be experienced when approaching that which has always discomfited us. Peeling back finger by finger the lon-cramped fist of our holding to reveal the open palm, the very spaciousness of our true nature.

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of moth wings,

so you could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire

and go toward light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming.

Water, world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other. To these eyes

you have now, what looks like water

burns. What looks like fire

is a great relief to be inside.

. . . .

We have always been led to believe that healing, like grace, will make us feel better, but first entering the fires of our healing may not always be pleasant. One may experience a profound desire to pull away from the fire and try to force the pain out off the mind/body, trying to discover some oasis of pleasure in which to submerge oneself. This struggling away from the fires of the moment, driven by an urgency not to see, leaves us not with a sense of floating but of one which resembles drowning.

It takes a slow approach to the fire to recognize that the tow-haired boy going by on the bicycle is not your son killed three months before by a hit-and-run driver. That the woman with the gray hair and the flowered shawl in the checkout line just ahead is not your mother who died a year ago. The mind sees itself everywhere. The mind looks everywhere for water and is burned. The heart enters the fire and is cooled. The denial of our pain, our unwillingness to enter wholly into the moment, leaves us like someone trying to pick fruit in the midst of a burning orchard.

Although all this looks good on paper - entering into the pain, letting the mind sink into the heart, taking healing in the midst of suffering - it is not always easy.

Recognizing that only we can sense the timing appropriate to our own process, not dashing into the fire, we take one mindful step at a time closer. To take a step, sit a moment, then take another step. To gradually accustom oneself to the heat, to enter gently through the molten armoring of the heart. Unburned by grief or separateness, meeting the pains of the world in the absolute love of universal healing.

May you listen to the beat within the beat even when you are tired.

When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead.

May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom.

If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose.

If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor.

If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear.

If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship.

If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat.

May you follow the voice, for This is the way - the hero's journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.