Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled.
So wildflowers will come up
where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.
~ Rumi
Mary Mrozowski was a spiritual teacher and mystic, who sought a spirituality that wove instead into everyday life. As one of the founders of Contemplative Outreach and the author of the Welcoming Prayer practice, she believed her gift was in teaching the “how to’s” and knew people needed the practical alongside the spiritual. She couldn’t have been more right.
Over this past month, I have attempted to practice the Welcoming Prayer and it has felt more like wrestling with a greased pig than the quiet, pious activity I thought it would be. Oh, my ego! I’ve discovered, for me at least, that it has been easier to recognize and welcome the emotions (thank you, counseling) but letting them go is an entirely different thing. I mentioned previously, we have a tendency to stew and ruminate. We love to sit in our shit because it ultimately feeds an anxious cycle that convinces us to hang on for our own survival. If I didn’t have this anxiety, frustration, sadness - who would I be? Or what would I do without it? Because our false selves have a feeding pattern that makes us believe we’ll starve if we stop eating from this source. But our anxiety is often our hidden desire for control, even if that control is simply us choosing to hang on.
To welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of each day. It is an open-hearted embrace of all that is in ourselves and in the world.
— Mary Mrozowski
The difficulty of this simple practice is it requires us to not only accept our reality as it is but also to surrender to it. Who just cringed?! I know I did and I wrote it!
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