Letter from Ilia
Dear Friends of the Omega Center,
Thank you for reading the New Creation posts on our website and to those who have responded—a big thank you. Some of the responses are extremely insightful and I encourage you to respond to one another. I am not able to respond to your comments because I am teaching my courses online and must respond to my students who are grappling with many things right now. It is especially difficult for the Seniors, who spent four years waiting to cross the threshold at graduation. It will be a very different year than the one they had planned.
These are the times that mark our lives—where plans can change at the blink of an eye and life as we know it has come to an abrupt halt—as if stepping out to cross the street and seeing a car speeding up the road.
You have heard me say many times that we need a new paradigm—now more than ever—there is no other way forward than a radical change in our structures. A friend of mine said to me last week, “it is as if the whole earth is the cell and we humans are the virus.” “Wow,” I said, “that is disturbing!” Yet, the COVID-19 virus is impelling us to look in the mirror to see what we have become.
I will speak to this new paradigm at our ZOOM conversation next Friday, April 3rd at 4:00 p.m. There will be time for Q&A’s. I hope you will join us.
Until then stay inside, find God in the midst of everything, reflect on your own desires, never fail to dream and live in hope. Life always seeks more life. After 13.8 billions years of life in the Big Bang cosmos and 4.2 billion years of earth life, do we really think God will wipe this slate clean? Absolutely not; God is doing new things and it is time to rediscover this God who is in the pandemic crisis with us and who will not fail us; for God is beyond us. God is the power of the future.
Blessings and peace,
Sr. Ilia
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Blessings and Peace to you Ilia. It is really sad for those graduating to not be able to celebrate together and with family and friends. Thank goodness at least with all of the means of communication they have a simile, but it won’t be the same.
All of this sheltering in place made me reflect on when I started using my down and away time to begin a Centering practice. I was also working on the Shadow 3-2-1 practice designed by the Integral Community, specifically Diane Hamilton. I was at times overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that began to surface outside of actual practice time. I followed the guidance to just let it come and feel it and also did some journalling. I think Fr. Keating reffered to it as an excavation process. It was some of the most productive time of my adult life and continues to this day as it’s true that if you are true to your practice, your practice will be true to you.
Hopefully this time of remaining home will be an opportunity for people to turn off the news, get off all their media and seriously begin a discipline of Centering, or any practice of kenosis allowing our thoughts to drift by without attending to them. Lent is always a reflective time, but this year perhaps we can truly hone in on one of its greatest calling.