As a member of the Live Oak Friends Meeting in Houston, TX I was reminded a few Sunday’s ago during Meeting for Worship just how much I missed the James Turrell Skyspace. Walking into the Meeting House I could see the sun glowing inside – illuminating the room and the people. Feeling The Light Within was not hard to do that morning.

For more on the re-opening Douglas Britt has a great article over at the Houston Chronicle…

Illuminating the spirit in Quaker meeting space

By DOUGLAS BRITT Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

July 29, 2010, 5:50PM

On a recent Sunday morning, members of the Live Oak Friends Meeting, a community of Quakers based in the Heights, saw something they hadn’t seen in more than two years: the sky as viewed through a 12-foot square window in the roof of their unassuming meeting house on West 26th…

Visiting the Skyspace shortly after it opened in 2001, former Houston Chronicle art critic Patricia C. Johnson described “a glorious interior space that makes manifest the Quaker principles of simplicity, silence and the ‘light within.’ ”

“The eyes cling to this skyward window, to the clouds and occasional bird in flight that pass across it, but especially to the light,” she wrote. “At sundown, light shifts softly from porcelain transparency to silken cobalt blue and velvet black. Eyes turn inward, and a hush descends. The Skyspace transforms the spare, white meeting room into a luminous chamber, a metaphor for the body and soul.”

Read The Full Article on the Live Oak Friends Meeting House, James Turrell Skyspace Re-Opening in Houston, TX >>

• Buddhist Women Who Blog — Luminous Heart

  the promised list of 15 Great Women Buddhist Blogs – in no particular order…

  tags: women, buddhist, blog, luminous heart

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

There was a lot of ministry in Quaker meeting this Sunday about areas of massive disaster… areas of war… areas in deep suffering.

When I hear of the suffering in Haiti, in Iraq, in Chile, in Poland… I feel a desperate desire, I mother’s desire to make it all well, to make it better. I physically crave to touch those in pain, to sooth the soul, to hold and hum away the hurt. I think I could leave… I could just get on a plane and go there… I could serve those in such great need, recovering from such destruction, devastation, loss… I think of the connections and commitments I have here. What trail of destruction would I leave behind by walking out the door, going to the airport, getting on a plane and being gone for months, years… I can go and sooth the child who has lost a mom by orphaning my own children, support a parent who has lost a spouse by denying my husband his own partner, I could work to rebuild by leaving a hole in my own company. Yes, there are ways and those who co go, who do balance, who do give so much to put the world back in the place for those who have been rocked to their very core. And it is a choice… I could go. I choose today to stay… and still I am left with the physical longing to do… something.

I sit in the silence of Quaker meeting and wander through my choices. I could and do send money… the great American way of doing… feels like handing a Scooby-Doo band-aid to a Haitian who has just lost everything… everything, every person, every item, everything.

I could simply pray.

The simplicity of it at first makes my scoff. Prayer… I could just sit here on this bench, not move, not give, not anything… and pray. That’s not doing anything my mind battles with itself.

Love. Send love. Love is always the answer, not matter the question. Find it inside, connect to it and send it out on a prayer.

I connect to the Great Connection. The force of Love that connects us all and I know, know in every cell of my being that a prayer is the most powerful thing I could do. I pray for those in suffering and in sorrow. I pray for those who are leaving home and country and loved ones to go and render aid. I pray that they will all find the strength they need to keep moving forward. I pray that they will all feel some sense of peace, if only for a moment. I pray they will feel a mother’s love, the touch of the Great Mother Spirit, watching over them. I send love out on the wire… and I know it will make a difference. It will help to make it all better.

(Thanx! for the pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/revdave/459210631/)

I love this pic… Love it.
So I wanted to say Thanx a million to http://www.flickr.com/photos/raggle/3870506267/
for the Creative Commons use of it on my blog.

We attended Quaker meeting this Easter morning and surrounded by the silence, the breeze through the open window, and the sound of the birds outside… I was moved by the Spirit to share the following Ministry…

I have a degree in Chemistry, very close to a minor in Physics, and in those heady days of studying the infinitely small ways the world works it would have been easy with all the formulas, rules, and equations to write God out of existence.

I did have a friend ask me well then, why did I still believe in God?

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life better.

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life sweeter.

I choose to believe in God because it make my life richer, deeper, fuller…

At the end of the day believing in God brings me peace.

There are pieces of the bible I hold very dear. Scriptures that support me, guide me, comfort me.

There are hymns from my childhood I still hum when I clean or cook, sing to my children when they are sick.

And there are pieces of the bible that don’t really resonate with me… pieces I hold a little looser.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to look within and find what Light have I stuffed away in a dark place. What gift have I covered up.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to resurrect that gift that God would ask me to bring forth into the world.

What gift have you hidden away? What gift is hidden in the dark? What gift have you been called to resurrect?

(Thanx for the pic! http://www.flickr.com/photos/fmc550uz/3056713650/sizes/m/)