Lisa Banning Ender Healing Touch

11/04/2024

Always a good message from the Center for Action and Cont!emplation

Episcopal priest and educator Alice Updike Scannell (1938–2019) considered spirituality to be an essential element of radical resilience.  

28/03/2024

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Richard Rohr names how fear diminishes our ability to love and forgive:
Jesus came to resolve the central and essential problem of hate. We’ve produced so much utopian talk about Jesus and love, we’ve forgotten Jesus had a very hard time getting to the issue of love. First, he had to expose and destroy the phenomenon of hatred. Once he exposed the lie and illusion of hate, love could show itself clearly—and it did.
The pattern, unfortunately, remains the same. Hate, it seems, is the ordinary, daily agenda. Love is the way out of this ordinary programming. The Gospels present the dilemma in a personal narrative that grounds the whole issue in history and in one man’s enlightened response to the human situation. Jesus accepts the religious and social judgment of hate and publicly bears the consequences, but in an utterly new and transforming way that reveals new patterns and possibilities. For two thousand years, he has remained the most striking icon of a possible new agenda. His death exposed the lie and the problem. His risen life tells people their lives could have a different story line. He didn’t just give us textbook answers from a distance; he personally walked through the process and said, “Follow me.”
I believe fear is almost always behind hate. Sometimes it looks like control, but even then, people are usually just afraid of losing something they think they have. It is almost always unrecognized or unaddressed fear that justifies hatred. The best and most convincing disguise for fear is seeming virtue, or godliness. Then it never looks like fear. It looks like reason, prudence, common sense, intelligence, the need for social order, morality, religion, obedience, justice, or even spirituality. It always works. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14, NRSV). What better way to veil vengeance than to call it justice?

Only people who have moved beyond their wounded ego and the need to control all outcomes, only those practiced at letting go, can see fear for the impostor that it is. To be trapped inside of our small ego is always to be afraid. Great religion tries its best to free individuals from the tyranny of their small and fragile selves. It always points toward a larger identity that we call the Godself, the True Self, the self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), the trustworthy Lover. Healthy and true religion, like Jesus himself modeled, tells us there is Someone we can trust. [1]

Jesus came to reveal and resolve the central and essential problem—humanity’s tendency toward fear and hate. Love is the totally enlightened, entirely nonsensical way out of this pattern. Love has to be worked toward, received, and enjoyed; the first move is to recognize our deep capacity for fear and hate. But remember, we gather around the negative space quickly, while we “fall into” love rather slowly, and only with lots of practice at falling. [2]


Read this meditation on cac.org.

21/03/2024

I will be attending the North Central Healing Touch Conference on Saturday. So excited to see these peeps!

  Annual North Central Healing Touch Gathering “The Strength of our Organization is the Collective” — Janet Mentgen This annual Community Gathering is an opportunity to share our common passion with the regional Healing Touch Community. Join us to meet new friends, purchase products from vend...

21/03/2024

21/03/2024

Today I see the miracle in all things

How often I do not notice the miracles all around me, or honor all the kindnesses shown me, or allow myself to fully embrace the good that’s already in my life. Today I remember that every day is precious, every heart carries within it the Spirit of God, and every event contains the platform for a miracle. May I not be blind today to the awesomeness of life.

May the days be gone when I took for granted all the blessings in my life. May my eyes be open, that I might see more beauty; may my ears be open, that I might hear more truth; may my spirit be open, that I might feel the tender touch of God.

Today I see through a different set of eyes, that I might recognize the miracles all around me. I see the sparkle of light that surrounds all things and the yearning for love that exists in everyone. I see the innocence beyond guilt and the love beyond all fear. Thus I am reborn into the truth of who I am.

Today I see the miracle in all things

~ Marianne Williamson

18/03/2024

Just what I needed today!

Negativity poisons my mind and positivity restores it

05/01/2024

Yin Yogadevotion and Healing Touch with Lisa
Weds at 7:00 pm Jan 10 -31

Gentle and Yin Yogadevotion allow time and space to experience Presence. Our body's tissues can be revived by a good long soak the same way that an old, stiff sponge can. As you hold a yin pose, the subtle release that takes you deeper, surrendering into each pose enabling tissues to lengthen, hydrate, and becoming more pliable. Healing Touch is a nurturing energy therapy that promotes healing and reduces stress and anxiety. Gentle touch assists in balancing your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. During an extended final meditation, Lisa will guide us through self- chakra connection that balances energy and encourages deep relaxation. Click this link to register for this virtual class.

06/12/2022

Today I see the miracle in all things

08/11/2022

Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair, thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl. Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Art by Leah Dorion

10/06/2022

Yes! 🙌