I was sitting with a friend yesterday gazing out at snow falling through the trees along the street. We were talking quietly, both looking out, not at each other. I found myself telling her about a practice I use when the outside world seems so awry that I don’t know what to do.
I don’t avail myself of the news in the form of tv, newspapers, internet. It doesn’t help me meet my responsibilities to love and serve everyone I meet—either in person or in my prayer and meditation. Yet I do stay aware of what’s happening out there, and sometimes I find a particular leader flash into my mind. With that flash may arise confusion or even fear. What to do?
Some years ago I found this practice in a book about angels: When I’m troubled by someone in my world—it can be a public figure or someone close to me—I can call a Convocation of Angels to help us. How it works is this:
•I invite my guardian angel, “Please come.”
•Then I invite the guardian angels of those I admire as peacemakers—they can be on the Earth now or have been here in the past. Some of these for me are
Anandamayi Ma
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Dalai Lama
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dag Hammarskjold
Mahatma Ghandi
•Then I invite the guardian angel of the person I’m troubled about to join us.
•I ask the gathering of angels to support the guardian angel of the troubling person in supporting that person in knowing they are loved beyond measure, in softening and opening to the peace and grace at the heart of life, to returning to the light that is their true nature, to have the courage to see things differently and to change their way of being in the world.
•After a time, I say thank you and close the Convocation.
Does this make a difference in the outside world? I don’t know, of course. I do know that it feels like something I can do. And I want to do something directly to aid the good, the light, the love as it is showering on us all.
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