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Heartful Living and Dying
Rev. Maya Massar, MDiv.
Bucksport Professional Building ~ Suite #1, 151 Main Street, Bucksport, ME 04416

Welcome to the Blog page of Heartful Living and Dying. 
Maya makes every effort to properly and respectfully credit any sources referenced in her blog posts, her Hospice IDT offerings, or Resources page; please report corrections or additions via the CONTACT page.
ALSO:
If you wish to use material from this or any of Maya's websites, please email mayamassar@gmail.com for permission.  Maya lovingly requests that you credit her by sharing her name, website and contact links in written material and verbally as well if using material in live presentations.
You can contact Rev. Maya on our CONTACT page.
Thank you!


Blog

The Meaning Behind Muslim Prayer Postures

8/23/2023

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Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind the three positions of Muslim prayer?

In the youtube video "Steps of Muslim prayer explained"  by David Middlecamp,
Spiritual Leader (Imam) Mas'ab Abdalla explains it with grace and simplicity. 

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1. Hands are put up to symbolize putting the world behind, so as to focus fully on God.  Imam Abdalla shares "it's hard, but it's a practice we do five times a day".  "This first step is standing up, with the mind above the heart; the first step on the journey for a seeker of truth - it is all intellectual; learning the steps of purifying onesself, and how to pray. . ."
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2. The second step is done in the bowing state.  The mind and heart are now on a level - they are even with one another.  Imam Abdalla tells us that this represents the second step of the seeker - and that in this pose the teaching is transferred from solely intellectual in the mind to an experience of the heart.
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3. Prostration.  In the third and final stage of the seeker, the mind is placed below the heart; it represents the submission of heart to God.  In this stage, says Abdalla, "We trust in God. We are loving God whether times are tough or times are prosperous."

To see the video of this simple and beautiful explanation offered by Imam Abdalla,
please CLICK HERE (or the link above) to watch.

If you did your own prayer five times every day, what do you think might unfold?

If this information is new to you, thank you for opening your mind and heart to another's way of praying; understanding builds compassion, compassion builds community, community makes our world a better place for everyone.

Much Love,
Rev. Maya
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Image above is from www.learnreligions.com 
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MAKING SPACE

8/23/2023

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Today I want to share a story that has been going around on social media; it is a letter written by pop star Fiona Apple, about her choice to cancel her South American concert tour.  May we all have the respect for our own hearts, loved ones and our personal process that Ms. Apple takes for herself in this lovely example of true self care and care for a being who has been her companion for over a decade.  Here is her letter:

“It's 6pm on Friday, and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I'm writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here's the thing.
I have a dog, Janet, and she's been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an ad0-ult, officially — and she was my kid.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We've lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it's always really been just the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison's Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all this, she's effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.
I can't come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she's not sad about aging or dying.
Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That's why they are so much more present than people.
But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She'll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can't leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I'm afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.
I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable and comforted and safe and important.
I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I'm asking for your blessing.
I'll be seeing you.
Love,
Fiona”


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Please visit www.fionaapplestore.com 
Or click the image above to support this artist and all around kind human.
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Brother Steindl-Rast's A GOOD DAY

8/9/2023

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Today, I invite you to take a small moment, just for you, to gentle your breath as you read this piece by 96 year old Austrian-American Benedictine monk,  BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST.  

It is called


A GOOD DAY . . .

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“You think that this is just another day in your life?
It’s not just another day.
It’s the one day that is given to you – today.
It’s given to you.
It’s a gift.

It’s the only gift that you have right now
and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.
If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is…

If you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life
and the very last day
then you will have spent this day very well.

Begin by opening your eyes, and be surprised that you have eyes you can open.
That incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for our pure enjoyment.
Look at the sky.
We so rarely look at the sky.
We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment, with clouds coming and going.
We just think of the weather, and even with the weather we don’t think of all the many nuances of weather.
We just think of “good weather” and “bad weather.”
This day, right now, with its unique weather, maybe a kind that will never exactly in that form come again...
The formation of clouds in the sky will never be the same as it is right now.
Open your eyes.  Look at that.

Look at the faces of people whom you meet.
Each one has an incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom.
Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors.
We all go back so far.
And in this present moment on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here like a life giving water if you only open your heart and drink.

Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us.
You flip a switch and there is electric light.
You turn a faucet and there is warm water, and cold water, and drinkable water.
a gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience.
So these are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to which you can open your heart.

And so I am wishing you will open your heart to all these blessings and let them flow through you.

That everyone you will meet on this day will be blessed by you,
just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch, just by your presence.

Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.

Then it will REALLY be a good day.”



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For an inspiring start to your day:

Play video below or CLICK HERE 

to listen to Steindl-Rast himself, as he recites A GOOD DAY, in this lovely video.




Who is Brother David Steindl-Rast?

CLICK HERE


to learn more about this fabulous soul,
known as the “grandfather of gratitude”.




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    Author:

    Rev. Maya Massar

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