My heart

The Peace Rose
Artist: Ruth Sharkey

That which God said to the rose,

and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,

He said to my heart,

and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

— Rumi

What speaks to us of God?

My Family

Anisa Kasa, Age 13, Tirana (Albania)

You know, if we did this and if we let this princple guide our evangelism, we wouldn't be able to keep up with all the baptisms!

If God is love, then let our love speak to us of God. If God is good, then let what is good speak to us of God. If God is joy, then let what fills us with joy speak to us of God. If God is peace, then let what brings us peace speak to us of God. If God is life, then let what is full of life speak to us of God.

— Margaret Hebblethwaite

Love and peace and tenderness

Today, someone who comes to me for spiritual guidance sent me a card with this quote on the front:

Our life is love and peace
and tenderness -
and bearing
with one another -
praying for one another,
and helping
one another up
with a tender hand.

-- Isaac Penington (Quaker)

I thought it was absolutely beautiful. There was also a mandala on the front of the card. I couldn't find one exactly like it to reproduce here but the image above is close!

Sacred space of contemplation

Seated upon the porch one finds it unnecessary to comment upon or analyze what one sees and hears. It is enough that it is. Being is not something to be taken for granted nor overlooked, but something to be breathed in and celebrated with sweet contentment and a grateful heart. The porch is the home's sacred space of contemplation, the structural articulation of the home's most treasured and earnest secret. The porch speaks mutely all that we cannot say, but that we nonetheless know to be truest about our lives.

-Wendy Wright, Sacred Dwelling: A Spirituality of Family Life

Thinking of others

Thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity. If you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christlike, for His heart was meek and always thought of others.

- Mother Teresa

Jesus Can Work It Out

This is the Choeur Gospel Celebration de Quebec. Dust off your high school French and take a look at their website right here.

God’s love is like a circle

Here's something I stumbled upon today that's meant to be a children's song. It's sung to the tune of "Stand up, stand up for Jesus".

God’s love is like a circle
A circle big & round,
For when you see a circle,
No ending can be found.
And so the love of Jesus goes on eternally
Forever & forever, He loves both you & me.

Today, I got a forwarded email that was so hate-filled (toward a certain group of people I'll choose not to name here) that I felt really sick inside. This sweet little song was something of an antidote for that and it brought me to gratitude.

Prayer for protection

The Tetragrammaton

Many years ago, a little girl in my neighborhood told me a slogan she had learned in Sunday School: "There is no spot where God is not!" I was reminded of that today when I found the following prayer:

The light of God surrounds me;
The love of God enfolds me;
The power of God protects me;
The presence of God watches over me;
Where I am, God is!

His living presence

The earliest reference to the Resurrection is Saint Paul’s, and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that in a way it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since.

-- From The Faces of Jesus by Frederick Buechner

Spiritual beauty

"Internal Dialogue"

On an impulse I decided to run a search using the words "spiritual beauty" on Google Images. I found the above painting. Here's something the artist, Kim Walker, has to say:

Painting allows me the quiet and thoughtful internal dialogue that refreshes my spirit. For me, there is no greater beauty than what God has already provided. It can be seen in every aspect of nature, from the tiniest petal to the outreaches of the heavens. My artwork takes me on a spiritual journey as I seek and collect each item found in the natural world. Also, by incorporating these elements into my work my desire is to provide another way to view this beauty that might otherwise have been missed.

You can find more of her work right here.

Dying to self

Death where is your victory? Grave where is your sting?

I'm afraid I don't have a source to give you for the following quote. I found it years ago and memorized it:

Let us die while we live lest when we come to die we shall be dead indeed.

-- Inscription on an early Christian tomb

A prayer for day's end

"Night"

Artist: RoseLynn Imbleau

Lord,
You have been with me all through this day,
stay with me now.
As the shadows lengthen into darkness
let the noisy world grow quiet,
let its feverish concerns be stilled,
its voices silenced.
In the final moments of this day
remind me of what is Real.

But let me not forget
that you were as present in
the stresses of the day just past
as you are now
in the silence of this night.

You have made me for
day and for night,
for work and for rest,
for both heaven and earth.

Here in this night
let me embrace and not regret
the mysterious beauty of my humanity.
Keep me in the embrace of your Reality through the night,
and the day to come.
Surround me with your silence
and give me the rest that only you can give--
Real peace,
now and forever.

--Evelyn Underhill

He is risen! Alleluia!

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. . . . We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

--Pope John Paul II

Stabat Mater - Pergolisi

Countertenor Andreas Scholl and Soprano Barbara Bonney

Here is an English translation of the complete Stabat Mater poem:

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.

O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.

Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.

Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?

By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.

For the sins of His own nation,
She saw Jesus wracked with torment,
All with scourges rent:

She beheld her tender Child,
Saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.

Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?

O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:

Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.

Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Savior crucified:

Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.

Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:

Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.

Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;

Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;

Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.

Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;

When my body dies,
let my soul be granted
the glory of Paradise. Amen.

Good Friday

Crucifixion

Am I a stone and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

-- Christina Rossetti

Let us all, like the poet, pray for the gift of tears on this day.

Maundy Thursday

Artist: Leszek Forczek

Most of us will have a ritual foot washing ceremony as part of our Maundy Thursday observance tonight. I want to recommend that you read a Washington Post article from a couple of years ago entitled "Gaining a Dose Of Humility, One Washed Foot at a Time". Here's part of what it says:

As they prepared for the holy ritual, the churchgoers had all the essential items: latex gloves, nail clippers, chlorine and antibacterial soap. The only things missing were the feet, and soon enough they poured into the church by the dozen.

Many were callused and cracked from cold nights spent on the streets. Some were sore and infected. What they needed was some old-school -- we're talking centuries here -- Christian doctrine in action. So volunteers at Centenary United Methodist Church in Richmond got down on their knees and scrubbed.

The practice of foot-washing, rooted in the biblical account of what Jesus did for his disciples, has ebbed and flowed throughout church history, abandoned at various times for reasons of dogma or embarrassment. But in recent years it has grown in popularity as an act of submission, both at Easter season services and in many other settings.

...

Pregnant and homeless since November, Wright has drifted with her 7-year-old daughter from shelter to shelter. One constant in her life has been the Friday talks over foot-washing with the volunteers.

...

"When they put my feet into that hot water -- whew!" she sighed. "It sure feels like heaven."

May tonight's ritual be deeply meaningful to each of you.

Tenebrae

Today is Wednesday in Holy Week. If you are not able to get to church tonight, I recommend that you read the service of Tenebrae on your own. Here's a description of the service:

The name Tenebrae is the Latin word for "darkness" or "shadows," and has for centuries been applied to the ancient monastic night and early morning services of the last three days of Holy Week, which in medieval times came to be celebrated on the preceding evenings.

This service is marked by a reading from the book of Lamentations and the gradual extinguishing of candles and other lights until a single candle, considered a symbol of the Lord, remains. Towards the end of the service, this candle is hidden, typifying the apparent victory of the forces of evil. At the very end, a loud noise is made, symbolizing the earthquake at the time of the resurrection (Matthew 28:2), the hidden candle is restored to its place and by its light all depart in silence.

You can find the service right here.

Romanian Orthodox Byzantine Chant - The Lamentations

Tip of the hat to Byzigenous Buddhapalian.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A blessing for Holy Week

What is the Gospel Story in your own words?

The importance of self-acceptance

The Prodigal Son

It's so important to accept ourselves and to find a way to make friends with the parts of ourselves we tend to want to reject. Marion Woodman puts it this way:

I am remembering, gathering together the prodigal parts of myself and welcoming them home.

Welcoming the parts of ourselves we have previously sent into exile does not mean indulging them or letting them be in charge. It does mean not getting in a contest with them. It means integrating them into the totality of our being without letting them turn destructive.

PAINTING PRAYER

It was my very great privilege to hear Henri Nouwen give a series of lectures at Virginia Theological Seminary in the 1970s. Here's something he said about prayer:

To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. ... Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts -- beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful -- can be thought in the presence of God. ... Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue.

-- Henri Nouwen

Spiritual sensitivity and contemplation

"Contemplation"

Spiritual sensitivity heightens when we know how to see, touch, and taste the physical world with exquisite reverence and contemplative discipline.

— Tessa Bielecki in Holy Daring

Faith

Faith transforms the earth into a paradise.
By it our hearts are raised with the joy of our nearness to heaven.
Every moment reveals God to us.
Faith is our light in this life.

— Jean Pierre de Caussade

Radical hospitality

Copyright 2007-2008 by Shoshanna Bauer All Rights Reserved

(Used with permission)

Artist: Shoshanna Bauer

Dear friends,

Please go over to Elizabeth Kaeton's blog and read her post entitled The Radical Orthodox Rabbi. It brought tears to my eyes. Beautiful. Beautiful.

God of the Moon and Stars - Kees Kraayenoord

Please watch this to the very end.

This was sent to us by Kate Morningstar.

We REALLY need to remember this!

Artist: Arabella Decker

God speaks to us in a thousand voices each with the same clear message: "I love you. Please trust me on this one."

— Hugh Prather in Spiritual Notes to Myself

We are marching in the light of God

To dance, to sing, to play

"Dancing In The Light"

Artist: Richard A. Waters

I really admire Anne Lamott so very much. Here's something she said in a recent interview:

I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.

Connections

I cannot exist without in some sense taking part in you, in the child I once was, in the breeze stirring the down on my arm, in the child starving far away, in the flashing round of the spiral nebula.

— Catherine Keller quoted in Lighting a Candle by Molly Young Brown

The soul

"Transition of a Soul"

Artist: John Perry French

The soul is not a physical entity, but instead refers to everything about us that is not physical - our values, memories, identity, sense of humor. Since the soul represents the parts of the human being that are not physical, it cannot get sick, it cannot die, it cannot disappear. In short, the soul is immortal.

-- Rabbi Harold Kushner

Loving others

Artist: Michael Leunig

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

-- Thomas Merton

When your soul awakens

In the west of Ireland

Some years ago I came across the writings of the Irish philosopher and poet John O'Donohue who sadly died prematurely in January of this year. Here's a paragraph from an essay published on his memorial website:

If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it would be less incredible than the story of being here. And the ironic thing is that story is not a story, it is true. It takes us so long to see where we are. It takes us even longer to see who we are. This is why the greatest gift you could ever dream is a gift that you can only receive from one person. And that person is you yourself. Therefore, the most subversive invitation you could ever accept is the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed. Plato said in The Symposium that one of the greatest privileges of a human life is to become midwife to the birth of the soul in another. When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it through our protective barriers of domestication and control. The normal way never leads home.

If you have a chance to listen to any of this tapes, please do so. His voice is so lyrical and soothing that just the memory of it delights and consoles.

Being present

"Presence XII"

Artist: Gloria Blades

Years ago I was blessed to discover the wonderful book by the great spiritual director Jean-Pierre de Caussade called Abandonment to Divine Providence or sometimes published as The Sacrament of the Present Moment. I recommend it highly. Here's a brief excerpt:

The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love.

Whom do you hate?

"Aspects of Humanity"

Artist: Jessie Booth

My favorite quote by Anne Lamott of all time:

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

The most radical teaching

The Good Samaritan

Artist: Vincent van Gogh

Love your enemies is probably the most radical thing Jesus ever said. Unless, of course, one considers the parable of the Samaritan. There the admonition is to let your enemies love you.

--Robert Funk

What God is not

Artist: Chris Higgins

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.

~Saint Augustine

Faith

"Faith"

Living Water

Samaritan Woman at the Well

Time erased
By life-giving water,
Offered by a man who had no bucket,
Who knew me not, yet knew me well.
My past washed clean In
the spring that I became —
Flowing, flowing through me,
God's instrument.
Never again shall I thirst.

-- Judy Ritter

St. Teresa of Avila

Here's the Spirituality and Practice site's "Spiritual Practice of the Day":

Whenever I am checking bags at an airport, I recall St. Teresa of Avila's wonderful prayer of praise, "Thank God for the things I do not own."

— Kathleen Norris in The Quotidian Mysteries

To Practice This Thought: The next time you are in a store, repeat St. Teresa's prayer.

Partners in creation

I no longer ask the young man's question: How far will I go? My questions are now those of the mature person: When it is over, what will my life have been about? First as Martin Buber taught, life is meeting. We come alive only when we relate to others. Secondly, we are here to change the world with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily rather than with one great dramatic leap in results. Finally, we are here to finish god's labors. One of the sages of the Talmud taught nearly two thousand years ago that God could have created a plant that would grow loaves of bread. Instead He created wheat for us to mill and bake into bread. Why? So that we could be His partners in completing the work of creation.

-- Rabbi Harold Kushner

Amen!

Oh, my! I really like this:

At the end of his spiritual talks, Gurdjieff said "Amen." When asked to translate "Amen," one of Gurdjieff's closet pupils answered, "Give it a try!"

— Michel Legris quoted in Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker

To Practice This Thought: The next time "Amen" crosses your lips, remember it means you are agreeing to give whatever preceded it a try.

I found it on the Spirituality and Practice site.

Something to think about

Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer. It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.

— Evelyn Underhill

Mystery

Celtic knot

For some time now I have really valued the website called Spirituality and Practice that is maintained by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Today I found an article of theirs on the subject of mystery. Here's how it gets started:

Mystery. It's not much in favor these days. Modern consciousness has little respect for the unseen and the unknown. We're much more comfortable with sound bytes from the experts and tidy philosophical or psychological systems that have an explanation for every situation. Television programs us to think that every problem has a solution that can be found in an hour or two, minus the time for commercials.

Politicians, educators, scientists, writers, self-help psychologists, and even many preachers seem to have everything all figured out. If we need answers, they're more than willing to give them.

There is another way to be in our world: we can embrace mystery. Christian novelist and essayist Madeleine L'Engle said, "There are no answers to the wonder of creation." There is only a deep and abiding respect for the awesomeness and unfathomability of the miracles of life. To try to explain them in detail, to reduce them to a simple answer for someone, is to limit their majesty.

The rest of the article is quite wonderful. You might like to click through and read it.

The world's grief

"Grief"

Artist: Olinka Broadfoot

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

-- The Talmud

Break in blogging

Hello, friends. I'll be away for the next couple of days. Blogging will resume on Sunday evening!

A new perspective

My friend has a kaleidoscope she sometimes uses in her counseling practice. She invites her client to look through the kaleidoscope to catch a new perspective. God's Spirit within us is like this kaleidoscope; we need to be attentive to it so we can be transformed with new eyes.

— Celeste Snowber Schroeder

Silence

"Beneath the Unseen Silence"

Artist: John McCormick

Silence will illuminate you in God. . . and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God. . . . In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then from our very silence is born something that draws us into deeper silence.

— Isaac of Nineveh, seventh century Syrian monk

Jesus is our home

Christ in a Red Robe

Minerva Teichert (1889-1976)

When you practice the bell of mindfulness, you breathe in, and you listen deeply to the sound of the bell, and you say, “Listen, Listen.” Then you breathe out and say, “This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home” . . . If you are a Christian, you feel that Jesus Christ is your home. It’s very comfortable to think of Jesus as your home. . . He is ever present. Your practice is how to touch him; he is your home.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

(Many thanks to Fr. Clyde Glandon for sending me this quote.)

Lent 1

Duccio - The Temptation on the Mount

From a sermon for Lent 1 by Dr. Robert Crouse:

A certain wilderness is necessary for the clarifying of the Spirit. Turn off the noise for a bit, and shun the continual distractions for awhile. There is a powerful modern prejudice in favour of busyness; even the Church seems determined to keep us busy. Even when we have retreats, which used to betimes of quietness, the inclination now is to turn them into conferences with discussion groups.

The ancient Christian hermits, the "Desert Fathers," as they are called, had a point when they claimed that the real battles of the spirit, the real confrontations with our devils, take place in quiet and isolation. Lent calls us to participate, at least in some small way, in that flight to the desert, to try to see ourselves clearly in the undistracted light of God's word, to identify our illusions so as to be free of them.

Remember this about prayer

"Pray as you can, not as you can't."

-- Ted King (Former Dean of St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town)

Shrove Tuesday

Penitent by Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

Over 1000 years ago a monk wrote in the Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes:

In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.

with ah! bright wings

Artist: Dan Vantari

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Transfiguration

Today, the last Sunday of Epiphany, is a day we observe the Transfiguration of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from a sermon for this day:

God is love. That's one of the first verses of Scripture that we each learned and that we teach our children and grandchildren. We say it with ease, but do we know what it looks like?

We do know that love does shine. We've all seen it. We've all seen someone in love, perhaps it was your own face in the mirror.

The eyes are bright with a new sparkle, the smile is radiant, the cheeks aglow. The same is true of a woman pregnant with child. Her love for the new creation growing in her womb shines through her face.

That's how God wants to be seen by us, as love making radiant all of God's creation. All of it, mind you--especially you and me. God wants us to shine with the light of that love, just like Moses and Jesus and Elijah. Because each one of us, as we walk through our lives, is a moment of Transfiguration for the people we meet. It is through us that God's love shines to fill the world with light.

-- The Rev. William S. Bennett

Candlemas

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in The Temple (Candlemas). Traditionally, candles are blessed on this day.

Here's a Robert Herrick poem for the day:

THE CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS DAY

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again,
Till Christmas next return.

Part must be kept, wherewith to teend
The Christmas log next year;
And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.

In some traditions it's fine to keep Christmas decorations up until Candlemas. I did that one year and enjoyed it very much!

St. Brigid's Day

Marilyn Bedford sent me the following tribute to St. Brigid:

Brigid, you were a woman of peace.
You brought harmony where there was conflict.
You brought light to the darkness.
You brought hope to the downcast.

May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious,
And may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world.
Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all God has made.

Brigid, you were a voice of the wounded and weary.
Strengthen what is weak within us.
Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens.
May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body, and spirit.
AMEN.