Windows to the inner life

Artist: Claude Monet

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm not much of a gardener, really. I don't particularly like being outside in the heat, I don't like stooping and digging and I don't like getting dirty. But I do have houseplants and I manage to plant some begonias in front of my little house every spring. So I really agree with the following:

Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.

- Patricia R. Barrett, The Sacred Garden

Godly whispering

Russian icon of prophet Elijah

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It's a very short little quotation that I bring you today. But it is one that is very evocative. Let us allow it to teach us, to encourage us:

Blessed are the ears that pick up the Godly whispering.

— Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ

Something about prayer

Artist: Georges Seurat

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have just finished reading the transcript of an interview with Sr. Joan Chittister whom I've admired for many years now.

Here is just a little bit of what she says:

After more than 55 years of growing into a life of prayer through a lifestyle based on it, my definition of prayer is consciousness, immersion, and relationship. Prayer makes us aware of the elements of the divine in human life, bringing us into contact with the God-life in and around us. Prayer is not personal devotion; it is personal growth. Prayer brings us to the ultimate and the eternal, the daily and the regular, the total consciousness of God now. Prayer enables us to be immersed in what is fundamentally and truly divine in life right now. It is not meant to be a bridge to somewhere else because God is not somewhere else. God is here. Prayer is the act of beginning the process of becoming one with the One we seek -- eventually, melting into God completely.

I urge you to click through and read the whole piece. It gets better and better as well as more and more moving. She talks about her family, about her parents' "mixed marriage" (Roman Catholic and Presbyterian), about her passion for social justice and how that is utterly connected with her prayer.

It is beautiful.
~~~

Radical gratefulness

Artist: Peter Paul Rubens

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I really like the following way of summing up this morning's gospel reading. (It's from a blog called "Contemplative Viewfinder"):

There was a woman who made a scene over Jesus when he was eating lunch at the house of a friend named Simon. (Luke 7:36) She cried and her tears wet his feet. She dried his feet with her hair. She poured perfume on them.

Simon told Jesus this was inappropriate. He was probably right. There’s a time and a place for everything, you know. Jesus’ answer: Simon, you’ve not even showed me basic hospitality in your own home, but this woman’s gratitude has caused her to do what you think is inappropriate. She’s just grateful. Leave her alone.

-- Melissa Bane Sevier

How wonderful to experience such gratitude that a person is able to be this "over the top". There's a humor website I recently discovered called "Overkill 9000". It's subtitled "Everything in excess, including excess!" I like it because, oddly enough, sometimes too much of something is exactly what it takes to jar us into waking up, to capture our attention about what is real, what is necessary. Today's gospel reading is a good example of exactly how this can work.
~~~

What sort of comfort?

Artist: Paul Gauguin

Image from Wikimedia Commons

You know, this strikes me as being a very important teaching about prayer, actually:

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.

-- C. S. Lewis

It certainly flies in the face of the so-called "prosperity gospel", doesn't it?

What would happen if part of our prayer was to ask for help in cultivating an awareness of and a receptivity for the kind of comfort they do supply in heaven?

I would think that it's well worth pondering.
~~~

Happiness

Artist: Judith Leyster

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have shared with you before, I believe, that I had the privilege of hearing David Steindl-Rast speak at a conference in Virginia back in the 70s and was hugely impressed and moved by what he had to say. Some years later I read that he spent six months of the year in solitude and six months teaching and that was something that truly encouraged me in pursuing my solitary vocation. Here's one of his pithy sayings:

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Deep and abiding change

Image from Wikimedia Commons

At the heart of the Christian tradition lies the belief that transformation requires sacrifice. In fact, I would say that the difference between real movements and mere events is the sacrifice. Deep and abiding change is hard. When we experience conversion, we not only turn toward something new but away from something old. We can look down the road and recognize that in the long run our sacrifice is worth the cost, but it still does not make it easy or comfortable to sell all we have to buy the pearl of great price.

-- Jim Wallis

The above is from an article entitled "We Must Respond to the Needs of the Gulf Coast". I do recommend the entire article. It's painful to read but we need to read this sort of thing.

Some words on the mystics from Matthew Fox

This most amazing day

Artist: Jakob Hendrik Pierneef

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have long loved the work of this poet. And this particular poem is truly a little gem:

I thank God for this most
amazing day;
for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.

-- E. E. Cummings

Building bridges with strangers

I realize that some who read this blog may not be happy with Archbishop Rowen's approach to dealing with the "current unpleasantness" within the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, the reflection in this video is very powerful and well deserving of thoughtful attention.

Raising the sons of widows

Artist: Lucas Cranach

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In both the gospel reading for today and the reading from the Hebrew scriptures we are offered stories that relate how a widow's son is restored to her through divine mercy and power.

Please remember that in each case the widow's predicament is not merely that of losing someone she loves dearly. She is also losing her very means of survival. Women of that day were horribly vulnerable without the support of a husband or a son.

These stories are tremendously meaningful to me because they teach us that God cares for the woman who is alone, that her feelings matter, that her survival matters and that she is not to be devalued. I, too, am a woman alone; I have no husband, no son. And while I certainly have more options for survival than did a first century widow, I often feel very vulnerable indeed - especially as I age. So today's readings are powerfully consoling and affirming.

Now, there are other kinds of vulnerability besides that which makes physical survival precarious. What seems to have died in your life that has left you vulnerable and bereft - perhaps in on an emotional, inward level that most people will not recognize, much less acknowledge? Today's readings assure you that God will restore to you what you need for that part of your life to be supported once more, for you to thrive again.

Deo gratias.
~~~

Sacred, precious solitude

Artist: Václav Brožík

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I want to tell you about a very beautiful blog that I discovered quite some time ago and then re-discovered today. It's called "Spiritual Things Matter" and is made up of the poetry and reflections of the blog author, Viola Jaynes. Here is one stanza of a poem (which can be found right here in its entirety):

Oh solitude, my sacred precious solitude,
You so eloquently speak comfort to me.
May you captivate my heart fully -
And may you teach me never to fear you,
But to love you even more intimately!

In her post about herself, Viola writes the following:

As I write, I desire that those who have experienced pain will find some comfort and peace. The words which I write come from my heart, birthed from my own brokenness and a continued longing to find greater spiritual awareness. I want to embrace all people and therefore I will not limit my writing here to any religious beliefs or quotations of scriptures. That is a journey each will have to make for themselves. I simply want to share that in and through pain, a full life is still possible. It has been for me.

I identify with that hugely. It aptly expresses the reasoning behind my own interfaith focus.

The blog overall is gentle, lovely and offers writings of great depth indeed. You will not regret taking the time to explore this site.
~~~

That we may write our names in kindness...

Artist: Edmund Blair Leighton

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This is about having a sense of purpose. It's interesting that Chalmers talks about kindness, love and mercy and that he doesn't talk about financial success, professional achievement or impressing others:

Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never be forgotten. Your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

-- Thomas Chalmers

Something about words

Artist: Michelangelo Caravaggio

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Very often the problem between fundamentalists and other religious people revolves around the meaning of words. It helps if we maintain a humble and respectful recognition of how limited verbal language can be:

... God is not objectifiable. Words serve only as mute gestures pointing to the irreducible, ineffable dimension where God subsists.

-- Martin Buber

A little challenge

Artist: Angelo Bronzino

Image from Wikimedia Commons

No posting today, dear people. I had hand surgery this morning and that makes driving the old computer a wee bit difficult!

I'll be back tomorrow, I sincerely hope.

Blessings to all.
~~~

Memorial Day

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

I heard this on NPR today - Writer's Almanac - read by Garrison Keillor:

High school band. Memorial Day.
Country cemetery. Marched all the way.
We stood in formation, took off our caps.
Stood with the nation, we played taps

Year before Kennedy, year before King.
Last year I cared about anything.
But for that moment, we were one.
Honoring soldiers

At Arlington.

Notes drifted across the plains.
Swallows signaled oncoming rain.
Station wagons, pickup trucks
Rescued us then turned to rust

We put on new uniforms
Crisp, creased. Tattered, well-worn
Some forget where we come from
Some come to rest

In Arlington

When he was twelve, took my only son
Lost ourselves in the Smithsonian
Then Abraham, above the Mall.
Then raised our hands, touched the wall.

Headstone horizon, eternal flame
Unknown lie with familiar names
Sacrificed daughters and sons
So I could cry

At Arlington.

-- Dennis Caraher

Blessed Trinity

Artist: Edgar Degas

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The early church leaders described the Trinity using the term perichoresis (peri-circle resis-dance): The Trinity was an eternal dance of the Father, Son and Spirit sharing mutual love, honor, happiness, joy and respect… God’s act of creation means that God is inviting more and more beings into the eternal dance of Joy. Sin means that people are stepping out of the dance… stomping on feet instead of moving with grace and rhythm.

I'm not sure who said this but I found it on Lindy Black's "Sermon Nuggets" page.

I have long delighted in the image of the life of God (as well as the spiritual life of the lover of God) as a dance. When we allow ourselves to experience the Divine as movement (rather than trying to analyze or explain theological formulas) the difficulty associated with the doctrine of the Trinity simply falls away and we embrace the Mystery in joyful celebration.

Oh, yes: Amazing!

If this doesn't make you happy, well, I just don't know what to do for you!

~~~

Created for transcendence

Artist: Odilon Redon

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm sorry to say that I had not heard of the theologian, Joseph Sittler, before I found a passage from his book Gravity and Grace from which I offer the following:

St. Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions, makes a great and beautiful statement: "Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." Back of that statement lies a proposition which says that the human is created for transcendence. It is the Jewish and Christian belief that we are meant for a selfhood that is more than our own selves—that we are by nature created to envision more than we can accomplish, to long for that which is beyond our possibilities.

I am so struck by the words "a selfhood that is more than our own selves". It merits considerable reflection, I think.

You can read more excerpts right here.

Something about why people lose heart

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Those of us who consider ourselves to be part of the Church need to think about the point being made here with all due seriousness:

Of the friends of mine who have abandoned the Christian faith, very few of them stopped believing in Christ because of intellectual problems with the Bible of because they were seduced by some other worldview or belief system. Rather, they tend to abandon Christian faith because of the irrelevance, judgmentalism, internal dissension and lack of compassion they experience within the Christian community. Rather than finding the church to be the community that most deeply encouraged them in their struggles, they lost heart in their discouragement and lost their faith in the process. Rather than experiencing the church as the site of the most profound hospitality, love and acceptance, they felt excluded because of their doubts and struggles.

-- Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat

Illuminating what love really is

Artist: Ivan Aivazovsky

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've told you before, I'm sure, how much I admire this writer:

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

-- Frederick Buechner

There are some very erroneous and unhealthy ideas out there about what love really is. I think this particular Buechner quote comes very close to verbalizing what love - the real thing, I mean - is actually all about.

Why perseverence is so very necessary

"The Stonecutters" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Image from Wikimedia Commons

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it -- but all that had gone before.

-- Jacob Riis

A challenge to our assumptions

Image from Wikimedia Commons

When you think about it, the celebration of Pentecost is the ultimate antidote against discouragement. And so I like this excerpt from a Pentecost sermon very much:

[W]e have a call, a “stunning vocation,” Walter Brueggemann says, “to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful…and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact.” Mind you, we are not in charge, God is in charge, but we are called to imagine this future, to trust in it, and to live into it, participate in it, and to share it with all of God’s children. We might be tempted at times to give in to those same impulses we see around us – to build up our defenses, look out for ourselves, find security in our “stuff” and in our sure knowledge that we know best, but this wind of the Spirit – it blows through our lives and it turns things upside down. We want a faith that only consoles us, and instead, God challenges our assumptions, blows them over, and opens up our eyes to see things in a new way, opens our hearts to a new creation of possibility and hope.

-- Kate Huey

I believe I have quoted Kate Huey on this blog before. I'm starting to like her preaching very much indeed. She is a United Church of Christ minister, by the way.

The Day of Pentecost

Bamberg Apocalypse miniature (11th Century)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following quotation may seem very simple but it is deceivingly so. Phillips is communicating a powerhouse here - something utterly radical:

Every time we say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.

- J. B. Phillips

The question before us is this: Do we really want our personality to be entered by the living God and then changed?

Something about readiness

Artist: August Macke

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever tried to read a spiritual book before you were really ready and managed to get nowhere only to pick that same book up some years later and have it be utterly illuminating? Here's something about that:

Words are merely carriers of the secret, supernatural communications, the light and call of God. That is why spiritual books bear such different meanings for different types and qualities of soul, why each time we read them they give us something fresh, as we can bear it.

-- Evelyn Underhill

The benefit of solitude

Artist: Giovanni Fattori

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It grieves me when people have an aversion to being alone, who have not discovered the richness of a purposeful and chosen solitude. Here's a little encouragement in that regard:

We need not wings to go in search of Him, but have only to find a place where we can be alone -- and look upon Him present within us.

- Teresa of Avila

The archangel who fights for us

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I just found this stunning mosaic of St. Michael and wanted to share it with you all. The original is in Moscow.

A paradox

Artist: James Tissot

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Oh my. There is just so much to this one:

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

-- Joseph Campbell

There is unbelievably rich material for reflection in this great observation. I'm very glad I found it.
~~~

Sunday after the Ascension

Saint Paul the Apostle

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I was very struck by this morning's first reading from the book of Acts. In this narrative, Paul and Silas exorcise a divining spirit from a slave girl who is being exploited by her owners. Later they are locked up in an "inner prison" and an earthquake sets them free. The jailer is about to commit suicide (as he will surely be blamed for letting them escape) but Paul assures him that he and Silas are still there. The jailer then asks what he must do to be saved and is baptized along with his entire household.

How many of us find ourselves locked in an "inner prison"? And how many of us assume that freeing those parts of ourselves that have been locked up for so long is bound to be a disaster?

Here is an excerpt from a commentary I found on this reading. It has given me much material for reflection:

When the jailer asks Paul what he must do to be saved, Paul answers simply that he should "believe on the Lord Jesus." This is still a difficult question today, and Paul's answer presents its own challenges as well. Perhaps we need to spend much more time on what it means to "believe" (and Marcus Borg has written so helpfully on this in books like The Heart of Christianity). However, Ronald Cole-Turner's reflects on this question in the context of this story and poses this question for each one of us, personally: "What must I do," he asks, "to be saved from what destroys me? What must I do to be saved from my particular bondage, my oppressive addiction, emptiness, or boredom? There are countless ways to lose our way in this world or to be in bondage, just as there are many different threats from which we need to be saved." One of the most powerful captivities of our age, besides materialism and militarism, is the way fear can imprison us in our convictions and our desire for security, making us unable to open our hearts and minds to others, to events, to the God who still speaks through them. How amazed the jailer must be, just as he's about to kill himself, to see that the prisoners are still there! Fear almost leads to death, but compassion leads to his life, and his family's life, being transformed. Cole-Turner writes that "Believing….means becoming decisively aware that our small lives are swept up into a great drama, God's story line. God is indeed reaching out to us in Jesus Christ, taking our lives into the gospel story of transformation and redemption."

-- The Rev'd Kate Huey

You can read the entire commentary right here.

Honest and dishonest questions

I have admired and been influenced by Richard Rohr for many years now. He is a wonderfully skilled conference leader and retreat conductor. I had the great privilege of attending one of his conferences early in 2009.

Ascension

Artist: Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquility of the Divine Essence.

-- John Henry Newman

Think about how these words, "the very abyss of peace" are put together. What wonderful words. How full they are of both assurance and mystery.

~~~

Essence

Artist: Raphaelle Peale

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must destroy its symbols and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there your soul must stay.

-- Meister Eckhart

A beautiful icon

Artist: Ekaterina Iliynskaya

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Healing

"River of Life" from the Bamberg Apocalypse

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have treasured these two verses of this morning's reading from Revelation for many, many years now:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Now here is a commentary:

The river of life in 22:1-2 is based on Ezekiel 47:1-12, where the river flows out of God's temple. In Revelation's New Jerusalem there is no temple building, and so the river flows from the throne of God, flows with life from the presence and the ruling power of the Lord of all. The old serpent has been dispensed with (20:2, 10), and the tree of life flourishes among the people again. In Ezekiel, the river was lined with all kinds of trees, but here there is only one, the one that matters, the tree of life lost with Adam's and Eve's sin. In Ezekiel's vision, the leaves were for healing (of Israel), but here they are for the healing of all the nations. Here there is nothing cursed (verse 3). Paradise is fulfilled in this city.

-- Brian Peterson

The fact that in Ezekiel the leaves were for the healing of Israel but now are for the healing of all the nations is a critical point to notice, I think. God wants us all to be healed - every single one of us.
~~~

The song of our soul

Artist: Benjamin Vautier

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I discovered Martin Buber while taking an undergraduate philosophy class when I read I and Thou. Many is time I have wishe I knew German so I could read his works in the original. Here is a lovely passage that adds to my collection of quotations about valuing the ordinary:

One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.

-- Martin Buber

Angels

Artist: Hildegard von Bingen

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Now this is really worth thinking about:

All God's angels come to us disguised.

-- James Russell Lowell

Remember, the Greek word angelos simply means messenger.

Think back over your life and call to mind the divine messengers that have come your way. That's one approach to learning about the disguises taken by God's angels.

~~~

A paradox about worth and worthiness

"St. Martin and the Beggar" - El Greco

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today's society - in the United States at any rate - is very caught up with the idea of personal and individual worthiness. Many of us believe that we shouldn't assist anyone who isn't worthy of being assisted according to our own understanding of what that means. Such an approach is not, however, the Christian way:

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

Embracing reality

Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Image from Wikimedia Commons

One of the temptations that often assaults those who are striving to be spiritual is that of trying to escape reality rather than learning to embrace it:

If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrace reality and thus find ourselves immersed in the life-giving will and wisdom of God which surrounds us everywhere.

- Thomas Merton

Supporting and inspiring the young

Artist: Max Slevogt

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've really liked this saying ever since I first came across it. I think it applies not only to parents with children but also to teachers with students:

Do not limit your children to your own learning, for they have been born in another age.

— Jewish proverb

Sharing our home

Artist: Philippe Legendre-Kvater

Image from Wikimedia Commons

From this morning's Gospel reading:

[Jesus said,] "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

And, thus, the following quotation really gave me pause:

Martin Luther King said once that the story of the church is like a great extended family that receives a tremendous bequest: they receive an inheritance of a wonderful, beautiful, spacious, luxurious home to share. There is only one stipulation. All must live in it together.

-- from Lindy Black's "Sermon Nuggets"

Something about regret

"Hope in a Prison of Despair" by E. De Morgan

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's the lament of someone who spent just one day in "riotous living" and is experiencing great regret:

The Debt

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end—
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release—
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best—
God! but the interest!

-- by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's a beautifully crafted little poem and a truly evocative one. It can give us material for reflection about making reckless choices, I suppose. Of course, a reasonbly high doctrine of grace helps us let go of the suffering that accompanies regret. Sometimes, however, the consequences of recklessness really can't be undone - at least not in this life.

A simply gorgeous chant

Artist: Simone Martini

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Please do go over to the YouTube site and listen to this:

The Angel Cried (old church Slavonic)

I would give it to you here but the embedding feature has been disabled.

It is a monastery choir singing (i.e. not a professional group). Deeply evocative - at least to me it is.

Something about goodness

Artist: Unknown (14th Century)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I seem to be drawn these days to quotations about the ordinary things and the little things. Here's another:

Those who wait to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. Life is made up of little things. True greatness consists in being great in the little things.

-- Samuel Johnson

A Prayer for Courage

Artist: Abbott Handerson Thayer

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
But to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
But for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield,
But to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
But hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward,
feeling your mercy in my success alone,
But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

I am particularly moved by the very last line of this prayer. I know that I, myself, am not able to be fearless - at least, not yet. Nor am I able to stop myself from looking for allies. I must admit that I don't deal particularly well with pain. And, I'm sad to say that anxiety and I are old traveling companions. But, oh, that last line! I know what it is to find the grasp of God's hand in my failure - yes, I do - and for that I am grateful beyond expression.

Who are we? Where are we?

Artist: Francisco de Goya

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Suppose we really believed this. Then suppose we made a consistent effort to show it forth:

I am a place where God's love turns up in this world.

— M. Basil Pennington in Listening

Good Shepherd Sunday

Image from Wikimedia Commons

For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

- From Revelation 7

Holding a skyscraper

Artist: Claude-Max Lochu

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Just because I'm really wanting to post verse tonight. Just because I really like Sandburg and just because I really like this particular poem:

Prayers of Steel

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

-- Carl Sandburg

The Bard and the spiritual path

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It's Shakespeare's birthday. (At least, we think it is.)

Anyone who is serious about the spiritual path would do well to study Shakespeare because of his astonishing insight into human nature and character. Just as you can find any emotion you want to express as part of your prayer somewhere in the psalms, so you will find everything you need about human motivation and the passions in Shakespeare.

Here's a sonnet that has been very meaningful to me for decades now. The poet reflects on impermanence and how vanity (as well as a spirit of acquisition) undermines true spiritual health. It's Sonnet 146:

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Ruled by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

Earth Day

Artist: Martin Johnson Heade

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Some very good questions are posed in the following quotation. Today would be a good day to reflect on them:

How do we live in creation? Do we relate to it as a place full of "things" we can use for whatever we want to fulfill and whatever goal we wish to accomplish? Or do we see creation first of all as a sacramental reality, a sacred space where God reveals to us the immense beauty of the Divine?

As long as we only "use" creation, we cannot recognize its sacredness because we are approaching it as if we were its owners. But when we relate to all that surrounds us as created by the same God who created us and as the place where God appears to us and calls us to worship and adoration, then we are able to recognize the sacredness of all God's handiwork.

-- Henri Nouwen

Somthing really important about love

"Narcissus" by Michaelangelo

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It is actually a form of exploitation to want another to be primarily an extension of oneself. Even so, it is tragically common. Merton expresses this truth simply, briefly, skillfully:

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

~Thomas Merton

More sunrises than cyclones

"Sunrise Over Diamond Head" by Jules Tavernier

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I think, despite what I consider to have been an excellent and life-giving early religious formation, that I have also fallen prey at times to the notion that God's will is likely to be something distasteful or painful for me. I well remember when it dawned on me in prayer that the God in whom I truly believe is a God who profoundly desires my well-being. And so I particularly appreciated the final sentence in the following quotation:

It seems to be a general belief that the will of God is to make things distasteful for us, like taking bad-tasting medicine when we are sick, or going to the dentist. Somebody needs to tell us that the sunrise is also God’s will. There is the time of harvest, the harvest which will provide food and clothes for us, without which life could not be sustained on earth. God ordered the seasons—they are his will. In fact, the good things in life far outweigh the bad. There are more sunrises than cyclones.

- Charles L. Allen

Quite a challenge

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Why not make the following experiment, which will not only be thrillingly interesting, but will certainly teach you more in one day than you could learn from books or lectures in many weeks. Here is what you have to do: For one whole day think, speak, and act exactly as you would if you were absolutely convinced of the truth of the statements that God has all power and infinite intelligence, and that His nature is infinite goodness and love. To think in this manner all day will be the most difficult thing, because it is so subtle. To speak in accordance with these truths will be easier, if you are vigilant. To act in accordance with them will be the easiest part, although it may require much in the way of moral courage.

-- Emmet Fox

This would be an intriguing experiment indeed. The hardest part, it seems to me, would be remembering it all day in the first place.

To consider oneself a physician

"Corridor in the Asylum" by Van Gogh

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I listen to many people who express great distress over the behavior and attitudes of other people. If we all thought of ourselves as healers, that would help. It would help even more if we did not expect the world to be other than it is:

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to happiness.

-- Thomas Traherne

Even more on the ordinary

Artist: Antonio Sicurezza

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Just lately it has turned out that a number of the quotations or passages that have caught my eye for this blog have been about cultivating an appreciation for the ordinary. I really haven't gone looking for them. Rather, they seem to have come to me. So here's the latest one:

The eye that sees nobility and beauty in what another would regard as ordinary is the eye of prayer.

— Wendy Beckett in The Gaze of Love

Maybe some of you remember having seen Wendy Beckett on television. She's a solitary nun who has used various works of art as focal points for her contemplation and then shared those observations with others.