Category Archives: Spiritual formation

Questions and Answers

Posted on by
4

We are hearing so many stories of tragedy and trauma, of danger and despair.  Some of the horror is magnified by the immediacy with which we now receive the news.  Social media and news reporting brings word and image straight into our homes and hearts from the real-time scene.  “Breaking news” threatens to break us. For some of us, the pain is present in our immediate and extended families  Is there anything we can reply to disillusionment and despair? To the erosion of hope?  To fear?  What does the intersection of faith and art (which this blog addresses) offer in response to this reality? How is our energy best spent in helping each other?

Howard Thurman offers this:  “The mass attack of disillusionment and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great deception…To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind – this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”

100_1612

roots reaching past drought

pushing up through rocky path

surviving In sun or shadow,

blooming with perennial grace

alive

map 6-14-2013

A Close Look

Posted on by
4

015

One of my gifts for Mothers Day was a bunch of tulips.  They were a delightful surprise when I found them on my front porch. I took them out of their box, trimmed their stems and put them into water, fragile, tight buds, petals held together like small pastel hugs, no clue of their real color. By the next morning, buds began to turn to blooms and the next few days were a wonder of  unfolding deep magenta, peach, orange and apricot plus buttery yellows punctuated with a few creamy white blossoms.  My tulips were lovely and I enjoyed them every day.  But it was only as they truly opened and I came close to marvel at the art inside their cups that I saw all the colors, all the intricate markings of their center.  I admired them from a distance, but they took my breath away when I looked more carefully.

I learn to “look again” and practice wonder.

“The patterns of our lives reveal us.  Our habits measure us.”

011Thank you, Jeremy.

Alive Again

Posted on by
2

024The patch of wood fern under our Meyer lemon tree never completely dies back in a mild winter like last year’s season.  Even so, brown scraggly branches and twiggy stems look untidy and we need to cut it down.  That part of the garden looks bald and bereft for awhile, but without fail, fresh fronds begin to push their way up and begin unfurling.  I sometimes wish I could do time lapse photography to capture this annual rebirth.  Suddenly, what seemed hopelessly ugly last week blooms green!

 

Alive Again

pushing through darkness, reaching for light

fronds a dozen shades of green

unroll like little scrolls

what does it feel like to leaf out?

Unencumbered

Posted on by
5

020

Pruning is one of my most difficult tasks, inside and out. But just look how the roses can bloom when rid of all their excess branches and runners!

 Unencumbered

“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”

~Wendell Berry

I must let go of things that weigh me down

I must free myself of cumber

I must pare down, lighten my load

I must go through with this relinquishment.

I must rid myself of too much, too many.

I am called to marvel at quotidian mysteries

to be attentive and astonished

to cultivate inner and outer space

to create time for what matters most

to simplify

Centering

Posted on by
6

MaddieTeaParty 077

Receive each day as 
a resurrection from death, 
as a new enjoyment of life.
[William Law]

I do not skip down a Lenten path singing

my steps are slow, measured

intentional

a labyrinth path reminding

each day

take one step, then another

on toward center

and Song

Peace

Posted on by
2

Pewter skies and gentle rains yesterday gathered into thunder clouds and stormy weather today, so I stay inside, grateful for the morning last week when I took my camera into the morning light to receive the gifts of beauty offered by this climbing Noisette rose, whose name is Crepuscule. I don’t think the name is a lovely one, sounding harsh to my ears, but the word means twilight, that time of day just after sunset, and the flowers hold the memory of sunset in its unfurling petals. The loosely double blooms open nearly orange, fading to a rich apricot, peach, and yellow. The sprawling canes have light green leaves with rosy new growth. This rose has few thorns so reaches for me only with fragrance when I brush past it as I walk through the arbor, bringing me the “peace of wild things.”

IMG_0177

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~ Wendell Berry

Reach

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_0147

The beginning of a new year is a time to think about what is important, what needs to be done, who I am called to be.  I like to ponder and come to those thoughts over a period of time, rather than my making resolutions on January 1.  A good way for me to do that is to choose a word for focus.This year I choose the word Reach. LIke these tomato seedlings  in my kitchen, I start where I am, break open my comfort zone, shed what is unnecessary for growth, and celebrate new opportunity in the present – all the while reaching toward the Light.

Recalibrating, relinquishing

Embracing this season of enough

Attentive and astonished

Called to this journey

Holy mystery

Happening Still

Posted on by
3

IMG_0044

“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.”  ~ Frederick Buechner,  Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Maddie, SkyeJune11,12 002

Wonder

Posted on by
Reply
ScannedImage035
Light has come.
Let us pay attention
Let us be astonished
So that we do not starve for want for wonder
‎”THE world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” ~G.K. Chesterton

Seeing a Star

Posted on by
2

100_1854Of the many symbols which decorate our home at Christmastime, my favorite may be the star.  Our big tree is lit with tiny twinkle lights reminding us of stars, and is topped with a star.  A crystal star holds a candle on the kitchen table.  My grandchildren draw stars. Joe loves the Christmas Song  “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.”  I love the deep mystery of the great star which led wise men to search for a baby.  How sweet, then, in this simple and sacred ordinary evening,  to slice an apple to float in the cider on my stove and find this star, marking seed and promise of fruit..

Star giver,

Light shiner

Promise keeper…

Come.

Quicken.

Emmanuel.