Tag Archives: Spiritual formation

Sunsets and Sonnet 73

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Today is my birthday, and I almost missed one of my gifts!  While I was thinking about how many sunsets and sunrises I have been gifted in 73 years, I almost failed to go outside and witness the blaze of glory that is today’s sunset.  We do that, don’t we?  We busy ourselves with good thoughts and activity and miss the glory of what is happening right this minute.  I am thankful for every day and every blessing I have been given.  But I want to practice being present in the moment that will pass forever if  I don’t (in Mary Oliver’s words) pay attention, be astonished and tell about it.  Today’s sunset will be remembered, but the gift it has given me is more than its beauty.  Help me, Lord, to celebrate the now.031

That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)   William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
....
 This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Morning Meditation

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 dawn casts veiled promise
through this day’s window
I come to the quiet
in shifting shadows of morning light
inhaling peace
exhaling all that I need to release
grace settles like a shawl around my shoulders
dance of stillness, silent song
enough

Prayer

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Grace

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life

~ attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

The Old Oak Tree

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One of my favorite places to be still is here, beneath a very old oak tree in our church prayer garden. Its branches spread out over a trickling stream and bubbling fountain and a small labyrinth. In dry times, like our present drought, there is crusty brown growth along its mighty branches. But when we are blessed with rainfall, this turns to vibrant green. It is Resurrection Fern.

At all times I soak up the green and growing refreshment of this place. But it is in the times when I feel drought in my spirit that I come here to be still and know God, and to refill and refuel – the greening of my heart, Eastering.

Perspectives and Paths

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“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday”. ~John Burrough

 

vine greens and reaches

early light dawns and dapples

new  morning new mercy

 

Means of Grace

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Morning Glory opens

 grace glows in star gift

  wrapped in blue tissue

“It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of ‘an inward and spiritual grace’.”

                                                        ~ A. Barrett Brown

Photo by Madelyn Claire Parker, age 7

Awareness

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“Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~ James Thurber

fish flashing in lavender shadow

lily lifting  purple wonder

prayers unfurling

hope

Questions and Answers

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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.”

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roots reaching past drought

pushing up through rocky path

surviving In sun or shadow,

blooming with perennial grace

alive

map 6-14-2013

Alive Again

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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?

Centering

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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