Tag Archives: Spiritual formation

Pay Attention

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“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”   ~  Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”

Joe and I attended the same highschool in Jacksonville, Texas . Over fifty years later, we talk about how grateful we continue to be for good teachers who taught us well, expected much, and by their example and instruction gave us more than knowing how to construct sentences, write paragraphs, solve equations, and appreciate art,  history,  geography, music and sports.  Lois Boles, Frances Childress, James Everett, Mr. Mosely, Signora Mullinix,  Jerry Robinson, Bill Ingram spring to mind quickly.  But a spry lady we called Miss Kate (Kate Stadler) who taught typing, used an expression so often in her classes that we still use it.   “Pay Attention!”  Miss Kate demanded attention to detail with expected results in skill and accuracy.  I am pretty sure she didn’t intend application beyond keyboard skills or think that as years went on, paying attention would be a skill that would become something to live by.  I am certain that I did not understand the phrase as more than a requirement until much later.  In its simplicity, there lies a risk of underrating its scope and impact. But it has become a compelling imperative, one that helps me see the intersection of faith and creation and art. No surprise, my favorite Mary Oliver quotation expresses this well.

“Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention…

Be astonished…

Tell about it!”              ~  Mary Oliver, “Sometimes”

Secret Garden

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A book which is now considered  a classic children’s book of the twentieth century, Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was published as a novel in 1911.   Its story, full of loss and gain, tragedy and triumph develops as children and a garden grow and change.  There have been a number of productions produced for movies and television which bear the name and tell the story. But the movie version created in 1949 is the one which lives in my memory.  I was 9 years old, and not allowed to see many films.  The scene which so impressed me was one of sudden change. Almost the entire film is in stark black and white. The scene in which the door to the garden is opened to reveal the beauty of the garden in vivid Technicolor created a breathtaking moment.  Little girls weren’t the only ones to gasp.

It is only these many years later that I am understanding that I was far more than entertained by this. In this story, it is only as Mary begins to think of others rather than herself that she became more than a spectator of the garden.  As her perception as well as her vision changed,  the garden became more beautiful.

This photo is a sign in our garden that has become intertwined in a yellow climbing rose.  It reminds me of that other Mary, and of the miracles created when I see beyond myself.

“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

Lichen

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Lichens are intriguing. Often the first form of life to colonise a new area of rock, they are commonly seen and also commonly overlooked. They frequent older buildings, stone walls, and most perennial plants, particularly trees. Lichens are important because they often occupy niches that, at least sometime during the season, are so dry, or hot, or sterile, that nothing else will grow there.

In the hot and dry times in my life that seem unproductive, it may be that Grace is growing a bit of lichen – some small ruffled newness that needs no notice but still proclaims life and growth.

Yes

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It is easy to fall prey to complaining these days when the temperature registers 105 and most people, animals, and plants slow their pace and wilt.  I remind myself that the same blistering sun that sears my skin and makes getting into my truck seem like opening an oven door also flavors my herbs and ripens the figs on our tree. Lord, help me be alert to the yes in every day.

i thank You God for most this 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
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any–lifted from the no of all nothing–human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

— from E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, by e. e. cummings

Sabbath Song and Shade

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Image of Redbud tree leaves in prayer garden of First Baptist Church, Richmond, Texas. 

The clearing rests in song and shade.

It is a creature made

By old light held in soil and leaf,

By human joy and grief,

By human work,

Fidelity of sight and stroke,

By rain, by water on

The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O Dust, arise!

~Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem VII (1982)

Beautiful?

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When I was making some purchases at our favorite garden supply shop, I saw a wall decoration that simply had the words “just as the caterpillar thought its world had ended…it became a butterfly.”  For most of us, it is so much easier to admire the beauty in the floating and flitting of  irridescent butterfly wings than the bulges of voracious caterpillars or the lump on a twig that is a chrysalis.  Yet beauty and wonder are there if we see more than a worm.  Maddie brought in tiny larvae she found in the garden.  We found a glass jar, supplied extra host plants for food, and watched them grow.  Jordann, although a bit skeptical at first, became intrigued as she watched the caterpillars eat and eat and eat.

In her book My Grandfather’s Blessings, cancer physician and master storyteller Rachel Naomi Remen quotes Proust by saying that the voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.  She says that she sometimes suggests to depressed patients that they review the events of their day for fifteen minutes in the evening by asking three questions and writing the answers in a journal.  1.  What surprised me today?  2.  What moved me or touched me today?  3.  What inspired me today?  In this chapter, which is titled “Finding New Eyes”, she tells of one patient who told her he answered the questions with “Nothing, nothing, and nothing” in the beginning, but that gradually he realized he was building a capacity he had never used, so that he began to see things differently.  Maddie and Jordann have a capacity for seeing that I hope they never loose.

“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know.  Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is abut seeing familiar things in new ways…We can see life with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition…But perhaps it is only by those…who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served.”

~  Rachel Naomi Remen

Ash Wednesday

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In a journal from three years ago, I found thoughts about Ash Wednesday that are much the same I would write today.  “Lent, Day 1.  We are adding readings from Psalms to the few minutes we have before Joe leaves for work in the mornings.  In all my Protestant years growing up, Lent was little recognized most of the time.  I have grown in need and appreciation of these set apart days approaching Easter and in all my observation of the liturgical year.  I crave the structure, need the framework for deepening spiritual sensitivity and awareness.  So begins arranging days and heart and home in new awareness of Eastering.”

Crosses of ashes,

sign of beginning journey,

mark Lenten promise.

Beginnings

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At the beginning of a new year, I am not so much making resolutions as I am considering how I spent myself and a year’s worth of time in the year just past.  That leads to choices about spending time and personal resource in the present.  What do I need to keep or change in order for me to honor God, delight in His presence, and show my love to others in ever growing ways? 

 As I mulled these thoughts while packing away Christmas lights and garland, clearing table tops and starting the cleaning tasks which accompany taking down decorations, I saw the disappointing results of a gardening project I began around Thanksgiving.  Every year, I enjoy placing Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs into containers with stones and water.  They put down roots, send up green shoots, and always delight us with fragrant white blooms before Christmas.  Most of the bulbs offered beginning shoots of green. Some grew a few inches.  But none of them bloomed by Christmas, and in general failed to thrive.  Now, only one bulb appears to have the small swelling at the base of its leaves that tells me a flower may eventually unfurl.  I decided to remove the bulbs.  That is when I discovered that they never grew any roots.  Only the ones with more than an inch or two of leaf had grown the plump white roots which could reach down into the water for necessary nutrients. Beginning was all they did; then lacking roots and healthy growth they began to decay.

 That was an epiphany moment for me.  No matter how full I am of possibility and fresh starts, I can never grow if I am not rooted and absorbing the nourishment necessary to flourish. “Feeding myself” is never on a daily to do list.  But I realize I have little to offer others if I don’t choose healthy foods and activity for my body as well as take the time to begin my days with quiet time which feeds and grows my soul.  I love listening to a John Michael Talbot album called “Come to the Quiet” each morning.  As I listen and worship, I am fed.  My roots spread and deepen. I stretch and grow.  I can bloom!

Spanish Moss

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During my morning walks, I see long veils of Spanish Moss draped on the branches of live oaks and bald cypress, but it is not a moss at all. It does not actively harm the trees, but its webs block out light which the trees need, and trees that are heavily adorned with it topple more easily in hurricane force winds. I think of what I allow to occupy my life that “really doesn’t hurt anything” but which causes me loss of growth and makes me more vulnerable to toppling.