Spring, morphing into Summer . . . a time for reflecting . . .
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Potential
Sometimes you have all the equipment - but you really can't think of anything to say. Other times, the reverse is true.
Contemplative
St. Johns Tomb, Ephesus
I have a friend who is 'off the scale' when they do tests about people being active, as opposed to those who, I suppose like me, are more contemplative. Not that my friend never has deep thoughts (far from it) - and actually, honestly, I do manage to get some things done.
Leanne Payne talks about people who seem always to be 'pregnant with book' - I think meaning that they have more creative ideas than that they seem to actually be able to bring to birth - that remain often half-developed, unformed, not quite complete in the words, ideas, chapters - the whole blessed book - actually getting to be written down, finished.
Leanne Payne talks about people who seem always to be 'pregnant with book' - I think meaning that they have more creative ideas than that they seem to actually be able to bring to birth - that remain often half-developed, unformed, not quite complete in the words, ideas, chapters - the whole blessed book - actually getting to be written down, finished.
It is, perhaps, the 'feminine' aspects of our lives, our beings, that are creative in this way, while it takes the more 'masculine' to actually get the book finished - polished, taken to the editor, the publisher, the binder - till it's actually really done.
In the above photo, taken by another friend last November in Turkey, I am standing at the tomb of St. John the Evangelist - the intimate of Jesus, his dear, close friend. I think he was very contemplative. I have a collegue at work - active, impulsive, wonderfully impetuous. He gets things done. He doesn't think about things half as long as I do; he just does it. I envy him sometimes.
While in Ephesus I was moved to share some words I'd memorized from 'the Book we all love' - with those of our tour, visiting from John's Holy Spirited vision, the letter addressed to the 7 Churches of the Revelation:
How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us
that we should be called the children of Godand that is what we are.
The 'world' does not know us because it did not know Him.
Dear friends, now we are the children of God
and it does not ye appear what we shall be . . .
but we know, that when He shall appear,
we shall be like Him
for we shall see Him as He is.
Everyone who has this hope in him (or her)
keeps himself pure.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Impressed Yet ?
Smitten, I'm sure . . .How can two walk (er, swim) together unless they are agreed ?
No Way !!
Sometimes it's true - 'You can't get there from here !' - not yet anyway. But who says it's necessarily the end, or not possible, ever?
What seems impossible in one Season has a way of becoming possible in the next.
At least, I hope so . . .
Wonder
In her book, 'Small Wonder,' Barbara Kingsolver writes -
The closest my heart has come to breaking lately was on the day my little girl arrived home from school and ran to me, her face tense with expectation, asking, "Are they still having that war in Afghanistan?"
I suppose there are a lot of things that may break our heart. The passing of a loved one, the absence of a friend, the hopes and fears that turn into dashed dreams and the reality finally happening: something we had greatly feared actually happens.
"As if," she continues, "the world were such a place that in one afternoon. while kindergartners were working hard to master the letter I, it would decide to lay down its arms..."
Said her daughter: "If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I'd never been born."
Kingsolver writes that she "sat on the floor and held her tightly to keep my own spirit from draining through the soles of my feet . . ."
And she continues: "It used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself to be perfectly happy. I have wondered lately if that feeling will ever come back. It's a worthy thing to wonder, but maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe . . . the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, 'twixt two extremes of passion - joy and grief,' as Shakespeare put it."
One tries to keep balanced, or get balanced, tries to keep keeping on, to make sense when there's little sense - only mystery and more mystery, beyond any possible explanation; and when there is mostly silence when one tries to pray, or when one hopes a voice may respond to one's attempts at meaningful - even simple, basic conversation.
The closest my heart has come to breaking lately was on the day my little girl arrived home from school and ran to me, her face tense with expectation, asking, "Are they still having that war in Afghanistan?"
I suppose there are a lot of things that may break our heart. The passing of a loved one, the absence of a friend, the hopes and fears that turn into dashed dreams and the reality finally happening: something we had greatly feared actually happens.
"As if," she continues, "the world were such a place that in one afternoon. while kindergartners were working hard to master the letter I, it would decide to lay down its arms..."
Said her daughter: "If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I'd never been born."
Kingsolver writes that she "sat on the floor and held her tightly to keep my own spirit from draining through the soles of my feet . . ."
And she continues: "It used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself to be perfectly happy. I have wondered lately if that feeling will ever come back. It's a worthy thing to wonder, but maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe . . . the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, 'twixt two extremes of passion - joy and grief,' as Shakespeare put it."
One tries to keep balanced, or get balanced, tries to keep keeping on, to make sense when there's little sense - only mystery and more mystery, beyond any possible explanation; and when there is mostly silence when one tries to pray, or when one hopes a voice may respond to one's attempts at meaningful - even simple, basic conversation.
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