Humanly made beauty

From Jean Vanier:

How easy it is to fall into the illusion of a beautiful world when we have lost trust in our capacity to make of our broken world a place that can become more beautiful.

This beautiful park is humanly made and it gives joy to all who visit it

 Jean Vanier: Becoming Human, Paulist Press, NY, 1998

The preciousness of life

My nephew-in-law used this poem recently to remember the life of a friend who had recently died. It is called The Summer Day by Mary Oliver* and I think it is a  poem about our choice to live life or to let it slip through our fingers. Here is an excerpt:


        I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
        I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
        into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
        how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
        which is what I have been doing all day.
        Tell me, what else should I have done?
        Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
        Tell me, what is it you plan to do
        with your one wild and precious life?

* Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston Mass. 1992

The right place...or not?

Henri Nouwen has some very wise and real things in his books. Here is something that makes a lot of sense to me:

There is not such a thing as the right place or the right job. I can be happy and unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew that I was walking with the Lord, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.*

*Henri Nouwen: Gracias; A Latin American Journal, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1993

The power of love

This is a quote from Mary Jo Leddy's book Radical Gratitude. In the chapter called 'Creative Power' she is writing also about the implications for each of us when we feel powerless.

' For want of a sense of power, the dream of something new and someone different dies. When we don't believe we can make any difference, some small part of God's dream for the world dies.' *

Sadly, I did not take this photo. It is of Jean Vanier and Dolores Szarfinski

* Mary Jo Leddy: Radical Gratitude, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y.,  2002

Your own path

Mary Oliver in this poem entitled, The Journey, reminds us that we each have a path and it belongs to us, not anyone else.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Awe

Beauty is so healing: 

From Abraham Heschel:

Awe is an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves...the beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe...Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality.

Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Wisdom of Heschel, selected by Ruth Marcus Goodhill, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y., 1975.

Hope

For a little while I am just going to 'write' my blog with one of my photos and a quote or a poem that I like. I want to take some time to ponder...

 

 A quote from Henri Nouwen:

When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.

Nouwen, Henri: The Wounded Healer, Doubleday, N.Y., 1972 

Date books and meaning (revisited)

I am once again reading Mary Jo Leddy's very fine book: *Radical Gratitude, and finding so much to ponder, even to startle. Here's one of her thoughts that I found really struck a chord. This quote is from a chapter entitled, The Point of our Being:

Consider date books, their shape and size and color, how they are used and why. Not only are they helpful, they are also a sign of identity and maybe even purpose in life. You can tell a person, so they say, by his or her date book. The fuller it is the more important you must be, the more meaningful your life - or so it would seem. You sense your true insignificance when someone merely pencils you in - and tilts the date book toward you so you can see how lucky your are to have been fitted in between all those other to do's. An empty day in a date book can seem like a day devoid of meaning and purpose. No crisis seems worse than losing your date book, because then you wouldn't know what you were supposed to do or when.

Yet, would you still know why?

I may have used this quote before but I find it so powerful. Do we define the value of our lives by how many things we have to do? By how many people we may see in a day? By the sheer number of items we have to remember? And then those questions are followed by the big question: why?


Why are we rushing around filling up our time with all those 'to do's'? Do we have a sense of what the purpose of it all is? Do we have a sense of purpose at all or are we just filling in the time? Why is it so hard for us to enjoy doing nothing - literally doing nothing? Being silent? being alone? 

Midnight wait at the Pizza Pizza

The Buddhist and Christian sense of being in the present moment is so worth giving some thought to. The present moment is in fact, all we have. What if we come to the end of our lives and find ourselves wondering - did I really LIVE this gift of my life. Was I actually THERE for those whom I love? Was I there for the events of history that are happening everywhere around me?

I have recently realized in my own life how much I miss and I am trying to commit to paying better attention. What a hard task though and yet I sense it is the way to real life.

*Mary Jo Leddy: Radical Gratitude, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. 2002

Easter

I wish you a most blessed Easter:

Holy Thursday / Good Friday

The crucifixion didn't just happen two thousand years ago... it still happens.




 But if we try to care for one another LIFE will thrive for all people...

If God is like Jesus, then we find out that God is not, after all,  distant and uninvolved. God is here hanging with us on our own crosses of terror, loneliness, injustice giving us the wherewith, not just to endure, but in the end, to overcome all that is hurtful and dark in a world meant to be loving and care-full and joyful. 

Whatever our burdens:

 

Holy Week questions

A couple of weeks ago I was sharing about something Elizabeth Johnson was writing about our capacity to ask questions. She said, 
 It shows first of all that we do not know some thing and yet want to know it: we have a desire for this truth...It also means in some significant way that we do have a hunch that something is there to be known...How many questions can we ask in a lifetime? It is without number. No one answer will ultimately satisfy us.

The second thing that Elizabeth identifies is part of this need/ability to ask questions. It is an infinite thirst for truth and an infinite capacity for truth, an infinite dynamism toward truth. For Elizabeth this infinite unsatisfied thirst will continue in our lifetime and only ultimately, be fully satisfied by God who is Truth.

The third thing is that our human nature has an almost constant experience of hoping against hope. In situations of desperate need, human beings nevertheless do not necessarily despair...There is a capacity in us to imagine a better future and to hope against hope for it.

In this season of Lent and particularly in Holy Week, it seems to me that these things really come to the fore in the story of Jesus and in our attitude toward Jesus. For the person who identifies as a Christian, Jesus is the answer to our question and thirst but we are never able to stop seeking deeper and deeper answers as our hope is so often challenged.

For the person who does not identify as religious or is a follower of another way, it seems to me these qualities still hold. We still experience this tremendous drive to ask questions. We still ask where our lives are meant to lead and what our daily joys and hurts and questions are all about. 

Why do we have this thirst to get to the bottom of things or, in other words, to seek the truth? Why do we hope even when there seems no way forward? I see this this as a call to each of us to deepen our search for the meaning of our lives. 
          

Our lives are drawn to 'more'; to longing; to pondering; to storing up...Wm. Wordsworth felt this I think in his poem, The Solitary Reaper. He sees a woman in a field 'reaping and singing by herself' and his final words are;

    Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
    As if her song could have no ending;
    I saw her singing at her work,
    And o'er the sickle bending: - 
    I listened, motionless and and still;
    And, as I mounted up the hill,
    The music in my heart I bore,
    Long after it was heard no more.

More thoughts on Beauty

I wrote last week about questions; the fact that we spend our lives asking questions and seeking answers. One of my 'all my life' questions has been about beauty: why do we even recognize beauty? or why what I see as beautiful you may think quite ordinary? or, what is it that touches us so deeply when we see a beautiful sunset or sunrise or person or work of art or tree or, or, or? More questions!

I was reading this morning some poetry of Wordsworth's, his 'Tintern Abbey'. He is remembering his response to the view and to the stream and woods and beauty that he saw in his younger days and he is expressing something very deep within himself:
         These beauteous forms, 
     Through a long absence , have not been to me
     As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:    
     But oft in lonely rooms, and mid the din
     Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
     In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
     Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
     And passing even into my purer mind,
     With tranquil restoration - feelings too
     Of unremembered pleasure; such perhaps,
     As have no slight or trivial influence
     On that best portion of a good man's life,
     His little, nameless, unremembered, acts   
     Of kindness and of love.  

St Augustine many centuries before put a name to the reality of Beauty and its effect upon us. He was living a hard, self-indulgent life of 'pleasure' and yet something kept nagging at his inner being. I imagine he was a passionate man and so he struggled, he searched and finally put a name to this nagging feeling in his heart. God. And in his "Confessions' ( one of the spiritual classics of Christianity) he told the story of his life and of his search and of the One who was searching for him. One phrase he wrote to God never fails to touch my heart as he speaks at last about finding what he was searching for:

     'Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you!...you called  and cried to me and broke open my deafness: and you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness...'

Sadly, so often we as Christians have not realized that God is Beauty in all its amazing forms and that God calls us, cries out to us and, if we let God, breaks open our hearts to love. That is another thing that Lent is meant to be for us.
  

Our Search

I am re-reading a book by Elizabeth Johnson* who is one of my favourite authors in the context of spiritual enquiry. In the part I want to quote from she starts by asking the question: 'What is human nature?' One of the qualities that she suggests in answer is that we ask questions:
  
This is a universally human thing to do...Asking a question is a characteristic of human beings, as unique to us as a species as is laughing.  Elizabeth then goes on to question what this might reveal about us. She says, ' It shows first of all that we do not know some thing and yet want to know it: we have a desire for this truth...It also means in some significant way that we do have a hunch that something is there to be known...How many questions can we ask in a lifetime? It is without number. No one answer will ultimately satisfy us.

Think of the children you know. Aren't they full of questions? Why? why? why? Though it can be rather annoying at times, it is part of the gift of new life. Certainly, as the child gets older, 'because I say so' is not an answer that will be accepted. So the child's questioning forces us to look more deeply at life and what makes the world the way it is.


Think of yourself. How often each day do you ask questions? Many will be  practical questions like, 'where is this?' or 'what is that' or 'how can I do this?' but sometimes the questions are deeper. 'Why does he or she act that way?' 'Why am I doing this or saying that?' 'What meaning does this all have anyway?' Surely Elizabeth is right that there is no end to our questions and to our questioning.
 

I don't know who took this photo but it says something about the hugeness of the questions we ask.

What is the point of this need to question in our lives? I believe it has something to do with a deep and constant searching for understanding and for meaning. We seek to understand ourselves and the others in our life, we want to know about this world in which we live and the cosmos in which it exists. Ultimately, we want to know what purpose is at work in existence? 

Surely we are seeking in the totality of our questioning that which brings all the pieces of our life together, that which makes us whole, that which is peace and healing. Thomas Merton says it this way: At the center of our being is a point...which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God...*. Can this be the goal of our questions?  
Lent is a special time set aside for the big questions and the big answers. 

*Elizabeth A. Johnson: Consider Jesus, Crossroad Publishing, 1990. 
*Thomas Merton: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. 

The cry of the heart

I was at a church service recently and, because it is Lent, it began with an acknowledgement :

Before God, with the people of God, I confess to my brokenness, to the ways I wound my life, the lives of others, the life of the world.
I always find it good to remind myself that I and all those around me are not yet 'there'.

And in that vein, the other day I was reading something written by the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen and it is, I thought, a really vivid example of how we do or don't care for one another. The excerpt is from his book *Gracias!. Nouwen had been spending time in South America living and working with some very poor people and these were some of his reflections in the early days of his visit:

*How little do we really know the power of physical touch. These boys and girls only wanted one thing: to be touched, hugged, stroked and caressed. It seems that without such a safe place. No human being can be truly free, can truly think boldly and live courageously.

Probably most adults have the same needs but no longer have the innocence and unselfconsciousness to express it. Sometimes I see humanity as a sea of people starving for affection, forgiveness and gentleness. Because they receive so little, if anything of it all, they make pistols, guns, rifles, missiles and similar toys instead, to ask for attention.

Everyone seems to cry: 'Please love me'.

Of course, there are many people who would say, 'but I was loved'. But love is the gift we all thrive on and yet so often we fail to give it or show it or say it. And when we are hurt or feel alone and in some sense abandoned we lash out sometimes either against another or against ourselves.

Can't we try and change this? Won't this, slowly, transform our world?

*Nouwen, Henri: Gracias!: A Latin American Journal, Harper and Row, N.Y. (1983) and Orbis, Maryknoll, N.Y. 1993.

Power and the House of Cards

I'm not sure I want to admit this, but I will. I have, from time to time, been watching 'House of Cards' on Netflix. For those of you who don't have access to it, it is a drama made especially for Netflix about American politics... except I hope that is not quite true because if it is then there is not much hope for America.

The main character is a Congressman who is his party's whip in Congress and is therefore quite 'powerful' but he wants more power. He is also totally unprincipled and ruthless and intends one day, sooner rather than later, to be President. The reason I am somewhat ashamed to admit to watching this is that I find it very gripping to watch. This man, charming, lethal and indeed evil, is amazing to watch as he uses and abuses the people he needs. He knows how to use the power he has - or what passes for power in most governments I suspect.

So, the other day I began to think about power as it is often perceived in our societies. This is generalizing I suppose but I think I may not be far wrong. For instance, we think money confers power: it buys things and people and influence; we think position confers power: it influences big decisions, it also buys people, it has 'importance'. I could go on but you will know yourself some good examples.

I would think that almost all of this kind of power brings with it the ability to manipulate, to regulate, to overwhelm, to use. This implies, of course that there are many other human beings who are then the used, the abused, the manipulated, the powerless, the throw-aways. It is not a very pleasant picture of humanity.

My further thought then took me to Jesus and his relationship with and use of whatever power he may have had. I am for instance, presuming he had the power of a certain personal charisma or he would not have attracted people's attention. But he certainly didn't have position or money, that is made clear all the time. He also did not have the power to stop people putting him to death - or at least he chose not to stop them. He could not - indeed still cannot - force people to believe in the truth he speaks or the message he brought - and still brings. So, by our standards he was one of the really powerless people.

And yet, though his message is often abused or misused (as it was when he was alive in the flesh) he still has a power far beyond that of anyone else who ever lived. It is a power we all appreciate I think, whether we believe the dogmas or doctrines, because it is a power that speaks to our hearts. It is the power of love and forgiveness and compassion and care. We all want to be loved, to be forgiven, to experience compassion and to be cared for. We know its healing power and we know how awful life is when all this is missing. This kind of power is what we are meant to live with one another, not the power that Frank Underwood and many - too many - people try to achieve.

All these people are the powerful powerless.

Learning about this is part of the journey of Lent.

Lenten thoughts

It is also of course, a time to remember that we - pretty much every one of us - act badly,hurtfully and perhaps worse. We can be part of the greed and fear that torture our society and there are no doubt, other things that we do that do not make our world a better place. Lent is a time not only to try to recognise those but to try to work to make them less powerful in our lives. That is why it is good to know in our deepest selves, how dear we are to God because from that love we can move forward.

 

The following are from the Insight magazine of Rosedale United Church in Toronto of several years ago. I have printed them before and have no idea who originally wrote them. They express something of what we can try to do to make ourselves and our world better. It is called, 'Do it anyway' and I reckon we also need to remember that there are two sides to the equation and we can be both!

People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centred. Forgive them anyway.
 
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
 
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

From the bulletin at church today: We know the sting of temptation; the desire to abuse power. hoard your gifts, abandon faith. But you God, you love us as we are. You gave us Jesus to show the way.  
We should trust our good instincts no matter what we think others will say or do. Goodness in our world is built out of very small acts that in the end will triumph.  

The Earth

 I have been away so I have not been able to write anything. However, I have been reading a lovely book that a friend sent - another of Thich Nhat Hanh's books called,* 'Love Letter to the Earth'. If I read this correctly he is trying to remind us that the earth, our planet and we, are one and if we destroy mother earth, then we destroy ourselves. Then there is something from Annie Dillard.

One of TNH's letters is entitled, Heaven On Earth says some beautiful things but here is one I like very much:
    
 

In deep contact with the Earth and wonders of life, I touch my true nature. The exquisite orchid flower, the ray of sunshine, and even my own miraculous body - if they do not belong to the Kingdom of God,

     what does? Contemplating the Earth deeply, whether a floating cloud or a falling leaf...we are carried into eternity.

    
      



The Kingdom of Heaven exists, not outside of us, but within our very 
own hearts. Whether we're able to touch the Kingdom of God or not at every step, depends on our way of looking, our way of listening, ourway of walking. If my mind is calm and peaceful, then the very ground I'm walking on becomes a paradise.

“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same.*Annie Dillard

*Thich Nhat Hanh: Love Letter to the Earth, Parallax Press, P.O. Box 7355, Berkeley, Ca. , 2013
* Annie Dillard: Teaching a Stone to Talk, HarperCollins.

Winter

I think I have spoken before of Thomas Hardy’s beautiful, if dark, poem ‘The Darkling Thrush’. For me, it speaks about the possibility of hope and the power of life in the midst of a long, burdensome winter.

Hardy starts by saying that this moment came to him as he ‘leant upon a coppice gate, when frost was spectre-gray, and winter’s dregs made desolate, the weakening eye of day’. This is an amazing poetic painting of what winter and, by extension, the wintry season of the soul feels like. Then, as he speaks further about the evening drawing in before him, he says that  ‘at once a voice arose among the bleak twigs overhead in full-hearted evensong of joy illimited; an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume, had chosen thus to fling its soul upon the growing gloom’.
                     

Then Hardy goes on to try to make some sense of what this can be about because : ‘So little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things, afar or nigh around, that I could think there trembled through its happy good night air some blessed hope whereof it knew and I was unaware’.

This beautiful poem is an incredibly creative vision of winter and too, the wintry season of our lives. It moved me deeply as I thought of the courage of the little bird in its blast-beruffled plume, to sing and hope when all around seems cold and dark. That the thrush is alive as we ourselves are in the wintry moments of our lives, with a beautiful courageous hope that Spring will come; light will come. The gloomy darkness and cold will pass.

But too, this is an aged thrush. It has lived other winters and so have we. But is it not sometimes true that the more winters we live, the longer they often seem? And though we know that Spring will come it seems the longer in coming. Think of how we feel in February when there comes, almost it seems as a gift to us, a warm and sunny day. Our hearts burst and we think of the Spring not too far away; Spring, the very epitome of life. Spring that sends our spirits soaring. Hardy said earlier in the poem, that he heard the thrush just at a time ‘when every spirit upon the earth seemed fervourless as I’ so the thrush touched his heart just as for us the sun and the warmth awaken in our hearts that spark of hope and joy. 

I think Hardy’s thrush is not just hope but courage. It hangs on as we hang on because we trust that the light will come and life will blossom. But as we grow older we also grow in our awareness that hope will not be found just in waiting for Spring or Summer but in the life that is this very moment. I think this awareness deepens our joy . Life in winter is, in its own way not despair or darkness though there may be that too, but it is a time also to hear the thrush and join in its song.

Our value

I was speaking in my last blog about how we search for the meaning of life often in the wrong places. I was also trying to say something about how our life's value lies not in what we do or have done or have achieved but simply, truly in who we are; that we are. However, our world is such that that is very difficult to accept.

The other day while I was on the bus coming home there were two young women standing near me - I think they may have been University students. I have to admit to being a chronic eavesdropper and so I was listening to their conversation. I wish I had counted the number of times the word 'stress' arose in this conversation over about 10 minutes. And it is a word and a reality it seems, that has become a huge burden in people's lives. Why is this so? What is it that we are reaching for that makes life so stressful? Part of my question would also be: if we liked ourselves and believed ourselves to be of infinite value irrespective of what we achieve would we be more at peace?

I have a number of friends who have taught me a lot about the gift of being somebody without worldly success. These folks are my friends at l'Arche - I have spoken of them before and hope to do so many times again. But my point is that here are people who are not only beautiful in themselves but have far less sense of the stress that comes from being a chronic high-achiever. It isn't that each person hasn't felt the sting of rejection or hasn't suffered deeply because most have, but even so, there is a beautiful gift of just being.

Ken Milne

Here are some of my friends
to whose friendship
I owe more than I can
say.

Melina Boote and Gwenda Dunlop

You will see in these people the amazing gift of human dignity that we all desire. And because we are all getting older there is as well, the acceptance of self that brings a greater peace.

I would like to trust that as our world faces more of the trials that seem to lie ahead we could learn to value each other person as a gift - regardless of rank or wealth or place in life. It would be amazing if we could come to a new, truer sense of what beauty actually is and where peace really comes from. 

Finding our center

I was reading an article in the British magazine *'The Tablet' by Daniel O'Leary - a man whose wisdom I admire very much. He is writing about some of the 'social anxieties' of our day. In particular he tells the story of someone he was taking somewhere in his car. They had traveled six or seven miles when his passenger said 'Please turn back. I have forgotten my mobile'[cell phone]. He goes on to say 'Even though there was no emergency in her life just then, and we would be back in a few hours, the thought of being phoneless was very distressing. Full blown FOMO - the Fear of Missing Out - is one of the most insidious social anxieties of our age'.

I of course, had never heard of FOMO but as I read further it began to make sense. The need frequently (constantly?) to check Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites is so ever-present not just for young people but older as well. Daniel goes on to suggest something about what he feels is happening, ' There are, currently, an increasing amount of reports and warnings about people's deep fear of losing a sense of themselves, of right relations with others...anxious teenagers are constantly monitoring their popularity among their peers, tormented by feelings of inadequacy and doubt'.
             
O'Leary then goes on to speak about our human need to believe there is meaning to our lives, to believe that I am worth something. He suggests we need to become more attuned to that sense, deep in our selves, of being valued, loved. 'However driven, drained or damaged people may be, is there not always some inner belief in a feeble flicker of a finer self, a moral, mystical seed still alive in the depths...?' Daniel goes on to say 'From that awareness emerges their true identity. It is a treasure hidden in the neglected fields of their souls'.

I do think Daniel is touching on something so vital in our modern lives which are lived mostly, without an awareness of the God who loves and cherishes us. We seek to be loved for superficial things (designer things, monetary success, etc) and miss the beauty which is there and is true and is worthy without having to prove anything. 

                                                                           How do we get to know who we are?

Which leads me to another article from *Sojourners that someone sent which is about the recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman a most wonderful actor. The author suggests that a very special gift that Hoffman had as an actor was his ability to reflect back to us, our frail, vulnerable humanity...and our dignity in the midst of it. Here is the link: 

http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/02/04/philip-seymour-hoffmans-invaluable-gift-revealing-our-humanity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29   . 

Modern life presents so many challenges to our humanity; to our ability to accept who we are and how we are. It challenges our yearning to be true to ourselves; to accept our failures (if indeed they are); to love ourselves just because we are, just because we exist and for no other reason.

Both these articles have raised for me, such vital questions about our existence as we move forward in an ever more challenging world. We can help each other first of all, by caring.

 *http://www.djoleary.com    http://www.thetablet.co.uk/
 *http://sojo.net/magazine

Trees and Life

I hope you will forgive me for using my photos again but sometimes when I look at them they suggest things I would like to say. This post is mostly photos of trees of one size or type. The thing about trees is that they are stupendous. They have their own wonderful and unique beauty at any season.

And at each season they reflect in such a fantastically obvious way the amazing processes of nature especially of life and death.

This is Tony the shepherd and the trees at their fullest

Each growing thing, including we humans, starts out with what it takes to grow and multiply and die. In spring the fresh beauty: flower and seed, in summer a coming to maturity - sometimes looking a bit eaten and worn and then of course in fall, the process of death at least of some part of the plant or tree. 

Is this the instinct for survival we all have?

Trees and all growing things also help to keep us alive by providing the air we need - that is why people worry about the cutting of forests especially perhaps the Amazon rainforest which provides our planet with 20% of our oxygen apart from all the other amazing  things that live and grow there. 

This makes me think of community: grow together, help one another survive.

I guess what I am wanting to say then is that the trees around us provide us with beauty, with life, with amazement. So let us love them and care for them, treasure them and protect them.

Is this not breathtaking ?

A quote from that wise man, Thich Nhat Hanh* We can get so caught up in our plans, fears, agitations and dreams that we aren't living in our bodies anymore and we are not in touch with our real mother, the Earth, either. We can't see the miraculous beauty and magnificence that our planet offers to us. We are living more and more in the world of our minds and becoming increasingly alienated from the physical world...Our planet is right here, powerful, generous and supportive at every moment. 

*Thich Nhat Hanh: Love Letter to the Earth, Parallax Press, Berkeley, Calif., 2013

Children

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.” John Betjeman

This week I don't want to write much but I do want to share with you some photos that I have taken of children. These are not children that I know personally but I felt each time I saw them that they represented a sort of 'childrenness' (I don't imagine this is a real word but you will understand what I mean). I guess the reason I wanted to share them is because I often feel as an adult how much of that quality I have lost. It isn't that childhood is all wonder or joy by any means but I do feel feel that what they experience, whether it be joy or fear or uncertainty or curiosity is much less guarded and protected than later in life.

Almost everything is an adventure and a learning.
 















 








 












 









 






The other thing that strikes me in many of these photos is that for most children trust is a totally necessary part of their lives. They must trust the adults in whose care they are placed. 'Life' tends to make us less trusting as we grow older- sometimes a good and necessary thing but sometimes a sad and hardening thing.

Courage

For several reasons I have been thinking about courageous people. One reason is that I have just finished reading a very special book called 'My Mother's Secret' by J.L. Witterick*. Ms Witterick has written a small but very powerful and poignant book about two brave Catholic women who sheltered Jews in their small farmhouse in Poland in WWII. The book is a novel but the two women did exist and have been honoured in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Golda Meir compared the Righteous Among the Nations to drops of love in an ocean of poison, and said that "they rescued not only the lives of Jews, but had saved hope and the faith in the human spirit."     (this is taken from the website of Yad Vashem - the holocaust museum in Israel)

At the end of the book Ms. Witterick quotes from Sydney J. Harris " Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable".  I could see as I read the quote some of the things that hang over me that I did not do and should have done. I would guess that may be true for many of us. 

It is something to think about: the things we did not do and should have, because it isn't too late. We are still alive and we can change, we can choose to live differently. We know that we can't undo the past but we can certainly act in the present which will become the past.

The other reason I have been thinking about courageous people is because of a hymn that someone sang at church recently. The song was a Spiritual called, I think, Deep River and it was explained to us that not only were the slaves singing about their hope of crossing a river to heaven but that underlying it was also their hope to cross the Niagara River to safety in Canada.

There have been many books and articles and programs in the last few decades about slavery. I never ever fail to be almost overwhelmed by the strength of faith and courage that so many people had in the face of lives of horror and apparent hopelessness. How did they manage to cling to the hope that they were in fact important in the eyes of God and that somehow, life here or 'in heaven' would make up for it. I am so in awe of such courage. 
   

Ordinary people giving us all the hope that we too can be people of courage in the face of darkness, are such a gift. I am so grateful.

A new year's resolution?

So, we are starting a new year. And it has been a very cold beginning here in Toronto and in much of eastern North America. Thinking about this, I found my mind turning to what, if anything, the beginning of a new year means to the men and women who live on our streets - and there are many; or to the families who are living in cold housing. Does this seem a grim way to think when for so many of us it is the time when we look forward in hope, believing in the possibility of good things? 

Maybe I am thinking a bit more about this right now because recently I heard once again, one of the most powerful passages in the Christian gospel. This passage, found in Matthew 25 has Jesus saying to some people:  'I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me'. Almost every time I read these verses with their opposite verses which say things like 'I was hungry and you gave me no food'..have always made me feel badly. I feel badly I think because I understand the truth and the life-giving power of what is being said and I am very aware of my own many failings. 
   

I believe this passage outlines the key to human happiness. We are indeed meant to take care of one another. If I take care of you and you take care of me then we are both well and happy. If my city and my country also live by these words, then our world will be well on the journey to the wholeness that we are called to. It isn't of course a free journey or an easy one, but I am absolutely certain it 'works'.

The other thing that is being said here is that for those of us who are Christian - and I am pretty sure each other faith has had its own way of saying the same thing - Jesus is saying basically - this is what it means to be a follower of mine and when you do these things to and for one another, you are in fact, doing it to me. I believe that Jesus is also saying (though not in words) that this is more important than remembering dogma or rules. It is, he says, living faith.
   

I don't explicitly make New Year's resolutions but I do hope that this year to come will bring me and all of us closer to the realization of this costly gift of love.
 

Light and Dark

This Sunday is for many Christians the Feast of the Epiphany. The scripture that is read from the gospel is mostly about the magi/kings/wise men that came in search of the child Jesus. So, it is about following a light and about a journey. 

Another scripture reading comes from the book of the prophet Isaiah. It begins: 'Arise, shine out for your light has come, the glory of God is rising on you, though night still covers the earth and darkness the peoples'. That is very mixed sign isn't it? Light and darkness. The theme is carried forward in the gospel of Matthew where we see the men following a bright star but on the journey they are also faced with the dark ambition and fear of the rulers of the land. It is a journey then towards the light but which includes more than one confrontation with the dark.

In the story they reach the light most certainly, but it requires great perseverance and wisdom as they go. Theirs is a long and tiring journey during which they are not sure what they will find. They only know they must go on. 

All this made me think of life's journey for us all. Our days, our months, our years are surely that mixture of seeking light: what is good, what is true, what is loving and at the same time, constantly being confronted by the dark within ourselves and others. But we do, mostly, go on don't we? We are drawn towards something? Someone? or is it just well-being?  peace?  Light? or are those all the same?
                 

What is it that draws you forward? What is it that gives your life meaning? 

I wanted to share with you a TED talk I watched recently which isn't so far off the track of this meditation:http://www.ted.com/talks/maysoon_zayid_i_got_99_problems_palsy_is_just_one.html