“Thou takest the pen – and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute – and the notes shimmer.
Thou takest the brush – and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond where Thou art.
How, then, can I hold anything back from Thee.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
_
A friend posted this on Facebook over the weekend. With today being election day here in the U.S., I wanted to share it on this page.
From the Book of Common Prayer:
Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the
ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another
and serve the common good.
Silence
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
~~~
[Photo: a cairn I came across this past weekend on a day away]
A week ago today, my best childhood friend died suddenly. There we are in the picture above, sitting on a deck at our first summer camp–the two girls intentionally wearing identical bathing suits. She moved next door to me in the middle of grade school, and we were nearly inseparable after that: walking to school together, having sleepovers, attending the same church, jumping on our neighbor's trampoline, making clothes for our Barbie dolls and later for ourselves, learning to knit, writing and putting on plays, riding our bikes to the library and coming home with the baskets full of books, and so many other things. When my family later moved to Florida in the summer between eighth and ninth grade, we wrote letters nearly daily that first year–actual letters, on paper, by hand, sent with stamps. She came to visit, sometimes for weeks at a time. We were in each other's weddings.
But then adult life set in with work and families and budgets and we rarely saw each other, the last time about 12 years ago. There have been Christmas cards, the occasional but rare email, and Facebook. A couple months ago, though, she and I had a lengthy and meaningful private FB message conversation and as quickly as those messages could be sent, the friendship–always there but buried by time and distance and the changes that add up over time–flared and burned bright. Her funeral was yesterday, far from me, and I think of that conversation, which took place with her death no where in sight, as a gift.
As you've been reading this, if an old friend has popped into your mind, and he or she is still living, think about reaching out to them today and tell them they mean something to you. Tell them they had a share in shaping who you are for the good. Tell them they brought you joy.
~~~
[Picture: Can you spot the two girls with matching bathing suits? From a brochure for the summer camp we went to, Covenant Pines.]
This poem was in a recent issue of Critique and it caught my attention. I particularly found myself thinking about the line, "We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes...." Perhaps your eye will land and stay on a different line.
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity;
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Amen.
–Sir Francis Drake (attributed to)
~~~
[Photo: taken of a fall scene]
"We do not always see that we should be moving about our days and lives and places with awe and reverence and wonder, with the same soft steps with which we enter the room of a sleeping child or the mysterious silence of a cathedral. There is no ground that is not holy ground. All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples."
–Robert Benson, from Between the Dreaming and the Coming True
~~~
[Photo: taken of an apple tree heavy with fruit, last weekend at Sweetland Orchard]
Nearly 7 years ago I bought the icon known as The Holy Trinity, or The Trinity, by Andrei Rublev, brought it home, and hung it above my desk where I could see it every day. Honestly though, over time, I have tended to forget to look at it even though it's right in front of me as I work. After all, there are papers to read and chapters to write and slides to edit. This morning I'm re-reminding myself to look at it, to think about it. So in that spirit, I'm sharing the blog post I wrote just days after I purchased it in February 2010.
~
Last weekend I went with a friend to a bookstore in St. Paul that was closing. A bookstore closing is always a sad affair, yet the owner seemed in good spirits and prices were slashed so joy was still to be had. I bought a few books and an icon wall hanging. Since hearing Dr. Roy Robson from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia speak at The Museum of Russian Art a couple years ago, I've had my eye out for a copy of the Holy Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev, which reflects the story of Abraham's hospitality from Genesis 18. Robson showed a slide of this icon, with three figures seated at a round table. Two of the three figures were robed in brilliant blue. It was so beautiful I could hardly stop looking. The figures represent the Trinity, as its name suggests, and they are seated at the nine, twelve, and three o'clock positions. Left open is the 6 o'clock position. As Robson said, it invites you to "contemplate sitting at the table with the Trinity." I like that sense of invitation and so for that reason I'll hang it near my work space where I can see it.
I want it where I can see it for another reason as well, particularly while I write. In Mind of the Maker, written in 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers examines in great detail the analogic association between the Divine Creator and the human creative process through the doctrine of the Trinity. The ideal literary artist composes his or her works in the image of the three-fold mind comprised of the co-equal and co-substantial Idea, Energy, and Power.
The Idea—or the Father—is the “Book-as-Thought” in the writer’s mind irrespective of any words actually written. The thought precedes the actual activity or material production of the work, but continues on eternally after the work is written and read. The work “is known to the writer as …a complete and timeless whole."
The Energy—or the Son—which “brings about an expression in temporal form of the eternal and immutable Idea,” is the “Book-as-Written." It is the creation that the writer or a reader can witness either as the material form of the work or as the passion and toil of the writer.
The Power—or the Spirit—emerges from the Idea and the Energy. This is the “Book-as-Read” and is the “means by which the [Energy] is communicated to other readers and which produces a corresponding response in them.”
To the writer, the Idea, the Energy, and the Power “are equally and eternally present in his own act of creation…they exist in—they are—thecreative mind itself." To ignore this co-equal and co-substantial pattern of the ideal creative mind, Sayers argued, is to invite failure to a literary work.
Much to think about and be reminded of for 50% off.
~~~
Reading from Joel, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.” I love that “and afterward.” What’s to come, after whatever has been endured is past: a statement of hope. As to a child, now we’ll let the nurse give you your shot, but afterward, on the way home, we’ll stop for ice cream. Or now, dear child, dear husband, dear friend, dear self, all you can do is hunker down and do what you need to do to live, to get through the day, the month, but afterward, when the pressure lifts, and it always does eventually, you will breathe again, you will daydream, you will have a vision of what life can and will be.
~~~
[Photo: taken of a drawing on the outside wall of a nearby building.]
I mentioned reading Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer in my newsletter earlier this month and told readers to watch for something more from it the next week here on my blog. Well, life happened. After 4 weeks of nothing at all on this blog, here finally is more from the book.
My Bright Abyss is one of those rare books that can be as little or as much as you want it to be. You can read it through and take it as the journey to and of faith for Wiman, former Poetry editor and now on faculty at Yale University. Or you can savor it in smaller bites. Reading it slowly and stopping–or reading it straight through then going back–to consider the deeper meaning or import of certain sections on your life.
Here are a few of the many sections worthy of further thought. First this:
"Faith is not some half-remembered country into which you come like a long-exiled king, dispensing the old wisdom, casting out the radical, insurrectionist, aspects of yourself by which you'd been betrayed. No. Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life–which means that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change."
And...
"Be careful. Be certain that your expressions of regret about your inability to rest in God do not have a tinge of self-satisfaction, even self-exaltation to them, that your complaints about your anxieties are not merely a manifestation of your dependence on them. There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world."
And this...
"It is a strange thing how sometimes merely to talk honestly of God, even if it is only to articulate our feelings of separation and confusion, can bring peace to our spirits. You thought you were unhappy because this or that was put off in your relationship, this or that was wrong in your job, but the reality is that your sadness stemmed from your aversion to, your stalwart avoidance of, God. The other problems may very well be true, and you will have to address them, but what you feel when releasing yourself to speak of the deepest needs of your spirit is the fact that no other needs could be spoken of outside of that context. You cannot work on the structure of your life if the ground of your being is unsure."
~~~
[Photo: taken of a cedar tree earlier this summer.]