Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) states its mission as three-fold: called to creative work, devoted to the church, and present in culture. For this Advent season, CIVA has put together a virtual art exhibition entitled YES! to explore Mary as a model of faith. CIVA's website says the aim of this exhibition is to "visually guide us during the days of Advent as we anticipate the joy of the incarnation, reflecting upon how we are being called to respond in hope to the 'how can this be?' moments in our own lives. Where and how might we say with all our heart: 'May it be done to me according to your word.'"
I hope you'll click here to visit the gallery and take a look at the art that's been gathered and the statements by the artist's about their work. In particular, please visit this page to see an entry by my good friend, Pamela Keske.
Overwhelmed with mercy
Here’s another gem—another of many—from the gospel of Luke (Message version): "God had overwhelmed her with mercy."
May it be so for each of us.
If you don't know how to pray for another person, pray that they be under God's mercy, overwhelmed with God's mercy. Even if you think you know how to pray for another person, pray that God's mercy covers them. If you don't know how to pray for yourself, pray for God's mercy in your life. When you read the word mercy, think love.
Hope flows from the mercy of God.
Living futurally
This past weekend, the latest newsletter from James K. A. Smith, editor of Image journal, popped into my email. The subject line caught my eye: "Hope Takes Practice." Some of you may remember me mentioning, a long while back, that my working title of my (still-long-in-progress) manuscript on hope is Being On The Way: The Practice of Hope. So of course I had to quickly open his email and see what he had to say. Smith writes of "living futurally."
"Living futurally is not living in such a way that my being and doing are subsumed or overwhelmed by waiting; rather, to live futurally means that my very mode of being-in-the-world is infused by anticipation. Instead of being defined by waiting, my active life is shaped by what I hope for. I receive myself from the future. I am what I am called to be. We are what we hope for. And hope, like love, takes practice. Lord knows I need it."
There's much to think about in his words: Our current life is shaped by what we hope for. Anticipation vs waiting. Practice.
The Duty of Delight
I've been reading The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. At 693 pages of small print, this compilation gathers her journal entries from 1934, at the age of 36 years, through 1980, the year of her death at age 83. Based on her work with the poor in New York City for most of her adult life, Dorothy Day is currently being considered for sainthood by the Vatican. In addition to her work with the poor through her community, the Catholic Worker, Day also wrote about 6 books, including The Long Loneliness.
I'm only halfway through this volume of her diaries, but what hits me every time I open the book is how human Day is. Many of her entries are filled with statements of honest complaint, such as how sore her legs and feet are, how tired she is, how frustrating is a person in her life, how upset she is with someone else, how discouraged she is, how little time she has for herself. Yet she kept getting up every day (well nearly every day) and being about her very difficult work. The title of the book comes from her mention, multiple times of a phrase from John Ruskin, "The duty of delight." A footnote in the book said, "this phrase came to serve for Dorothy as a call to mindfulness in the face of drudgery and sorrow."
Here's an entry of Day's from July 9, 1951:
"This diary could start with the chronicling of aches and pains—rheumatism, lumbago, etc., every day. It also could go on to list work done and that would give satisfaction. So many hours at the ms., letter-writing, talking to visitors, odds and ends of housework, wash, caring for the children, so much that does not show, that does not give one a sense of thinks accomplished....
The duty of delight—as Ruskin says.
Today we have a picnic in the woods. The air is sweet with milkweed in bloom. The honeysuckle is past, the sweet clover goes on all summer. ..."
The duty of delight. I like this reminder very much.
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This post was first published in my monthly newsletter, “Dear Reader.” Subscribe here.
A container for awareness
Several months ago I shared something that I learned from an online course by Christine Valters Paintner. A number of you responded then with your versions of an "Elevenie" poem. Thank you! This time I want to pass along something from Paintner's book, The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom. Paintner refers to the process of writing or any kind of creative expression as “a container for your internal awareness.”
Maybe your container for awareness is a journal, or letters you write to a friend, or simply a catalog of thoughts you process as you go about your daily activities. I think that anything that furthers the process of writing, nearly by definition, furthers the ability to be an aware person, and visa versa.
Filling with light
The last couple months I've been reading through the Gospels using The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson. Reading through the eleventh chapter of Luke, here's what caught my attention: "Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills with light."
Maybe as a child, like me, you learned and sang the song, "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine," based on other translations of this verse. The light in me for others. Yes to this; a wonderful thing to be taught early in life. But I appreciate this additional twist that Peterson gives, this emphasis on opening outward, "living wide-eyed in wonder and belief," not in the sense of responsibility but in the joyful sense of becoming filled with light.
Press on
About five years ago my sister gave me this sign for Christmas. I've had it in my office ever since, on the bottom shelf of a tall set of shelves. I can go for periods of time forgetting it's there, but then I see it again, particularly when settling into a certain chair, and remember its message. Its important message.
PRESS ON.
For me, press on means one more word, one more page, one more dare to think I can ever get such-and-so done. For you?