Pondering: Contemplation

Photo by Jon Sullivan

from Too Deep for Words: Rediscovering Lectio Divina
by Thelma Hall

Contemplation is a strange new land, where everything natural to us seems to be turned upside down--where we learn a new language (silence), a new way of being (not to do but simply to be), where our thoughts and concepts, our imagination, senses and feelings are abandoned for faith in what is unseen and unfelt, where God's seeming absence (to our senses) is his presence, and his silence (to our ordinary perception) is his speech. It is entering the unknown, letting go of everything familiar we would cling to for security, and discovering that in being "wretchedly and pitiably poor, and blind and naked too" (Revelations 3:17) (which grace reveals to us and which we fear to acknowledge--much less accept--in ourselves) lies the potential for all our hope and joy, because to know our true selves is to know we are loved by God beyond all measure.

Pondering: Good Intentions

Photo by Tom Woodward

from Disciplinary Treatises: (4) The Communion of the Body by Scott Cairns included in At the Still Point by Sarah Arthur

...Like us all, the saved
need saving mostly from themselves, and so
they make progress, if at all, by dying

to what they can, acquiescing to this
new pressure, new wind, new breath that would fill
them with something better than their own

good intentions...

Pondering: Prayer

Photo by Guillaume Paumier, CC_BY.

from Divina Commedia (I) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

     Far off the noises of the world retreat;
     The loud vociferations of the street
     Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
     And leave my burden at this minister gate,
     Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
     To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
     While the eternal ages was and wait.

Pondering: Appearances

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

from At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

"Ah, but there's another thing, Diamond: what if I should look ugly without being bad--look ugly myself because I am making ugly things beautiful? What then?"
...

"If you see me with my face all black, don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like a bat's, as big as the whole sky, don't be frightened. If you hear me raging ten times worse than Mrs. Bill, the blacksmith's wife--even if you see me looking in at people's windows like Mrs. Eve Dropper, the gardener's wife--you must believe that I am doing my work. Nay, Diamond if I change into a serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for my hand will never change in yours if you keep a good hold. If you keep a hold, you will know who I am all the time, even when you look at me and can't see me the least like the North Wind. I may look something very awful. Do you understand?"

Pondering: Catching Quiet

Photo by Ander Burdain at Unsplash.com

from "Passing Ordinary Time"
by Enuma Okoro

It is a hard art to learn,
catching quiet
by palms raised
cupped in
air shifting location
here and there like
trying to guess the pattern of falling leaves,
and hoping to feel the soft descent of moments
when silence slips
between sounds.

Pondering: Feelings

The 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross reminds us that, as wonderful and consoling as feelings of God's presence might be, they are not God. All consolations and spiritual gifts, he reminds us, are finite and as such are infinitely less than God, who is infinite. We are not to reject any consolations that may come along. But neither are we to cling to whatever consolations or other spiritual gifts we may experience. For God made our hearts in such a way that only God will do.

From Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God by James Finley

Pondering: Rooms

“There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emtional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”
       ― Rumer Godden

Pondering: Goblins and Princesses

“It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in at his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.”
       ― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

“I write, not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.” 

       ― George MacDonald

“...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.”
      ― George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

Pondering: Reach

Today is the first Thursday of the month and time for my Spiritual Journey Thursday post. Today we are focusing on Donna's One Little Word for the year, REACH. You can enjoy other perspectives on reaching by stopping in at Donna's website, Mainely Write.

I posted a piece of a poem a few weeks ago that has spoken so deeply to me. As I think of this idea of reaching, I keep coming back to it again and again. You can read the first stanza here and the full poem here.

This ache for eternal beauty draws us forward, keeps us reaching beyond what we can see, beckons us from our present circumstances to a deeper understanding of our source of beauty, of life, of eternity. 

It reminds me of something Paul said in his letter the the church a Phillipi. 

"I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward..."

from Soul’s Eternal Rapture
by St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395)
translated by Scott Cairns in Endless Life: Poems of the Mystics
And thus, at every point
         she learns that each
                new splendor is to be
eclipsed by what is to come--
         the ever-exceeding
                Beautiful that draws, and calls
and leads the beloved
          to a beauty of her own.
                  

Pondering: Interruptions

“The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.”

             C.S. Lewis

Pondering: Incomprehensible

“People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.”
                 ― Richard Rohr

Pondering: Happiness

“she had long accepted the fact that happiness is like swallows in Spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it. When you expect to be happy you are not, when you don't expect to be happy there's suddenly Easter in your soul, though it be midwinter.”
               ― Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch

Pondering: Eternal Beauty

Soul’s Eternal Rapture
by St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395)

translated by Scott Cairns in Endless Life: Poems of the Mystics

The soul that looks
            finally to God, conceives
                        a new, mouth-watering

desire for His
             eternal beauty,
                        and tasting this, she

awakens to an ever
             greater yearning—
                       an ache never

to be fully satisfied.

Read the rest here.

Pondering: Connecting Threads

Photo by Orin Zebest

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
       ― Herman Melville

Pondering: Silence

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses we are in a very elemental condition of grace. ...You say, "But He has not answered." He has, He is so near to you that His silence is the answer. [It] is big with meaning that you cannot understand yet, but presently you will. Time is nothing to God...[He] will give us the blessings we want if we won't go any further, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing us into this marvelous understanding of Himself.
     --Oswald Chambers,  If Ye Shall Ask

Pondering: Deep Peace

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.

               --Gaelic Blessing

Pondering: Solitude

Photo courtesy UM School of Natural Resources..

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together...writes, "Let him who cannot be alone beware of community...Let him who is not in community beware of being alone...Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity self-infatuation, and despair."

Therefore, we must seek out the recreating stillness of solitude if we want to be with others meaningfully. We must seek the fellowship and accountability of others if we want to be alone safely. We must cultivate both if we are to live in obedience.

---Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

Pondering: Nearness

    

Art by Gwen Meharg

    Draw Near
    by Scott Cairns


        προσέλθετε


For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered

far to find. And near is where you’ll very likely see

how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon

the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye

a more than common sense of what lay flickering

just beyond the ken,

Read the rest here.

The Greek word προσέλθετε translates as attend.

Pondering: To Rise

Photo by Sebastian Gabriel 

I'm pondering today with a community of bloggers who write about their spiritual journey on the first Thursday of the month. Each month features a host blogger who chooses the topic. Each blogger responds to the topic and links their post to the host blog. This month Leigh Anne Eck has asked us to write about her one little word for the year--RISE. (I did finally post my own OLW for the year here.)


To Rise

The heart knows more
than the mind can tell.
It sings itself
out of a well.

where it has fought
in bogs of doubt.
It hears wings beat,
lets itself out.

What dares to sing
without words, has power
to rise like hope,
faith, sun, and flower.

--Joseph Joel Keith
Poetry Magazine, August 1928, p. 260.

This is a favorite verse from Isaiah, chapter 60. Some days it feels like the whole earth is wrapped in darkness, but I choose to remember that God is in control. My hope is in him, not in a person or a government or a cause.

Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight.
God’s bright glory has risen for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you,
his sunrise glory breaks over you.

May his sunrise glory break over you today.

Pondering: I'm Not a Two-Part Invention

I've begun a beautiful book, Endless Life: poems of the mystics by Scott Cairns. I'm reading "slowly, / and thoroughly, tasting / each word's trouble."

from the Preface:

Noetic prayer is the heart of our matter; if it is acquired and sustained, it becomes the means by which we apprehend God's presence and His will. Nous is a tasty noun from which the adjective noetic springs--a word found throughout the Greek New Testament and throughout the writings of the fathers and mothers of the Church. In translation its spot as, say, the intellective aptitude of the heart is almost invariably lost. It is the center of the human person, where mind and matter meet most profoundly, and where the human person is mystically united to others and to God.

...the word is most often rendered as mind or reason or intellect, and these curious choices have become complicit in one of our unfortunate dichotomies, that of the human person into a two-part invention: a relatively deplorable vehicle (the body) and its somewhat more laudable and worthy passenger (the soul or spirit)...You might recognize its legacy as an ongoing, body-bashing error among a good bit of the Western Church, both high and low. A rediscovery of nous, therefore, would be a very good thing.

And this first poem from Saint Paul the Apostle, you may recognize.


Beyond Knowing
translated by Scott Cairns

I'll bet your wits won't let you
quite believe any of this; it is, however,
precisely so.

I know a man, a follower of Christ,
who, some fourteen years ago
was lifted clean

to the third heaven--whether this
occurred in the body or out of it,
I could not say,

though God knows. And this same man--
whether in the body or out of it,
I do not know,

though God surely knows--was lifted
(hear me!) clean to Paradise, and there
he heard such words

--so marvelous and grave--that no
human tongue could repeat them,
nor think to try.