Tomorrow I head down to the Priory for our annual Oblate retreat, the topic is "The Heart of an Oblate" and I am looking forward to spending time with some of my Oblate friends. Sister Lucy asked if I would consider being a mentor this coming year to someone who is becoming an Oblate candidate, [...]
Archive for May, 2007
Practicing Resurrection S-l-o-w-l-y
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For the season of Easter I made a commitment to practice resurrection of the body, both my own body and the Earth's body. It has been a good process as I continue to discover places of my own healing and how they are woven together with the healing of the greater body. As a part of [...]
Even in Sleep Your Life Will Shine
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Camas Lilies Consider the lilies of the field, the blue banks of camas opening into acres of sky along the road. Would the longing to lie down and be washed by that beauty abate if you knew their usefulness, how the natives ground bulbs for flour, how the settler’s hogs uprooted them, grunting in [...]
The Fire of Courage
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In the Christian church, today is the feast of Pentecost. It is considered to be the birthday of the church because it celebrates when the Spirit descended upon the disciples and filled them with the fire of courage to go and spread the message of liberation witnessed to them. Vestments and banners usually are red, filling [...]
Allium Fireworks
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Allium is one of my new favorite flowers (after peonies, of course). For some reason I had never seen or noticed them before. They look to me like purple dandelion seed pods or a tiny fireworks display. Blessings upon your weekend. May you discover new beauty you never noticed before! -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey [...]
Dreams of Africa
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In the last couple of weeks we have watched Blood Diamond which takes place in Sierra Leone and The Last King of Scotland which is about Uganda. They were both heart-rending films. I also have been reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah which addresses the Sierra Leone story from the perspective of a boy soldier [...]
Peonies
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This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers and they open — pools of lace, white and pink — and all day the black ants climb over them, boring their deep and mysterious holes [...]
Art in the Cracks of the Day
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Driving Under the Influence of Poetry Scribbling on scraps of paper On the seat next to me As my car sails down The freeways. Words tumbling out Around that sharp turn. Poems dashed off at stop lights They will not wait for me To sit politely at a desk. Poems on the run. No speed [...]
Flower Communion
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What a gathering-the purple tongues of iris licking out at spikes of lupine, the orange crepe skirts of poppies lifting over buttercup and daisy. Who can be grim in the face of such abundance? There is nothing to compare, no need for beauty to compete. The voluptuous rhododendron and the plain grass are equally [...]
Being an artist means. . .
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Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, [...]
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