This summer has been rich in experience, epiphany, and insight and there is still another month to go. I will be processing all of it for many months to come. Going to Ireland in June was amazing, it connected me with a land infused with holiness that sings in my memory. I felt a deep [...]
Archive for July, 2007
Invitation to Poetry: Empty Chair
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The week before last when I posted the Open Doors photos I was very moved by the enthusiastic response. Pam made a great suggestion to use them as a writing prompt. So I think I may experiment here with that once in a while — just post a photo or photo series and invite you wonderful readers [...]
Contemplative Living
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A great reflection by Robert Toth at the Merton Insitute: "Do you consider yourself a contemplative person? Would you say that you live contemplatively?" Having asked these questions of hundreds of people, we find that most people do not see themselves as contemplative or feel they are living contemplatively. Most defined contemplative living as leading [...]
We Give It
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The Weighing The heart's reasons seen clearly, even the hardest will carry its whip-marks and sadness and must be forgiven. As the drought-starved eland forgives the drought-starved lion who finally takes her, enters willingly then the life she cannot refuse, and is lion, is fed, and does not remember the other. So few grains of [...]
Kinship with Creation
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One of the elements of Celtic spirituality that most attracts me is its sense of kinship with all of creation. I have written here many times about the connections between animals and spirituality. While I was in Ireland I read several books on Irish history and Celtic spirituality. In Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved [...]
Inspiration as Grace
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The other essay in the Theological Aesthetics book I am reading that has especially moved me is by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff from his book Liberating Grace: "The poet, the musician, and the writer feel overtaken by inspiration. On the one hand, it is they who do the work. Their energy and their deepest [...]
Do you know how beautiful you are?
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Saints Bowing in the Mountains Do you know how beautiful you are? I think not, my dear. For as you talk of God, I see great parades with wildly colorful bands Streaming from your mind and heart, Carrying wonderful and secret messages To every corner of this world. I see saints bowing in the mountains [...]
Benedictine Resources
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Sister Laura Swan, the former Prioress of St. Placid, where I am an Oblate, was interviewed on our local public radio station, you can find the link here. Sr. Laura has written several books on Benedictine tradition worth checking out: The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian Women Engaging Benedict: What The [...]
Beauty
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I have been reading Theological Aesthetics: A Reader for a book proposal I am working on for a publisher. It is going to be a book about beauty and aesthetic spirituality inspired by an article I wrote once and I am very excited about this project. The book is a reader which means many of [...]
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