More beautiful icons by Heather Williams Durka. As I mention in my previous post, Heather is an iconographer in the Orthodox tradition. Please visit her website: Icons and Sacred Images Scroll down for a post on using lectio divina to pray with images. . .
A busy week ahead, I start teaching “Contemporary Christian Spirituality and Prayer” at Seattle U’s School of Theology and Ministry Tuesday morning. I am excited to be working with students from the MDiv and MA programs there. I love teaching people new ways to pray and helping them prepare for ministry by finding a spirituality and set of practices that are sustaining and nourishing. Our first session of the Awakening the Creative Spirit Program will be on Friday-Saturday October 6-7 (there are still a couple of spots left if you want to join us!) We have a wonderful group of women already
I love to celebrate and support the work of women artists who reveal the sacred in their expressions. This image is called “Blessing” by Martina Shapiro. Visit her website for many lovely images celebrating Shabbat and other Jewish themes (thanks to Wendy for featuring her) Miska is an artist who lives in Issaquah and does a whole series of wonderful Madonna icons in contemporary style. I first discovered her art at St. Placid Priory bookstore and have a couple of reproductions of her work. Julie Barrett Ziegler lives in Olympia and is trained as a calligrapher and icon artist. This is a violin she
I have been asked if I would make my recent article in Presence (the journal of Spiritual Directors International) available. It is on Using the Arts in Spiritual Direction and Discernment, and you can read it here. Also, Christian Century posted a great article about the RevGalBlogPals, a webring I am a part of. You can read that one here.
Not as much time to write as I had hoped this week, with our first Monthly Gathering tomorrow (with 22 RSVP’s!), then my spiritual direction peer supervision group and women’s group in the afternoon and evening to recharge my soul. Then Saturday I lead a workshop down at the Priory and stay overnight for our first Oblate meeting of the year on Sunday. My own little whirlwind of activity, I am grateful for an open week next week to write and to be. In my blog journeying today I found two things that especially touched me, an image and a quote: Art is
Apparently yesterday was Blog Day 2006 which I found out from Swandive who tagged her readers (by the way, I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post, that she has some great comments on the poem she posted.) The purpose is to recommend 5 new blogs, these are some I read pretty regularly: (maybe this will prompt me to finally set up the blogroll sidebar?) Trish at Story Midwife writes such wonderful stuff on art and dreams and mystery, and she is a wonderful musician! Rachelle at Monkfish Abbey is a Seattle friend and fellow writing group member who is also the urban abbess
In my blog-hopping adventures this morning I discovered two absolute gems. The first is from Rachel at Swandive: a poem from Jack Gilbert’s book Refusing Heaven: A Brief for the Defense Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the
