Category Archives: Mystery

The Turn of the Year

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in beauty, body, creation, grace, gratitude, Mindfulness, Mystery, paying attention, presence

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coloradoaspens

Two years ago as the season turned from summer to fall, I was driving through Colorado and northern New Mexico, and saw the stunning harbingers of the season in the forests of aspens.

plazaresort

Last year as the summer became fall I was on the west coast of Florida to see my children, the beauty of a completely different order, serenity of a different hue and promise.

These summer and fall seasons I have felt sidelined from the turning of the season because of surgery and recovery. I watch as the children go back to school through my front window. I follow the many adventures of my friends and colleagues as they take their sojourns to exciting or exotic locations. I notice that committees and kick-off events are happening without me. Since here in Southern California there are not critical changes in the weather, I look up our current predictions for the day, all usually well within the temperate zone, which tell me that Fall has come.

But my focus is here where I am, with the resources that I have this moment, looking over the place where I have been planted.

backyardlabyrnth

It is a lovely place, a place of stability that I have been given to savor and to share, even as the world turns. It has many moments of deep stillness, a capacity to invite and enjoy host of beloved ones or just one. I have a window to the street and another window to the sunrise. Many birds visit, along with our dog, the squirrels and the occasional unwelcome possum. I live in God’s world, as well as God’s season, God’s time, God’s rhythm. I have been reminded again in this season of relative confinement that it is all Grace, and that the only appropriate response to Grace is gratitude–for bringing me safe this far–in Love, in Beauty, in Joy. So let the season turn–in me, around me!

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The Green Spirit

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in blessing, creation, earth, gratitude, Mystery, reflection, refreshment, renewal, Spirit

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images-4And so Pentecost comes! Traditionally the liturgical colors are red with yellow, reflecting the fire that alighted on the heads of the faithful in Act’s story of that event, signifying the illumination and power of the Holy Spirit. But Maren Tirabassi, contemporary liturgist and prophet, has called our attention to the fact that in some circumstances, this year, for instance, flame and wind are not positive and encouraging symbols; in the case of the horrendous fire in Alberta, Canada, and in other places around our planet, fire is only a force for destruction and devastation. So she in her winsome and provocative blog, Gifts In Open Hands, has lifted up other metaphors for the Holy Spirit. Her musings immediately pointed me to that earlier medieval liturgist and prophet, Hildegard of Bingen.

From one of her visions Hidegard sees God declare:

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green…I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grass to laugh with joy of life…I am the yearning for the good.

It is the greenness of the Spirit I am longing for this year. Dr. Rebecca Button Prichard in her book Sensing the Spirit (Chalice Press, 1999), says:

The Spirit of greenness is visible in a way that transcends metaphor, analogy and imagery. The Creativity that causes leaves to unfold and buds to flower is the Creator Spirit, the One who broods over creation still. (50)

So many people and places in life I encounter need the greening from the Spirit inside to bring life back, to bring healing throughout, to spring back into fruitful encounter with the Holy and the world. And I feel the need of it in places in me. I often pray that poetic voice of T.S. Eliot, “Oh, thou Lord of Life, send my roots rain!”

I am looking at new plantings of a more drought resistant grass in the small patch of lawn in my back yard. They are bright green as they take root, and they need much less water than our previous sward. They remind me of places where I would invite the Spirit to bring her nurture into greenness–my energy for coming alongside others, my patience for sitting still and listening as the Holy One speaks, my perseverance in doing those things that will bring good for others, now and in the future, my openness to hearing, seeing and sensing what is new. I would love my life of prayer to become jade green, shining and gem-like in its consistency and beauty. I would like to wander down forest green paths of Mystery that I have not yet discovered. I pray that my encounters with those I meet be bright kelly green, sparking with mutual compassion and  appreciation. The colors of all life will be brightened with a fresh infusion of the greening of the Spirit.

After this Eastertide past with equal shares of Light and Darkness in our world, I find myself needing to sing this hymn for Easter and beyond:

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in the dark  earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been: love is come again like wheat arising green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, your touch can call us back to life again; fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green. (John M.C. Crum, 1928)

Come, Holy Spirit, green my heart!

Image created by Marcy Hall for Abbey of the Arts

Lent 2: Discovering the Goodness of Creation

23 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by in beauty, creation, discovery, earth, Lent, Mystery

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yellowflowers

As I continue to follow the recommendations of the reflections of Joyce Rupp, I am practicing another the emphases of Celtic spirituality this week–discovering the goodness of Creation. She suggests “listening to creation,” pausing to look at what you see, finding something new to you, and letting creation reveal its deeper meaning. This is much more challenging to me than last week’s call to see God’s presence in the ordinary, in my case blessing each of my children morning and night. I seem, either by nature or nurture, to need to work at connecting with creation.

I have been working hard at trying to engage what Calvin calls the “second book of revelation,” the natural world, and so this invitation to a focused practice is welcome, though not easy. However, I have received a gift that has made the practice more central in this past year which is the installation and blossoming of a drought-resistant garden in our front yard. We chose to embark upon this project for practical reasons: the merciless drought in Southern California has frightened and threatened us all. We have been given standards by which we need to decrease our water usage, and have been seeking ways to be good stewards of the water we do have. The garden took longer to install and cost more than we first estimated, despite the rebate that came from the state government. Yet what has developed where our lawn used to be is a constantly unfolding display of wonder and beauty. Under the tutelage of the marvelous Merilee, a garden designer, we were able to create and execute a garden that not only saves water for our parched land, but gives us examples of the ways that God’s mercies are new every morning, much to our surprise.

It begins in the dark. It is full of surprise. I am never sure when I go to bed at night what I will find in the morning that has blossomed. During Advent our purple bearded iris on the south patch kept us entranced with a new bloom almost every day, a continual parade of glory from one violet sentinel to the next. Now in Lent the white iris on the north side sheltered by the salvia has begun the same array, one blossom per day; is it marching us toward Easter?

The variety seems infinite. Just when I think I have noticed each plant and flower, another one emerges in shape and color utterly different than the one next to it. What are those little neon green capsules all in a row? What are those tall drapy red leaves in a bush? What color are those tiny florets hiding behind that prominent plant? Creation, when I focus my attention, has more manifestations of beauty and design than I can count.

I continue to be challenged by beauty. I have long known that I am “buoyed by beauty,” a phrase that I read in a narrative describing my beloved isle and community of Iona in Scotland. But my own little clusters of drought-resistant plants in front of my house keeps expanding my definition of what beauty is–not only vivid color, now only shapely fronds, not only striking succulents–but odd outcroppings, angular leaves and open patches are beautiful too. And how glad it makes me.

This week I am taking care to observe–truly, madly, deeply–the creative array that proliferates in my front yard, and ask myself how this reveals the Holy One to me. Calvin teaches me that there is much about the Mystery that can become known in creation. I am hoping that is discovering the goodness that is there, I will also have a deeper intimation of the goodness of God.

Personal photo from front garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming Into A Clearing

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in listening, Mindfulness, Mystery, opening my mind, paying attention, Spirit, wisdom

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HuntingtonDogBeach

The big pressures of the Season are over, and even though there continues to be much to do, I feel as if I can pause to take a breath. I have been doing a great deal of reading about “mindfulness,” and listening to a multitude of voices who speak from their experiences about what this practice does for, in and through them. In attempting to participate in the practices about which I read, however, I find that they are not intuitive to me, or easy to get the hang of.

This break in the liturgical year between Epiphany and Lent does give me space to try to practice some ways of mindfulness. The calendar is not quite so event-filled, the deadlines have been met for the time being, and the sales forces are losing a little of their steam. I can be a little less in a hurry, a little gentler in my intention, and more expansive in my gaze.  Susan Phillips in her book, The Cultivated Life, (IVP,2014), when speaking of mindfulness for someone on a faith quest, says this: The praying person enters the silence, pays attention to what’s on her heart, and then directs attention to God, aided by the text and the community.” (116)

I am attempting to take that pause, to allow this change of pace to be more mindful and attentive. On a trip to the section of beach where dogs can roam free, accompanied by my grandson, husband and wild dog Max, in the crispness and quiet, I sit shivering, but still, captured by the juxtaposition of motion and stasis: rolling waves, calm ocean farther out; dark mass of clouds softening into promising light; intrepid surfers and quiet watchers. How do I attend to Holy Presence in this moment?

I begin with gratefulness–for being here in this moment to behold the beauty of the Creator in wave, sky and sand; to delight in the weaving of grand-boy, grandfather and dog, up and down the strand; for living in proximity to ocean and mountain both; for ample time to take a day to celebrate the birthday of this unique grandchild, with a love for creatures and a longing to wander untethered in as much wilderness as he can inhabit.

Then with the prayer, Loving God, here I am, I turn my heart to questions for clarity: what do you want me to know? where do you want me to be? how shall I do the next right thing? I experience these prayers as seeds being sown in the garden of my heart, to be brought to fruition when the time in right. For the moment I need only to offer them, and sit with the panorama of Light and Dark before me, and wait. Like the roses in my garden behind and as the irises in my garden in front, the flowering of answers will appear in due season.

The next morning I am in a sanctuary preparing for worship. I am sitting with my husband, there is powerful music, stained glass, and a welcoming liturgy. But first to get quiet. I find that  I routinely need to do things: rest in the truth that I am now a “person in the pew” not a worship leader, and that I need to recycle all the Grace that was extended to me by letting go of any bits and bobs of critique I might carry forward from my years of experience as pastor; then, I need to remind myself that I am gathered here with the people of God in worship of the Mystery we call God, even though I don’t have deep friendships or feel connected. I am ready now to pray, Loving God, here I am, and to see what how the Spirit will catch my attention and nourish my thirsty soul. Will it be words of a new hymn? will it be the reading of the Word by a sweet and adept 10 year old? will it be a line from the Word preached, a cadence sung by the alto soloist, an invitation to participate in the healing of the world close by? I tune my hearts to listen.

The next challenge will be to bring my practice of mindfulness to a committee meeting. Will I be able to lay aside my resistances, my anxieties, my critical spirit long enough to be quiet, pray again Loving God, here I am, and then listen for what prompts the Spirit brings to me: is this a time to speak, to refer to my past experience, to jump into the fray or this is a time to call of the Spirit ot “set a seal on my mouth,” to listen to the deliberations with an open heart, while praying for the common good for all of us gathered?

“Thou will keep her in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee…”  Isaiah 26:3

Loving God, here I am, make me mindful.