The Natural World

The thoughts below are from a daily meditation that I receive via email each day from Richard Rohr (thank you Betty Cribbs!!). It just makes a lot of sense.  The way that we live, more or less insulated from the natural world and largely believing that we have conquered it, seems logical, and, well, natural to us.  But it's really a very new way of thinking and living in terms of the span of human history.

The modern/post-modern self lives largely  in a world of its own construction and reacts for or against its own  human ideas.  We have disconnected  ourselvesfrom nature, from the givens of life, from the only world that people lived in for most  of human history.   This, as much as anything, may explain  the loss of soul. When you read the writings of Francis of  Assisi, you see he is calling  everything in nature brother  and sister.  Now what would make  a man call the  natural world brother and sister?  Well, it means he learned how to live there  and somehow got  connected with it.  Francis  recognized that the  soul that he had was also over there! Now until you come to that moment,  there is no soul initiation.  You live in what modern psychology and philosophy call the state of alienation, the state of separation.  You don’t  experience yourself as r adically connected or radically belonging to this universe. Adapted from The Soul, The Natural World,  and What Is

: The whole earth is full of God's glory!

The path gets a second chance

I've always loved the pathway on the west side of our house, and have thought of it as my 'secret garden'.  It's been a shady, somewhat secluded little area, full of ferns, hostas, columbine,  and lady's mantle, much of which I brought from Baba's property before it was sold.  But last summer the serenity of the path was dealt a severe blow.  Our neighbors pulled out the hardly-rotten-at-all wood retaining wall and picket fence that was attached to the top of it, and replaced it with massive blocks of grimy concrete.  It was no longer a shady habitat, afforded no privacy whatsoever, and the concrete wall conjored up visions of prison yards.  The plants along the retaining wall side were destroyed.  It was a sad little place.  I didn't take any pictures, not being of a masochistic nature. But this spring we had a lovely cedar fence built along the property line, which restored both a measure of privacy and the shady environment of previous years.  It is now a tabla rasa, which is not such a bad thing.  I came across a photo of the path from another year in the midst of its summer jungle-like lushness.  I've taken a picture of it now,  as it is being readied to begin to come to life again.  Stay tuned....

Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest  to you.
--Mother Teresa

Henri and the House of God

The writings of Henri Nouwen for me serve as anchors in what at times feels like a sea of confusion. I have a little book called "The Essential Henri Nouwen". It has small excerpts from various of his writings, so it lends itself well to being used as a daily devotional. This is part--actually most- of what I read today. It concerns prayer as the House of God.

The more deeply we enter into the house of God, the house whose language is prayer, the less dependent we are on the blame or praise of those who surround us, and the freer we are to let our whole being be filled with that first love. As long as we are still wondering what other people say or think about us and trying to act in ways will elicit a positive response, we are still victimized and imprisoned by the dark world in which we live. In that dark world we have to let our surroundings tell us what we are worth. It is the world of successes and failures, of trophies and expulsions, of praise and blame, of stars and underdogs. In this world we are easily hurt, and we easily act out of these hurts to find some satisfaction of our need to be considered worthwhile.

As long as we are in the clutches of that world, we live in darkness, since we do not know our true self. ....In prayer, however, again and again we discover that the love we are looking for has already been given to us and that we can come to the experience of that love. Prayer is entering into communion with the One who molded our being in our mother's womb with love and only love. There, in the first love, lies our true self, a self not made up of the rejections and acceptance of those with whom we live, but solidly rooted in the One who called us into existence.

--Henri Nouwen, from The Return of the Prodigal Son

Remembering Easter past.....15 years ago.

Easter

We celebrated Easter at our house this year, with lots of friends and family. It wasn't raining, which was a blessing, and we were able to spill outside a little, and hunt for eggs down at the pond. We hid enough eggs for lots of hunters, but only Braxton and Ava ended up looking for them, so they got very full baskets!  The only sad note was that Stan didn't feel well enough to come. Greg and Linda took him a plate of dinner afterward, and he sent along his traditional Easter lily, thoughtful and gracious as always. It was the very first large family gathering with no one present from our parents generation. An inevitable but sad reality....and yet tied to the hope of Easter.

A good day

"Grandmother, on a winter's day, milked the cows and fed them hay, slopped the hogs, saddled the mule, then got the children off to school, did a washing, mopped the floors, washed the windows, and did some chores: cooked a dish of home-dried fruit, pressed her husband's Sunday suit.
Swept the parlor, made the bed, baked a dozen loaves of bread,, split some firewood and then lugged in enough to fill the kitchen bin, cleaned the lamps and put in oil, stewed some apples she thought would spoil, churned the butter, baked a cake, then exclaimed.'for heaven's sake, the calves have got out of the pen'-went out and chased them in again.
gathered the eggs and locked the stable, back to the house and set the table, cooked a supper that was delicious and afterward washed up all the dishes, fed the cat and sprinkled the clothes, mended a basketful of hose, then oped the organ and began to play, 'when You Come to the End of a Perfect Day".
author unknown

I've always loved that poem, probably because it reminds me of my grandma, and also because its about finding joy in everyday things. I kind of felt like that grandma today. I walked to Wood's with Ron for coffee, then made us breakfast, made some granola, did eight loads of laundry, vacuumed the house, washed the kitchen floor, saved all my and Chris' documents to the external hard drive so we can send the computer off to get rid of the nasty virus we have, (grandma didn't do that one), changed all the sheets,made a loaf of bread (ok, with the bread machine), weeded the flowerbeds, de-pooped the back yard, filled the bird feeders, made a bean sausage soup for tomorrow, made meatballs for the freezer, and made a salmon dinner for tonight. Whew!