Stream of Consciousness

Tags

beauty, God alone suffices, let nothing disturb you., psalm 24, St. Teresa of Avila, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I have been awake for almost two hours now, much of the time just sitting with the cat looking out the window at the birds eating seed on the deck. She is so focused, she puts me to shame. I—on the other hand— have been watching my thoughts wander through many streams: an internet article on snowflakes—more information than I thought possible but quite interesting, (especially because it appeared spontaneously—I clicked nothing to receive it!), how much snow has fallen and how much more is expected, tasks to be completed today including my 2:00 zoom call, the Scripture readings for today—the Baptism of the Lord—and sometimes…no thought at all.

The most engaging of this conglomeration was a brief part of the today’s Psalm, a question that asked (quite appropriately) “Who is this God whose beauty streams to us in majesty so strong?” (PS 24:8*)

Just looking out my window causes me to pause and bow—at least internally—in wonder at the beauty of what I witness. I did not ask for or cause the snow to fall. I can do nothing about it except to watch it. I need to surrender to the beauty, the interruption it causes in the day, the plans of everyone in this area of the country, the disappointments and frustrations of those who can do absolutely nothing about it. And always, for me, the beauty.

I think of Teresa of Avila and her wisdom. She understood the flow of life and the reality—the necessity—of surrender to what is. Her prayer has been with me for 55 years and the truth of it becomes clearer all the time and gives me peace. She says: Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you. All things are passing, God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things, s/he who possesses God lacks nothing. God alone suffices.

Yes, indeed.

(*Ancient Songs Sung Anew: The Psalms as Poetry, p. 56)

October

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beauty, breathe, poetry, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I thought I could find everything on the internet. What a shock it was to fail in such a simple task as finding a poem on the long-awaited appropriate day for it. Here’s the story.

When we were in elementary school – called grammar school back then – we had to memorize poems. Some were of historical importance, some famous works of literature. I was always ahead of the curve in the learning because the syllabus did not change much from year to year and my sister was two grades ahead of me in school. We used to lie in bed at night, Paula practicing her poem of the week and I listening and learning, because she already knew mine. Some were more exciting than others.

We can still recite much of Barbara Frietchie, a 60-verse poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that offered a not-so-authentic window into Maryland history. How it stirred our patriotism with its Civil War theme and vivid images! (Read an amusing commentary, “Barbara Frietchie: Who Really Waved that Flag?” on the internet).

William Cullen Bryant’s, To A Waterfowl is lost to me in all his “thy’s” and “those’s,” as is Ode to a Grecian Urn, but the poem I love the most comes back on this date each year, if only with the first two verses, like an old friend coming to visit on its birthday. And today the weather is a perfect welcome for October’s Bright Blue Weather:

The goldenrod is yellow, the leaves are turning brown. The trees in apple orchard with fruit are bending down…

I’ll have to call my sister to fill in what the internet has not provided. Hopefully, between us we can remember it all. If not I have just to walk outside, look around and breathe in the beauty…

The Gift of Music

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Andrea Bocelli, beauty, conscience, friend, heart and soul, music, mystical experiences, spiritual enrichment, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I was reminded this morning of the gift that is ours in the beauty of music. I was reading an interview with Andrea Bocelli where he speaks of what music does for the “human heart and soul,” something that I agree is necessary to us, perhaps more important than ever in our lives now. See if you agree with him.

Bocelli says: “Music is like a dear friend, one that never leaves your side. It is a universal language with the strength and ability to affect our conscience, helping us to do better. Music is also a source of spiritual enrichment, which is why knowing its language can be useful for everyone, not just those wanting to make it a profession.

When music embraces beauty, it soothes us, makes us grow, heals us by directing us toward rectitude. It can also lead us toward a fuller mystical experience.” (blog.franciscan media.org – Andrea Bocelli on Music and Miracles, August 26, 2020)

What is the music that can alter your mood, lifting you to a place of beauty, joy, peace or promise? Might you give yourself the gift of music today?

In and Out

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beauty, breathe, nature, Sabbath, silence, stillness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There are so many people and organizations giving advice daily on television, podcasts and all manner of “advice columns.” I sometimes feel a need to add my voice from my tiny corner of the world but often lately I sense more of a need to just sit quietly and let the silence speak. Nature seems complicit in this feeling this morning and gives me a nudge saying, “Yes, that’s it. Any thoughts you have are unnecessary today. Just listen. That’s what “sabbath” is all about.”

I can be confident in that feeling because here’s what has happened in less than the last hour. Knowing that I had a late start to the morning because of a late start to sleeping last night, I got my coffee and began my sojourn through my regular prompts—Scripture, USCCB notations, Franciscan media, the SSJE Brothers… and had trouble accessing the above mentioned pages or staying on the page when it finally showed up. As I surfed I realized it was getting darker outside and I still had nothing to offer. Suddenly there was a great, yet silent, cloudburst washing the trees with no wind, just a steady, torrential downpour that gave way to a sparkling sunshine and birdsong within minutes of the rain’s conclusion.

Why would I think I need to add to that happening? The silence fills the world with Sabbath beauty and stillness is God’s gift to my soul. May you be similarly blessed with the simple necessity of breathing into the day: in and out…in and out…no distress…only breath…in and out…in and out.

Jewels on a Page

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balanced life, beauty, discipline, quotations, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I picked up one of many small notepads on which I make lists and jot down things I need to remember. It’s become almost a full-time job to keep track of everything as life seems to move so rapidly — or is it just that I’m moving more slowly? Regardless of the answer to that question, I love the “jewels” I sometimes find written on pages that I have forgotten but find impossible to let go. On the page in question I had written two brief quotes on the remaining top half of said page. I needed a clean page to note the information I was to get on a phone call already in progress but rather than discarding the previous message, I saved it for later, after my phone call. A very wise decision!

I have no memory of writing the following two quotes but am happy now that I saved them as they seem to me to speak of a wonderful way to live a balanced life encompassed by both the poetic and the mundane, namely: in beauty and discipline. See if you agree.

Beauty is that which glistens on the edges of our yearnings and lives into the depth of things. (Embracing a Beautiful God by Patricia Adams Farmer)

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments and that bridge must be crossed each day. (Brian Johnson, http://www.optimize.me)

Natural Beauty

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awake, beauty, dawn, God, gratitude, sunset, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I was driving home at sunset which seemed to me a ridiculously early time for it to happen. I noted the time as 4:20PM and then realized that we are less than a month away from the winter solstice! “How can that be?!” I thought. Those people who told me years ago that time goes more quickly as you age were certainly correct! It’s all about perception, however, as the atomic clock is still chugging along with just seconds of loss or gain over the years. But I digress – sort of.

I can never get enough of the color and design of the sunset on Route 81 as I drive south coming home. That’s where I get the longest view because as my car climbs the hills and dips down into the valleys it’s like playing “Hide and Seek” with the sky. (It is New York State, after all!) So yesterday, I watched this golden panorama sink and then rise for at least 30 miles, shifting slightly all the while but continuing to delight me as I consistently worked at keeping my eyes on the road.

This morning I had the opposite phenomenon to watch as dark turned to deep magenta – just a hint at first and then brighter and glorious behind the tree outside my window. Just for a moment and then it was gone, swallowed up in the light of day. It would have been so easy to miss this brief miracle. Just another five minutes of sleepiness…

The psalmist calls, “Awake! Awake! I will wake the dawn!” I know how that feels and am also bowed in gratitude for the slowness of every sunset. How kind of our God to have created such beauty – so many trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets…and you and me in the midst of it all!

“The Little Flower”

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beauty, flowers, spirituality, St. Therese of Lisieux, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

As we enter the month of October, I always think of a poem we learned in elementary school entitled “October’s Bright Blue Weather.” Even considering the title brings gratitude for living in the Northeast of the USA because of all the natural beauty that we witness as trees put on a colorful show and big pots of fall mums can be seen everywhere. There is a bit of sadness mixed in with the dying down of garden-fresh vegetables and disappearing fields of corn, but the slowing of activity with the shortening of daylight calls to our need for rest. We do well to heed the advice.

Today Christians mark the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, one of the most revered saints of the Catholic Church. She lived only 24 years, a simple life by all external standards, but is celebrated the world over for her life of love in God. There are many ways to get to know her – many books and commentaries on her life. Today I found a quote of hers that I had never heard before. It speaks to me of her spirituality as well as to the season that is ending and the one we are entering. It is perhaps most appropriate for one whom we know under the title of “The Little Flower.”

I understood that every flower created by God is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enameled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s lovely garden.

Meandering

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autumn, beauty, blessings, fall, gratitude, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wandering

Finally, the leaves are beginning to show some colors of autumn! It’s not that I long too much for this miracle of beauty; it means the approach of cold and often inclement weather, after all. It is, however, one of God’s great gifts to those of us who live in the Northeast of the United States. One could spend a lot of time thinking of autumn as metaphor. (Going out “in a blaze of glory” comes to mind as an image.)

I wonder sometimes if all of life is not meant to be that kind of alternation of beauty and dissolution so we don’t hold on to anything too long. I wait for the autumn colors and would love to see them for months, but that would hold back the wonder of snowfall and interrupt the natural order of things…Some of you are already saying, “Fine with me – if I never saw snow again it would be okay!”

I could go on but I don’t know how I even got this far. It doesn’t take much sometimes to set my mind to wandering. I guess my point today would only be one of gratitude for God being in charge of the workings of the world and a wish that we would stop interrupting the flow…of global warming, for example…but there I go again with a new topic!

Enough! Blessings on your Tuesday!

Pentecost

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beauty, Genesis, language, lovingkindness, Pentecost, Spirit of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, upper room

As I sit waiting on this very special feast of the coming of the Spirit of God into us, I smile into a “letting go” stance because it’s as if I am back in the upper room with the disciples of Christ who have no idea of what is about to happen. Who could have imagined the whoosh of the Spirit that came upon them that day? Suddenly they comprehended so much of God’s message to the world and were able to speak to everyone in a language that could be understood. What was that language? Were they really “speaking in tongues” as we have come to understand that phrase? If so, that is all well and good but I wonder about another (perhaps concomitant) way that they might have been understood.

This weekend we are exploring “the original blueprint” of creation in a step by step journey back to the beginnings of the universe. Our presenter has shared in a complex but understandable theoretical presentation that before anything else the universe emitted two sounds that can be translated as lovingkindness and beauty.

In the book of Genesis (11:1) we read today that “The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words” until things got complicated and people began to gather into tribes in order to “make a name for themselves.” What if, before that happened – before they even had language, perhaps – they were operating in a manner based on the sounds of the universe where lovingkindness was the way and beauty the expression.

Just a theory – one more way to look at how the Spirit of God comes in order that we might heal the earth in service to one another. Today it certainly makes good sense to me. I will attempt to walk this day on the path of lovingkindness and be aware of the beauty in all that I experience.

May

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beauty, hope, May, Thanksgiving, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Having just stepped over the threshold into “the lusty month of May,” I was disheartened to see all the puddles on the deck of our house and the wind that seems determined to create another round of “pick-up-sticks” for my unwilling exercise regime. Checking the weather to see if we will truly have rain for the next six days, I found a reason to rejoice: every day of the next seven will see, at some moment, temperatures in the 60 to 70 degree range! Perhaps that is a silly thing to rejoice over but I always have such high expectations of this most beautiful month that I can’t help myself looking for anything that will propel me happily into the wide world outside.

There is much to recommend this month. For me the bright yellow of daffodils and forsythia have prepared the way for what looks to become a lovely (if late) flowering of the spring. Now to await the days of no coats but rather bright-colored clothing and picnics outside, longer days and looking at the night sky without shivering in the cold…All of the things that seem ready to raise spirits after a long and difficult winter are truly welcome.

More important than external signs is the hope that lives in my heart. The thanksgiving for gifts that lift the spirit – small things or great – remind me that this is the season of “Alleluia” so that even in the midst of trial and bad news I can walk and talk and see the beauty around me even when clouds appear. It may take some effort but that is the call of the dawning of light each morning.

Thanks be to God!