Seeing

O, to see Your glory in the windward dance of trees.

O, to see Your glory in the ragged scudding clouds.

O, to see Your glory in bird prints etched on snow.

O, to see Your glory in star-spattered midnight blue sky

and frosty topped waves assailing glinty shore.

O, to hear Your glory in a child's desperate wail and a teenager's shy giggle.

In every taste--chocolate & coffee, sweat and wine.

In every smell--hyacinth & sulfur, manure and soap.

To feel You in every touch -- caress of wind, pain of burn, child's handclasp, friend's hug.

O, to see You peeking at me from every nook and cranny and blade and hair of creation!

To hear You whisper in every moan and whistle and bleat and wuther of live, living Life!

Open my eyes to see, Lord, for where I look, You are.

I wrote this several years ago when I was first learning to really see, really learning to live in the present moment and be in the present moment. Yet, looking back over my life, especially thinking of my childhood and youth, days spent wandering my family's 50 acres of woods and overgrown fields, noticing wild flowers and leaves, laying in a pastures gazing at clouds, marveling at the mass of purple violets filling the stream hollow, I realize I was seeing then, and though I didn't know it, God was at my side.

I've been reading a book about seeing in which the author says, "We cannot attain the presence of God because we're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take." (Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 29) This echoes Acts 17:24-28, "The God who made the world and everything in it ... gives to all men life and breath and everything. ... he is not far from each one of us,
for `In him we live and move and have our being.' as well as Colossians 1:17 "in him all things hold together."

What we need, the author contends (and Jesus, as well as Buddha and many religious leaders and mystics) is to see, to become aware. God is already present in our lives. We don't need to look in the past, the future, the next state, the next church, the next relationship, the next book, the next retreat center. When we look at what is before us with openness and humility and faith, we will truly see. What is, is our teacher that will open our hearts to God's presence. Like a cup, we can be open and still, waiting to receive the gift of awareness of Presence.

The Folly of Hope

"Which of you walks in darkness and sees no light?
Let him trust in the name of Yahweh and lean on his God."
Isaiah 50:10

What a wonderful promise!
Where do I see little or no light?

As I ponder this question of where I see little or no light, I can come up with quite a depressing list in both in my immediate circle of concern and nation and world wide. Entrenched negative attitudes hurting the loved ones who hold them. On-going dryness in a friend’s life. Uncertainty regarding my childrens’ education. Declining morality in the US and Europe. Continued violence and suffering in Sudan. Persecution of Christians in Indonesia and many other countries. My own long-term sins.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that, "Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of realities that are unseen." I’ve learned over the years that I can rely on God, even when all seems dark and I can't see how light will come in dark situations. I can lean on Him and somehow, someway, in the end, all will be well. Maybe all won’t be the way I want it and all problems won’t be solved, but I can trust God and be at peace because His wise, loving ways will prevail. Even a godless king learned this lesson:

When the time was over, I, Nebuchadnessar, raised my eyes to heaven: my reason returned. And I blessed the Most High,
praising and glorifying him who lives forever,
for his empire is an everlasting empire,
his kingship endures, age after age.
All who dwell on earth count for nothing;
as he thinks fit, he disposes the army of heaven
and those who dwell on earth.
No one can arrest his hand
or ask him, "What have you done?"
Daniel 4:31-32

That we ‘count for nothing’ doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care for us–the Bible is abundantly clear that He does–but it does mean that compared to his power and ability, ours is nothing and, in the end, His will can’t be thwarted by us and that somehow, unbelievable as it seems, all will work out as he plans.

Thomas Merton says this well in Seasons of Celebration:
"The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that his plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will. Our Advent is a celebration of this hope. That is the audacity of Faith, the folly of Hope–to proclaim Him when all is crumbling and violent–the antithesis of a loving, merciful God who saves. (pp. 90-91)

And this is what we are called to do: to proclaim a Loving, Might God who ways will prevail when all is dark and hope seems foolish.

Chanticleer Garden

This past Wednesday a friend and I went to Chanticleer Garden outside Philly to spend the day. Since the trip was like a mini-retreat and the photos were part of my meditation, I direct you to them: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023359&id=1462133121&l=cd22a3d34e

The Holy Trinity

Today is Trinity Sunday. While a three person in one God is impossible for us to truly comprehend, I like what I've read in recent years about the relational aspect of God this reveals to us and how we are invited to enter into the love relationship among the Godhead--Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Often metaphors help us to understand spiritual truths like the Trinity. St. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate the three-in-oneness of the Trinity, the shamrock being like a clover with three distinct lobes on one leaf. One day last September, a metaphor came to me about the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is like a tree with roots, trunk and leaves. The Holy Spirit is the roots supplying water. The Father is the trunk supplying support and tying all together. Jesus is the leaves, the most noticeable part of the tree, which fall to earth for a time then appear anew. The tree is all the parts together. They don't exist as separate entities yet each is distinct and has a distinct function in their integral union as does the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Distinct yet undivided
One in essence, three in Being
Mystery of Trinity.

Another significance for me of the Holy Trinity is related to the name I took when I was clothed in the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, Elizabeth of the Sacred Heart. This name has much significance for me, but I'll only share the Trinity-related one now. One of the Discalced Carmelite nuns I admire is Elizabeth of the Trinity who was a French Carmelite nun with a strong devotion to the Trinity. One of my favorite quotes from her is,

"I have found heaven on earth,
Because heaven is God
and God is in my soul. ...
Seeing that He is always with me,
prayer, heart-to-heart communication,
can never have an end."

My third Trinitarian thought is from Henry Nouwen on the Holy Trinity icon written by the Russian icon painter Andrew Rublev (http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/trinity.html) which portrays the Holy Trinity as the three guests who visit Abraham in Genesis 18. In his book, Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons, Nouwen points out the invitation in this icon to enter the loving fellowship of the Trinity and to find our home within this House of Love.

"How lovely is thy dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!"
My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God
Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at thy altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God."
Psalm 84:1-3 Revised Standard Version