My column is up...and my gardens a mess!

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/prayergardens/2012/10/autumn-2012-adjusting/

October 2012

To all of you who follow my columns, please click here and you will be redirected to my new location at the Catholic Channel at Patheos. Once there, if you scroll down a bit, on the right you will see a way to continue to subscribe to my writings by email and automatically receive updates. Please sign up, won't you?

Autumn 2012 Changes are coming!

Branching Out

I feel like a little violet among the mighty oaks.
 
     I am delighted and honored to announce that my blog will soon be moving. I will be joining the Catholic Portal web page at Patheos. This is a snapshot of the banner. Isn't it lovely! (Thanks to Hillary.)

     I will post the link to my columns on Patheos once their team has completed the transfer. The columns will continue to be posted on Fridays.
     I would like to share with you this quote by Thomas Merton that I read each day before I begin to write: To do this work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God's will in my work. In this may I become his instrument.
     I will contiue to try and remaining true to Our Lord, being his instrument, and listening for his whisper in the garden. Thank you for your encouragement and loyalty to my columns. It is because of your sharing that others have come to these pages, and maybe found their own solace through God's creation.

 

Autumn 2012 Prayers

Autumn Prayers
 
                Autumn moves in with its usual quiet grace. I took note the other day that the shrubs and trees have become peppered with color. I smile to myself and think of my own autumn-of-life with hair becoming peppered gray—and the next thing I knew, almost white! I had changed and like the trees, in due season and incrementally.

                In Michigan, and throughout the Midwest, there are visual seasonable changes in nature. There are also expectations of what each season brings. The greening in spring and the coloring dormancy before winter, the migration of birds into a region and their eventual return to warmer climates as the temperatures drop, are just a couple of the things I know and anticipate each year.

                I like the rhythm of it all, when everything is not always the same. This shift leads me to alter my perspective, to see things differently, to pray in different ways. The energetic prayers of springtime are not the same as those said during times of slowing down entering winter.

                I find that age—young or mature—dictates my response to change. The sudden shifts that took place in my youth would be harder to manage these days. I like change in moderation and can adapt well with a show of grace. It is dramatic changes that are jolting; when the scenery becomes unfamiliar and uncertainty skews my view.

                There was a time as an adult when I came to fully embrace Catholicism. It was then that I was jolted by the reality of my relativistic decisions as compared to the new scenery of faith, and found myself disoriented in my ethics.

                The prayers of my early years, chronologically and spiritually, were vigorous, eager, and thrust unto the Holy with certainty of specified resolution. The prayers that I now pray are much less frenetic and are presented with fullness and patience. I have no less confidence that they are being heard, but my expectations of how they will be answered are less defined.

Like the gentle, slow and steady pace of changing leaves at the end of a season, my prayers are slowly spoken, and hopefully more graceful in their petition. Seasons change as do our lives and how we pray. We live in all our seasons with assurance of the rhythm—day by day, familiar with the pace.

 

Autumn 2012 A Walk with Pat Gohn

Sacred Walk 

           
      A beloved friend, Pat Gohn, the voice of Among Women, is in Colorado. She recently sent pictures back of a morning walk praying the rosary. One of the pictures is of a very old log across a stream, and it evokes for me the Holy in nature. The power of God in mountains, his flow in our lives like the stream, the death and life present in the frame of the photo leads me to ask myself, “Where is my sacred place on this earth?”

One would assume the answer to be at the retreat center where I have spent the better part of ten years working the gardens, but that is not so. Though the gardens are serene spaces of prayer, intentionally numinous, they do not often move me to awe.

Where I have come closest to the God of Earth and Sky is on the Canada side of Lake Superior. This is the deepest of the Great Lakes and legend has it that it never gives up its dead.

I am filled with amazement at the startling power of the wind sweeping cold dark waves off the lake onto stone-pebbled beaches of granite and gneiss. It is a glaciated wilderness millions of years old that still groans with God’s mystery. The jagged vertical cliffs, the strong winds, the scented mist of fertile waters, the drumming of the waves, are all thrilling to the soul. It is the gentler side of the ferocity that is God, and a confirmation of my smallness.

Photo from emily.net

                When I am walking along the coast of Lake Superior, God’s presence feels as near as when in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Standing near the water I can close my eyes and feel His swirling Presence inside my being, and wander about the beaches reflecting with Him for hours. Sometimes I’ve wished for days on the shores alone with Him, in Him, and through Him…in the unity of the Spirit.

There is a hunger in all of us to know that connecting place of prayer, to find a space, indoors or out, that draws us to the Holy. My friend’s finding a lovely walking trail in Colorado opened an avenue for holy conversation through the rosary. For me, remembering those walks within that sacred space along the shores of Lake Superior, induces a hunger to return there and feel His majesty, and a hunger to return home…unto dust and spirit.

Maybe next year I will retreat to a cottage along the shores of Lake Superior. This week I will find a woodland path, and before setting out make sure a rosary is in the pocket of my jeans. 

Autumn 2012 Nearly Feral

Nearly Feral 

                         The three year old tabby is small for her age at only five pounds. Her dark-gray fur is striped in black with a lovely undercoat of coppery-gold and is surprisingly soft and thick, more like rabbit fur in winter.

                Her round little head seems too small for her expressive and large oval eyes, especially when the pupils dilate—anxious at my approach. She is nearly feral and only partially tamed by the priest who cared for her. She needed food and protection from her own kind so he set up a covered cage on his deck where she could eat and sleep in safety. When I adopted her she had two sizeable infected wounds from being attacked by other stray cats and the trip to the vet was traumatic.

                When I look at her tiny paws and miniature prick ears, somewhere deep inside a warm gentleness overtakes me. I want so much to cuddle this diminutive kitty and feel her warm purring body against my own. But she is small and frightened, so my patience is required. I have had her long enough that she no longer bolts from the room when I come with her food.

                In order to move close to her as she shrinks into the corner I lay on my belly and scooch slowly across the floor, softly repeating her name “Georgia.” Extending my arm and petting her with two fingers, I must be very delicate with my touch. Too much pressure or too near and she’ll dart into hiding. When this happens I wait for her to regain her trust and return to me, that non-priest person.

                What I have found works best is to sit on the floor near her with my open hand facing up and resting by my side, but where she is just beyond my reach. This one knows arithmetic well and can calculate exactly how far a human’s arm can reach! If I am patient she will often inch toward me, leaning into my open palm and choosing to feel my touch. She has then decided to be more accepting of my enormity in her little life.

                I think of how God is just so with me, waiting patiently just beyond my reach for me to draw near. He waits, knowing I may bolt if I become sensitive to his approaching greatness compared to my littleness. His quietness draws me in as I trust the closeness of the hand that nourishes and protects. And I too, with desire overriding my fears, inch towards that loving touch.

                Georgia only comes to me at night after I have settled in for sleep. She softly mews at the foot of the bed until I pull my hand out from under the blankets—palm up and fingers slightly curled. She then comes eagerly when I whisper her name. Curling up next to my hip, she rubs against my fingers a few times, places her round little head in the palm of my hand, and settles down. We both fall asleep in peace.

Autumn 2012 Cirrocumulus

Clouds

 

                It’s that time of year when autumn clouds fill the sky for most of a day. Thick and dense, they are a brilliant white with melding shades of gray.

                I love how clouds reflect all the spectrum of light from the sun. Light is made up of the colors of the rainbow and when all the colors are present in equal amounts you get white.

I wrote in my first book, A Garden of Visible Prayer, “White is the color of the Holy Spirit, of truth and sanctity. It represents purity, innocence and kindness. I read somewhere that white teaches us about relationships because, in our perceptions of colors, it tints how we see. White is in itself not a color but the complete revealed energy (manifestation) of all the colors. A very nice explanation of the completeness of the Holy Spirit.” And like the presence of the Holy Spirit that brings light and lightness to my soul, clouds also give me a sense of being free of weightiness.

It is not unusual to see clouds formed at different heights in the stratosphere. When this happens the clouds will appear to move at different speeds relative to their distance from earth. Watching the clouds late one afternoon I see that this layering has taken place; there are higher Cirrocumulus clouds over heavier Stratus.

What was unusual is that these clouds are running in different directions, clearly moving perpendicular to each other! The higher whiter clouds were moving due north and the rain filled Stratus clouds, seeming so low one could almost touch them, speedily moving east and slightly south.

I had never seen this before and stood in the field turning in circles to view all of the sky, eventually sitting against a fence post in awe. My love and learning of natural sciences from undergraduate years began formulating the why of stratospheric wind directions and the collective weight of water vapors. Still, the wonder of the event kept me spellbound for nearly half an hour.

Later as I reflected upon the event, I came to understand more fully how the currents in our own lives can often run contrary, or perpendicular to one another. We can seem to be floating along bright and white and above all earthly things, and then lower dark clouds move in and draw our attention down and on a completely different course.

We may need to be attentive to the potential of storms from these lower obscuring clouds. But let us remain focused on the higher clouds in our lives, those that capture the whiteness of The Light and reveal the currents of the Holy Spirit manifest and moving within our souls.