April Musings from "The Color of Grace"

...I am an urn of Adam's skin, the thickness of a lifetime. When kicked I spill protesting blood. Each year, Spring takes a swing at bringing me around. Spring sings a resurrection song I strain to hear. A woodpecker drums its red head against a cedar pole Cumulus clouds rock in the promising wind. Gold sap pulsates in the boughs of the winter-charred oak. A robin chick sheds its itching egg. I press my ear to the earth: Dry bones, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

WORD HARVEST

Mining With a Feather Contemplative Writing And Spiritual Renewal Retreat – Facilitated by Tonia Colleen Martin And Jessica Campbell May 31-June 1, 2013

The Pearl

I woke up this morning with the image

of a pearl in my mind:

a tiny sphere brought into being by an irritating

grain of sand within the house of a muscle;

a space where competition between a foreign

and resident thought spar to arrive at something

beautiful and kind.


This is an image of instruction for me.

When I find myself in the realm of competition,

I want to lean kindly into that which irritates despite its 

essence of otherness.  I want to embrace this Other rather

than muscle it out by wit, criticism or ridicule

and wait for the pearl of new understanding

to roll sweetly into view.

Bringing Ireland to California

In speaking of our desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in or experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter….The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our past – are good images of what we desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we hve not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am, but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. --- From “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis

Stepping Into Our Story

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.” ― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Finding Happiness in Your Most Profound Relationship

Crossing theThreshhold

Under His Wings