Category Archives: The Great Outdoors

Holy New Year

01 Saturday Jan 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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Ringing in a new year with the phrase “Happy New Year” feels backward.

Because happiness is effect rather than cause, a symptom rather than source.  It is fleeting and easily  imitated; I can paste a smile on my face, laugh in all the right places and fool most into believing I’m happy.

Holiness, however, is another thing all together.  As the source of happiness and love, goodness and truth, who could hope to pretend holiness?  And if they did, what would it look like?

To be holy is not the same as being religious.  Pray save me from religion — which at best is symptomatic and at worst, best not to say.  Nor is holiness found by reading the Bible (or praying or whatever) but by being found in reading the Bible (or praying or whatever.)  And I really do mean whatever.

To be holy is to become more whole — closer to that precious one-of-a-kind being I was created to be and become.  To be holy is to be ‘set apart’– to love myself and others and God in a way that only I can and no one else is able.  In that order.  We only work up to loving God, by practicing on ourselves first and others second.  And if we did just this, we’d be loving God too.

So my new year’s blessing for you today is, “Holy New Year.” I invite you to clear space in your mind and heart and life to practice those things which make you feel most at home in your own skin  — so much so — that you forget yourself and get lost in something bigger.

Unlike happiness, the tracks of holiness are everywhere;  this gorgeous sunset on a lonely stretch of  Oklahoma highway found me yesterday.

Afire with Reality

03 Wednesday Nov 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors, Writing

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I looked outside my bedroom window this morning to a blaze of autumn color peeking above the rooftops.

Delivered by the rising sun, the tree’s glowing beauty demanded a second look, so I gazed upon it for a while before finally searching out my camera to preserve the moment.  Yet, as with any sacred souvenir I’ve ever attempted to capture, the image I have is less than what I experienced first-hand.

The autumn-blazed tree reminds me of other numious moments in life that defy tidy summaries:  the birth of a child, say, or the marriage between man and woman or for me, the taking of Holy Communion.   To explain them at all is to explain them away.

I am reminded of words written by C.S. Lewis on the subject of truth and reality:  “truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is.” Somewhere, in all my many readings, I’ve stumbled across the thought that goodness and beauty and truth are conductors of Reality.  Reality with a capital “R” — the very word many Christian mystics use for God.  After all, how can one explain any of the three — in words?  Yet we know truth when we hear it.  Beauty when we see it.  Goodness when touched by it.

One of my very favorite biblical stories — a mystical one, of course —  comes from the third chapter of Exodus.  It’s the story of how Moses stumbled upon God by taking a closer look at a burning bush.  Well one stumble leads to another, and before Moses had barely taken off his sandals, God had commissioned Moses to go to Egypt, to set God’s people free.  To this shocking left-field demand, Moses volleys back a nonsensical sort of “Who’s on First” response, by asking God to tell him His name.  And unlike Moses, not one to beat around a blazing bush, God gives Moses His name.  In two short syllables, it’s often translated as  “I AM” or “I AM WHO I AM.”

God’s name goes to show how much can be conveyed, even when words are few.  Then there are these, found in Book VII of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around and pick blackberries.”

 

Here I Am

29 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors, Writing

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How is it that none of the month’s joys or sorrow have anchored the days?

So much has happened.  Engagement announcements, baby showers, my 55th birthday and last week’s unexpected short getaway to San Antonio.  And then there have been all the many mini-dramas and comedies which fill everyday life.  And though I touch upon it all in my off-line journal, it’s only here that I really work to get underneath the surface events — to explore and name my deepest feelings of the moment.

So its unfortunate (for me) that I have not written here this month.  Mostly, I have been uninspired to write here.  In part, the thought of trying to write beautiful sentences has exhausted me.  And if I’m being honest, maybe I just wanted to have a good pout — what my younger sister likes to call, the Pappas Pout —  where one goes off to sulk alone in a bedroom, after slamming a few doors to ensure everyone and the neighbors too, know that you’re mad and sad.

But today, as I sat in my favorite living room chair after writing three morning pages, I began to think that maybe I should just sit down and write a few lines of everyday sentences in my blog  — and not worry over making them their Sunday Best.

So.  Here I am.  And just writing these three little words — here I am — reminds me that the prophet Isaiah also spoke these words to God before God set his charred lips loose to say a few words on His behalf.

So what is it that causes me to sulk rather than write?  I can only point to my Aunt Jo’s death.  It doesn’t help to tell myself that she’s in a better place.  And all of this is mixed up with my own mortality, of course, as that older generation ahead of me falls one by one, like a row of dominoes, each one falling closer and closer to me.

But yesterday, I realized that this particular vintage of my favorite month is almost used up.  And on the most important level — the one which has me taking notice of glimpses of Reality —  the month has unfolded its goodness and truth and beauty without my notice.

I am sorry to have missed out on the the miracle of cool crisp nights and lovely fall foliage and the particular way the autumn sun causes my living room to glow and shimmer for a few minutes each October day.

This weekend, I will be in the cool sunshine days dipping a paintbrush into a bucket of paint at my sister’s house.  The plan is to finish what she and I began last April —  the restoration of her homestead inheritance.  And knowing myself as I do, knowing that I grieve best with a paintbrush in my hand, my plan is to finish with this grieving of Aunt Jo’s death.  Because I don’t wish to miss out on the deepest and best part of everyday life.

October, here I am.