Three of the most beautiful lines:
‘He does not raise his voice;
He does not crush the weak,
or quench the smallest hope.’
So all our hopes,
though they might beat against our chest with wings,
or lie smaller than a mustard seed
hidden in the hand,
can grow in time
like the tall grass lengthening.
Can incline towards faith,
as seedlings seek out the light,
surpassing themselves
with the warmth of the sun,
and the wind
speaking over them.
Mary Oliver speaks of the Catbird,
‘common as the grass’,
who has picked his pond and made
a soft thicket of the world –
that in wonderment I consider
how good it really is
to be one of many,
in an ever stirring, breathing
mass of humanity.
Perhaps not so different
to a kingdom measured out in the grass,
from fence post to gate,
the breeze gently whispering,
the soft sun delivering a steady coverage.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
February 2020
For more poems for Ana Lisa de Jong, check out the free downloads available in our store:
by Kate Kennington Steer, all images by Kate Kennington Steer
As a photographer and visual artist, I subconsciously take note of the level, type, angle, and colour of light throughout the day, month, season, year. Yet, in the past few months, I have been trying to be more attuned to my feelings about the changing light rhythms that make up different cycles. In particular, I’ve been paying attention to the Solstices, the Equinoxes and the cross-quarter days in between. This year, my feelings about the Autumn Equinox can be summed up in two words: ‘gathering’ and ‘gold’.
Somewhere in my psyche my English cultural heritage associates the end of September and beginning of October as ‘harvest festival’ season, even though the agrarian calendar might show that in fact cereal harvests are long over, and the next crop of winter wheat is ready to be sown. There are many traditional rituals around the cutting of the last sheaf, and its grain being used to make a communal loaf or sheaf of bread for the coming festivities when all the harvests – cereal, vegetable, fruit – are completed. And as I was thinking about the rhythm of cutting and sowing, I remembered being a child in Norfolk and seeing farmers burning the stubble in the fields.
And suddenly, shockingly, I felt fear: have I been cut down? Have I been burnt utterly away? For a moment, my fear coalesced around the word ‘gather’: I have nothing to show for myself, there is nothing to gather, nothing to store, nothing to bring out in the coming long winter nights and reflect upon. And it occurred to me: perhaps the Autumn Equinox is the corrective festival a perfectionist most needs to celebrate? For, of course, when I ask myself, ‘what do you have to show for yourself? What do you have to share from yourself?’, below the shrieking fear, the deep-down answer comes back: lots.
Lots of admittedly messy, unfinished, half-baked ideas, thoughts and projects; lots of acts of daily seeing, even if fewer of them than I would like were glimpsed through a camera lens; lots of words written, even if few of them are yet in a form that will make sense to anyone else; lots of doodles in sketchbooks that nobody has seen; lots of painted postcards that remain unsent. Much of this hoard needs sharing. Yet much of this hoard also needs ploughing back into my ground to form a rich enough humus for the next cycle of creation my Maker has in store for me.
In his book, Spiritual Intelligence, Brian Draper cites Mark Greene’s term ‘small fruits’ to describe ‘small-scale change which can make a big difference to you and the world around you… It’s a way, perhaps, of taking stock and taking encouragement along your journey, of seeing what difference your journey is making.’ (41) The idea of micro-changes or ‘microshifts’ has become part of business management lexicon, but I continually find it a challenge to sustain them for very long. But something has been shifting, clarifying as I have watched the light lope across the ceiling of my bedroom these past few months: I have a very stark choice to make. Do I want to live a fear-filled life or a creativity-filled life? Which of these energies will take me across the next threshold of my becoming in a way which helps me flourish? Which of these energies do I need to gather to myself? Which of these energies do I want, need, to share with others?
So my inner perfectionist needs to confront the language she uses. I am not cut down. I am not left behind, brittle, arid and useless. I am not left a mere husk of myself after the anxieties of COVID-19 lockdown, with no sense of an opportunity to rest before the potential onslaught of whatever unknown health crises this winter might bring. And the best counter I know to perfectionism is the redemption of gratitude: ‘I will gather you to joy’ says ‘the searcher’ in Rilke’s poem.
I wrote a post on my blog imageintoikon in Lent reflecting on how often I need to remind myself to flex my ‘rejoicing muscles’, and I found that trying to increase my gratitude for what is present to me during the course of a day, week, month, season, year, is the key to this. My most regular gratitude practice focuses around making what I call ‘Grace Notes’ in my journal. But on the dark days I can only find a way to be truly thankful by digging beneath the surface stubble of my day, ’mining for gold’ as I go. ‘Mining for gold’ can sometimes be a rather arduous form of self-examination, and it reminds me of the hard, physical labour that is involved in ‘gleaning’ after a harvest.
In the Bible, the principle of ‘gleaning’ is first laid down in Leviticus 19:9 and Leviticus 23:22. God tells Moses that fields, vineyards and orchards are not to be harvested to the very edges or to the very tops of the trees and vines:
‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God.’ (Leviticus 23:22 NIV)
The principle of looking after others as being of equal importance to looking after oneself is thus deeply ingrained in the traditions of gleaning. So I wonder, as I look for all the golds the Autumn Equinox might bring me this year, what scraps of nutrition do I especially need to pay attention to? What do I need to gather to myself as encouragement or fuel or inspiration for the season after the Equinox? What gold can I share with others rather than hoard it to myself?
Ultimately, can my private, inner reflexive gratitude practice spill over into a microshift that could make a practical difference to someone else? Perhaps today’s literal equivalent of the Biblical principal of ‘gleaning’, in our city-centred, twenty-first century life, might be found in supporting ‘Food Bank’ charities? Perhaps the Anglican Church’s recent institution of making this time of year into a liturgical season called ‘Creation Time’ might suggest ways in which I can join in with a communal celebration of God’s gifts all around us, even whilst I am mostly home-based and solitary?
I am yet to answer any of these questions I pose to myself. But I know now what needs to characterise my celebrations of the Autumn Equinox this year: gathering, gleaning and gold.
by Christine Sine
This has been a hard week for me, probably the hardest since the pandemic began. The air quality in Seattle has been at hazardous levels much of the week, and though it is now only “poor” it is still enough for those of us who are sensitive to smoke, to feel the effects. Of course, others have had it much worse and I grieve with my friends in California and Oregon, many of whom have not only had to deal with the hazardous air but have also had to evacuate their homes. Some have lost their homes in the rapidly moving wildfires.
Seattle Skyline – photographer unknown
One interesting comment from a participant in the Wonder in the Trauma Healing Process webinar last Wednesday was recognizing the link between lament and wonder. Shortly after the session, I received an email from a participant commenting that Rabbi Abraham Heschel, one of the 20th century’s leading Jewish theologians and one of my heroes, emphasizes the need to begin and remain anchored in wonder in order to deal with the pain in the world. So, he felt I “was in very strong company”. Anchoring ourselves in wonder really does help us cope with the trauma of our world and that has certainly been my experience this week.
Wonder Changes Our Perspective on Life.
Wonder changes our perspective on life. It opens us to surprise, anticipation, unpredictability, celebration and mystery, replacing the rigidity of fear and anxiety with flexibility and joy. It enables us to imagine new life, new opportunities and the possibility of new beginnings definitely something that we all need to do at the present time. I think that one of the great benefits of wonder is that it helps us to look not at the pain but through the pain to God’s comforting and strengthening presence. It enables us to hold onto hope when everything around us seems hopeless.
Over the last six months, I have become an increasingly strong advocate for the power of wonder as a healing tool. Initially it was my awe and wonder walks – wandering the neighborhood with the wide-eyed wonder of a child- that has provided my greatest wonder inducing practice, but in the last few weeks, and especially this week as the air quality plummeted, I have found myself stretching for something more. The creation and use of my beach combing garden has enabled me to both delight and grieve. It has been one tool that has been a constant support for me. This week it has been my circling exercise that has provided my greatest stability. Each morning, I light my candles and feel the embracing presence of God around me, and then imagine it extending out to friends and neighbours, to strangers near and far, and radiating out to the whole world. Knowing that God embraces all creation is both awe inspiring and strengthening.
What I realize is that all of these are expressions of an embodied faith – not just praying with words but with our whole body and our actions as well. Incorporating our senses and our actions into our spiritual practices is awe inspiring. It helps us reach for the wholeness hidden deep within and brings us to a place of healing.
What Is Your Response?
Sit for a few minutes with your eyes closed and consider where you have found strength and stability this week. What has enabled you to maintain flexibility and resilience in the midst of our increasingly traumatic world? What new creative practices could help you not only connect to the wonder of God’s world, but also help you find healing and stability in the process?
Not Too Late to Join Us.
Wednesday, we will hold another Wonder in the Trauma Healing Process webinar. I hope that you can join us.
Wonder in the Trauma Healing Process with Christine Sine – 9/23/20
It is time once more for all of us too rest and take a Sabbath. I know that for many of us contemplative services like this one from St Andrews with Taizé style music become a wonderful focus for refreshing and renewing our spirits. This service for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost does just that for us.
Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“‘La Ténèbre” (Our Darkness) and “Nada Te Turbe” – Copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“Raboni, Beloved,” – By Kester Limner and Andy Myers, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“Kyrie for September 20th” – Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“On Christ the Solid Rock,” – Public domain hymn, arrangement and additional verse by Kester Limner Shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY)
by Lisa DeRosa
Home. What does that word mean to you? What feelings are elicited from its utterance?
Taking a small step outside, how about neighborhood? Are these feelings different? Maybe more distant? Or maybe community is a synonym for your thoughts about neighborhood?
Continue to extend this thought experiment out to city/town, region, country, continent, world, and universe. How connected do you feel as it broadens and the distance increases?
In thinking about where I currently live and my sense of place, this year has drawn me to really take notice of my surroundings. I left my place of work about a year and a half years ago, not knowing what God was going to provide next. After a journey of several months trying this job and that job, I began working for Christine and Tom starting in February this year. It is the shortest commute I could ever imagine because I live in their basement unit. So living where I do and working at home regardless of Covid, I have structured my day to include excursions out into the garden and plenty of walks around the neighborhood. In these walks, I witness the Black Lives Matter posters, the teddy bears in the windows, the vegetables that neighbors are growing, the kiddos that thank the garbage man every Thursday, the empty little free libraries… and I wonder to myself, how am I impacting my neighborhood? Or am I, even?
As the air quality has been particularly unhealthy over the last two weeks here in Seattle, I have not ventured outside much. Feeling the effects of the smoke in the air as well as the lack of fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, I feel as though I am disconnected from my place. Inside, home is still the same, but I haven’t walked around the neighborhood or nearby park, explored the garden to smell the flowers or pick raspberries for two weeks now. And I miss it.
With Covid restrictions and the fires taking over the West coast, I know others are struggling to find their sense of sanity through their normal coping mechanisms of walking outside, grabbing coffee with a friend, hosting a gathering in their home, etc. Others are having to evacuate their place without knowing if they will have anything to return to. That is the reality for so many right now and I pray for all those involved from the victims to the fire fighters.
In reflecting on your sense of place, where you are right now in this moment? Are you present? Do you feel connected to your surroundings?
This idea of place has been radically challenged for me in reading and listening to Dwight Friesen and Tom Sine talk about their newest book, 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change. A section in the book on reflecting on and knowing your place reads:
“You are not everywhere. You are somewhere. You may have moved many times or lived on the same plot of land your whole life. You are somewhere right now. There is a place you call home. Your place is God’s gift to you and those who share it with you. Your place is your teacher. Your place doesn’t force itself on you; it is the kind of teacher that whispers to you. It invites you to slow down and listen. It woos you to mindful attention to the impact of your foot-prints. It bids you to notice and seek communion with all its inhabitants. Place is the platform to discover the real. The primary thing place teaches, if we will listen, is faithful presence.” (2020s Foresight, 176-177)
The notion of slowing down and listening hit home during the first few months of our “stay home, stay safe” order. It forced me to schedule all plans as possibilities, stop traveling, and stay in my place. So I could really listen. So I could hear the sounds of the birds, not muffled by the sounds of traffic or planes overhead. To listen to the sound of the rain falling on the leaves in the garden. And listen to the sirens of first responders helping those in need.
Listening to, reflecting on, and knowing your place allows the opportunity for God to move not only in your heart and your home, but in your neighborhood as your sense of place extends outside of just your dwelling space.
I am grateful for Tom and Dwight sharing their insights with me as I have worked with them, but also that they share them in their book. The examples given are of real people, living in real places, who have reflected on and know the place God has them in as they seek to positively impact their neighborhood. How are you impacting your neighborhood? Or are you?
If you have thoughts about this, please comment. I am looking for creative ways to love the people in my place, too.
by Lilly Lewin
This got me thinking about praying with these boxes… and inspired my prayer practice this week!
OPEN THE BOX
He knows you and sees you and loves you so much!
PASSING ON THE GIFT
by Kate Kennington Steer, all images by Kate Kennington Steer
As I mentioned in a previous post for Godspace written in 2016, I have long been fascinated by and inspired by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), not least because despite her struggles with persistent ill health, she was a writer, a composer, a scientist, a preacher, a prophetic visionary, and an Abbess of two Benedictine convents; and because, for me, she personifies what I called back in 2016 ‘expressive strength in creative weakness’. Here’s my concluding passage from that post:
It seems to me that it takes a very particular type of strong personality to be able to continue to live a
creative, fruitful, flourishing life in the service of God and others; and that such a life-force is only found in those whose strength is based on a recognition of their absolute vulnerability and powerlessness. For Hildegard this life-force came from what she idiosyncratically identified as ‘viriditas’, a ‘greening’ of the spirit that forms the innate connection between God’s goodness in the heart and God’s goodness in the earth; a connection Hildegard personifies as Grace. ‘Greening’ is the epitome of God’s blessing to those God loves… As I struggle to find ways in which I might join every day with the Creator in creating and healing, Hildegard’s expressive, exuberant celebration of the ways in which we may all still be greened continues to echo down the centuries to encourage me this day.
During the COVID-19 Lockdown, I have returned to actively thinking about viriditas as part of my ongoing #projectgreen: an intentional, slow, gradual, mindful multimedia exploration of the colour green, asking what might I learn from its associations and usages (both traditional and modern), and what do I need to notice about the presence and absence of this colour in my life at this time?
Philip Larkin, in a line from his poem ‘The Trees’, wrote, ‘their greenness is a kind of grief’. This pinpoints an association that has been humming through my writings this summer, as I have charted the Sun’s arc, and marked moments of particular turning and potential thresholds of revelation. I realise that, as my attention has shifted through the building of light and its affect on the intensity of greens surrounding and greeting me in my Mum’s garden, that once I was past the zenith of the Summer Solstice, I have been looking at green in a (literally) different light, as darkness begins to make its presence felt round the edges of each day as the peak of the season passes. It sounds so obvious to say green is not a homogeneous entity, a single universally understood colour. Nor, of course, is light. My late Summer light is not the same even across the northern hemisphere, let alone the light experienced on other continents enjoying different seasons. Something of this found its way into ‘blank green’, a poem found from the words of my journaled reflections on this collage I made:
and suddenly there is no such thing as a blank green
see the paper crinkled by blued glue into
precipitous mountain top passes
and plunging crevasses the shape of a missing
plate framing bokehed sun shapes
masking whatever is currently unseen
glimpse rust flakes becoming moss trails over flocked rocks inviting me to clamber into depths of evergreen
rich darkness enfolding me in forest
hear its promise to hold me in pined perfume
setting me down on the winding track into untold lostness
or perhaps only as far as the blue pool
where my yesness continues to echo off sunbaked
clay banks and the Spirit’s hovering ripples water
in a constant play of eddy and still in delight unhesitating I plunge along the ridge of upturned leaf stirring minute hairs freed from dew
parting to reveal a stippled pathway of midgreens leading me on past the comfort of High Windows and Larkin’s words of baptism in light
over the whale’s crustacean enhanced hide
onto the uneven terrain of the seabed itself where murk and shadow disrobe what light may veil
until I am spouted upward propelled into sky
until a rail steadies me
onto a look out over the aura borealis
a swirl of pea green against unimaginable layers of receding blueback purpled at the edges
until returning to present I am pierced again
by the stripes of the tongued plant
(though lacking a mother-in-law how can I know
its’ true speech?) I traverse the hinterland of understanding as it dips into hollows of familiar yellow and dances along blazing minty ice cream heat heights
reaching past the softmeadow grass and the friable hayfield into unexplored tropics extended fans and
upside down paintbrush trees mirrored
in jewelled swimming pools transfigured emerald
against a jungled sky
until here in this coolness
here where I am overshadowed by such unfamiliar shapes here may I rest
This kind of welding of written and visual expression is something that speaks intently to me (as the name for my blog imageintoikon suggests). It is the path I wish to explore in future works, even if for the moment I needs must be content with an A4 collage made in bed, doodles made beside scribbles in a journal that is almost never beyond arm’s reach. Again, this brings me back to the tensions that Hildegard lived with: the reach of her earthly ambitions were tempered by persistent ill health, and yet, her trusting perception of viriditas beyond the surface of all things, is what helps me, hundreds of years later, see the ‘greening power of God suffusing all life and creation’:
Viriditas is the force sustaining life each moment, bringing newness to birth. It is a marvellous image of the divine power continuously at work in the world, juicy and fecund … The prophet Isaiah writes that “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and
singing” (Is 35.1-2) This abundant blossoming is the provenance of viriditas. We are called to wander through the desert tending to the abundant gifts of viriditas, the creative life-force of everything alive. Hildegard’s wisdom is for living a life that is fruitful and green and overflowing with verdancy. She calls us to look for fecundity in barren places …
(original emphases)(Christine Valters Paintner, Illuminating the Way, 161-2, 164, 170)
In one of her books of visions, the Liber Vitae Meritorum, Hildegard receives a dialogue between two characters: Heavenly Joy and Worldly Sadness. In the opinion of Heavenly Joy, Worldly Sadness is sad because she does not ‘observe the sun and moon and stars and all the decoration of the greenness [viriditas] of the earth and consider how much prosperity God gives man with these things’. By contrast, of herself Heavenly Joy says:
“I possess heaven, since all that God created, and which you call noxious, I observe in its true light. I gently collect the blossoms of roses and lilies and all greenness [viriditas] in my lap since I praise all the works of God, while you attract sorrows to you because you are dolorous in all your works.”
Hildegard’s viriditas reminds me to notice the gifts I am given in the ordinary details of my life around
me. Viriditas reminds me that the Spirit always waits in readiness to ‘green’ my soul’s barren places and our planet’s damaged earth. There is always hope within viriditas. In the action of the Spirit’s ‘greening’ I am becoming who God longs for me to be. In the light that is itself a gift, I am called to notice and collect together the incidents of greening around about me, like where ‘moss trails over flocked rocks/ inviting me to clamber into depths of evergreen’. The Spirit’s ‘greening’ invites me to open my eyes, to see where the Spirit ‘sets me down’ to find even more green, and though at first I may appear surrounded by ‘lostness’, the ongoing ‘greening’ of my soul promises always to lead me into the heart of God’s calling for me.
So perhaps this is the key to both viriditas and #projectgreen: they symbolise the continual flow of emergence and re-emergence of gratefulness in me, which inexorably leads me to pause to praise my Maker the Great Artist, with thanksgiving in my heart, before I move on, powered by viriditas, into the day God lays before me, welcoming whatever it may bring. Today, using Hildegard’s words of praise of the Holy Spirit, I ask that viriditas will bless us this day, and all the days to come:
Out of you clouds
come streaming, winds
take wing from you, dashing
rain against stone;
and ever-fresh springs
well from you, washing
the evergreen globe [terra viriditatem].
(From ‘O ignis Spiritus Paracliti’ (trans Barbara Newman Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations, 148-151))
[an extended version of this post (with more examples of #projectgreen) can be found at imageintoikon.com)
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