Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
H is for Hurry
Author: Sally
G is for Glory
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
In the spring of 2012, my father’s home insurance company sent an inspector. As a result, the insurance company required two changes: part of the roof needed to be replaced and two trees needed to come down, one of them being the tree shown above.
“I am sorry,” sighed the tree.
I wish that I could
give you something…
But I have nothing left.
I am just an old stump.
I am sorry…”Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
Well, an old stump is good for a garden.
Come, plant flowers and enjoy.
A purple coneflower gives glory to God by being a purple coneflower and a petunia gives glory to God by being a petunia.
F is for Fear
Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart.
It shrinks up our capacity to love.
It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration
At the root of all war is fear.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
… and fear is a color. As soon as it touches our liberty, it stains it and renders it unlike to itself.
Thomas Merton, quoting St. Bernard in The Silent Life
E is for Extraordinary
… to fly into the desert in order to be extraordinary is only to carry the world with you as an implicit standard of comparison.
Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert
D is for Desert
Meanwhile, we are passing through the desert on our way to the promised land.
Bread in the Wilderness, by Thomas Merton
Photo taken by Owen during his travels in Morocco (2006)
C is for Community
There is a world of difference between a community and a crowd.
Thomas Merton, The Silent Life
People often comment on the size of our family — “That’s a crowd!” But the truth is that family can be the very best of community, united in love.
A common purpose and working together create community, even when languages and religions are different.
The small town of Greene, NY, is community. When the village flooded some years back, we watched neighbors tirelessly helping neighbors and it struck me that this is a special community.
And then there’s Cooperstown, whose population swells from 2,000 to 50-, 60-, 70-thousand on Baseball Hall of Fame Induction weekend. Of course not everyone is like this, but an awful lot of make-a-buck people, get-that-autograph people, and swoon-at-celebrity people take over the village.
Along the lines of community, on Monday, I was reading a post from one of my favorite sites: The Rabbit Room.
It began with these words:
Recently, there have been a lot of conversations about how the Rabbit Room can best bring people together and support the work of creative communities across the world. We’re happy to tell you we’ve been listening, and today we are excited to lift the veil on the next frontier of the Rabbit Room experience.
How exciting, I thought.
As I read the next line, though, I became troubled.
We believe social media is the key to shaping the world into a better place.
Oh, golly, I thought. I guess we’re moving in different directions.
As they laid out their vision, I became more and more sure that this was a parting of the ways — until, that is, I came to the Grammar Police.
Our Grammar Police™ filter will automatically correct abbreviated textspeak and fill in you’re every missed Oxford comma, incorrect apostrophe and dangling modifier.
I looked at the “you’re” and the date, and started laughing. I had been April Fooled.
Well done, Rabbit Room.
To read the full post (and learn about the Chabbit), click here: Announcing the Next Evolution of the Rabbit Room
B is for Breathe
Abbot Pastor said:
A man must breathe humility and the fear of God
just as ceaselessly as he inhales and exhales air.
from The Wisdom of the Desert (collected sayings of 4th century ascetics, compiled and translated by Thomas Merton)
A swimming picture because it’s in swimming that we learn to be intentional about our breathing until it becomes so natural that we no longer have to think about it.
A is for Advent
In Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton reflects on the writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Bernard spoke of three advents of Christ.
The first advent is “that in which He comes to seek and to save the lost.”
The third advent is “that in which He comes to takes us to Himself.”
The second advent, the one which I’ve been thinking on ever since reading about it, is the present advent which “is taking place at every moment of our own earthly life as wayfarers.”
Thomas Merton said, referring to the second advent, the one between the first and third,
To meditate on these two Advents
is to sleep between the arms of God
with His left hand under our head
and His right hand embracing us.
It is also to sleep ‘between the lots’ —
that is to say to
‘live at peace in the midst of our inheritance’.
Blogging from A to Z 2019
I’m taking one more go at the April A to Z Challenge — this time using quotes from Thomas Merton and photographs from my stash.
What is the A to Z Challenge? Basically, it’s a challenge to post every day except Sundays during the month of April, and, since it usually comes out to 26 posts, using the alphabet as inspiration for each day.
I’m loving my year of reading Thomas Merton, so I’m going to let him speak for me.
Tune in April 1 for the first Merton quote, based on the letter A.
Laughter IS Good Medicine
Last week, when the EMTs arrived at the house, one asked my father, “How do you feel?”
“With my hands,” he replied.
The EMT didn’t get it.
I don’t think he expected an 80-something man who had just had three syncopal episodes to be doling out one-liners.
My brother and I both laughed. Then Peter tried to get him to answer the question by asking it again, “How do you feel, Dad?”
Same response.
He often answers “How did you sleep?” with “With my eyes closed.”
His joking may irritate some, but not me. I am so glad to have been raised with a sense of humor. It’s such a gift — to be able to laugh in the midst of a terrible situation.
I remember when we were all gathered around my mother’s bed as she was dying. Different people were sharing things she had said and done, thanking her for the many ways she had blessed us.
During a lull, one of my kids said, “No charge.”
We all burst out laughing (and maybe crying). That’s what my mother would say when we got up to use the bathroom.
It could be a little embarrassing when we had someone over to visit. They would ask where the rest room was and excuse themself. My mother would call after them, “No charge!”
But it was her way of being funny — and it carried long into her dementia.
When I have dementia, I’m sure I’ll tell dumb jokes. I’ve been gathering them this year for the swim team.
I’m not coaching this year so that I can be home more with my father. Now my role is parent-coach liaison, registrar, information disseminator, question answerer, meet signer-upper, and joke teller.
I carved out the joke teller niche for myself.
One of the other coaches is very punny. She helps me.
Now the kids are sharing jokes with me, too. Here’s today’s offering from a swimmer:
Who cleans the sea?
Mermaids
Why did the fish go to the sand bank?
To get sand dollars!
In November, I started off with a few swim jokes,
Q: What kind of race is never run?
A: A swimming race.
Q: Why would the boy only do the backstroke?
A: He just had lunch and didn’t want to swim on a full stomach.
Q: What did the ocean say to the swimmer?
A: Nothing. It just waved.
Q: Why did the vegetarian stop swimming?
A: She didn’t like meets.
Moved on to snow jokes in December,
Q: What do you call ten rabbits hopping backwards through the snow together?
A: A receding hare line.
A: A receding hare line.
Q: What do Snowmen call their offspring?
A: Chill-dren.
A: Chill-dren.
Q: Which is faster — hot or cold?
A: Hot, because you can catch cold.
And then fitness jokes in January.
I went to the gym and decided to jump on the treadmill. People were looking at me weird so I decided to jog instead.
Why did the elite swimmer buy tape from the hardware store?
Somebody told her she was ripped!
Somebody told her she was ripped!
Someone tried to tell me that Yoga was a good workout. I thought that was a bit of a stretch.
My favorite workout is between a lunge and a crunch. I call it lunch.
Before I knew it, anything was fair game, even Armageddon.
So what if I don’t know what Armageddon means? It’s not the end of the world.
What’s at the end of everything? The letter G.
Once I told a chemistry joke. There was no reaction. (<—- That’s a joke.)
Today I was sending out information on timing at the next meet. This was the joke I adapted.
The past, the present, and the future all arrived at the swimming pool. Things got a little tense.
What can I say? Laughter is good medicine.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 