The holy earth. We must take such care of it. It must take such care of us. This side of Paradise, we are each of us so nearly all the other has.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
E is for Earth
Tag: collage
D is for Darkness
The original creation of light (Genesis 1) itself is almost too extraordinary to take in. The little cook-out on the beach (John 21) is almost too ordinary to take seriously. … Only a saint or a visionary can begin to understand God setting the very sun on fire in the heavens, and therefore God takes another tack. By sheltering a spark with a pair of cupped hands and blowing on it, the Light of the World gets enough of a fire going to make breakfast. It’s not apt to be your interest in cosmology or even in theology that draws you to it so much as that empty feeling in your stomach. You don’t have to understand anything very complicated. All you’re asked to do it to take a step or two forward through the darkness and start digging in.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
C is for Chanting
Words wear out after a while, especially religious words… When a prayer or a psalm or a passage from the Gospels is chanted, we hear the words again… We remember that they are not only meaning but music and mystery. … Of course, chanting wears out after a while too.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
One of my children said that when people pray prayers together in a service they sound like robots. I suppose it could sound that way.
I like how Buechner refers to them as music and mystery.
They are polished rocks, made smooth and beautiful by time and use.
B is for Boredom
You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it… To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life is offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.
~~ Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
I can honestly say that boredom has not been a part of my life. Instead of nothing to do, I have a thousand things to do and not time enough for them all.
I liked this quote because it reminded that the people who are bored are simply not engaged in life. I think about the pall of depression that can settle over our elderly who are in long-term care settings. It’s hard to be engaged there — but a visit from a friend or family member can brighten a whole day. It sparks memories and conversation. It reminds them that are loved and remembered and valued.
A is for Apologists
“C. S. Lewis once said something to the effect that no Christian doctrine ever looked so threadbare to him as when he had just finished successfully defending it. … In order to defend the faith successfully — which is the business of apologists — they need to reduce it to a defendable size. It’s easier to hold a fortress against the enemy than to hold a landscape.”
~~ Frederich Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
A is for Apologists defending a landscape, not a fortress.
My faith is pretty threadbare these days. I look at my country embracing “Christian” principles and am ashamed.
Jesus never behaved the way these people are behaving. We’re back to The Crusades, a most shameful part of Christian history.
When we feel that we have to defend God, we are, in a sense, thinking ourselves bigger and stronger than God. He doesn’t need me to defend Him. Seriously.
What He wants is for me to be kind and loving. To emulate Him.
We “defend” God not with a sword, but by being kind. We demonstrate not with angry words and violent actions, but with gentleness. If someone thinks differently than we do, we still call them beloved, not lunatic.
I will defend the landscape that is my faltering faith by planting seeds. My sword has been beaten into a plowshare.
Sunflowers
A photograph of a sunflower was the prompt for Tanka Tuesday. I immediately thought of the sunflower field near us. People constantly stop to photograph it — it’s so lovely. Recently, on Facebook however, there were a number of nasty comments about the people stopping to look at the sunflowers. It’s dangerous, they said — and they were probably right.
But doggone-it, the sunflowers are so pretty.
I wrote a poem about the controversy (kind of) and shaped each stanza like a petal, using syllable counts 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. Then I cut them out and put them in a collage.
Below, the poem in text form. Below that is my collage.
some
people
see the field
of sunflowers
and are in awe of
their beauty but
others see
the cars
that
pull
over
to the side
haphazardly
because somebody
in the car caught
sight of the
flowers
and
could
not help
but to slam
on the brakes and
climb out of their car
to draw closer
to the gold-
en beaut-
y
they
are drawn
by flowers
and more flowers.
they’re intoxicated
by the beauty
and don’t see
danger
to
self
or to
others – the
ones who are just
on their way to work
and don’t have time
for flowers
or they
are
weighed
down by
too many
cares — so they don’t
care or remember
to care, to see.
this world is
so so
rich
rich,
I say,
in beauty
golden yellow
living miracles
that came from seeds
and grew taller
than even
you or
me
Almost Lost
True story: A little over a week ago, I did the high ropes course with my daughter Mary. I had done it two years ago with friend/co-worker and had a lot of fun. This go-round, I was definitely weaker. My upper body muscle soreness in the days that followed bore witness to that.
Anyway, I had this one little serendipitous moment while on the course the other night. Mary and I were unclipping and clipping our carabineers from one cable to another after we had completed one element and were getting ready to start another. Suddenly I realized that my necklace was gone.
Now this necklace had been given to me over 8 years ago by one of my daughters. I have worn it nearly every day since. To say that it’s a favorite piece of jewelry would be a gross understatement. Stamped on those discs are the names of all my children.
So Mary and I are standing I-don’t-know-how-many feet above the ground and I realized my necklace was gone. I held my hand against my chest, just below my throat, right about where the pendant would have rested and tried to calm myself.
Breathe…. Breathe…. It’s okay…. it’s just a necklace….. it’s okay….. breathe…..
Then I looked down. See that kind of flat surface with cables and stuff screwed into it?
Yeah, well, my necklace was there. All neat and tidy like someone had gently placed it on the wooden “shelf”. The chain wasn’t broken. The clasp wasn’t broken it. It was just waiting for me.
I can’t explain it and I’m not even going to try to. I’m just grateful.
I found an art challenge today called Tic-Tac-Toe. The idea is that one of the artists sets up a grid with nine art elements and over the course of a week, you create a piece using three of those elements that appear in a row.
Here’s this week’s grid:
I decided to give it a try using Green-Metallic Elements-Use Shapes.
- Green — that was the easy part.
- I had a broken chain from my necklace that I had saved to use someday in a collage. A necklace is metallic, right?
- The artist for the tree I cut out had drawn star-shaped leaves so I cut out some more star-shaped leaves covering over hers.
Thus I created a riff on the story of losing a necklace in a precarious place.
What do you think?
Meditation
My mind’s a scattered mess
Errant thoughts I cannot catch
Direct result of stress
I deeply breathe — attach
This diffuse excess
As if herding butterflies
To scented blooms of peace
I deeply breathe — and sighs
Open me — I cease
Needing order. Chaos dies.
This was much harder than I thought!
My poetry muscles are weak.
I just started working out with weights again at the gym. Some of my flesh-and-blood muscles are SO SORE. Thank goodness my brain doesn’t hurt the same way 🙂
I realize this collage is not terribly meditative, but I was looking through my photos for one of a butterfly and found this collage that I made years ago. It made me laugh.
Reactions
The prompt was to use a photograph in my collage, so I did.
So many reactions to a new baby! Wonder, joy, must-tell-everybody, what-the-heck-is-all-the-fuss-about-it’s- just-a-baby
Retro
“Create a retro feel,” prompted The Collage Ideas Book by Alannah Moore, a gift from one of my sons.
Did I succeed?
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 