… watching for the brushstrokes of God
Katangole/Rice in Reconciling all Things invite us into the ongoing process of confession and lament, “as we learn to go out of our way to draw near and tarry with the pain of the world in concrete places, the challenge is to keep naming the truth, keep being disturbed, keep remembering the awful depth of brokenness.”
Do confession and lament keep you going?
“Wind is the only one of the four elements that is invisible. The gift of air lacks any discernible form or color or texture, but it makes everything else come alive both literally, as in the gift of life-giving breath, and figuratively, as in the buffeting of things by the wind’s power.” ~ Christine Valters Paintner
When was the last time you lay in the grass watching the clouds drift by?
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote “It is only framed in space that beauty blooms.” I wonder how space allows for ordinary miracles that ground us and strengthen our hearts so we can keep them open in difficult times, turning and returning to the center when too many demands and chaos pull us like centrifugal forces off center.
What space nourishes grounding?
“The invitation again and again is to return to the heart and to recognize the slow work of spiritual practice in softening us, making us more receptive to God’s movements.” ~ Christine Valters Paintner
How do you return to the slow work?
“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.” ~ Annie Dillard
How do you ride the monsters deeper?
… So let us be marked
not for sorrow. …
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear. ~ Jan Richardson
With the Eyes of the Heart 