… watching for the brushstrokes of God
“…this can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.” ~ David Steindl-Rast
How do you ride the wave of gratefulness?
I already know everything I need in this moment to live fully. There is no other book or experience that will make me more complete. … the caution is to not let the words in a book become a substitute for my own deep knowing.” ― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s slow Ripening
How do you tap into that other way of knowing?
A major obstacle to creativity is wanting to be in the peak season of growth and generation at all times . . . but if we see the soul’s journey as cyclical, like the seasons . . . then we can accept the reality that periods of despair or fallowness are like winter – a resting time that offers us a period of creative hibernation, purification, and regeneration that prepare us for the births of spring. ~ Linda Leonard, The Call to Create
How do you rest in winter seasons?
Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century)
What is your soul drawn to?
“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before … What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.” Jan L. Richardson, Night Vision
“What if you bowed before every dandelion you met and wrote love letters to squirrels and pigeons who crossed your path? What if scrubbing the dishes became an act of single reverence for the gift of being washed clean, and what if the rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots became the drumbeat of your dance? … There are two ways to live in this world: As if everything were enchanted or nothing at all.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim
What shall it be?
With the Eyes of the Heart 