… watching for the brushstrokes of God
“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, Call to Create
How do you pay attention to areas of winter?
Watching the destructive forces of one storm after another leaving devastation in their wake makes me wonder what we in our rushing leave behind. Is life-giving unfolding and emerging found in slowing? Birth, rebuilding, growing all take time.
What in your life needs slowing?
“One could not begin the cultivation of the prayer life at a more practical point than deliberately to seek each day, and several times a day, a lull in the rhythm of daily doing, a period where nothing happens that demands active participation.” This lull of being rather than doing is a holy pause. “ ~ Howard Thurman
How do you breathe in between?
Some days it seems important to simply gather the pieces that have been cut and broken and put them together in new ways to find beauty.
What pieces are you laying out in new patterns to find beauty in the brokenness of these days?
We came back to the lake one evening for some night-time kayaking. There is something about being out on the water…fish jumping, frogs croaking, encircled by the deep darkness of the trees, wrapped in the cloak of darkness, infinitely small under the vastness of the stars. It was what Karla Kincannon calls “a holy moment, an encounter with the Divine that pulsates within the circadian rhythms found in all creation.”
Where have you found a holy moment? How do you build spaces into your regular rhythm to be surprised by the holy?
“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
What helps you remember?
With the Eyes of the Heart 