… watching for the brushstrokes of God
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?
There is movement in the scriptures leading to Jesus’ birth. People are travelling along unfamiliar, unexpected, unwelcome and unpredictable roads….watching, waiting, trusting, yearning for God.
How do we long for God with us…Immanuel?
Redwing in winter
with leftovers in the snow
nourished by color
What nourishes you when life gets bare? How does God provide?
“There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor no created thing can touch.” (German mystic Meister Eckhard)
“…what it means is that your identity is not equivalent to your biography and that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.” John O’Donohue
Do you know that place?
“Something as earthbound as fabric and clay and paint can speak our most wordless longings, express our delight and grief. Beauty can connect our hearts to the divine heart.” ~ Grünewald Guild founder Richard Caemmerer
How do you express what words cannot?
“I think it makes a huge difference, when you wake in the morning and come out of your house, … whether you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you, but in a totally different form, and if you go towards it with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you.” John O’Donohue
What is the landscape of this season revealing to you?
With the Eyes of the Heart 