… watching for the brushstrokes of God
“The bush burned, was alive with flame and was not consumed. Why? Isn’t it because, as a bush, it was perfect? It was exactly as a bush is meant to be. A bush certainly doesn’t have the opportunity for prideful and selfish choices, for self-destruction, that we human beings do. It is.“ ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
How do you get to the place where you are not consumed?
“By refusing to ask what was wrong, I was holding the fragile bubble of my world in my hand, protecting it by not questioning it, keeping it from shattering into a million fragments. I put myself into a state of arrested development by staying a child.” Madeleine L’Engle, Bright Evening Star
What are you willing to ask?
“When I think of the incredible, incomprehensible sweep of creation above me, I have the strange reaction of feeling fully alive. Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning…I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this—and out of nothing—can still count the hairs of my head.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle
What do the galaxies awaken within you?
A tiny dot of blue in the grey and cloudy sky. An opening. A promise.
“In our anxiety to limit ourselves to that which we can comprehend definitely, we are losing all that is above, beyond, below, through, past, over that small area encompassed by our conscious mind” Madeleine L’Engle
How do you limit yourself? How does God break through?
Jesus asked 307 questions, was asked 186 and answered three of them.
“ We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means that we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues and thanked God that he was not like other men.” Madeleine l’Engle
What questions are burning within you?
“I will never understand the silent dying of the green pie-apple tree if I do not slow down and listen to what the Spirit is telling me, telling me of the death of trees, the death of planets, of people, and what all those deaths mean in the light of love of the Creator, who brought them all into being, who brought me into being, and you.” Madeleine L’engle, walking on Water
There is forced slowing down from outer circumstances and there is voluntary slowing down, to be and to listen. What emerges as you slow down and listen?
With the Eyes of the Heart 