Here's a lovely 106 year old witness to the love of beauty. It's a testimony to the power of the spirit to overcome enormous trauma and suffering through the love and practice of beauty. I can't help wondering how things around us would change if we lived as such ordinary saints, simply celebrating and cultivating beauty each day in the little places where we live.
'Till the mind is ravished
Notes from my reading of the Pursuit of Wisdom (by the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, 14th century), taken during my study at Oxford, summer 2007: "You must gather together your thoughts and your desires and make of them a church, and there learn to love only this good word Jesus, so that all your desires and thoughts are directed to love Jesus alone. And do not fail in this mindfulness, insofar as it is possible by grace and your frailty will permit, humbling yourself more and more in prayer and taking counsel, patiently waiting on the will of the Lord, until the mind is ravished above itself to be fed with the sweet food of angels in the beholding of God and godly things."
The kiss of God
Notes from my reading of the Ancrene Wisse, a medieval guide for anchorites (early 13th century); taken during my study at Oxford, summer 2007. Here's a lovely meditation on the priority of the heart, and the tenderness of the One we seek in prayer:
"'Protect your heart well with every kind of defense, daughter,' says Solomon, 'for if she is well locked away, the soul's life is in her,' (Proverbs 4.23). The Heart is a most wild beast and makes many a light leap out. As St. Gregory says, nichil corde fugiatus, 'nothing flies out of a person sooner than their own heart. . . .'"
"'Do what you should here and you will be fair elsewhere, not only among women but among angels. You, my worldly spouse,' says our Lord, 'will you follow the goats, which are the lusts of the flesh, to the field?'--the field is desire's breeding ground. 'Will you follow goats through the field in this way? You should beseech me for kisses within your heart's bower, as my lover, who says to me in the book of love: 'Let my lover kiss me with the kids of his mouth, the sweetest of mouths,' (Canticles 1.1). This kiss, dear sisters, is a sweetness and a delight of the heart so immeasurably sweet that every taste of the world is bitter compared with it. But our Lord kisses no soul with this kiss who loves anything but him, and those things it helps to have for his sake."
Be gentle with each person you meet
A vacation posting: this post from last spring is even more timely now in the midst of such widespread incivility
Here’s a simple practice that will change the way you interact with others, and how you treat yourself.
“Be gentle with each person you meet, for each of them is actually fighting a great battle.” Philo of Alexandria, 20 BCE—50 CE
It is a deeply spiritual practice, and contemplative—that is, it rises from the unceasing, interior prayer you are practicing.
Gentleness arises from the compassion God is birthing in you as you pray. Gentleness arises from your deep awareness of your own interior battle to be human and holy. Practice this and you will not only change the little part of the world you inhabit, but you will change yourself, for you too are fighting a great battle.
Sufism: bridge between East and West
Here's an excellent essay by one of my favorite authors. Muslims in the Middle. New York Times, August 16, 2010 William Dalrymple's book, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, helped inspire my own pilgrimage in 2007. That tale is told in my little e-book, Returning to the Center: Living Prayer in a Distracting Word/The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First Century Pilgrim (available for free download here).
In this essay, Dalrymple explores why the mystic arm of Islam, Sufism, makes a perfect bridge between East and West, moving beyond Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and secular extremism. It's an apt corrective to so much of the mis-information being bandied about today, especially as September 11 draws near once again.
I commend not only Dalrymple's essay (reprinted from the New York Times), but also the website diversejourneys.com, and more, the Rand Corporation's 2007 Report, Building Moderate Muslim Networks.