‘If the bow is kept continually taut, it looses its resilience and becomes less fit for its works’.

Saint Bruno

Invisible, Elemental

The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.

There are men of the East, he said,
Who are the East.
There are men of a province
Who are that province.

There are men of a valley
Who are that valley....

The Mandoline is the instrument
Of a place.

Are there mandolines of western mountains?
Are there mandolines of northern moonlight?

The dress of a woman of Lhasa,
In it's place,
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand" Wallace Stevens


Lingering thoughts shared here, from here.





Photo: miss604

John Bradburne.... "Vagabond of God"

"God's love within you is your native land.
So search none other, never more depart.
For you are homeless save God keeps your heart."
(JRB)

I learned a little about John Bradburne when a wonderful priest called father David who works with orphans in Zimbabwe, as part of an organisation called Mother of Peace, came to visit our church some time ago.
This Holy man has a truly humbling and inspiring story I would love to share.

John, who described himself as a Strange Vagabond of God, was a layman and a member of the Third Order of St Francis.
He lived a life of poverty that seemed almost directionless to many, until he found his true vocation, caring for lepers in Zimbabwe.

Many of his patients needed considerable care which John Bradburne gave them with unstinting devotion, until his murder in 1979 at the end of the war for Independence.
After Bradburne
was shot, the local people wanted to hide the body for fear of reprisals
from white security forces. As they were carrying it away, they heard a
choir singing, dropped the body, and ran. However, when they turned back
they saw a strange white bird, with three beams of light ascending
heavenward, hovering over the body. The villagers fled in fright.

Since his death there have been many signs of John's close friendship with Jesus.


Here is his story...

Beauty.... and the Liturgy of Life.

I love it when I am put into other people's shoes, feeling and experiencing other people's temptations, ideas, sorrows, desires. I have become (over time) grateful for when this happens because it has humbled me so much, it has also caused me to sympathise with people I would have very quickly judged.
The other day I was driving through town. I had many different tasks to do, appointments, time constraints, on top of sleep deprivation and just general anxiety which I'm prone too get when stuck in town anyway. I'm sure I have sensation issues, lights, noise, crowds.... just effect me in a bad way, anyhow....
Emmy noticed this beautiful V line of geese, make it's way across the sun mottled sky above us and pointed it out to me.
Beauty has always been so important to me. It stops me hard. I am compelled by it. I have, on occasion, been caught frozen solid in the middle of a crowded street by a glint of sunlight through the branches of a tree, or forgotten my bag on a bench to wander into a little grove of dappled light on the path ahead.
But for some reason that particular day, the juxtaposition of this sacred ritual of flight in the heavens and the stress of the streets reacted toxically within me.
I felt nauseous and irritated.
I simply didn't want the distraction!
Oh, how beauty has become devalued in our highly industrialised world. We simply don't want the distraction. Everything has become streamlined to manage the practicalities of life efficiently. The sacred journey of the geese, the lichen of every green hue imaginable upon the bark of a horse chestnut tree, and the little spider upon the quivering leaf are left unnoticed by most. The deep truths that speak to our very soul within the natural world are not penetrated for the sake of gleaning a breadth superficial knowledge with the questionable agenda of our mental trawling.
Art always reflects it's society. These days even the art we see hanging out upon the walls of modern galleries has become almost utilitarian in it's aesthetic approach. Soulless and aspiring to look factory made, image after image betrays the mark of a Warhol print from his own pre fab style "factory" line productions.
In many ways, art has become about image rather than intent.
With the constant noise of technology buzzing around us and the demands of a life that turns upon it's dizzying axis, children (adults too) have very much, lost the ability to notice, to observe, to recognise beauty.
For economies sake houses are losing their individuality and workmanship. Products, estates, high streets and interiors emphasis the contemporary twin attributes of being streamlined and functional. Our cities are built, not to reflect the art and civilisation of a nation anymore, they are set into the hardened mould of capital gain.
But we humans are not soulless robots.
A thing done for nothing more than the sake of beauty is surely valuable indeed, within it's own right. It's usefulness or economy should not be it's primary reason for existing.
Is it ours?
The Bible tells us that we have been made to know, love and praise the God of heaven and Earth.
Problem is that these days, these high ideals have become relegated to the sidelines of life. The edges and the hard shoulders, for making small pit stops only when we break down completely.
Life is liturgy. It is discovering of the essence of God within all things. It is the fibonacci sequence within nature, ratio's golden rule!
It is harmony, both inner and outer. Yet we are losing segments of the sequence, we are messing with the DNA of the liturgy. The liturgy of life itself, the Word made flesh.
Noticing, observing and recognising beauty in the natural world around us and in the reflection of this in art was what the great philosopher's of the past saw as the very purpose of life.
Education and life wasn't about the repetition of tasks for the sake of both the individual and national economy, it was for the nourishment and expansion of the soul.
How many people take wonderment. How many people have been taught, or shown how through example, to take wonderment from the simple beauty's within nature.
Children, I truly have come to believe, need to been in nature regularly. They need to be taught the liturgy of life.
I'm glad Emmy noticed. It is becoming a gift, noticing. May I always be able to slow down, stop and stare at the sun glinting through the shivering branches of a city tree lifting it's leaves in praise from the 2 by 2 sqaure patch of dirt along the road.

Photo credit: NaPix -- Now in Sapa VN

Two kinds of Emptiness....

Emptiness is a very common complaint in our days, not the purposeful emptiness of the virginal heart and mind but a void, meaningless, unhappy condition.

Lives are overcrowded, filled with trivial details, plans, desires, ambitions, unsatisfied cravings for passing pleasures, doubts, anxieties, and fears; and these sometimes further overlaid with exhausting pleasures which are an attempt, and always a futile attempt, to forget.

The whole process of contemplation through imitation of Our Lady can be gone through , in the first place, with just that simple purpose of regaining the virgin mind, and as we go on in the attempt we shall find that over and over again there is a new emptying process; it is a thing which has to be done in contemplation as often as the earth has to be sifted and the field ploughed for seed.

At the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in his life, all the hard blocks and congestion's; not necessarily to discard all his interests forever, but at least once to stop still, and having prayed for courage, to visualise himself without all the extras, escapes, and interests other than Love in his life; to see ourselves as if we had just come from God's hand and gathered nothing to ourselves yet, to discover just what shape is the virginal emptiness of our own being, and of what material we are made.

We need to be reminded that every second of our survival does really mean that we are new from God's fingers, so that it require no more than the miracle which we never notice to restore to us our virgin-heart at any moment we like to choose.

Excerpts from "The Reed of God" by Caryll Houselander

Photo: Romulo fotos

Finding my life

Still
Be still heart

The storm will not last
don't let the bitter winds
turn you to ice
Come inside.

Sit still and remember
the seed I planted deep inside you long ago...

....As a child you watered it well without even
understanding, you just fell right down and
cupped your little hands into the river's depth

But now there are other concerns
and they grow up like weeds
around the garden of the child
who played among the reeds...

....Sit still a while and remember
where you found me last

I am always here.

"The eyes to see, the ears to hear"

Just sit a while with me,
your own heart is the eye of the storm
that aches in the skies of your thoughts
See my face and not
the wailing rains and swelling tides
they will subside
the waters still
and then you will recognise once more
my reflection upon the
surface of all things


Child, if you can find my heart and my life
within all
...you will find where yours dwells too.

abandonment. God at every step....

*
*
*
"Everything is intended to guide, uphold and support you. Everything is the hand of God. God’s action is vaster and more present to you than the elements of earth"

Purchase the Joy of Full Surender.

I hear singing...

I hear singing

Her voice a bubble

of certainty

and hope

rising

on the breeze

Into the blue unknown.



Poem doodle (thanks to LL for the idea:)

Just do the next thing

Just do the next thing.

Do it with all the love and purpose you can.

Without thinking further

Off into the distance, where

input must equal output

income balance outcome

and the expectation of something better somewhere

someplace, somewhen ... else

can only ever underestimate

the aching sweet

beauty of the

"just now"

I have here with you.

He loves me just as I am...

Just thought I'd do something a little different... I picked up a book at random, turned to a random page and thought I'd write the first paragraph I came across here it is... "He loves me with all my weaknesses, with all my inherited and acquired defects, he loves me as I am, with my idiosyncrasies and my temperament, my habits and my complexes. ... Just as I am." From the book "Love" by Earnesto Cardenal

With the giving... ( A Poem inspired by Mother Teresa)

In an embrace,

In a smile,
In the eyes of a stranger
who stayed
When shame danced
drunk with despair
in the rain.

In the pouring

of dreams to a child's empty bowl,
rattling along the fractured
paths falling
between the broken
seams swelling

where lonely tears
seep into the fabric
of absorbed tomorrows

And yesterdays' concrete -
covered dreams sleep
too deep
to be woken.

mutely softly,
still,

silently stepping

over lines

that divide.

That run aimlessly beneath the surface

Across the brokenness

It's in the touch

of a pencil thin mark
sound like the
one gentle voice
above the white noise

of railway stations and
police sirens
falling change...
....sun drenched rain...

In the seeking beyond

the lush green fields

and a vision
that can reach
a lower kind of ground

crossing rivers that wade
between the currents
of race, creed
colour, sound

till something once lost
may again be found

The precious cradled
gently
un-bound.

It's in the space between

the vapour of breath
where hands cup
emptiness
and call it fullness

this touch
of thankfulness

Yes

the kind of love
that sees the mess

and still loves

and a heart
that can only
grow greater

with the giving

Multitude Monday

a
w

This week gratitude started like the podding of peas.
One by one little blessings appearing beneath broken shells. Opened shells.
Bright green sweetness popping in little mouths. And a mad scrambling under a tent, peas and all, when the sudden afternoon rain shower blew over!

Yesterday, thankfulness was a birthday cake for Daddy, that was meant to be blue but ended up green because you made the icing with yellow butter cream :) (It was even more delicious)

Then two hours alone with Tani on his birthday. Talking, opening up, sharing, shedding shells, becoming real, vulnerable, making deeper connections, walking, laughing over silly jokes that make no sense to anyone else but us. Remembering when we first met all those years ago! How did all this happen four girls and this! All within what seems to be a heartbeat of a time?

Slowly, steadily with His hand the opening of the protective shell we've built around our lives, our family, so to share more, give more, bring in more, abundantly, the seeds of His own harvest, not ours only.

Recognising deep within my soul that God brought me and him together from the very beginning.
How, really we are the missing pieces of each other. Two halves of a pod around four little peas!
How I love him for his heart, his courage, his honor and honesty, his childlike spirit,
his creative mind, the sacrifices he makes for us, some little, some very big, all given as gifts, the love he has for us, the ways he shows it in small ways and big ways every day.

Then the unveiling of beauty. As summer fades seamlessly into the velvet hems of autumn. That drape like an endless evening.

The golden, dappled light of late August. pools around and swells my heart with thankfulness.

If I could swim in the light of an autumn sunset!

Indigo blots on white linen, amethyst storm clouds set in platinum sunlight.

The flush of sudden rain. The sparkling emerald leaves, when the shower is over.

Little apples fresh picked from the branch, red as little sun blanched cheeks, bitter sweet delicious to taste.

Pots of jam, plum and damson berry. Shades of Autumn, bottled, fragrant, concentrated.
Perfect spread thickly on warm crusts.

Warm cups of tea beside a basket of knitting on a quiet evening of early bedtimes after a busy, blustery, outdoorsy day.

Trusting in God in the letting go.

As one season moves toward another.

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

I have watched this series of talks during this last week and I have been utterly moved, convicted, and shaken to my soul.

(Linked originally shared by Tonia and Seth)

Rich Christians in an age of Hunger.... (More Prayerful Thoughts)

"This is the kind of fast day I'm after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families."
Isaiah 58

"He will answer them, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.'Mathew 25

James 5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.

Luke 6:24 "But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.

Luke 16:25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.

1 Timothy 6:9 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing,
but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.
Proverbs 28


Photo credit Mio Cade

Let my soul be at rest again...

Let my soul be at rest again,
for the Lord has been good to me.
He has saved me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
And so I walk in the Lord’s presence
as I live here on earth!

Psalm 116 7-9



Photo credit: KarenR-TB

Some Other Summer Day

beneath the soft petaled
veil the past and future lay
bare, trembling
vulnerable, upon the thin
balance between yesterday
and tomorrow
you could call it
faded beauty but
only without the eyes
to see the vision embraced
inside a little green pod within
it's heart
All petals have to fall, all veils
come undone
pollen must fade to memory
and colour absorb into
the ground
before
a life can be reborn
in a hundred different ways
across the grassy plains of
some other summer day.

Multitudes on Monday. How Hope Can Grow from the Debris of Dreams

I am walking home, weighed down with plastic bags that cut through my fingers like cheese slicers. Somehow they're filled to the brim with a weeks worth of shopping for £10.

On this heat worn and frayed, summer day, I'm sixteen years old and thinking, "however did country girl me ever come to be living in the middle of this strange city?"

Home is a two storey terrace shared with 5 unconnected, disconnected souls displaced in one place for a transitory period. Almost feels like a sentence we've been given, to share this one cell for and allotted time before one leaves and another inmate arrives to replace. I have discovered that one face becomes another too easily in a city.

Sometimes it seems I could be in Turkey, North Africa or even Jamaica depending upon which side of the street I'm on. Yardy boys at plantain stalls, women draped in black, serene, guarded, silent, men smoking roll ups in pool rooms and the ever lingering smell of kebabs and hot oil.

Disorrientation fills the air with a thousand unnamed voices giving different directions to the right bus I need to take home.

The heavy air of traffic clogged streets in summer time and the swirling synthetic rainbows of rain laced with petrol turns my thoughts to fog...

Two years later and I'm on the brink of leaving for another country all together.

During the intermission of this "time between", too many lines have been written, scenes been played out, lines spoken and hurts, rehashed, re-played and re-enacted on this stage.

Now all I want to desperatly do is hide in the wings for one night. Curl up into the nothingness of annonimity.

So I travel toward the heart of the city. Following the clogged ateries, mainlines and thread veins of skinny streets, pumping, faster and faster, harder and harder as I get closer to the center.
Convulsing like the strobe lights that seep from darkened doorways as stars begin to dissolve into the orange glow of street lamps.

I'm pregnant, but I don't know it yet.

Exsausted, I find myself sitting on the steps of west end musical stage show on the cusp of an evening's performance.

I hear the clink of shoes on cobble, I smell the static of excitement in foreign voices. French vowels bubble up from the dank and drenched tarmac like champagne.

It is raining heavily and I have no place to go.

I close my eyes and try to find a small corner of quiet.
My ears have throbbed with the noise of this city for so long I hear the conversations between taxi cabs and Double Decker buses in my dreams.

Slowly it comes into view....

The outline of a tree in the distance, branches tanned golden in the sun, bark gilded and shivering, leaves trembling.

It seems too far away to be real. I begin to squint, as I dare to look up a little.

Clouds part mutly. Beneath them the sky is powder blue, it seems to roll out forever.

Somewhere in the far away, I hear a child laughing and some long grass brushes against my legs as I walk.

Then, without warning, I feel a hand on my shoulder.

I turn abruptly, defensive, instinctivly.

No, no one is moving me on this time, this hand simply rests, and waits...

I don't know who it is who gently rests their hand and speaks my name.

One day years from now I will understand. Recognise the voice who called me away that day.

In the white noise of dislocated memories and fears, manifested by what I thought would numb them. A cold sea of concrete, a pavement fractured and scarred, covered with a liquid neon ointment.
Somehow I heard.
Somehow I stumbled
to my feet that day
and followed.

And somehow, now, I find myself sitting beneath tree, that was once nothing but the small seed of His hope, the echo of His voice, in my heart.

Branches tanned golden in the slender sunlight of late summer.

The storm clouds dissolved a long time ago in the blue transparency of this sky of hope. Endless, limitless, boundless, eternal...

I hear a child laughing, now two, now, three, now four.

And the sound heals the wounds that tears once furrowed. Eroding saltwater, carved out a hollow for freshwater to pool.

And I drink long drafts of thankfulness.

All the while as the long grass brushes against my legs while I walk.

I still feel that hand on my shoulder.


Thank you Lord for Summer memories ,

Each cherished moment in which to linger with my children,

The words of friends who encourage with their courage. And give me the courage to share too.

Thank you Lord, for taking my hand towards future life that heals the wounds of the past.

And the wonder of now,

Thank you for the miracle within the small seed of your own hope which you plant in hearts.

It can even grow a "forever home" where trees and blue skies and sunlight emerge from the debris of dreams of a once lost and homeless girl.

The sum of Humilty...

" If you have five gifts and you think you have six, that’s not humility;
if you have five gifts and you say you have only four, that's not humility;
if you have five gifts and you say you have five and you thank only yourself for them, that’s not humility.
But if you have five gifts and you say you have five and you thank God for them, that's humility.

The point of it is that humility is just the truth."




Photo credit: Theresa Elvin

Just a little note and update...

Just to update.... now that the new school year beckons I have started to write again over at Scraps of Starlight my homeschooling blog...

:)

JOY (a post revisted from the archives)

Happiness.

There are definitely two kinds.

The first kind is conditional.

The second kind is unconditional.

What does this mean?

Well the first kind is dependant upon my external circumstances. It is integral to what I have and what I am able to do.

It's about my own expectations and how I live up to them. It's about making my own rules and sticking to them (however suffocating they may be). It's about setting my own standards and trying to live up to them however different they mey be from God's standards and priorities for my life.

It's all about satiating that which I am unsatisfied with instead of finding contentment with what I have been given.

In real terms, it comes down to having a long hot soak in a bubble bath as opposed to the typical mummy's military shower at the first light of dawn!

It comes down to being able to read through a novel uninterrupted on a Sunday afternoon as opposed to the same dog-eared half chewed ABC storybook, for the tenth time before lunchtime.

It comes down to doing as I want, when I want and having what I want how I want it.

Parenthood challenges this definition of happiness. It shakes the foundations of this building and knocks it clean to the ground.

Once the dust has cleared what is left in the debris is the second kind of happiness.

The unconditional kind of happiness.

This kind of happiness looks a little different from what we have come to suspect. It can take a while before we recognise it:0)

This kind of happiness lends itself more to the word joy.

God Blesses this kind of happiness :0)

Joy finds miracles in the ordinary.

Joy finds the sacred in the everyday.

Joy sees the beautiful painting before the mess on the kitchen table.

Joy sees the rainbow instead of the rain

A few little words on Joy

It is the consciousness of the threefold joy of the Lord, His joy in ransoming us, His joy in dwelling within us as our Saviour and Power for fruit bearing and His joy in possessing us, as His Bride and His delight; it is the consciousness of this joy which is our real strength. Our joy in Him may be a fluctuating thing: His joy in us knows no change. James Hudson Taylor

Any one can sing in the sunshine. You and I should sing on when the sun has gone down, or when clouds pour out their rain, for Christ is with us. Anonymous

Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God. Robert Schuller

Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen. Mother Teresa

Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride. Our work is jubilant, carefree, merry. Utter abandonment to God is done freely and with celebration. And so I urge you to enjoy this ministry of self-surrender. Don't push too hard. Hold this work lightly, joyfully. The saints throughout the ages have witnessed to this reality.... You know, of course, that they are not speaking of a silly, superficial, bubbly kind of joy like that flaunted in modern society. No, this is a deep, resonant joy that has been shaped and tempered by the fires of suffering and sorrow; joy through the cross, joy because of the cross. Richard J. Foster

Happiness depends on happenings; joy depends on Christ. Anonymous

Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the soul of God shouting for joy. William Blake

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:22)”

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John 15:11)"

JOY

Jesus Others Yourself

(Jesus: first, others: second, yourself: last)