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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
A World Full of Gifts
You have given me Your love, filling the world with Your gifts.
– Rabindranath Tagore, The Heart of God
Wisdom of Imagination and Art
What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?
– Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Wisdom of Perspective
Whenever feeling downcast, each person should vitally remember, “For my sake, the entire world was created.
-Baal Shem Tov
Wisdom of the Long View
If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Wisdom Right before our Eyes
For the month of September, the subject will be Wisdom.
Guidance streams through the whole of creation, and in any moment we can recognize the form it is taking right before our eyes.
– Patricia Campbell Carlson – sister of Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB
Let’s Live in Amazement!
Those who are awake live in a constant state of amazement.
– Jack Kornfield
Emptiness in Bloom
Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.
– Eihei Dogen, Sky Flowers
Where Do We Find Heaven?
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
– Henry David Thoreau
The Feast of Saint Dominic
Tomorrow, August 8th, is the Feast of St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, otherwise known as the Dominicans. It is always appropriate to celebrate a feast on the eve of the feast. And as we are celebrating the 800th Anniversary of the Dominican order this year, we could actually celebrate Dominic everyday.
The photo above is detail of a fresco named, Madonna delle Ombre at the Convento (or now, Museo) San Marco, in Florence. Dominic holding what we call his last will and testament. According to his brothers, he gave this to us on his deathbed: ” Have charity, guard humility, hold fast to voluntary poverty.” He promised that he would continue to guide them in spirit. He died on August 2, 1221, and was buried as he wished, “at the feet of his brethren.”
My Own Unique Door
The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist….It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.
– Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action
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