OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
How Do I See the Beauty of Flowers?
Back to our Weekly Lenten theme of Sight.
Many people have never learned to see the beauty of flowers, especially those that grow unnoticed. For instance, when you walk outside and look down at your feet, you may see tiny flowers nestled in the moss and clover hiding under a curled fern. Most people just step on them. I paint them.
– Erika Just, Flowers
Is Love for Fools?
Oscar Wilde said,
Love is understanding between two fools.
On this April Fools Day – and an April day in Lent, let us never tire of being great fools, if it also means that we are great lovers, following the Greatest Lover of them all – One Who was willing to look the fool for love’s sake.
Proust on Truly Seeing
I have always appreciated this quote by Marcel Proust:
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Meister Eckhart on Sight
On this 4th Sunday of Lent, we read how Jesus heals the man who had been born blind. So this week we will reflect on sight.
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
― Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart
Thirst by Mary Oliver
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have.
I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons.
Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time.
Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart.
Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowy learning.— Mary Oliver, Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006, pp. 1, 52, 69
Good Things to Thirst for
Yogis are drunk on discipline. Priests are drunk on scriptures. Celibates are drunk on vanity. Monks are drunk on prestige. So what’s left for you? What could you possibly get drunk on? I recommend being drunk on peace, being drunk on joy, being drunk on the fulfillment of the quest of a human being.
-Maharji
Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflection
In Lent, as in any season, a poem from Rumi is a welcome reflection
From “A Thirsty Fish” by Rumi
I don’t get tired of you. Don’t grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it’s thirsty for!Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.All this fantasy
and grief.
Hafiz on Thirst
I Know the Way You Can Get
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love’s Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
– Hafiz
We Celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation
Annunciation by Marie Howe
Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it
I know it is—and that if once it hailed me
it ever does—And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t—I was blinded like that—and swam
in what shone at meonly able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.
I heard this poem read by the poet on On Being with Krista Tippett, and was very moved. If you would like to hear it, here is the link.
Quenching Our Thirst
Let’s choose today to quench our thirst for the ”good life” we thinks others lead by acknowledging the good that already exists in our lives. We can then offer the universe the gift of our grateful hearts.
– Sarah Breathnach
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