I am imagining that this week’s photo challenge might be a challenge for some . . . the folks who stumble through the morning. Fortunately I am a morning person: I consider this to be the best part of the day, and found this wonderful description of a beautiful morning by Arthur Conan Doyle.
How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!
– Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I
True . . . it’s not a London sky. Still wisps of pink clouds in the morning can inspire in any part of the world.
St. Francis of Assisi is probably one of the best known and loved saints. He is the founder of the Franciscan Order; he and St. Dominic, who founded the Order of Preachers, were contemporaries. One of his sayings that is especially loved by Dominicans is:
Who might be hiding behind the grass and the thistle that needs my attention?
When I walk through thy woods, may my right foot and my left foot be harmless to the little creatures that move in its grasses: as it is said by the mouth of thy prophet: They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.
Today, October 2, is Gandhi Jayanti – the birthdate of Mahatma Gandhi and is a national holiday in India where he is revered at the “Father of the Nation.” The world reveres him as one who taught and practiced non-violence.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Can we imagine how this beauty could ever be sullied?
Today is the Feast of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux who is known as “The Little Flower.” So how better to celebrate her than with flowers and a few words from her, one of the three women doctors of the Church.
The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux
Here is an angel, from a fresco in the church of San Domenico in Bologna, receiving St. Dominic’s last will and testament. It reads: “Have charity, guard humility, hold fast to voluntary poverty.”
May I burst with jubilant praise to assenting angels.
Anxious? Go to the sea “When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach–waiting for a gift from the sea.”
OPreach 