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Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow
What we are today foreshadows what we will be in the future. According to Carl Jung,
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
For some reason, we human being struggle with that, We often try to be other than who we truly are. I noticed while on retreat last week as I plucked the wild blackberries that grew everywhere, how lovely they were as tender pink flowers. And I saw their promise as unripe green and red berries. Finally, when they got to their fat black lusciousness, they tasted so sweet. The berries (or pre-berries that foreshadowed them) were satisfied to be in whatever state they were in there becoming. May we become who we truly are as gracefully (and as tastefully) as they.
Culturing Your Garden
Silence is the garden of meditation.
– Ali, Maxims of Ali
Where Is Your Altar?
Everywhere, wherever you may find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer.
– The Way of a Pilgrim, author unknown
To Pray
To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live….
Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers wiser than all alphabets–clouds that die constantly for the sake of God’s glory–we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel, from Quest for God
Embracing All
The world is so constructed, that if you wish to enjoy its pleasures, you must also endure its pains. Whether you like it or not, you cannot have one without the other.
– Swami Brahmananda
Is Your Soul Alive?
Is your soul alive? How can you tell?
If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
– Eleanora Duse
Gentle God
Gentle God
God is breathing gently,
God never hurries,
Is never anxious or pressing,
God just waits,
Breathing gently upon us
With great tenderness
Until we look to God –
And, knowingly,
Nod.– Edwina Gateley, from I Hear a Seed Growing
Seeking God
You seek for God, beloved soul, and he is everywhere, everything speaks of him, everything offers him to you, he walks beside you, he surrounds you and is within you. He lives with you and yet you try to find him. You seek your own idea of God, although you have him in his reality.
– Jean Pierre de Caussade, from Abandonment to Divine Providence
Experience the Mysterious
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, his eyes are closed.
– Albert Einstein, from What I Believe
Be the Thing You See
Be the Thing You See
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say
‘I have seen spring in these
Woods,’ will not do–you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.– John Moffit
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