OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
For Dappled Things
Today I share an image of Sister Adele Rowland, OP, one of our sisters. She was famous for her work in photography, particularly Photo Montage. This particular image was created in 1978, long before the advent of Photoshop; she did her creative work in the darkroom, with film, and with slides. I am including an article about her from The Petaluma Post. This particular image is entitled For Dappled Things; Sister surely had Gerard Manly Hopkins poem in mind when she created it.
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple
upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow,
and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle
and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled
(who kows how?”
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers – forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise [God].
– Gerard Manley Hopkins
God’s Presence Fills Creation
Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence fills creation.
– Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Wisdom from a Dominican Mystic – Meister Eckhart
Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.
– Meister Eckhart, Dominican mystic of the 13th century
Delighting Ourselves in God
Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee, for Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.
– St. Augustine of Hippo
Seeking God
God guides those who seek [God’s] good pleasure into the ways of peace, bringing them out from the shadows into the light by {God’s] act of will and guiding them into a straight path.
The Qur’an
Are We in Tune with the Eternal?
It is an ecological, theological, and biological reality: The more we are in tune with eternal nature, the more we will be able to hear the still small voice withing and have explosions of inspirational insight.
– Dr. Rober Schuller
Wisdom from Dag Hammarskjold
The longest journey is the journey inward.
– Dag Hammarskjold
Weekly Photo Challenge: Carefree
How many of you remember that wonderful song by Gordon Lightfoot, “Carefree Highway?”
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Carefree highway, you seen better days.
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes –
Carefree highway, let me slip away,
Slip away on you.
In case you’d like to hear the song,
here is the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa9XVvMtBVk
How True Is This?
I came across this quote and wondered, “How true is this for me? Do I want it to be true for me? What am I willing to do to make it not be so?”
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
– Wilbur Rees
Nature’s Equilibrium
Nature is evenly balanced. We cannot disturb her equilibrium, for we know that the law of Cause and Effect is the unerring and inexorable law of nature; but we do fail to find our own equilibrium as nations and as individuals, because we have not yet learned that the same law works as inexorably in human life and in society as in nature – that what we sow, we must inevitably reap.
– Sidney Bremer, Spirit of Apollo
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