OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Have We Come Far Enough to Find God?
It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God ‘set bars and doors’ and said, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’ But have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?
– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Where Do You Find Peace?
The Peace of the Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.Source: The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry
Drink of the Experience of Spring, While It Is Still Spring
The one who neglects to drink of the spring of experience is apt to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.
– Ling Po
Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above
And Mark Twain once said,
“Distance lends enchantment to the view.”
In All of Nature We Find God’s Initials
All animals who lift their voices at dawn sing to God. The volcanoes and the clouds and the trees cry to us about God. The whole creation cries to us penetratingly with a great joy about the existence and the beauty and the love of God. The music roars it into our ears, the landscape calls it into our eyes. In all of nature we find God’s initials, and all God’s creatures are God’s love letters to us.
All of nature burns with love created through love to light love in us. Nature is like a shadow of God, a reflection of God’s beauty. The still, blue lake is a reflection of God. In every atom lives an image of the trinity, a figure of the trinitarian God. And also my own body is created to love God. Each of my cells is a hymn about the Creator and an ongoing declaration of love.
– Ernesto Cardinal, To Live Is to Love
Finding God
In the early evening we see the stars begin to appear as the sun disappears over the horizon. The light of day gives way to the darkness of night. A stillness, a healing quiet comes over the landscape. It’s a moment when some other world makes itself known, a numinous presence beyond human understanding. We experience the vast realms of space overwhelming the limitations of our human minds. As the sky turns golden and the clouds reflect the blazing colors of evening, we participate for a moment in the forgiveness, the peace, the intimacy of things with each other.
– Thomas Berry, The Great Community of Earth
Weekly Photo Challenge: Culture
In thinking of culture, it is difficult to not think of food and how it brings us together.
Food is our common ground, a universal experience.
– James Beard
Wisdom from Walden
The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The Feast of Catherine of Siena
Today is the Feast of Saint Catherine of Siena (Dominican Saint, born in 1347). She wrote, “Love transforms one into what one loves.” (Dialogue 60)
Reflections:
- Into whom or what will we be transformed?
- How would we like to be transformed?
- What am I doing to “make it so”?
Mystery
It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.
– Diane Ackerman
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