Beautiful too...

 

Muscovite Schist

The beauty of the schist-y stone church

Beautiful too the Sunday Song.

The beauty of Nazareth's Ave

Beautiful too Bethlehem's Gloria.

The beauty of the cricket awake all night

Beautiful too the silence of dawn.

The beauty of the purple crocus

Beautiful too the pollen-laden bee.

The beauty of Aquila, Cygnus and Phaeton

Beautiful too the night flight on its way to JFK.

The beauty of the womb's conceptus

Beautiful too each person born.

The beauty of spring's greening

Beautiful too autumn's leaf-drop.

The beauty of the cirrus sky

Beautiful too the cloudless. 

The beauty of God long ago

Beautiful too a present life in Christ.

The beauty of the weather's changing

Beautiful too a gentling heart.

The beauty of the icon's lamp

Beautiful too Venus at midnight.

The beauty of meeting a saint

Beautiful too expecting to hear God.

The beauty of eyes lifted to heaven

Beautiful too one's feet on the ground.

The beauty of God's reliable love

Beautiful too compunctive tears.

The beauty of the Divine Face

Beautiful too the I and the Thou.

Fr. Stephen Morris

Window at night

 

My little dog puts his front paws up

on my bed to wake me at 4:00 A.M.

I don't mind at all —

the day begins with this small act of mercy —

his need to go out

for business and a biscuit

and for me

the first of the day's perceiving.

It is the hour of the nocturnal animals,

the ubiquitous  rabbits,

the solitary red fox,

the toad sitting under the street light

  waiting for a moth to fly by,

the night crickets

  which pitch

  varies with each turn,

and the "night owl"

  whose lamp is lit

  on the second floor.

Who's there awake at this hour?

  the collegian cramming for the first period class?

  a nurse who's needed to relieve the night shift?

  an insomniac who dozes by day

    then tosses and turns the night away?

  the parent who soothes the frightened child or

    the grown child who consoles the frailing parent?

  a worrier who prays the comfort restoring rosary?

  a loner who's afraid of the dark

  or the couple who have argued through the night.

My matins prayer is a prayer of gazing

and an upward sending of every good wish.

"Bird Brain" ~ NOT!

Michael and Diane Porter put up this (2012) photo of a flock of winter-time American Goldfinches on their website Birdwatching Dot Com. Their company out of Fairfield, Iowa sells everything one would need to start birdwatching. 

We accuse someone of being a "Bird brain" when we think them to be dim, slow or unintelligent. I don't agree. I'd say birds are in the know and have a great deal to teach us. We might do well to keep a keen eye on them and learn some of their lessons.

Entering the time of overwhelming darkness,
  the sparseness,

  storm and 

  chill - 

no more solo, undulating flights

across open lawns and

fields,

but gathering now 

into flocks at feeders -

Goldfinches

seem to know what we forget:

that we need each other.

Tree Speak

Every early morning, rain or shine, I walk the long, circular, dirt driveway here eleven times. That's just over three miles. One portion of the path runs parallel to a grassy area about twelve feet deep. Beyond that is a wooded area of about thirty feet deep, then a wide and active stream of about forty feet across. Monday morning was dank and wet from the night rain. On lap number five, head down, shoulders hunched...

"Hey!" ...

"Hey!" ... 

"Hey, you with the hooded-head!"

"Hornbeam here, 
   pumpin out gold, 
   while you're in a fuss
   over mud on your shoes!"

"...and the swallow a nest..."

How lovely is thy dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My spirit longs and pines
for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my flesh give a shout of joy
for the living God!

Even the wren has found a house,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may put her young.
Even thine altars, O Lord of hosts,
my king, and my God.

Psalm 84: 1-3

The psalmist is singing about his delight in the enormous and beautifully decorated temple in Jerusalem - God's house containing the Ark of the Covenant on Mount Zion. When we go to one of these great American warehouse stores today, containing over a million products (the thingdom come!) often we see and hear noisy sparrows that have somehow gotten in and made themselves at home. The temple in Jerusalem had many openings and apparently swallows built mud-nests against the high walls near the altars where they raised their families.

The psalm-singer isn't giving us a bird study or trying to charm us, but giving an image of the soul - joyfully delighting in God, finding security in God, taking pleasure in being near God, entrusting to God what's most precious to us. 

As a boy growing up on Long Island in the 1950's and early 60's, I recall my father taking me one Sunday afternoon for a drive out east along the Sunrise Highway and our visiting the small the wooden churches each village had, some time before the population explosion which required the building of new mega-churches. The churches were all dark, except for the vigil lights which still burned after the last Mass: the smell of wax and the moment when the flame jumped from the wooden stick to the wick of the candle in the blue or red glass, the little glow at the end of the stick after it was blown out, the whiff of smoke and then the silent prayer which acknowledged an invisible world. "...even my flesh gives a shout of joy..." All sufficiently soul-impacting that it's easily and clearly remembered more than a half century later.

In a book length interview Pope Benedict shared that on the day of his ordination to the priesthood, upon returning to his sanctuary seat after the bishop ordained him, a lark flew into the cathedral and sang and sang from the rafters above. The pope didn't make too much of it, but he did say it seemed to be a lovely sign, "You're on the right track." 

I imagine everyone has some memory of experiencing a particular joy and pleasure in God. We might take a few moments to gratefully acknowledge and ponder it.