Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast – Khalil Gibran

Yesterday I went see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum. I didn’t take my own camera, but you can see a gallery of the spectacular photographs here.

I lost track of time as I wandered entranced past the images: a red kite hovering, river dolphins playing, and white hares boxing. I gazed into the eyes of a jaguar and a very cold fox. There were special junior photographer categories: this subtly amazing image won the ten years and under category. I’d love to be such a gifted photographer now, let alone as a child!

One image was conspicuous by its absence. The space where the overall winner had hung was replaced by a statement that the photograph Storybook Wolf had been disqualified because the photographer had allegedly used an animal model. The picture was posed.

I knew about this drama before I went, but I kept coming back to this enigmatic wall space. I realised something. Humans are animals, and we behave in many of the same ways: we kill to eat (at least carnivores do) and to protect, we mate, we fight, we care for our young, we often live in groups, we grow old and die.

But can you imagine an animal thinking I really want to win this prestigious photographic prize, I think I’ll hire a human to pose for me and pretend I tracked them down in the city street at night and caught them in their natural habitat?

Why do we distort our urge to create or observe what is beautiful? When does our calling to do great work become corrupted? How can we live with more integrity?

What do you think?

Image at the top of this post by Tim Parkinson

Elsewhere:

Blisschick is being challenging again at Radical Gratitude, quoting Meister Eckhart and Anthony de Mello, and asking us to be thankful even for the bad stuff. And Towanda quotes Henri Nouwen calling us to bring our pain home or risk not knowing our own truth. This seems to me linked to Blisschick’s post. Eckhart, de Mello and Nouwen, what a powerful trinity.

Tweet This Post

{ 15 comments }

Isn’t the photograph gorgeous? How could anyone hate such a beautiful thing?

I hate them because bonsai are produced by snipping and clipping and binding and confining what nature would have grow glorious and luxuriant.

They seem to me a perfect metaphor for our humanity. We allow ourselves to live small lives. Thoreau famously wrote that we live lives of quiet desperation. They often look like such special  lives from the outside: perfectly formed and artfully displayed. But such shallow roots.

Today’s Gospel reading was the Transfiguration:

…he took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white…Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory…

Luke 9:28-36

Just imagine the lives we could live if we were to become fully awake to glory. Our roots would shatter those decorative pots and sink deep into the good earth, while our branches would stretch to the sun.

Image by cliff1066

Elsewhere:

Christine’s post about the Transfiguration gives us the transformation of the disciples who witnessed it, while Claire, in Transfigured, shares a beautiful and very personal meditation.

And thanks to everyone who spoke up last week for one or more of my books – I’ll be in touch with you very soon.

Tweet This Post

{ 9 comments }

This morning during meditation, my monkey mind was especially chattery, and an image came to me. In the room of my mind, narrow jagged cracks were splitting open in the walls and through them, dark figures came scrambling towards me. Rather frightening, and a very vivid representation of distraction. (Of course, for the rest of the meditation I had to keep setting aside thoughts of how I would share that image with you in this post…)

What has this got to do with books?

I felt quite sad last night as I looked through my bookshelves. So many books I’ve never read, or read years ago and will never return to. And a couple I have duplicates of for some reason.

Every one of those books is a distraction, a reminder of what I won’t do or what is past. Every one a witness to my monkey mind. But I love them and I want them to go to good homes. I’m reflecting that giving things away is actually a subset of hospitality, my word for the year. Sharing ideas and potentialities is one of the most hospitable things we can do.

So below are details of 15 books I’m giving away, with Amazon links for further information.

If you want one or more, let me know which in the comments – by next Sunday 28 February. If there’s competition for a book, I’ll put the names in a hat (do I even own a hat?) and pick the winner. Then I’ll email to ask you for your snail mail addresses. Don’t worry if you’re not in the UK, I’m happy to post anywhere.

1. The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. A very funny and insightful record by a secular Jew living in New York of his year trying to take the Bible literally. A great “delve into it from time to time” book.
2. The Reflective Life by Ken Gire. Creating pauses in our lives to listen and become more sensitive to God in our everyday moments.
3. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. His classic autobiography.
4. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. His exploration of why, if God is good and all-powerful, do God’s creatures suffer. The pages are a bit yellowed, I’ve had this forever.
5. Julian, Woman of our Day edited by Robert Llewelyn. An anthology of work by eight authors exploring the mystical insights of Julian of Norwich.
6. In Search of a Way by Gerard Hughes. Hughes is a Jesuit priest. This is the story of his physical and spiritual journeying.
7. Transitions, The Challenge of Change by Barrie Hopson and others. A thin, practical workbook with a sense of humour and cool illustrations that will help you meet change more positively.
8. In Search of Stones by M. Scott Peck. Subtitled A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery, and described by the author of The Road Less Travelled as “the closest thing to an autobiography I will ever write”.
9. Befriending, a Self-Guided Retreat for Busy People by Joseph A Payne, O.P. A practical book full of suggestions, exercises, scripture and other treasures. Flicking through it, I came upon lines by Blake: And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
10. The Good Life Guide: Saints, Snobs and Sanity by Bernard Basset. A book about prayer and life that tries to draw a distinction between pleasure and happiness and does so in a very unstuffy way. Some of the pages are a bit scuffed – I dropped it at some point.
11. Why Did I DO That? by George New and David Cormack. Subtitled Understanding and Mastering your Motives. Someone recommended it and gave it to me as a gift but I’ve never been able to get into it. It looks very sound though, lots of diagrams and questionnaires.
12. Angels in Art by Belinda Wilkinson. A beautiful and very tiny book with colour plates of angel paintings by some of the great masters, such as da Vinci’s Annunciation and Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.
13. How Proust can change your life by Alain de Botton. An exploration of Proust’s writing, and how it applies to everyday life. Described (by people more educated than me who have actually read Proust) as intoxicating, stimulating, charming and amusing.
14. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Let’s always remember the need for women to have financial, intellectual and creative freedom.
15. All God’s Creatures by Sister Seraphim. Old enough (1966) to be described as “gay” in the former sense of the word, these are the autobiographical writings of an eccentric, animal-loving Englishwoman who became a Russian Orthodox nun and takes “all creatures great and small” pretty literally. She rescues them as often as she can, like the live rabbit brought to the monastery as a gift for the dinner table. I inherited this book from my aunt, who seems to have inherited it in turn from the Surrey County Library.

Image by Vince Alongi
(check out his work – a very talented photographer)

Elsewhere:

Several links for the price of one: Christine’s Lenten Reflections signposts other moving Lenten journeys. By coincidence, she also mentions Jacob wrestling with the angel (book 12 above).

Tweet This Post

{ 19 comments }

I love it when someone helps me see a different perspective.

Today’s Gospel is Luke 4:1-13, in which Jesus is tempted by the devil. You probably know it:

Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”

Then he led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and: ‘With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’” When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.

In the sermon at Mass this morning, I heard something that gave me a different perspective: that the devil’s temptations were bound to fail because they were not relevant for Jesus. The devil was using temptations that he himself found tempting, but Jesus did not. The devil had recast Jesus in his own image, and understood nothing about the image of God.

I’m intrigued by this notion of how we all so often see things through the lens of our own selves and our own preoccupations. I know we do that, but so often forget it.  It’s so difficult to lay aside the restrictions of our own personalities. Even the devil couldn’t do it, for all his wiliness.

And how do we know in whose likeness the images we create might be?

Image by Alex Proimos

Elsewhere:

In Trying to Breathe, Mary Beth has introduced me to a very interesting initiative, Women for Women International. It helps women survivors of war. Given that it’s International Women’s Day on March 8th, this might be something for us all to look into.

Tweet This Post

{ 8 comments }

As I begin to write these words it is just after 8.30 in the morning, as the office of Lauds is being said and sung a few miles away at Turvey Abbey Benedictine monastery.

Yesterday, I returned from Turvey after co-leading our first Enneagram weekend of the year, introducing a new group of people to this insightful system of personal and spiritual growth. And what a positive and thoughtful group they were.

At the same time, the six-week online course I’ve been part of, Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, led by Christine at Abbey of the Arts has ended. I’m grateful to have been a part of this community of people, all of us ordinary yet extraordinary.

I am so full of hope and joy about the groundswell of desire for growth that I sense all around us, and not only because, in the Northern hemisphere at least, spring is beginning to break through the frozen ground. I’ve noticed that increasingly when I talk about what could be seen as a somewhat eccentric preoccupation with Benedictine life and with spiritual and creative growth, people I meet are interested and asking questions. There’s a different feeling around from the days a few years ago when colleagues would look at me as if I’d suddenly grown two heads. Or perhaps I’m simply less tentative in my self.

This morning I read a poem from the awakening hour section of Macrina Widerkehr’s book seven sacred pauses. It reflects perfectly this sense of grace and renewal that I’m aware of:

What lifts the heron leaning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare,
a long stroke through the cumulus of trees,
a shaped thought at the sky – then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees,
would have cried Father! Cry anything you please.
But praise. By any name or none. But praise
the white original burst that lights
the heron on his two soft kissing kites.
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays,
I sit by pond scums till the air recites
Its heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.

John Ciardi

What grace and renewal can you see in the moments that make up your life?

Image by S Wolfe

Elsewhere:

And as we approach the sacred time of Lent, Claire Bangasser talks about Cultivating our Soul, and Jan Richardson meditates upon Ashes and Sojourner Truth.

Tweet This Post

{ 12 comments }