"When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel. When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction. WE simply need to learn to keep our ears open. Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become 'all ears.'" Henri Nouwen
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The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe
Gerard Manley Hopkins (go ahead, read it out loud) WILD air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere, That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-flixed Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing’s life; This needful, never spent, And nursing element; My more than meat and drink, My meal at every wink; This air, which, by life’s law, My lung must draw and draw Now but to breathe its praise, Minds me in many ways Of her who not only Gave God’s infinity Dwindled to infancy Welcome in womb and breast, Birth, milk, and all the rest But mothers each new grace That does now reach our race-- Mary Immaculate, Merely a woman, yet Whose presence, power is Great as no goddess’s Was deemèd, dreamèd; who This one work has to do-- Let all God’s glory through, God’s glory which would go Through her and from her flow Off, and no way but so. I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air: the same Is Mary, more by name. She, wild web, wondrous robe, Mantles the guilty globe, Since God has let dispense Her prayers his providence: Nay, more than almoner, The sweet alms’ self is her And men are meant to share Her life as life does air. If I have understood, She holds high motherhood Towards all our ghostly good And plays in grace her part About man’s beating heart, Laying, like air’s fine flood, The deathdance in his blood; Yet no part but what will Be Christ our Saviour still. Of her flesh he took flesh: He does take fresh and fresh, Though much the mystery how, Not flesh but spirit now And makes, O marvellous! New Nazareths in us, Where she shall yet conceive Him, morning, noon, and eve; New Bethlems, and he born There, evening, noon, and morn-- Bethlem or Nazareth, Men here may draw like breath More Christ and baffle death; Who, born so, comes to be New self and nobler me In each one and each one More makes, when all is done, Both God’s and Mary’s Son. Again, look overhead How air is azurèd; O how! nay do but stand Where you can lift your hand Skywards: rich, rich it laps Round the four fingergaps. Yet such a sapphire-shot, Charged, steepèd sky will not Stain light. Yea, mark you this: It does no prejudice. The glass-blue days are those When every colour glows, Each shape and shadow shows. Blue be it: this blue heaven The seven or seven times seven Hued sunbeam will transmit Perfect, not alter it. Or if there does some soft, On things aloof, aloft, Bloom breathe, that one breath more Earth is the fairer for. Whereas did air not make This bath of blue and slake His fire, the sun would shake, A blear and blinding ball With blackness bound, and all The thick stars round him roll Flashing like flecks of coal, Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt, In grimy vasty vault. So God was god of old: A mother came to mould Those limbs like ours which are What must make our daystar Much dearer to mankind; Whose glory bare would blind Or less would win man’s mind. Through her we may see him Made sweeter, not made dim, And her hand leaves his light Sifted to suit our sight. Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere; My happier world, wherein To wend and meet no sin; Above me, round me lie Fronting my froward eye With sweet and scarless sky; Stir in my ears, speak there Of God’s love, O live air, Of patience, penance, prayer: World-mothering air, air wild, Wound with thee, in thee is led, Fold home, fast fold thy child. Goodness"Don't the ordinary old rules about telling the truth and doing as you'd be done by tell one pretty well which kinds of fun one may have and which not? But provided the thing is in itself right, the more one likes it and the less one has to "try to be good," the better. A perfect man would never act from sense of duty; he'd always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch at times; but of course it's idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc) can do the journey on their own!" C.S.Lewis
"An [art] exhibit is powerful because it brings us face to face with the actual object that hosts the traces of master-hands. Yet we want to take this experience of the original home with us by buying some kind of a replica. So, while the gift of the experience is in the encounter with the original, many still walk away with two credit card hits. We buy because we want to concretize what has moved us even while wonder cannot be bought and surprise cannot be orchestrated. They are grace-filled: unbidden and to be received with open hands, hearts and minds. And while we await them, we live with the expectation that the Holy One will hold forth what we need precisely when we need it and in fitting manner: abundantly, surprisingly and evocatively."
–from "Things That Cannot Be Bought" by Allen G. Jorgensen, on his blog, stillvoicing. "Our specifically Christian undertaking is decidedly not one of transcending. It is, rather, the intentional reinspiriting of the body and its lovely matter--as manifested in the incarnation of Christ." Scott Cairns
"This love of God proceeds from our conversing with Him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness arrives with the stripping away of self." Saint Isaac of Syria as quoted by Scott Cairns "There are angels in those fields, and, I presume in all fields and everywhere else. I would go to the lions for this conviction, to witness this fact. What all this means about perception, or language, or my own sanity, I have no idea." - Annie Dillard
"The pain which conscience gives the man who has already done wrong, is soon got over. Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse." Oliver Goldsmith
"The power that created the universe and spun the dragonfly's wing and is beyond all other powers holds back, in love, from overpowering us...the passionate restraint and hush of God."
Frederick Buechner |
"Ideas
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A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
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Book Of Centuries
Book Of Firsts
Church Year
Commonplace
Copywork
Enquire Within
Fortitude Journal
Gratitude Journal
Keeping
Music Notebook
Nature Notebook
Notebooks
Picture File
Poetry
Prayer Journal
Recipes
Zeitgeist