Category: - Keeping a Book of Centuries

In my Prayer Journal...

4/22/2020

"It's been a stunning time for us adults. It always is. Nothing is new, but it's fresh for every new crop of people. What is eternally fresh is our grief. What is eternally fresh is our astonishment. What is eternally fresh is our question: What the Sam Hill is going on here?

Is anyone running this show? Is some Fate carefully placing earthquakes on our one planet? Does an intelligence fix the height, speed, and angle of waves? Does Omnipotence hurl hurricanes, point tornadoes, plant plagues? We could not find anyone to make a credible case for any of these brain-snarling positions.

After all, we in the West hold the individual precious. Do we not? Or does an individual's value weaken with the square distance, like the force of gravity?

We eat at restaurants while people weaken and starve everywhere, sons or daughters all. We vote as equal persons. Some monks train themselves out of bias for family members. Monks don't have children. You and I, then, are just two of seven-plus billion people of supreme significance. "Head-Spinning Numbers Cause Minds to Go Slack" read one newspaper headline. Surely we agree that our minds must not go slack.

A British journalist, observing the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, reasoned: 'Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.' For 'sacred' substitute 'of great value' or whatever you want, and look for flaws in his logic. He meant, of course, human life."

- Annie Dillard, The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New

In my Prayer Journal...

1/15/2020

TRIPPING OVER JOY

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
- Hafez,

In my Commonplace...

9/4/2019

Sr Ruth Fox meant there to be more...

In my Prayer Journal...

3/6/2019

"For He remembers we are but dust." Psalm 103:14

In my Prayer Journal...

1/6/2018

at Ephiphany: "The past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. " C. S. Lewis

Skating on the Rideau River in Ottawa

In my Prayer Journal...

1/5/2018

The Pulley

BY GEORGE HERBERT
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”

MORE POEMS BY GEORGE HERB

In my Music Notebook...

3/24/2017

"the time of the singing of birds is come."
song of Solomon

In my Prayer Journal...

1/12/2017

"Praying"
by Mary Oliver, Thirst

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

In my Prayer Journal...

10/12/2016

photographer unknown

Well, these are our two starting points. In one way (our old phrase!) God includes evil, in another way he does not. What are we to do next? My beginning of the `next' will be to deny another remark of yours - where you say `no good without evil'. This on my view is absolutely untrue: but the opposite `no evil without good' is absolutely true. I will try to explain what I mean by an analogy.

Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through a turnstile or past a post. You know what happens (apart from his usual ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go the wrong side and gets his lead looped round the post. You see that he can't do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing - namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: tho' in factit is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.

Now if the dog were a theologian he would regard his own will as a sin to which he was tempted, and therefore an evil: and he might go on to ask whether you understand and `contained' his evil. If he did you cd. only reply `My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go. If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against the collar and try to force yourself forward in a direction which is no use - why I understand it of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you don't understand) I cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathise with your real wish - that is, the wish to get on - the less can I sympathise (in the sense of `share' or `agree with') your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering the attainment of your real wish impossible.'

I don't know if you will agree at once that this is a parallel to the situation between God and man: but I will work it out on the assumption that you do. --C.S. Lewis

In my Prayer Journal...

10/7/2016

"'Good will,' murmured John Adair. 'No one ever stops to think what that means. Not an easy thing. Unregenerate man had he the courage to inquire into what he is really willing right down below the surface, would get a very nasty shock. Very rare, as rare as peace. When a man has both, the angels make quite a song and dance about it.'" -Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim's Inn

"Ideas
won't keep; something must be done about them."
- Alfred Whitehead

A Charlotte Mason education leads to all kinds of ideas! Join me in keeping one or several of the notebooks she prescribed and discover the Science of Relations and the Art of Mindfulness.

Laurie

"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
--Charlotte Mason

Virtual Life?

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.

In Appreciation
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.

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