Divine Discontent and Longing

wild violets emerging from dead leaves with a drop of sunlight  ©A.Rutherford

Someone else has felt it too . . . .

THE MOLE had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.   First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs with a brush and a pail of whitewash; til he had dust in his throat and eyes and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and and aching back and weary arms.   Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.   It was small wonder, then, that he SUDDENLY flung down his brush on the floor, said "BOTHER!" and 'O Blow!" and also, 'HANG SPRING-CLEANING!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.   Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are near to the sun and air.   So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go!' till at last, POP! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow. 

~ Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame

One of my very favorite books  *smile* . . . a lovely story... I adore the idea of "scraping and scrooging," and to find a meadow after all of that would be wonderful. To roll in the grass more wonderful still.

March is the month that flirts with us.  She’s temperamental, blowing hot and cold, enticing us with sunshine, then drenching us with cold rain or even snow.  But slowly, we see light and life emerging from the darkness of winter, and we feel renewed energy bubbling up in us as well, overcoming the inertia of winter. 

The prose of Winter is turning into the poetry of Spring. 

Prose or Poetry?

The world outside my window

Is wide and beckons me

To leave my perch so safe

And seek the poetry

Of vistas wild and free.

At my back the hearth-fire

Makes a counter claim,

"Stay within the prose tale

And risk not what you've gained, 

The tried, the known, the sane."  

Insistent comes the whisper,

As softly as a sigh;

The life beyond my window

Is awaiting my reply.

© A. Rutherford

“Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.”  -Song of Solomon

I will confess that this may be a bit of a “cheat” as I have purchased daffodils from the nursery to put in my sunroom, but placed up against the bank of windows, I can almost convince myself they are blooming outdoors.  Alas, only the foliage is up in the garden.

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Casting Shadows

Shadows on the beach at Cleggan, County Mayo, Ireland ©A.Rutherford

Wanted to share with you something from my reading today . . .

This fellow painter was writing about her response to an experience of viewing Turner's watercolors in the Tate Museum in Britain:

“I went and sat in front of Turner for hours and I realized something profound—that the vanishing point in the work does not vanish so that you have the feeling that love, truth, and beauty go on forever.”    -Catherine Clancy

I found these two Turners online which illustrate her observation beautifully.

And I remembered this adage . . .

Doubt is the shadow cast when something gets in the way of light.

Helpful, isn't it, to understand that doubt, in what seems to be its opposition to Light or Truth, ironically points to Truth's presence, and in a way brings a greater sense of light because of the shadow that is cast.

Like the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave, I guess.

And shadow is one of those neat words which can have multiple meanings.  For example, there are two Gaelic words for shadow—  scáth and scáil.   Scáth also means shelter.

So the old Irish proverb "Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoinne" means "People live in one another's shadow."   Lovely thought, isn't it?  We can live in the shelter of one another’s presence.

Spring is coming with its lovely light . . . I wish you a Springtime full of reassuring shadows! 
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The Journey toward Renewal

primroses growing wild in Cornwall during the Lenten season, ©A.Rutherford

Ash Wednesday

I was not raised in a faith tradition that gave any attention to Lent, certainly not the tradition of giving something up for Lent.  Of course, I often heard people I knew who did observe the tradition speaking of giving up chocolate or Pepsi or some other treat they dearly loved and thought would be a sacrifice to do without for 40 days.  But that never appealed to me as I couldn’t make sense of the point of giving up such things.

I knew, of course, that the Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday.  In fact, as a graduate student in English literature, I wrote a critical analysis of T.S. Eliot’s long poem, Ash Wednesday, which was the first poem he wrote after his conversion to Christianity.   Eliot, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature,  is considered the most important English-language poet of the 20th century, but the theme of this particular poem rankled the secular intellectuals of his day, as might be expected.  However, after his coming to faith, Eliot was unapologetic about centering his subsequent work about the theme of redemption.  His genius was such, though, that it had to be recognized however much anyone might disagree with his Christian sentiments.

Ash Wednesday is the day the yearly journey begins toward the promise of Resurrection assured by Easter.

This year I have decided to take on the challenge of Lent, which is in essence a 40-day retreat, a time of renewal.  As I understand it, Ash Wednesday is the day you sort of take stock of your present position in your journey and face wherever you might be falling short.  Then with penitence and prayer, reading scripture and meditating, you enter more deeply into the process of renewal.  

An ancient tradition, to be sure, so what could it offer of benefit in the 21st century.   The culture around us is increasingly disorderly and clamors so for our attention, and its fast pace places demands upon us that often leave us unbalanced, and in this unbalanced state, our own individual lives easily become disordered.  So now more than ever, as individuals and as a society, we need the balancing and course correction which comes from a spiritual practice like Lent.   Self-denial is necessarily difficult, much more so than giving up treats, but more needed than ever.   We need a set-apart time when we look honestly at ourselves and determine what is impeding our physical, emotional, or spiritual progress in our journey.  However, the thing we should give up is the surrender of our Self in order to grow closer to the Divine Source.

With reflecting on Lent, I am set to thinking of a bit from Eliot’s poem:

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

                                         -Ash Wednesday, by T.S.Eliot

The sad note here is the recognition that there are those that never make the journey, never enter the passage which leads to renewal, and thereby never open the door that leads to the garden blooming with new life.

This year as I observe Lent personally for the first time, I may not be wearing ashes on my forehead, but I will be wearing them on my heart. 

For each of us the journey is unique.  It is not a journey that we have to take.  Each of us must decide to set out on the journey.  No one else can take it for us, nor can they prescribe the route that we must take, as they cannot know precisely where we are.   That is a matter for the Holy Spirit.  Furthermore, we cannot take the journey for another, though we can offer each other support. 

The Journey 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save. 

~ Mary Oliver ~

Joel 2:12-14

Yet even now, says the Lord,
Return to me with all your heart,
With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
Rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain-offering and a drink-offering
for the Lord, your God?

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The Peace of Wild Things

taken at Greenbottom Wildlife Management Area ©A.Rutherford

I was reading today in A Continuous Harmony, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry.  The subtitle of the book is "Essays Cultural & Agricultural." Wendell Berry is a distinguished man of letters, critically acclaimed as a poet, a novelist, and an essayist.  Berry is also a life-long Baptist,  a teacher, and a farmer in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Berry set me to pondering when in one of his essays he quotes Thoreau.   Although at first consideration, this might not seem to relate to the discussion about tension and angst in the arts and in the general culture that we’ve been having in this blog, but upon reflection I think it sheds some light on aspects of that theme.

Here is Thoreau, writing about Autumn, in his journal from Nov. 20, 1851:

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man, and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening somewhat weary at last, and beginning to feel that I have nerves, I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry. The very air can intoxicate me, or the least sight or sound, as if my finer senses had acquired an appetite by their fast.

The modern conceit, or pretension, or whatever, is that only the "sophisticate" is culturally literate enough to either produce or enjoy poetry, or to be, as Thoreau expressed it, "susceptible . . . to the finest influences, as music and poetry."  The same is true for the pretensions of most contemporary artists and art critics.   The "sophisticate" of course is at home in the "civilized" world of the city.  The rustic life is not for him, and the rustic soul does not understand him and his needs, or so he thinks.  Of course, it can rightfully be argued that is a two-way street.   True, the rustic may not understand the angst which the Post-Modern poet or artist feels is the necessary ingredient for a valid expression of one's literary or artistic talents.  But neither do most "sophisticates" understand the beauty or the harmony the rustic can appreciate and express in his works.  Fortunately, having spent time in both worlds, I feel I have experienced enough of both to be able to judge for myself who most nearly approaches the Truth of what it means to be human, either in the created works of his mind or his hands,  or to appreciate the created order as the God-gift that it is to refresh and renew the human spirit.

To be alive in this world is a wonder-filled thing.

Here is Wendell Berry expressing this sentiment in a poem of his own:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of 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 for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

What it is, I suppose that troubles me, is that too many people of Faith have listened to the siren song of the culture, and bought into the hard-sell of our materialistic society that Nature is there for our leisure pursuits and our recreation, rather than our re-Creation, an antidote against all that is causing the angst in our tension-ridden world.

Scripture tells us that Nature is to be studied as a way to tune our spirits to the Harmony inherent in Creation, as a place to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding, as an avenue to finding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness when we have lost sight of them in our fast-paced lives.  And out of this deep-seated harmony we are able to express our creativity in life-affirming ways.  

Isaiah 45:18 

  For the Lord is God,
      and he created the heavens and earth
      and put everything in place.
   He made the world to be lived in,
      not to be a place of empty chaos.
   “I am the Lord,” he says,
      “and there is no other.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart . . . “

Isaiah 40:26-31

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
   Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
   and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
   not one of them is missing.

 Why do you complain, Jacob?
   Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD;
   my cause is disregarded by my God”? 

 Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

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The natural world is a magical place in the positive sense of that word, as having a quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, especially in a way that gives delight.  Click HERE for a glimpse of that magic and enjoy! _________________________________________________________________

Sabbath Thought: The Lifted Heart

© A.Rutherford

In the sharing of one’s pilgrimage, there will naturally be times when the path winds through a valley.  In reality, most of life is not lived on the mountain top.   In dark times, it is not realistic to expect that what normally makes us happy, as the world counts happiness, will counteract a heaviness of spirit.  In weeks like this past one, in which there have been struggles with critical illness of two family members, the small joys are of special benefit and blessing.   These are the times when only an abiding spiritual joy will sustain us.  However, human that we are, if we do not take care, our resources can become depleted.  Therefore, it’s important to take opportunity  for small “refills” of joy.  We must remember that God certainly knows what we are made of.  He bears in mind that we are dust (Psalm 103:14).   This is the time to pay attention to the God-gifts sent to refresh your spirit.  

A poem by Sara Teasdale illustrates this well—

      Wood Song

I heard a wood thrush in the dusk

 Twirl three notes and make a star—

My heart that walked with bitterness

 Came back from very far.

Three shining notes were all he had,

 And yet they made a starry call—

I caught life back against my breast 

 And kissed it, scars and all.

Elizabeth Gray Vining: 
Once when for long months sorrow had clamped tight my heart, it was a minor ecstasy that showed me that life might again hold joy for me.  I woke in the morning to the sound, I thought, of rain on the porch roof, but when I opened my eyes I saw that it was not raindrops making that soft and playful patter but locust blossoms falling from the tree above.  For a fleeting second my cramped and stiff heart knew again the happiness that is of the universe and not of itself and its possessions, and like Sara Teasdale, when in similar circumstances she heard the wood thrush through the dusk, "I snatched life back against my breast, and kissed it, scars and all.”  

. . .

 There have been countless others down the years: crape myrtle flashing through the slanting silver of a sudden southern downpour;  the flute passages in Beethoven's Fourth Symphony; the cold curve of the river in winter where it turns between purple wooded banks; shared laughter over nothing more than fundamental understanding; the call of a cuckoo above the peat bogs in Skye; the whistle of a cardinal in the dark of a suburban February morning; the smell of wet wood and seaweed at a ferry wharf; the fragrance of sunwarmed honey suckle on stone walls."   

Dietrich Bonhoeffer bears witness to this need to pay attention to small gifts of joy even amidst great suffering as he faced death in the concentration camp:

"Spring is really coming now . . . . Here in the prison yard there is a thrush which sings beautifully in the morning, and now in the evening too.  One is grateful for little things, and that is surely a gain."  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When you bathe, when you eat, when you walk, when you sleep--these are great symbols and are holy . . . Have more joy in your daily life . . . have greater joy, but be sure the Source of it is within rather than without--and, lest you be misled, that simply means to be more aware of God whom you worship while you play [and when you walk through the valley], for God abides in the lifted heart." - Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood

Look for the "Grace notes," the signs of His Presence, for “God abides in the lifted heart.”  

A Fire in my Head

How do those of us with a "fire in our head" and a hunger in our heart fit ourselves to the "regular world"? Or do we?

I think this question is asked and answered somewhat in Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.”  When I first read this poem years ago, I loved it for its music and its fanciful, romantic quality.  It had lovely images and a magical aspect which was appealing.  I loved the way it sounded on my tongue when I read it aloud.  But now that I am older and just a bit wiser, I believe that I understand the poem in its fulness . . . what Yeats is saying through the medium of the poem is far more meaningful than the surface details which are fairy-tale like.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lads and hilly lands.

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

-William Butler Yeats

What could the glimmering girl represent in this poem . . . Yeats (or the persona of the poem) has grown older, yet he is still entranced with beauty and simplicity and rapture, and is still able to relate to what the girl symbolizes, the things of the spirit. Just because he has grown older, he doesn't feel he must give up enchantment.

Others may grow old in their heads (or spirits), but he still has a fire in his . . . and why not? Let the others settle, he will still pursue his dreams. He will be vibrantly spiritually alive until he dies physically.

If this "fire" is part of our very nature, what do we give up when we deny it or don't seek to assuage it with what we are longing for?

Where is your "hazel wood," that place apart where you can be yourself or even rediscover yourself whenever you are lost?   For me, it is usually out in nature that I find the harmony that is often lost in the "civilized" world . . . an elemental world filled with simple yet fanciful things . . . a place where goodness is possible . . . where beauty can restore and re-tune the spirit . . . where I only need a hazel wand and a berry to catch a silver trout.

Food for thought as to how the modern culture has it all wrong:

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards;  they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.    The way it actually works is the reverse.   You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do in order to have what you want.               

                                                                          ~Margaret Young


After you have taken care of things of the spirit, you will find that what you want will have changed.  And your chance of fulfillment and contentment will be far greater but with less cost.  


A person who isn't spiritual doesn't accept the things of God's Spirit, for they are nonsense to him.  He can't understand them because they are spiritually evaluated.
-I Cor. 2:14 (ISV)


Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.   -Proverbs 4:23

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Joy as a Discipline

What is the source of your Joy?

If you can begin to think of Joy as a discipline, something you can practice until you get more skilled at it, then you don’t have to wait until perchance something happens that causes you to feel joyous.  If you consciously direct your attention to all that is true and beautiful and good, and if you open yourself to various opportunities to act in love, you will come to understand that you can become an active participant in your experience of Joy.  It is not a random or capricious emotion that we are able only to feel at times if we are fortunate enough to be standing in its path.

We readily accept that we can live our way into gloom or sadness or depression.  Why cannot the reverse be true?  As we expand our awareness of the minor avenues of Joy, increasingly we can develop our capacity to live our way into greater Joys.  

“I am thinking of what I have learned to call minor ecstasies, bits of star dust which are for all of us, however monotonous our days and cramped our lives, however limited our opportunities.

Everyone has these moments, more or less often, according as they are recognized and cherished.  Something seen, something heard, something felt, flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart, tired or sick or sad or merely indifferent, stirs and lifts in answer.  Different things do it for different people, but the result is the same:  that fleeting instant when we lose ourselves in joy and wonder.  It is minor because it is slight and so soon gone;  it is an ecstasy because there is an impersonal quality in the vivid thrust of happiness we feel, and because the stir lingers in the memory.  Fragments of beauty and truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye and the receptive spirit to become the stuff of authentic minor ecstasies.  - Elizabeth Gray Vining

 Yes, the proverb is true:  If you keep a green bow in your heart, a singing bird will come!

The following is my attempt to put into poetry this idea of being open to all the ways that Joy and Love can come to you, and also the necessity of being willing to actively engage in those “minor ecstasies” or loving acts.  

Move beyond your narrow limitations of who deserves your love, just as the Hindu woman did the story told by Mother Teresa.  

Pay attention, look around you, appreciate what you find!  Practice Joy.

Think about it—  Something can be breath-taking only if you stop long enough to take a breath.                                                                                                      Breathe deeply.

                                                          photography and poem © A. Rutherford

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