"Recalculating"

In the Gap of Dunloe, County Kerry, Ireland ©A. Rutherford

"Recalculating" was the incessant refrain from my GPS during a recent trip to Ireland.  

Ever take a wrong turn?  Ever think you knew where you were going, but somehow got distracted and got lost?

Ever think you knew what you wanted, but when you got it, it wasn’t what you thought it would be, or didn’t satisfy you in the way you longed to be fulfilled?

What do you do then?

As a culture and as individuals in that culture, we seem to be addicted to change . . . to the novel, the new and different . . . from the trendy gimmick or fashion to the artsy avant-garde,  and yet wise men have warned us that all change is not progress.  Not all roads we’re invited to take lead forward.  We’ve observed that happen in society and in our private lives again and again.  

C. S. Lewis, in discussing the concept of progress, once observed:

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

If we have, indeed, come to such a pass that the concepts of beauty and purpose, goal and design are no longer seen as relevant, it is high time to go back.” [emphasis mine]

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it.  I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-- R. S. Thomas

Jeremiah 6:16 

This is what the LORD says:

   “Stand at the crossroads and look;
   ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
   and you will find rest for your souls.
   But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

Sometimes you have to go a very long way around to come back a very short distance correctly.  But it doesn’t always have to be that circuitous.  However, you always have to start by admitting that you’ve gotten off track.

Beauty, purpose, meaning . . . these to many today are old-fashioned words.  But my hope and prayer is that others can come to see these, and all the great virtues, as just as relevant to the 21st century as ever they were.  Whatever contribution I can make to that end, whatever pebble I can drop in the stream to make ripples spread out, I want to do my small part.

Taken on my early morning walk around a local park  ©A. Rutherford

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Springing into Life

Daffodils in my garden after the snow  ©A. Rutherford

Last week began with blossoming trees and flowering bulbs.  The hyacinths and daffodils were lovely in my garden.  Spring was here and my heart was singing a lilting song, that same tune that the emerging season always inspires in me as my spirit responds to the new life springing forth.  Out of the deadness of winter these tender blossoms had come from ground and branch so bleak and bare that one could not believe they would contain life were it not for having experienced this same miracle year after year.  

Make no mistake . . . it is a miracle we are witnessing as the seasons turn from Summer’s full verdant flowering to Autumn’s golden dying to Winter’s spare white grip on Nature.  Then in the deadness of full winter when all seems grey and heavy, out of dry, seemingly lifeless branches tiny leaves begin to unfold, tender green shoots thrust themselves forth from muck and mire, and the miracle happens all over again.  We call these tiny emergings “signs of life.”  With hope, we gardeners  look for them to reassure ourselves that we have not lost this favorite plant or that special shrub to the harshness of Winter.  

Life out of deadness, a type of resurrection, a sign . . .

After several balmy days, toward the end of the week, I was shocked to see that what I thought was pear blossoms floating down was actually snow showers, which continued off and on all day!  Oh no! I thought . . . what about the flowers?   What will happen to Spring this year, or even the fruit crop later, as so many things had already begun to set bud.  But the next day the sun came out, the flowers were smiling happily in their beds, and I learned a lesson in resilience, to be sure.  We are created to be tougher than we sometimes feel we are.  We just need to look for signs of Life in the deadness and dryness that sometimes surrounds us and nurture those tender shoots until they grow strong and blossom into their fullness.  The miracle of resurrection is the Hope that we have been given.   And we are given signs of its reality every Spring . . .  watch it happen!  Attend to it closely!  Let the beauty of the process nurture your spirit.

Let your mind work its way slowly and thoughtfully through the following poem as a meditation on Resurrection.

What Secret Purple Wisdom

What word informs the world,

and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel?

What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges

to unfold in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill

urges the sap until the bud resolves

its tight riddle? What irresistible command

unfurls this cloud above this greening hill,

or one more wave – its spreading foam and foil –

across the flats of sand? What minor thrust

of energy issues up from humus in a froth

of ferns? Delicate as a laser, it filigrees

the snow, the stars. Listen close – What silver sound

thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing?

Gives love for loneliness? It is this

unterrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds us

in its tingling embrace, gongs in our echo hearts.

-Luci Shaw in The Green Earth: Poems of Creation

along the nature trail at the Huntington Museum of Art ©A.Rutherford

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Sabbath Thoughts: Light

a gift of Light for today  ©A. Rutherford
click photo to enlarge

“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. 

When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is bad, your body is filled with darkness.   

Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. 

If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.”     Luke 11:34-36 (NLT)

After a rather rough few days during which I haven't posted, I will admit that my vision needed at least a slight adjustment.  So you can imagine how I reacted when I looked up from where I was reading to see that the morning sun, which was just beginning to appear, was shining through the stained glass window in my little library and casting shadows on the opposite wall.  I ran for my camera because I knew I would probably need this visual reminder again sometime to help me “reset my sights.”

One of the advantages of having lived longer is the insights we gain along the way.  One of these insights is that the inner vision is often more accurate than the ocular vision.   We also learn that the way we perceive, or receive, the things that happen to us can often shape our experience, but that we can reshape a difficult experience by thinking about it in a more positive way.  Our attitudes are the lenses through which we see what we call reality, then we allow these attitudes to magnify or diminish, to clarify or darken, the experiences and the relationships we have.  Had we thought differently about the experience, the “reality” of it might have been altogether different.  Had we attended to our perception, fine-tuned our reception, we could have extracted what good there would have been even in the worst of circumstances.

This perception is not always easy to achieve in a world increasingly given to negativity born out of  superficiality.  “But bad things happen, even to good people,” the world protests!    Yes, that is very true . . . it is foolishness to deny that suffering is a very real aspect of the human condition, but there is a higher viewpoint from which we should strive to look upon these things.  And that higher viewpoint, that higher road to take in our pilgrimage, can only do us good, even in adversity.   It will not change the circumstances, but it will change the way we experience the circumstances and help to bring forth what good may be achieved from whatever we face.  We can feed on that goodness and draw strength and courage from it, which will then allow us to do good  and thus transcend and ultimately overcome adversity.  The eternal perspective is always the best one to take.

A sonnet from poet George Santayana expresses this perspective very well:

O World, thou choosest not the better part!

It's not wisdom to be only wise -

And on the inward vision close the eyes,

But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart,

Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;

To trust the soul's invincible surmise

Was all his science and his only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine

That lights the pathway but one step ahead

Across a void of mystery and dread.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine

By which alone the mortal heart is led

Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

I want to always be the one to say, when looking at the partially filled glass in my hand, “Oh good!  It’s half full!”   And to whatever extent I can, I want to translate that attitude to others through my own life.  However imperfectly I now accomplish this, my goal and prayer is to grow more fully into allowing this stance to govern my life and my witness.

The Serenity Prayer

God, grant me 

Serenity, to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage, to change the things I can,

      & 

Wisdom, to know the difference.

                                                            Amen

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Memory's Grace Notes

The Blue Boat, Killarney, Ireland © A.Rutherford

Sometimes just a simple note of color can brighten a day or provoke a meaningful thought if you attend to it.  Only by being present to it can it become a grace note in your life.      (See Being Present in the Moment) 

attend

verb

1  be present at, take part in; present oneself at, turn up at;

     informal:  show up at

 ANTONYMS  miss.

2  pay attention to, pay heed to, be attentive to; take note of,  take into   

     consideration. 

ANTONYMS  disregard, ignore.

grace note

1: a musical note added as an ornament

2: a small addition or embellishment

From one of my earliest solo trips to Ireland, there is this image which I have carried in my head for a long time. In Connemara in the west of Ireland, out away from anywhere, I came upon this isolated, reedy lake with a single blue boat pulled up on the shore. No houses or other signs of life were anywhere around.  There was also no sign of the boatman or clue as to where he could be.   I have never forgotten the allure of this scene, but could not figure out why it had seemed to speak to me and remain in my consciousness in the way that it did.  But it has long been a memory that I have feasted upon in my mind's eye at times when I needed peace.

Then the scene repeated itself on my latest visit to Ireland, this time in Killarney.  The day was a brilliant one, but there was, as can happen only in Ireland, a slight mist in the air which made everything shimmer and seem a little dreamlike. 

Again a single boat, seemingly abandoned, caught my imagination and again provoked an inexplicable emotion in me.   But I remember being grateful for the serendipity of finding such a scene again.  I spent some time just sitting and attending to the scene.  It was important to be present to it in the moment.  I wanted the memory to be more real than a photograph.   I knew from experience that although I might record the scene with my camera, the lens could not capture how I responded to the scene. 

Not long ago, when using my memory of the blue boats for peaceful reflection, finally I was able to describe how those scenes of the abandoned boats made me feel.   Then the discipline of putting my thoughts together in poetic form crystallized it all for me, and their message became clear.  They were grace notes for me, spots of beauty in my life.  But for the owners of the boats they were merely the everyday objects of their lives.  I wondered did these fishermen pay attention to how beautiful the setting of their daily work was.  Were the blue boats amongst the grassy reeds grace notes for them too?  Did they attend to their special quality the same way that I, a tourist in their environs, did?

So I was inspired to make sure that I see my daily life for what it is, a gift with grace notes of color and messages of affirmation, if I pay attention.

The first blue boat can be seen in the short video below, which contains the reading of my poem:

The Blue Boat 

The blue boat is lightly tied 

Among the reeds along the grassy shore. 

The silence of the scene calls out, 

Disturbing, leaving me desiring more. 

O Boatman, what drew you away? 

What lured you is not clear. 

Where could you go to seek a place 

More peaceful, lovelier than here? 

Some urge deep within my heart, 

Unbidden, rises as a question 

Which surprises, even startles me, 

Forcing an admission, a confession. 

I long to discard too the barque 

Which has carried me along thus far, 

And climb ashore in some mystic place 

And wander off in search of some strange star. 

I’ll leave it tied up should I come again 

To need it to return where I belong, 

But something will be different, this I know, 

I will be more sure, I will be strong.

                                                                © Ardoth Rutherford
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The Beauty of Memory

The Old Spring House, watercolor ©A. Rutherford

"Pioneers looked for a spring and built their homes near it. It kept their thirst (and that of their animals) satisfied and their food from spoiling. It was the only refrigeration known for years. Usually a house or building was built over the spring out of rock and a tree was planted near the door. A stone trough was built in the spring house. Through it ran cold, slow flowing spring water. Earthenware crocks of milk were placed, neck deep, in the water. It was always cool in the spring house, even in the warmest of days. A gourd dipper hung in the spring house so men coming in from the hot field could stop for a draft of cold water. The dog quenched his thirst from the overflow at the back of the spring house and a flock of ducks noisily investigated the trickling stream for tidbits. Watercress grew in the shallows.   (Taken from The Good Old Days, The Spring House, R.J. McGinnis, F. & W. Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, page 76 

In painting this scene with an old spring house this weekend, I was set to reflecting on the old spring house on my grandparents’ farm.  What a comforting place it was for me, but also just a bit mysterious with its cool, shadowy corners and the spring that seemed to flow up out of nowhere.  As a very young child that spring seemed magical to me.

In our fast-paced society, what are the memories that will last?  Which of their experiences are shaping our children into men and women of character, sensitivity, and strength?  

Perhaps one way to ensure that our children will indeed have those life-shaping memories is to take the time to remember what kind of our own past experiences contributed to who we are today.   Or look back at your own parents and grandparents.   What were their lives like?    What were the events that contributed to all the characteristics you value in the people they were and the contributions they made to your own life or the communal life?    What kind of music did they listen to?    What books did they read?    What chores were they responsible for that gave them the work ethic that successful adults need?    How did they spend their leisure time?    What was the balance between leisure or productive activity for them?    What adversities did they face or mountains they had to climb that carved those lines of character that you see in their faces?    What did they love, and how did they love?  

What were the simple joys that nurtured them?    I know in my own family, there was not the incessant need to be entertained or amused.    My memories are of warm family times of story-telling or playing games, gathering around a dinner table filled with home-cooked food, helping out with whatever needed done in the house or outside.    There was time to play, but not to be idle.   Time to explore our environs, but not to waste before the TV.   Time to read or be read to, and the books were ones that inspired our imaginations or connected us to the past or nurtured our character.   And music that delighted and entertained us but that didn’t fill us with angst or wrong-thinking or over-sexualize us.

What are our children experiencing that will feed their souls and will not fade away, but remain a comfort and an inspiration throughout their lives?   What are the memories we are making with them that will stand them in good stead when the rough places in their own lives occur?    What will act for them as reminders that they must take their place in the flow of the river of time and serve with honor and courage?

How will the memories of fast food and ready-made meals linger lovingly in their minds?   What will endless hours spent on the internet or lounging in the malls contribute to their strength of character or their resourcefulness?   Or will all the structured sports activities or “enrichment” activities only contribute to their being driven adults with the incessant need to be “on the go”?

Below is a poem by Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who received among many, many honors the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Although he was born on a farm to working class people, he became a professor at both Oxford and Harvard.

The material of his poetry was the material of his own life.  Speaking of his early life and education, he commented, "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." 

When Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Nobel committee described his poetry as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

From his lecture upon receiving the Prize: 

When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.  At the time I am thinking of, such an outcome was not just beyond expectation: it was simply beyond conception.  In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world.  It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other.  We took in everything that was going on, of course - rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house - but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation.  Ahistorical, pre-sexual, in suspension between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptible and impressionable as the drinking water that stood in a bucket in our scullery: every time a passing train made the earth shake, the surface of that water used to ripple delicately, concentrically, and in utter silence.

Click HERE to listen to his poem about exploring the wells of his childhood,  "Personal Helicon," Helicon being a river from Greek mythology.

No, how could he have dreamed as a child of the man he would become, but his early experiences molded his character and gave him the stuff of his later life’s work.

Continuity . . . staying connected to the past, carrying those valuable things of the past into the future . . . remembering what made us wise and strong and and loving and then passing it on.  That’s important!

Train up a child in the way he should go,
      And when he is old he will not depart from it.

                                          -Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

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The Mission of Art

The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, 1510

There seems to be a general recognition that something is amiss in modern culture, a dehumanization, a lack of unity or community, a repressed longing for something, anything, that can fill a void that most people cannot name.  The attempts to fill this void take a myriad of forms, from toys to technology, from the incessant need to be entertained to the use of drugs to kill the pain of meaninglessness resulting from lack of a higher purpose.  We shop, we party, we vacation, we increase our speed although the roads we are traveling on are often going nowhere in particular.

Philosopher Jacques Maritain offers this insight on what might lie at the root of our trouble:

          “We do not need a truth to serve us, 

                                            we need a truth that we can serve.”

Many consider that we as a society are poised on the brink of a precipice.  My purpose in this blog is to offer reflections concerning a Truth that we can serve, a Truth that offers a way back from this precipice.  I am not a mover.  I am not a shaker.  I am just an ordinary person who has life experience that seems to validate what I offer in these reflections.  And I am a person who has worked with young people all my life and who has watched time and time again the transformative effect on these young people when they have been introduced to Truth, Beauty, the great moral and spiritual Virtues, and what are generally recognized as the Great Ideas of Western Civilization.  When they have been shown a way to attach their lives to a transcendent purpose, they are then free to soar.  

My first approach in working with young people is to introduce them to forms of Beauty with which they have not yet been acquainted, the golden nuggets of beauty found in great literature, philosophy, art, music, Nature, etc., and then, released from the bonds of their own subjectivity and the tyranny of the culture, they begin to fall in love with Truth, which leads to the desire to attach their lives to Goodness and to some larger, unifying purpose for their lives.

As one student quoted in a good-bye “thank you” note she wrote to me:  “Teaching is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” -W.B. Yeats  

I believe that Beauty lights the fire on the altar of Truth.

However, Beauty as a virtue has been generally dismissed in modern society, especially in the arts, with its antipathy to anything that has standards of measurement, and the requirement to “measure up” to those standards.

Maritain, writing in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, argues that the loss of Beauty as a standard is a contributing factor to this dehumanizing, even if most people are unaware of the effects this loss creates.   The solution he offers for many of the ills that plague us as individuals and as a society is a return to the recognition and acknowledgement of the power of Beauty as a unifying force and an avenue of spiritual healing.

According to Maritain, “The dehumanizing process . . . can be overcome.  Art in this connection has an outstanding mission.  It is the most natural power of healing and agent of spiritualization needed by the human community. . . .  Art, as long as it remains art, cannot help being intent on beauty.” 

Therein lies the rub—”as long as it remains art” . . . All the modern “isms” have separated Art “from beauty, and from any transcendental end.  The final end and center, then, can only be man,”  which leaves us no way to get ourselves off our hands, so to speak.

This Beauty can take a myriad of forms, approaches, and modes of expression, enough diversity to satisfy anyone, yet there are common criteria or principles that must be recognized or else, to use an analogy, the powerful and life-giving river loses its banks and becomes a swamp.  The real “rub” for the modern culture is that these principles derive from the true source of the transcendent nature of Beauty, or its Divine source.   As stated by Thomas Aquinas, the "beauty of anything created is nothing else than a similarity of divine beauty participated in by things," . . . "the existence of all things derives from divine beauty."

Dostoevski said, “Beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil contend with one another for the heart of man.” (The Brothers Karamazov)

the Lady's Slipper Orchid, a wild Beauty found in Nature
photo © Greg Ferrell
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Signs and Symbols

Shamrocks, watercolor © A.Rutherford

Last week as we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, I was reminded of a powerful icon or symbol in Celtic Christianity, the Shamrock, the “green flower” of Ireland.

In order to make the people understand the doctrine of the Trinity—that there are three beings who make up one divine God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—St. Patrick drew an analogy by picking a shamrock and showing that its three leaves were on only one stem.   The shamrock’s presence then served as a lovely reminder of the Presence of the Divine amongst the people. 

Goethe's quote under the header of my blog is providing a general theme as I write and reflect here on the nature and purpose of Beauty in our lives.  I include the second half of his quote below—

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

In times of tragedy, either personal or global such as the tsunami that has wreaked havoc in Japan and threatens to have far-reaching effects, human beings can be overwhelmed or even tempted to despair.  In those times it may be easy to forget the sacred nature of the human spirit, created as we are in the image of God.  Life may appear bleak and we begin to feel victims either of our circumstances or of the fragile nature of life in general.  But tragedy is not the final word of our existence.

Kathleen Raine, writing in Defending Ancient Springs, explains it thus:

Strangest of all is the ease with which the vision is lost, consciousness contracts, we forget over and over again, until recollection is stirred by some icon of that beauty. Then we remember and wonder why we ever forgot.

The "vision" Raine is writing about is that certain Truth about who we are and Whose we are in the final analysis.   Or to borrow a couple of lines from the poet John Keats,

                    'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

         Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Raine reminds us that our recollection of the Truth we know and may have forgotten in our circumstances can be stirred by an icon of that Beauty, which is the wellspring of all life.  We are not to be given over to anxiety or despair.   

A psalm of joy and hope, a piece of beautiful music or art, a bit of poetry, the first daffodil coming up in our garden, and many other such icons can remind us that Beauty is an attribute of God and a sign of His presence in our situation.   Beauty can serve as reminders to us of the richness that is inherent in who we are as created beings and also of the transcendent nature of our lives.

When I was a very young girl, I remember reading a poem about a single blue flower blooming in a rather remote, dreary bog.  It bloomed for the most part unseen and unappreciated, but it was there, and it was blooming in spite of its environs.   It served as a symbol of hope for the persona of the poem, and it has served all my life too, vividly in my memory, as a sort of icon of the ability to transcend my circumstances through paying to attention to the God-gifts of Beauty offered around me.

Later in college I learned that the English Romantic poets used the blue flower as the symbol of the unfolding of the soul, and as an emblem of the desire of the human spirit for the Infinite.  C.S. Lewis, in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, also used the blue flower as a symbol for his longing for Beauty, which he later came to understand was in reality his longing for God.

But as I came to adulthood, I began to understand that it was my responsibility to tend that fire and keep it burning.   I must take the time and make the effort to look for the blue flowers God graciously places along my path not only for my enjoyment, but also for my spiritual enrichment and as signs of the Hope there is in our Faith.  I must not neglect this significant aspect of what God is and who I am created to be.  In this way, Joy is a discipline and is to be practiced in our daily lives.

An early Joy-note from my garden . . .

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