Beautiful Seine

 

The beautiful Seine River that flows through the heart of Paris. I took this picture from the Left Bank (south side.) This is only one of the many graceful bridges that span the river. The Seine is the main reason that I found Paris itself so beautiful.
I stayed just two blocks south of the River and found myself attracted to it constantly. This I had not expected. My focus for the trip was the beauty that human beings had created in stained glass and art. The Seine and Paris itself turned out to be an important part of that Beauty that lifted me out of myself into the Divine.

Divine Beauty

 

I'm back from a wonderful time in France. The main focus of my trip was to experience the beauty of great stained glass windows and of great paintings, and I was not disappointed.
The rich color and brilliance of the recently cleaned windows in Chartres cathedral lifted me out of myself. In Paris La Chapelle whose walls are almost entirely stained glass, the rose windows in Notre Dame Cathedral, and the more modern stained glass of Sacre-Coeur were truly Divine. I could not get good pictures of stained glass windows with my camera. This picture of a stained glass window in Notre Dame is the best I could do.
Of all the paintings that I saw the great standouts were Monet's "Water Lilies." Two large oval shaped rooms with skylights each display four of Monet's enormous works, floor to ceiling, door to door. I didn't know where to look, whether to sit or stand, encircled by the shimmering colors of purple and blue and pink and green. An ecstatic experience.
I was struck by the thought that these artists who may or may not have believed in God had created works that caught me up into Divine Beauty.

A Memory Bouquet

 

I've got pieces of August. I keep them in a memory bouquet. I've got pieces of August, and it's a morning in September. After finding God in a special way in those last few gorgeous weeks of summer, I move on to find the Divine in the stained glass windows of ancient cathedrals and the paintings and sculture in museums.

Living in Love

 

One of my favorite prayers that can be used at Mass includes the sentence, "In You we live and move and have our being." In The Awakened Heart May often refers to our being "in Love."
In Just as You Are which I am now using for spiritual reading Coutinho, the author tells a story from an Indian mystic: "I laughed when I heard the fish in the water say that it is thirsty. How can the fish in the water be thirsty? But it is easier to understand fish in the water being thirsty than a human being not experiencing God. Because God is closer to a human than water is to fish."
In the same chapter he tells Anthony de Mello's story about a fish that was swimming frantically from side to side in the ocean. Another fish asked, "What are you doing?" He answered, "I'm looking for the ocean." "You are in the ocean," replied the other fish.
No need to look for God. We are in God. We are all living in this Divine atmosphere, breathing this Divine love, and everything is vibrating and pulsing with the Divine Life. Like fish in water.

Gentian Reminder

 

Gentians glistening in this morning's sun remind me that September is here and summer is coming to a close, as if temperatures in the low 40's these past three days were not enough reminder. So I look elsewhere and turn inward.
Yesterday for spiritual reading I started Paul Coutinho's book, Just as You Are. Here is his first paragraph:
"God is not a religion, not a theology, not a belief--God is an experience that takes you into the fullness of life. All experience is discovering the fullness of God, discovering the original face of the Divine, beyond all the titles and images. Through experience, I find my own identity in the Divine and see the Divine presence manifested in all of life."
I spent a good ten minutes talking to God about those three sentences. No title that we use, not "God," not "Divine," captures the Reality. Experiencing God turns my life over more and more to the Divine which in turn helps me to experience God even more in the gentians and the world around me. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with Beauty.
(Continho is the author of How Big is Your God, the most helpful spiritual reading I've used in the last few years.)

Heaven Underfoot

 

I reached down to the bottom of my t-shirt drawer this morning and came up with a shirt I haven't worn all summer. On the back is this quote from Henry David Thoreau: "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." The shirt was a gift from someone who understood my conviction that the Divine is present in everything around us.
The picture is one of my favorite sections of the 42 miles of trails that wind through Dolly Sods Wilderness. Hiking there has always made me feel especially close to God. I didn't get to go there this summer and I miss it.

Confused Forsythia

 

I took this picture this morning of blossoms on the forsythia bush in my back yard. One of the earliest bushes to bloom in the spring, this bush had started to bloom last spring. Then came a late frost that killed the blossoms. The bush did not bloom again. I was afraid that the whole bush may have died, but it was green and hardy all summer.
A week ago I began to notice some yellow blossoms on some of its branches. I don't know what season it thinks this is. The days have been exceptionally hot for late August, not springlike.
It is often hard for me to know the right time for action or for speaking up and the the right time for silence and laying low.