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.)