The Universe is God's - Madeleine L'Engle

The Universe is God's

A while ago when I was at Berea College in Kentucky I was asked the usual earnest questions about creationism vs. evolution.
   I laughed and said that I really couldn't get very excited about it. The only question worth asking is whether or not the universe is God's. If the answer is YES! then why get so excited about how? The important thing is that we are God's, created in love. And what about those seven days? In whose time are they? Eastern Standard Time? My daughter in San Francisco lives in a time zone three hours earlier than mine. In Australia, what time is it? Did God create in human time? Solar time? Galactic time? What about God's time? What matter if the first day took a few billennia in our time, and the second day a few billennia more?
   I told the student at Berea that some form of evolution seems consistent with our present knowledge, and that I didn't think that God put the fossil skeletons of fish in the mountains of Nepal to test our faith, as some creationists teach. But if I should find out tomorrow that God's method of creation was something quite different from either creationism or evolution, that would in no way shake my faith, because that is not where my faith is centered.

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Madeleine L'Engle. Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections. HarperSanFrancisco: 1996. 282-3.

Hymns of Harmony

[At the going away party, I felt] grateful to be alive then and there with such good fortune and so many loving, special friends. It was almost too much for me, and I had to wander off to the edge of the redwoods to be alone for a little while. I started listening to the insects absently, until I began to hear patterns and waves of patterns in their music. I could hear one chorus end and another start and hear the creatures all shift and syncopate their music to the new wave, and I realized, for the first time in my life, astounded, that they weren't making random noises, that they were actually singing in huge harmonies, harmonies of sweeping waves, harmonies involving thousands of voices! Ripples of subtle shifts were repeated as heard and transmitted for as far in any direction as I could focus my hearing. I looked up at the sky and the clouds and the stars and moon, and I looked at the silhouettes of the magnificent trees around me, the motion of the branches in the gentle wind. I thought of my many friends who loved me, .... I felt that rare oneness with the universe, that sense that maybe it all does mean something. I felt complete.

~ Reuel Parker

I think this sums up why we need "wild places."
How do we remain connected to the wider/larger harmonies of the world, with God's creation, with a sense of Paradise here and now?
As people on the water, where do we find these moments of astounding connection?
How do we share them with others?
How do they shape our lives as Beloved Children of God?
How do we join in this hymn of praise?

Blessed Be

Being Mindful of Grace

Never forget that your days are blessed. You may know how to profit by them, or you may not, but they are blessed.
~ Nadia Boulanger

How do we practice mindfulness? Rituals help. Practice helps (as in practicing the piano or spiritual practices). Seeing what others before us have done, and then implementing them into our lives, helps. Many of the saints within the church upon the striking of a bell (hour clock chime, etc.) have reflected back to see how often they recalled thinking or speaking or being mindful of, to, and about God. Even spending time at the end of the day in reflection upon where one has experienced the Divine helps to build an awareness throughout the day.

Basho, the Zen pilgrim and poet, speaks about an end of the day ritual: "After lighting a lamp, I took out my pen and ink, closed my eyes, trying to remember the sights I had seen and the poems I had composed during the day."*

This practice of mindfulness pays off in unexpected ways. Here this story related by Phil Cousineau in his book The Art of Pilgrimage.

The afternoon of his arrival [at Walden Pond, journalist William Zinsser] sauntered over the grounds, contemplating the contribution of Thoreau to his own life. At the edge of the famous pond, he noticed a man whom he presumed to be from India, apparently in deep reverie. At an appropriate moment, Zinsser approached him and asked if he was indeed from India and, if so, why he had come so far. The man explained that he was a friend of Gandhi, who "always had planned to make a pilgrimage to Concord." Because of Gandhi's untimely death, the visitor had vowed to make it for him, to complete the pilgrimage and find out for himself what had given Thoreau the serenity to write the books that had inspired his friend to pursue the philosophy of civil disobedience.
Zinsser was very touched by the sentiment and the gesture of this man completing his friend's pilgrimage nearly forty years after Gandhi's death. There is great power in making a journey with a deep purpose, but any journey can be further deepened by seeking a broader perspective. If Zinsser had kept to himself, lost in his own private thoughts, he never would have seen Walden the same way.
On an ordinary journey, one designed for sheer entertainment, diversion, or self-reward for a year of hard work, there would be no obvious need to go out of your way to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger.
But a pilgrimage asks us to do exactly that. The path needs more light. To shine the light of your own natural curiosity into the world of another traveler can reveal wonders. To remember the mysteries you forgot at home.*

Let us not be afraid to be mindful of Grace and Light, as we seek to share it with others.

*both quotes are from Phil Cousineau. The Art of Pilgrimage. 197-8.