the opening of eyes...

a trip over to Golden Gardens with Jim today 

The following reflection is an excerpt from the blog called the "Abby of the Arts" by Christine Valters Paintner: "One of the many things I love about Celtic spirituality is its earthiness. The spiritual life can become too much about seeking the spiritualization of all things, of seeking to be lifted from the ordinariness of daily life. What the Celtic monks teach us is that our earthiness is so very good. They wrote blessings for all the tasks of daily life, so that waking, and milking cows, and leaving on journeys, are all celebrated as gifts of our humanity.

This season of Lent might tempt us to seek lofty goals and rise above the very ordinary life we find ourselves in. But then we are called to remember once again the ashes marked on our foreheads, the dust and earth from which we emerge and to which we shall return, and we might discover that the grace of this season isn't so much a sublime encounter with angelic beings, or being lifted from our lives into a state of endless rapture, as it is seeing our lives with new eyes.

The return to God called forth from us for this season doesn't demand a long journey to the heavens. It is perhaps even more demanding than that. It invites us to plunge ourselves right into the heart of our lives here and now and to bless this as holy: the dog having an accident on the rug, the child up sick in the night, the terrible ache and exhaustion we feel from so many hours working, another dawn and dusk, bouquets of spring tulips, a warm embrace just when we needed one, this fragile earth upon which we stand.

This is the call of the monk in the world, a phrase which arises from the belief that the holiness of the monk's path comes precisely from this wonder and awe we might open ourselves to right in this moment, whatever this moment might bring. 

It is, as David Whyte writes in his poem, not the expected ascent to heaven, but the falling "in love with solid ground."  It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground." 

at Ravenna Park with Anna and Jim... 

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds 

the passing light over the water

and I heard the voice of the world speak out,

I knew then, as I had before

life is no passing memory of what has been

nor the remaining pages in a great book

waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things

seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years

of secret conversing

speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert

fallen to his knees before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

as if to enter heaven

and finding himself astonished,

opened at last,

fallen in love with solid ground.

  -- David Whyte

      from Songs for Coming Home