Zen Gardening

Local Botanical Garden's Japanese Zen Garden

 

J and I ran from a local park to the local botanical gardens to see what was left of the blooming cherry trees. We visited the area close to the tea room which also contains a Zen Garden. I have been to the garden numerous times between high school and present day. I have seen this garden a multitude of times, looking at it, over it, beyond it. Even when J and I travelled to Kyoto and saw the Ginkakuji temple, I viewed the “sea of silver sand” and wondered the meaning of these large areas of gravel with rocks arranged within it in a purposeful, random way. 

 

All this time, the gardens meant little to me. I did not see how it lent itself to meditation or represented the struggle between “impermanence and stasis in human life.”[i] And I was okay with this ignorance. But my feelings changed on our run to the gardens a week ago.

 

I admired the garden and looked at the concentric circles around what I considered the “living objects” of moss, boulders and a bonsai-type cedar. The circles emanated from the living objects, stretching in more encompassing circumferences. 

 

In an instant, I felt the Zen masters knew something about reality I did not. They intuited what Einstein would formalize. They “saw” how particles, waves, molecules, quarks existed beyond the large, splashy and utterly embodied objects which hold and distract sight. 

 

I also thought of my grandmother’s death vision of Christ. When my mother first told the story, she said Granny’s words were “everywhere He goes is love and peace,” and in my mind, maybe even viscerally, I “felt” the force of the love and peace. They had weight, girth, and strength – the forces invisible, but experienced as enveloping. . .

 

Much like the gravel in the garden – the circles at once emanating out AND radiating in. The material world being both the originator of these forces while also being created and molded by them.

 

But also and ultimately all are connected and interconnected in the never-ending flow of permanence and impermanence. All material things creating waves, forces which bind us, repel us, link us together – the actions not purely physical, but metaphysical – existing in a plane we cannot see, but sometimes experience.

 

As Eric Cunningham posits, “One is very cautious about drawing any deep conclusion concerning what all this [Zen Gardening] ‘means,’ knowing that meanings will change.”[ii]

 

But this revelation strikes me as truth in a moment where so many seek to separate and divide us. We are connected in more ways than we can imagine and it seems wise to act like we are.

 

4/3/26

 

---

[i] https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/cultivating-enlightenment-the-manifold-meaning-of-japanese-zen-gardens/#:~:text=Although%20Zen%20gardens%20as%20landscape,faithful”%20into%20a%20metaphysical%20space.

[ii] Ibid.

 

The Process of Becoming

Photo credit here.

Little comes out wholly itself.
Even a seed must be formed bit
By painstakingly long bit and
Even then its journey continues.

 

Is it food? 

Does it feed off another?

May it wait for yet another type of seed

Which by combining 

becomes something new.

 

The hazelnut contains the universe – 

The work of millennia formed and 

Transformed into this tiny seed.

 

Give it soil, rain, sunlight – 

The nut transforms into something

Quite different – larger, broader

Containing multitudes of itself

For all of time (maybe).

 

All the tree releases from itself – 

Gases to fill the air, 

Nitrogen to feed the soil

 

As it dies it decomposes into hummus and fungi

Decomposes into 

Soil and spore and molecule.

 

The world below and the sky above

Filled again by what had been

One tiny seed, by what had been

Universe.

 

So what of my short life?

The lesson may be not so much

All my transformation

But mostly I am stardust as much

As I am flesh and

To stardust I will return.

 

The vanity of life

Its crowning glory:

The whisper of eternity

In each breath,

Each turning of a life.

 

Writer’s Workshop, 11/16/25

Providence

Photo Credit here.

 

A slippery fish

Fighting the pull of current

Yet still pushed along

To some destination yet unseen

 

The steely-eyed hawk

Soaring on the winds

A dance with changing direction

To keep aloft and flying

 

A sunflower

Raising its weighty head

Adores the sun and moves

To communicate its praise

 

And what of me

Fights or soars or adores

Through the flow of my life

Directed by forces unseen? 

 

Tomorrow is mystery

Unfolding in every breath

A past which whispers

“Bidden or unbidden, God is here.” 

 

3/14/26

Wildflowers, Weeds and Heaven

Photo Credit here.

I ripped plants out of the ground this afternoon after work and before the sun set. I recognized the irony in mourning a tree but mercilessly pulling out dandelions, creeping charley and other nameless blights from the wet earth. If I did nothing, I would have a yard of color – mainly white and yellow - dotting shape-shifting greens with wild violets punctuating the ensemble in deep purple. 

 

My aunt tells a story about my grandmother and flowers. The story goes like this: My aunt and uncle built onto the old farmhouse sometime after they married, eventually moving into the main house while my grandmother occupied the one-bedroom apartment my aunt and uncle initially constructed. My aunt began planting around their shared home, and Granny asked her what she was planting. “Flowers,” she said, to which Granny replied, “What a waste.” 

 

Growing up, much of the back yard supported corn, beans and peas. A side yard had turnip greens, tomatoes and okra. The flowers bloomed on those plants, but the end prize was the fruit or vegetable it produced. I don’t know what she did about all the “weeds (and their flowers)” which have now overtaken the back yard. 

 

As a small child, I loved the wild violets and always hoped they would survive their harvesting (which they did not). I loved dandelion seed heads and finding one which looked perfectly round in order to try and blow off all the seeds with one giant breath (which rarely occurred). I don’t remember the other variety of flowers and plants which I now grab and pull from the earth with abandon. 

 

When I stop to look at the plants, these so-called weeds, awe overtakes me. I can think of at least a dozen different types of leaves, growth patterns, flower designs, heights, root structures, etc., as I consider what I grabbed by fistfuls and yanked from the ground earlier today. Their ability to replicate and proliferate far outweighs mine. Thousands of flowers formed week after week and I trample them to admire scrawny azaleas and thorny rambling roses – both miserly with their blooms, demanding a certain amount of pampering to keep up appearances. 

 

Still I clamor after showy blooms and shocks of color, preferring the hassle of prima donnas to the scruffy take-what-take-can of chickweed, henbit or purple archangel. 

 

My mother, who could kill pretty much any plant in her general vicinity, told a different story about Granny and flowers. In her version, her mother took a hillside and transformed it with gladiolus and a crepe myrtle. According to mom, Granny loved to witness the flowers unfurling each summer and delighted in them. As she aged, she bent more toward roses from what I remember. 

 

On her deathbed, she woke out of whatever stupor held her and spoke of seeing Jesus. “Everywhere he goes is love and peace,” she said. Then, her eyes brightening, she added, “And the fields are filled with yellow and purple roses!” A few moments later, she had passed into the place where roses grew like wildflowers and weeds. 

3/13/26

 

Wonder(ing)

 

Photo credit here.

How did the universes begin? By a spoken Word over “waters” – things that are NOT becoming manifest by breath and voice? 

 

If so, where did the waters begin? In the belly of God – an artery cut open to bring about life?

 

Does the serpent swallow its tail,

Spinning time in endless loops

Until the flick of creation

Telescopes a spiral

Reaching to eternity?

 

Or maybe the learned ones know best

A single atom

Exploding with instability;

Then opposites attracting

And coalescing

Swirling together and

Settling into non-ending expansion

 

All of us stardust

Matter to the matter that is us

And then to pass through and onto

Some other galaxy light years away.

 

A burden of questions

Known only as (in?) mystery

Inviting us to embrace

Wonder.

 

Writer’s Workshop, July 2025

Seeing God

Gustave Dore, ‘Paradiso, Canto 31’ (19th century)

Found here.

The story of Jacob and Esau includes a pericope in which Jacob, having stolen Esau’s birthright, must travel through the country where Esau resides. Jacob frets over the anger his brother feels and seemingly expects retribution. 

 

As he travels through the country, he sends his wives before him. The first to meet Esau are the women and children Jacob cares for the least. He saves Rachel to the end, but still, he sends her before him with her two children. Then, traveling even further behind Rachel, he meets Esau last. 

 

When he finally stands before Esau, Esau embraces Jacob. When Jacob is released, he steps back and says, “In seeing you, I see the Face of God.” 

 

Outside of Jesus, this is the only other person in the Bible who is identified as God and it is because of the mercy and love Esau shows Jacob, despite Jacob’s treachery and scheming. 

 

The Lenten card asked where I have seen God, and because spring weather brings new life all around, seeing hints of God abound (no charge for the rhyme). Seeing God in people is more difficult, however, because people act horribly. Jacob needed mercy and Esau gave it to him – god-like stuff. According to Jesus, the sick I see in the hospital are God. The prisoner, the poor, the “least of these.” Radical ideas especially in the current social context. 

 

I’m not good at seeing God in those Christ said are God and yet God, according to this criteria, surrounds me day-in and day-out. I stand on holy ground all the time. May I - may we all - have eyes to see.

3/2/26

Ground Hog Day

 

Photo credit here.

He (She?) saw a shadow;

The long January days

extending another 6 weeks.

 

Yet daffodils peek below

the deck, with a day

as warm as mid-March.

 

No prophet knows

the sum of it

but leans into hunches;

 

Feeling what may be

right – the limbic

firing of an ancient brain

 

Whispering of truth

currently scattered in a 

universe of matter, waiting

 

To coalesce into a future

entity – vibrations already

syncing and swaying in harmony.

 

A shadow

seen

by the animal

within us all.

- February 2, 2025

No Place Like Home

 

Photo credit here.

J and I have now purchased my childhood home. We took over 2 of the 3 bedrooms, the hall bath, and the dining room-turned laundry room/pantry. The rest of our goods landed at the storage facility 2 miles away. Too much stuff crammed into unaesthetic monotony on the 3^rd floor, down the hallway to the left as you get off the elevator.

 

Dad and I share coffee in the mornings while Mom drinks her Boost. J and I go for walks along the creek behind the property, then up along the ridge line of the
Hills. Our rescue, the Maltese named Riley, has grown in to a veritable therapy dog – his love for love softening everyone he meets. Work remains fulfilling, as the people in front of me find space and freedom to air deep concerns or hidden secrets – leaving them lighter and more hopeful.

 

Thanks to Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upward, I’m looking at my return home to Rocky Ridge through the lens of the Odyssey with its wandering and return, attempting to see how all the pieces of my life are grace. My vision’s not so great, but if God shows up in anything, it is this beam of truth: everything is grace.

 

Going on 16 years ago, my wanderings took me to a Catholic retreat center in North Carolina. St. Therese, the Little Flower, was its patroness. A labyrinth lay just beyond the dorm, scattered trees encircling it. I walked the labyrinth with urgency since I wrestled with returning back South, and particularly to Memphis, TN. I had left the South 3 years earlier and, in that time, faced some of my own demons from childhood. I felt broken and utterly confused about why now was the right time to come back. I had not wanted to return and tried my best to stay in Berkeley, but all the doors closed.

 

I poured my heart out as I walked in one orbit then in retrograde, in-toward-the-center-and-away-again, on the serpentine path to the middle of the labyrinth. As I stepped into the quiet center of that particular system, I saw it: a singular stepping stone imprinted with the shape of a butterfly, its wings filled with the shattered glass from some imperfect past.  Then imperceptibly the thought came, “Nothing is wasted. What has been your wounding will be your path to flight.” Then the tears and gratitude of hope. 

 

I met J in Memphis – a conduit of love and grace that I could never have dreamed or imagined, but God could and did. And here we are, in Birmingham, back at ground zero. I’m trying to envision how all the pieces are being formed into wings – the pleasant, the difficult, the indifferent. Some days the evidence shines, some days not so much, but I believe the hope discovered on the path and I trust the Love with all the unbelief that remains. As a prayer to St. Therese says, 

 

“Little Flower, give me your childlike faith,
to see the Face of God
in the people and experiences of my life,
and to love God with full confidence.”

 

May it be so, God. May it be so.

- Written as an Advent devotional, 11/2020

The Gateway

 

Photo credit Paul Reiffer

The day is gray - when water folds into skyline like its lapping heaven

Yet the face of the sky is flat, motionless, settled - still

As if the wet lick does not tickle its nose or catch just enough of its mouth to make it retract back in disgust. A pall placed upon it by hands unseen, it is dispassionate.

Yet there is a gateway - the legs reflected in the ocean's mouth, the top disappearing from its view.

Is it a chin rest of the gods? 

A step so the god may reach to grope for the sun? 

Maybe it's for the god's cigarette - that nasty habit it's trying to break? 

Or a hairpin to keep unruly tresses obedient? 

But there it is - hard and motionless; embodying in flesh what the vapor sky expresses - out of place

Like a piece of trash on the wilderness path - unthinkingly, carelessly tossed aside.

- Writer's Workshop, 2019

A New Song

                                     

A human from the beginning. Photo credit here.

In watching Aspens leaves blown by the wind, skyward green and earthbound white twisting wildly, I hear (and see!) the trees singing for joy – enlivened by the Spirit filling this ancient world.

 

Then an Appalachian spring covers the forest floor in dazzling flowery jewels, dismissing the drab mud of winter, the brown crush of leaves – exultant in the caresses of the Sun – 

 

Or maybe the creeping light of day alerts cardinals, blue birds, house finches and Carolina wrens to the latest gossip and the air fills with tales and triumphs I cannot understand – but still my heart stirs.

 

Of course, the ocean, they say, holds the power of God – the mystery of depth incessantly rushing into conscious thought and then away – the creatures within too marvelous for the light of day.

 

I look at this body, each year changing, and consider the beginning: two microscopic cells – nothing more, nothing less – uniting, dividing (but holding together), differentiating, migrating and forming 

 

All the parts of me: the moving parts, the breathing parts

The sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell parts

The thinking and feeling

Reflecting and dreaming

Creating

 

A body like mine held God,

Knitted him together in darkness,

To be birthed in all of us

This Christmas Day – so

Sing to the Lord a new song.

-Written for an Advent Devotional, 12/24/23 with Psalm 96 as the inspiration

Many Ways

Image origin here.

 

She asked God all the time,

“What am I to do with my life?”

 

She worried at each path’s opening,

went down multiple roads, but always wondered

if another way would be better,

Or easier,

Or less exhausting,

Or more thrilling.

Turning to go yet another way,

She asked again, “What am I to do with my life?”

 

Then she stood still,

sat in the center of the path,

and tried to listen.

 

Looking around at bursts of flowers,

creeping weeds and grass,

moss clinging ferociously to the ground,

she finally heard God’s reply,

 

“There are many ways to be in the world.

Pick one.”

- March 23, 2025

Breaking Bread

Access information about this picture here. 

I did not grow up in a very liturgically minded church, but we recognized Maundy Thursday (which happens to be today for anyone who may not know). I never have bothered to understand why it is "Maundy," so I googled it and found this: 

"The word "Maundy" is originated from the Latin word called "mandatum," which means "commandment." This day is named after Jesus' commandment to his disciples to love one another. Maundy Thursday demonstrates the importance of humility and service by remembering Jesus washing the feet of his disciples." (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/maundy-thursday-what-is-the-meaning-importance-and-history-of-this-day/articleshow/99295309.cms?from=mdr#)

Circling back around to the fact Lent began on Valentine's Day this year, learning the historical roots of the name of this day seems apropos. Of course, it means the same thing every other year, too, but synchronicity is sometimes where one finds it. 

So I made some poor life choices in the late afternoon with my snacks, and by the time I entered the doors of my church for the service, each morsel of candy which had passed my lips earlier wackamoled me. I felt thin, beaten down ("like butter scraped over too much bread" per Bilbo Baggins) - my brain shifting to autopilot as I sat to listen to Leanne and Tom begin the service.

Tom picked up the bread, panning it slowly across all gathered, from right to left with no words. He held it still resting in his palms for a moment, then shifted the loaf to grab it tightly between his hands and ripped it top to bottom. I felt the tear somewhere in the space between my body and my soul: The thin layer of my will evaporating in the space between the broken loaf. And then the thought, "I know how it feels to break and shatter when strength is gone, Kara," and then my confession, "I am not alone."

If I had the energy for tears, or if I had not been taught early to suppress most of what I felt or maybe if I were not so damned fearful of vulnerability, my seat would have been a puddle. In the moment, I was the bread, but so was Christ, and He whispered, "I know." 

Good night.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

John 13:1-11, NRSV

Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet

13 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

Eyes Open

Picture credit

I'm enjoying my eyes-open centering prayer practice. My life pushed me into it, though. When I first learned about centering prayer/meditation, I had traveled to the Hudson River Valley and ensconced myself in a Benedictine monastery there (with about 20-30 people from my theological seminary). In an ancient basement room, arches of stone creating column-obscuring views, we were taught to sit, with eyes closed, and focus on God. Nary a worldly or bodily distraction should shift us, and if an unwanted itch or slight pinch arose, acknowledge it and let the sensation go.

Later, when I sat in a centering prayer circle in Memphis, a similar exhortation came. With both feet on the ground, hands comfortably on legs or chair, our eyes were to close and all focus be on God regardless of what the body or world around us may do. Later still, during another educational adventure, a professor taught Eastern Meditation with similar guidance: sit still, eyes closed and see what floats down the river of consciousness and let it go, and focus again on breath, on being.

The preponderance of teachers saying the same thing about similar practices usually means the wisdom of time and practice lays a foundation which imparts the benefit of the exercise. In other words, no need to upset the apple cart, but. . .

When barre class runs late, or it's Friday and Krispy Kreme *must* be purchased, and the faithful group of "simple presence" practitioners meet promptly at 6:30. . .well, centering prayer becomes wrapped with visions of Shades Creek gurgling under the bridge, the emergence of red maple leaves, the greening of the tulip magnolia. Prayer also converges with sparrow song, cawing crows, shrieking hawks and the flurry of bird activity hailing the rising sun.  Cool air, the scent of cherry blossoms, the sickly green coat of pine pollen weave their own tapestry of story, of yearning, of praise - and God ceases to exist in the singular space behind my closed lids and expands to fill all the "circling spheres." 

I've sensed the whisper to watch, feel, listen, smell and taste God in the center of all of my life: the active moving parts AND the quiet, sitting still ones. 

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Psalm 24:1-2, NRSV

Entrance into the Temple

Of David. A Psalm.

1 The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
    the world, and those who live in it,
2 for he has founded it on the seas
    and established it on the rivers.

Facing the Ceiling

I'm so ready for bed, everything in me is screaming out to be asleep right now. I wrote the title to "be funny," in the way I am not funny at all (and if you are scratching your head right now, welcome to my world.). 

Even so, I'm realizing to "face the ceiling" could be a descriptor of so much more than sleeping: I could be facing the glass ceiling. I could be coming to terms with my limitations, the height of my trajectory, the top of my pay range. . .Having taken a Pure Barre class tonight, I think of all the abdominal work we did while looking up. 

Chasing the tangent, I consider looking up into the sky during the day - the clouds forming some barrier between the land and the sun. Then at night, the perceived ceiling drops away with the setting sun, and the sky keeps reaching ever forward into deepening and deepening space. 

I'd call that revelation. We spend our days following a direction, thinking the parameters set with so much road ahead (and behind), with the blue sky above. Our living days consisting of these rules. Then night arrives - the road, sure and obvious before, now misshapen with shades of gray smudging the lines. The sky, self-contained and solid, shot through with lights stretching further and further out. Everything which was certain now appears wild and mysterious. Anything I thought real shape-shifts and more possibilities are left in its place. 

The Bible may say it like, "This is impossible with humankind, but with God all things are possible." 

Maybe the ceiling is part reality, but part figment of my imagination. Maybe I need to sleep on it. 

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Matthew 19: 16-26

16 Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. 19 Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20 The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

Photo credit here.

Being Made Whole

Eighteen days left in Lent. I've done something for Lent over the last 3 years, and I find myself grasping for ideas, thoughts, plans about halfway through each time. Thinking about it, I recognize this as true for being halfway-ish through my life - if the self proclaimed prophetess was right in telling me God would give me 90 years. It's both freeing and anxiety-provoking to have a due date (an expiration date, an end?). 

I don't know what I expected mid-life to be, but sitting in my egg chair in the sunroom of my childhood home would not have crossed my mind. When I began my "work tourism" lifephase, I could not imagine it ending. I loved going new places, meeting new people, experiencing how people encountered life in different ways. When I finally landed in Memphis and met J, one way I knew he was "the one" was because I didn't want to move somewhere else away from him.

Memphis became home for about 7 years, then the school-itch returned, and we were off again. Two moves and 9 years later, we landed back in Alabama for reasons noted in earlier posts. Like the move to Memphis, the timing felt right; I had a knowing interiorly we needed to return, and my mother died 6 months later (I posted a reflection about this last year during Lent here.). Now, I work with teenagers and drive almost the exact route to work which I took to high school.

My grandmother once asked me when was I ever going to come home. As a woman who never lived outside of Alabama, I think my distance in my young adult years baffled her. She died when I was 30 and living in New Jersey. I don't know if she would have understood how this piece of land with a house felt nothing like home at the time. . .too many ghosts, too much silence. . .the pall of a culture which danced on the graves of women's aspirations, accomplishments and dreams. 

So I went searching, under acceptable guises, of course, and really, did I even know I was searching? A part of me did, I think, and when I landed in Berkeley I found a community of believers who trusted deeply in the healing power of Christ. As we completed our confession every week and the liturgist said, "Friends, believe the good news of the gospel." We replied, "In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven and are being made whole." The weekly repetition of the phrase worked its way into the cracks and crevices of my soul, feeding whole areas of my being and knitting together the rifts I had felt for decades. I still add "and are being made whole" each time I participate in confession because forgiveness is amazing, but the wholeness which comes from relationship with God is life-saving.

Augustine wrote in his confessions, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Somewhere in that statement there is a truth about finding home. Home isn't an address, but an expansion of our souls toward God, by God, in God, through God, then in that homecoming, we co-create (with God!) a space for others to discover the same, and we are opened to those ready to be our guides as well. 

Being back in Alabama is not always easy. This house still holds ghosts and sometimes silence, but they do not threaten to overtake me as they once did. Part of the grace of my life is my partner and friend, J, and in his spaciousness, I have been encouraged in my own - the expansion of my soul, the welcoming of home. And I find God in our life and the ways we walk this life together. I find, over and again. God's love is making me whole.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Acts 17:23-28, NRSV

 23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26From one ancestorhe made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,  ‘For we too are his offspring.’

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God Prays Back

Photo credit: Pat Lucas

 Kara,

I Am here -

Listening with you to the bird calls.

Rejoicing with the surprise of hyacinth,

the laughter of daffodils...

Smiling, for the promise of renewal

all around. 

I Am near: 

the Breath you inhale,

the Melody you hear,

the Feast you taste,

With each moment, each heartbeat

Each pulse of body, of nerve

I Am holding all you offer:

Bottles for tears; 

Incense for intercessions;

Words deeper than you know

for all the wonder and pain

knowing no words to contain them.

I Am with you.
.

God and Fibonacci

Original image came from this website.

This image appeared in my pseudo-dream state during centering prayer (CP hereafter) this morning. I hate to admit my tendency to doze during CP, but it happens. The image in my brain's eye presented itself more black and white with markings indicating its form (i.e., related to a gastropod), but I recognized it as a question mark as well. 

Seemingly, the "squishy" bits of the animal inhabiting the shell, excretes calcium carbonate which eventually hardens into the shell spiral as seen above. The shape in mathematics has some relationship with the Fibonacci Sequence (though not perfect), and after taking way-too-much of a deep dive on this math professor's website, I read the following:

"We should really think of this curve as spiraling inward forever as well as outward. It is hard to draw; you can visualize water swirling around a tiny drainhole, being drawn in closer as it spirals but never falling in."

While my imagination wants to create some meaning to this symbol materializing during my CP practice ("Will my questions be forever spiraling toward me and away from me?" or "The Eternal came to me in my dream-state symbolically" or "my spiritual path is eternal," etc.), I think most who interpret dreams would say remembering this symbol is enough. So here it is - a memory which "may" last forever on the World Wide Web.

As is often the case when I write these daily missives, I am exhausted, so not much more to share. If I end up relating this to The Eternal - how striking for God to symbolize Self with a gastropod. According to the mathematician one finds this pattern on the branches of trees, pine cones, pineapples, the center pad of flowers (asters, sunflowers, daisies) - almost like God's fingerprints - God's presence? - mark all of creation. And if God is there, so is Love.

 PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Genesis 1: 1-5, 9-13

1 When God began to create[a] the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.