Psalm 8:3,4
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
I am glad to have Americain Halloween behind me! I mean the costume candy silly thing we do here on what for me is a sacred time. All souls/all saints. Meditating on the real meaning of All Hallows I am so very mindful of the saints upon whose shoulders I stand today. I've been feeling the close presence of my maternal grandmother and my mother especially. In that space between sleeping and waking they 'speak' comfort to me. Their faith sustained me in life and even now that they have passed.
October is a mysterious time of year. We walk on sacred ground. And the older I get the more I am content to leave situations in the realm of mystery and wonder. Most of our lives one is concerned with _doing_ and not _being_ I find that being is the better state. Every morning I read a Fr. Richard Rohr's blog. His subject this week is The Cosmos. He writes, "Today, we know that the universe is old, large, dynamic, and interconnected. It is about 13.8 billion years old, and some scientists think it could still exist for 100 trillion years. The universe has been expanding since its birth. Our home planet, Earth, far from being the center of the universe, revolves around the Sun, a medium sized star in a medium sized galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains about 200 billion stars. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter. Furthermore, it is one of 100 billion galaxies in the universe. We do not appear to be the center of anything. And yet our faith tells us that we still are. This cosmic shock is still trying to sink into our psyches."
October.The mystery has been celebrated through the ages. This month there was a dramatic vertical lineup of Venus.Leo's bright star Regulus, Mars and Jupiter. They were joined by Mercury and the Moon. The full Hunter's moon made a spectacular appearance on the 27th.
Our field has hosted a parade of creatures gathering stores for winter. Deer, possums, chipmunks, groundhogs, foxes, coyotes, wild turkeys. A bear or two was spotted in nearby towns. Trees and plants are dropping nuts and seeds which will bring new life come Spring. Hickory, Walnut, Acorn, Dogwood, Coreopsis, Thistle. Flocks of birds feast on their way to warmer places. Owls call in the woods. Young hawks are soaring with their parents above. Bats swoop for last insect meals before winter. Spiders are weaving their last. Moths flutter their last. The cicadas chirp a slower, hopeful beat.
In the magazine Alive Now the editor Beth Richardson writes: "Mystery--it is something that I cannot explain or even understand. Gazing at a vast sky and know that I am but a tiny part of an infinite universe of creation. Sensing that those who have passed away are right here with me." ( We celebrate the lives of our friend Paul Huber, and nephew Bruce Doele. My Mother is close, and her mother both of whom passed on their great faith to me.) "Standing with others around the communion table, knowing that the Holy is here in this place." As it is in every place.
In youth I was so certain of things. Today, I embrace the presence of mystery in the world, and in my life. The older I get the less I know for sure.
Some quotes passed on from my friend Fr. Serafim Sigrist ressonate. (1)
“(We are) incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance. We are floating in a medium of vast extent, always drifting uncertainly, blown to and fro. Whenever we think we have a fixed point to which we can cling and make fast, it shifts and leaves us behind. If we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips away, and flees eternally before us. Nothing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations. We burn with desire to find a firm footing, an ultimate, lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity, but our whole foundation cracks, and the earth opens into the depth of the abyss. Let us then seek neither assurance nor stability...” --Blaise Pascal
(2)
"The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things — but the oddest part of it all was that, whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite, empty, though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold. 'Things flow about so here!' she said at last..."
(3)
When Alice does choose an object in the shop, an egg. She finds it is not something she can hold on to but a passage into another place. The sheep instead of handing her the egg sets it on end at a far corner of the shop and in so doing the sheep, who is the White Queen's bishop in the dramatis personae and list of moves made by Carroll for the chess game the story represents,, makes a move out of Alice's vision. The egg becomes Humpty Dumpty as Alice approaches and the shelf on which he is set has become a wall on which he is perched. --Lewis Carroll
And so it is with me these days. It is not important for me to comprehend the Mystery. The Mystery, God, comprehends me in an eternity I can't see.
AMEN
Ann Ahnemann - 11/2/15
state.
Your best blog article ever Ann! Love the Pascal quote. It reminds me of dreams and how that, if you become self aware in a dream and ask a dream character a question, they suddenly dummy up and say nothing at all, as though it would violate some treaty in the world of spirit that says, "You can only know so much and no more."
ReplyDeleteAnd the faith of our parents . . . I sometimes think it's the only thing that will get me into Heaven. I've been missing my mom lately in particular. I should have been more kind to her.
High praise, Bill. Thank you. Yes, acceptance of mystery has been a big item for me. Amazing to me how vast, but how close to us our Creator is, and all the saints. I miss my mother too, and yet I feel her loving presence as if she were here beside me. I accept and am grateful for the mystery.
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