It was over ten years ago that I first watched Henri Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved” YouTube video. It resonated with me deeply as it has for many people. It has become a spiritual practice to watch it several times a year. I have parts of it almost memorized and yet, I keep watching. It seems I need to hear again and again that I am the Beloved child of God.
As I walked the cobble stone streets of Old Jerusalem in 1972, I noticed a number of plaques high up on the walls of ancient buildings. Some said Via Dolorosa and others identified where certain events happened as the battered Jesus headed toward Calvary and his crucifixion. Up to that point in my young life I had never heard of The Stations of the Cross. That is no longer the case.
I brought Lectio Divina into my home school Lit classes this week. The students picked a “word to the wiser” from their stories and essays they’d read, and I walked them through a modified version of the ancient practice. Each class went in a different direction, but it was the group around my table that afternoon who left my heart the softest.
This group of Muslim girls picked a quote from a John Green essay entitled “The Yips” that said, “How can you regain confidence when you know that confidence is just a varnish painted atop human frailty?” Once I established that “varnish” is not the same as “garnish”—by pointing at my worn kitchen table—they dug in.
Starting the year afresh brings thoughts of beginning...again. This month, we revisit a blog post from March 2020 reminding us that “silence is God’s first language.” (Keating).
The morning light begins to illumine the eastern sky. I can hear the waves of the Strait of Juan de Fuca pounding upon Dungeness Spit and then off in the distance is the haunting call of an eagle. This morning there is only a slit through the gray clouds allowing the yellow and golden colors of the morning sun to shine forth. Other mornings, the sky is alive with color, with beauty, with grandeur. Off in the distance is the baritone voice of a seal and the squawking of seagulls playing in the wind.
God, Divine Love, is everywhere, in all things, and always pouring out all that is needed in every moment. I have seen it was God in my seeming “stuck-ness and indecision.” I have seen Divine Love behind in my “forgetting.” I have even seen God at work in my seemingly “casual decisions.”
Each incident: feeling stuck and indecisive; forgetting to respond; a casual decision made to do something different one morning, is just a part of normal daily life. However, God helped me become aware after the fact that there was more happening than I realized.
“Watch out for the rock!” I heard my husband yell from behind as we careened down the river into the massive boulder to our left. Instinctively, shielding my body from a possible painful blow, I did EXACTLY what our guide had told us NOT to do. I leaned away from the rock, causing me to lose my center of gravity, and almost like in slow motion, I felt my kayak capsize. My head went underwater while my body, slowly but uncontrollably, followed.
Be Curious Before Critical. These words greet me every time I walk into my Naturopath’s office. While this reminder is meant to be helpful during my visit, I have found it also applies to internal thoughts and feelings. It is a weekly reminder of a practice I want to build in my life: assuming a posture of curiosity before rushing to criticism when discovering a part of myself.
My daughter and I wore prom dresses to the airport. Beautiful black dresses with pink flowers on the long flowy skirts that had been marked down from several hundred dollars to $19.99. We weren’t shopping for dresses when we innocently walked by the dress section in Macys and noticed the price and the good fortune that they had one in each of our sizes. We only meant to try them on but as we twirled and laughed in the dressing room, we thought, we are going to buy these dresses and wear them. Never mind that neither of us had a prom or formal event in our future.
