Not quite the cup of tea I was expecting and hoping for. After an awful lot of trial and error bumbling around, I think I have the general idea of how to use the Themify Builder. Long ago I got a Themify membership and the other day decided to use it for something. This is the result. Not Themify to blame for shortcomings… Just me.
Today looks promising for gardening. I have a lot of transplanting to do. The ground may not have dried up enough for digging though.
Meanwhile across the train tracks where no gardeners dig, plants are popping up.
St. John of the Cross reading has entered a more complex stage now. I no longer really like what I am reading. Just a bunch of words. As soon as I read them, I forget them. I still read a bit at night before I go to bed, but have to really hunt for memorable phrases.
Gardening season has arrived but before I could really get started seeding, the rainy season started. I am transplanting seedlings in to pots. I cannot safely work the soil until it dries out. I can make potting soil mixtures of some bagged soil I still have, potting soil, seedling soil, compost. All sorts of odds and ends.
That should keep the poor little things alive until I can make proper garden beds. Meanwhile, though, the weeds are sprouting. Today I should out there and start pulling them up. Good plan.
Little Joey, the neighbour’s cat, is not so little any more. I think he is responsible for digging up some of the few. transplants I put in before the rains started. Yesterday I saw him lying plump and satisfied-looking in what used to be a raspberry patch (the neighbour’s construction crew flattened them with dirt as their backhoe knocked down the screen fence. I turned the hose on him. He leapt right over the replacement fence I have strung up.
He is a very sweet cat and I don’t mind him elsewhere in the yard. But not in my food garden.
Surely there is no author to compare with St. Thomas Aquinas. Difficult to read! Extremely so, and– forgive me– therefore intensely, painfully boring. I am referring to his books.
The music of St. Thomas Aquinas, however, is much more bearable. Perhaps the very first Latin hymn I learned to sing was Adoro te devote. Simple easy-to-learn melody. And I vaguely understood what the words meant. At times I sang English translations. In Catholic and in Anglican churches. That is probably how I learned what the song was all about. A eucharistic hymn about God hidden in the Sacrament.
This morning I woke up and the hymn was in my mind. The first two lines, in Latin, in particular: Adoro te devote, latens deitas. Eventually I found time to consult an English translation. Yes! Hidden God! And I felt a connection to the God of St. John of the Cross, hidden within us.
The Eucharist then, is something like the hidden God within us. We believe in the Eucharist, even in today’s world of facts and necessary factual proof of facts. I believe in the Eucharist. Though I have not received since November last year and am not in a rush to return to in-person church services.
I don’t make any heretical claims here. I am not proposing anything really. Just noting that the concept of “hiddenness” that St. John of the Cross applies to God in general (and in particular to God within us), and the concept of God hidden in the Eucharast (Jesus) are similar.
That is my theology thought of the day. No offence intended to God, Jesus, St. John of the Cross or St. Thomas Aquinas. Just expressing what came to my little mind this morning. My little morning thought has made me regard Adoro te devote with much more affection.
Though I am only a few pages into the Spiritual Canticle I am finding myself surprised and encouraged. I shall continue to paraphrase. I am reading what seems to be a whole chapter on the first line of the poem. My memory being what it is, I cannot remember the words of it. Last night I remember reading a quote by St. Augustine that gave me joy. I don’t remember the words of it.
My memory is not what it used to be. I accept that and don’t worry about it. It is not the words so much as the concept that matters. And one thing I do recall from my late night reading is the certainty that it is okay not to worry about it. Not to let spiritual reading become focussed on memorizing, or upon worrying words into “understanding”.
Reading with the brain is important, certainly. If you are following a recipe, for example. Or talking to a carpenter about what you need fixed on your eaves. I am not reading the Spiritual Canticle with my brain. I do not have to make notes, or write an essay about it.
St. John’s poem describes a person looking for God. Where are you, the person is asking. And St. John says, in my words, God in within. Not out there. And God won’t be talking in words. So don’t expect to hear an answer.
And so when I think back about what I read last night, I don’t worry if I can’t remember any of the words. I know that God is here, not out there, and that knowledge fills me with hope, and makes me look forward to the day ahead. My memory isn’t cluttered with words that I am trying to make sense of. Neither am I alarmed that my own words here probably make no sense.
Spring is here. The birds have told me so. Sparrows in the garden. Robins returned form their winter vacation. Pairs of geese swimming in the bay.
More things to do outside. The yard. The garden. Pruning. Eave repair. Fence fixing. New frames for raised beds.
With my spiritual reading, I have reached The Spiritual Canticle by St. John of the Cross. I baulked fearfully at the start, but managed through the introductions which were not as formidable as I expected. And now I have waded into the actual text.
Rather than make quotes, which require referencing, I shall make comments in my own words. So far, on the second page of actual text, I can state that:
St. John is saying that God cannot be understood or described through words.
By faith I shall inch along, bit by bit, every night. I am reading The Spiritual Canticle because I want to. No motive beyond that.
Slowly plodding along with ” The Dark Night of the Soul”. Sometime this winter I discovered Chester Cathedral. Perhaps I mentioned that earlier somewhere in a post. If not… let me say that the Chester Cathedral evensong videos propelled me to cheerfulness and confidence.
Winter can be hard to bear. The cold, the dark, the piles of snow and the slippery ice… We all have our crutches to “get us through”. Mine became Chester Cathedral evensong. Online. I watch and listen while I am making dinner so I miss bits. There is a choir. Outstanding music. Amazing music director. Pipe organ. Beautiful setting. The clergy seem to sincerely love being there and are excellent, compelling readers. Another amazing site is Canterbury Cathedral.
I do “attend” the Zoom morning prayer of the nearest Anglican Church (about a 40 minute drive from home). Not quite the same but less “virtual”. The Zoom provides interaction, and I know a few of the people a bit. In person services there may start up again there if Covid restrictions relax.
Why wood ducks? I love ducks. And I am seeing a lot of them down at the lakeshore, particularly since I started giving them some grain on snowy days. I am grabbing any old photo to stick on the post. Rush, rush, rush.
Today, rather than be painstaking and perfectionist and careful, I am just going to race off and put my first St. John of the Cross quote online. Later perhaps a page for them, if I continue. For now, one quote per blog post. I will quote from the online public domain edition. But find the chapter from my hard copy of a different translation, which I purchased sometime back around the year 2000.
Maybe I can find it in the online edition without checking in my own book. Lazy, lazy. Impatient too. No spiritual aspirations for me.
I did go and get my hardcopy version. And I see already that there are differences wording. However, here from the online version is a quote:
“…this Divine fire of contemplative love,…”
from Chapter 10 of Book Two of the Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers from the edition of P. Silverio de Santa Teresa, C.D. (Paragraph 3, under Point 2. The electronic edition was scanned and edited by Harry Plantinga).
This quote is a fragment of a very long sentence. I chose it as my “quote of the day” from my reading last night. It was short, and I hoped memorable enough that if I ran into a bout of insomnia I could repeat it to myself, in my mind, to keep stray thoughts from running wild.
St. John is talking about God’s purifying contemplative love, which can act in us without our asking, as God wills and when God wills. In my case I don’t think it has been God’s will to put it to work in me! However, what an uplifting inner vision to ponder upon while tired but sleepless, abandoned even by one’s cat for the moment (warmer for her in the living room by the stove).
There is a rather battered paperback copy of the writings of St. John of the Cross that I have been reading for over a year. Just a little at night, before I go to bed. Twenty years ago I read the book cover to cover, and did not understand it very well. I forgot, or perhaps never actually remembered, any of it.
Reading it through the second time, I see the little marks where I left off each night. Yes, I was reading it at night then, too. And now and then there is a line or two highlighted in bright green from those days.
This first reading was very difficult for me, and not very interesting. I was reading it to try to learn something, or even worse, to try to become something. I was like a like a bull butting its head against a stone wall. Silly, sad me. St. John’s words were cold and critical to me. Very “dark”.
This time his words affect me differently.They are still dark. I don’t pretend to understand them. However, I don’t feel any pressure to understand them. I read them because I like to read them. His words satisfy me somehow. I read them and don’t think about them. I enjoy his imagery. I now know I am not an aspirant. I am just me. His words seem friendly, not judgemental or critical. It doesn’t hurt to read them this time.
Today I discovered that someone a translation of one of St. John of the Cross’s writings, The Dark Night of the Soul, and it is online, public domain. I can quote from it. I am really happy about that. Because usually every night I find some little phrase that I really like. And I wanted to make note of them on this site.
