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Divine Intimacy

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Stellar February

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A new month! Bills to pay! Decisions about hosting plan to make! January retreat is finished! Today I will be putting only three more drops of eye medicine into the right eye and then it is only the left eye to treat, with 5 drops a day. 

This morning was warm enough that Rozsa the cat wanted out and stayed out for quite awhile. I hung a little wash out till I heard raindrops on the roof and decided to bring it in. Green grass everywhere, And stellar jays in the garden and cherry tree. Very noisy, very busy.

I decided I liked a pre-breakfast meditation. I pulled out Divine Intimacy and found the page for Septuagesima week Thursday. This year I am only reading the prayer part of the meditation. Not the instructional, doctrinal parts. The prayer parts are often full of quotes.

Today’s choice for me was by St. John Eudes: “O my God … draw me to you.” I will to keep it in mind throughout the day. I wrote it in a little book which I keep on the kitchen table so I can consult it when I forget… 

It was so nice waking up and looking out the bedroom window and seeing clearly. I spotted the first stellar jays in my neighbours’ yard. I will see if any of my photos are usable. The jays were very active and only one briefly  posed for me.  

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Wood Stove Time

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This year I have switched to burning larch. Last year for some reason I had a difficult time with the stove. I think some fir wood that was too “pitchy” was the culprit. I had been getting soot on my windows and ceiling. Horrors.

So far I have lit two fires. Successfully.This morning I noticed I had left the kitchen window open all night and the kitchen was not cold. A wood fire warms my trailer up like no electric or oil-filled heater can. I dried my laundry in the living room on a rack.
 
This year may be a cold one. Who knows? The price of electricity has gone way up out here over the past year. I paid a lot for the larch wood, but it will be less smoky and burn more efficiently.
 
I have been reading a meditation from Divine Intimacy almost every day and hope to soon start writing about them. My daily meditation is an important part of my day.

 

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Simmering Summer

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Suddenly it really is summer. Not false alarm early summer any more. But regular early summer. Days so hot I am now spending afternoons inside. Plants are growing more quickly. My first ripe strawberry yesterday! I bought bedding plants. A little late for seeds. Last night I put in kale. Tonight I will put in chard and maybe celery.

Unlike other summers, the mosquitos are fierce in the evenings. Too much long grass in the yard this year perhaps. I may try preparing the earth earlier in the day so I can transplant more quickly. 

Trinity Sunday was amazing. I got to sing one of my favourite old hymns “Holy, Holy, Holy“. I spoke to the celebrant briefly about St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. I chatted to others at fellowship time about my love for trees. 

Sewing project is to embroider some sort of Trinity symbol on a t-shirt. I have an embroidery machine. I have the shirt. I have the pattern. I have the backing. All I need is the nerve. I am afraid of the machine. For years I used an older dewing machine for embroidery and I didn’t really know what I was doing. Some disasters occurred. 

Readings from Divine Intimacy are pretty amazing right now following Trinity Sunday. My meditation phrase yesterday was:

“Even…when our heart is cold, and our mind in darkness, the Holy Spirit is praying within us…”

I keep my meditation phrases short so I remember them if I wander off from the book to do garden chores or housework. Also I try to remember it throughout the evening and the next day until I make another meditation. Out of context the phrase itself loses meaning, but I vaguely remember the content of the entire meditation in Divine Intimacy. I think it is wonderful that the Holy Spirit is there for us, in us, like a coach, guiding and encouraging us towards holiness.  

Of course it is up to us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. We still have to work at being good and at being prayerful. How grand, though,  to have such a loving, powerful helper “within”. How kind God is to us.

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Keeping balanced

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Life seems very fragmented at times. There are so many demands… Home, family, community, church to name a few. Life seems very fragmented at times.  And one more– faith. Faith is related to church, but not quite the same. I know that if church became difficult for some reason, I would consider staying away. However I would never, I hope, set aside my faith.

To be more specific, I am attending an Anglican Church regularly now. And if I had to stay away,  I think I would go “off grid” and just pray and sing and try to live a good life on my own so to speak. I would carry on with my short daily meditation and with my spiritual reading too.

Yes, I still try to keep a sentence of my reading in my mind through the day. Today it is from Divine Intimacy again: “…the interior apostolate of prayer, love, and sacrifice…”. That seems to be the best I can manage these days. 

As always, I am not claiming to be advancing spiritually or working very hard about it. No delusion about that. Every day I turn from opportunities for charity and self denial. 

That seems to be the best I can manage these days. 

 

Evening

How peculiar…

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All sorts of unexpected… results of my starting to read Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, to myself, on the internet rather than in the tiny print volumes at home. Starting on Advent I Sunday, I decided I would read something every day from the Book of Common Prayer. For one year. As a sort of intellectual emotional and spiritual religious experiment.

So I fluttered around with this collect and that, and Mid Day Prayer, and then Evening Prayer, first on the Canadian Prayer Book Society app, then on the Church of England app. And found to my surprise that the readings differed on each app, and then again on You Tube showings. And found out that there are various editions of the Prayer Book, including one with modernized language.

Well, fine. Confusing but also a bit unnerving.  Shouldn’t there be uniformity in the readings? Or will any reading suffice, on a particular day? And who chooses the readings? Can I choose my own?

Believe me, I would choose different ones. In BCP Evening Prayer I find  gloomy, tedious passages from Isaiah (although Isaiah has so many beautiful, uplifting sections). And wild passages from Revelations, which sound like LSD ravings, making no sense to me. And psalms full of violence and strife. So much nastiness, particularly in the Old Testament readings. Well, yuck.

 

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Edmonton sidewalk

Sadly I had just finished the collected works of St. John of the Cross. And I had put aside Divine Intimacy to make time for Evening prayer. And I often was uninspired to meditate from anything I had read in Evening Prayer.

Worst of all, I began to have nightmares, which I do when I get stressed. And three times in the past week I have lost my temper. When I lose my temper it is very unpleasant to others, as well as to myself. I have been so at peace for so long… And nothing awful is happening in my life to upset me. So I am tempted to point a finger at the Book of Common Prayer readings and psalms.

Yesterday I resumed reading from Divine Intimacy. I’ll make time. And after rooting through my bookcase I discovered Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade, which I read years ago. I’ll carry on with the Book of Common Prayer but cautiously and perhaps selectively. And see how it goes. 

On to the Living Flame

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spotted sandpiper
spotted sandpiper

Somehow I finished reading the Spiritual Canticle. And decided to stick with St. John of the Cross, although he has left me far behind with his visions. Ah well, it is nice to look at mountains even if you unwilling and unable to climb them. 

The Living Flame of Love is the next writing in the anthology. Began it last night. A poem about merging the soul with God, with a detailed analysis of the poem’s meaning(s). I cannot remember a thing I read last night. 

However I most certainly remember my little Carmelite meditation of yesterday. About charity. In my words, charity is the greatest gift that the Holy Spirit can give us. I think that my words may be the exact words of the meditation so here is the reference: Divine Intimacy, by Father Gabriel of Mary Magdalene. 

I have decided to follow along with the calendar in Divine Intimacy, reading only the first meditation of the day, and skipping everything else. I try to meditate on the quote I choose for twenty minutes. And I try to keep the quote, and/or the meaning of the quote for me, in mind throughout the next day. Until I read the next meditation.

In my little life, I have not found any authors so inspiring as St. John of the Cross and Father Gabriel. I thank God that I have these books to read, for without them life would be grim for me. 

Bird Songs

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All day long I hear bird songs.  Bright, happy singing. A background of joy. They don’t like to be photographed, these little tweeters that sit very still on wires and on branches till the camera appears. Then suddenly they disappear. They still sing, but from under cover. 

I am reading more from Divine Intimacy. Not every day. But when I have time. It is a little more down to earth than St. John of the Cross. I still read a little of St. John before going to bed but the ideas don’t stay with me. They are too far beyond me. I have about 30 pages left in the Spiritual Canticle. I’ll finish it out of respect for St. John. 

Photo is an old one from my archives. A red wing blackbird. I rarely see them now for they only stop by on migration.