Category: Nature

The Mystic Way; Part One

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Five years ago, I wrote five blogs on the Mystic Way. I think it may be time to revisit these five movements in spiritual growth.

a seed breaks open
transformation begins…
awakening

Nicholas Hermann (Brother Lawrence) saw a dead-looking tree in winter. As he meditated on that sight, he realized that the tree would come back to life in the spring. He was awakened to the presence of God.

Paul of Tarsus and Rulman Merswin saw great lights and were awakened. Jesus of Nazareth heard a divine voice at this baptism and his life was never the same.

Richard Rolle and John Wesley both felt a warming of their hearts–a heat that modern Tums could not ease. Catherine of Genoa felt her heart pierced by the love of God.

Sundar Singh had a night dream and awoke transformed.

Awakening comes in different ways, but when it comes a person is never the same. The Divine becomes the ever present reality of their lives (except maybe in the Dark Night of the Soul, the fourth movement). They affirm over and over again, the beauty and love of God.

Awakening is not something we can make happen for ourselves. In fact, it can be experienced by religious and non-religious people. All I can suggest is to pay attention to life–both inner and outer. All life comes from God. Perhaps if we pay attention, we are more likely to experience a moment of awakening that will endure, though conceivably not without some naps along the way.

One caveat; not all mystics talk about an awakening. Not all awakenings are as dramatic as the ones mentioned above. Some may be so gentle that they are barely remembered. I imagine this is more likely to be the case with persons who are raised in a deeply spiritual atmosphere.

May the love of God fill your heart. May the beauty of the Divine radiate through your thoughts and imagination.

LaMon

Who Is Talking to Whom

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This is actually Pathway Poem #22, but I decided to use a title instead. The poem today is by Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk whose novice master and spiritual director at the abbey of Gethsemani was Thomas Merton. The poem is found in Unquiet Vigil: New and Selected Poems published by Paraclete Press.

In the poem there is an italicized quote from Prayers of a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, published by Paraclete Press.

Now to the poem, that I hope you will read aloud and maybe twice.

Speculating Swallows

Swallows wheel below me
seated high on a window sill
as I read Rilke this rainy evening.
In chorus they sweep close to me,
curious and much amused at this aerial man
perched two stories up.

The make clipped remarks with swift wing beats
as the sail past my window.

Well–the delight is mutual.

I return to the page and read:
I am! You anxious One, don’t You hear me
with my soft senses surging toward You?
My feelings, which have found wings,
circle around Your face innocently.

How strange! How did they know? Am I God to these
swallows?
Or be they God wooing me?

They befriended me briefly in their god-like play,
then passed beyond to loftier freedom.

The reference to “god-like play” reminded me of the line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled As Kingfishers Catch Fire, i.e., “Christ plays in ten thousand places” which is also the title of a brilliant book by Eugene H. Peterson.

The poem also called to mind an older woman in the church where I grew up. She talked about going to a window in her kitchen every morning to hear what God might tell her through the two birds who regularly showed up. What she might have heard, I have no idea.

Just as there seem to be “thin places” where this world and another reality seem to meet, I think some beings bring this thinness to us. Birds did that for Paul Quenon that day and apparently did it often for the elderly church lady.

I hope you will return to the poem now and read it a second time. And I hope that you will take time to pay attention to life around you through which another life might shine through just for a moment.

Sunday morning
trinity of chickadees
feeder confab

If you like what you have read and are not already a follower, I hope you will click the follow button to receive my posts in your email. As always feel free to share this with others who might enjoy it.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #21

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Today’s poem is by John O’Donohue from Conamara Blues published in 2001 by HarperCollens Publishers, Inc. O’Donohue was an Irish priest much loved for his spiritual writings. I was attracted to this book of poetry because of the title. I have visited Ireland three times. I love every place I have been there. But my favorite is the west coast area of Galway and Conamara. The poem chosen for today illustrates a pathway into the Presence.

As always, I encourage you to read the poem slowly and to read it twice.

The Secret of Thereness

And the earth fled to the lowest place.
And the mystery of the breeze,
Arising from nowhere, could be
A return of unrequited memory
Awake at last to a sense of loss,

Stirring up the presences in these fields,
Clutches of thistle roll their purple eyes,
Grasses wave in a trembling whisper,
Profusions of leaf dance slowly

On the low spires of rowan trees;
In fields and walls the granite ones
Never waver from stillness, stones
Who know a life without desire,

Each dwells in its own distance
From night acclaimed by twilight
And day released through dawn.

Utterly focused in their stance,
Stones praise the silence of time.

If you have ever been to Conamara, you have seen those stones “focused in their stance” rising up out of the ground and in their places as part of a wall. They are everywhere. They “never waver in their stillness.” That is the image that calls me back to a spiritual truth that is so easily lost in the hectic pace of the modern world.

It is the “secret of thereness”. I cannot express how important it is to practice stillness, silence, simply being ‘there’. I cannot say that it is only in stillness that we can experience the presence of God, but I can affirm both personally and from the witness of other seekers over the centuries, that if we are still and attentive, the Presence might touch us.

alone not lonely—
solitary with God
by a mountain stream

The haiku was first published in frogpond, vol. 43:1 winter 2020, Haiku Society of America, Inc.

As always, please feel free to share this blog with your friends.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #19

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I lead a contemplative class on Sunday mornings. This week, one reading we had was from Mary Oliver’s Thirst.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

One of the most impressive prayers I have ever heard was voiced in 1971 when I was leading a youth group in El Sobrante, California. A teenager had joined our group (and church) a few weeks before. One night after church the young people met in a member’s home. At one point, I had invited the young people to voice their own prayers to God. Several did. Then toward this end, I heard the soft voice of this young man pray. He simply said, “Thank You.” I have never forgotten that beautiful two word prayer.

Mary Oliver asks us to do three things. First, pay attention to life. Second, voice thanks to the creator of life. Third, sit in silence to perhaps hear another voice respond. This is a good pattern for a contemplative life.

croaking frogs
chittering birds
Creator listens

May wisdom fill your mind and peace overflow in your heart,
LaMon

As always fill free to share this blog with your friends and encourage them to follow it as well.

A Lesson from “The Prophet” and a Preacher

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And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of
riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud,
outstretching His arms in lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving
His hands in trees. Kahlil Gibran, Collected Works, 149.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, not hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
R. S. Thomas, “The Bright Field” in Selected Poems, 114

Both Gibran and Thomas, from very different backgrounds, remind us of the same truth. If you would know the divine reality that permeates creation, paying attention helps! Those of you who live in a “modern” nation like I do, know how easy it is to rush from one thing to the next.

My advice is to walk slowly and to sit for a while. Allow creation to permeate your senses. You may come away refreshed and a bit wiser.


a gentle zephyr
dances among the trees:
breath of the Spirit

Peace to you all. And as always, feel free to share this with others. LaMon

Pathway Poem #12

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Jane Kenyon was a wonderful poet. She died of leukemia at the age of 48. She wrote,

There are things in life that we must endure which are all but unendurable, and yet I feel that there is a great goodness. Why, when there could have been nothing, is there something? This is a great mystery. How, when there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness, beauty?1

Among the many poems in Otherwise: New & Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon, I have chosen the following:

At the Feeder

First the Chickadees take
their share, then fly
to the bittersweet vine,
where they crack open the seeds,
excited, like poets
opening the day’s mail.

And the Evening Grosbeaks–
those large and prosperous
finches–resemble skiers
with the latest equipment, bright
yellow goggles on their faces.

Now the Bluejay comes in
for a landing, like a SAC bomber
returning to Plattsburgh
after a day patrolling the ozone.
Every teacup in the pantry rattles.

The solid and graceful bodies
of Nuthatches, perpetually
upside down, like Yogis . . .
and Slate-Colored Juncoes, feeding
on the ground, taking only
what falls to them.

The cats watch, one
from the lid of the breadbox,
another from the piano. A third
flexes its claws in sleep, dreaming
perhaps, of a chicken neck,
or of being worshiped as a god
at Bubastis, during
the XXIII dynasty.

What makes life worth living if not “love, kindness, beauty” and perhaps a bit of humor.

We have a beautiful Korat cat named Jinx. He too watches the birds at our feeders. And the beautiful birds come all 12 months of the year. Like Jinx, I too like to watch them, though perhaps with a different desire.

One of my Autumn haiku:

a beautiful morning:
just watching the birds feeding
and the leaves falling

May you all rejoice in the beauty around you–blessings of God. As always, feel free to share this blog with others. And comments are always welcomed–really! Peace, LaMon

1 Good Poems for Hard Times by Garrison Keillor, p.314.

Pathway Poem #11

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As I continue to work my way through my books of poetry, I have come the last J. It is A Night without Armor by the famous singer-songwriter, Jewel Kilcher. It contains poems from her journals as she grew up in Alaska. The poem that moved me most was next to the last one, so written, I imagine, in her twenties.

God Exists Quietly

God exists quietly.

When I sit still and contemplate
the breeze that moves upon me
I can hear Him.

For hours I would lay
flat upon the meadows
stare at the
endless field of blue sky
and revel in
the divine placement of all things.

I would walk alone
in the woods and let my mind wander
freely, stumble across theories
on the origins of myself
and all things.

In nature I knew all things had
their place. None supreme,
none insignificant and so
great peace would come to me
as I fit neatly in the folds
between dawn and twilight.
Living in sync with the rhythm
of the earth, eating what
we grew, warming
ourselves by the coal fire,
creating
myself in the vast silence that existed
between the wild mountains of Alaska
and our front porch.

I grew to love the
Nature of god.
I knew Him best not in churches, but
alone with the sun shining on me through the trees

It birthed a space in me
that would continue to
crave the sacred
and demand sanctity
as my life took flight
and lit out to travel
the world.

It has grounded me
and held me steady
in the strong winds
that have caried me
so far from
where I have been.

Prayer is the greatest
swiftest
ship my heart could sail upon.

I am presently reading a book that I think the Jewel who wrote this poem would resonate with. It is The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell. It is written in beautiful poetic prose. He would agree with Jewel that “all things had their place.”

Jewel’s experience of what some of us might call the divine in nature created in her a craving for the sacred and a demand for sanctity. It does not happen to everyone, but for many it has. So, again, I am encouraged to spend time immersed in the world of nature.

The title of this poem, so impressed me that I too wrote a poem in 2002. I have written other non-haiku poems, but trust me, none deserve printing! I share this one only because Jewel’s poem inspired it.

Unhurried, unharried, God exists quietly
Impassible Silence weaving improbable dreams
into the fabric of life lightly.

As always I welcome comments and encourage you, that if you find this blog helpful, you share it with others, welcoming them to follow it as also.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #10

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I have been working through my poetry books alphabetically, with one or two exceptions. I came to poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I was sorely tempted to pull one of my favorites from his poems. I did not, primarily because I would have had to spend way too much time trying to explain obscure words and phrases. Plus, reading his poetry aloud can be challenging because he has a unique rhythm scheme. If you want to take a look at my favorites, you can find them online; “God’s Grandeur”, “Pied Beauty”, and “As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire, Dragonflies, Draw Flame”.

Today’ poem is by Rod Jellema in A Slender Grace: Poems. One critic noted that Jellema “is a mystic…[but] he never loses touch with the earth. He is a poet of deep and humane good sense who’s infused with an abiding awareness of the holy.” [Andrew Hudgins, from a blurb on the back of the book.]

I have read this poem several times and will read it again. It seems full of meaning and mystery. Read it aloud slowly a couple of times and see if you agree.

We Used to Grade God’s Sunsets
from the Lost Valley Beach

Why we really watched we never said.
The play of spectral light, but maybe also
the coming dark, and the need to trust
that the fire dying down before us
into Lake Michigan’s cold waves
would rise again behind us.
Our arch and witty critiques
covered our failures to say what we saw.

The madcap mockery of grading God as though
He were a struggling student artist
(Cut loose, strip it down, study Matisse
and risk something, something unseen–
C-plus, keep trying–that sort of thing)
only hid our fear of His weather
howling through the galaxies. We humored
a terrible truth: that nature gives us hope
only in flashes, split seconds, one
at a time, fired in a blaze of beauty.

Picking apart those merely actual sunsets
we stumbled into knowing the artist’s job:
to sort out, then to seize and work an insight
until its transformed into permanence.
And God, brushing in for us the business
of clouds and sky, really is a hawker
of cliches, a sentimental hack as a painter.
He means to be. He leaves it to us
to catch and revise, to find the forms
of how and who in this world we really are
and would be, to see how much promise there is
on a hurtling planet, swung on a thread
and saved by nothing but grace.

If like me, you got to the startling end and thought, “wow”–and then went back to read it again. The poem just keeps growing on me and hope it will on you as well.

source of all being
plants mystery in the world–
survey the garden

As always, feel free to share this blog and encourage others to follow.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #9

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According to the Anglican calendar, today is the day that Evelyn Underhill is to be remembered. Perhaps more than any other person, Evelyn Underhill has helped me to learn about and appreciate the path of mysticism. I have over 25 of her books. She was one of the three persons about whom I wrote in my dissertation.

Though she published two books of poetry, it was not her primary writing style. Nevertheless, since I am presently sharing poems that point to a pathway to God, here is one that you mind find helpful. It is found in Immanence: A Book of Verses by Evelyn Underhill. This is the first poem in the book and it is entitled “Immanence”.

I come in the little things
Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod,
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flower:
Above your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Wait, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.

I come in little things
Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood–
There doth My Godhead rest.

I come in little things,
Sayeth the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit my stature to your need,
In beggar’s part
About your gate I shall not cease to plead–
As man, to speak to man–
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

This poem was published in 1912, so forgive her use of male language in the fourth line from the bottom! The point of the poem, which I have taken to heart, is that God creates various pathways by which we might find God and that God might fill us with divine love and joy and peace.

sitting with the trees
by a gently flowing stream–
patient rootedness

Now taken a moment and read the poem one more time. I would love to hear what your favorite line or image is in this poem. If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine!

As always, if you find this blog interesting or helpful, you may, if you
haven’t already, click the follow button and also share it with others.

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #8

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Tom Hennen was born and lives in Minnesota. Many of his poems are meditations on life in the upper Midwest. Today’s poem, originally found in Love for Other Things, looks at the prairie land he cherishes. I suggest you might want to read this one twice. Listen to the words, see the images, understand the feeling of the poet. Everything flows from the poem’s wonderful first line. But don’t allow you rational side to argue with it. If you can’t say, “Yes,” perhaps you can at least wish it were so.

From a Country Overlooked.

There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.

Toward the end he speaks of the spot he sees as being “full of grace and being”. Such language is a reminder that meditation on nature is a way to connect with the inner Reality revealed through what we can see (and not simply overlook). It is a pathway to experiencing the presence of God.

swollen Cahaba–
roaring into the silence
of the waiting woods

Peace,
LaMon