NPR, Rilke, and World View

I believe in coming full circle and ending up in an entirely different place that feels just as comfortable as the first place.

In the first place, I was driving to church on a Sunday morning while NPR read Rilke poems and suggested we all take a look at the world through a poetic lens instead of a fact and figures lens. (re: oil spills and other environmental disasters)

In the second place, I was sitting on the couch with C. discussing when homeschooling is appropriate and more desirable than public schooling and how the government offers public schooling at home now, suggesting the homeschool-er needs the same curriculum as the public school-er.

In the third place, I was roused out of my comfortable non-confrontational self to say that sometimes we need public school at home and sometimes we don’t.  There is a line in each of our lives that we best watch for, adhere to, etc.  Ideal is not ideal if it doesn’t deal with the current I.

In the last place, I do value facts and figures, but I do so much more easily view the world poetic line by poetic line.  Well, it looks like I’ve come full circle, but I don’t think I arrived in a new place this time.  I guess I will just keep circling.

“I live my life in growing rings
which move out over the things around me.
Perhaps I’ll never complete the last,
but that’s what I mean to try.
I’m circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I’ve been circling thousands years;
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm
or a great song.”

Rilke

If Jesus is about anything…

“If Jesus is about anything, it’s the inconvenient truth that a spiritual life is a physical life.”

–Sara Miles
“jesus freak”
Jossey-Bass Publishing, (c) 2010

Sara Miles is the founder and director of The Food Pantry, and serves as Director of Ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, USA.

Progression

Today started with “Hush, Somebody’s Callin’ My Name,” business, business, business, progressed to “Seasons of Love,” business, business, business, and finally landed in some sense here:

I have always watched this (starting the moment it arrived on the scene in 1993) and longed to be a part of a moment like that.  I just might find a moment like this yet.  Lord, despite the anxiety, stress, and business of a real life school day, keep my eyes, heart, and mind attentive to catch on to a truly happy day.

Running To Yourself

“…So it isn’t a matter of trying to run away from yourself, but running away to yourself, to the identity you are not allowed to recognize or nurture or grow so long as you are stuck in the habits of anxious comparison, status seeking, and chatter.”

–Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another
New Seeds Books, Shambhala Publications, Inc.
(c) 2005 for A World Community of Christian Meditation

It is recommended to read this statement, at minimum, twice to self and twice out loud.

I Did Not Learn This At Wheaton College

I neither learned how to make (a) kaffe eis, nor how to compose a short story while at Wheaton College.  I have learned, however, that these two events go perfectly well together.  I use to try them separately, one at Julius Meinl cafe in Chicago and the other in various attics and basements around the world.  Together is better.  Case in point?  Today.  Sometimes you learn very important things post college graduation.  😉

Present Peace

I read today, “If you are depressed, you are living in the past.  If you are anxious, you are living in the future.  If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” (Lao Tzu) If then I am at peace when I am talking to you, it seems doubly true that you are my present.

Heaven

“To me, the notion that life is a dream compared to the reality of heaven has always seemed better suited to the fiction of Borges than to living one’s every day life.”

–Kathleen Norris

I can’t live for today when tomorrow is always on my mind.  I must learn to live fully in this only moment that I have because tomorrow slides right into it anyway.  Yes, without my even knowing heaven comes quicker than I think.

-Naphtalia

Pie, Piano, and Poetry II

After months of joyously watching my sister carry on our Pie, Piano, and Poetry traditions in Indiana, around Christmas I grew eager enough to go out on a limb.   I realized that soulful photographer and hostess of Urban Porch Songs, Danica Myers, would be the perfect collaborator for an event in Northeast Minneapolis.  I e-mailed her like it was 2001.

We started making plans sometime in January and ended up with a house full of beautiful hearts on Friday, February 25, 2011.  The Minnesota chapter of Pie, Piano, and Poetry is officially an excellent idea.

Visit Danica’s blog for more reflections and photos of the evening’s sharing.  Then, dear friends, go, create, share

(Do feel free to share your art here, if you wish, by the way.)

She loves that art.

K. loved the tincture she had made.  The rest of us didn’t know what it was.  Then she explained it and we loved it, too.  K’s tincture is beautiful art.

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