Portraits: Of Flowers and Shadows by Anna Kirwan & The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Of Flowers and Shadows was a very quick read and yet a very enjoyable story. The book is a novel which takes Winslow Homer's painting of  Girl and Laurel and gives subject matter and meaning for this piece of art. The author sets this story in Massachusetts where the actual modeling took place and in the time frame of  the painting, the year of 1879. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American artist that was mainly taught by his mother as he only took a few art classes. He first came into the public eye as a special war correspondent illustrator during the Civil War.


The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane was very interesting with a pace that kept you reading. Having read several novels depicting the Salem witch trials of 1692 from various angles, this one presented yet another possibility ... that witchcraft was real.  Genealogical research has shown the author has family connections to two of the accused women:  Elizabeth Howe, who was hanged and Elizabeth Proctor who survived the trials. I'm sure this was the reason she presents the novel in the manner she does .... moving between contemporary time and the historical time of the witch trials with both time periods taking place in Massachusetts. Caused me to reflect upon how the actual people experienced this event that is a part of the American history. I did decide that I would have preferred living the rest of my life as the accused instead of the accusers and hopefully I would have had the opportunity to move far away from it all. I am sure that there were several generations that needed healing. 

 

99 Sayings by M. Basil Pennington; Thomas Keating: The Spiritual Senses & On Prayer

Short books that are full of wisdom and written by monks. M. Basil Pennington (1931-2005) was a monk at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts; Thomas Keating is a monk currently serving at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado but he also served at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts with Pennington.  Check out this site to view the beautiful St. Joseph's Abbey:   http://www.spencerabbey.org/ 

To review these books I am going to post a few of the sections I highlighted for future reviewing:

99 Sayings by M. Basil Pennington

True centering prayer cannot but bring us into the kingdom of heaven. We may not experience it in any sensible way. but in faith we know it is so. And we will see it in our lives, as wer become more and more determined to do the will of the Father in heaven.

Do we think we are more capable than our Lord himself? How many times in the course of his few years of ministry did he not send the crowd away flee away to a solitary place, even when everyone was seeking him with their very legitimate and pressing needs. Even the Son of man needed his time with the Father to be refreshed and renewed for his ministry.

We need those times of prayer when we listen not just with our ears, our eyes, our minds, but more with our hearts, with our whole being. It is outside the time of prayer that we will begin to see the difference, as the fruits of the Spirit begin to flourish in our lives.

It would be a great mistake to try to do the prayer "right.": It is, rather, making space in our lives, both in regard to time and to mental attitude and desire, to allow God to reveal to us our true selves in the eyes of his love and to bring us to the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. Some things can only be known by experience. That is true of this kind of experiential prayer. "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). "Taste and see how sweet the Lord is" (Psalm 33:9).


The Spiritual Senses by Thomas Keating


..... listening to the heartbeat of the Savior, which is the purpose of contemplative prayer and its mysterious resting

..... when we taste something, we transform it into ourselves; it becomes a part of us
..... this is not a presence through a concept or feeling but a presence through faith. One awakens to the undifferentiated presence of God beyond concepts, feelings, and particular acts, except to maintain the intention of loving, reverent waiting upon God
..... fidelity to the interview day by day proves one's sincerity and determination to grow in this deepening relationship with Christ
.....to commune is to rest in each other's presence and to enjoy the mutual gift of each other's presence without saying or doing anything, except perhaps to hold hands. The personal gift of oneself to God and of God to us is exactly what contemplation understood in its rational meaning, is

On Prayer by Thomas Keating

..... the word "repent" does not refer to penitential exercises or external practices but means change the direction in which you are looking for happiness
..... not only are we not who we think we are, but other people are not who we, or they, think they are. Our judgments about our character and other people's characters --- and the reality of the world within and around us ---are largely incorrect. We see everything upside down or from the perspective of downright ignorance
..... the question of our relationship with God is crucial. There are, of course, as many relationships with God as there are people.
..... the God of Christian faith becomes a human being in the person of Jesus and, in doing so, becomes not only one with the human family as a whole, but one with each of its members in particular
..... in the beginning, external silence and solitude are very helpful in order to develop the habit of listening to God's presence beyond the noises and preoccupations of everyday life or the particular environment we may be in. With practice we learn to integrate external noises into our prayer without either resisting them or paying any attention to them.
..... God's first language is silence. As soon as we put the deep knowledge of God into words, we have interpreted it. Every translations is in some degree an interpretation.
..... We believe that god is already present. Hence, there is no place to go to find him and no need to run away from ourselves
..... The ego acts as a  kind of bridge from the past to the future, hindering us from every being where God actually is, which is in the present moment
..... We pray in secret when in our hearts alone and in our recollected spirit, we address God and reveal our wishes only to Him. Hence, we must pray in utter silence


     

Sojourners Article: The Key Lesson We've Forgotten by Carol Osborn

Want to keep this article as this is the path I'm taking:  https://sojo.net/articles/key-lesson-weve-forgotten-our-rush-beat-old-age     and this link: http://consciousagingalliance.org/   

Receiving the Day Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time by Dorothy C. Bsss

This book is my first reading by Dorothy C. Bass but will not be the last.  She has a wonderful way of starting with the day that God has given to each of us and weaving it into the liturgy, the Sabbath, the Christian year, showing how we are drawn into the story of God with our days and how we can experience "fullness of time" and learn to "count our days." Very helpful for me in planning my devotional time for the coming Christian year of 2015-2016.  Following are quotes from various authors reviewing this book:

Walter Wangerin, Jr.: "With wisdom, clarity, and sacred practicality, Dorothy Bass changes our relationship with Time. It needn't control us. Rather, the day, the week, and the year are each an opportunity for us to shape our lives in the peace and kindness of God. God's story becomes our story. This is a book of genuine insight and gentle leadership. Let it turn your calendar from a taskmaster into a gift from the Creator for creation and for you."

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore: "This deeply spiritual book dramatically reorients the heart of the reader...challenging our time-obsessed society and teaching the wisdom of religious practices." 

 Roberta Bondi: "A profoundly useful book ....It reminds us forcibly that we are embodied creatures gifted by God with time too precious to fritter or work away. In its recommendations for healing our relationship to time it is often unsettlingly revolutionary, frequently subversive of our secular culture, and always full of of Dorothy Bass's honest and generous reflections on her own life. It is a pleasure to recommend it."

  

Open Mind Open Heart by Thomas Keating

This is probably the third time I have read this book but blog posting never happened because the other  readings took place "before sixty." Thomas Keating is a Cistercian priest, monk, and abbot. He presently resides at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. He is the founder of the Centering Prayer Movement and of Contemplative Outreach.  Here is the link for the site:   www.contemplativeoutreach.org  

Chapter One: What Contemplation Is Not 

There is much popular misinformation in people's minds about what contemplation is. Saying what it is not may help to put a perspective on what it is. The first thing contemplation is not is a relaxation exercise. It may bring relaxation, but that is strictly a side effect. It is primarily relationship, hence, intentionality. It is not a technique, it is prayer. When we say "Let us pray," we mean, " Let us enter into a relationship with God," or, "Let us deepen the relationship we have," or, "Let us exercise our relationship with God." Centering prayer is a method of moving our developing relationship with God to the level of pure faith. Pure faith is faith that is moving beyond the mental egoic level of discursive meditation and particular acts to the intuitive level of contemplation.

I'm hoping to re-read several more books now that the garden "has been put to bed for the winter." Without gardening, my exercise has to be intentional, which is hard for me and "going walking" without the Beagles is even harder.     

Christian Mystics edited by Paul de Jaegher & The Way of the English Mystics by Gordon L. Miller

From the introduction of the Mystics of the Middle Ages, An Anthology of Writings  by Paul de Jaegher:

Speaking to the first place of understanding, is it not a law of love always to want to know the beloved object better? We cherish and are interested in everything that enhances the quality of the loved one, everything which shows us new aspects of him, everything that helps us to penetrate more deeply into his soul. Understanding increases love and love needs ever to grow, so it is always trying to feel the charms of the beloved in a new way. If that is a characteristic of human friendship and love, then it will not be different with the love of God, and the truly Christian soul is always anxious to know more about the object of her love, God, and the country where He shall be possessed and enjoyed, Heaven. She loves God above all ad more than herself, He is her sovereign preoccupation, and it is an ever new happiness to know more of Him. Now God reveals himself to us first analogically, in the beings that we live among. Unhappily but few souls are habituated to looking beyond creatures to the Creator. However, we have other than this analogical knowledge which tell us nothing, for example, of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God Himself has com to our aid and unveiled to our faith the truths of the three Divine Persons, His love for us, and its grand manifestations: the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Eucharist, the sojourn of God in the sanctified soul. He reveals Himself to us in the books of the Old Testament, which speak to us magnificently of God's power, wisdom, justice, loving-kindness, and mercy. The New Testament records the love-able virtues of the Word made flesh: the Gospels must always be the favorite book of a religious soul. Then, to teach us yet more about God and His ways, we have the teachings of the saints. Those who left mystical writings especially tell us high things about God, His attributes, and His dwelling in the soul. The saints can only babble of what they have seen of the Unseeable, understood of the Incomprehensible, learned from the touch of the bodiless Spirit. They touch us deeply, because they are the result of the direct experience of men like ourselves, who tell us, if I may put it so, about the "reaction of the human soul" to the near approach of her highest good and last end, God.  

This book Includes the writing of:  St. Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), Henry Suso (1295-1366), Richard Rolle (1300-1349), John Tauler (1304-1361), The Author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich (1342-1415), St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Walter Hilton (d. 1396), St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510), St. Teresa (1515-1582), St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622).


Gordon L. Miller's The Way of the English Mystics An Anthology and Guide for Pilgrims presents seven mystics from England: Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, William Law, and George Herbert.

The Christian mystics represented in this book speak to us from different eras of the religious life of England, and they convey a variety of its aspects. Five of them -- Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the anonymous author of author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe -- are drawn from the medieval period, specifically the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the era that could be considered the golden age of English mysticism. George Herbert and William Law represent a later, more secular age -- the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- though their devotional standards and practices were certainly no less rigorous than those of their predecessors.  All of these writers, with differing emphases and distinctive forms of speech, convey the message that we exist in the embrace of a mystery, a divine mystery touching us at the very center of ourselves, of which we are but dimly aware. They develop the themes of humility, of inner detachment, of love and service to others and of meditative prayer as aspects of the spiritual life, as ways of realizing and responding to the mysterious touch. These writers also emphasize, in one way or another, that the spiritual life is a process, a pilgrimage. To engage in this inner pilgrimage requires no outer excursions at all. But all such pilgrims, it seems, seek to participate in something larger than themselves -- in the common spirit of fellow pilgrims, or in the universal Spirit that is their deepest stimulus and ultimate goal. The spirit of pilgrimage has always been close to the heart of mysticism. The essence of pilgrimage, whether inner or outer, is not, strictly speaking, the seeking of a certain kind of spiritual experience; it is, rather, the pursuit and practice of living from a deeper dimension. In cultivating a sense of the sacred, the essential and perennial human task is the preparation of a fertile inner field of stillness and spaciousness, so that the holy can take hold and bear fruit.                                                                                             ..... from the introduction