Good day brothers and sisters.
I am glad to
be able to say its coming up to Christmas once
again and its the greatest Christian festival to celebrate.
Being fully alive in Christ requires a certain foolhardiness in a world that says it’s all about you, that you can have it all, be it all, with no pain, no inconvenience, no discomfort. We have to reject all that is passing and seek that which is eternal that neither moth will eat nor rust destroy.
Aha, now my art is granted only a passing phase, but its okay to enjoy that which is in the moment,
as long as we do not try to hold on to it with misguided worth.
To be fully alive is to be constructive, never destructive–always on the side of whatever is life-giving, on the side of that which uplifts us and empowers us to lift up others.
To be truly alive is to abide in the love of Christ and have the love of Christ abiding in us.
John wrote in 1 John 3: 11-24 that he who does not love abides in death.
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“For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we
should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil
one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own
deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished,
brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have
passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not
love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers,
and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We
know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to
lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone
who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister* in need and yet
refuses help?
“Little children*, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
“And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”
. Which brings us back full circle to what Merton says, that “if we accept this infant as our God, we accept our own obligations to grow with him.”...
For those of you my brothers and sisters who got this far, having let those who gave up earlier through lack of pictures of my art, then please stick with this, as it is coming up.
I just wanted to say that I am sharing on my blogs that which is essential to being who I am. Which is of course to deny my ego, which separates me from God. Part of me; and yes a big creative part, is an artist and so here now I will share photos of my art which you are the first people after me to see...
Yes these were taken whilst the painting is still wet and it is moving about a little bit as I move it.
This above is the painting from which all the shots below emerge.
It is as I type still wet and was painted/formed using acrylic
and liquid acrylic. Plus of course various tools, but not
on this occasion any paint brushes! Pls enjoy
the different views I did choose to
share with you my beloved.
Whenever we go back to the fundamental mystical experience, to the soul’s first-hand testimony, we come upon a conviction that the human spirit transcends itself and is envisioned by a spiritual world with which it holds commerce and vital relationship.
~ Rufus Jones, The Inner Life (1916)
The only way to seek God is to seek God first. Deny the nayward, affirm the yeaward, be true to those stirrings and motions which He starts in us, refuse priority to all else, and be faithful to the sacred.
~ Jean Toomer, 1894-1967
“May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions. ”
― John Woolman, The Works of John Woolman
I share the following as maybe it would be good for a revival of Gregorian chant by the newest pope!
“I was only beginning to enter into the infinite subtlety of Gregorian chant. It was - and remains - the only public prayer I have ever been able to engage in without feeling like a phony and a jackass. But then, one day in 1965 or so, it was simply abolished. With a stroke of his pen, Pope John XXIII - who had such good ideas about other things - declared that liturgy would henceforth be in the vernacular language of the people. That was, effectively, the end of Latin chant.
Then all those monks and nuns who had devoted hours and hours a day began to sicken and fall into depressions, but nobody noticed for a long time. Maybe, as I can well believe, the music toned up their systems in some mysterious way. Or perhaps chant really was a language that God understood. Faced with numerous liturgical scholas shrieking away in the new vernacular hymns, Divinity may have covered its ears and withdrawn, leaving the monks to pine. We parish musicians, illiterate in anything written after the 13th century, stumbled around trying to score liturgies for guitar and bongo drums, trying to make sense of texts like "Eat his body! Drink his blood!"
It wasn't because the music got so bad that I quit going to Mass, but it certainly was the beginning of my doubts about papal infallibility.”
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
I am not today feeling blue, but am restful after a long walk with Maisy the puppy.
FIN Brother Peter
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