Part of me wants to apologize for not posting last week - another part of me wonders if anyone noticed - and yet another part acknowledges that when we follow the movements of the Holy Spirit, with prayer and discernment, God is ALWAYS at work!
I will likely only post every other week as we move into summer… As much as I receive so much from engaging with and creating the content I share, it takes time; and I’m already panicking a little about where, once the kids are home 24-7, I’m going to fit in the extra part-time jobs I’ve taken on since January. (Thankfully both those bosses are also working moms - flexibility for family is very much supported!)
All that said - I will share a couple resources that have been very spiritually fruitful. All are readily available in your home collection, online or second hand if you’re looking for something concrete for the summer season to continue cultivating your sacramental imagination to discover and connect with God at every moment.
St. Francis de Sales’ “Introduction to the Devout Life”
Evelyn Underhill’s “Essential Writings,” or any other thing she wrote!
The Psalms
Francis de Sales’ work is full of metaphors and poetic imagery to understand spiritual realities and the virtues. (Note that Philotea is the “soul” he is writing to who has requested spiritual guidance.
“Real living devotion, Philotea, presupposes the love of God; is in fact that very love, though it has many aspects. In so far as this love adorns the soul and makes us pleasing to God it is called grace; in so far as it empowers us to do good it is called charity; when it is so perfect that it moves us, not merely to do good, but to do good carefully, frequently and readily then it is called devotion.
Ostriches never fly, hens fly sometimes but clumsily and not very high, but eagles, doves and swallows soar upwards swiftly and frequently… Those who are devout soar on high to God frequently and readily.” (p. 10)
Evelyn Underhill defines mysticism (of which she wrote extensively) as “the art of union with Reality.” Devotion seems a surefooted path to that destination - which is one I long for during multiple moments of discontent daily. (I don’t mean discontent as in frustrations or irritations, but that sense of longing for “home,” knowing our true home isn’t here on this earth but deeply desiring to sip from its stream now and then for refreshment amidst the chaos that constantly threatens to cloud our vision and plug our ears to what is true, good and beautiful.)
When she attempts to define the “spiritual life,” Underhill highlights that we often think of it as something self-serving, self-bettering, but…
“Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature with its small ideas and adventures in the center foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity…
[We will] make a determined effort to see our situation within that great spiritual landscape which is so much too great for our limited minds to grasp, and yet is our true inheritance…
So many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the program carefully, believe every statement made in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.
Yet there are plenty of things in our normal experience, which imply the existence of that world, that music, that life…
Life in its fullness, the life which shall develop and use all our capacities and fulfill all our possibilities, must involve correspondence not only with our visible and ever-changing, but also with our invisible and unchanging environment: the Spirit of all spirits, God, in whom we live and move and have our being.” (p. 29-30)
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The God of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed: While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need? He leads me to the tender grasse, Where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently passe: In both I have the best. Or if I stray, he doth convert And bring my minde in frame: And all this not for my desert, But for his holy name. Yea, in death's shadie black abode Well may I walk, not fear: For thou art with me; and thy rod To guide, thy staff to bear. Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine, Ev’n in my enemies sight: My head with oyl, my cup with wine Runnes over day and night. Surely thy sweet and wondrous love Shall measure all my dayes; And as it never shall remove, So neither shall my praise.
If I could make one request - that you pray for me next week in particular. I will be preparing for a day retreat I was asked to lead on Saturday, May 16. The title I chose is “Adventures in Inner Space” and draws on both St. Francis de Sales’ thoughts on devotion, Evelyn Underhill’s on the spiritual life and how we can find union with God in the ordinary, as well as on the poetry and writings of my beloved Sr. Madeleva, CSC.
I am both nervous and excited - because this is the kind of content and mode of offering where I feel God truly needing and leading me! (But the financial necessities of life - and what makes sense for our family’s balance - keep me juggling writing jobs that help pay the bills…)
Enjoy the May-days!
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