Divine Nature

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Blessedness

Happy--nay, most blessed!--are they who are able to do in adulthood what they enjoyed in childhood.

The Osprey

Watchful, watchful, the osprey
On the islet in the river
Comely, goodly, the maiden,
A fit mate for our lord
--Shi jing

"The Osprey"

by Mary Oliver

This morning

an osprey

with its narrow

black-and-white face

and its cupidinous eyes

leaned down

from a leafy tree

to look into the lake - it looked

a long time, then its powerful

shoulders punched out a little

and it fell,

it rippled down

into the water -then it rose, carrying,

in the clips of its feet,

a slim and limber

silver fish, a scrim

of red rubies

on its flashing sides.

All of this

was wonderful

to look at,

so I simply stood there,

in the blue morning,

looking.

Then I walked away.

Beauty is my work,

but not my only work -

later,

when the fish was gone forever

and the bird was miles away,

I came back

and stood on the shore, thinking -

and if you think

thinking is a mild exercise,

beware!

I mean, I was swimming for my life -

and I was thundering this way and that way

in my shirt of feathers -

and I could not resolve anything long enough

to become one thing

except this: the imaginer.

It was inescapable

as over and over it flung me,

without pause or mercy it flung me

to both sides of the beautiful water -

to both sides

of the knife.

--from West Wind (Mariner Books, 1997)

Monday, January 4, 2010

What Is Goodness?

Here is a quote from the film Chocolat that I wanted to share, along with photos of some lovely enticements.

At the end of the film Père Henri delivers the following short comments as his sermon during the Easter Sunday mass, after a Lenten season that turned his village upside down:

I'm not sure what the theme of my homily today ought to be. Do I want to speak of the miracle of Our Lord's divine transformation? Not really, no. I don't want to talk about His divinity. I'd rather talk about His humanity. I mean, you know, how He lived His life, here on Earth. His kindness, His tolerance. Listen, here's what I think. I think that we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do. By what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.