Peacock Feather: The Color of Summer

_{The peacock feather appeals so to me because it sports many of my favorite colors, and they are the colors of Summer.  A carefree, dazzling beauty, that no one could have made up but God himself.}

_{This is an interesting combination of hand drawn and digital art.}   

Transparency

It is nice to see situations where people own their words and take responsibility for the seeds they sow.  I was very impressed this week with a post on this topic by my virtual priest, Fr. Jake, of Father Jake Stops the World blog.  Taking a prompt from Episcopal Cafe's policy of asking folks to post in their real names, Fr. Jake decided to reveal his identity and provide some background information on himself.  See his article on Transparency on his blog.  It is nice to know more about one of my favorite priests.  

True Knowledge

"True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved by reality, how it is Christ himself who is present and in an ineffable way disposes and forms the souls of men."  ~Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Sonnet Tucked Away

I don't like poetry as a general rule.   I do, however, love the following by Edna St. Vincent Millay which I socked away in a drawer on a little piece of crumpled, folded paper:

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink and rise and sink and rise and sink again.

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by need and moaning for release

Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It may well be. I do not think I would.  

Eagle Missing Inaction

I have been missing with inaction lately as it comes to this reflective journal because I have been busy working my way down a path in a storm.  I could not see further than a foot in front of me, and everywhere I stepped was washed out  terrain.   Have you ever thought you were in Atlanta and all of a sudden everyone is speaking a foreign language, nothing looks familiar and you realize you are in Little Havana, Miami, or some such place?  And you know no one in Little Havana and are completely incapable of appropriately expressing your need to get home...excuse me, sir, can you tell me how I got here?  Blank stare and "no comprende."  Your reality suddenly does not exist, and you realize that all of your coping techniques that you thought to be so effective do not work.   All that study, discipline and search for spirituality got you no where.  You are nothing.  If anything, completely stupid.  You are once again lost.  Dark Night of the Soul?  Gee, I didn't intend that, but when do we pencil in "dark night of the soul" on our calendars?  That's the point of a dark night, isn't it?  Sometimes we have things to learn.  We aren't there yet and too tired to go on.  But I know that one step leads to another leads to a brisk walk leads to a run leads to flight. 

One of my favorite Bible verses is Isaiah 40:31.  It says:

 "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagels; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." 

Now I don't know what "waiting upon the Lord" means exactly.  My best guess is waiting on the Spirit to refill, clarify, comfort and direct.  I once read that part of the life cycle of the eagle includes a shedding of feathers, rendering all eagles, at some point, incapable of flight.  During this time other eagles bring food and water to the downed bird until the feathers grow back and the eagle can again fly.  There's no pretense there.  The downed eagle cannot pretend to be all right; he needs help and the instinct of his breed to preserve him. 

Are humans this way?  I think so.  Our breed probably will bring us food and water when we lose our feathers....if they know our feathers are gone.  And I am grateful for friends through whom the Spirit brings me food and water until I can again fly.