Category Gratitude
Release of the Peace Lily
Today, planting a peace lily turned into an unexpected ritual of forgiveness and blessing. Several years ago, my husband took a small peace lily to work, planted in a professional-looking gray plastic pot. He enjoyed and nurtured the plant to the point of flourishing and then, over time, collapse. It was severely root bound, many leaves […]
Belated Earth Day Love Letter
This is your day, sweet Earth, dear planet swimming gently and powerfully through the sky. My dear ancestor, my cradle, my mother, my home. Today, truly, all I want is to look into your eyes and understand — you, myself, the cosmos. All I want is to stand in the wonder, arms outstretched, open to […]
As a bird in the redwoods
As the day closes, turns dim in the forest, my soul wells up into a chitter of praise. I offer a song of the magnificence of life, of this day, of this blessed moment — this elongated blink between day and night. Let me hold on, hold out for the great sun that brightened and […]
Water
It came to me this morning casually pouring a glass of water: here is depth, here in my hand, liquid stardust, billions of years old, the elixir of life on earth and I can drink it. Millions of molecules have traveled billions of places and come to me, come through me, from that deep, dark past bearing […]
King’s Canyon
She said to go depth, find my place in the deep of things, travel down, down to the canyon bottom, feel those granite walls, majestic, decorated in scraps of life, and the smaller sky, swimming among the clouds, covering me in my hidden abode. There in that secret place, find the windy arms to hold […]
Forgiveness
I never seem to be able to choose to forgive someone. I will think I’ve done it, and then the resentment comes back in short order. As I was cleaning up the kitchen this morning I was reflecting on forgiveness. For about 18 months in 2010-11, it was a big theme for me and during […]
The Examen
As part of a Sacred Journey class I am taking at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, I am doing a daily Examen practice modeled after the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. There are many versions floating around. Here is the one I use from my class: 1. Presence – Begin by recognizing the […]
Nice vs. Kind
When I checked my Facebook account today, two postings appeared directly next to each other. The first: “God doesn’t want us to spread words that hurt, He wants us to spread nice words.” from Veggie Tales (children’s videos at https://www.facebook.com/veggietales). And directly below this, a post from Byron Katie said, “Hurt feelings or discomfort of […]
The Broken Bits
“Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” – Jesus, after feeding the multitude This little morsel was part of the reading at Mass a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. As a post-Evangelical, ex-fundamentalist, semi-Agnostic, mystic, Buddhist Catholic universalist (or something along those lines), I […]
Getting Started
It seems appropriate to start my blog explaining the title: Luminous Immensity. It describes my artistic appraisal of both the physical/cosmic universe as well as the universe infinitely present within all of us. When I feel my place in this radiant and grand cosmos, I am happy, grounded, and life is satisfying to me. When […]
luminous immensity 