Tag: #SensingMeaningfulness

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creation Creative Worship Thought of the Day

Dust to Dust or Light to Light?

What is your relationship with your environment? Or perhaps a better place to start is to reflect on how you perceive your relationship with all that is around and within you.

Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed by the absence of the things we hope for. It can seem like a struggle to animate lifeless dust, and hold everything together. Perhaps there is a fear that if we stop, then everything will just crumble and fall apart.

There is good news. While all these feelings are real, and deserve acknowledging, we are also children of light. God the creator creates and sustains all things in being. We are children of light, and the way has been opened so we can become the fulfillment of the potential that is in the fabric of the cosmos.

If you are stressed, let the knowledge of the love of God (for you) fill your heart and mind. Breathe. Let it be the light in which you see your self, reflected in your relationships, and with which you illuminate the room.

See more of the installation by Rob Mulholland here…

2009 Vestige

Categories
Lent Thought of the Day

Pangur Bán

From the resident Quartz weaving specialist – Alison Fair Bixler

Continuing my ongoing pondering of the BBC radio 4 Daily Service, (about the gifts of talents) I reread the 9th century  poem a monk wrote about his cat Pangur Bán in the margins of the page in the book he was working on. In it the monk compares his work as the calligrapher of a sacred books with the work of his white cat (Pangur Bán) hunting a mouse.

We all have different talents. Rather than worrying if we have a 5 bar of gold talent, or just a 1 bar of gold one – we should use what we have!

The original poem

The Scholar and his Cat

1. I and White Pangur, each of us in his special craft. His mind is set on hunting; my mind is on my special subject.

2. I love resting (better than any fame) at my book, with diligent understanding; White Pangur is not envious of me; he loves his childish craft.

3. When we are (tale without tiredness), in our house, being alone, we have an endless sport, a thing to which we may apply our skill.

4. It is usual, at times, by feats of valor, that a mouse sticks in his net. As for me, there falls into my net, a difficult rule with hard meaning.

5. He points fiercely against an enclosing wall his eye, bright, perfect. I myself direct against the keenness of knowledge my sharp eye, though it be quite weak.

6. He is happy with swiftness of movement upon a mouse sticking in his sharp paws. Which I understand a difficult pleasant problem, as for me, I am happy, too.

7. Though we may be indeed (like this) at any time, neither disturbs his partner; good to each of us is his art, each rejoices in them.

8. He himself is master of it, the work which he does every day. To bring clarity to difficulty, I am at my own work.

Anon translation – found by Alison can be read at Georgetown.edu