A series of Haiku inspired by Chopin’s Nocturne No. 19
Soft clouds in moonlight
Precision grace strikes my heart
A twill spins twilight
Iv’ry sounds belt sky
A soul lifted up Divine
clouds cover moonlight
Truth known by beauty
Expressed; heard; attained—now gone.
Drowned by modern noise
Two finches are here
Golden and Red, now Sparrow.
Eat and Share a meal
Recently, I’ve read two books that have spoken to me on a very spiritual level. The first being In Praise of the Useless Life by Br. Paul Quenon. In that particular book, although I had some issues with theological concerns, Br. Paul spoke about how our society no longer has the capacity for memorization. Our souls no longer have music within them. Of course, naturally, this is because as the second book I’ve read by Cardinal Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence, we’ve let noise drown them out. How can we hope to pray and hear the voice of God in this fast-paced, noisy atmosphere?
Br. Paul speaks about reading, learning, and writing poetry to stir the music of the soul. He says:
“Prayer, mute as the ground, is a seedbed for poetry. Prayer, while at rest out on the ground, catches plenty of seeds. The kind nursery of nature is congenial to prayer and nurtures poetry. They form a symbiosis, like bees and trees, which thrive on one another despite all their differences. It is quite cogent how psalms in choir, how prophecy and gospel, how all great poetry, nurtures prayer; equally cogent are prayer and poetry. They can do without one another, and often do, but not as well. Like kissing cousins, you have to keep them apart sometimes or they will get to scrapping, get in each other’s way, get to too much kissing. (Quenon, Paul. In Praise of the Useless Life (p. 79).
Br. Paul gives Haiku as an easy example to start writing poetry: a form not concerned with a meter or rhyming, but merely syllables. Of course, as I remember from taking a college class on poetry, depending on what part of the country you are from determines how many syllables are in a word! So, I’ve written a few here and there since reading the book and it has certainly helped me to contemplate the mystery of God.
In this particular Haiku, I write about finches eating together in community. In this community, there can be found golden finches, house finches, and somehow a sparrow—who is no finch at all! As I contemplated this particular scene, I found the voice of God in the silence. The story of the covenant of Israel and that of the New Covenant of Christ. Christians, especially, the Gentiles, are the sparrow who God have given the great grace to dine at the great feast in community of His covenant.
Take a moment to reflect on the image of finches with the sparrow described in this haiku. And reflect with it what St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians 1:3-6:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens] 4 as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love 5 he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, 6 for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.
When humanity recognizes the beautiful, they see a glimpse of God. Beauty is complex; it is a participation in the Divine, as truth and love also participate. These glimpses are all around us; we merely have to disconnect for a mere second from the chains of the noise of our techno-modern society and in the silence feel the cool spring breeze, see the vibrant red of a cardinal and listen to his dawn chorus.
What most experience as the beautiful is rather their limited understanding of it. We come to experience the beautiful as it is measured in physical being, but beauty is a concept that is understood—abstracted from the sensible or perhaps revealed. Does beauty have its own form or does our understanding simply reveal that of the source of all that is beautiful?
What is it about the precision of a dance, the awe from the movement of a marching soldier, the order to the liturgy, and the rising and setting of the sun that man can abstract the beautiful?
Beauty as a concept is debated among philosophers; whether it is a form, a transcendental, or a participation. Perhaps, the most appealing aspect of beauty is its mystery. Does it then become a tautology, if beauty is a mystery and mystery is beautiful? Beauty is what stirs the soul to take the leap into the mystery of faith; whether it be faith in God or that of the love of a paramour. And yet, it is the relationship of beauty with measuring values that lend its connection to Truth
via dwightlockenecker.com
Meditation and Contemplative prayer allows us to silence a great many distractions in our lives. In meditation, such as Lectio Divina, we can read the text and ask the Lord, “What am I to learn?” In this form, our minds are allowed to explore and be illuminated rather than be reactive as modernity has trained our minds. Finally, Contemplative prayer as CCC 2715 explains, “is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. “I look at him and he looks at me.” The gift given allows us to order our will with the renunciation of our individualistic desires.
One technique that is described in Fr. Michael Casey’s book Toward God is Lectio Divina, which he describes as holy reading. (p. 67) The reading of scripture is not the same as reading the books of the Bible in a narrative form but rather with reverence and meditation. Fr. Casey explains that “one needs to be convinced that the text of the Bible being used is substantially accurate. If one is reading for a more theological standpoint, a Bible that is translated into a more literal translation may be preferred over a dynamic translation which is better suited for narrative uses of scripture.
Fr. Casey illustrates further that when practicing the technique of holy reading, one must process through the text at a much slower pace and with a vocalized prayer to focus more intently on each word. (p.71) The process may take as long as a year to read a single book of scripture. However, as the Catechism reflects in paragraph 2708: “Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in Lectio Divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.”The process becomes naturally efficacious because it allows the text to continually speak to us within the parameters of our own lives and develop a greater appreciation for the nurturing word of God.
pilgrimsofchrist.com 