Week of Oct. 8, 2017
The Scripture ~ “Remember [God] how you brought a young vine out of Egypt, cleared out the brambles and the briers and planted your very own vineyard? You prepared the good earth, you planted her roots deep, the vineyard filled the land.” Psalm 80:8-9 The Message
The Spiritual Focus ~ “When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.” John O’Donohue
The Devotion ~
Fall is a season that draws our attention to the beauty and changing landscapes all around us. From wine country to the North Shore of Lake Superior, or just outside our door, we witness the creative nature of the Master landscaper. An outward observance draws our attention inward, to imagine that the beauty we see around us might also reside within us.
John O’Donohue defines spirituality as the art of homecoming. In his book Beauty he speaks of beauty as a calling or longing for creating or recreating an inner landscape. Inner landscaping is to create space within, to start clearing the briers and the brambles of the soul. We begin by moving inward with an intention to begin to claim or reclaim our true identity. We visit our soul, a place to come home to our true identity, the place where we have never been wounded. It is there that we begin the work of spiritual landscaping. We find our true identity, we become alive and as John O’Donohue says we begin to imagine ourselves as the ex-babies that we are; pure, open, beautiful, alive. St. Irenaus is quoted as saying; “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”
Beginning the work of inner landscaping can take different forms; music, art, drama and dance. The Christian mystics over the ages found prayer and meditation to be a way to visit the inner sanctuary, to begin to tend to the inner narrative and discover our true identity…to landscape….in this way yoga is a vehicle. Yoga asana is a primary vehicle to settle the body toward meditation and prayer, helping us to arrive at our destination, God’s presence. When we reside in our destination, we cease to fear, we realize we are never alone. God has prepared the inner landscape of our soul and has invited us to participate in the creative activity, spiritual landscaping is to come home to being fully alive, To God be the glory!
I AM Alive
