4th Advent: toward sole desire
This blog started in part as one of many people’s ‘pandemic projects.’ I hope that it has been a source of enjoyment and even some learning for you who have been reading. There will be more mystics, planes and dogs, with pictures in 2021, and the wonderful guest posts will be regular and expanded.
I am very grateful for your readership, responses, contributions and prayers. And this week I humbly ask two things:
1) Please sign up below for the newsletter & mailing list. I will not bombard you with email or paper mail. I will tell you quarterly about upcoming work, offerings, and directions for ministry, and about ways you might participate. These include classes, blog posts or other publications, local groups, and new workshop space, when in-the-flesh hospitality becomes safer, pandemic-wise.
2) If you have found this work meaningful, and you are in a position to do so, please consider making a financial contribution below to the Boat and Table Workshop. Your sign of confidence equips me to invest effort in the blog & workshop, and in other people, as we develop this ministry of practical learning and spiritual accompaniment.
Thank you. And now a picture (from December’s ‘Spiritual Tools for Artists.’)
By Unknown author - http://www.tchevalier.com/unicorn/tapestries/desir.html#, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2723771
The Lady and the Unicorn/ ‘to my sole desire’
Let yourself have a moment to gaze.
What do you especially notice?
What do you wonder about?
Where does this image invite you?
In the zoom program, there was little notice of the unicorn, but you who raise and teach children might see how they respond before it. Conversation was deepest when most playfully discussing dogs, and most playful when letting the theological imagination run off leash. A little like the chase that so fascinated medieval minds- light-footed, energetic, and rather serious business. A diversion, a (pre)occupation, and a symbol of the One who pursues us. The little dog who rules at the entrance to the tent of the wise, well-adorned princess.
In attempts to reflect our real, prayerful conversation, consider that,
You are invited into dimensions of Self that you have not yet known,
through work, purer intention, letting go and taking hold…
That Wisdom has built her house in the world and in you,
and poured out her treasure there…
the time, skill and labor of many hands poured into this fabric wall covering…
That we beautify the world
with a faith that gives us “little practical sanities for each day”…
That it’s nice to have dogs great and small around…
