Dear All,
This week we are looking at ‘Beauty’ in our reflections – this came about as a result of coming across a copy of a striking article by Daniel O’Leary ‘Ministry of Beauty’. I have included an excerpt from it. If anyone wants to read the whole article let me know & I will scan it to you. I also found another article written by Chris O’Donnell who had read Daniel’s piece and wrote a reflection on it himself.
I have included something that reminds us that we need to look after the beauty in creation that we enjoy.
We have another Rutter blessing this week: ‘The Clare Blessing‘. May it bring us all great peace.
Love to each one of you, Margaret & Moira.
Information: reminder –
No zoomed Evening Prayer on Friday 3rd July (just community) , Sunday 5th & Friday 10th (just community)
Chris McDonnell
There was an inspiring article in Autumn 2016 edition of the Irish Dominican Journal, ‘Spirituality’, written by the late Daniel O’Leary, entitled ‘Ministry of Beauty’. In it he reflected on the beauty of God that we experience in ourselves, in others and in the world in which we live.
It set me thinking of places and situations where I might have experienced the beauty he talks of, where, through circumstance, something remained that has not been lost.
Many years ago, when on holiday with my family in Northumbria, I remember walking the beach from the small harbour town of Seahouses as far as Bamburgh Castle on the north-east coast. It was low tide, and the expanse of sand was vast. In a couple of hours, I passed only one person, then at some distance, too far apart to even be able to exchange greeting. But the pleasure and peace of that walk remains, a truly beautiful place.
In contrast to that open beach, the banks of the River Dee on the Wirral were a place for an evening walk, when as darkness fell, I would occasionally light a small fire from driftwood gathered in a rough circle of stones and sit watching the flickering orange flames dancing in the night.
Nearly twenty years ago, my daughter Sarah lived for a while in Canada, in the city of Toronto. During our stay with her I visited a city centre church and there, high in the wall was a small alcove, home for a candle-lit icon. It was so restful and simple a place where attention was held, and reflection accommodated.
Three small examples of the beauty of place where something memorable happened, where something was shared and a still point in a turning world found
Love Every Leaf
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
In times like these, our prayer may need to be expressive and embodied, visceral and vocal. How else can we pray with our immense anger and grief? How else can we pray about ecocide, about the death that humanity is unleashing upon Mother Earth and upon ourselves? How else can we break through our inertia and despair, so that we don’t shut down and go numb? . . . .
I’ve taken to praying outdoors. I go outside, feel the good earth beneath my feet and the wind on my face, and I sing to the trees—to oak and beech, hemlock and pines. Making up the words and music as I go along, I sing my grief to the trees that are going down, and my grief for so much more—for what we have lost and are losing, and for what we are likely to lose. I sing my outrage about these beautiful old trees being cut to the roots, their bodies chipped to bits and hauled away to sell. I sing my fury about the predicament we’re in as a species. I sing my protest of the political and corporate powers-that-be that drive forward relentlessly with business as usual, razing forests, drilling for more oil and fracked gas, digging for more coal, expanding pipeline construction, and opening up public lands and waters to endless exploitation, as if Earth were their private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale. I sing out my shame to the trees, my repentance and apology for the part I have played in Earth’s destruction and for the part my ancestors played when they stole land and chopped down the original forests of the Native peoples who lived here. I sing my praise for the beauty of trees and my resolve not to let a day go by that I don’t celebrate the precious living world of which we are so blessedly a part. I’m not finished until I sing my determination to renew action for trees and for all of God’s Creation. . . .
So our prayer may be noisy and expressive, or it may be very quiet. It may be the kind of prayer that depends on listening in stillness and silence with complete attention: listening to the crickets as they pulse at night, listening to the rain as it falls, listening to our breath as we breathe God in and breathe God out, listening to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our heart. A discipline of contemplative prayer or meditation can set us free from the frantic churn of thoughts and feelings and enable our spirit to rest and roam in a vaster, wilder space.
Ministry of Beauty – Daniel O’Leary
‘It is only beauty that will save the world’, wrote the French philosopher, Simone Weil, who never doubted the power of beauty to draw us into transcendent mystery and to transfigure lives. During the last few decades a strong case has been made for a theology of beauty to be explored and for reclaiming the vital role of beauty in the liturgy. However, the first picture of beauty I should like to paint is the beauty that lies with in the human heart. Irenaeus said that the glory of God is the human being fully alive. John Keats wrote, ‘I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination’. Where, in our Western liturgy today, do we see imagination at work awakening each person to the beauty that lies within?’ Where, in our preaching and teaching, are we encouraged to see beauty within ourselves and to enable others to discover their own unique beauty too?………………………………..
Beauty has an immense power to call us back from woundedness, tiredness and sin to health, enthusiasm and gratitude. All beauty – be it beauty in nature, the masterpiece of an artist, the stunning grace of the human body at the peak of its bloom, or the more abstract, though no less real, radiance of virtue and truth – is equipped to do this.
Beauty, then, should be honoured. Like love, it softens the heart and invites one out of itself. Moreover, perhaps even more so than love, it is what reminds us of, as Merton once said, that we are ‘all walking round shining like the sun’.