slow & still @slowandstill-blog - Tumblr Blog

#Manitoulin #the art of slow living #get outside #explore ontario #water

Early Summer 2023:

Studying petals and leaves, feeling water and earth, delighting in the sight of wings and amphibian toes, following light and shadow.

#flowers #the art of slow living #get outside #natural theology

Our tiny garden’s bounty

Heirlooms, etc.

Saturday morning

Dusk

Manitoulin in November

Golden light.

O Thou who by Thy touch give form / To all things and their polity, / Whose sight is light to all, draw thanks / From us as we draw breath from Thee.

—Wendell Berry

Shifting Seasons

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

— Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

My husband is a bit of a birder, so this summer we have spent a lot of time outside, searching for unique birds, with binoculars in his hands and my camera in mine. Herons are some of his favourite types of birds, so coming across this little night heron in the gloomy light of dusk was something special for both of us. 🌖✨

Only in the realm of Praising should Lament walk, the naiad of the wept-for fountain, watching over the stream of our complaint, to keep it clear upon the very stone

that bears the arch of triumph and the alter.-- Look: around her shoulders dawns the bright sense that she may be the youngest sister among the deities hidden in our heart.

Joy knows, and Longing has accepted-- only Lament still learns; upon her beads, night after night, she counts the ancient curse.

Yet awkward as she is, she suddenly lifts a constellation of our voice glittering, into the pure nocturnal sky. -- VIII (Erster Teil), from “The Sonnets to Orpheus” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell

#Rainer Maria Rilke #Rilke #The Sonnets to Orpheus #contemplation #reflections #canon #canon eos #canon photos #canon photography #simple and still #simple and sacred #black and white #shadow and light

Simplicity, wonder, childlike joy, earthiness, grace, and God: what I feel, and what I experience, when I spend time in the presence of little creatures. 🐾

It’s almost unbearably humid outside, our garden is dry from a lack of rain, and we don’t live in a house with air conditioning, but I’m trying not to wish this season away.

I treasure sweet Summer moments like this one, where we stand at the lake down the path from the cottage, watching the sun set while listening to the birds greeting the coming night and slowly singing themselves to sleep. I remember just a few months ago when this great body of water was frozen, and I was longing to hear it gently sway and feel its warmth cover my toes. Now, here I am, experiencing that very thing in this very moment. My darling husband stands in front of me, silently looking at the horizon and we both take in deep, slow breaths, letting the earth envelope us and welcome us into her wild, quiet peace.

These warm Sabbath moments seem longer and fuller and richer, somehow. I remember what it was like near the end of Spring when we were both worn out from the busy, difficult, grief-filled days that stretched across the year. It’s been the hardest year we’ve faced together, in many ways, and yet this Summer I have had moments like this where I’ve realized how much better, and deeper, and how strong our love is coming out of it: led out of darkness by a Holy Light.

I exhale slowly, with thankfulness escaping my lips as breath.

Stumbling into paradise. 🌿

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.” — Richard Rohr

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

slow & still