Speed-reading “just this one.” |
Jake, the Collie, finds a spot to rest his weary head. |
Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
Speed-reading “just this one.” |
Jake, the Collie, finds a spot to rest his weary head. |
Mixed Flock of birds flying in a V Formation- Put together- ©Creative Commons
I love writing and blogging: watching something shapely, and sometimes beautiful, emerge from a jumble of thoughts.
But there are many times when I just don’t feel like writing. My brain and spirit and fingers feel wooden. It is what Steven Pressfield calls “The Resistance.”
What helps then? Reading, reading a lot, ideally something like what I want to write, until the rhythm of words beats in my bloodstream, and ideas explode in my brain, and I yearn to get them out on the page.
* * *
And what when it comes to prayer, and I feel numb, a lifeless thing without joy, or love, or thought?
But I have made a commitment to pray, so pray I will.
I used to read scripture and read it until my heart said “Amen.”
I now practice eucharisteo–giving thanks for all the beautiful and lovely things in the world, and in my life.
I give thanks, and give thanks while the plane of my emotions slowly slides down the runway, and inches into the blue, sunny skies of praise and joy.
Michaelangelo, Pieta |
I saw an absolutely flawless piece of art today, Michaelangelo’s Pieta (Italian for Pity) now behind plexiglass at St Peter’s.
His contemporary, Vasari, wrote of it, “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”
The rest of St. Peter’s was overwhelming–lots of eye-candy, beautiful marble everywhere, lots of ornate little side chapels, all too much in keeping with the central shrine of Catholicism, and the second largest church in the world (in area).
I enjoyed my exhausting wander through it, of course, but it didn’t have the same sense of awe and holiness for me, as Gothic cathedrals do.
Believe it or not, this is a mosaic. What a labour of love!! |
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