Tuesday Teatime: Patience

God knows that there are so many areas in which I need to improve, and patience is certainly one of them. Sometimes, when I feel I'm especially lacking in a particular virtue, I pray about and focus on that virtue for a few weeks, and that is what I'm doing right now with patience. Is there a particular virtue you're working on or would like to strengthen in yourself? I'm curious to know! :)

"Days pass when I forget the mystery"

Salisbury Cathedral

Good morning, all. I do intend to start posting about all the books I mentioned in yesterday's video. But first, I want to share this poem with you that has been on my mind the last couple of days. 

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then

once more the quiet mystery 
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, 
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord, 
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

~Denise Levertov: 'Primary Wonder'

Isn't it wonderful when we can clear our minds of all the little problems we use to distract ourselves from the awesome power that is God? A clear mind, fresh awe. Lord, help me to quiet my mind and fill my thoughts with Your quiet mystery once more.

Levertov, Denise. The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1975.

Tuesday Teatime: Ten Books

PLEASE don't feel pressured to watch this whole video. Asking someone who makes her living talking about books to talk about ten books is a recipe for a veeeeeeeery long video. 

But as always, I'd be honored if you watch any of it, and I'd be even happier if you join in the conversation!! (You have so many options: comment on Clare's blog, comment on my blog, make your own video...you know you want to do the last one......)

Question: What ten books represent you best?

Many of these really require more explanation than I could give them in this video - especially the ones that have to do with my faith or with Catholicism as a religion. I think, therefore, that I'd like to write a separate post on each over the next couple of weeks. So if you hear me say something that strikes you as odd such as 'The Taming of the Shrew taught me about marriage' or 'I choose the Catholic life of joy, not of rules' (to which I imagine you'd respond 'Shouldn't it be about both, Libby?') just hold on a couple of days and let me explain myself.

Happy Tuesday, everyone :)

Note: I just re-watched this video and realized I imply that only Christians believe in God, which I certainly didn't mean to imply. I know that people of other faith backgrounds believe in God as well. I should have said that I needed to find someone who believes in Christ as God.

"How can I focus my flickering?"

Regent's Park, London

Sometimes, I lose my way. (I bet that sometimes you do too. But I'm not going to make assumptions. So I'll refrain from writing 'we' here.) Sometimes, I lose my way. Sometimes, it just seems easier to fall out of a prayer routine, to forget to live my faith. Sometimes, I let myself get swept up in my busy life and forget to make time for God.

But always, always, always, God is there, and He is good. And He always welcomes His lost sheep back with open arms, for which I am so grateful.

It has been a hectic month over here, as I've said in video after video. But I'm realizing that there is a danger in being so busy, even if it is busy with friends and family: it becomes far too easy, at least for me, to use that craziness as an excuse to hide behind when I'm feeling spiritually lazy. Yet God called me back, and how beautiful was His call.

Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive

to action and inaction.

~ Denise Levertov: excerpt from 'The Tide'

Lord, not you,

it is I who am absent.

At first, belief was a joy I kept in secret,

stealing alone

into sacred places:

a quick glance, and away - and back,

circling.

I have long since uttered your name

but now

I elude your presence.

I stop

to think about you, and my mind

at once

like a minnow darts away,

darts

into the shadows, into gleams that fret

unceasing over

the river's purling and passing.

Not for one second

will my self hold still, but wanders 

anywhere,

everywhere it can turn. Not you,

it is I am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,

the pulsing shadow,

you the unchanging presence, in whom all

moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering, perceive 

at the fountain's heart

the sapphire I know is there?

~Denise Levertov: 'Flickering Mind'

Levertov, Denise. The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1975.

Tuesday Teatime: Current Reads

Question: What are you currently reading?

Tuesday Teatime: The Eucharist

What do you do to prepare to receive the Eucharist?

Tuesday Teatime: Keeping Sunday Holy

Hi everyone! A day late, but I had some technical difficulties. For whatever reason, I can't get it embedded onto this page, so I'm giving you a link to it on Youtube (where it's unlisted) instead. Question: What do you do to keep Sunday holy?

Tuesday Teatime: Keeping Sunday Holy

Friendship

"There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."

~St. Thomas Aquinas