praying with my eyes: the wetlands as icons...

Quite by accident, I came upon a lovely little website: Friends of Silence (check it out @ https://friendsofsilence.net) For October this question is asked: could it be our time to let go of expectations, hurts, fears, and distractions that keep us from living fully into the mystery of life? Much like my own inward/outward journey into the wisdom of creation, these on-line friends know that: "In autumn, the golden glow of tawny hues signals the waning of the chlorophyll that has been transforming sunlight into food. Trees let go of their leaves, plants their flowers, and we let go of bird song and water play and butterflies on the wing. Fall is the season of letting go." Patricia Donegan, a poet who worked with Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam Trungp at Naropa University, frames the challenge with clarity in Haiku Mind:

it is not the thing itself...that is the problem; but it is our clinging to the thing even when it causes us, ourselves, and others mental or physical pain, which blinds us to a bigger view and snowballs into more suffering. Ultimately, the challenge of letting go becomes a spiritual act in some way: in many spiritual traditions, surrender is the backbone, as Mohammed says in the Qur'an, "True religion is surrender." And so as we grasp at the beautiful red leaf, we just might let it spin again in the autumn wind, delighting in that tiny leaf-filled and empty moment.

Letting go - relinquishing - surrender or acceptance is at the heart of serenity. It is also an incremental process much like a pilgrimage: it takes time to shed that which is unnecessary or even unhealthy. It takes days - often months - to get to our destination and place of holy prayer. Yet during the quest there are lots of times to ponder not only why we are making the journey in the first place, but what is being shown to us along the way. On pilgrimage getting there is every bit as important as arriving - if we are paying attention. What's more, the return trip is often ripe with new insights that bubble up slowly from below. The Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas - who is also an Anglican priest - wisely wrote:

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

For the past 12+ years I have been praying with my eyes using the iconography of the wetlands behind our home to lead me closer to the Lord. For a few years, I still don't know how many, I didn't realize I was in prayer. Nor did I understand that the land, sky, water, and light were teaching me something about the sacred. I just kept looking. And taking photographs on my IPhone. Eventually my quiet watching and waiting was revealed to me as prayer. Not all at once and never with a blast of insight: it was a truly gradual awakening. As I found words today to describe my awakening, other words from Henri Nouwen in his little book, Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons, called out to me:

We are assaulted by images in a society where consumerism comes at us through posters, billboards, television, movies and store windows. But icons are a different thing completely... By giving the icons long and prayerful attention, talking about them, reading about them, but mostly just gazing at them in silence I have gradually come to know them by heart. I see them now whether they are physically present or not. I have memorized them as I have memorized the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and I pray with them wherever I go.

I have icons all over my study. Maybe this is where I first learned to pray - and want to pray - with my eyes. Music certainly opened my ears and heart to the prayer of songs. And my four pilgrimages to Russia deepened my appreciation for this spiritual practice. So while I am unable to say with clarity when I started to see the wetlands as an organic icon, I know that the land continues to call me into deeper contemplation. Silence. Letting go. Today, as the photo atop this reflections shows, almost all of the green has fallen away in an autumn rain. In the midst of the remaining silvers and grays, however, are hints of red and even violet. They are ghost-like with a casual glance. With time and concentration, the passionate shades of vermilion rise up to visually embrace the whole wetlands much like bookends. When the family gathered for our All Souls feast last weekend, the fields and woods were not so barren. But now they are - they have let go - except for sanguine shades of mystery. 

One of the blessings I now hold dear about this place is that it lets me see, touch, taste, smell, and encounter the wisdom of the seasons in real time. There is nothing abstract or purely academic about the wetlands. Or the rain. Or the snow. Or the summer gardens. Here in these hills, the wisdom of creation is palpable. Christopher Hill notes that "when we're cut off from the moon, the night, and the waters of mystery, the spiritual world is blinding and blisteringly arid."

Mystery refreshes us. Mystery is a cool dark underground stream, a tributary of the river of living water that bub bled into that well in a dusty Middle-Eastern village where Jesus stopped at midday and spoke to a Samaritan woman. When our roots are sunk into mystery, we flourish like trees planted by a stream. (Holidays and Holy Nights: Celebrating Twelve Seasonal Festivals of the Christian Year, p.50)

On Sunday, I will drive six hours one way to Ottawa to be in community with L'Arche. Once again I will encounter stillness. And a wildly changed physical terrain. Already there is snow in Canada - and even more darkness than here. It is that season, that moment in time, when we are invited to let go so that something else might grow deep within. Today, I am grateful.