Something gorgeous for a Friday

This woman, Antoinette, speaks like an artist and a poet from where she lives in the Karoo in South Africa. I love her language (Afrikaans) and the way she lives in harmony with nature and understands the secret to life. For me, watching this beautiful little film is like going up the mountain to visit the wise hermit. Kudos to the videographers for the stunning images. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/Xup8yGqjYQw

The Patron Saint of simplicity

A little pocket-sized gift
from my daughter -- from
www.JenNortonArtStudio.com

Today is the Feast Day of my favourite Saint, Francis of Assisi, from whom our present Pope takes his name. I fell in love with Saint Francis when I was a kid, and have read about him at every opportunity. Followers of these moodlings might notice that I write about him at every opportunity as well. He's one of the main inspirations for all the work I did with Laudato Si Reflections a few years back. As there's not a lot more I can add, today I'm looking back at past moodlings about Francesco, and listing them here for any interested readers. He makes me happy because he points us to what's really important in life -- loving the marginalized, caring for creation, and following Christ. May he bless your day as well!

St. Francis, the Patron saint of Simplicity
Walking with St. Francis, the earthiest Saint
Laudato Si: Sunday Reflection #1
Celebrating the original Francis
Simple Suggestion #139... Count your squares
Book Review: The Passionate Troubadour
God and St. Francis talk about lawns

The original 40 days of Lent

I don't know about you, but I've never really given a lot of thought to the original Lent, the forty days when the holiest of holy men walked into a desert to spend time with God. It seems to be what was needed before Christ embraced his mission to teach us all about how love and the suffering that comes with it bring us to resurrection and deeper love.

In Jesus' day, going out to the desert was a practice mostly undertaken by the Essenes, a sect in Roman-occupied Palestine who embraced simplicity, prayer and fasting as a way of life. John the Baptist probably "trained" in that tradition, and it's clear that the average Jane and Joe of his time looked at the desert-dwellers as either really holy or really crazy people. You can tell from Jesus' comments about John (Matthew 11:18). Going into the desert wasn't something taken lightly -- a certain reputation came with it.

What exactly does one do in a desert for forty days? No one really knows what Jesus did with his forty-day "time away from it all retreat." I can't begin to imagine fasting or praying for that long, so I guess that's why this video with Matt Maher's song, 40 Days, caught my attention. Kudos to the video creators!

To be honest, I didn't really like it when I first saw it a few weeks ago, but after listening to the gospel reading this morning, I had to find it and watch it again and rehear the lyrics... and now something in me has changed.

The images, while simplistic, touch something fundamental about the meaning of Lent. It is a time apart from the ordinary, an opportunity for silence, solitude and simplicity. The image that stays with me the most is Christ on his belly in the dust, watching a flower grow, probably in deep conversation with the One who made the flower.

What will you do in the desert for these 40 days?

If you could design a new world...

What if you were given a superpower that would allow you to design a new society? What would your blueprint look like? What would you keep from our present way of life? What would be unnecessary? What would you add?

There's so much dysfunction in our present existence (especially the US election news these days!) that it sometimes looks like the dystopian novels my young adults read. From the disintegration of families to the breakdown of the environment, the polarization in politics to the rampant over-consumption of our earth's resources -- the hectic and harried pace of society as we know it has dragged us further and further from being soulful people who value life in all its forms. You'd think we could come up with a better plan, no?

Lucky for us, Mark A. Burch has written his own alternate society in his new novel, Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia, which is being released this week. It's a fascinating story of the beginning of something better than life as we presently know it, a renovated existence where people pull together, where everyone has enough, where humans cooperate with nature, and where beauty is appreciated and cultivated daily. I was fortunate to read early drafts of the story, and my initial response to Mark was, "Where is this place? I'll be there in a heartbeat!"

Of course, Mark's view of a simpler world is one that has resonated with me ever since I attended a workshop he gave on Voluntary Simplicity and Personal Wellness, ten years ago this month. He was kind enough to stay in touch because his workshop filled me with many questions, and thanks to the emails that flew back and forth between us, a deep friendship formed. Mark's desire for a world less focused on the material and more in tune with the values of simplicity and sufficiency will always ring true for people who give serious consideration to life's true purpose.

Besides being a wise man in the areas of simplicity and sustainability, Mark is also an excellent writer, having been published many times. It's not easy to pen a good novel that teaches without being overly preachy, but there's an abundance of fresh ideas and suspense in Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia to carry the reader through to the story's end. Chapters begin with wisdom sayings that seem to come from sages beyond our time. The establishment of Euterra is juxtaposed with its later existence and the arrival of an "outsider" whose appearance threatens the community's existence, making for a real page turner. And the bonus is that there's another book in the works, if readers want more!

I would love to see this book become a best-seller, simply because it carries the seeds for many long-overdue conversations about the kind of world we really want to inhabit. We're used to the status quo, to feeling like we have no choice but to go with the flow, but it's past time that we begin to envision and build a better future than the one that's coming down the pipe whether we want it or not. Euterra Rising: The Last Utopia is available via Kindle or in hard copy, with the possibility that Euterra book clubs could be the launch pad for a better world (book club resources are available on Mark's website).

For more information, see http://markaburch.ca/, or visit Euterra on Facebook and meet Nota Dorne, one of the book's characters.

Better yet, pick up the book for yourself, share it with friends, and start imagining and creating the world you really want to inhabit...

Being sisters and brothers of nature

Have you noticed that the weather is getting to be less and less predictable? Sometimes I get the feeling that our sciences, maths, probabilities and meteorological indicators are stories we tell to convince ourselves that everything is "normal." I keep wondering... if our polar icecaps are melting, where is all that water going to go? We've sure got a lot of snow this season... and people in Brisbane and Brazil aren't doing so hot with their homes destroyed by water or mud. Freak occurrences, or part of what's now called Global Climate Change?

We'll never really know because so many variables are at play, but I have my suspicions. And my suspicions lead me to believe that it's time human beings woke up and paid more attention to things that are happening, rather than trying to explain them away. The calendar on my wall this month quotes Ekhard Tolle: "To awaken within the dream is our purpose now." In North America, we've been dreaming that the earth will always be able to supply our every need and satisfy our every whim. We've dreamed until a lot of Earth's species and resources have disappeared because of us, and now it's starting to look as if Nature is about to revolt. Who can blame her? We certainly haven't been very good stewards in our twin quests for luxury and convenience. Personally, I could handle a lot less of both if it would mean fewer disruptions in the health of our planet.

For too long, we've been taking the easy way out. We've lost touch with so many of the processes that allow us to live. It wasn't that long ago that we grew our own food, built our own homes, and worked with our hands to provide for ourselves and our communities, and we were much healthier for it. We didn't have to worry about diets or exercise because both were balanced and integral parts of our daily lives. We knew how to make do, and we lived in solidarity with each other, rather than in competition to see who had the most or best of everything.

We can't go back in time, but we can return to our roots. It's high time we start to consider ourselves to be sisters and brothers of nature and forget all that biblical bosh about "filling the earth and subduing it." We need to wake from the dream that we are in charge and that every homeowner must have their own fill-in-the-blank. We need to get on with living lightly, with using as few of Earth's resources as possible, and remembering that we aren't the pinnacle of God's creation, but just a small part of it. I expect that God loves everything created, right down to the tiniest amoeba, and our challenge is to live in harmony with it all.  Henri Nouwen hits the nail on the head when he says:

When we think of oceans and mountains, forests and deserts, trees, plants and animals, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the galaxies, as God's creation, waiting eagerly to be "brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God" (Roman 8:21), we can only stand in awe of God's majesty and God's all- embracing plan of salvation. It is not just we, human beings, who wait for salvation in the midst of our suffering; all of creation groans and moans with us longing to reach its full freedom.

In this way we are indeed brothers and sisters not only of all other men and women in the world but also of all that surrounds us. Yes, we have to love the fields full of wheat, the snowcapped mountains, the roaring seas, the wild and tame animals, the huge redwoods, and the little daisies. Everything in creation belongs, with us, to the large family of God.      Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, December 9th

God's dream is so much bigger than ours. It's time to wake and live God's dream. My seed catalogue arrived last week. I'm going to cooperate with God's dream today by ordering seeds to grow this year's vegetables to help feed my family.

What's your plan to live God's dream today?

Of Christmas pageants and good, good news

On Monday evening, most of my family and a few friends enjoyed the L'Arche Edmonton Annual Christmas Pageant. For those who were unable to join us, here's the run-down: it was a wonderful celebration featuring many amazing musicians; a fantastic choir who had everyone in the church singing too; a gentle Mary and a cowboy-hatted Joseph who were extremely attentive to a serene six-month-old baby Jesus as he watched everything with shining eyes; radiant angels in bright white Christmas lights; a rag-tag band of shepherds who danced with excitement; and majestic magi -- one on wheels. I think it's safe to say that the Spirit of Christmas took hold of everyone in the building.

As I watched the holy family cuddle together under the star, I couldn't help but feel that everyone present was seeing a more realistic portrayal of Christmas than any you see on Christmas cards or in movies. Jesus came in a simple, humble way to spend his life with simple, humble people, and to call us all to simplicity and humility in our relationships with each other and with God.

In L’Arche, God’s love and acceptance of everyone -- with and without disabilities -- makes Jesus’ presence real, and not just at Christmas.