Seasons Change and So Must We

I Arise Today

As I stepped outside for my morning exercise, I immediately began singing and felt the lyrics of “The Deer’s Cry” by Angelina permeate my being in these beautiful surroundings…….journey with me…..

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Angelina – The Deer's Cry lyrics

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise to-day
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's eyes to look before me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
From all who shall wish me ill,
Afar and a near,
Alone and in a multitude.
Against every cruel merciless
power that may
oppose my body and soul
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ to shield me,
Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me.
I arise to-day

Do you arise today?

Sunlight dawning through the trees at the replica of the Lourdes’ Grotto remind me of the importance of listening to and trusting my voice within just as Bernadette did so many years ago. Thoughts of the obstacles that prevent me from truly arising surfaced…..what prevents you from truly arising each day?

Bees, Butterflies, and Bunnies along the walking paths remind me to surrender my cares, concerns and worries to Our Lord….as I pray with today’s gospel, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.”….http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/11:28.

For me, I constantly struggle with lack of trust in Our Lord about financial security….Lord help us all to see that you will provide for us just as you do for the Bees, Butterflies and Bunnies……

And then I came upon the Deer on the retreat house grounds and knew in my heart that it was not coincidence that I stepped outside this morning singing “The Deer’s Cry”. It was God’s great sign that all will be well as long as I seek Him and bring Him to others……are you seeking Him and His Kingdom or have your cares, concerns, and burdens gotten the best of you…..”Come all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.”

Ponder those living words from today’s daily scripture readings and allow the Holy Spirit to bless you beyond measure…..

Peace and love,
Patti

Guided Meditation Alongside the Mighty Mississippi-White House Jesuit Retreat House

Evening Guided Meditation

I continue to be amazed with how God works! I have had what I would refer to as writer’s block since the Fall. Actually my last post was immediately preceding the last retreat I directed here at White House.

I praise the Lord tonight for the inspiration as my block has been removed. As I took an evening stroll alongside the Mighty Mississippi earlier tonight, I was moved to post a pictorial guided meditation for you my brothers and sisters in Christ.

First, take a few deep breaths and ask Our Lord to be in His Presence as you use this prayer aid.

Quietly place yourself in the scenes alongside the Mighty Mississippi as we journey together….take it slow and become more and more aware of your interior movements…….

As you gaze out at the beautiful cloudy skies and the Mighty River, what comes to mind, what stirs interiorly?

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Now, marvel with me at the Beauty of Nature……imagine the sounds of crickets and birds, imagine bunnies and lightning bugs surprising you along the trails……

Now pause with me at the beautiful fountain…..imagine sitting at that fountain just as the Samaritan Woman sat at the Well….listen to the flow of the water that never stops…..imagine Jesus walking up to you and gazing into your eyes….what happens during this encounter?

Take Jesus by the hand and go together and explore the beautiful creation all around you…….

Jesus then says to you that He wants to show you His Great Love in the Beauty and Serenity of the Sun beginning to set and the landscape surrounding you at dusk….

Before showing you His final artwork of the evening, He guides you to the replica of the cave from Manresa, Spain attached to the main chapel to pray in communion with St. Ignatius of Loyola for whatever bubbles up inside of you…….take note of your inner movements….

When your prayer period comes to an end in the cave, Jesus invites you to His final piece of art for the evening…….the Sun has set…….

May you be blessed abundantly from this experience!

Peace and love,
Patti

Need a Vacation with the Lord this Summer?

Love nature?  Love to hike?  Love being by water?  Want to connect with God in a peaceful setting in the Dallas, TX or Atlanta, GA area?  I have two great options for you to consider!  Be spontaneous, grab a friend and/or your spouse and join me for an Open Retreat which means Men and Women are welcome!  I will be directing two Open 2-Day Preached Weekend Retreats based on The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House in Dallas, TX on July 12-14, 2013 and at Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center in Atlanta, GA on July 26-28, 2013!

About Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House

Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House is located on beautiful Lake Dallas in Lake Dallas, TX.  The grounds are peaceful and beautiful, filled with wildlife and easily accessible from DFW International Airport.  Watch a beautiful sunset on the pier, pray in one of their many prayer spots nestled around the campus, or relax in their relaxing library!  Lots of sacred spaces for meditation, introspection, relaxation and prayer!  Learn more about the Facility and take a look at the Facility Photos via Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House Photo Gallery

About Ignatius House

Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center is located in Sandy Springs, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.  The facility occupies 20 heavily wooded acres overlooking the Chattahoochee River. The expansive grounds feature indigenous trees, plants, wildlife, and a waterfall. A large deck, gazebos, and benches provide quiet resting places for meditation, introspection, and prayer. Learn more about the Facility and take a look at the Facility Photos via About Us – Ignatius House Retreat

Hope to see you at one of these wonderful retreat houses this Summer!  If you cannot join us, please tell a family member or friend and please pray that the Lord use me in a powerful way to touch the lives of those making the retreat and pray that they be open to whatever the Lord has to reveal to them.

Ice Shoves, Oak Trees and Irises-Does God Speak to You Through Nature?

In the last week and one half, I have gone from South Louisiana to Oshkosh, Wisconsin and back and have been touched deeply by my prayer experiences in nature.  When I arrived in Oshkosh, the ice on Lake Winnebago had mostly melted so I must admit I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to see the lake frozen.  However, God had something more in store for me.  I actually learned something new about Mother Nature and myself.  When the ice starts to melt on the lake and the wind comes, it creates what is called “Ice Shoves” on the shore of the lake.    Once I got settled at Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Winnebago, I set out for a nature walk.  I was amazed at how drastically different the landscape was from my previous trip in October (See previous post about Golden Snowflakes).  As I walked along the lakeshore and then sat in the Sacred Heart Chapel on the retreat house grounds overlooking the lake and the “Ice Shoves”, I immediately began to reflect on what the Holy Spirit might be inviting me to shove ashore in my own life.

• What has had me frozen in fear that I might need to be more open to allowing God to gently help me let go of?  I invite you to reflect on the same in your own life……

Then on Monday, as I entered the grounds of Manresa House of Retreats in South Louisiana to direct the Jesuit Volunteer Corp, once again nature just took me away on the beautiful grounds.  I had a very deep revelation of God’s great love for me as I sat and looked at the beautiful old oak trees.  As I sat just absorbing the beauty, the Holy Spirit prompted me to enter into one of the most beautiful imaginative prayer experiences imagining the huge oak tree branches symbolizing  God’s loving embrace reaching out for me.  It is a Christian belief that God loved us first and that deep inside of each of us is a hunger for that great love….which we often spend our whole lives seeking.

• How might nature help you get in touch with God’s great love for you?

Then on Thursday afternoon after packing my car, I decided to take another nature prayer walk.  The first image that really struck me was this beautiful old oak which has toppled over and begun to show its roots.  It stopped me in my tracks as the Holy Spirit prompted me to reflect on several questions:

• How well does my life show or reflect my Judeo/Christian roots especially after I have been toppled over?
• Am I capable of offering and receiving forgiveness to those who may have played a part in the times I have felt toppled over?
• Jesus tells us in the gospel according to John,  “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”.  Am I staying deeply rooted in Jesus Christ to bring me new life?

Another beautiful site that the Lord used to speak to me were the beautiful irises on the grounds.  Each time I passed the blooming irises I would pause and reflect and the Holy Spirit would prompt me to pray……I invite you to use this image and do the same with the following questions and/or thoughts……

• Because Dad and my brother share the same middle name. “Iris”; each time I passed this beautiful site, I was reminded of the two of them and my entire family and my own need to pray for their well-being.  Who might you be being called to pray for?
• As my graduation from Creighton quickly approaches, I was prompted to ask myself where might the Lord be inviting me to bloom next?   Are you blooming?
• How might I be able to better help others bloom where they are planted?  What invitation might the Lord be offering you during this Easter Season as it relates to the new life symbolized by the blooming irises depicted?

Let’s bless one another by sharing in the comments what bubbled up inside of you as you read about God speaking to you through nature……

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Feel Free to “cut and paste” any of these texts for Prayer or Worship Aids and simply add this reference:

“Taken from the The Hopeless Romantic: Falling in Love with God site of Patti Clement. www.patticlement.wordpress.com Used with Permission.”

Human Resistances as a Door to God’s Beauty!

Have you ever looked to your Human Resistances as a Door to God’s Beauty?  How might the Divine Artist bring out His Beauty in Each of Us?

As I sit to write this reflection, my heart is bursting with gratitude for the wonderful gift of journeying with so many wonderful women these last 3 days at Our Lady of the Oaks Jesuit Retreat House in Grand Coteau, LA as their Retreat Director for their 3 day silent preached retreat.

I truly believe what we find in Psalm 139 which is that we are each fearfully and wonderfully made as one of God’s masterpieces.  I have also come to understand that my own human resistances have been an entryway to go deeper with God.  It seems that if I go to prayer asking the Lord to reveal to me why I am resisting what I am resisting that He will always gently bring forth from me more than I could have ever imagined.

As I reflected tonight on Fr. Larry Gillick’s daily reflection from Creighton University’s Online Ministries for today’s gospel, I really resonated with his imagery of God, the Divine Artist, in light of having prayed with the women this weekend with Psalm 139 and encouraging them to ask the Lord to see themselves as His Beloved Masterpiece.    Let’s all imagine ourselves as clay or marble and God as the Divine Artist who loves us, finds us, embraces us as unique human beings and patiently and gently brings out God’s Beauty in us that is buried deep inside each one of us within our resistances.   Each time we resist something that Jesus invites us to follow, we are invited to let God in to bring out our Beauty.    Monsignor Louis Melancon gave a very moving homily today at the Oaks as celebrant of the mass.  His homily was beautiful and challenged me and others to think about today’s gospel passage from Mark 10: 17-30 in terms of what the pious rich young man did not have, namely, the virtue of humility instead of all of his possessions.   Did the rich young man miss an opportunity to let God in to bring out God’s Beauty from within him?   In mass, I immediately thought of the words of the late George Horace Lorimer, a former editor of The Washington Post,  “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.”    The rich young man went away saddened after his interchange with Jesus because he had to face the sad reality that his possessions possessed him too much and that he had lost the things that money can’t buy.  The wonderful gifts of riches and possessions are not bad in and of themselves, but if they in any way lead us away from God or prevent us from following Jesus; perhaps we have become too attached.

What bubbles up inside of you when you read the quote above?  Have you checked lately to make sure you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy in your life?  Do you need to surrender to Our Lord any disordered attachment you may be experiencing in your life?  Remember the last lines of today’s gospel depicted so beautifully in the picture below……

I would love to hear from you about how today’s gospel passage spoke to you…..

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Feel Free to “cut and paste” any of these texts for Prayer or Worship Aids and simply add this reference:

“Taken from the The Hopeless Romantic: Falling in Love with God site of Patti Clement. www.patticlement.wordpress.com Used with Permission.”

Need a Vacation with the Lord this weekend? Join me at Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center in Atlanta-Unleash Yourself

Love nature?  Love to hike?  Love being by water?  Want to connect with God in a peaceful setting in the Atlanta area?  Be spontaneous and join me at Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center in Atlanta this weekend for a 3 day silent weekend retreat titled the “Triumph of the Cross”.

I just arrived at Ignatius House Retreat Center in Atlanta and the grounds and setting are as beautiful and peacful as ever!  I’m getting settled in for the 3 day weekend retreat I’ll be directing that starts tomorrow night.   There are still a few spots available if you are in the area or can get here by tomorrow night.

About Ignatius House

Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center is located in Sandy Springs, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.  The facility occupies 20 heavily wooded acres overlooking the Chattahoochee River. The expansive grounds feature indigenous trees, plants, wildlife, and a waterfall. A large deck, gazebos, and benches provide quiet resting places for meditation, introspection, and prayer. Learn more about the Facility and take a look at the Facility Photos.

via About Us – Ignatius House Retreat

Hope to see you!  If you cannot join us, please pray that the Lord use me in a powerful way to touch the lives of those making the retreat and pray that they be open to whatever the Lord has to reveal to them.

Beauty As A Pathway to God-Part 1

Have you ever been awestruck by a beautiful sunset?  Have you ever been mesmorized by a beautiful painting?  Have you ever been moved to tears by a song?  I think all of us have at one time or another been touched deeply by a form of art or a nature experience.

During the past two decades, as I have followed my call to grow spiritually, I have noticed a gradual new found love of nature and art.  Up until recently, I had viewed this personal interest as my way of nurturing my own creativity and continuation of God’s creation through me.   While taking a course this past year on the study of Catholic Identity and particularly ways to be in dialogue with non-believers and those indifferent to their faith in the world today, I began to question why I am drawn to nature experiences and artwork and how that might be a wonderful way to approach this cultural phenomena.  I am really excited with what I discovered in my questioning which is that theologians and Popes have encouraged and valued using the Beauty of Creation and the Beauty of Art as a way to God dating as far back as Augustine.

The 2006 document of the Pontifical Council for Culture speaks to these ways to Beauty.  It first discusses that the beauty of creation leads us to the Creator of all, God, and how the contemplation of the beauty of creation causes interior peace and harmony and a desire for a more beautiful life.  Astonishment and admiration somehow transforms themselves into admiration, praise, gratitude and awe for the creator of the beauty.[1]   The document reminds us of how St Augustine underwent his own deep transformation of the soul by meeting the beauty of God.   In the Confessions, he relives his tormented journey of all the missed occasions in the search for the truth and for God.[2]

As I pondered the content of that document, I was reminded of the many transforming moments I have had on a mountaintop, watching a sunset, watching the clouds on a beautiful day, being mesmorized by the white pelicans that had migrated South, etc.   On Thanksgiving Day last year,  I was so overwhelmed by the sight of the while pelicans that I parked my car and found myself almost in a trance frollicking around the lake taking pictures of the beauty before me.  I just kept thinking if God loves those pelicans enough to bring them down here for the Winter, how much more does he love me.  I have been there and experienced that transformation mentioned and so desire to have more of those encounters with God.

I really resonated with what the theologian, Andrew Greely, suggests about how beauty overwhelms us, enchants us, fascinates us, and calls us.   He reiterates what the council document puts forth which is that as we ponder beauty, we see that it is good and we are attracted to the Goodness it represents; therefore, beauty is transcendental making it a very effective means of dialogue with non-believers and those indifferent to their faith today.

Pope Benedict refers to art as being “ like a door opened to the Infinite”.[3]  Pope Benedict spoke on the experience of art as a signal of transcendence as follows:

Perhaps it has happened to you at one time or another — before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of poetry or a piece of music — to have experienced deep emotion, a sense of joy, to have perceived clearly, that is, that before you there stood not only matter — a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, an ensemble of letters or a combination of sounds — but something far greater, something that “speaks,” something capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message, of elevating the soul.

A work of art is the fruit of the creative capacity of the human person who stands in wonder before the visible reality, who seeks to discover the depths of its meaning and to communicate it through the language of forms, colors and sounds. Art is capable of expressing, and of making visible, man’s need to go beyond what he sees; it reveals his thirst and his search for the infinite. Indeed, it is like a door opened to the infinite, [opened] to a beauty and a truth beyond the every day. And a work of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, urging us upward.[4]

To portray how the beauty of art itself can remind us of God, help us pray and even help us to a conversion of heart; Pope Benedict referred to the famous French poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel who felt the presence of God and experienced a conversion of heart while listening to the singing of the Magnificat during the Christmas Mass inside the Basilica of Notre Dame in Paris in the 1800’s.   Claudel was experiencing one of the great challenges we see often today in the church, i.e. non-belief, but was moved deeply by the grace of God through the beauty of art.  He was later quoted as stating, “In an instant, my heart was touched and I believed. I believed with such force, with such relief of all my being, a conviction so powerful, so certain and without any room for doubt, that ever since, all the books, all the arguments, all the hazards of my agitated life have never shaken my faith, nor to tell the truth have they even touched it.[5]  Wow, what a powerful testimony!

How have you been touched deeply by some form of art or a nature experience?  Have you taken the time to allow God to touch you deeply or are you too busy to stop and smell the roses or watch a sunset?  Go out and fall in love with Creation all over again, visit a museum and ponder a beautiful piece of art, or attend your local symphony and allow Beauty to be your pathway to God.

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[1] PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE, Concluding Document of the Plenary Assembly “The Via Pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelization and Dialogue”, III. I. A., March 2006

[2] PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE, Concluding Document of the Plenary Assembly “The Via Pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelization and Dialogue”, II. 2., March 2006

[3] Benedict XVI, Meditation on the via pulchritudinis, Beauty as a Way to God, August 2011, http://www.zenit.org/article-33326?l=english (accessed March 5, 2012)

[4] Benedict XVI, Meditation on the via pulchritudinis, Beauty as a Way to God, August 2011, http://www.zenit.org/article-33326?l=english (accessed March 5, 2012)

[5] PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR CULTURE, Concluding Document of the Plenary Assembly “The Via Pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelization and Dialogue”, III. C., March 2006

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Feel Free to “cut and paste” any of these texts for Prayer or Worship Aids and simply add this reference:

“Taken from the The Hopeless Romantic:  Falling in Love with God site of Patti Clement.  www.patticlement.wordpress.com Used with Permission.”