Wishing all a bright and beautiful Feast Day! Sending along a rustic almond treat with a final pace + bene…

The extension of an invitation received here…looking forward to observing this evening with any who wish to attend/in Spirit (there are many venues that observe Transitus, or one may simply wish to spend parts of today and tomorrow out in nature, etc.).

Human measurements and toil cease; it is enough to simply rest in the Creator, small and great. That hour is fast approaching in which we can take nothing with us, and the only weight upon the scale is love.

The little traveling circus has been performing for five generations. If you look up at the right moments, you will see quiet flashes of joy upon the faces of the acrobats, who have observed the faces of the adults in the audience as children are permitted to individually greet the cat that has leapt through hoops. A dove receives a gentle kiss – it has been ascending and descending a ladder in human hands – and again the acrobats receive the audience, from audible ire that the birds must perform to hearts beating in and with the memory of innocence. Still tinier creatures are visible near the feet of the acrobats: a cricket, a spider. The circle of the stage, of the hoops, of the beings merge: were this the last day of your life, would it be gift enough?

Sometimes referred to as the Troubadour of God, Saint Francis of Assisi lived in a time of poet-musicians, many of whom were active in France and Italy, and produced his own works as well as was known for his joy. As we prepare for Transitus on 3 October and a Feast Day on 4 October, music is perhaps in order.

LISTEN

Saint Francis is writing his final letter to his friend when there is a knock at the door. The Divine has already sent Lady Jacoba to the saint, and she packed the things requested in his letter. How wonderful that the Creator has bid the angels to help us on our journeys! They love to aid us – ask through the One they worship! Today we celebrate Michael for protection, Gabriel for the Good News and truth, Raphael for healing…

The ladybugs are out today. There’s one in the rosemary, another in the sage. Many tiny plants and animals show up in ancient paintings as symbols of the Divine or become associated with the sacred via art. For example, Our Lady was once often depicted in red, and seven black dots upon a ladybug’s back symbolize the Seven Sorrows.

The company of those who walk with the land – people engaged in healing work, our Indigenous siblings, gardeners, and Franciscans – has long been helpful, affirming, and illuminating for me. I like to listen to what delights these individuals as we walk and work. The hours contain the Creator’s wonders, and the noise of the World fades away.

There are a few stories about Saint Francis and grapes. The grapes aren’t in the best condition or are used in aid of someone who isn’t. Being truly present with what we have – instead of focused on what we do not have – can be a place of the miraculous.

We may not be able to change a thing but we certainly have a choice regarding blessing or cursing. A little robin rests with us for some minutes. Painting is impeded, for another creature has discovered that the paint is bound with egg. It licks the page and paces relentlessly over the table…so, a few brushstrokes of pax et bonum to you.

Perhaps we choose death over life multiple times per day. Some choose death that others might live: how the whole universe must reverberate through the flowering of such souls.

A gentle rain is falling upon the near-ripe olives.

No one is worthy of God. This understanding alone may begin to soften the heart – and how much more when we turn back to the Creator again and again. The fear with which we approach God through Christ isn’t a cowering fear. It’s right relationship and a commitment to that. It’s awe. It’s victorious. Grace and love, truth and justice…He’s already won the battle…

In the still, small hours of the early morning, we are shown the bright stars in a sky without light pollution.

Oh, look – I’ve been seeing them in threes lately. On the wire are lovely doves in the sunset. The time is coming when we won’t need them – nor anything else – to point to Love Itself.

From the windows, there are fields of sunflowers, their faces turning to the sun. In praise and in countenance, so it is as we (re)turn to the Divine – whether blooming, or done.

Many creatures receive negative labels because of their association with death. And yet our loving Creator assigned them functions that sustain interconnected life. It may please God to provide us with comforts and to use us to give them to others through that Holy Comforter, the Spirit – and we rejoice. At some point, we also grow into the acceptance of the gift of discomfort. Blessed Fly lands nearby.

We rarely discuss the stigmata despite a feast day and the illustrations of this event. Many depictions include the sky in the scene, and today il cielo d’azzurro has a cross cloud with a tau cloud at its base. A butterfly cloud emerges from the heart of the larger cross. Gifts are ever poured out to each seeking soul as we watch for the return of One whose love we cannot earn and even as creation is crucified. The clouds have a role to play in the mystery of this love: then, now, and soon.

As with many creatures, the gulls carry both positive and negative symbolism, and they do not always find themselves welcome atop a house. Deciding to bless it all – the creatures, the houses, the hearts and souls – is already a step towards cleaning. Sometimes our spiritual discernment is to bless from a greater distance for a season or for a lifespan, and that’s alright. May blessings alight upon, enter, and go out from your house.

Every evening as able, a certain creature hastens to a passer-by. How happy they are to meet near the house of its people! Long scars mark the gentle creature’s back: no hair grows there now. Suppose that this creature is a person steadfastly approaching you or you seeking another. Imagine that the scars were inflicted by your own hand or upon you by the very one you approach. How blessed will such a meeting be, for together and in Spirit, you have defeated a skandalon.

The Bee Tree Finder is explained: a handcrafted box with tiny holes and a glass window, it is perhaps where ‘beeline’ comes from, as a person would release a captured bee from the box and track its course straight back to the bee tree, an art known as bee lining. This focused pursuit of honey can serve as a metaphor for the soul’s search for the sweetness of the Creator. People treat their cats, dogs, and additional pets as honoured members of a family and the bond between bees and human caregivers isn’t surprising: several saints are linked to the bees they tended and/or experienced the miraculous with, humans will mourn when bees are lost, and there is at least one record of bees apparently attending the funeral of their deceased keeper. It was once a practice to respectfully inform the bees of major family events such as death – but also of births, marriages, and departures – and the skeps would be draped in colours corresponding to the events. While this practice could be placed firmly in the category of superstition, for there were perceived consequences for not telling the bees, it is also possible that seeing the bees as a part of the family created a sacred relationship, the example of which is relevant today. May the sharing of our sufferings and joys with others be a blessed echo of the sharing with our Creator, the One Who listens with the bees.

There are times when I would like a little house of my own. I would eco-decorate it in simple, lovely ways, establish a safe and beautiful spare room for the sojourner, and spend my days in an accompanying garden. The house would become a home. And then the Spirit says no. There’s something about things and the human soul. However well-intentioned in construction and exchange, these will pass away, but the love to be shared in the days that remain will not.

If one knows that one knows not what the Creator fully knows of where a soul has been, is, and will be, how can one progress to hatred of a spiritual sibling? How wonderful that the angelic is a part of the Creation and graciously aids us on our pathways! During September and October, at least two feasts are for the angels.

Sparrow carries varied and beautiful symbolism. Jesus illustrated its value. Considered a “plain” bird by some, this description may please the Franciscan – but so too can brilliant Hummingbird, lovely Dove, and the many carrion-eaters with their God-given purposes. Different bird species listened to and mourned Saint Francis: one likes to think that all were and are welcome.

Mary is the patron of the Franciscans. She continuously points to her Son. Many plants are symbolic of her, including the nearby honeysuckle in which the sparrows hide; it has produced its rainbow-hued berries in an autumn of drought. There will be those who will recognize Whose fragrance you bear and those who will despise you, and the task is to continue to grow in Divine sweetness.

Gentle Crane Fly is often misunderstood. Judged by its physical appearance, it can be met with fear and loathing via the demonization of yet another creature – Mosquito – but it cannot harm you. Perhaps Crane Fly’s appearance on the scene is a gift, golden on a turquoise surface. This does not mean that evil does not exist; rather, we can choose to develop our discerning spiritual eyes in a world sometimes eager to close them.

The butterflies are specks of light in the grass beyond the garden. A human is struggling through a narrow opening when a large butterfly appears and beats its delicate wings against the gate until it finds the way between the wooden slats.

Apparently Saint Francis walked over rocks with reverence. An ancient part of the Earth, they are also a symbol of the Creator. In human-centric culture they are dismissed, much as animals and plants may be, but science increasingly teaches the intelligence of various life forms. This morning included a discussion of Brother Juniper, who was often treated as many may treat non-humans – as less than. But careful observers, including Saint Francis with a wonderful pun, recognized the holiness in this man’s simplicity. Brother Juniper was ultimately the one to console a dying Saint Clare, and he is a great soul to invoke in intercessory prayer should mockery and scorn abound, for his smiling through so much of it turned many an “enemy” into a benefactor. By mid-day, surrounded by trees, someone shared a cautionary tale about a little pine tree, a species found on all seven continents (fossilized in Antarctica). And in the evening, the form and history of the carrot was studied: as trees are to humans, are carrot greens to ants? It was a tree that bore the body of Christ. Do the forests know it?

The chirping of insects and birds is as if beneath running water, hearing impaired upon waking, and the ants are seen here and there, going about their lives. The deer are not visible. An approaching truck slows to a stop and then a passenger’s window rolls down. The eagle on the pole, says one man therein. Is this a riddle? He gestures across the water. He’s there every morning. There’s another one on the marker. Thanked, the men promptly drive away without further words. The eagle on the marker or sign is perched far lower than the one on the pole, and bends forward as if bowing to the other.

In the early mornings, the deer are nestled in the meadows – gentle and watchful. But soon they will be gracefully mobile. And so it is with us. I feel that the time to go Home approaches. Some years ago, I asked what I was to do. The answer was immediate and clear: Love them. And them was interpreted to mean all.

It often disappoints people when they learn that these are not the words of Saint Francis of Assisi. The prayer seems to have appeared in the early 1900s – in French. The content does bear a resemblance to the words of an early Franciscan brother, Giles of Assisi, and appears here in a modified form that moves away from the individual to the collective. The prayer is also an example of putting on one’s spiritual armour by living – and sowing/growing/harvesting – in the opposite spirit. This strategy is simple. If you are being tempted by despair, shift the focus to hope. The existence of despair isn’t denied, but one’s energy moves to and in the opposite spirit.

It is written that perfect love casts out fear. God gave to Saint Francis what the saint most feared – lepers – and through the power of God’s love, Francis overcame that fear. In a recent study group, there was an assignment to write about one’s experience of harming (fear-based) and healing (love-based) creation. Many people seem to develop both strong fear of and strong love for specific creatures; this was the departure point for the linked response, which was recalled aboard a sailing vessel yesterday evening. First the web was seen along a railing, then the spider and its prey within a nearby hole. Various estimates exist as to how many spiders the average home or square meter contain. What quantity find themselves out at sea? Were we a little like spiders as we worked together amid the intricacy of ropes to hoist the sails? Here are the arachnids of the past and the ones seen and painted on this new day.

THE WEB – PDF

Yesterday, a person met along the street was filling a bag with tomato and zucchini, pouring poppy and foxglove seeds into envelopes, and sharing the flowers from those she was caregiver to over the years. There were two great trees growing side-by-side from seedlings nearby; they too have a story. Gardens were made for friends…you can sit in here anytime if you’d like to be with the hummingbirds. We parted ways in the increasing warmth of the sun, this living saint (who even offered to drive the undeserved harvest to the next destination) and I. God is merciful, strewing the darkness with bright beauty – tangible and intangible.

Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that he should not be a spiritual focus. His beloved – the Triune God – is the true focus and the recipient of an 800-year-old poem/song that the saint composed. Similarly, the Canticle of the Creatures is not a praise of creatures beyond the fact that the Divine spark resides in them all; rather, the Creator is praised through them. And while the saint may not have written a work with ecological stewardship in mind (his landscape pre-dated the human imprint of later centuries), it is nonetheless a crucial time to realign with holy stewardship of our shared home, and the work resonates with an understanding of the sacred, interwoven nature of the universe. Some may experience difficulty feeling joy during this annual season of reflection and action called the Season of Creation, which a variety of Christian denominations observe from 1 September – October 4 (and all are welcome). We might look at the place Francis was in when he created the Canticle: ill with fevers every few days, nearly blind and pained by sunlight, bleeding, in the damp dark, perhaps considering the later disappointments of his life, and possibly being nipped at by mice or rats. From there, he fashioned a thing of joy and light that includes Sister Death, perhaps illustrating that loving care for all creation first stems from a choice made within each soul’s interior spark.