A Good Paintbrush

Trusting The Great Artist is an idea that keeps resurfacing in my readings, and most recently at the Morning of Reflection on Friday.  It reminded me of a journal entry I wrote about being a "good paintbrush," a few months back.  (It's funny to me that most everything I write makes its way from my little green journal to you, eventually.)

Anyway, God must think we're pretty awesome.  We get to do, and be, everything that God uses in our transformation!  It's fascinating to me that we are both the canvas on which God, The Great Artist, creates His masterpiece, and the paintbrush He uses to make it.  We are the tool, the medium, and the finished product.  Our job as tool and medium is the same.  To respond. 

September 18, 2013
Help me to be a good paintbrush, Lord.  Content to be in Your Hand for as long as You deem necessary.  Help me to remain docile and content, to paint only the picture You have in mind.  For I know paintbrushes don't have eyes, with which to see what the Great Artist intends.

Just as no one thinks "of praising the quality of the brush an artist used when you look at his painting, but instead admire his skill in using it," help me be deaf to the praise of others, for it is praise of You alone. 

Help me to be blind and deaf to everything but You, and to rest comfortably in Your hand, or wherever You set me down.

A paintbrush has no life of its own.  Help me to be a good paintbrush - One who doesn't fall into the trap of trying to be "powerful, relevant, and spectacular" (Henry Nouwen).  Amen.

One Cruel Mark At A Time

The following applies to us any time God is at work in our life, but we don't have a clue what He's up to.  All we know is that it hurts.  Here is another view, from a distance:

It is true that a canvas simply and blindly given up to the work of the pencil only feels its movement at each moment.  Each blow of the hammer on the chisel can only produce one cruel mark at a time, and the stone struck by repeated blows cannot know, nor see the form produced by them.  It only feels that it is being diminished, filed, cut, and altered by the chisel.  And a stone that is destined to become a crucifix or a statue without knowing it, if it were asked, "What is happening to you?" would reply if it could speak, "Do not ask me, I only know one thing, and that is, to remain immovable in the hands of my master, to love him, and to endure all that he inflicts upon me.  As for the end for which I am destined, it is his business to understand how it is to be accomplished; I am as ignorant of what he is doing as of what I am destined to become; all I know is that his work is the best, and the most perfect that could be, and I receive each blow of the chisel as the most excellent thing that could happen to me, although, truth to tell, each blow, in my opinion, causes the idea of ruin, destruction, and disfigurement.  But that is not my affair; content with the present moment, I think of nothing but my duty, and I endure the work of this clever master without knowing, or occupying myself about it.

Yes!  give to God what belongs to Him, and remain lovingly passive in his hands.  Hold for certain that what takes place either exteriorly or interiorly is best for you."

~Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for Fr. Jean Pierre de Caussade and his writings.  Thank you for this one, in particular.  Please help us to remain lovingly passive in Your hands, and endure Your work, in whatever form it may present itself, with peace.  Please purify our self-love, which always demands to know what is going on, and help us rest in our ignorance of Your divine plan.  Amen.

Making Room for What Is Best, Most Beautiful, and Most Profound

I want to share another life-giving quote from The School of the Holy Spirit, but first, please read my little reflection on transplanting flowers.  (I want you to read mine first, so the last thing you read are his words and not mine). 
March 12, 2011

I was planting flowers yesterday, and as I began to extract one from the 6-pack it was imbedded in, I had to pull the roots apart and break some when necessary.  Feeling the tender plant in my hand and hearing the sound of the roots breaking, I began to think about God.  There was no way the flower could understand (even if it had eyes and a brain like we do) that the painful process it was undergoing, was for its own good.  It was getting ready to be placed in a much bigger pot, with more soil, space, and food than it could begin to imagine (if it could imagine at all).  As I looked at the little flower and how it used all of its resources to make a home in a tiny cell of a 6-pack, I felt like sometimes I do the same.  I think about throwing all of my energy at something because that’s where I am.  I become root bound.  I have trouble imagining life in a bigger pot, where I will be able to grow without limitations. 

God must extract us from our own root-boundedness (probably not a word, but you know what I mean).  His all-knowing hands, no matter how gentle, must break some of the roots we have plunged so deeply in the soil.  What are they?  For today, I’m going to think about the roots I have needlessly bound myself with and try to help God out a little, by separating them and breaking the ones I don’t need.  

Thank you, Jesus, for your example of detachment.  Please show us how to do the same.  Amen.

Now, for the life-giving quote from Jacques Phillipe that incorporates the idea of having a painful process, but for the greater good:

"What is freedom?  It does not mean giving free rein to whim, but rather enabling what is best, most beautiful, and most profound in ourselves to emerge, instead of being stifled by more superficial things such as our fears, selfish attachments, or falsity.  If we submit to God, that submission will in fact strip off a sort of shell that imprisons us, to make room for all that is genuine in us.

If we submit to God's will , it will certainly be opposed to part of ourselves.  But, this part is the negative part of us that limits us and from which God is gradually delivering us.  God's will is never opposed to what is good in us:  our aspiration to truth, life, happiness, and the fullness of love.

Submission to God prunes things in us, but never gets rid of the best that is in us:  our deep, positive aspirations.  Just the opposite:  it awakens and strengthens them, and frees them from obstacles to their fulfillment."