Stigmatization of St. Francis by Giotto (1300)

(Source: g-n-o-s-i-s)

Heaven On Earth

Jon Meacham searches for it:

If heaven is understood more as God’s space on earth than as an ethereal region apart from the essential reality we know, then what happens on earth matters even more than we think, for the Christian life becomes a continuation of the unfolding work of Jesus, who will one day return to set the world to rights. If you begin to think about the drama of life in such terms, you begin to invest more meaning in the here and now — not in the “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” pagan way, but as a way of infusing everything with potentially sacred meaning. The love of friends, the brush of your spouse’s hand, the eyes of a young child — these become not hints or glimpses of what heaven may be like as a posthumous region but of what earth may be like if light and love achieve dominion over darkness and envy.

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crashinglybeautiful:

Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996), St. Francis, Japanese Kappa-ban Print Sadao Watanabe. Thank you, veareflejos & yama-bato.

St. Francis Preaching to the Birds (detail), Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) 

NATURE AS MIRROR

Can you feel the spiritual ecology we’ve been talking about? If you live in a fully connected world, you’re saved every day, just by playing your part. You are grabbed by God, and you belong to this universe, along with everything else. I was recently feeling discouraged and irritated, and I went out to my garden and spotted a green “stick bug” happily chewing on my flowers, almost completely camouflaged next to the stem. This bug’s simple but amazing existence completely took away all of my negativity. Life was again wondrous and miraculous.

At a recent retreat I gave on the Scottish island of Iona—which was the center point for the diffusion of Celtic Christianity—the attendees remarked how the Celtic “knot” was found on most crosses, gravestones, in manuscripts, and on jewelry. It was apparently their artistic way of saying that all is connected, everything belongs, and all is one in God. They knew about ecosystems long before we did. ALL was held together inside the divine knot that made it one.

T.S. Eliot ends his famous “Four Quartets” quoting Dame Julian, and saying the same: “And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flame are in-folded / into the crowned knot of fire.”

From Richard Rohr:  In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation webcast
(CD, DVD, MP3)

proustitute:

Francisco de Zurbarán, St. Francis in Meditation, c. 1635-39 (via)

[prompted by darksilenceinsuburbia’s word suggestion: “devotion”]  

"

“Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens light.”

—St. Francis of Assisi

"

http://www.parabola.org/ (via parkstepp)

defterisk:

Giovanni Bellini St Francis receiving the stigmata (1485)

the city in the background is no ordinary place but the Heavenly Jerusalem, which is always shown as unpopulated.

The Meaning of the Landscape in Bellini’s “St. Francis in Ecstasy”

Author(s): Anthony F. JansonSource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 15, No. 30 (1994), pp. 41-54

(via my-ear-trumpet)

"What you are looking for is what is looking."

St. Francis of Assisi

(via sharanam)

(via frenzyandlightning)

"Our hands imbibe like roots,
so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.
.
I fold them in prayer, and they
draw from the heavens
light."

St. Francis of Assisi (via paynehollow) (via yama-bato)

missfolly:

Legend of St Francis: 2. St Francis Giving his Mantle to a Poor Man by Giotto di Bondone, 1297-1299 

crashinglybeautiful:

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

darksilenceinsuburbia:

lapetitebaobab:

Meditation of St. Francis, 1632 - Francisco de Zurbaran

*

My favorite story (legend?) about Francis is when the Bishop of Assisi finally dragged Francis before the Pope, so that Francis could ask permission to start a new order.

So there is Francis, barefoot and filthy, standing before the Pope, arrayed in all his finery. The Pope asked, “Tell me, Francis, why I should grant your request to start a new religious order.”

Francis replied, “You Holiness, I am not a man of words. I cannot tell you. But I can show you.”

And then he danced before the Pope.

He received permission to start a new order.