Spiritual Practice of Fishing

 Spiritual Practice of Fishing

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”—Leo Tolstoy in Essays, Letters, and Miscellanies (Scribner’s, 1929).

I sit outside each early morning on the Gulf Coast just after sunrise, and watch lone surf fishermen come like clockwork to the water’s edge with fishing rods, fishing rod holders, buckets, bait, and folding beach chairs. They are early risers, arriving before the pelicans, seagulls, and dolphins come out of hiding. The members of this all-male club mark their territory as they spike two rod holders into the sand as the only signs of human presence. Then, they unfold their chairs, bait their lines, cast them beyond the roaring, white ocean’s surf, and sit and wait between the two holders for the rods to jump and bend. 

The nibbles are infrequent, so they spend most of the time sitting and staring out into the Gulf. They peer out as if they can see all the way beyond South America. They do not take out their cell phones or read books. Instead, they wait patiently, usually for several hours, presumably with great faith that their efforts will connect them to the gift of unknown food from beneath the sea.

I have become so fascinated by watching the fishermen that I recognize them by their walk, what they are wearing, whom they talk to, what time they come out, and how long they stay. When I have spoken with them, they have taught me much about spirituality and faithfulness, and how to surrender to a spiritual practice. Indeed, some fishermen refer to their daily routine as a spiritual practice, while others would be appalled at giving their fishing exercise such a name. Nevertheless, they all agree that this recreational sport brings them peace; most realize it is not the fish they are after. It is re-creation.

Perhaps this uncertainty girded by faith is also part of our spiritual practices: Centering Prayer, saying the Rosary, walking the labyrinth, praying, fasting, Lectio divina, and worshiping. The peace comes in offering time, a piece of our life, to the practice, rather than always reaching any goal or making or receiving a connection.

My second gift from our fishermen is that in spending time observing them, I have stayed grounded, connected to my surroundings, and living in the present moment. The fishermen are teaching me about looking beyond the turbulent water’s edge and having faith that there is something greater than any of us constantly trying to connect to us.

Joanna.   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

A Graceful Penumbra

                                             Painting as a Spiritual Practice

Guest Writer: Ken Fellow

 A Graceful Penumbra or Shadow

A Graceful Penumbra

     Someone painting a house … not usually a subject to capture in watercolor. Walking past this scene in Stonington, Maine, I was attracted by the painter on his ladder … riveted less by the man than by his graceful, dramatic shadow. How remarkable that an ordinary human, doing such everyday work, could cast a near balletic penumbra. On reflection, this seemed a dramatic physical representation of the concept, existing in both spiritual and psychological literature, that human personalities have both a consciousness and a latent shadow side.

     Painting in watercolors for many years now and incorporating shadows in my work has always been intentional and personally rewarding. Shadows create and denote light in a picture. Without them, there is only color to build interest in the subject or scene. Shadows in paintings can be any color. Art classes often teach they should be the complementary color of the object they cover …. that is the ‘painterly’ way. Most people think of shadows as black or grey, but in fact, scientists say they are variations of blue. Whatever hue an artist chooses, shadows’ have highly variable shapes and sizes, edges both faint and sharp, and a random distribution in any scene that attracts and intensifies interest.

       Painting shadows in watercolor can be somewhat of a high-wire act. Because watercolor is a light-to-dark, transparent medium, the lightest colors must be painted first. Unlike oils, if a color is painted that’s too dark, it can’t be rectified by covering it with a lighter color. As a result, the shadows in a watercolor painting are usually the last step … to be laid down over the lighter colors in a scene. A lot can go wrong: shadow washes too dark, misplaced, or unrealistic ….and the painting is ruined and can’t be corrected.

     In my pre-teens, long ago and way before TV, I listened daily to radio dramas.

One of my favorites was THE SHADOW …, a mystery program always begun with a

deep, ominous voice asking: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” Since those days, shadiness has always been intriguing to me. Later in life, my profession as a radiologist also may have been an influence. A former medical colleague at an art showing remarked: “Well, I see you’re still dealing in shadows.”

     For some, shadows exist as a dark side of human personalities. The psychologist Carl Jung has written that “everyone carries a shadow,” and “the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

The spiritual teacher, Patricia Adams Farmer, supports the concept of the need to attend to one’s shadow side with “compassionate self-awareness.” She further advises: “Our shadow side is part of our humanity, albeit the more primitive, unpleasant, and difficult side. With courage, we can look deeply into the dark side of our being –not to judge and condemn –but to understand, to suffer with, and to love back into the wide, rich tapestry of our being.”

     My favorite painting teacher, Dewitt Hardy, taught that artists “are in the business of making miracles.”  For me, my watercolor efforts have no chance for such an aspiration without effective shadows.

 Ken Fellows

 Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Getting out of Our Head

 De Mello: Out of the Head    

“The head is not a very good place for prayer. It is not a bad place for starting your prayer. But if your prayer stays there too long and doesn’t move into the heart, it will gradually dry up and prove tiresome and frustrating.”—Anthony de Mello in Sadhana: A Way to God (Liguori, 1998).    

Anthony de Mello’s Sadhana: A Way to God is an amazing book—a collection of “one-of-a-kind, practical spiritual exercises” blending Eastern and Western spiritual practice for contemplative prayer. De Mello describes contemplative prayer as communicating with God with minimal use of words. He lists forty-seven exercises, all of which can be learned through practicing each for a week at a time.

In his first section, de Mello repeatedly teaches how contemplative prayer comes after achieving an awareness of the body, not just the mind, leading to an awareness of God’s presence. 

The second section discusses using fantasy in prayer, and the last section discusses employing devotion in contemplative prayer. The awareness exercises help us get out of our heads and into our bodies—where de Mello says we must return to our senses. He describes the head as a place to begin to pray, but becoming aware of the feelings in our entire body, paying attention to our breath, and returning to our senses keeps us in the present presence. It is in the present moment that God meets us—not where we are anticipating or dreading the future, or resenting or taking pride in the past, but in the now. Our head lives in the past or future. Our body, our heart grounds us to the present moment.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/