rise up, pick up your mat, and go home

With no special goal or direction in mind, I was enjoying a slow-paced afternoon of meandering around the west wing of the Main Floor Gallery at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

Then I came around a corner and stopped, suddenly startled, facing a rendition by an anonymous artist of a familiar Gospel story, a painting I had never seen before:

I immediately recognized the image as the story of the paralytic-- one that is told again in today's Gospel, Mark 2:1-12. 

I found everything about this image provoking.  

In the past, when I have heard the healing of the paralytic story proclaimed at Mass, I always pictured a feeble man--and in my mind's eye, the man was carrying something small, maybe equivalent to a door mat! 

But our Lord is much more generous and merciful than my imagination.

Jesus healed the paralytic and brought him back to wholeness. He gave him the strength, energy, ability--everything he needed--to enable him to walk away with his mat and go back to his life... no matter how massive or heavy was the paralytic's old baggage!

Now let the images walk you through the Scripture:

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days,

it became known that he was at home.

Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them,

not even around the door,

and he preached the word to them.

They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.

Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd,

they opened up the roof above him.

After they had broken through,

they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to him,

“Child, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves,

“Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming.

Who but God alone can forgive sins?”

Jesus immediately knew in his mind what 

they were thinking to themselves, 

so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?

Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,

‘Your sins are forgiven,’

or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’?

But that you may know

that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth”

–he said to the paralytic,

“I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.”

He rose, picked up his mat at once, 

and went away in the sight of everyone.

They were all astounded

and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

Netherlandish 16th Century (painter)

The Healing of the Paralytic, c. 1560/1590

oil on panel

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

[I originally wrote about this painting in my blog October 25, 2012]

I don't want my children to inherit my weird neuroses...

“Son, in 35 years of religious study 

I've come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts; 

there is a God… and, I'm not Him.”

~Father Cavanaugh (played by Robert Prosky)

to a young Rudy (played by Sean Astin)

in the movie Rudy

I still remember the first time I became genuinely aware that my ability to love my children would always be incomplete, inefficient, clumsy.

I could not rely only on myself if I wanted them to know God’s unconditional love for them!

So every night before I went to bed, I went into each child’s room and placed my hands on his or her sleeping body, asking—sometimes begging—God to, “please heal the gap between the love she felt today and the perfect love you have for her.”

It was a prayer for healing for them, and a prayer of surrender for me.

Yet at times I still felt overwhelmed by this weight of parental responsibility for their well being—physically, mentally, emotionally, and of course, spiritually.

When I asked my friend and mentor Pat Stankus how she handled this sort of heaviness as a mom, she did her best to reassure me. Pat reminded me that God is always in charge, especially taking over when I walked in crooked lines. Above all, Pat reminded me that God knows and listens to the deepest desires of my heart.

Pat had such confidence and conviction when she spoke, either addressing a group or one-on-one, that I found it difficult not to trust with certainty anything she said.

“But, Pat,” I insisted, wondering if this time she understood my worry. “What can I do different? I don’t want my children to inherit my weird neuroses.”

“Oh no, Maria. I can assure you, that won’t happen… they will not have your same neuroses,” Pat answered without hesitation.

There was a substantial, long pause before Pat added with a huge smile, “your children will develop completely new ones!”

+     +     +     +

This is a powerful HEALING PRAYER that you may find helpful.

I have prayed it for myself, and I have also prayed it inserting the name of one of my children—especially when I sensed that he or she was struggling.

HEALING PRAYER

Jesus, I ask you to enter into my heart and release me from those life experiences that torment me. You know me so much better than I know myself. Therefore, bring your love to every corner of my heart. Wherever you discover the wounded child, touch, console, and release me. 

Walk back through my life to the very moment when I was conceived. Cleanse my bloodlines and free me from those things that may have exerted a negative influence at that moment. Bless me again as I was being formed in my mother’s womb and remove all barriers to wholeness which may have affected me during those months of confinement. Bridge the gap between the love that I needed and never perceived receiving. 

Jesus, I ask you to surround my infancy with Your light and heal those memories that keep me from being free. If I needed more of a mother’s love, send me Your Mother, Mary, to provide whatever was lacking. If I needed more of a father’s love and security to assure me that I was wanted and loved very deeply, I ask you to hold me and let me feel Your strong, protective arms. Give me renewed confidence and courage to face the trials of the world because I know my Father’s love will support me if I stumble and fall. 

Thank you, Lord!

 [Photos of Dale Chihuly art, permanent exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art]

beauty in the details

Good photography comes from a state of grace.

~ Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain

"For Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain, 

beauty was in the details: 

a child's face, a dog, a reflection. 

'The perfect photograph is a kind of miracle that appears in a blaze of light...

You press the button almost by chance and the miracle happens'." 

[quotes from June/July issue of AFAR Magazine,

photos mine!

© María Ruiz Scaperlanda]

He turns all things to beauty

Would you be willing to create a piece of art that you knew would exist only briefly?

Would you give your whole energy to a project that you knew would only survive for a fleeting moment in time?

And would you find joy and purpose in it?

Meet Jim Denevan.

For the past twenty years, this California-based surfer has been creating sand art, not in a glass, but on the beach itself, using the shore as his canvas.

He began by creating sand designs along the rugged California coastline. But he has now expanded to deserts in Nevada, beaches in Australia, and lakeshores in Siberia.

Using only a rake and beach driftwood as tools, his designs can extend over hundreds of feet or more than a mile.  And they always disappear with the tides.

“I do it for the meditative benefits. The beach is my sanctuary.”

No one who has seen his designs – even in photos – can argue with the soulful beauty of Denevan’s simple drawings, geometric patterns, or 3-D visual illusions. Perhaps my favorite design is the swirl—an energetic spiral... moving inward.

“When I’m pleased with a composition, it’s bittersweet to see it go… But I know the next day that stretch of sand is going to be just as wonderful. And I’ll be out there doing it all over again.”

Talk about living the practice of being in the moment!

“God passes through the thicket of the world, 

and wherever His glance falls 

He turns all things to beauty.” 

~St. John of the Cross

imagining the Visitation

Yesterday at daily Mass as we celebrated the feast of the Visitation I couldn't help  remembering some of the beautiful images of this feast that we saw on our French pilgrimage. 

Two very different images that caught my attention picture unique scenarios as the two artists imagined this beautiful feast of the encounter... here they are, Mary and Elizabeth, both of them pregnant!

At the Cathedral in Amien, the artist pictured the Visitation as a "contemporary" event. And below, a modern impressionistic rendition inspired by the stained glass windows of the great Chartres Cathedral:

"The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst,

you have no further misfortune to fear.

On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem:

Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged!

The LORD, your God, is in your midst,

a mighty savior;

He will rejoice over you with gladness,

and renew you in his love,

He will sing joyfully because of you,

as one sings at festivals."

~Book of Zephaniah, 

Chapter 3: 15-18