Reading
Colossians 2:2,3
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Devotion
This week's artwork is a quilt, created by Scottish artist, Penny Sisto. Entitled "Merton's Glance" it provides a window into the world of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and spiritual author whose feast day it is today. This particular quilt lives in the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY. More about the artist may be found here Penny Sisto | About . She also had an exhibit that just ended in Mount St. Francis, IN Clarity at 83 – Art Exhibit by Penny Sisto - Conventual Franciscan Friars
I am intrigued by the way the artist renders Merton's eyes. They seem to be looking deeply into the viewer's very soul. Merton's face is stitched together in the most interesting and eclectic manner. For those who have studied Merton, he worked diligently to build bridges between and look for connections in all sorts of spiritual expressions. Though he is most famous for his 1948 work, Seven Story Mountain, I find more inspiration in his later works. His 1966 work, written two years before his death, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, includes this quote: "Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation."
Where are you finding connections to the spiritual world these days dear reader? Are they mediated by technology in some useful way? Or, perhaps you are finding technology a great temptation to waste time or numb your mind? I note with some irony that in reading this you have either found it on the internet or received it in an email. May you have eyes to see, in a glance, depths of spiritual reality that you may have heretofore been unaware.
Prayer
Gracious God, you called your monk Thomas Merton to proclaim your justice out of silence, and moved him in his contemplative writings to perceive and value Christ at work in the faiths of others: Keep us, like him, steadfast in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen (from A Great Cloud of Witnesses).