Another tile in the Martha/Mary mosaic....read more here.

 Another visit to Shoup-Parsons Woods and more sights of spring, with spring beauty, mayapples looking like furled beach umbrellas,  bloodroot and the first sunning turtle I've seen this year (with a friend). Plus a few mysteries, at least for me.

Click here: Tessera 3: Lectio Matters for the essay.

From the song "Julian of Norwich"
Love, like the yellow daffodil, is coming through the snow;
Love, like the yellow daffodil, brings joy to all I know.

Ring out, bells of Norwich
And let the winter come and go.
All shall be well again I know.
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April Day Away at Pathways, with the winter's last snow (we hope), daffodils about to bloom and in full bloom, a tenacious feather with fresh snowflakes, and a cheery cherry-colored pompom.

Early spring, with the mix of old and new at Parsons-Shoup woods -- bare branches with a red-wing blackbird trilling his spring song; a tiny trillium bud growing out of the mud and debris left by flooding; new leaves looking like exotic birds; a buckeye putting down roots; patterns of seed heads breaking open and a dry leaf caught on a stem with tiny new leaves budding out.

Another draft that got overlooked, with more sights from the woods, from the week before Christmas, before the snow fell. 

Just discovered an old draft of a post that never got published. This is from back in December, after a warmish day when I spent an hour enjoying the dried seed heads of a wildflower planting. I especially like the tiny seed to be found in the large seed head of the last photo.

Click here : Tessera 2: The Needful Thing for this essay.

I found the feather above in the labyrinth at Pathways Retreat, on a warm day back in December. When I was there in March, I discovered the same feather still tenaciously hanging on, though a bit bedraggled. I wonder how it looked a few days ago, when we woke to hoarfrost -- on daffodils, crocus, and holly. 

Tesserae are the small cube-shaped tiles of ceramic, glass, or precious stone that are used to make a mosaic. Over the next while, I will be creating verbal tesserae, short essays exploring different bits of my ongoing lectio divina on Luke 10:38-42, Luke’s account of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and Mary. Eventually, perhaps, we’ll discover the mosaic picture these tesserae create.

First, a word about lectio divina, or divine reading. Lectio is a centuries-old practice for reading scripture prayerfully. We approach the text seeking to encounter the living Word, an encounter that shapes and transforms us. We read a short passage slowly, noticing a word, phrase, or image that stands out for us; we stay with that phrase, savoring it and letting it echo in our hearts and imagination; we respond with prayer interaction through words, thoughts, and feelings; we move beyond words to rest in God. (Check here for simple directions on this way of Praying with Scripture.)

I have done lectio in multiple ways over the years, sometimes reading a few lines of scripture in the morning, discovering a word or phrase that has echoed throughout the day. For several years, I regularly went to www.sacredspace.ie/daily-prayer, an online website whose gentle questions guide the reader through lectio with the day’s chosen passage. I’ve also done group variations, where a weekly fellowship group looks at a passage together. And the contemplative photography I have been sharing on this blog is itself a sort of lectio divina, with the text being God’s creation.
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With this story of Martha and Mary, I have been doing a sustained lectio divina, a way of going deep with a text that I encountered in Lectio Matters: before the burning bush, by Sister Mary Margaret Funk, a Benedictine nun from Indianapolis. More on this in upcoming Tesserae.

I have been posting to Sparks of Light for nearly seven years now, trying to "Pay attention; be astonished; share about it." For many years the pattern was a weekly post with 5-6 photos, sharing moments of visual delight gathered that week. The "eyes of my heart" seem most often drawn to nature and moments of light and shadow, color or patterns, and the discoveries to be found by slowing down and looking more closely.

The past year or so my posting has been erratic, due to a fuller schedule and technical difficulties after a hard drive loss. The blog seemed ripe for a reboot, and I now have a better idea what the new version will be.

I will continue to share photos from contemplative prayer walks, camera in hand. In addition, I am adding a new thread, posts that will be labeled Tesserae. Tesserae are the small cube-shaped tiles of ceramic, glass or precious stone that are used to make a mosaic. Here they will be short written reflections on a biblical passage, one that I have been doing a sustained lectio divina with over the past several months.

​Not sure what lectio divina is, or wondering how one can stay with one biblical passage for months? Curious about what the passage is? Stay tuned -- I'll go into more detail in the first Tesserae. And if you are fed more by visuals than by words, I am not at all offended if you skip over the words and wait for the next photo post.