Category: Friendship

Our Lady of Guadalupe – Patroness of the Americas

On By Susan FeathersIn Art and Culture, Community, Culture, Friendship, Nature, Spiritual, WomenLeave a comment
from http://www.sancta.org/intro.html
from http://www.sancta.org/intro.html

Our Lady of Guadalupe inspires millions of believers, offering a mothering balm of love, peace, and forgiveness through her Blessed Son. Read the legend of the appearance of the Holy Mother on Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City. Her apparition was witnessed by Juan Diego who had gone to the hill at the request of his Bishop to gather roses for the church. The Bishop’s actions were inspired by a request for a sign from the Holy Mother after she asked the Bishop to build a church on the hill. When Juan Diego returned with the roses, an image of the Holy Mother was embedded in his tilga–a garment that has remained without any sign of wear or age for the last 485 years.

Miracles do happen but we never know how or sometimes why. The universe and the Earth herself are imbued with numinous qualities that we intuit but can never “prove”.

guadelupe-tumamoc-hill
Guadalupe Shrine on Tumamoc Hill

In my novel Threshold, Dolores Olivarez is a devout Catholic who recites the Rosary as she hikes the mountain to the top.

At the summit, she looks out over the vast metropolis, and then down at the Birthplace of Tucson at the base of the mountain. cropped-cropped-mission-a-mt.jpg

From a place of reverence, Dolores seeks to understand the meaning of her time and place, much as Juan Diego climbed to gather his roses.

At the Trailhead of a New Year

On By Susan FeathersIn Friendship, Nature, SpiritualLeave a comment
Paul Baker: The Quiet Path
Paul Baker: The Quiet Path

As the New Year begins today,  I am listening to Paul Baker’s beautiful Celtic harp renderings on The Quiet Path.

I believe it is important to be aware of first steps with the gift of this New Path.

Time as we Westerners perceive it, is a linear path.  But, many other cultural traditions see time as circular, spiral in nature, turning back on itself, learning again and again until the lesson at each part of a life’s path, is complete.

On this first day of the new year, the new physical cycle of the sun’s path, take time to understand where you are on your life’s path. The sun “returns”, lengthening daytime, illuminating our perceptions, invigorating growth and fruitful endeavor.

Happy New Year My Dear Family and Friends!

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”

― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge