Les Botanistes

We are beginning our fall botanist project! This cute kit from Moulin Roty comes with a magnifying glass,  boxes for seeds, plants, and treasure collections, a nature observation booklet, and a leaf press. The girls and I wandered around our yard and collected leaves, flowers, grasses, and seeds which next will go into the leaf presses. Once the water is evaporated and the leaves are flattened, we plan to make laminated book marks to give during the valentine's season. The pink and red petals from the knockout roses and the purple catmint / nepeta will make the best valentines...but in the meantime, the fall foliage colors of red, orange, yellow, brown, and green are so inspiring for this autumn season.

This project is a lovely simple outdoor adventure with the children, and I might enjoy it more than they do. These first autumn evenings when the sun is out in full force, the temperatures are still warm with a slight crisp breeze in the air, and the evening hours approach earlier than the summer months, are really so great and special. This project is one way to capture the feelings of autumn in a preserved fallen leaf and a  pressed still-vibrant flower petal. The white and yellow daisy-looking wildflowers from the front pond are also a hit as we collect them while the frogs and toads leap into the water to escape the human trespassers in their otherwise peaceful cattail habitat.

We also picked up handfuls of the beautiful acorns in our front yard...but I've learned from previous seasons to leave them outside. I warn the girls to avoid putting them in their pockets, even though the acorns and the little acorn tops are so so pretty---and reminiscent of Julian of Norwich's acorn theology of life potential. The last time I collected a bowl full of acorns, I found little squirmy weevil larvae crawling all over the outside of the acorn shells. Upon researching it further, I discovered a great article from Iowa State University Extension about "The Dark Side of Collecting Acorns" (cue the scary music here). What the ISU entomologist wrote is true: Creepy crawlies everywhere! Here's that article: The Dark Side of Collecting Acorns

Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love (1373, Anno Domini) is a text that gives me great peace especially amidst suffering, anxiety, and the restlessness that is the hallmark of our earthly existence. As Blessed Julian repeats throughout her revelations: but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

In one of her visions, she witnesses the architecture of her inner soul as an enormous kingdom, an "endless castle" in which God is eternally enthroned:

I saw my soul as large
as if it were an endless castle
and as if it were a blessed kingdom;
and by the circumstances I saw in it
I understood that it is an honorable City.
In the midst of that City sits our Lord Jesus Christ,
true God and true man,
a handsome person,
and of tall stature,
a most exalted Bishop,
a most solemn King,
a most honorable Lord. (180)
---
And thus I understood truly that our soul can never have rest in things that are beneath itself. And when it comes above all created things into the self, still it cannot remain in the contemplation of the self, but all its contemplation is blissfully fixed on God, who is the Creator dwelling in the self (for in man's soul is His true dwelling). (181)

She testifies to the blinding, distancing effects of sin which thereby estranges us from the Godhead.

I saw two persons in bodily form, that is to say, a lord and a servant; and with this God gave me spiritual understanding. 

The lord sits solemnly in repose and in peace; the servant stands near, before his lord reverently, ready to do his lord's will. The lord looks upon his servant most lovingly and sweetly, and humbly he sends him to a certain place to do his will. 

The servant not only goes, but he suddenly leaps up and runs in great haste because of his love to do his lord's will. And immediately he falls into a deep pit and receives very great injury. Then he groans and moans and wails and writhes, but he cannot rise up nor help himself in any way. 

In all this, the greatest misfortune that I saw him in was the lack of reassurance, for he could not turn his face to look back upon his loving lord (who was very near to him and in whom there is complete comfort), but like a man who was feeble and witless for the moment, he was intent on his suffering, and waited in woe. (120)

When we turn our backs on God or stumble into the abyss of sin, God is always immediately nearby, waiting with a loving hand and a loving heart.

Amidst the many showings that the Lord granted to Blessed Julian of Norwich, she often wondered at the Lord's meaning. Fifteen years later, she eventually was granted spiritual understanding that God's meaning is always, essentially, and wonderfully Love.

Wouldst thou know thy Lord's meaning in this thing?
Be well aware:
love was His meaning.
Who showed it thee? Love.
What showed He thee? Love.
Why did He show it thee? For love.
Keep thyself in that love and thou shalt know and see more of the same,
but thou shalt never see nor know any other thing therein without end. (218)

I love this conclusion. Blessed Julian leaves us with the blessed reassurance of God's endless and eternal, expressive and essential, eloquent and effervescent Love. Deus Caritas Est!