Keeping things in perspective

By Nancy Shuman

Cross with Ladder in Perspective by Lautensack
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The following is something I have a hard time describing, but I find it important enough that I'm going to give it a try.

I think we're made to look for the time when things are stable and settled, but we set our sights too short.  Heaven is where our gaze (even now) is to be directed.

I compare it to the "vanishing point" I did projects on in Art school.  In a study of perspective, the vanishing point is that place on the horizon where what one sees, in effect, vanishes.  It's a central point, sometimes illustrated by a single little dot.  It is that spot to which all things are directed.   Everything in the picture is geared toward that point.  Streets, roofs, windows, roads can then be lined up as the eye sees them: wider when they're closer to the viewer, and narrower toward the horizon.  the picture is only correct, nicely proportioned, and logical if the artist takes into account the vanishing point.  In a basic perspective lesson, the student is taught to project the vanishing point and then to practice by using rulers until all things in the picture line up correctly with that one central spot.


Continue reading at Nancy's blog The Breadbox Letters.

Meditate on the Last Things

By Ruth Ann Pilney

Autumn Leaves by Millais (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

Watching the beautiful autumn leaves fall reminds me of the temporality of earthly life. An excerpt from Bambi, a children’s novel by Felix Salten, is a dialogue between two oak leaves clinging to a branch high above the others.

     “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on our branch,” said one. 

     “You never know who’s going to go next,” said the other.

     “Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we’re gone and after them still others, and more and more?”

     “It really is true,” whispered the second leaf.  “We can’t even begin to imagine it. It’s beyond our powers.”

     After a period of silence, the first leaf said quietly to herself, “Why must we fall?”

     The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we have fallen?  Do we feel anything, do we know about ourselves down there?”

     “Who knows?  Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.”

     “Let’s not talk any more about such things,” said the first leaf.

     “No, we’ll let it be.”

Many people eschew discussing death, but at this time of year the Church encourages us to ponder such things: death and judgment, heaven and @#!*% , the end of the world, the second coming of our Lord and Savior, and the establishment of the Reign of God.  We wait in joyful hope!


Ruth Ann originally posted this at her blog From the Pulpit of My Life.

A thousand dimensions

by Nancy Shuman

Photo by Greg Smith, Wikimedia Creative Commons.

I fell in love with the sea when I was seventeen.  Never mind that I'd never laid eyes on it.  Never mind that I was growing up in a landlocked American state, far from salty breezes.  I imagined crashing waves and windswept dunes and oh, such a wonderful smell! 

The first time I saw the ocean, that day when I was hit with the full impact of sounds and scents and gusts of wind for which I had only been partially prepared, I knew I'd had no way beforehand of picturing the scene spread out in three dimensions before me.  The constant roll of waves, that overpowering ROAR, the feel of feet being sucked down into wet sand.  Even though I'd dreamed of it and actually in some way loved it, there was no way I could have envisioned the totality of it all. 

Everything I'd imagined about the sea was true.  The only shock was in discovering how much MORE there was to it.  The three-dimensionality of it.  The engagement of senses I'd never thought would be called into service. 

Sometimes I compare my love of the sea to love of God.  Never having seen Him, I love Him.  I have true ideas of Him, and through His grace I can actually know Him.  Yet there is no way I can know Him in His fullness until I see Him face to face.  I cannot even envision such Totality, and I suspect such vision would overwhelm a human still in the flesh.

Will there be, in eternity, sounds beyond anything we've ever heard here?  Colors not detectable to eyes of flesh?  A thousand dimensions spread before us, in every taste and shade, in every tone and depth, in every texture of Love.... ?

"Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love Him."  (1 Corinthians 2:9) 


This was originally posted at  The Breadbox Letters. Nancy Shuman also blogs at  The Cloistered Heart.