Lynn Underwood

Art, science, and personal experiences all help us better understand who we are and how we can flourish

Category: spiritual experiences

  • why create art?

    art by lynn

    Am I wasting my time by drawing things like this hydrangea? Should I do something more useful? I just re-read the little book Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by Josef Pieper, and his words helped me answer that question.

    “How can man preserve and safeguard the foundation of his spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted relationship to reality?  The capacity to perceive the visible world ‘with our own eyes’ is indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here about man’s essential inner richness…. To see things is the first step toward that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, which constitutes the essence of man as a spiritual being.”

    Being in touch with reality does seem like a worthwhile goal. One of the ways Pieper suggests that we do this, is to become active in artistic creation. 

    ”Before you can express anything in tangible form, you first need eyes to see. The mere attempt, therefore, to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal observation. Long before a creation is completed, the artist has gained for himself another and more intimate achievement: a deeper and more receptive vision, a more intense awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and inconspicuous, an eye for things previously overlooked. In short: the artist will be able to perceive with new eyes the abundant wealth of all visible reality, and thus challenged, additionally acquires the inner capacity to absorb into his mind such an exceedingly rich harvest. The capacity to see increases.”

    We all have the capacity to create art. No matter what the outcome looks like, the process of doing so can enrich our capacity to see, and this can help us clearly perceive the world as it is in all its depth and that can enrich our lives. This is a valuable thing to do.

    Is there some kind of creative activity that you can do today? When we loosen the constraints of excessive critique of our creations, we can have fun, and in the process can more clearly touch what is real in other moments of our days.

  • The beauty of creation

    One of the 16 questions in my daily spiritual experience scale is: ‘Recently, have you been spiritually touched by the beauty of creation?’ ‘When does it happen for you?’ It can reflect our feelings of awe when in the natural world – when we encounter animals and mountains, trees and flowers and how we respond to these. But it also can happen when we encounter the artistic creations of others. These beautiful creations of musicians, visual artists and poetic words. The book on the set of questions has examples of how different people have responded to this question that might provoke an awareness of this in your life.

    I love drawing animals and flowers. I never tire of the feelings of connection to the wider world and the transcendent that I have when drawing or painting these.           

    Are you ever spiritually touched by the beauty of creation? Are there ways to find circumstances that stir that in you today? The natural world, music, visual art? It can be so uplifting in the midst of other life circumstances that pull us down.

  • I love weeds

    art by lynn

    I collected these on my afternoon walk. I couldn’t resist picking them and drawing them. There is beauty all around us. With the terrible and distressing events happening in our world, the beautiful weeds still bloom. I know I need a reminder to look for them and celebrate their beauty in the midst of everything.

  • What can I do now?

    We so often think we need special talents and tools to do something good. But just using what is in front of us, stretching out to express what is in our hearts in the moment, can lead to small good things.

    While talking on the phone with my daughter recently, I picked up a ballpoint pen, and a sheet of printer paper. In front of me was a vase of ranunculus flowers given to me as a gift.

    It is not yet spring here, but the flowers on the table were a taste of spring. All my feelings came together: listening with care and concern to the words of my daughter, feeling the love from the person who gave me the flowers, appreciating the unusual beauty of these flowers, feeling the urge to express some of this, not only in my words of response to her but beyond that.  The perfect expression was not there – the perfect tools, the perfect talent, the perfect response to love flowing in me.  But I could say and do something.

    In these especially chaotic times, there are limits to what we can do. Each moment is an opportunity to do something: love in ways we can, express what we have within us, act in ways that contribute something good, acknowledge the good in others. I need to remind myself of that, and keep doodling – in my actions and words as well as in my drawings- using what talents and tools I have in front of me and not waiting for the perfect opportunity.

     

  • poetry and music weblinks

    Here are some web-links to poetry and music from the Spiritual Connection book that I gathered up to post. I hope some of them can help to provide fuel for you in these days.

    Here is a sampling of the first few on the webpage link:

    10   Had I Not Been Awake by Seamus Heaney

    34   Postscript by Seamus Heaney

    38   Dust by Dorianne Laux

    48   Even in the Quietest Moments Supertramp

    49   There Is Some Kiss We Want, Rumi

    134  3055 by Olafur Arnald

    ….

  • Seeing into the life of things

     

    With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deeper power of joy, we see into the life of things.

     -William Wordsworth

     

  • speaking my mind

    Art by Pawel Kuczynski – permission from the Artist to reproduce

    For nine months now I have been re-composing and recording an audiobook of my Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book. It was published back in 2013, and needed extensive revision to work in audio. I took a lot of the research and quantitative material out and put it in the appendix, so it could be focused even more on the experiences that the listener had personally.  I wanted to narrate it myself, so set microphone and iPad up in the corner of the room I use for art, with baffles and pop-filter.  The whole process has been a labor of love. Editing out sounds, sending to an audio-engineer, re-recording and re-editing.  I am now working with Applelane Press to get it out on different platforms. For now, it is here: https://payhip.com/b/c4jv

    I enjoy listening to audio-books and thought in this format people could allow the book to wash over them.  I developed a journal as a PDF included with the book so that people would have a space to write their answers and reflect on the questions throughout the book, a part of the paperback that many have appreciated.

    One of the challenges in the process has been that I have had to listen to, and re-listen to, my voice. I felt it would be better to read it myself rather than have someone else narrate it, and I am hoping that adds to its value for the listener.

    The picture here is by an artist I admire so much, Pawel Kuczynski. A picture can truly represent even more than a thousand words.  This picture encourages me to get back to doing my drawings and paintings, now that this audiobook is floating out into the world.

  • elegance of grace

    “Don’t push the river” a friend of mine reminded me.  Recently I have been thinking about how grace makes its way through me, in my life. These words helped.

    Grace is one of the most majestic words in theology. It suggests the sublime spontaneity of the divine which no theory or category could ever capture.  Grace has its own elegance. It is above the mechanics of agenda or operation. No-one can set limits to the flow of grace. Its presence and force remain unmeasurable and unpredictable.  Grace also suggests how fluent and seamless the divine presence is. There are not compartments, corners or breakages imaginable in the flow of grace. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. It suggests a  compassion and understanding for all the ambivalent and contradictory dimensions of the human experience and pain. This climate of kindness nurtures the sore landscape of the human heart and urges torn ground to heal and become fecund. Grace is the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness. – (John O Donahue, Beauty, 2004, Harper Collins pg 228)

  • the spiritual practice of drawing portraits

    drawing by lynn

    When I draw or paint someone, I find myself exploring the heart of the person, and becoming sympathetic to their fears, their desires, their concerns.  We can never fully understand what another person is feeling or their circumstances or history, but we can stretch into that in our portraits.  We are limited by our skills. But we can still move in love toward the person, and see the fundamental value of another human being, when we draw them. For me, this is a spiritual practice.

  • asking

    drawing by lynn

    “I asked the earth, I asked the sea and the deeps, among the living animals, the things that creep. I asked the winds that blow, I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars….My question was the gaze I turned to them. Their answer was their beauty.” – St Augustine.

     

  • A daily choreography of praise

    art by lynn

    […] every bole and limb begins to dance;
    the universe’s light-fantastic prayer
    now lauds a wooer taking still a chance
    on just this cosmic ballet’s elegance
    where nothing is decided in advance,

    where hadrons jiggle in their resonance
    while galaxies bebop and flowers blaze;
    in cedars and wild animals I glance

    a daily choreography of praise.

     

    -from Micheal O’Siadhail’s ‘Five Quintets’Baylor University Press 2018

  • joy nevertheless

    drawing by lynn

    I am fascinated by how we can experience joy even in the midst of tough times. I have seen time and time again that joy can be found in the midst of so much gunk. I have interviewed people and read research studies and other writing about resiliency and post traumatic growth, and have heard how people are thriving in the midst of trauma and disease.  I find it inspires me. I meet people whose lives seem much tougher than mine, and I find myself in awe of the joy they can find in the midst of it all, and am encouraged.

  • dancing with joy

    I have always loved to dance, and to watch others dancing. There is something about dancing that can express joy in fantastic ways, connecting our feelings of joy to how we feel in our bodies. I have enjoyed a video recently, of the TU Dance Company in a collaboration with the singer Bon Iver, and I enjoyed sketching the dancers, entering into their experience while doing so (click here for a YouTube). Music and dance together can lift us up, no matter if we are participants or those watching.

  • flowers and darkness

    Flowers grow out of dark moments.  
Therefore, each moment is vital.  It affects 
the whole. Life is a succession of moments and to live each, is to succeed.

    -Sr Corita Kent

    I am emerging from many weeks suffering from ‘the revenge of the chickenpox’! This quote from this marvelous creative lady seems just right.

  • enraptured

    art by lynn

    …For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven

    From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.”

    -Patrick Kavanaugh (from Canal Walk, from Collected Poems, 2004)

  • stepping off the escalator

    Many of the Zen stories that are almost always incomprehensible in rational terms are simply the ringing of an alarm clock, and the reaction of the sleeper.  Usually the misguided sleeper makes a response which in effect turns off the alarm so he can go back to sleep. Sometimes he jumps out of bed with a shout of astonishment that it is so late.  Sometimes he just sleeps and does not hear the alarm at all.

    art by lynn

    But we in the West, living in the tradition of ego-centered practicality and geared entirely for the use and manipulation of everything, always pass from one thing to another, from cause to effect, from the first to the next to the last and then back to the first. Everything always points to something else, and hence we never stop anywhere because we cannot: as soon as we pause, the escalator reaches the end of the ride and we have to get off and find another one.

    -Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite.

  • spirituality is not a project

    The false self impulsively turns the spiritual life into a project and a task of the ego. But what is the false self trying to get that a person doesn’t already have? The false self prays from where it thinks it should be or would like to be. The true self prays from where it is.

    -Albert Haas OFM

  • nighttime and rain

    As I reflected on the days here in the northern hemisphere getting darker and darker, this quote from Merton seemed just right. This is from my advent calendar.

    I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking up the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

    -Thomas Merton, from the essay Rain and the Rhinoceros

  • unbelievable sunset

    A beautiful sunset from the hills of Kentucky. The colors in the sky were unbelievable, but I tried to capture them anyway.

  • still

    from the poem Still, by AR Ammons

    …at one sudden point came still,

    stood in wonder:

    moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent

    with being!

    From The Selected Poems: 1951-1977, Expanded Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1986 by A. R. Ammons.

    I was on retreat this past week, and I even found the bathroom beautiful.  It seems to have followed me home, together with the many positive effects of the week at the monastery.

     

  • I would rather…

    I put a bumper sticker on my car last winter. It reads “I would rather be here now.” I don’t naturally think this, especially in tough times. When I stuck it on, I wondered whether I would always agree with the words: in traffic jams, in the midst of conflict, if I had an accident, in the deep cold of winter. It is a daily reminder to me to whole-heartedly inhabit my own skin, no matter what the circumstances.

    There is a chapter “Yes!” in my latest book, that I just recorded in audio. Click here if you want to listen. In it I invite us to reflect on our personal challenges and difficulties, yet affirm the value and wonder of who and where we are. I also write about how we view our past, and how we might see the good in what we might see as mistakes and things that don’t seem at all perfect.

  • Traveling without seeing ahead

    We travelers, walking to the sun,

    can’t see
 ahead, but looking back the very light

    That blinded us shows us the way we came,

    Along which blessings now appear, risen

    As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,

    By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward

    That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

     

    –Wendell Berry, from Given: New Poems

    So often I want to see what is coming ahead, so that I can plan, so that I can better control things, including myself….But the future is not something we can see in any kind of certain way. And imagining that we can is a delusion to be avoided. That does not mean that we cannot be hopeful, however, for bright surprises.

  • nonchalant asparagus

    One of the best things about summer where I live is food from the farmer’s market. I cannot grow plants for the life of me, but I so enjoy looking at the beauty of the produce at market, and then, of course, eating food made from fresh ingredients. These small blessings add so much to the quality of my life. The asparagus this year has been great. Fresh food like this inspires even this mediocre cook to make a dinner. When I sent this drawing to my daughter she said it was nonchalant asparagus. 

  • small things

    “People who place their small time into the heart of eternity, which they already carry within, will suddenly realize that even small things, have inexpressible depths, are messengers of eternity, are always more than they appear to be, are like drops of water in which is reflected the entire sky, like signs pointing beyond themselves, like messengers running ahead of the message they are carrying and announcing the coming of eternity, like shadows of true reality that are cast over us because the real is already very near.”—Karl Rahner (trans. Annemarie Kidder)

    art by lynn

  • freshness

    art by lynn

    “There is a freshness deep down things”, wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins.

    I am finding myself looking for freshness in each day and moment, and finding it in the most unexpected places.

     

  • Why beauty?

    art by lynn

    But are these beautiful because we think them so, or because they are beautiful in the mind of nature or the mind of God, beautiful by intention inborn in a world beloved?

     

    Beauty is the crisis of our knowing, the signature of love indwelling in all created things, called from nothing by love, recognized and answered by love in the human heart, not reducible by any analysis to any fact.

     

    –Wendell Berry, A Small Porch, Counterpoint Press, 2016

  • good conversation

    “16 questions” by lynn

    What makes for a good interview? I think Dr. Rachael Kohn has it nailed. I had the privilege of being interviewed by her on the Australian public radio ABC show The Spirit of Things, which aired on March 26. She is an exemplar of how we can help good conversations to happen in our daily lives. We can ask questions that bring out the other person, and sometimes stretch them in an accepting context. We can take time to listen to the answers, rather than thinking about what we are going to say next. We can find out about the other person, and engage with them, not use them as a vehicle to press our point of view. When in the course of research, I  interviewed people about the practices that were important for compassionate love, ‘really listening to the other person,’ was one of those practices.

    Rachael engages in conversation with a perfectly lovely voice, and that helps this too. She sets the person at ease through her respectful and honest attitude. She gently asks probing and sometimes hard questions, which enable interpersonal connection and understanding to happen. Of course, a conversation that is designed to be broadcast, and happens between continents, can never be like one over coffee or at home, and because it was an interview I didn’t get to ask her questions, but nevertheless, this same kind of asking and listening can happen in our own living rooms or when we are in a variety of social situations.

    The show, which includes a poem and quotes from the Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book, is now up on the ABC website, where it can be played or downloaded http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/are-you-spiritually-connected/8376242  Her balanced approach provides a model for us all for how to make a space for truly good conversation.

  • Contour drawing as a spiritual practice

    contour self-portrait by lynn

    One of my favorite ways of sketching is to do blind, or semi-blind, contour drawing. In it, you try not to look at your paper at all, and not lift your pen, while you draw. You look at the subject, not the paper, and feel your way around and within your subject, as you draw with your pen or pencil. I was first exposed to this method in a studio drawing class in college and found it marvelous. When I do this while drawing a person, it connects me with the interior feelings of the person. It reminds me that the visual nature of the person is not just about ‘looking good,’ and that the success of a drawing is not in its photographic likeness. It also draws my attention to how we can perceive some of the complex life of a person even through outer appearance. It is, for me, a kind of spiritual exercise.

    You may wish to try it. All you need is a pencil, paper, and a subject. The easiest to start with is yourself in a mirror. More details about this method can be found in a book by Kimon Nicolaides, A Natural Way to Draw.

  • arresting attention

    art by lynn

    I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

    Saul Bellow, the Art of Fiction No. 37, 1966, The Paris Review

  • listening to birches

    Poets can open our hearts and touch us. Robert Frost does this for me in his poem ‘Birches’.  The complete poem can be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44260 or in The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969).

    When I see birches bend to left and right

    Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

    I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

    And then after Frost digresses about how ice storms bend the trees downwards, he continues:

    By riding them down over and over again

    Until he took the stiffness out of them,

    And not one but hung limp, not one was left

    For him to conquer. He learned all there was

    To learn about not launching out too soon

    And so not carrying the tree away

    Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

    To the top branches, climbing carefully

    With the same pains you use to fill a cup

    Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

    Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

    Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

     

    So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

    And so I dream of going back to be.

    It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

    And life is too much like a pathless wood

    Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

    Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

    From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

    I’d like to get away from earth awhile

    And then come back to it and begin over.

    May no fate willfully misunderstand me

    And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

    Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

    I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

    I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

    And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

    Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

    But dipped its top and set me down again.

    That would be good both going and coming back.

    One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

    Each of us may be touched differently by this poem. The full poem can transport us into the woods, the natural world. The description of the boy can take us back to the sense of adventure and freedom of swinging and climbing as children, and even our adventures as adults. But the poet also gives a way to think of our desires to be free of the constraints of the world, when our faces ‘burn and tickle with the cobwebs’ and ‘one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it.’  Yet, he reminds us:  ‘Earth’s the right place for love.’  We launch out in this wild world that is the right place for love.

  • Joy in hard times

    art by lynn
    art by lynn

    I am involved in a project at Yale University on joy, considering what science might have to contribute to our understanding of it. I have also been doing more work and writing on how dire circumstances can help us dispel certain delusions of thinking. These words speak to both:

    The basic assumption of the happiness mentality—in spite of considerable hard evidence to the contrary—is that if one lives one’s life correctly one will be happy. The corollary of this assumption is that if one is not happy, one is doing something wrong. These two beliefs form the foundation of a system that has become so rampant in recent years that many people now feel any sign of unhappiness in their lives is a symptom of psychological or spiritual disorder. People who believe this strive to resolve or repress unhappiness as quickly as possible….

    The happiness mentality causes people to repress or deny many of their own negative feelings. It prohibits the rich experience of living through painful situations, of fully feeling and being in the sadness, grief, and fear that are natural parts of human existence. It fosters a pastel quality of life, with limited ranges of emotion. Some shallow conditions of ‘happiness’ may be achieved in this way, but joy is altogether out of the question. Most of us know that prohibiting agony in the experience of life must also prohibit joy. To try to accomplish one without the other is to dilute both the experience and the meaning of life. But the happiness mentality can overcome this knowledge, convince us that sadness is unhealthy, and cause us to bridle all our feelings. At best, this watered-down existence takes on a ‘Pollyanna’ atmosphere, denying the negativity of life. At its worst, it sinks into apathy, denying life itself.

    Human beings who adhere to the happiness mentality are continually attempting to deprive themselves of the rich dark side of life, the leaven, the creative complementarity without which happiness is empty. If these attempts are successful, life’s experiences become as flimsy as tissue. If the attempts fail, people feel that something is deeply wrong inside them. Neither way allows the precious beautiful, awesome possibilities of accepting the richness of life as it presents itself in each moment.

    Perhaps the greatest inherent defect of the happiness mentality is that it prohibits sensitivity and responsiveness to the suffering of others. The happiness mentality maintains that one must first organize one’s own life toward the absence of discomfort. Even if a person manages to accomplish this for a brief period of time, the terrible pain in the rest of the world still exists. One then has an extremely limited range of options in responding to this pain. One can deny it, shut it out of awareness through ‘selective inattention,’ or one can engage in brief sophomoric attempts to rationalize it. But the fact remains: private happiness can exist as a permanent condition in the midst of public suffering only if it is based on delusion.

    (This is of course not to say that one must carry the world’s burdens on one’s shoulders with constant morbidity. In fact, the happiness mentality is in large part a rebellion against precisely this kind of puritanical pessimism. It was not too long ago that people in our culture were looked upon with suspicion if they appeared too happy. Many puritanical-pietistic themes of Middle America maintained that life was hard, that each person had to bear the cross, and that suffering was good for the soul. It was believed that something was morally wrong with people who did not seem to be struggling with the pain of life. It is not surprising that generations of such somber sobriety would eventually bring rebellion. As usual, however, the pendulum swung too far. Now, instead of happiness being seen as a moral impropriety, unhappiness is seen as a psychological defect.)

    Whenever one is preoccupied with happiness, the possibility of joy is pre-empted. Poets, contemplatives, and some philosophers have long maintained that a fundamental qualitative difference exists between these two states, but our society is just barely beginning to appreciate how radical that difference is. Happiness has to do with Freud’s old pleasure principle: the satisfaction of needs and the avoidance of pain. Joy is altogether beyond any consideration of pleasure or pain, and in fact requires a knowledge and acceptance of pain. Joy is the reaction one has to the full appreciation of Being. It is one’s response to finding one’s rightful, rooted place in life, and it can happen only when one knows through and through that absolutely nothing is being denied or otherwise shut out of awareness.”

    May, Gerald. (1987). Will and Spirit. Harper and Row. pp 14-16

  • memo to self

    on the bulletin board in the kitchen

    acceptquotecomprLynnUnderwood

  • to see what we see

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.”        –Charles Peguy

  • milagros

    I found myself trying to find words and image to convey something of this tiny arm and hand full of promise.

    Milagrosdrawing by lynnb

     

    Loose

    in the breeze of the holy

    spirit

    draw near

    flow through

    unclench –

    no need.  New

    power now.

    Will of good pleasure

    through my body

    my arms

    my hands.

     

     

  • juicy

    art by lynn
    art by lynn

    I have asked people what kinds of things they thought of, when they felt ‘thankful for their blessings.’ One lady replied that after recovering from a bad cold, she really appreciated the taste of tomatoes. So often we just don’t notice wonderful things until we lose them.