Agatha Nolen

Putting God First and the Holy Relationships that Flow From Our First Love
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Beauty of the Mundane

Agatha Nolen March 17, 2014

This rose photo is one of my favorites. I shot it in September 2013 when I was testing a new camera setting. I can almost smell the roses in the air.

I discovered why this photo is so appealing to me when training to give docent tours at the Frist Center for Visual Arts of the current exhibition, Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan.

Western artists were enamored with “everything Japanese” after trade treaties were signed in 1854 and the mysterious romance of Japan flowed to the rest of the world.

Japanese art was shaped by Wabi-sabi, a Japanese worldview that is centered on the transience and imperfection of life.  In Wabi-sabi, things that are beginning to bud or in decay, are better than things which are in perfect bloom. In Wabi-sabi, we have an altered state of consciousness which gives us the ability to see the beauty in the mundane and simple.

It isn’t the perfect bloom in the foreground of the photo that I found so attractive, but the bloom deep into the photo. With only a few petals left, it is in the final stages of its life, but mysteriously, the light seems to be shining brighter on the bloom in decay. It is as if the decayed bloom is being illuminated to show the younger blossoms not only what they will become, but that they will still be beautiful, shining brilliantly until their very last day.

As I read about Wabi-sabi, this sentence stuck out: “The signatures of nature can be so subtle that it takes a quiet mind and a cultivated eye to discern them.”

I want a quiet mind and cultivated eye that can see the transience and imperfection of life as beautiful, taking delight in the mundane and simple.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

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Book Launch

Book Launch: March 2022
You Are Loved: Praying with John

You Are Loved: Praying with Anglican Prayer Beads (10:43)

Why I am an Anglican
a short story


Friends of the
Anglican Pilgrim Centre in Santiago (Spain)

Video
Dean Robert Willis of Canterbury Cathedral on St. James’ Day-July 25, 2021 (35:04) and the planned Anglican Pilgrim Centre


Workshop: The Holiness of TIME
based upon the

2015 Lenten Series from SSJE
It's time to...
STOP, PRAY, WORK, PLAY & LOVE
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You Are Loved: Praying with John
(book information)


Chasing My Father-Book Information

Duke Divinity School

St. George's Episcopal Church

Why I am an Anglican (pdf)

The Society of St. John the Evangelist

Frist Art Museum

Miracles

Healing Prayers - Index

“Spiritual practices and beliefs as a social determinant of health: When will the profession of pharmacy address the whole body-mind-spirit triad?” (August 15, 2023)

 

Sermon June 11, 2023
Agatha Nolen

St. George’s Episocpal Church
How are You Called to Be Bold? (12:10)


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Agatha Nolen

Putting God First and the Holy Relationships that Flow From Our First Love

304 Pinnacle Pl, Nashville, TN, 37221, United States

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