Walking in my winter garden, I see some things I might not notice when the drab palette comes back to green and growth. This mossy stone ball reminds me of an organic global map and prompts me on this Valentine’s morning to love all my neighbors, including those beyond my daily shores. I am called to widen my view, open my mind. I pray to know more, in order to better love.
“Love follows knowledge.” ~ Thomas Aquinas
Where do you go when you feel troubled or unsettled? Is there a place you find healing? I don’t have need to go further than my back yard. I open the kitchen door and go into sanctuary, to retreat, to respite. I sit on the stone wall surrounding my herb garden, crush a few leaves of rosemary or mint and breathe deeply. Breath prayers rewarded with familiar fragrance bring to my attention the joy of growing things. I walk the flagstone path between the roses and measure countless blessings. I sit in stillness and wonder by the little pond and watch the silver flashes and ripples, gifts from fish and sunlight. Quiet is broken only by trickling water and birdsong. I witness the miracle of beginnings and rhythms as my eyes wander from new buds to the pregnant green of promised daffodils. I am settled.
When my granddaughter receives a present, she pulls off paper and bow, looks at her surprise with a giggle of pleasure, saying a sweet “Thank you!” The unwrapping and happy surprise come naturally. She has learned to say Thank You.
I have learned this, too.
If I can begin and end my day with gratitude, then the gift of that day has been carefully unwrapped, examined, delighted in, and acknowledged. God has given me a new day and I can choose to meet it by expressing my gratitude for the life and breath that lets me live it, as well as for work to do and strength to do it. Before I sleep again, I can choose to thank Him for what my day has held before I claim His peace for rest and refreshment. Those two bookends hold up my busy days and increase my awareness of being awash in grace.
Years ago I kept a gratitude journal, in which I wrote 3 things I was thankful for every day. I was recently given another calendar/ gratitude journal, this one leaving 5 spaces for each day. I love doing this. I like rereading those entries, because I am reminded of how many things I find for which to be thankful . Seldom are these related to possessions, although often for relationship. I am grateful for Plenty. I am grateful for enough. Gratitude and Contentment don’t mean the same, but they sure do look alike, so I am sure they are kin.
January 8, 2010: Today, I am grateful for a friend’s hug, herbs still growing in my January garden, starting a new book, making a memory with Skye and Lauren last night (movie night: Sound of Music), and these smiles…
Bobby Gross, in his book Living the Christian Year, speaks of giving ourselves permission for both song and groan during Advent. The waiting, the yearning, longing element present in this time were in my thoughts here.
Advent Lament
We wait without words
Behind windows covered with curtains of darkness
With shoulders too weary to shrug.
Wearing shawls of worry.
Behind windows covered with curtains of darkness
Worried, wandering, worn.
With shoulders too weary to shrug.
Sanctus Deus, Sanctus Fortis, Miserere Nobis.
Worried, wandering, worn,
Wearing shawls of worry.
Sanctus Deus, Sanctus Fortis, Miserere Nobis.
We wait without words.
Written by Deborah Bray, recorded by Cynthia Clawson, this hymn brings beauty and mystery to my Advent morning meditation.
In the long way that we take, in our growing up, in the vicissitudes of life by which we are led into its meaning and its mystery, there are established for us, for each one of us, certain landmarks. They represent discoveries sometimes symbolizing the moment when we became aware of the purpose of our lives; they may establish for us our membership in the human frailty; they may be certain words that were spoken into a stillness within us the sound thereof singing forever through all the corridors of our being as landmarks; yes, each one of us has our own. No communication between people is possible if there is not some mutual recognition of the landmarks.
Howard Thurman in The Inward Journey
I almost missed it. I nearly overlooked the cobalt and cloud blue ruffles of this tiny iris that seems to have bloomed overnight. Three years ago, I gave Joe a garden gift for Father’s Day: a mail order collection of iris bulbs in all shades of blue and purple. Eleven came up that year, all but one. The next year only three or four dusky green blades pushed through. Last year, none. So I wasn’t expecting to find this lovely offering. I am grateful to notice what this morning brought to light. Richard Wilbur’s poem adds to my note to self: notice what each morning brings!
In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light:
Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment
Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law
Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof,
Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town
In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse’s neck
Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones
Beginning now to tug their shadows in
And track the air with glitter. All these things
Are there before us; there before we look
Or fail to look; there to be seen or not.
~ from Lying, by Richard Wilbur
Gathering around light is common. We circle a campfire, draw close to our fireplaces, light candles at special dinners and ceremonies. At times we are drawn by a need for warmth, or to increase our ability to see, but often we focus on a candle’s flame seeking illumination beyond seeing… for inner glow. It is then we become not so much like a candle fly, inching closer in puzzling confusion and risking injury as like a firefly, able to fly in the dark and to show light.
Stones and Feathers 