Category Archives: Gifts

Unbroken Peace

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Two of our granddaughters have been with us this week.   Maddie and Jordann fill the house and our hearts with energy and laughter.  They love playing with their cousin Skye,  being in our garden, feeding the fish, gathering herbs, picking flowers, and tending plants.  Maddie helped me make pumpkin waffles. Jordann drew everyone’s picture.  We sang songs from The Sound of Music and then watched the movie.  They love to play board games with Joe and me.  They like to take out the Story Cube box and make up stories from the picture cubes.  But they didn’t even know what a powerful story they were telling when I took these photographs.  They asked to visit our church’s prayer garden, so we did.  In one corner of that garden is a bench and a sandy area that contains 12 smooth stones and a clay marker engraved with the word “Peace.”  When we arrived on this afternoon, one of the first things they saw and exclaimed about was that the marker was broken.

As I watched, Maddie put the pieces back together and smiled as she read “peace.” Then they began picking up the river stones and trying to dust the sand and gravel off, but decided to take them over to the small stream nearby and dip them in the flowing water. One at a time, the stones were washed and brought to put in a circle around the Peace marker.

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When all 12 stones were clean and in place, I asked them if they would like to use the stones to help them say what they are thankful for.  Without a moment’s hesitation, each girl walked the circle, saying, “I am thankful for…”  They named each other,  their Daddy and Mommy, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, their cat and dog and home, the trees and flowers.

Their story is fresh and new, because they are. But it is also an ancient story, one that speaks of acknowledging brokenness, restoration, transformation, and redemption.  And that this prompts deep gratitude.

I am thankful for unbroken peace.   And Maddie and Jordann.

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Do You See?

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“It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.”  ~ Helen Keller

Today is the birthday of Helen Keller, who could see nothing physically, but who had vision that has blessed many.  She might have held this shell without knowing its color and spots, but knowing in tender touch its roundness, spirals and ridges, the precious point where they ended,  the way it nestled in her palm and told silent stories of the sea.  If we are attentive and tuned to all our senses, we may find new dimensions of beauty in our surroundings.  One way of showing gratitude is by using all the senses I have been given to be aware of the world around me, to have vision beyond sight.

Seeing a Star

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100_1854Of the many symbols which decorate our home at Christmastime, my favorite may be the star.  Our big tree is lit with tiny twinkle lights reminding us of stars, and is topped with a star.  A crystal star holds a candle on the kitchen table.  My grandchildren draw stars. Joe loves the Christmas Song  “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.”  I love the deep mystery of the great star which led wise men to search for a baby.  How sweet, then, in this simple and sacred ordinary evening,  to slice an apple to float in the cider on my stove and find this star, marking seed and promise of fruit..

Star giver,

Light shiner

Promise keeper…

Come.

Quicken.

Emmanuel.

It’s a Wonderful Life

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November 14, 2012, my 72nd birthday.

I have made it my custom for years now to give myself birthday gifts which no one else can give me.  I cherish the hugs and surprises from my husband and children, love every phone call and email, and smile all over with my granddaughters’  “Happy Birthday, Granmary!”  But no matter how else I spend my time having a happy day, I give myself music – this is the time when I begin playing my favorite Christmas albums, beginning with James Galway’s Christmas Carol and going on to thrill to an English Handbell Choir, Renaissance pieces by the Tallis Scholars, Handel’s Messiah, and John Denver’s Muppet Christmas, which was the one my little boys loved to listen to when they decorated the Christmas tree.  It still makes them laugh and we still play it when the tree is staggering to stand up and be dressed.  but I also play Paul Hillyer’s Home to Thanksgiving.  And in the last couple of years I have added a gift to myself.  I write a list to go along with Hillyer’s music.  This is a list of sacred ordinary things from throughout my year and is a way for me to move toward the celebration of Thanksgiving in our family, which also is the springboard for Advent.  Since I keep a gratitude journal where I record 5 things I am grateful for each morning, I simply make my birthday list from that journal, choosing 2 or 3 entries for each month in the past year.  Just remembering and writing these things is a reminder of hope and joy. What a gift!

 Gratitude

In my 72nd year, these are things for which I give thanks:

greens from our garden on the table with peas and cornbread

time to curl up with a book

walking around the lake on a clear, cold day

pain management for Joe

silent room, dark except for Christmas tree lights

Christ, who came, is come, and will come

warming my aching fingers on my coffee cup

my son taking down the Christmas tree and making our dinner

safety during a storm

winter sunshine after the winds

puttering and pruning in the garden

rainbows on the floor from the prism in leaded glass at our front door

the buttery taste of winter squash

memories of babies and boys

my husband’s gentle spirit

morning quiet time

13 bean soup

settling, being settled

deep colors of roses blooming in January

mockingbird singing on top of our rose arbor

“hope is that thing with feathers that perches on the soul and sings….”

Sabbath heart

a perfectly timed call from a dear friend

hoping in, not for

the poetry of Luci Shaw

my nursing education and experience

books on hold at the library

planting Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato seeds

quiet – no rushing to fill with noise

still – no rushing to “do”

Places to Play and Pray

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Everybody needs beauty, as well as bread

.Places to play in and pray in

Where nature may heal and give strength

to body and soul.

~ John Muir

November

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Autumn leaves go very near the top of my favorite things list.  I grew up a few hundred miles north of where I now live, just far enough away for seasonal change to be much more apparent.  I remember watching for the colors to appear when temperatures dropped.  After the first frost, scarlet Sumac, yellowing Sycamore and Sweet Gum were blazing drifts of foliage that popped out of the evergreen forests of Pine and Cedar along East Texas roadsides. A few years in Oklahoma are remembered as having beautiful fall colors.  Some time living in and near Dallas when our boys were little brought us plenty of pretty leaves and fallen ones to pile up and scuffle through.   My sweet niece sent me pictures of the brilliant confetti of New Jersey leaves just last week before Hurricane Sandy caused so much destruction in their area.  I am grateful she and her family are safe, but know that so many others are ravaged from the brutal storm.  Winds didn’t just blow away the beautiful leaves, whole trees were uprooted.

Swirling in the mix of my concern and prayers, I have thought how glad I am that Jen saw the beauty of those leaves and shared the images with me.  In reality, I have lived a good deal of my life where the autumn colors were little changed, or at most subtle – South Texas, Southern California, Indonesia.  For twenty years now, at home here on the South Texas Gulf Coast, I need to look more closely at the gifts of Autumn.  I love the yellow leaves that swirl from Chinaberry and Elms, the little vermillion flags waving from Hawthorne and Crepe Myrtle. But most of all, I treasure the leaves that fall from my Magnolia tree, bronzed and gilded on one side that is lacquered shiny, and soft sueded brown on the underside.  Magnolia leaves were my playthings when I was a child.  A bank of Magnolia leaves graced our wedding.  I stood in front of a Magnolia tree in Bogor on the island of Java.  As I walk in these days leading to my turning 72, the turning of these magnificent leaves is with me again.  I am thankful.

And Now, I Bud Again

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A seed from some Cosmos planted in a nearby bed drifted over to a flower pot where this bloom is on a single plant that has become a giant reminder of parent plants much smaller and long gone.  This is more a bush, and is now taller than me!  It is covered with flowers that compete with the sunset in their vivid color.  It is an unexpected gift and I love it.

“And now in age I bud again after so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, and relish versing.”  ~ George Herbert

Smooth Stones

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I keep a small basket of smooth stones, each marked with a word,  on the back porch which I use like prayer beads. Somehow, as I lift a stone and place it beside me with a prayer for each thing the word I have written there represents, I am able to focus more sharply and receive these gifts.  I keep the same list by the coffee pot in the kitchen and can cover it with the palm of my hand in my petition.  Laying the stones down is a random process, so I am drawn to the pattern on this particular day when I look at all of them together.   I begin with seeking Light and the progression leads me to the most important request, “Thyself.”  I realize that if I could have only one request it must be that, for it is in the presence of God I find the all the rest.

The poetry of John O Donahue helps me imagine he might have had a basket of stones, too.

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,

Clear in word,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in LOVE.

– John O’Donohue

Lagniappe

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Recently our favorite garden center had a greenhouse sale. It is hard for me to pass up plants we love to have in our garden on sale for $2, so I came home with a large healthy milkweed.  I parked it on the back porch until I could pick a good spot in the yard for it. I shouldn’t be surprised since I know that milkweed is the only plant on which Monarch butterflies lay their eggs, but was pleasantly amazed the next day when I discovered my lagniappe – 6 tiny caterpillars munching away at the milkweed leaves.  I had to laugh as I remembered a conversation I overheard while I was looking at the nursery plants.

A lady standing next to me said  yes, this was a good buy for such a large plant but she had one like it and caterpillars kept eating it up.  I smiled and reassured her that meant she would have alot of butterflies, too, since the caterpillars would crawl off to neighboring spots, form a chrysalis, and emerge as Monarchs.  She looked at me and stomped off complaining that the butterflies were OK but she couldn’t take the caterpillars.

It is true, the little yellow and black wigglers completely stripped my new plant, so much that I took caterpillars and all out to another milkweed in the garden and let them lunch there too.  Within a few days there were no leaves left, and no caterpillars either.  Now as I enjoy the flickering color of butterfly wings I am happy they had what they needed to become what they are.  Today I see that both milkweed plants have new leaves popping out all along their branches. I am thankful for learning to let the caterpillars be.

* Mark Twain writes about the word in a chapter on New Orleans in Life on the Mississippi (1883). He called it “a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get”:

We picked up one excellent word — a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word — “lagniappe.” They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish — so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth.”…  It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure.

Interruptions?

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“The great thing is, if one can, to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions in one’s “own” or “real” life. The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life.”   ~C.S. Lewis

I am a list maker.  I make a list of at least 5 things I am grateful for every day. I keep a calendar where I list all commitments and appointments.  I make a menu list every week and grocery lists after that.  I have a list of things which must get done today, and a list of important matters which need to get addressed ASAP.  I have lists of projects I want to do someday and ones I intend to do this month or “for Christmas.”

I once kept a list (read journal) of meals I served for entertaining when we lived in Indonesia which included notes of foods which were favorites or those someone disliked.  As you see, some of these are lists for keeping and others which need to get checked off and discarded (replaced by new ones, of course.)

I have learned that lists get changed, rearranged, simplified.  I have learned, as C. S. Lewis says so well, that things happen which are not planned and are not on my list.

And I love that God, in His infinite grace and patience with me, has taught me that I don’t know all that I will face and need, and so to practice living with grace as the unexpected, and sometimes unwelcome parts of life occur. That (with the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory” humming in my mind) I am given both the wisdom and courage for the living of this hour, which is precisely, my life.