“Courage is found in unlikely places.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
Courage
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Category Archives: Growing
The Old Oak Tree
One of my favorite places to be still is here, beneath a very old oak tree in our church prayer garden. Its branches spread out over a trickling stream and bubbling fountain and a small labyrinth. In dry times, like our present drought, there is crusty brown growth along its mighty branches. But when we are blessed with rainfall, this turns to vibrant green. It is Resurrection Fern.
At all times I soak up the green and growing refreshment of this place. But it is in the times when I feel drought in my spirit that I come here to be still and know God, and to refill and refuel – the greening of my heart, Eastering.
Perspectives and Paths
“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday”. ~John Burrough
vine greens and reaches
early light dawns and dapples
new morning new mercy
Sitting in the Garden
“Sitting in your garden is a feat to be worked at with unflagging determination and single-mindedness – for what gardener worth his salt sits down. I am deeply committed to sitting in the garden.” – Mirabel Osler
Sitting still is necessary for so many things: I listen better when I sit still. I hear things unheard when I am crunching on the gravel or digging or clipping. The butterflies and hummingbirds come closer when I am still. The cardinal pair lingers longer on the fence. Appreciation and savoring of beauty may run after me when I am on the move but they settle around my shoulders like a soft cover when I sit still. And in the stillness I begin to settle – the cloudy debris of things which can fret and hurt begin to drift to the bottom, leaving pure, clear knowing. Holy moments can happen when I sit in my garden.
Means of Grace
Morning Glory opens
grace glows in star gift
wrapped in blue tissue
“It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of ‘an inward and spiritual grace’.”
~ A. Barrett Brown
Photo by Madelyn Claire Parker, age 7
I Have This Day
Celebrate Now
I have long thought Hibiscus flowers exotic and lovely. They remind me of Bali, where we often visited when we lived in Indonesia. Outside the little thatched roof lodging at Poppie’s Cottages where we sometimes stayed, large shrubs of the plant were always in bloom. Once I sat outside on the tiny porch where they left our kopi and mango breakfast and painted one of the flowers. I remember searching for a scarlet or vermillion paint that would allow me to capture the intensity of its color. Now I mostly photograph the hibiscus that grow in our garden. They help me remember to celebrate today – because today is all each flower has. Whether I enjoy the bloom as it grows with large glossy leaves, or pluck it to bring inside to grace our kitchen table, it only lasts one day. Putting its stem into water does not prolong the beauty. By the next morning, this flower’s petals folded shut.
Awareness
“Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~ James Thurber
fish flashing in lavender shadow
lily lifting purple wonder
prayers unfurling
hope
Questions and Answers
We are hearing so many stories of tragedy and trauma, of danger and despair. Some of the horror is magnified by the immediacy with which we now receive the news. Social media and news reporting brings word and image straight into our homes and hearts from the real-time scene. “Breaking news” threatens to break us. For some of us, the pain is present in our immediate and extended families Is there anything we can reply to disillusionment and despair? To the erosion of hope? To fear? What does the intersection of faith and art (which this blog addresses) offer in response to this reality? How is our energy best spent in helping each other?
Howard Thurman offers this: “The mass attack of disillusionment and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great deception…To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind – this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.”
roots reaching past drought
pushing up through rocky path
surviving In sun or shadow,
blooming with perennial grace
alive
map 6-14-2013
Alive Again
The patch of wood fern under our Meyer lemon tree never completely dies back in a mild winter like last year’s season. Even so, brown scraggly branches and twiggy stems look untidy and we need to cut it down. That part of the garden looks bald and bereft for awhile, but without fail, fresh fronds begin to push their way up and begin unfurling. I sometimes wish I could do time lapse photography to capture this annual rebirth. Suddenly, what seemed hopelessly ugly last week blooms green!
Alive Again
pushing through darkness, reaching for light
fronds a dozen shades of green
unroll like little scrolls
what does it feel like to leaf out?
Unencumbered
Pruning is one of my most difficult tasks, inside and out. But just look how the roses can bloom when rid of all their excess branches and runners!
Unencumbered
“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”
~Wendell Berry
I must let go of things that weigh me down
I must free myself of cumber
I must pare down, lighten my load
I must go through with this relinquishment.
I must rid myself of too much, too many.
I am called to marvel at quotidian mysteries
to be attentive and astonished
to cultivate inner and outer space
to create time for what matters most
to simplify
Stones and Feathers 