Category Archives: Hope

Matter of the Heart

Posted on by
2

IMG_1871

Last month I opened my small 2015 calendar book and began entering appointments and commitments already made.  I like that part of beginning a new year with fresh calendar pages. It is popular now to do this calendar recording on phones and other electronic devices, but I like handwriting little reminders of place and time. By the first week of
February, I already had a number of dates marked with plans leading up to Lent and Easter, a happy time and typically a very busy time for our family.

And then, a week ago, I ruptured an Achillles tendon and began the changes which would clear almost everything already on the calendar and replace commitments for choir and handbells and meetings with appointments for doctors, an MRI, and surgery. I was not only in severe pain, but crestfallen, disappointed.  Of course I did not welcome this interrruption and the extra work it creates for my husband and our busy family, but I realized that I was not only reacting to the physical discomfort and  limitation, I needed some heart work. The weeks ahead of surgery and limited mobility closely parallel the weeks of Lent, Perhaps I could consider this time of being still and healing in that light.

At the suggestion of my friend and pastor, I have registered for an online Lenten retreat which begins a few days after my repair surgery which considers the questions: Why am I here? What is mine to do? Who am I called to be? And what can I contribute and offer to the world?   It is a matter of the heart. I have put it on my calendar.

If you should be interested in learning more:

http://www.shalem.org/index.php/shalem-programs/open-hands-willing-hearts-online

And Yet…

Posted on by
Reply

 

Maddie, SkyeJune11,12 002

DECEMBER
Gary Johnson

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
~ Gary Johnson. Text as published online by The Writer’s Almanac (December 22, 2011).

Light for the Darkness

Posted on by
2

IMG_1403

 

Our hearts and homes are filled with anticipation of Christmas – music, the laughter of children, twinkling lights, and cookie baking. But there is no blocking the awareness of evil and horror in our world.  Media brings the terror of war and injustice of humans to even children right into our living room.  We may prefer to close our eyes and shut our ears to this threatening clamor, and may be tempted to think there has never been so much to fear at a Christmastime. But through the ages, there has been darkness and wrong – 100 years ago, in the trenches of WW I, the December of the attack on Pearl Harbor , and in the time before the first Nativity.

The poem below was written years ago by Madeleine L’Engle.  I believe it was one of the previously unpublished pieces included in the collection in Winter Song, published by L’Engle and her friend Luci Shaw in 1996, and was written some time before that, so at least 20 years ago.  But it sounds like she could have been writing after seeing this morning’s newscasts.

 

Into the Darkest Hour

It was a time like this,

War & tumult of war,

a horror in the air,

Hungry yawned the abyss –

and yet there came the star

and the child most wonderfully there.

 

It was time like this

of fear & lust for power

license & greed and blight –

and yet the Prince of bliss

came into the darkest hour

in quiet & silent light.

 

And in a time like this

how celebrate his birth

when all things fall apart?

Ah! wonderful it is

with no room on the earth

the stable is our heart.

~ Madeleine L’Engle, as quoted in Winter Song, Christmas Readings by Madeleine L’Enlge & Luci Shaw

 

Hope

Posted on by
Reply


IMG_1336My young granddaughters and I made this painting project together last week. As I laid out cardboard under a blank canvas and handed out a tube of paint and paintbrushes, 6-year-old Jordann said she didn’t want black, that she likes different colors. I explained our first step was to paint the white canvas completely black.  As I spoke, I was reminded of the words of an artist who painted many sunlit landscapes and night scenes where light shone from windows. He said that he must paint the darkness first in order for light to glow in the way that made him famous.

So they painted all black and waited as paint dried. Later I painted words and added tiny lights.  Everyone loves this simple illustration of a favorite Christmas song.  I love, too, that it illustrates hope – the coming of light to darkness, the very image of Advent.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”   Isaiah 9:2

” …this is indeed a season of lights shining in darkness- candles in windows, colored lights on nighttime trees, a lantern glow in a stable, a star shining high in the heavens. Help me follow the light of these images to the unquenchable ligt of Your real presence.”   ~ in Christ the Light of the World by Thomas Kinkade, Anne Christian Buchanan, and Debra K. Klingsporn

Let It Begin Again

Posted on by
Reply

024

sitting in early morning darkness

waiting for slivers of dawn

I light one candle,

dispelling this room’s darkness

sunday morning in church

one purple candle will flicker

all signs of beginning

the ancient Advent story

of dark need

of light coming

again

Silence

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_0585One of the disciplines that is hard to achieve in our bustling, hurrying, sound filled lives is that of silence. But if we do not know how to practice silence, if we do not make space for it, we may miss the time we are offered the chance to give that gift to one who needs us to listen. I love the silence of early morning – sitting with my cup of coffee as darkness opens to soft light. It is as if I am stilled in the lap of God, resting in the dawn of a new day’s hope.

IMG_0412

 

Talking always comes much easier than listening, but it is in silence that I can tune my ears and learn what it means to really hear. In my recent reading, I found the words from Rachel Naomi Remen as well as the poetry by John Fox. Both speak to the value of learning silence and deeply listening.

“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.”

~ Rachel Naomi Remen,

 

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.WWhen someone deeply listens to you
ithen it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered.

When someone deeply listens to you
your barefeet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

~ John Fox

IMG_0398

 

Remembering

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_1704It is Good Friday.  I go into our garden, remembering another garden that became a place of prayer, entreaty, yearning, betrayal, and choosing a path that cost life to give life.  A rosemary bush at the end of our stone wall has wintered, died back, and now demonstrates life beginning again. .Both  the garden I  am remembering and the garden where I walk are places of revelation.

a garden is a place of revelation

seeds that survive to grow

are containers that must open and change,

releasing all that they are

in order to become what they can be.

 

a garden is a place of repair

a wildflower stubbornly pushes through

a crack in the wall, filling that broken place

with green growing hope

 

a garden is a place pointing to resurrection

though whipped by winds and dried from drought,

shattered stalks lift up and flower

beginning again

 

a garden is a place of revelation

but not a place I can stay.

I cross its threshold

and remember.

 

 

 

Today

Posted on by
Reply

maddieinthepink

Photograph by Jeremy Parker, Maddie’s Daddy.

Like the flush blushing of azaleas and sun, Maddie surprised us today..  After days of chilly rain and pewter skies that made it hard to see the new green on tree branches, there is a sudden lifting of spirit and laughter rising.  There is the song of birds and little girls.  There is dancing, twirling, skipping. There is  joy. Tomorrow Maddie will go back home.  Pink petals will begin to drop on the flagstone path.  But having been surprised by this joy (thank you, C. S. Lewis) I will gather this light now, and it will be mine tomorrow.

“Light tomorrow with today.” ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Rooted

Posted on by
Reply

021

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”                        ~ Simone Weil

Recently when family gathered to help us celebrate our 50 years of being married, we were given a small white pot which contained a plastic bag filled with potting soil and a dried, brown ball with papery layers peeling back about the size  of a small onion. It was an Amaryllis bulb.  As long as I let the pot, the soil, and the bulb wait on my counter, nothing much happened.  There was one place where a spot of green wanted to push through its crackly wrapping, but seemed to have grown weary and quit trying.  But as soon as opened the soil packet and poured it into the pot, pushed the bulb down, set it in a window, and added water, I could almost hear the dry dirt begin to breathe a lullaby to hungry roots as they began to channel new life into stalk and leaf. Two sturdy stems soon grew heavy with swelling buds.  Above, the first scarlet flower opens wide, stamens heavy with pollen.

026Then there were three, so large it seemed they would topple. And just as the first bloom began to fade, the second stalk of buds began to open.  In all, 6 magnificent delights have graced the plain white pot in my kitchen window. Without roots, this blooming would have stayed inside the brown bulb.  The roots were a potential, but not a possibility until nourished with soil and light and water.

What nourishes my soul to satisfy this need for rooting?  Do I choose that which roots and grows?  These are questions I ask again in a soul’s wintering.