“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
Awareness
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Category Archives: Hope
Reflection
Photography by Skye Parker, my granddaughter
These windows at the back of our house mirror a rose arbor covered with blooms just a month ago. But summer arrives today says the calendar as well as the temperature, so the scanty blooms that are still there are pale and dried. The reflection today seems to say “all gone away.” But I know this rose. It is hardy and tenacious, with a reputation for surviving even a hurricane. I know it will bloom again. I will not mourn for lost blossoms. I will enjoy the many shades of green in its leaves, admire the lacy intertwining of its branches. I will wonder at the raindrops caught in spider webs woven in rose canes. I will count the bird nests perched inside the arbor’s protection, and rest in the shade it gives me. And I will be grateful for eyes that can see the rose bush reflected in the windows of home.
“Whether one looks at a star, a child, a moment of sorrow, or a time of gladness, blessed is the ordinary…I believe the small moment is the carrier of God’s most endearing gift, and that it must not be permitted to slip away unsavored and unappreciated…If one accepts each day as a gift from the Father’s hand, one may sometimes hear a voice saying, “Open it. I invite you to share with me in these little appointments with myself as we try to unwrap the hidden beauties in an ordinary day.” Gerhard Frost in Blessed is the Ordinary
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
Seeing the Stories
My pastor reminds us that each time we meet, there is a story on every pew that can break your heart. I know some of those stories, and I know that he is right. I also know that we need to hear each other’s stories if we are to know and trust and help each other.
” It always amazes me to think that every house on every street is full of so many stories; so many triumphs and tragedies, and all we see are yards and driveways. ~Glenn Close, American Film and Stage Actress
Part of my daily walk takes me by the front yards of houses in our neighborhood, but the last mile or so of the walk is around a small lake behind the back of houses with wrought iron fences. I see beautiful landscaping, luxurious pools, and groupings of comfortable outdoor furniture. Some even have outdoor kitchens. I enjoy my walks, but I very seldom see another person except the few who are on the path for jogging or cycling. The only signs of life are the dogs in several of the back yards. I don’t see the stories, but I know that they are there.
Wendell Berry expands this need for story in What Are People For? “When a community loses its memory, its members no longer know one another. How can they know one another if they have forgotten or have never learned one another’s stories? If they do not know one another’s stories, how can they know whether or not to trust one another? People who do not trust one another do not help one another, and moreover they fear one another. And this is our predicament now.”
I want to be a part of a community that has not lost its memory. I do not want to forget. Writing and blogging is one way I share my story with you, a hospitality of spirit for me. What about you? In what ways do you tell your story and how are you able to listen to that of others?
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?
Fair Hope
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
at the end of a week marked
with tragedy, peril, dark places
help me find the fair
green pastures, still waters
light overcoming darkness
love greater than grief
Mary Ann Parker April 20, 2013
Hope Within
within pages of garden catalogs
within thin paper packets
ready to pour out
tiny beginnings
within my sweaty palm
rests hope
Alchemy of Sorrow
shattered petals fall
fragrant still
garden gift of grace
“Sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmitted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.”
— Pearl S. Buck
Happening Still
“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” ~ Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Stones and Feathers 