Category Archives: Inner awareness

Settle Down

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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.

Gratitude

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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…

Advent Lament

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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.

One Tiny Feather

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A  little feather was a reminder to me for years. I don’t remember where I found it or exactly when, although for a long time I kept it in a little birthday reminder book that was given to me in 1987, the year we moved to Indonesia. I put it there in the beginning because on that page there is a drawing of that same feather, right down to the size (tiny) and colors and markings (black and white). I was amazed at that. Usually the process is different…you find the object, then obtain or make its resemblance.

The other special thing about that feather is that it lived between the pages of the birthday calendar book where my oldest son’s  name is written, January 13.  It stayed there, through 2 moves in Jakarta, an international shipping, and 3 moves back in Texas plus all the shuffling of my kitchen desk here. Feathers usually don’t stay. They drift in and blow away.

But this little feather stayed between the pages and always caused me to smile when I came upon it. It reminded me of joy in small things, of hope, of lines of poetry and scripture, and that gifts can come when you open your hand and heart, and sometimes, the door. This year on January 13, I gave the little feather for a birthday gift.

…”That is the reason a bird can sing. On his darkest day, he believes in Spring”. (D. Malloch)

Inner Landmarks

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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