Category Archives: Stillness

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.

Sabbath Song and Shade

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Image of Redbud tree leaves in prayer garden of First Baptist Church, Richmond, Texas. 

The clearing rests in song and shade.

It is a creature made

By old light held in soil and leaf,

By human joy and grief,

By human work,

Fidelity of sight and stroke,

By rain, by water on

The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O Dust, arise!

~Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem VII (1982)

Silence

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“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

After all these years, I am still learning to look before I leap and listen before I speak.  The latter is often hard for me.  Another’s outpouring of worry,  angst,  anger or sadness can make us think we are being asked for advice or to “fix it.”  Many times, the need for just having someone to listen to what we need to say is greater than any verbal response we can make.  I love sitting outside in our garden because it offers both solitude and silence.  I also love sharing that space with others and feeling the quieting that comes to us both.  The still silence speaks of the centering, settling presence of God.

Christmas Afterglow

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Christmas Afterglow

Christmas Afterglow

savoring Christmas gifts not in a box,

sweet echoes of laughter,

dear traditions of music and story

 

Savoring Christmas gifts not in a box,

candlelight burning steady,  strong

dear traditions of music and story

keeping and being kept, golden circle

 

Candlelight burning steady, strong

sweet echoes of laughter,

keeping and being kept, golden circle

Christmas afterglow.

Thanksgiving for Seasons

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 This display at our local garden center is created to be a “living wall”.  As I enjoyed all the color and texture growing on this one spot, framed by the thoughts of a living wall, I was thankful for the lessons seasonal loss and gain teach me.  True, there are no daffodils or spring green tree buds here, but oh, the richness and variation of autumn color.  In the autumn of my life I am thankful for colorful change. Just as surely, winter will come.  Then, too, I can draw strength from the one in whom we are rooted,

“There is a winter in all of our lives,
a chill and darkness that makes us yearn
for days that have gone
or put our hope in days yet to be.

Father God, you created seasons for a purpose.
Spring is full of expectation
buds breaking
frosts abating and an awakening
of creation before the first days of summer.

Now the sun gives warmth
and comfort to our lives
reviving aching joints
bringing colour, new life
and crops to fruiting.

Autumn gives nature space
to lean back, relax and enjoy the fruits of its labour
mellow colours in sky and landscape
as the earth prepares to rest.

Then winter, cold and bare as nature takes stock
rests, unwinds, sleeps until the time is right.

An endless cycle
and yet a perfect model.
We need a winter in our lives.
A time of rest, a time to stand still.
A time to reacquaint ourselves
with the faith in which we live and breathe.
It is only then that we can draw strength
from the one in whom we are rooted,
take time to grow and rise through the darkness
into the warm glow of your springtime,
to blossom and flourish,
bring colour and vitality into this world,
your garden.

Thank you Father
for the seasons of our lives”

written by John Birch, Methodist Lay Minister in Wales

Hummingbird Garden

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This blurry photo is one of those that I am tempted to discard because it is less than I set out to accomplish, then allow it to draw me back for a “think about it” moment. I captured the image standing at my kitchen sink, which produced mostly a silhouette of the busy little bird, wings frantically buzzing while snatching tiny tastes from the feeder. I watch for him, but I seldom glimpse his full glory even though I am inches away because he is on the move.

A hummingbird garden is not a still garden.  The arrival of hummingbirds at our feeders brings the scene alive with dashes of color as they whir and whirl about, darting in for a sip of nectar, wheeling out to sit momentarily on a twig, then barreling back full speed to catch another drop or two.

 It is in those moments of perching stillness that I find these tiny creatures giving me a deep life lesson.  In all their quickness and industry, it is only as I catch the still seconds that I can see their feathers, really absorb the rich brilliance of their unique coloring. If there were no stops and stilling, however brief, how could they continue their pace, how would energy continue for gathering of nourishment?

 “The hummingbird goes a step beyond – they are perpetual motion. I remember when I first saw a hummingbird still. It was startling. As it can be for us – it can be startling for us to be still. Yet we must.”   ~ David Arms

The above words quote an artist who uses birds, and hummingbirds in particular often in his work, which calls me to come home, and be still.

Spending

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Most of us think of budgets when we think of what we spend. Current news reports are filled with dire news about our nation’s spending habits, all referring to a national budget and its imbalance. But there is a more critical balance – that which is created by daily choice and lifetime impact. How will I spend today? How will I spend my life?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~ Annie Dillard

The Trellis and the Seed

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The title for a favorite children’s book, The Trellis and the Seed,  provokes thoughts of what emerging parts of life we nurture and support so that new growth and beauty can unfold.  I have given Jan Karon’s book about a moonflower seed and a trellis along with a package of moonflower seeds to my granddaughters and other children.  It is a story of planting and waiting, of faith and hope, a story of creation and shaping and astonishment, a story of tending a garden.  The  latticework  must be strong  as it  balances and supports,  as seeds take root and new green growth stretches  into spaces, bearing fruit and flower, then reseeding for yet more beginnings.

I hold fast to a frame of Grace

Secured, marked, held in place.

One branch of Vine.