Good Morning
2
Woven Invitation
Gossamer strands, loom of twigs.
Grim hospitality intended to trap tiny wings.
Catching instead, light and dew.
Moon Flower
Crisp, cool mornings as fall arrives may not mean wondrous autumn leaf colors in this part of Texas, but there are other offerings. My moonflower vines, which flower at night, stay open considerably past dawn. Their saucer size tissue paper blooms are veined with pale yellow…lovely! Skye and Maddie helped me plant the seeds last Spring. One of our favorite books to read together is Jan Karon’s The Trellis and the Seed, a story of patience and faith about a small moonflower seed.
Beginning a New Job
“Just because something is broken doesn’t mean it’s no good. Doesn’t mean you throw it away. It just means it’s broken, and broken is okay…broken is still beautiful, still works…, and at the end of every day and those to come, I can love broken.” Page 242, Maggie, by Charles Martin.
Hold high the broken pot
Look for beauty in the ragged crack
See through to beyond before
One Tiny Feather
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
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
Finding Time
A year ago, in one of my beginning posts, Eden on My Mind, I included one of Joe’s photographs from our garden. Nestled under a tree by our back porch is a little stone ball engraved with “Time began in a garden.” A few weeks ago, Joe took this photo in a little shop on Stephen Street in Calgary where we were enjoying just looking. We found the same quotation written on a different slate, in a very different place, even a different country. I love the awareness that God does this for us. When we are paying attention, we find His Grace notes to us wherever we are, whatever we are doing.
The little shop was named Twigs. I like that, too. Tree or twig, old or new, we can be reminded that there is delight to be found for the looking.
What Each Morning Brings
I almost missed it. I nearly overlooked the cobalt and cloud blue ruffles of this tiny iris that seems to have bloomed overnight. Three years ago, I gave Joe a garden gift for Father’s Day: a mail order collection of iris bulbs in all shades of blue and purple. Eleven came up that year, all but one. The next year only three or four dusky green blades pushed through. Last year, none. So I wasn’t expecting to find this lovely offering. I am grateful to notice what this morning brought to light. Richard Wilbur’s poem adds to my note to self: notice what each morning brings!
In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light:
Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment
Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law
Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof,
Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town
In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse’s neck
Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones
Beginning now to tug their shadows in
And track the air with glitter. All these things
Are there before us; there before we look
Or fail to look; there to be seen or not.
~ from Lying, by Richard Wilbur
Candlelight
Gathering around light is common. We circle a campfire, draw close to our fireplaces, light candles at special dinners and ceremonies. At times we are drawn by a need for warmth, or to increase our ability to see, but often we focus on a candle’s flame seeking illumination beyond seeing… for inner glow. It is then we become not so much like a candle fly, inching closer in puzzling confusion and risking injury as like a firefly, able to fly in the dark and to show light.
Grace
When she was barely two, Maddie Claire could sing Amazing Grace. Perfect tune. Amazing enunciation. My choir director would have been proud of her consonants and vowel sounds. We, knowing the song, and understanding with awe and reverence the theology, smiled and praised her musicality, realizing that most of the words were not words she attached meaning to other than for the pleasure of singing them. Maddie turned four last week. She uses her large vocabulary for more than singing and talking…she asks questions. A lot of questions. Since the birth of her baby sister, Jordann, Maddie has been interested in the beginning and growing and arriving of babies, and last week asked her mother the time honored question about where babies come from.
“Where was Jordann before she was in your tummy, Mommy?” Her mother, knowing that Maddie was not ready for a total fact finding answer, wildly searched her database of acceptable answers and answered “the grace of God”. Satisfied for the moment, Maddie went about her job of being a big sister, and, I imagine, Michala relaxed in relief that the matter was tabled for the time being.
Today, Maddie and her Daddy were painting a wall in the bedroom. As she started to leave the room she told her Dad “If you need anything, just call my name.” He answered, “What name should I call you?” Maddie chided him, “You know my name, you have always known me since before I was in my mommy’s tummy.” Jeremy continued, “ And where were you then?”
To which Maddie solemnly replied, “I was swimming around in grace!”
It could be that Maddie is growing in her theology. Amazing. Grace.
Stones and Feathers 
