Welcome Back

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Last week, when straightening the house before bringing my husband home from a hospital stay, I brought the first few roses to open since early December inside to brighten the table by his chair.  A rosemary sprig completed the little bowl of multi-colored blooms…all from the same bush.  These roses, named Mutabulis, are different colors at various points in their budding and blossoming, darkening with age, instead of fading.  Single petals open soft yellow, changing through peachy coral  to  rich pink and finally dusky crimson.  Flowers of all these colors will often be on display at the same time, looking as if a host of varigated butterflies has settled on the bush.   C. S. Lewis said  “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”  I can stand on all four sides of this huge rose bush and see a different color rose each time.  I know this is due to this old rose’s roots as well as by what they are nourished.  I believe I am hearing that the sort of person I am is due to the same things.

When I picked the flowers for Joe, they were the first and only to open.  Today, only 2 weeks later, our three rose bushes in the corner of the back yard are putting on quite a show.

Hush

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“Hush”, the baby in my arms says with a proud smile, feeling power in using a word that produces result.

She has no malice, no judgement of my singing.

She only learned “hush” yesterday and is exercising cause and effect.

Will I do it again?

Happy work, this making music and hushing.

“Hush”, I hear God whisper.

Do I obey?

Is there compliance in this dance, too?

I begin a different song.

“Hush”,  I once more hear the prompting.

Then, when I have understood,

He begins the song and we sing together.

Labyrinth Meditation

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I  step on one stone which draws me outside in,

Centripetal propelling of self toward center.

One step, then another, a walk on a labyrinth path.

Seeking, finding

A center for refilling, refueling, refreshing.

Then reverse, return.

Stepping in an outward spiral,

The centrifuge which slowly spins and scatters this gathered grace,

Inside out.

   ~Mary Ann Parker, January 19, 2010

Winter Friends

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  Our Northern friends think we are funny when we gasp at 19 and 20 degree weather, but a recent forecast for days of these temperatures with little relief for thawing had us scurrying to clear the shelves at Home Depot of materials for wrapping pipes and covering foliage.  On the day before the predicted hard freeze, as I watered, then unscrewed water hoses and prepared to wrap faucets, I discovered one plucky narcissus opening little white stars in brave bloom.  I brought it inside to grace my kitchen window sill. The petals have turned to parchment.  Little heralds of flowering to come,  they are paper stars of hope.

In the evening after I picked the flower, Joe helped me with shaking out large wraps for citrus trees, azaleas, and container plants.  We were on our back porch, and after the first big whisk of a sheet, there was a mighty flapping and bustle on top of our heads.  As I cowered, I realized we had startled a dove who had made her nest in an empty hanging basket by the back door.  She gave us as much a fright as we had given her, and flew away indignantly to watch us tuck plants in for the night and leave night lights on. The porch lights must have helped her and her babies  keep warm, too.  They sing their morning song to me every day, thank you notes.

 

 

Star Song

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We have been having
epiphanies, like suns,
all this year long,
And now, at its close
when the planets
are shining through frost,
light runs
like music in the bones,
and the heart keeps rising
at the sound of any song.
An old magic flows
in the silver calling
of a bell,
rounding
high and clear,
flying, falling,
sounding
the death knell
of our old year,
the new appearing
of Christ, our Morning Star.

Now burst!
all our bell throats.
Toll!
every clapper tongue,
Stun the still night!
Jesus himself gleams through
our high heart notes
(it is no fable)
It is he whose light
glistens in each song sung
and in the true
coming together again
to the stable,
of all of us: shepherds,
sages, his women and men,
common and faithful,
wealthy and wise,
with carillon hearts
and suddenly,
stars in our eyes.
~ Luci Shaw
Once Upon a Christmas

The Carols of Christmas

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Each year during Advent and Christmas I enjoy many of the same carols I sang when I was growing up. But I also love learning new ones, which are mostly really old! I have a lovely Christmas songbook given to me by my son, Ben. In it I find the traditional favorites as well as many that have become well loved if not as familiar. The following is one of those. The origins of this old carol apparently lie in the southern part of France. I am strangely attracted to it, and like to think that my French great great grandparents might have taught this to their little girl who later came with them to the United States and was my great grandmother. Although she died when I was a baby, perhaps she even sang it to me and rocked me. I feel it so.

Whence comes this rush of wings afar,
Following straight the Noel star?
Birds from the woods in wondrous flight,
Bethlehem seek this Holy Night.

Tell us, ye birds, why come ye here,
Into this stable, poor and drear?
“Hastning we seek the newborn King,
And all our sweetest music bring.”

Christmas Rose

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Snow falls rarely on the Texas Gulf Coast.  Yesterday it snowed all day!  In this season of Advent, several beloved carols ring with mention of winter cold and snow.  In the Bleak MidWinter…snow on snow, Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming.  As the words of the songs drifted through my mind, snowflakes drifted and settled onto an antique rose in my garden named Maggie.  This rose is the only one I know whose fragrance is sweeter when it is cut to bring into my home.  One single bloom was bejeweled with snowflakes.

                              Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming

                              From tender stem hath sprung!

                                       Of Jesse’s lineage coming

                                       As men of old have sung.

                                       It came, a flow’ret bright,

                                        Amid the cold of winter,

                                When half-spent was the night.

                                                                     ~ Fourteenth-Century German Melody

                                                                         This verse, Sixteenth-Century German

Autumn

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Today, on my last birthday that will be sixty –something, I think of the gift of time, and the changes that come in this time in my life.   In this quiet hour as I sit looking at my garden changing into its autumn dress, I consider what the dormant fruit trees and  absence of bright  blooms says about these growing things.  They are different now from March or May or the heat of August, but those of root and permanence survive their winter and will bring heartspring with leaf and bud, even new fruit in a few months.   

In the garden seasons  I see beginning and changing and, yes,  some endings.  But the story of the seasons begins a new verse with its cycle of renewal and rebirth.   In my autumn self my roots remind me of this larger cycle of hope and grace.  I love my November birthday!

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“Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.”        ~ Giovanni Giocondo

Fruit Full Fig Tree

Fruit Full Fig Tree