Tag Archives: Choices

Saving Word Seeds

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Magnolia seeds are covered with a red waxy coat.  Birds love them, but propagation of the tree from seed is difficult because of the process of extracting the seeds and preserving them. A row of Magnolia trees grew along the edge of the schoolyard that adjoined the yard of the house where I grew up. As a little girl I admired the beauty and fragrance of their blooms and played with the glossy leaves and  brown suede cones, delighting in those red-coated seeds. There were always so many, and more would come the following year. I never thought to ask why there were no trees that sprouted from all those seeds.

In a similar fashion, we are surrounded by words as Advent begins and the calendar counts down to Christmas. Beyond the noise urging us to commercialize and socialize and make our list of things to do, there are words that can help us to be quiet and still, to reflect, to simply be.  It is these words I would like to extract and preserve as Advent begins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Different Way of Seeing

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Underneath a caladium leaf in morning light

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Standing in front of the same caladium leaf in the same light.

 

“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.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

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The pot of caladiums on my front porch continues to multiply and thrive in our cool mornings and sunny afternoons. Every time I come in that door I pause to to appreciate the soft colors and hint of scarlet at the center and edge of the leaves. They are pretty. But this morning when I opened the front door to go outside, I looked from a different place and what I saw took my breath away. Veined and shaded, the leaf’s translucency drew me closer. Morning light streamed through emerald tissue and glowed like stained glass.  In this moment,, in just this angle of sunlight, there was beauty I would have missed if had hurried by.  I believe we have countless opportunities like this to see with the eyes of our heart. I am grateful for this one.

 

On the Path

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this difficult thing that has come

as yet unnamed

stumbling block or stepping stone?

obstacle or opportunity?

barricade or bridge?

praying to see and to hear

the answer comes clear

choose

As If

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“I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you ~would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in the beauty which the world in all the facets of pleasure reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides.”   .~ Helen Keller

The commonly believed myth regarding the loss of hearing or sight is false.  People who are blind or visually impaired are not endowed with a sharper sense of touch, hearing, taste, or smell. To compensate for their loss of vision, many learn to listen more carefully, or remember without taking notes, or increase directional acumen to compensate for their  lack of functional vision. In other words, they pay more attention, using their senses in a more mindful way.  They make choices.

If I am never silent, if I surround myself with the noise of machines and electronic entertainment constantly, I will most likely never hear birdsong or water trickling over rocks. I have the choice to “unplug,”  go outside for even a brief walk in the garden and make the most of my senses, to “relish”, as Helen Keller phrases.

What are some of the ways you practice this?

 

 

 

Taking the Day Off

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Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

~ Mary Oliver, “Today” from, ‘A Thousand Mornings’

Christmas Path

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In many ways, Advent is like walking a labyrinth for me.  I begin the path inward and walk steadily toward centering my heart in a space that leads nowhere else but to Christ, born once again in me. But I cannot stay in the stable.  I must get up and begin the outward spiral.

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

Magnificat

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100_0934When I find a feather, I have long believed that it is a sign –  God sending me a reminder that he is with me, and that small things can be important in helping me know that.  I find feathers often and in strange places.  Once, a tiny feather blew across and stuck to my windshield on a drizzly day. One afternoon when I sat on my back porch, praying through a troubled time, I looked up to see what seemed to be a snowflake because of the way it drifted down to the flagstone path.  I looked up to see a dove on the edge of our roof – her bit of breast feather fluttering to the ground.

No wonder then, that I like Luci Shaw’s poem, Magnificat, published in the collection titled The Angles of Light.  

“I am singing my Advent to you, God: How all year

I’ve felt your thrusts, every sound and sight piercing

like a little sword – the creak of gulls, the racket

as waves jostle pebbles, the road after rain –

shining like a river, the scrub of wind on the cheek, a flute

trilling – clean as a knife, the immeasurable chants of green,

of sky: messages, announcements. But of what? Who?

Then, last Tuesday, one peacock feather (surprise!)

spoke from the grass; Flannery called hers “a genuine

word of the Lord.” And I – as startled as Mary, nearly,

at your arrival in her chamber (the invisible

suddenly seen, urgent, iridescent, having put on light

for her regard) – I brim over like her, quickening. I can’t

stop singing, thoroughly pregnant with Word! ”

Lucy Shaw, Magnificat, part of collection published in  Angles of Light

Questions and Answers

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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.”

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roots reaching past drought

pushing up through rocky path

surviving In sun or shadow,

blooming with perennial grace

alive

map 6-14-2013

Interruptions?

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“The great thing is, if one can, to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions in one’s “own” or “real” life. The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life.”   ~C.S. Lewis

I am a list maker.  I make a list of at least 5 things I am grateful for every day. I keep a calendar where I list all commitments and appointments.  I make a menu list every week and grocery lists after that.  I have a list of things which must get done today, and a list of important matters which need to get addressed ASAP.  I have lists of projects I want to do someday and ones I intend to do this month or “for Christmas.”

I once kept a list (read journal) of meals I served for entertaining when we lived in Indonesia which included notes of foods which were favorites or those someone disliked.  As you see, some of these are lists for keeping and others which need to get checked off and discarded (replaced by new ones, of course.)

I have learned that lists get changed, rearranged, simplified.  I have learned, as C. S. Lewis says so well, that things happen which are not planned and are not on my list.

And I love that God, in His infinite grace and patience with me, has taught me that I don’t know all that I will face and need, and so to practice living with grace as the unexpected, and sometimes unwelcome parts of life occur. That (with the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory” humming in my mind) I am given both the wisdom and courage for the living of this hour, which is precisely, my life.

Attentiveness

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I use the lines from Mary Oliver which speak to paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it often.  I find it applies to so many things:  nature, of course, but also words that I read, objects that I find and touch, people and our conversation, both joys and pain.  My recent posts about paying attention with not only our eyes and ears but also our sense of smell sharpened my savoring of these extraordinary peaches!  They are a wonder to behold with their brilliant crimson and saffron colors, soft to the touch, and a succulent treat as you taste their sweetness. Even the seeds are so beautiful I can’t throw them away.  I have them lined up ready to let my granddaughter help me plant them.  When I enjoy a peach for breakfast, how could I not be attentive to the way it is beautiful inside and out?

“Ten times a day, something happens to me lie this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathetic pin and swell.  This is the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”   ~ Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

“You can have the other words – chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity.  I’ll take grace.  I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it. ”  ~ Mary Oliver, Winter Hours