sitting in early morning darkness
waiting for slivers of dawn
I light one candle,
dispelling this room’s darkness
sunday morning in church
one purple candle will flicker
all signs of beginning
the ancient Advent story
of dark need
of light coming
again
Our entire Satsuma harvest – but the tree is very small.
As we move toward the end of November, our garden is a reminder of things that can be counted on: Gulf Coast Muhly fronds mound up like pink froth. Satsumas are ready for harvest, Meyer lemons are hanging ready on the tree, the last of our okra and tender herbs fade as the first frost comes. Marigolds, chrysanthemums and calendula bloom gold and copper. Thanksgiving is less than a week away. We will gather friends and family and favorite foods at full tables.
Marigolds
I am remembering childhood meals around my Terrell grandparent’s table in Smith County, Texas. There were hearty breakfasts with farm fresh eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, dinners (at lunchtime) that often included peas and tomatoes from their garden and an iron skillet of cornbread cut into wedges.There were suppers, often the same food reheated or a bowl of soup, and Sunday dinners after church. There were holiday meals at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas where the table and kitchen were both filled with chicken and dressing or a ham, plus those garden fresh vegetables which had been put up into canning jars. To follow, there would be an assortment of sweets – cookies, sweet potato, pecan, and mince pies, and often a pound cake. The food and occasion might vary, but there was always the same beginning: This, too, was something I could count on. Papa Terrell would say grace. Today we may say a blessing or give thanks, but he always said grace. The words were always the same, and rattled off so quickly I could never understand them. But his posture spoke to my heart with no need for words. Over 70 years later, now I see him clearly in my mind: gray head bent forward and bowed in humility.
“We offer grace at table as a form of waiting with confidence…reciting such a prayer is sometimes referred to as a way of preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. We offer grace in amazement that even the good things we have rejected are being offered again. And then we eat, and the food meets an earthly need of our souls, and we are made whole.” – Cynthia Rigby, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary*
For me, the calendar days designated to Thanksgiving are a wonderful approach to beginning of Advent exactly because of this waiting with confidence…preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. Our family will gather once again around the old oak table, the very same one that Grandma loaded with food and where Papa said grace.
Pink Gulf Coast Muhly, a coastal grass
*as quoted by Wayne Slater in DallasNews, a Texas Faith Blog
hear November whisper and sing
rain drops and ball moss cling
morning light holds onto night
a few brown leaves hang on tight
I linger like these and pray
reluctant to busy my day
yet still, yet silent
clinging
Underneath a caladium leaf in morning light
Standing in front of the same caladium leaf in the same light.
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
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.
I have never been fond of palm trees in my garden landscape. To me, as close as we live to the coast, they seem much more at home near the ocean, fitting right in with the sand and sun and waves. However, I adore ferns, and grow several different varieties in our wooded back yard. But as you see here, there is definitely a friendly relationship between these ferns and the large palm where they so happily grow. I noticed this cluster of ferns when I took my 6 month old granddaughter out in her stroller for a walk one morning. This palm is the centerpiece of a small pocket park in their neighborhood. I don’t think I had ever truly paid attention (sorry, Mary Oliver!) and been astonished at the sight, and certainly had never talked about how these graceful little ferns happen to find enough to grow on in what seems to be just a notch left by palm fronds as they age and break off.
In this case, the palm’s growth habit (aging?) creates a little pocket where debris and leaves collect. The point where the palm fronds once attached to the trunk – called boots – collect leaf litter that composts to create a growing medium that ferns love. This is a natural occurrence in areas like ours where wet, humid conditions favor the ferns.
The ferns are epiphytes. This means they are growing on another plant that serves as a host, but they don’t get their nutrition directly from the host plant or cause any it any harm. Spanish moss is another common epiphyte.
Another little fern called the Resurrection Fern can be found growing on a palm trunk, although the most common choice for this fern around here are the large old live oaks where the fern grows along the branches looking like brown moss until it begins to rain. Then it transforms into emerald lace! (See my previous post http://tinyurl.com/TheOldOakTree)
I am glad I paid attention to these feathery green surprises. One day tiny spores were floating around and a puff of wind carried them to just the right spot to root and grow. I am reminded of the lovely phrase used by Hildegarde of Bingen: A Feather on the Breath of God. Maybe we can learn to let go enough to be shown just the right place to grow. And it just might be an unlikely place, an extraordinary place, one we would never have known to dream of.
“Pay attention
Be Astonished
Tell about it.” ~ Mary Oliver
dear familiar line and color
velvet spread of leaf
magenta and vermilion petal
held in the sweet curve
of glazed garden pot
one brief glimpse
telling me
this is home
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
leaf shadows move across grass
book of hours
morning, noon, and night prayers
Days which lead up to Mother’s Day are a time of reflection and remembering.. I savor the model of mothering provided to me by my mother and grandmothers, express gratitude for their lives, and remember the simple tradition which marked Mother’s Day for me as a child: picking a red rose to wear to church in honor of Mother. Those whose mothers were no longer with them wore a white rose. It was a sweet gesture, and I miss it.
I cherish the images and thoughts of my sons as babies and little boys, and bask in the light of their lives as strong men of faith and integrity who have become faithful husbands and loving fathers. They love me and tell me so in word and actions. From the beginning, being a mother has been an adventure of faith and grace and joy. I have often spoken of the fact that parenting has shown me more about God’s love and care for me than any other element of my life. On Mother’s Day, our church’s order of service included a statement that affirmed this.
“It has been the amazing, often painful, often ecstatic adventure of being a parent that has most formed me. It is parenting that has made, unmade, and remade me into someone who comes up hard against the great religious questions that have always been part of the human quest:
Who in fact am I?.
What is a life well led?
What is most essential, permanent, and foundational?
What responsibility do I have to others?
How do I deal with evil and fear?
What is “the good?”
How do I love well?
How do I move in this wild and worrisome world with some grace and joy?
Wendy Wright, Seasons of a Family’s Life: Cultivating the Contemplative Spirit at Home
I cannot count how many different greens appear in Springtime.
There is a blush of green on the trees covered with tiny buds trying to open
The changing green as leaves unfurl and fill branches of oak and elm
Sprouting snap peas, lettuces, and fledgling tomatoes are not the same color
Herbs have a whole palette of green of their own: sage, parsley, oregano, chives
Feathery dill and fennel, each uniquely green
All beginning again
All fresh and new
Every green an alleluia,
Singing Easter.
Photograph by Jeremy Parker, Maddie’s Daddy.
Like the flush blushing of azaleas and sun, Maddie surprised us today.. After days of chilly rain and pewter skies that made it hard to see the new green on tree branches, there is a sudden lifting of spirit and laughter rising. There is the song of birds and little girls. There is dancing, twirling, skipping. There is joy. Tomorrow Maddie will go back home. Pink petals will begin to drop on the flagstone path. But having been surprised by this joy (thank you, C. S. Lewis) I will gather this light now, and it will be mine tomorrow.
“Light tomorrow with today.” ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Stones and Feathers 