“Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~ James Thurber
fish flashing in lavender shadow
lily lifting purple wonder
prayers unfurling
hope
Awareness
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Tag Archives: growing
Questions and Answers
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.”
roots reaching past drought
pushing up through rocky path
surviving In sun or shadow,
blooming with perennial grace
alive
map 6-14-2013
Alive Again
The patch of wood fern under our Meyer lemon tree never completely dies back in a mild winter like last year’s season. Even so, brown scraggly branches and twiggy stems look untidy and we need to cut it down. That part of the garden looks bald and bereft for awhile, but without fail, fresh fronds begin to push their way up and begin unfurling. I sometimes wish I could do time lapse photography to capture this annual rebirth. Suddenly, what seemed hopelessly ugly last week blooms green!
Alive Again
pushing through darkness, reaching for light
fronds a dozen shades of green
unroll like little scrolls
what does it feel like to leaf out?
Unencumbered
Pruning is one of my most difficult tasks, inside and out. But just look how the roses can bloom when rid of all their excess branches and runners!
Unencumbered
“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”
~Wendell Berry
I must let go of things that weigh me down
I must free myself of cumber
I must pare down, lighten my load
I must go through with this relinquishment.
I must rid myself of too much, too many.
I am called to marvel at quotidian mysteries
to be attentive and astonished
to cultivate inner and outer space
to create time for what matters most
to simplify
Fair Hope
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
at the end of a week marked
with tragedy, peril, dark places
help me find the fair
green pastures, still waters
light overcoming darkness
love greater than grief
Mary Ann Parker April 20, 2013
Seed Time
Seed finds damp earth
time to be broken
shed its old brown coat
and change forever
Lantana
Wanting to choose plants for my garden that don’t need constant watering and fertilizing, I favor native Southeast Texas plants. I didn’t plant the large bushes of Lantana that are showing up this time of year, growing from the roots in a few days of sunshine. The birds did! The plant produces deep purple berries which are poisonous to cattle, sheep and humans,but birds love them and spread the seeds. Bees use the nectar in making honey, and the tube flowers, are excellent food for many butterflies. Lantana thrives in the full summer sun and heat, requiring little water and taking the blistering heat of summer by covering itself with multi-colored flowers shaped like tiny nosegays.
I am realizing that many of the plants I remember in my grandmother’s and mother’s flower beds were volunteer, reseeding or re-emerging each year.
Reseeding. Returning.
Simple, ordinary flowering
of color and beauty
reminding me of Grace,
both perennial and volunteer
Peace
Pewter skies and gentle rains yesterday gathered into thunder clouds and stormy weather today, so I stay inside, grateful for the morning last week when I took my camera into the morning light to receive the gifts of beauty offered by this climbing Noisette rose, whose name is Crepuscule. I don’t think the name is a lovely one, sounding harsh to my ears, but the word means twilight, that time of day just after sunset, and the flowers hold the memory of sunset in its unfurling petals. The loosely double blooms open nearly orange, fading to a rich apricot, peach, and yellow. The sprawling canes have light green leaves with rosy new growth. This rose has few thorns so reaches for me only with fragrance when I brush past it as I walk through the arbor, bringing me the “peace of wild things.”
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~ Wendell Berry
Reach
The beginning of a new year is a time to think about what is important, what needs to be done, who I am called to be. I like to ponder and come to those thoughts over a period of time, rather than my making resolutions on January 1. A good way for me to do that is to choose a word for focus.This year I choose the word Reach. LIke these tomato seedlings in my kitchen, I start where I am, break open my comfort zone, shed what is unnecessary for growth, and celebrate new opportunity in the present – all the while reaching toward the Light.
Recalibrating, relinquishing
Embracing this season of enough
Attentive and astonished
Called to this journey
Holy mystery
How Much is Enough?
We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough ~ Wendell Ber
In recent years, I enjoyed forcing Paperwhite narcissus in the period after Thanksgiving and before Christmas – the flowering of Advent, if you will. I never planted just one container, pushing the ugly, papery bulbs into pebbles and keeping them in just the right temperature and light until strong white roots appeared. It became my habit to prepare at least half a dozen bowls of them to scatter around and share with family and friends. This year, whether by blatant omission or intentional effort to simplify, I didn’t buy any Paperwhite bulbs, although I have delighted in watching the green spears poke up and begin to bloom in the past.
This morning, celebrating a day of sunshine after some long dreary days with pewter skies and everything dripping with rain, I walked around the garden thinking to plan what needed to be dug up, pruned, and cleaned up in the next weeks. I began to see spots of color where the roses had responded to the rain, little things here and there that survived the frost, a single snapdragon, berries on the holly and hawthorne, and almost buried in wet leaves, one single stem of Narcissus. It was as if I were being told “You didn’t have to do it, I took care of it for you.” And one was enough.
Stones and Feathers 