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Tag Archives: meditation
New Day
Adventure of Grace and Joy
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
Remembering
It is Good Friday. I go into our garden, remembering another garden that became a place of prayer, entreaty, yearning, betrayal, and choosing a path that cost life to give life. A rosemary bush at the end of our stone wall has wintered, died back, and now demonstrates life beginning again. .Both the garden I am remembering and the garden where I walk are places of revelation.
a garden is a place of revelation
seeds that survive to grow
are containers that must open and change,
releasing all that they are
in order to become what they can be.
a garden is a place of repair
a wildflower stubbornly pushes through
a crack in the wall, filling that broken place
with green growing hope
a garden is a place pointing to resurrection
though whipped by winds and dried from drought,
shattered stalks lift up and flower
beginning again
a garden is a place of revelation
but not a place I can stay.
I cross its threshold
and remember.
Green Alleluias
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.
Taking the Day Off
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’
Unwritten
“To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.”
~ Mark Nepo
Seed Time
“Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers – plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun’s warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life’s stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or unable many of us are to pay this price in an age when manufactured sources of stimulation and pleasure are everywhere at hand. For me, enjoying nature’s pleasures takes conscious choice, a choice to slow down to seed time or rock time, to still the clamoring ego, to set aside plans and busyness, and to simply to be present in my body, to offer myself up.”
— Lorraine Anderson
Rooted
“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” ~ Simone Weil
Recently when family gathered to help us celebrate our 50 years of being married, we were given a small white pot which contained a plastic bag filled with potting soil and a dried, brown ball with papery layers peeling back about the size of a small onion. It was an Amaryllis bulb. As long as I let the pot, the soil, and the bulb wait on my counter, nothing much happened. There was one place where a spot of green wanted to push through its crackly wrapping, but seemed to have grown weary and quit trying. But as soon as opened the soil packet and poured it into the pot, pushed the bulb down, set it in a window, and added water, I could almost hear the dry dirt begin to breathe a lullaby to hungry roots as they began to channel new life into stalk and leaf. Two sturdy stems soon grew heavy with swelling buds. Above, the first scarlet flower opens wide, stamens heavy with pollen.
Then there were three, so large it seemed they would topple. And just as the first bloom began to fade, the second stalk of buds began to open. In all, 6 magnificent delights have graced the plain white pot in my kitchen window. Without roots, this blooming would have stayed inside the brown bulb. The roots were a potential, but not a possibility until nourished with soil and light and water.
What nourishes my soul to satisfy this need for rooting? Do I choose that which roots and grows? These are questions I ask again in a soul’s wintering.
Christmas Path
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
Stones and Feathers 
