Tag Archives: morning

Full of Light

Posted on by
Reply

002One of the things we love about Advent and Christmas is doing things the same way we have done them for many years. There may be minor changes and adjustments, but there is a sweet remembering in the things we do each year.  Even more, a balm for rough times and a surge of hope as we repeat the journey of the heart.   I found this entry in a journal i kept 6 years ago.  It is dated December 17, 2007, but it could have been words I wrote today.  These thoughts were in my mind then, and  now again.

“…the most important things that occur during my day usually aren’t on the to-do list. This Monday morning I am reflecting that fact as I finish my Old Testament reading and pray.  My heart is preparing – more important than the myriad things that will get done as the day unfolds:  laundry, house cleaning, finishing gifts, mailing cards, baking – each becomes an expression of my heart’s preparation.  I am so full of awe and wonder and gratitude for the great gift of Christ, the gift of God himself.  My home is full of Christmas music, Christmas color, Christmas light.  Christmas Light.”

Morning Meditation

Posted on by
2
005
 dawn casts veiled promise
through this day’s window
I come to the quiet
in shifting shadows of morning light
inhaling peace
exhaling all that I need to release
grace settles like a shawl around my shoulders
dance of stillness, silent song
enough

Small Things

Posted on by
1

Announcing Autumn on my porch,Duranta berries are reminders of the beauty and importance of small things.  Birds love these berries, so I welcome cardinals and mockingbirds as morning visitors.  Their thank you notes trill as they perch on my kitchen windowsill.  I enjoyed the plant’s summer blooms, but the small berries they left are an enchanting reminder of joy we find when we watch for life as it is made up of moments.

016 I think of [my life] in all its small component parts: the snowdrops, the daffodils; the feeling of one of my kids sitting close beside me on the couch; the way my husband looks when he reads with the lamp behind him; fettuccine Alfredo; fudge; Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice. Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.

~ Anna Quindlen, in A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Hints of Autumn

Posted on by
Reply

005In three more days, we can say that Fall has arrived because the calendar page turns and there it is.  But I can feel it coming from a long way before.  The leaves on our South Texas trees may not sport the vivid varieties of scarlet and orange and gold which we see in climates that have more distinct season changes, but there are hints. Crepe myrtle leaves begin to look different in morning light, even before they get touched with red.  Other leaves just begin to drop.  Mornings have the slightest hint of cool, and the light changes. I begin to look forward to baking more and spending more time on the back porch.  I check the supplies of cinnamon and nutmeg and maple syrup.  There are whispers of Autumn everywhere this week.

a pumpkin appears by my front door

I slice apples for dipping in caramel 

the ginger cat waits patiently

 

 

Perspectives and Paths

Posted on by
2

014

“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday”. ~John Burrough

 

vine greens and reaches

early light dawns and dapples

new  morning new mercy

 

Means of Grace

Posted on by
2

023

Morning Glory opens

 grace glows in star gift

  wrapped in blue tissue

“It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of ‘an inward and spiritual grace’.”

                                                        ~ A. Barrett Brown

Photo by Madelyn Claire Parker, age 7

I Have This Day

Posted on by
7

004

Celebrate Now 

I have long thought Hibiscus flowers exotic and lovely. They remind me of Bali, where we often visited when we lived in Indonesia.  Outside the little thatched roof lodging at Poppie’s Cottages where we sometimes stayed, large shrubs of the plant were always in bloom.  Once I sat outside on the tiny porch where they left our kopi and mango breakfast and painted one of the flowers.  I remember searching for a scarlet or vermillion paint that would allow me to capture the intensity of its color.  Now I mostly photograph the hibiscus that grow in our garden.  They help me remember to celebrate today – because today is all each flower has.  Whether I enjoy the bloom as it grows with large glossy leaves, or pluck it to bring inside to grace our kitchen table, it only lasts one day.  Putting its stem into water does not prolong the beauty.  By the next morning, this flower’s petals folded shut.  

Peace

Posted on by
2

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.”

IMG_0177

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

Light Comes

Posted on by
2

100_1868

Advent: season of waiting, expecting, preparing. One morning recently, I walked toward my front door and stopped, stilled with the beauty of light and shadow which shimmered in early morning sun streaming through our leaded glass door. As I received these images with my camera, I considered how much our Advent and Christmas pondering is like this – the shining of Light into our lament and darkness, beyond our closed doors, past our barriers of grief or bewilderment, settling into the curve of yearning in our hearts to create that  which can strike us still with its mystery.

“The light would never be so acceptable, were it not for that usual intercourse of darkness. . .God will have them that shall walk in light to feel now and then what it is to sit in the shadow of death. A grieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless mind.    ~Richard Hooker

” I’ve remembered this truth again and again as my ups decline into downs, my highs into lows. This reminder only confirms what I know but still need to learn. Light comes not in spite of the darkness, but to balance and penetrate it.”  ~Luci Shaw