A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.
~ Luis Barragan
plants and rocks and water
change with every shift of light
mystery of creation
murmuring stories
singing ancient songs
One of my favorite places to be still is here, beneath a very old oak tree in our church prayer garden. Its branches spread out over a trickling stream and bubbling fountain and a small labyrinth. In dry times, like our present drought, there is crusty brown growth along its mighty branches. But when we are blessed with rainfall, this turns to vibrant green. It is Resurrection Fern.
At all times I soak up the green and growing refreshment of this place. But it is in the times when I feel drought in my spirit that I come here to be still and know God, and to refill and refuel – the greening of my heart, Eastering.
“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
“Sitting in your garden is a feat to be worked at with unflagging determination and single-mindedness – for what gardener worth his salt sits down. I am deeply committed to sitting in the garden.” – Mirabel Osler
Sitting still is necessary for so many things: I listen better when I sit still. I hear things unheard when I am crunching on the gravel or digging or clipping. The butterflies and hummingbirds come closer when I am still. The cardinal pair lingers longer on the fence. Appreciation and savoring of beauty may run after me when I am on the move but they settle around my shoulders like a soft cover when I sit still. And in the stillness I begin to settle – the cloudy debris of things which can fret and hurt begin to drift to the bottom, leaving pure, clear knowing. Holy moments can happen when I sit in my garden.
“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
Photography by Skye Parker, my granddaughter
These windows at the back of our house mirror a rose arbor covered with blooms just a month ago. But summer arrives today says the calendar as well as the temperature, so the scanty blooms that are still there are pale and dried. The reflection today seems to say “all gone away.” But I know this rose. It is hardy and tenacious, with a reputation for surviving even a hurricane. I know it will bloom again. I will not mourn for lost blossoms. I will enjoy the many shades of green in its leaves, admire the lacy intertwining of its branches. I will wonder at the raindrops caught in spider webs woven in rose canes. I will count the bird nests perched inside the arbor’s protection, and rest in the shade it gives me. And I will be grateful for eyes that can see the rose bush reflected in the windows of home.
“Whether one looks at a star, a child, a moment of sorrow, or a time of gladness, blessed is the ordinary…I believe the small moment is the carrier of God’s most endearing gift, and that it must not be permitted to slip away unsavored and unappreciated…If one accepts each day as a gift from the Father’s hand, one may sometimes hear a voice saying, “Open it. I invite you to share with me in these little appointments with myself as we try to unwrap the hidden beauties in an ordinary day.” Gerhard Frost in Blessed is the Ordinary
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
One of my gifts for Mothers Day was a bunch of tulips. They were a delightful surprise when I found them on my front porch. I took them out of their box, trimmed their stems and put them into water, fragile, tight buds, petals held together like small pastel hugs, no clue of their real color. By the next morning, buds began to turn to blooms and the next few days were a wonder of unfolding deep magenta, peach, orange and apricot plus buttery yellows punctuated with a few creamy white blossoms. My tulips were lovely and I enjoyed them every day. But it was only as they truly opened and I came close to marvel at the art inside their cups that I saw all the colors, all the intricate markings of their center. I admired them from a distance, but they took my breath away when I looked more carefully.
I learn to “look again” and practice wonder.
“The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.”
Thank you, Jeremy.
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?
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
Stones and Feathers 