A World in Transition

"Monarch chrysalis on butterflyweed" by Martin LaBar is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

We walk daily circles around the yard, stretching our legs amidst long hours spent working on screens.  Frost arrived this weekend, impossibly early, and now, as we walk and watch, we witness the world - birthed in spring and matured in summer - receding, one plant, one insect, at a time. 

Frost has blackened leaves on the pepper plants in our garden, indiscriminately shriveling some while others remain unmarred. This morning, after three nights in the 30s, most of the Zinnias bear damage – some petals bleached white, others prematurely shriveled and brown. 

It’s strange, how the touch of frost’s icy fingers produces an effect so similar to fire, both burn at the touch. Too hot or too cold, the impact is the same – the shriveling, blackening, pulling back from life. 

The new purple Aster, a fall bloomer and late food source for honeybees preparing for winter, has yet to form buds. But our mums are crowned with hundreds of tight-fisted possibilities, green buds with just a hint of color foretelling the shade of flowers to come – rusty gold or brick red. 

Every day, I check the progress of a monarch cocoon that dangles precariously on the underside of a giant milkweed leaf. The cocoon is still largely green, and I wonder at the frost’s impact on the caterpillar’s delicate transformation. Will new life emerge in time to wing its way south to Mexico or will it be forever suspended, stunted, neither able to return to what it was or emerge into what it will be? 

Our kids are happy to be back at school, walking off to classrooms and tethered to laptop screens. My husband continues to work, steadily, at his make-shift desk in the unheated mudroom. I alone, have no place to be. I have no work to return to and what I will be, what I will do beyond the daily, has yet to emerge. 

I feel in myself the anxiety of being suspended between what was and what will be. Perhaps, this is why I visit the monarch each day - hoping for its transformation to be complete, hoping it emerges in time to head off to a balmy winter retreat. The chrysalis invites me to a stark surrender, a willingness to let go and wait to see what emerges. 

Today, I scooted around behind the giant stalk of half-eaten milkweed, hoping to catch a blog-worthy picture of the cocoon. Crouched behind the plant, I saw the prominent gold specks dotted around the top of the cocoon, like a crown. There is beauty in the process. 

The Compost Heap: Both/And

A Purification by Wendell Berry

At the start of spring I open a trench

in the ground. I put into it

the winter’s accumulation of paper,

pages I do not want to read

again, useless words, fragments,

errors. And I put into it

the contents of the outhouse:

light of the sun, growth of the ground,

finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

and to the faithful trees, I confess

my sins: that I have not been happy

enough, considering my good luck;

have listened to too much noise;

have been inattentive to wonders;

have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse

of mind and body, I close the trench,

folding shut again the dark,

the deathless earth. Beneath that seal

the old escapes into the new.

//

We were nearing the end of our time together when my spiritual director posed a question, "Are you familiar with a Wendell Berry poem where he digs a compost heap?" 

"Yes," I said, "I am." I thought back to the poem I'd printed and posted in the church's prayer room one spring, laying it next to a print of a painting of blurred greens and browns. 

"Maybe that's an image you could work with, a kind of ritual to provide closure," she suggested. "What, from your time at the church would could you put into that pile?"

We had been discussing my complicated, raw feelings about the pastorate I left suddenly at the beginning of March. It was a complicated leaving shaped by trauma and followed closely by the trauma of Covid-19.  I thought about her question for a few minutes, picturing the brown soil of Berry's trench cut in the ground. 

"I don't know yet," I said, at last. "It's all still so co-mingled together." 

She nodded, offering simple acceptance of my appraisal, but the image of compost has stayed with me.

//

Maybe this is what we need to know in this time and space, not the clarity and comfort of the either/or, but the difficult acceptance of both/and. The truth that there are no easy answers and that much of our experience is co-mingled - joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, love and hate, hope and despair.

Without this truth, we'll wear ourselves thin in the endless need to part and parcel out every answer and, in declaring one side of any debate a winner, we will create countless unnecessary losers. 

Both/and invites us to dwell in a place of creative tension - irresolution, if you will. It requires effort of a different sort, a willingness to remain open, a commitment to do the work of turning over ideas, emotions and view points. What if our fear and uncertainty might be transformed by the kind of creative alchemy we find in the compost heap? And what if we were to wait together, unified in faith, hope, and love, to see what emerges?

I am writing, of course, about my own recent experiences, but also about the uneasily resolved tensions we find ourselves in as we grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic. The thing we ought to fear is not the tensions of our divergent viewpoints, but our inability to hold them well, our unwillingness to recognize the creative possibilities of our current situations. 

//

This past Sunday morning, I asked my kids how they felt about using the liturgy from the church where I recently pastored. Despite visiting a few other churches after my resignation, we'd returned to using aspects of this church's liturgy once lockdown began. It was familiar, it was easy, but I was beginning to be certain it was time to move on and I wanted to find out what my kids were feeling.

"What do you think about using this?" I asked. 

The younger boys, age 8, said, echoing each other, "We like it."

Then, one quickly added, with a sly grin, "But we're supposed to hate them now."

His brother chimed in in agreement. 

They were trying to show loyalty to me, for the hurt I experienced. They were reflecting their mixed emotions. They were voicing the creative tensions we all feel, the desire to stay with what's familiar but painful and the need to create distance that will facilitate healing. 

"Well," I said, "you don't need to hate anybody. But Dad and I feel it's time to try something new." 

We joined another local church service online. We didn't know the songs and I cried quietly through the first ten minutes or so. Sensing my sadness, our cat, Blackie, came and sat with his paws on my chest, massaging my heart with his comforting purr. 

I hate the pain we are experiencing, the pain of unresolved endings, the pain of moving into something new, but undesired. It's all so co-mingled right now. But we're holding the tension, believing in the power of creation that makes all things new, the old seeping into the new in unexpectedly beautiful and amazing ways.

What co-mingled thoughts and feelings are you experiencing in this season? How are you holding tension creatively within yourself and with others?

The Year of Failure

“I’m tempted to declare 2017, The Year of Failure.” 

This is what I messaged to a friend minutes after opening a long-awaited email informing me I was no longer in the running for a coveted job.  My emotions were high; melodrama rose with ease. Looking back over the year, I identified a series of significant failures that lined up month after month in a neat and tidy row: 

• the book proposal and draft I spent months writing and was rejected.

• the library job I thought would be a good long-term fit, but wasn’t.

• the chaplaincy job I spent two months applying to and interviewing for and didn’t get.

The longer and harder I looked, the more failures I found.  Each failure represented energy spent without any easily identifiable reward; each failure was followed by a significant period of disorientation.  Why not chalk it all up as a miserable, frustrating disappointment?

Slapping a label on the entire year offered a tempting satisfaction, and the word ‘failure’ simmered with an oddly appealing blend of self-pity and shame. 

I’m not accustomed to failure. 

Partly because I’m amazing (wink wink), but mostly because I avoid significant risk like the plague.  If you only ever attempt what you know you can accomplish, failure is rarely an issue.  But, then again, neither are surprising successes or the experience of being comforted and carried by those who love you anyway after a difficult fall from glory. 

My friend replied, “Oh, I’m sorry.  That is so hard.”

She didn’t push back.  Her response left space for me to move around a bit, and I quickly realized other names might apply to this year as well.  Like, The Year of Risk-Taking, for one.   Opening myself to the possibility that other labels might just as easily apply helped me identify my real struggle:  I wanted to understand what had happened and to know whether my energies had been misdirected.  If I could figure those things out, then maybe I could make 2018 The Year that I Finally Do Everything Right (or something like that, only with a little more finesse).

I wonder whether, in all of this, it might be better in the long run (although, perhaps more intensely uncomfortable) to just say, “I don’t know what happened or why things happened as they did, but I’m committed to continuing to show up, to ask the hard questions, to look and lean and leap.” 

Still, sometimes, I feel that label – Year of Failure – hovering like a shadow in the periphery of my vision.   I sense it most when I feel uncertain and insecure.  But, for the most part, I’m resisting pinning it to my lapel or scrawling it across the front of my now-almost-finished 2017 planner. 

Even now, as I’m writing, other possible labels continue to present themselves.  Like, The Year of Withholding Judgment or perhaps, best yet, The Year of Believing There is More Happening Than I Can See, by which I mean, of course, The Year of Faith.  

That has a better ring to it, don’t you think?

The Healing at the Pool of Bethesda

John 5:1-9

How long must you wait

by the water’s edge

for the angel to dip

her fickle toe and

stir the surface

of the world?

And what if

even after

days, months

of waiting,

watching,

you sense

the air’s movement,

see the water shimmer

with circle after concentric

circle and yet,

are unable

to enter in?

To be near

the miracle is not

enough.  Second

place will earn you

no reward. 

What then?

Nothing can move

you save for the one

question most difficult,

“What do you want?”

The answer 

to that question

turns you away 

from waiting

and the still, 

smooth surface

of the water.  

The answer

to that question 

bids you,

“Pick up your mat 

and walk.”

After

After 

(Matt. 2:1-12)

After you find the One for whom you wait,

after you are overwhelmed with joy

and kneel to kiss holy ground,

you might also find yourself

returning home by another road.

The ways you once walked no longer

appeal.  And though the way is dark

and takes you further ‘round,

you will know it at once to be your road, 

the path for which you were made. 

- Kelly Chripczuk

When Your Huggy-Boy Won't Hug (i.e. Everything is Coming Undone)

(THIS is the lovely view across the street from our house.  Amazing.)

When the day starts with your huggy-boy not willing to give you a hug. 

Then progresses to yelling and hitting. 

When you let them watch way more T.V. than they should and it only whets their appetite for more.  And even the fun of pulling sunflower stalks thick as trees from the garden isn’t enough to help you all find a flow. 

Time is wrinkled.  And you are caught in its folds. 

On those days there is no low hanging fruit.  The easy way cannot be found.

//

The caterpillar, trapped within its cocoon, let’s go completely.  Dissolving all but its essence – a bit of memory and the cells that tell what it will become.  Antennae, wings, legs.  

Sometimes I think this is what we must do on these ill-fitting days that confine. 

Let go, completely, of all but the essential. 

Curl on the loveseat by the woodstove and nap. 

Sit under the weight of a blanket, bookended on either side by the boys who were fighting, the ones who want more T.V., and read book after book.

Then maybe something new, but familiar as your own memory of how the day could have been, will emerge.  Something composed from your own longing for something more. 

//

Unable to fit together as you are, the boys will spend an hour playing in the bathroom closet, their “office.”  And you will doze in and out of sleep in the one room where you can hear them the least. 

You will make a cup of coffee, adding cream and chocolate syrup.  Then it will be time at last to wait for the bus on the front porch.  The boys, happy now, will attack you from their picnic table pirate ships.  They will “fick” you into believing they’re innocent farmers before whacking you with a sword. 

In the afternoon sun, you will realize it’s warmer than you thought and the day, unveiled, will emerge as something new.    

Back When I Was A Crumudgeon (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

(Photo Source)

The seminary's married housing sprawled in a series of low brick buildings some five miles from campus.  There the newly married, newly empty-nested and a few brave families with young children resided in dilapidated cinder-block two-story apartments. 

My husband and I cohabitated quietly in our first floor apartment with a school of saltwater fish, a frog and a cat.  Although our closest neighbor had two children and a couple upstairs added a baby before graduation, the sight and sound of children in the building was relatively rare.

This wasn’t the case however in the open courtyard and parking lots behind the buildings where children roved about in loud, unruly gangs.  A playground stood somewhere back there, one we never visited and kids seemed, to my uninitiated young ears, to be screaming there all. day. long. 

As a student, I frequently stayed up all hours of the night reading hundreds of pages of theology or writing and studying for exams.  In the afternoon I rode the campus bus home and slipped into our quiet bedroom with its big window and filmy yellow curtains.  

There I lay down for a nap.  The cat tucked in quietly beside me.

Beneath that window, though, was a small alcove in the building’s design.  Children gathered there in the otherwise quiet afternoons like mice in a sewer drain.  Squeaking, shouting, squealing.  I had yet to learn the ability to sleep anytime anywhere.  I didn’t yet know how to make myself sleep on command, how to tune out noise and distraction with the flick of an internal switch.

It made me furious.  The noise.  The indignity.  The gall of all those children, gathering beneath my window, running through my front yard, taking up space, making noise while I devoted my life to the steady, demanding work of thinking. 

//

A great sweeping oak tree grew in the front yard of our building.  Its branches hung down low.  One evening, studying after dinner with my books and papers sprawled on the table around me, I looked out our sliding glass door and saw a boy.  He was about seven or eight, the age of my oldest boy now.  Framed by the glass door, I watched him hang and swing, tugging on the old tree’s branches.  Another boy stood watching the first.

Whatever he was doing, it looked destructive.  In a fit of righteous rage I slid the glass door open and let loose a forceful, 

“Hey!”

The boy froze and looked at me, the branch still in hand. 

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Still frozen, the boy replied, “I don’t know.”

“Are you trying to break that branch?” I asked, each word an accusation.

“Uh, I guess.” The boy stared at me with eyes like saucers.  His friend stared too at this seminarian standing back lit by her own apartment as evening fell. 

I was Wild and Fierce, Protector of Trees, Interrogator of Little Boys. 

“Then, cut it out!” I shouted, slamming the door shut.

The boys took off running. 

My husband and I exchanged a look.  Yes, he saw and heard it all.  

I’m sure I attempted to justify my outburst.  But later, we laughed.

We laughed at the boy’s look, at his sudden surprise.  Laughed at the way I must have looked, the way I did look and sound.  We repeated the scene over and over again between ourselves, the script of one of the funniest episodes we’d witnessed in a long time. 

Kids will do that to you.  I know that now.  

They get under your skin, pull and yank at your lower branches, until something in you breaks.  They tug you into the rough and tumble world of parking lot clubs that meet beneath open windows and oak tree branches strong enough to swing on.  Then, resting in bed on a sunny afternoon while your four-year-old twins rumble and tumble downstairs, as you try to distinguish between their cries and squeals of delight and the ones coming from the daycare next door, then you will remember the boys and the tree and the things you said.  

And you will smile and laugh all over again.    

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.  

  

This is My Confession (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

A small group of women sat in a circle.  The question was greeted with silence and I didn’t dare tell the truth.  What would they think?  It’s just not the kind of thing you admit in public.  And besides that, I felt guilty. 

But maybe it’s time now I owned up.

I’m not busy, not in the way most people are.

And, I’m not terribly productive.

I’m happy.

My life is incredibly fun.

I play all of the time.

 //

After listing seven attributes of play, Laura Boggess, author of Playdates With God, asked the women in our small retreat circle to name ways they already play. 

I thought of my kids – the way they invite me to join them on our hammock-turned-pirate-ship, the games of fishy-fishy-cross-my-ocean that form in the yard.  But it’s not just the kids’ fault.  When they’re gone – at school and preschool – I cut flowers from the garden, I paint and color, I design and make Tiny Books of poetry. 

And I write. 

In the silence that followed Laura’s question, I offered, “Writing's a form of play for me, I think. . . . cooking too.”

Women nodded, smiled.  I didn’t dare add about the coloring, painting, yo-yo fun and Ukulele experiments. 

//

It’s a miracle really that I’m having so much fun. 

My personality type's represented by a worker bee and yet, here I am flitting and fluttering about like some kind of butterfly.

Last summer God told me, “I'm going to restore your joy.”

This past weekend, a year and a half after God’s revelation, one of the retreat attendees noted on her evaluation form, “The leaders had a joyful countenance.”

Some secrets can’t be hidden.  The shine, like a light, like a smile on our faces.  If you’re happy and you know it, you won't be able to hide it for long.

That’s why I’m here confessing.

Miracles CAN happen.  Even worker bees can learn to dance.

(And, for your Monday morning happiness boost, click on the video below.  Dancing around is encouraged.)

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.       

A Stone Well-Placed (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

Wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance . . . - Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Speak

Five months pregnant with twins, I waddled up a narrow, rocky path.  I was looking – listening – for something in nature that might speak to me. 

This was the culmination of a retreat day oriented around nature as a source of revelation.  Having read an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Speak, we went outside, tasked with the mission of listening for the voice of God in the midst of the natural world.  Our assignment was to bring back the object that spoke to us for sharing within the larger group.

 

Twenty of us wandered through the gravel parking lot, then split off in different directions, uphill and down, into meadows and woods.  I didn’t stray far, my body shouting clearly that heavily pregnant women ought not go wandering the woods alone. 

I surveyed the grassy edges of the parking area. 

In the sea of green, a dark stone stood out.  I leaned awkwardly with my arm outstretched and plucked it from the grass where it nestled.

In my hand, though, it was just a stone.  Bending again, I put it back.  

Further up the hill, near the edge of the leafy woods I saw another stone.  This one was white, surrounded by smaller, darker stones.  It stood out bright in contrast. 

Bending to pick it up I realized it also stood out because of its surroundings.  I hesitated and left it unmoved.

 

Every rock, leaf, branch that caught my eye was the same.  In its place, it spoke, but in my hand, it was reduced.  It was probably the third of fourth sighting before I heard what the stones were saying, “I’m happy where I am.” 

They whispered contentment, half-buried on the rocky trail or sleeping in the bright green grass.  Not only were they happy where they were, but their placement was what made them special. 

Tears sprang to my eyes. 

I was not content with where I was or where I was going.  I didn’t want to be pregnant with twins, dreaded leaving my job in a few months’ time, and couldn’t imaging, much less accept, being a mother of four.

 

I left all of the stones in the woods that day and returned to the meeting room with their words in my heart.  The rocks had no say in their placement and yet, they thrived.  They were well placed right where they were.

Fast forward four years and a few months, through seasons of grief and fear, longing and hope, and I now find myself like those stones, happy in the place where I am. 

In Psalm 16, the author puts it this way:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance (v.5-6).  

The psalmist here is a stone well placed and I think of his words often when I glimpse the gift of this place we've been given; when I think about the paths I would have taken had I made my own way. 

When have you found yourself unexpectedly well-placed?  When has nature spoken to you?

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.  

Growing Season (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(The field of soybeans coming in across the street from our house.)

Late, I arrived at a recent Pastoral Development Day on the tail-end of opening worship.  I slipped quietly into a single stuffed chair down low in the back of the room, curling my legs and feet up tight beneath me.  I was never once late when I returned to work five weeks after my daughter, my oldest, was born.  Waking at 4:30 in the morning I nursed, then showered and drove the hour to work with her in the car seat, then nursed again in a bathroom before joining the rest of the staff with my infant in tow at 8:00.  That was nine years ago and I was not late once the whole summer that I worked with her at my side. 

This Thursday, though, was her field day at school and just as the bus pulled up we realized her lunch – the packed one she needed – was sitting still inside on the kitchen counter.  “Go,” I said, “I’ll bring it to school.”

After the babysitter came early so I could be on time, I gathered my things and hers and made the out-of-the-way trip to her school.  I got there just as the buses were loading and watched her walk out with her class. 

I was late that morning and frazzled, but happy too.  As I described it later to a friend, “My daughter forgot her lunch and I had to drop it off at school,” then, pumping my fist in the air I added, “Mommy, for the WIN!”

When the singing ended a friend of mine invited me to take his seat closer to the middle of the room – he would stand.  I gathered my things and moved for a few minutes, but eventually I turned and whispered, “I need to sit in the back to unwind.”  Then I got up and returned again to my single chair way down low in the back of the room. 

It’s been a year or two since I attended a Pastoral Development day put on by my local denominational conference and even longer since I resigned my pastoral position.  In the past I’ve felt the need and desire – the pressure – to mingle and fit in at these gatherings, to be both visible and vocal.  But this past Thursday I listened to my own heart, which was jangled and tired from rushing out the door and performing the emergency lunch delivery.  I needed to sit in the back and unwind and so I did. 

Seated in the back I watched several pastors working on their phones during the presentation or getting up and leaving the room to field phone calls.  This was one of the hardest things for me to give up when I left the pastorate – the feeling of importance.  It used to be routine for me to receive upwards of twenty emails a day and now I’m lucky to receive three or so a week other than twitter updates and notifications from my kids’ schools. 

Watching them I heard my spirit say, “I’m so grateful to be unimportant.”  It was such an unexpected thought that I wrote it down.  Having struggled so much with feeling unimportant,  I never expected to find myself grateful for it.  I thought immediately of John the Baptist’s words, “He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30)” and understood them in a new light. 

The initial presenter shared his story of incredible success followed by a stripping of all he valued as God called him back to his “first love,” back to the relationship at the heart of all things.  Much of what he said resonated with me – the invitation to love, the unknowingness of God’s leading – and the fact that he spoke from a time and place in his story that is as yet unresolved were all encouraging. 

I could have told his story, as it is also my own, except for the great success part.  God has kept me from that – a fact over which I am often frustrated, bordering on bitter.  It’s one thing to have great success and be called away from it – it is another altogether to never have arrived.  And yet, listening, I felt my spirit say, “God loves me very much.”  This also, I wrote down. 

In that moment the love of God sank down from head to heart, from abstract idea to incarnate reality as I pondered my life and the word-made-flesh love of God within it.  Who knew that the sorrow of my own professional stuck-ness could also hold within it a revelation of such joy – “God loves me very much.”

This all took place on Thursday and, halfway through Friday I pulled a muscle in my back while trying to maneuver a free coffee table into the back of the van.  I knew it was bad, but I’d promised my son I would attend his field day so, without resting, I made lunch and showered up before carting myself and the twins over to the park. 

By the time we got home I was in excruciating pain, the likes of which I haven’t known in a long time.  I could barely get myself onto the floor and sitting filled my core with sharp spasms.  With the pain came fear – laying on the floor, helpless, reminded me of last summer’s panic attacks and the tension caused anxiety to rise within me until I felt close to drowning. 

I loaded up on pain medicine, ice and restricted myself to the floor.  Relaxing, I felt a sense of peace and gratitude wash over me.  My back still hurt, as it does also today, but in the midst of the pain I knew also that it will get better.  The reality of the pain was inescapable, yet I now know that the reality of change is also inescapable.  Nothing in life is stagnant, no one fear or hurt has the power to cancel out the possibility of change and healing in the future. 

//

I took joy in meeting my daughter's needs where once I felt such great pressure to conform her needs to my own.

I tended to my own need to unwind in a spacious place rather than seeking to fit in with the expectations of others.

I felt gratitude in my un-importance where once I envied the importance of others.

I felt the love of God in what has not been given me, rather than resentment.

I felt pain, but also knew peace at the possibility of its passing. 

//

I read a children’s book by Ruth Krauss not long ago called “The Growing Story.” In it, a young boy puts away his winter clothes only to find that by next season they are too small.  Trying on the now-too-little clothes he exclaims in wonder, “I’m growing too!”

This is the wonder I want to share with you this week – the grace that time passes and we change.  Time away from my ministry context formed these changes in me and in returning I am able to see them and celebrate.  Like the little boy, this post is my own shout of wonder, “I’m growing too!” and I am so very grateful.

There is one last thing I wrote down on Thursday, which is this - “It is all gift.” 

May you be blessed, friends, with grace and wonder in each and every one of your growing seasons.   

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are. 

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.      

She Wore Red (a poem)

She never wore red, although
it was her favorite color. But
when she died, her coffin was
draped with red roses, soft
as velvet.  And so in the end,
dressed in a soft pink
housecoat, she wore red
and I stood over her casket
in black with a red leather purse
tucked under one arm.  

All of the Things of Fall

 

All of the things of fall
are as beautiful in their dying
as they were in their birth,
as if it were a farewell party,
a last hurrah, a riotous wake.

May I also be beautiful
in my surrender, fading
from green to brilliant
orange or red, and may
the moment of my letting go
be as precious as the leaf 
that falls, unnoticed, 
to the ground
that catches it.   

Still, there always remains
those few leaves that cling
and hold on, withered brown
in their stubbornness. Refusing 
to fall, they face the stark white winter 
alone while, below, the others return 
to that from which they came; 
returning, as it were, to home. 

Photo Source.

To Mend a Broken Heart

Flowers help, cut or wild

blooms of vibrant hue,

also time rolled out in long

stretches like bolts of cloth.

Air is essential, as well as stories

that name in some way the sharp

corners of your pain.

You will want to lay down

on the floor, to feel something

solid beneath your brokenness,

like a hand holding the pieces

of a shattered vase. 

Be gentle: offer yourself 

a cup of tea, a book, a candle lit

in silence. Tuck small 

moments of beauty and joy

into your heart like a poultice 

to draw out the pain.

If you're able, wake up

before the sun rises.  Allow

your day to begin and end

in the quiet dark.  Then watch

for the way the light breaks

through differently each day; 

witness the miracle

of night’s passing until 

you believe it's true.  

(Photo Source: Here. ) Linking today with Playdates With God.