Friday, February 10, 2012

February thoughts


(Photo courtesy. www.trappist.net)
Early Morning

     It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. 
     I stare out the window watching the night rotate into day. I woke for some reason and hope to go back to sleep without my mind going down my to-do list for the day. The harder I fight to go to sleep, the more it eludes me. 
     Finally the dark shifts to the deepest of blues, a hue of the blue that reminds me of a retreat I took at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga. It’s been four years since my retreat there, but there are images that stick to me - that flow through my dreams.
     One is of the interior chapel at Vigils and Compline or evening prayers, the sun serving as a color wheel casting shades of dappled blues along the arches. I know the monks are in chapel praying and chanting now.
     I am not alone. My heart sings with them.
     I drift back to sleep.

DB
********************************************************




     This has been my view for much of the week. I've had a lot of writing to do the past few days. What keeps drawing my attention is the space bar, and that worn out place in the middle where my thumbs have landed thousands of times. I can't help but wonder, if my life were a keyboard, which would be the worn out keys? Do I land most often on worry, fear, jealousy, anger? Or on hope, kindness, faith, love, joy? 
     I know which I want to be true, but still I wonder.

SS
**********************************************************


Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; 
they toil not, neither do they spin.   Matthew 6:28


     Laziness can have surprising benefits.   Last winter, I carefully planted shoots of baby romaine lettuce in a garden pot filled with fresh soil and a little compost.  The romaine loved the cool winter and I harvested romaine until the days got too warm.  When the lettuce bolted, I pulled it out and replanted the pot with sweet basil for the summer.  
     This winter found me lacking in time and energy for the garden.  I pulled the frost bitten basil out of the pot in late November and simply stored the pot full of dirt beside the house without even a plan for spring.  And look what happened!
      Free lettuce! Volunteer shoots of romaine appeared, growing again in the container.  I watered it a bit and now I have another winter of fresh romaine. 
     I love finding these small miracles in my life  - even when I've done nothing to deserve them.

AF
     



No comments:

Post a Comment