It’s not Leap Year
So today is the last day
Of February.
Three months in a row
Of winter
Of cold
Even in Texas.
This last day of February
I give thanks
For the river that thaws
The heart that beats
The breath that knows.
The night is shorter
Day is longer
I wonder at spring
Lying just beyond
My sight.
May we bless this winter
And look to this spring
To apparent Grace
To fleeting Light
To fragile and tender Wholeness.
There comes a time
When we know inside
That the wheel of life has turned
And the seasons have carried us, perhaps gently, perhaps roughly,
To this new moment.
This is the time
To take off our shoes
Even in snow and ice,
To stand on the earth
On holy ground.
Darkness can seduce us.
We wish to stay under the covers, to stay asleep,
To refuse to answer the knock on the door of our soul.
It is so completely understandable.
Turning away from the cold, maybe harsh, dawn.
Yet light is waiting.
And time flows on like a glacier.
We long for rest but know that spring is already on the way.
The present moment is all that can hold us.
It always asks our consent.
With awe and hope and always love,
May we open our eyes to the light that shines.
May we allow ourselves to know this moment just as it is.
We are enveloped in grace.
May our hearts say Yes.
Wishing you light and peace and love this night and, always, grace. The grace that surrounds us and that lives within us…apparent grace.
My birthday was earlier this month. It was lovely, with friends and family around me. And not one, but two birthday cakes. In the wake of another birthday, I am slowly and surely coming to acknowledge the earth-shaking importance of two practices: rest and play.
Of course, I have always known that sleep was important (even though regretfully in all too short supply). And much of the joy I have known has come from occasions related to leisure…from vacations and holidays and concerts and other special events that lit up my life.
But now I am coming to see and know that not all rest is sleep. Sometimes rest is hanging out on the couch, with a book or a magazine or a movie or the dog or maybe just hanging out doing nothing at all. Rest can be walking around the neighborhood or even the mall, just looking around. Rest is time that calls for nothing except breathing.
Not all play is recreational sport or holiday party. Sometimes play is taking pictures with my phone…of the ground or a fence or a leaf. Sometimes play is writing a poem or singing along or even watching TV. Play can be almost anything that isn’t work, and even work can be play if chosen freely.
Rest and play are often dismissed in our adult lives. Once upon a time, they were required activities. I am finding that I miss them now.
Last month I was on retreat, on the Hudson River about an hour north of Manhattan. The autumn leaves were beautiful. It was Fall there, with an upper case “F.” The retreat was led by Jennifer Louden and Marianne Elliott and Tracey Clark. There were invitations to writing, to photography, to yoga, to dancing, to silence and breathing. Resting and playing. New friends. And in the spaces between all these invitations, between rest and play, between such beauty in each leaf…grace abounded. Peace and mercy and compassion and grace. The whispers of God.
Very soon Advent will begin and the holiday season will arrive. Next week is Thanksgiving in the United States. Harvest time. A time to consider rest and play, to notice and reflect grace all around us.
May we know this apparent grace in the moments of today, and all the moments of our lives.
When I was in college, “adds and drops” day came a few weeks after each semester started. I sometimes would sign up for a fuller class load in the beginning so that I could have the option of “dropping” the class I liked least. It was always kind of exciting to consider the choice and experience the joy of new empty space in my schedule. Of course I couldn’t drop just any course, as some were required. But the universe seemed much more fluid then and I remember deciding that I would drop a required course, try it again in a later semester, and perhaps add an elective that someone said was fun or exciting (and then scramble to catch up). I loved the sense of flexibility and choice. There were always new favorite faculty and even new favorite trees to sit under. Once “adds and drops” passed, I would settle into the semester and into the season, autumn or winter.
This season of summer passing into fall always reminds me of these college days. I have a yearning to once again consider what I could drop and what I might add…at work, at home, in my learning and creating, and in my soul. The challenge is that these days there is more than a fifteen credit hours schedule to arrange. The actual challenge is that life feels like a river flowing over me and lately, sometimes like white water rapids. So who could add or drop anything intentionally? Much of the time I find myself trying to just breathe, stay in the raft, and not swallow too much water.
And yet. I saw a full rainbow on my commute home yesterday. I have been surprised in the past few weeks with amazing invitations that stopped me in my tracks. I have tiptoed up to witness heartbreaking sadness in this world that we love. So, I remember once again that in each moment I can choose to attend to the invitations that arrive, to the sadness that falls like twilight, to the joy that waits behind each “yes.” I can be present to the Grace that is all around us…and take the time to find a new favorite tree to sit under, in a park or in my heart.
May we experience again the fluidity of choice and of delighting in the world around us and may we offer a simple “yes” to the Grace that holds us all.
Today I decided to observe the Feast Day of Saints Next and Now.
In my practice I honored Saint Now by bowing to my to do list
And glorified Saint Next by dreaming of all the better times that surely lie ahead.
But I think I had it backwards.
Saint Next is only what may or may not happen
Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.
Saint Now is this very holy moment.
This bright blue sky, these white clouds.
This sausage and potato soup, this butterscotch candy.
This heart beating in this very body.
All of these sunflowers in this afternoon field.
Saint Next is another long commute home.
Saint Now is the liturgy of my each and every breath.
May we know the Holy
Again tomorrow,
But always and most fiercely, today.
As summer ends, the seasons begin to shift and turn again. Although our climate in Texas does not feel autumnal, in the landscape of the soul there are whispers of fall’s inflection. These are transition times when dreams might announce a message, a new thought, or simply an idea.
I had such a dream a few nights ago. In this dream, I was sitting at a table with a priest from my church and with a friend from college who died over twenty years ago. In dreams, of course, all are welcome. I was holding an empty bowl woven from fibers. I was telling these two friends, from now and long ago, that I wove this bowl from strands of yarn from old sweaters, ribbons from old gifts, and hair from friends, family, and beloved animals. We continued to talk about how we weave our loves into our lives. I was touched by the connection in my heart across the years, and my waking thought was that yes, community endures.
Praying with this dream, I considered the woven empty bowl as perhaps reflecting an empty nest…my empty nest. We took our daughter to college a couple of weeks ago and are continuing to shift and adjust in our now quieter and seems-much-larger home. And then I wondered, what if the empty nest is only a holy space for what comes next? As I weave the bowl from love in my dream, could I be also preparing for the waiting grace that lies ahead? Knowing that love never ends, and that community endures, this coming season brings wonder and thankfulness…not only for what has been given but for what is to come.
So here’s to the autumn soon to be ours, to community and friends old and new, and to the beautiful nests we weave together. May we know the grace that calls us always toward the Holy One, toward life, toward Love itself.
It has been almost ten months since my last Apparent Grace post. Soon it will be a year…but not yet. So there is still time to recall last June, last Trinity Sunday and hopes of beginning again. And there is still time to return to life, to new life in this Easter season.
As it happened, Trinity Sunday last year was almost immediately followed by a whirlwind of family events and much change for a time. It was a season of waiting on the Lord and being lifted by our friends and community. Surgery and illness and other losses…a time of learning patience and trust. And, in the end, certainly a time of apparent grace. Remembering again that all I need to do is look and listen, and grace is shining right before me.
And so, we grow and heal and live to see a new day. A new season of new life. I am ready to write again, to teach again, to learn again and again. I have a new blog glory rays (www.gloryrays.wordpress.com) for poems and prayers and I hope to also write more here at Apparent Grace…
May we live into Easter with new hearts of flesh and may we know and give thanks for all good, and for all Apparent Grace in our lives and in our world. Amen, Alleluia!
Yesterday was the day on the Christian liturgical calendar known as “Trinity Sunday.” The Sunday following Pentecost (the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit)…early June and the beginning of summer.
I have had several memorable Trinity Sundays. One was in 1978, in Washington DC, when I was visiting Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown. I was interviewing for a position as a Jesuit volunteer, a job as the coordinator of Zacchaeus Medical Clinic, an inner city free clinic. The local Jesuit volunteers took me to church at Holy Trinity and during the liturgy, members of the Community for Creative Non-Violence remained standing as a sign of their commitment to social justice. I had never seen anyone stand throughout a worship service, much less as a protest or a witness. Little did I know that seeds were planted that Trinity Sunday that would indeed lead me to become a Jesuit Volunteer, work at the free clinic, and later enter medical school.
Many years later, on Trinity Sunday in 2001, I was received into the Episcopal church, along with my husband. My spiritual path had meandered from being baptized as an infant by my Methodist minister grandfather, through a Presbyterian childhood and adolescence, into a young adult conversion to Roman Catholicism, and now to the Episcopal church that seemed to be the synthesis of all three earlier traditions..the Episcopal church that made room for my Quaker leanings, my Zen curiosity, my love of movies and books and enjoying friends. This was the commitment that we made in the spirit of wanting our daughter to grown up in a community of inclusion. This was the commitment that we made that led to my husband’s re-entering active ministry as an Episcopal priest (having been a former Roman Catholic priest). This was the commitment that led me to spiritual direction for the third time in my life and this time to becoming a spiritual director myself.
Yesterday, Trinity Sunday rolled around again. The day that we celebrate the community that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Three persons in one God. The theology eludes me as the mystery enfolds me like fog or like clouds on a hilltop. What I love most is the community, the connectedness of these three Persons in one God. I am reminded, this Trinity Sunday of 2012, that it is never too late to start again. To live in community within myself, with those around me, with those I love and with those with whom I struggle. To live in the connectedness and in the blessing of hope and grace and peace. To commit again, to living in love…in the Holy One who lives in and loves each of us.
Beginning again, this day after Trinity Sunday, thankful as ever for apparent grace.
