Category Archives: gratitude

A Waste of Precious Time

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Yesterday was Pentecost, the celebration of the Holy Spirit alive and moving in this world. I arrived early to set up for the high school class I lead, only to find that a fundraising car wash and the need for extra acolytes had reduced my class to just me. Several hours of preparation and a twenty mile drive for nothing more than a few minutes in an empty room and a return trip home. My thought on the drive home: what a waste of time.

And I was right, it was a waste of time: just in a way I didn’t appreciate until I was more than halfway home. I was so focused on the time I spent prepping for something that didn’t happen that I disregarded the celebration of the Spirit who always moves in unexpected and mysterious ways. I ignored the grace of so many youth and adults scrubbing cars to fund the mission trip to Puerto Rico. While I wasn’t rude, I certainly wasn’t gracious about the whole thing.

In truth, preparation for learning in faith is never a waste of time; I had the chance to pray for my class and learn something new. It’s a testament to my own lack of perspective that I forgot this. The real waste of time: I had the chance to see the Spirit moving in surprising and wonderful ways and I turned a blind eye to it. Not a waste of my precious time, but a rejection of the gift of sacred time the Spirit offered me.

O Lord, open my eyes to see your grace and my heart to love the gifts you give. In Christ’s name I pray, Amen.

Mother and Child

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 Picture by Jared Fredrickson

It’s Mother’s Day, and I’ve been up for almost three hours. I called my sister a few minutes ago, wishing her a good day. I’ll call my mom in another hour to wish her well and to say thank you for the life and love she’s given me – and for the prayers she continues to say for me.

The first time I laid my newborn sons in the crib at home, I gave them over to God in prayer. I said that same prayer every night, and still do with some modifications (For most of the year, it’s a long distance prayer for my older son). At sixteen and twenty years of age, they often stay up later than I do, so it’s now part of my going-to-bed prayers rather than a putting-them-to-bed prayer. I think it’s made being a mother more of a joy than an anxiety, and I’m sure it’s given me the strength to let them grow into their holy lives. I don’t own them and I don’t know what life holds for them. I do know that God loves them even more than I do. Perhaps I say this prayer to remind myself of that…

Gracious God, this night I give my son back to you in faith and hope. He is yours even more than he is mine. May you return him to me in the morning, to love and to raise. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 Row house by Colin Fredrickson

[St. Francis’ Prayer will return in a few days…]

The Things I Put Up With…

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The first great rule of life is to put up with things.

Baltasar Gracian

[Daily Peace, Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2015, March 11]

Baltasar Gracian was a seventeenth century Jesuit priest and philosopher who wrote these and many other words. His Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia was translated from its original baroque Spanish to English by Christopher Maurer in 1994, and gained popularity under its anglicized name – The Art of Worldly Wisdom. It’s currently available  as an ebook and as a printed-and-bound book]

This truth doesn’t mean accepting abuse or neglect – that would be the first great rule of death: it means accepting the bedrock reality that the world doesn’t exist for the convenience of any one person, including me. Sometimes the train will be late, the line at the grocery check-out long, the game cancelled due to rain. Power lines go down. It’s just the way life is. Sometimes there’s someone at fault, but often there really isn’t. The grocery store running out of cilantro isn’t a sign that the world is out to get me.There’s no nefarious plot to deprive me of salsa, just a plain old inconvenience that I can accept with amusement or petulance.

All these things I put up with can teach me patience and grace, opening my eyes to the glorious imperfection that is life on this planet. If I gain enough wisdom I might even discover that these things I put up with are God’s way of giving me the world (and the good sense to know that everyone else gets it, too).

Love is patient, love is kind; it is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians 13: 4-6 NRSV

 

Uncovering the Pattern

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I got a mandala scratch kit a couple of weeks back, complete with instructions, a wooden stylus, and 25 scratch squares stamped with mandala patterns –  a birthday gift of relaxation from my sister. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tracing lines and uncovering mandala patterns as my 20 minute morning meditation activity, matching my breathing to my hand’s movements. Faithful to the tradition of mandala creation, I don’t keep the finished mandalas for very long – all things are temporary, and letting go of my own handiwork is a spiritual discipline in its own right.

It takes me three or four days to complete each scratch mandala. I take my time, choosing which shapes to uncover first, which lines to trace, what areas to uncover and what ones to leave alone. I pause every few minutes to see how my latest marks have changed the look of the whole. When the twenty minutes are over, I take some time to look at the mandala and reflect on how it served as a spiritual focus. It’s at this time that I see how my own work falls into a pattern. There’s a pattern to how I’ve uncovered the mandala pattern. If it’s a six section pattern, I reveal the same part of each section: six circles or diamond patterns standing equidistant from the center and the outer edge of the mandala. Six flower petals around the circles, six rays connecting the petals to the center, and so on. For whatever reason, this way of revealing the overall mandala pattern is satisfying to me, providing a balanced if partial pattern as I work to reveal the whole.

I shared this meditation activity with the class of high school learners I see every Sunday. At the end of the 20 minute exercise, everyone held up their mandala. Some had started in the center, working their way out of the pattern. Others had started by revealing the outer edges and working inward. One or two worked in wedges, completing one whole symmetrical section before moving onto another one. Within these overall work patterns, each person chose the order of individual elements to uncover. Each person’s approach was unique – not a single replication. Each way had its own peculiar beauty and sense.

For me, it was an illuminating experience in the literal as well as the figurative sense. Revealing the pattern by drawing out the brilliant color underneath the black surface produced an illuminated mandala; seeing each person’s unique approach to this spiritual practice revealed his or her particular embodiment of God’s grace and holiness. Being a part of such an extraordinary moment in time and space, how can I be anything but awestruck by this sacred place and these sacred people?

Nursery Plans

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They came just after Christmas, but I put them aside. Mid-January is the time for lingering over Burpee’s new offerings and deciding which kind of heirloom gourd to order from John Scheeper’s. Johnny’s Selected Seeds came along with the other two, sporting a beautiful display of vegetables on its cover and seeds sold by the pound as well as by the packet. I don’t have nearly enough space to buy seeds by the pound, but it’s good to know that local farmers have the option to get their seeds from local nurseries (Jack Scheeper’s and Johnny’s are in New England, Burpee in Pennsylvania). Saturday night, I put my Burpee’s order in; My John Scheeper’s order will go in next week. A few days beyond that, the seeds will arrive on my doorstep; the plants will come just in time for putting them in the ground. With a wind chill in the air and ice on the driveway, it’s a blessing to remember that the green and growing season will arrive soon enough.

Preparing for this year’s gardens, the one in my yard and the children’s learning garden at my local library, is an exercise in memory, imagination, and planning. I review last year’s garden beds, remembering what grew well and what got eaten by local critters. I choose a theme for the largest garden bed: a Three Sister’s Garden adapted from Sharon Lovejoy’s Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots. I picture in my mind the colors and shapes that will emerge from the ground of this year’s gardens, and what simple snacks and salads will be savored every week. Work projects and shopping lists appear on scrap paper, meetings with learning garden leaders crop up on my calendar, and this year’s garden begins to take shape. Soon these garden plans will create a green and growing part of the library’s summer reading program – dovetailing garden activities to the state-wide summer literacy theme. From ordering seeds in January to putting it all to bed in October, this year’s garden moves from possibility and dreams to a blessed reality. It has begun on a January day of ice and wind, with the ground frozen and the earth asleep: nursery to beds to harvest.

But these plans don’t happen in isolation. A baby is due any day now, and library garden work is on hold: it’s more important for a grandmother to greet her new grandchild than to make summer program plans. Calendars and activities will be revised, timetables adjusted. That’s as it should be – a gentle, tangible reminder that life comes in its own blessed time. Life first, plans for life second.

Book Details: Lovejoy, Sharon; Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Activities to to do in the garden (New York: Workman Publishing, 1999)

Gifted

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My birthday arrives a few days after the new year, extending the season of opening presents a bit beyond what’s usual for most families. When I was a child, it was a challenge for people to find anything for me that hadn’t already appeared under the Christmas tree or hadn’t already disappeared from store shelves. With the advent of online shopping and dependable delivery, the technical difficulties have lessened. I don’t  know that it’s any easier to overcome the post-Christmas gift selecting fatigue, though. It’s why I’m impressed with the creativity and energy that goes into my birthday every year. This year was no exception. It’s not so much the gifts per se, as it is the world-expanding nature of each one – either something to deepen my own inner spiritual journey or something that reveals the mystery and wonder of the world that surrounds me…

Tickets to a local movie theater and musical theater in Boston plunge me into the arts, giving me a glimpse into how someone else sees the world.

Books, books, books. Some I asked for, and surprisingly wonderful ones I didn’t. A grieving widower irritated by his neighbors enough to begin living again (A Man Called Ove), Malala’s story in words and pictures (For the Right to Learn), two spiritual gurus in conversation (The Book of Joy) and a cynically humorous take on work and life, and a daily reading of ancient philosophy (The Daily Stoic).

A collection of things to help me find joy in every day, including scratch-a-mandala papers for use as a meditation. A hand towel that makes a usually thoughtless action an act of remembrance and thanks.

Gift cards and money, providing an opportunity for me to enjoy a walk around a lovely New England town and a chance to catch a glimpse into the heart and mind of my son over lunch – and enough to do the same with my other son sometime soon.

Cards with beautiful images and words, bearing the writing of beloved friends and relatives.

But it’s not really about the gifts; it’s about the love that binds me to their givers. To be in this world with them is an immeasurable blessing and an honor that humbles me. They are precious gifts to me and to the world. I am so grateful.

Happy, Pharrell Williams ( Despicable Me 2, 2013; Girl, Circle House Studios, Florida, Back Lot Music, Released November 21, 2013) Purchased on iTunes

Steadfast Love

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Readings: Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; Hosea 6:1-6; I Thessalonians 1:2-10

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,

The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;

Righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,

And righteousness will look down from the sky.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.

Psalm 85:10-13

God, Self, Neighbor. Everything in faith is about the relationship of these three. What I do is never done in a vacuum. If I give money to worthy causes only for the recognition it brings me, I’ve missed the point: knowing God’s heart, the holiness of my neighbor and the meaning of my own life. I don’t want to miss the point. I don’t want to mistake self-righteousness for righteousness.

It’s not easy, living a life of deep God-Self-Neighbor awareness. But an easy life isn’t really what I want. A righteous and faithful one is. When I seek God, I must do so without harming others – even and most especially the ones I don’t like and don’t agree with. When I encounter my neighbor, I cannot forget that he or she is God related and God created- just like me. Steadfast love, faithfulness, and peace – gifts God offers that can only be opened with the help of my neighbor.

Guide my feet, O Lord, on this road to Bethlehem.

Photograph by Jared Fredrickson, high school learner, keen observer of life, child of God.

Beginning in Hope

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The First Sunday in Advent
 
Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
“I wish you would open up your heavens and come down to us.” Isaiah 64:1
Have you ever been warned to be careful what you wish for—it might come true?
On this first Sunday in Advent we light the candle of “Hope”.  Could there be any message more hopeful than Isaiah’s, or the Psalmist in today’s reading imploring God again and again to “restore us” and to “let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Ps 80) or Micah’s reading for today where he prophesies that the Lord is coming down to tread on the earth. Then there is the message from today’s gospel to keep awake because the “Son of Man” is “coming in clouds with great power and glory.”(Mk. 13:26)
I remember, when I was an adolescent, asking my pastor why he didn’t preach about the “Second Coming”. Dr. Triplett smiled the smile of a wise elder and said that not nearly enough people are aware of the first coming and what that means to them to be spending time talking about the second coming. First things first.
It seems we are a hopeful but unappreciative lot. The times I have been blessed to get what I had hoped for, I’m very grateful, of course—for a few weeks, maybe. Then I’m all about “what’s next?”
This Advent, may we all for once just be grateful for the greatest gift ever given to humankind in the coming of our God to tread on the earth, to restore us and lift us in arms of love to everlasting salvation. If we can “get” this, there seems little need to wonder about what’s next. That’s my hope.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Bill Albritton

“There is a truth that lives within us that will be with us forever.” (2 John 2)
Bill Albritton is a church leader, prayer minister, and child of God.

Simple

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One of the things I love about cooking is the simplicity of it. With a few basic skills and a minimum of utensils, I can make something that feeds the body, gladdens the heart, and delights the soul. Chicken soup, grilled cheese, cinnamon toast, scrambled eggs, and flatbread with dipping oil require time and effort, but making them is much like walking a familiar path – there’s little to trip me up and a lot to enjoy.

The food on my Thanksgiving table is much the same. I’ve used the same recipes for years: Salted turkey from a 2010 Bon Appetit, mashed potatoes like my mother made, stuffing and candied yams a la my mother-in-law, cranberry sauce, and my husband’s pumpkin pie. The cheese tray before dinner varies from year to year, as do the vegetables. Add some sparkling cider and a nice wine and there’s a feast. The peeling, chopping, seasoning, and baking are familiar tasks made enjoyable through years of repetition. I think I enjoy the preparation almost as much as the meal.

I’d like to enjoy the work that goes into the other aspects of my life the same way I enjoy making dinner. But to do that, I’ll have to limit the number of things I’m working on and I’ll have to put in enough time and effort for it all to become a familiar exercise. Will I get bored with a simpler life? Will I miss the complexity that keeping more options brings? These are questions I am pondering.

But if Thanksgiving is any indication, simple isn’t boring: it’s just a good way to focus on the beauty and holiness found in every single moment.

May your Thanksgiving be blessed, happy, and simple.

Simple Gifts, Liz Story, artist ( The Carols of Christmas: A Windham Hill Collection, 1996)

Table Blessed

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Last night, Halloween dinner was at my house. Phyllo puffs, a cheese board, bread and dipping oil as we gathered, then a choice of soups and salad. We finished with an apple pecan pie and coffee. The food was wonderful, but it was the company that made the evening – eight amazing people who grace my table and my life. There were stories of John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads and Amazing Grace sung together in three different countries during the same vacation and the Blues Brothers buying chairs on the way to Martha’s Vineyard. The latest family news and losing electricity in the last storm were tossed back and forth, along with what’s happening in the oyster beds and maternity wards. All too soon, coats and purses were gathered up and everyone headed out the door, the evening a memory.

My husband and I know these eight friends through two churches. Four were on my husband’s church board, three added their voices and instruments to church choirs, two were on search committees that called my husband as a pastor. Two gave us their beach house when we first moved to town, two others hosted Easter Egg Hunts when all our children were young. Three came to the book club I led a few years back, and two included us in the Chinese naming ceremony for their grandchild. I’ve spend countless hours walking streets and trails with two of them. I’ve spend birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, funerals, baptisms, and graduations with every one of them. In more ways than I can comprehend, they have brought joy into my life.

Sixteen years ago, I hadn’t met any of them. I’d have missed them entirely if the Spirit had taken us somewhere other than Wareham. For a bit of cooking and cleaning on my part, some cooking and driving on theirs, the ten of us gathered together. I’d have to be blind not to see in their faces the love of God.

Wherever two or more gather together, I will be.