Category Archives: Meditation

Meditation, observation, Prayer

Doors

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I’m on my fourth day of deep cleaning, working my way around the kitchen and into the side entry hall. All my baking supplies have been taken out and sorted, the cupboard cleaned inside and out, and goods replaced. After I shut the cupboard doors, only the faint scent of peppermint soap and vinegar gives any indication of the changes within. It’s only when I open the doors that the impact of my work can be seen.

It only takes a quick glance to appreciate the cleaning efforts in my side entry hall. Scuff marks are gone from baseboards, fingerprints and dirt removed from light switches. The magnets holding keys, bags, sunglasses, and mail are bright and shiny, as is the metal board that holds them to the wall. These are the things that anyone coming into the house might see. But it’s what most of us don’t notice that captured my attention today: doors.

There are three in my entry hall: separating the outdoors from the inside, leading to the cellar, and a usually hidden recessed door marking the entry to the kitchen. The two I can see mark and maintain the transitions from one space to another, keeping cold winds and rain from coming in and people from taking a tumble down the basement stairs. The one that’s usually hidden in the wall can keep my two cats away from people allergic or afraid of them, and provides an extra barrier to the cold if a snowstorm knocks out the power. The ability to connect and separate, to protect and invite, standing silently within arm’s reach – this belongs to these rectangular creations of wood and glass.

Hiding and revealing, connecting and separating, opening and closing. Keeping watch over the space that goes from one place to another. Marking transition from one reality to another: it’s often said that silence, prayer practices, and worship are doors to the great mystery of God. Through them the Spirit draws me into a love far deeper than I can see or imagine. Perhaps I should pay attention to these doors as well. Who knows where I might find myself when one opens and I walk on through.

gratitude, Meditation, observation

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)

Meditation, observations

Epiphany

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Today is the day for remembering the astronomers/astrologers who followed a star to find the Christ Child. Contrary to Christmas pageant tradition, the Magi didn’t show up on Christmas day or any day soon after: enough time had passed for them to reach Bethlehem by way of Jerusalem and for Jesus to grow from a baby to a child (Matthew 2:1-12). While tradition holds that there were three of them (Casper, Melchior, Balthazar), it doesn’t mention their names or numbers in the Bible. It seems that there are a lot of things that have been read into this story over the past two thousand years, and it isn’t easy to read this sacred story without all the additions and assumptions.

Epiphany in the capital E church sense is a revelation or manifestation of the divine, in this case the revealing of the Christ child to holy travelers outside the Jewish faith. My visual for an Epiphany is a brilliant shaft of light parting the clouds. It’s a beautiful image, even if it’s a cliche.

In the lower case sense, epiphany can mean an illumination, a sudden grasp of truth, and the revelation of something essential revealed or understood. I guess the light-bulb-over-the-head is the cliche image, but it’s not one I can claim. I don’t really have a static picture for it, but I do have a couple of moving ones. The first is looking through a kaleidoscope – seeing the fractured colors become identifiable flowers or figures with a quick aligning turn. What made no sense seconds earlier falls into place and I see its structure and beauty. Two others: adjusting telescopes and microscopes to see what is too big or far away and what is too small or too much a part of me to grasp. In all cases, it’s a change of perspective – a new look at reality that allows me to grasp an essential truth or be grasped by an essential truth.

Like the Magi, I won’t see God-with-Us without leaving behind the comforts and assumptions of home. Epiphany and epiphanies only come when I’m willing to journey beyond my present understandings of God, world, self, and neighbor. Today is as good a day as any to hit the road…

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. C.S. Lewis

(quoted in Daily Peace: Photos and Wisdom to Nourish Your Spirit, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2015, January 1)

Advent2014, Biblical Reflection, Meditation, Prayer

Psalm 85 Remembering Pearl Harbor

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Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 1:1-8

Lord, you were favorable to your land;

you restored the fortunes of Jacob.

You forgave the iniquities of your people; 

you pardoned all their sin.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people,

to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,

that his glory may dwell in our land.

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.

Dear Lord,

Help us always to be grateful for the blessings you have bestowed on us in this country. May we always pray for guidance for our leaders, and those of other countries, and for peace among all nations. Amen.

Offered on December 7, 2014, by Mary Roberson, financial advisor, prayer hotline volunteer, child of God, who was a young child when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

gratitude, Meditation

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)

Meditation, observation, Prayer, Theology

Preparations begin…

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No matter how familiar the Thanksgiving menu, it’s still a lot of work to get the turkey in the oven and the fixin’s on the table. Shopping, cleaning, and making sure everyone gets home are tasks already begun. There are still a few outdoor chores to do as well – getting the leaves raked and bagged, putting away the hose and collecting the garden tools. It’s the same every year before Thanksgiving because it’s time to prepare for the winter months as much as it is time to prepare dinner. Isn’t that the point of Thanksgiving? Giving thanks for the bounty of the earth as we approach a time when the earth sleeps and nothing grows? In the season of canning and drying, storing apples, cranberries, sage, and other herbs for use during the cold months, I sometimes forget what a counter-intuitive act of faith it is to throw a feast when summer’s bounty had come to an end. Would I be as generous with my Thanksgiving meal if I had to depend on what I’d grown and preserved to get me through to Spring? With a market right down the street supplying more than I’ll ever need in the cold months, it’s hard to know the answer.

I think preparing for this Harvest celebration is trying to teach me something more than gratitude for the food on the table and loved ones around it. I’ve been wondering lately about the garden that is my spiritual life. What are the fruits of this harvest? If I’m honest, there have been many times I’ve neglected to tend this inner spiritual space. I can name quite a few of the weeds that choke its growth because I haven’t put in the time to pull them out – impatience, arrogance, and lack of gratitude come to mind. As far as I know, there is no spiritual grocery store down the street: My spirit lives on what I’ve grown in my God-given garden.

The older I get, the more I realize that my inner spiritual garden becomes more and more visible as I age. How I treat others, especially those whose actions or attitudes frustrate me, is a glimpse into the state of my spiritual growth. Like everyone, I am imperfect and easily broken. If I don’t tend to my spiritual life, I will push my own brokenness on others. If I don’t want to do that, it’s going to take some inner work. If I want enough generosity of spirit to celebrate the bounty of this life, if I want to share what I’ve been given rather than hoard it for myself, it’s time to do some gardening…

 

Biblical Reflection, gratitude, house blessing, Meditation, observation

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.

gratitude, house blessing, Meditation, observation

I Owe You One

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It’s only two days into writing about giving thanks and being grateful, and I’ve already acted without thanks or gratitude. As offenses go, it wasn’t a major one – just annoyance at having to do last night’s dishes. But such a little thing led to sending my beloved out the door carrying my irritation instead of wishes for a fabulous day. And this was after he had already offered an apology and an “I owe you one.” And the kicker: last night, I offered to do the dishes! He didn’t take me up on the offer then, but should that really matter? The dishes are the same, the task the same, and the time it takes to do them identical.

I took my crabby self for a walk before sinking the pots and pans in sudsy water. I saw a new mom pushing her baby in a carriage, a lovely woman working on her garden, and a man opening a car door for his wife. I stopped at the library garden long enough to prune the butterfly bush and dead head the marigolds; I saw two bumble bees just warming up enough to hum and a couple of squirrels racing up a tree. The sun turned the wet grass into brilliant slivers of light and the breeze brought the piney,fern-filled scent of Autumn. By the time I turned back and headed for home, I’d traded in my pettiness for joy.

Had the dishes been done this morning, would I have gone on that walk? Would I have missed out on the beauty of this day and the holiness of the life it holds? I’ll never know. What I do know: I owe my husband a gracious acceptance of his apology. What I suspect: for the blessings of sun and wind, work and play, I owe him one.

PS. I actually enjoyed doing the dishes when I got home…

Biblical Reflection, Education, gratitude, life basics, Meditation, observation, Prayer, Theology

Reaping What Was Sown

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The vegetables keep coming – kale, tomatillos, squash, onions, ground cherries, flowers, and a handful of herbs. My part in this bounty is limited to wise investment: I signed up for this CSA and wrote a check a few months back. That investment, along with the investments of quite a few others, has been returned to me in healthy, tasty, locally grown food. I figured the weekly bounty would end in September, so the last few weeks of produce are a wonderful, welcome surprise. I am thankful for the greens on my table and the ones in my freezer that will make their appearance in the months ahead. Karen’s labor in her garden has created an amazing, edible bounty.

With the cold weather comes the ingathering. I’ll spend some time canning applesauce and some cranberry orange sauce. I’ll pull in the rosemary and sage, hanging them to dry. They will season stuffing and soups, add zing to chicken, and give their flavor to dipping oils.

If I were a romantic, I might stop at these happy, homey words. These blessings are real, after all, and what was sown has become a bountiful harvest. But that’s not all that’s been sown, and not all that will be harvested in due time. I’ve planted emotional and spiritual seeds in my own life and in the life of others; others have done the same. I don’t think it’s possible to walk this earth without scattering seeds. Such seeds bear fruit and what was put out comes back. The question is: what harvest will come of the seeds I’ve sown?

I’ll spend this harvest time taking a good, long look. Who knows what I might find?

I invite you to share your harvest stories as well.

Lord, bless the work of my hands and heart. May my life bear good fruit. Amen.

Diana Krall, Count Your Blessings, Christmas Songs, Verve Records, 2005

Biblical Reflection, gratitude, Meditation, Prayer, Theology

To Marge, In Grateful Thanks

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She was a retired high school chemistry teacher, a reader of Bonhoeffer, and someone whose later years were filled with enough wisdom and love to pray for the people who would harm and kill others rather than foster and bless them. She spoke and wrote with love and intelligence. For the past eight years, she blessed my life as a companion in study and prayer. Even when she moved hundreds of miles away a few years back, she remained in my heart.

Marge O’Brien was kind enough to share her thoughts with me in many conversations. She was also kind enough to do the same for anyone who read my yearly Advent Devotional. With grateful thanks, I share her words with you:

Psalm 126; Habakkuk 3:13-19; Matthew 21:28-32

Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the field yields no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Habakkuk was a prophet in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. It was a time of great turmoil in Jerusalem and of many great injustices in the world. In many ways like in our own world, the question arises, “Where is God’s justice?” Why do the poor suffer while the powerful go unpunished for their misdeeds? Why do bad things happen to good people? Perhaps we ask the wrong questions. Is it up to us to criticize God? Or is it possible that there is something else going on?

Perhaps we have a role in bringing God’s kingdom into our world. Over and over again, in both the Old and New Testaments, we are reminded that our God wills a world of righteousness and justice, a world with compassion for the poor and the sick, a world of peace and love. Sometimes we are depressed by what we see in the events of our time. We feel helpless to make things better. Habakkuk foresaw great troubles coming to Jerusalem in the form of warring nations. He knew that times were going to be rough. “YET I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!”

There are times in our own lives when we feel helpless. We do not have control over what is happening. Jobs are lost. Relationships fail. Illness consumes us or someone we love. YET, in all of the sadness and violence, God is beside us, loving us, guiding us, helping us. As we look back on some of the dark times in our life, so often we see God at work picking up the pieces for us and helping us get through to a brighter side of the darkness.

And there is the answer: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, with us always. In the darkness or the light, as Julian of Nowich reminds us “All shall be well.”

“Lord Jesus, let our minds rest in your Word, so that when doubt and grief would overwhelm us, faith will open our eyes to see your hand at work in our life and enable us to turn toward the future with hope and toward each other in perfect charity.” A Prayer from St. Augustine.

Offered on December 13, 2014, by Marge O’Brien, retired teacher now worshipping at St. David’s Episcopal ChurchIn North Chesterfield Virginia, steadfast pray-er, child of God.