My grandmother got up early every day, getting the housework started well before the rest of us were out of bed. By the time I was getting ready for school, she was taking a break for her cup of tea. After that, she grabbed the dust mop and gave the floors their daily once-over. She filled the rest of her day taking care of the house and all the people who lived within its walls. At night, when it was time, she fell asleep, recharging her body, mind, and spirit for the next day’s work and play.

I asked her once how she managed to keep to such a good sleeping pattern, even when life brought worries that couldn’t be scrubbed away with soap and water. Just get up every day and do the best you can. Don’t worry about what you can’t fix. 

She didn’t put things in spiritual terms, and I never heard her wax philosophic over anything. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the capability – she just didn’t see the point. She didn’t talk about trust in God or letting things go in prayer. She just didn’t let daily cares become nightly anxiety dreams. She entrusted herself to something beyond herself, and had faith that the world would still be there in the morning.

If that isn’t the peace of God in slumber, what is?

God in my sufficing,

God in my slumber,

God in my ever-living soul,

God in mine eternity.

[For full prayer and more information, click Prayers from the Hebrides above.]

It isn’t hard for me to call on God when I cannot face something alone. When my own abilities and knowledge aren’t enough, asking God and neighbors for help isn’t such a stretch. It’s when I am perfectly capable of completing the task without help (thank you very much) that I’m apt to overlook God’s love and how I am always connected to God, God’s fragile creation, and all of God’s creatures.

It’s a terrible thing, forgetting that everything that is, was, and will be is God-created and God-related. Preserve me from the arrogance of assuming that I am somehow an exception.

Vessel (definition 1, www. Merriam-webster.com)

             A.  A container (such as a cask, bottle, kettle, cup or bowl)                              for  holding something.

              B.  A person into whom some quality (such as grace) is                                     infused

The heart is a vessel, by either definition – a container, or the core of a person. Either way, the heart will contain something, be infused by something. If it isn’t God, it will be something else.

Please God, let it be you. Amen.

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart

down in my heart, down in my heart,

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,

down in my heart to stay.

Most everyone who grew up Baptist knows these words, and how to sing them. It’s one of several I learned at a very young age – catchy tunes, easy to remember words, and lots of clapping when sung in a group. Here are a few more:

Do Lord, oh do Lord, oh do remember me…

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, to shine for him each day…

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Such songs get the toes tapping and the body swaying. Most every child who sings them does so with gusto. It’s only when we gain a few  more years on the planet that these songs embarrass us as being overly simplistic; even worse, they represent a bait-and-switch – the unconditional love that they offered suddenly gone, replaced with a moral measuring stick and a fear that any little mistake might be cause for our names to be erased from God’s book of life.

I’ve gained enough years on the planet to realize that these songs, taken the right way, are simple expressions of an abiding trust in Jesus. The bait-and-switch wasn’t God’s move, just the misplaced actions of people who thought unconditional love couldn’t be real or sufficient. Instead, they got out the moral ruler, marked it with do’s and don’ts, then whacked people on the knuckles if they couldn’t measure up.

These days, when God in my soul arises in my prayers, it’s a request that God give me the strength, patience, and love to see in everyone a holy and beloved child. God in my soul – an absolute necessity if I am to refrain from grabbing my own moral yardstick.

God in my life,     God in my lips,     God in my soul,     God in my heart.

[For the complete prayer, click Prayers from the Hebrides above.]

O Lord,  I need your presence not just in the words that slip so easily past my lips, but in my lips themselves. Unspoken things pass through my lips, for good or ill.

May my smile be genuine, and my compassion for your world always in my expressions.

Keep me from those subtle clicks and noises, the puffs of air that offer judgement and lack all courtesy. 

Keep me grateful for the gift of words and expression, and aware of the power they have to wound as well as heal. 

God in my lips. Please.

God in my life,           God in my lips,     God in my soul,     God in my heart.

Wednesday, October 14

My two sons are on the last leg of a five day, cross country drive. Last Saturday morning, my husband and I stood in the driveway and waved them good-bye. Once inside our home, I realized that this five day stretch would be the longest time we’d been by ourselves at home in almost twenty-three years. Sure, we’ve been away for some days here and there, but not at home together. Together with only each other has been the exception since having children – and what Dave calls a preview of things to come.  This will end in a couple of days when our younger son flies back to resume his virtual classes at UMass, Boston. But even when neither son lives with us full time, they will always be in our lives.

Nothing can alter their presence in my life because they have taken root within its geography and chronology.

My grandmother Grace used to say that having a child meant one thing: you’ll never draw another free breath. I don’t think she meant it in a burdensome way – just fully aware that there’s not undoing it when another life enters your own.

I doubt God has drawn a free breath since life itself came to be. God in my life, to be sure. Just as true, though: my life in God.

The same goes for you, too.

And every other member of God’s beloved creation.

God in my hoping

The small park across from my grandparents’ house had seven trees – tall, with limbs just low enough to reach, strong enough to bear my weight, offering a few comfortable places to sit and enjoy the view. I loved the climbing, and I loved taking in my own little piece of the world from a leafy perch. The rough feel of bark and the constant, gentle swaying were so different from my usual feet-on-the-unbending-ground reality. Mindfulness was a tree climbing requirement; carelessness was rewarded with a quick and sometimes painful return to the dust of the earth. I loved the trees all the more for spending time in their embrace, and I loved the ground all the more for spending time away from it.

Some people may consider hoping just day-dreaming, wishing against all good sense that gravity won’t shatter the ideas we throw into the air. I think it’s much more tangible. Hoping is tree climbing. It’s making an effort to leave behind the well-trodden ground and usual vantage point, to find a resting place that bends and sways and moves me even when I am at rest. True hoping requires mindfulness if it is to be more than wishing. But like climbing a tree, it offers something for the effort: love for the time spent in its lofty embrace, and greater love for the grounded daily life for being away from it. If it ends in greater love for the effort, God is in my hoping indeed.

[Photos by Jared Fredrickson]