You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~G.K. Chesterton
Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace
Chesterton has it right. No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first. Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.
Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times.
Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.
As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:
He is worthy. Amen and Amen.
Even more so. Ever more now.
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In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red When the summer ceased it’s gleaming When the corn is past its prime When adventures lost its meaning I’ll be homeward-bound in time ~Marta Keen from “Homeward Bound”
On Halloween day in 1985, I packed up a roll-up mattress pad, grabbed one lonely pumpkin from our small garden, locked our rental house door for the last time, then climbed in my car to head two hours north out of Seattle.
I don’t recall looking back in the rear view mirror at the skyline after nine years living in the city. My husband had moved to Whatcom County two months earlier to start his new job. I had stayed behind to wrap up my Group Health family practice in the Rainier Valley of central Seattle.
I was leaving the city for our new rural home and a very uncertain professional future.
I knew two things for sure: I was finally several months pregnant after a miscarriage and two years of trying to conceive, so our family was on its way, and we were going to live in our own house with a few acres and a barn.
A real (sort of) starter farm and starter family, a dream we both shared. Our home sits in the midst of woods and corn fields, with deer strolling through the fields at dawn, coyotes howling at night, Canadian geese and trumpeter swans calling from overhead and salmon thriving in nearby streams. The snowy Cascades greet us in the morning to the east, the Canadian Coastal range majestic to the north and not far to the west, the Salish Sea/Puget Sound.
Since it wouldn’t be a farm without animals, I stopped at the first pet store I drove past and found two tortoise shell calico kitten sisters peering up at me, just waiting for new adventures in farmland. Their box was packed into the one spot left beside me in my little Mazda.
With that simple commitment to raise and nurture those kittens alongside the life growing inside me, life seemed very complete.
I will never forget the freedom I felt on that drive north. The highway seemed more open, the fall colors more vibrant, the wind more energizing, our baby kicking my belly, the kittens mewing from their box. There seemed so much potential even though I had just left behind the greatest family practice found in any urban setting (at the time, it was the most ethnically diverse zip code in the United States) with patients from all over the world: alongside the multi-racial inner city population living in subsidized housing developments, my patients included Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and Indonesia, Orthodox Jews, Italian Catholics, and refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
I will never know so much variety of ethnic background and perspective again. If I could have packed them all into my little car and driven them north with me, I would have.
Despite what I was leaving behind, there was certainly a feeling of freedom that rainy Halloween day as the big city disappeared in the rear view mirror.
No longer would I sit captive in freeway rush-hour bumper to bumper traffic jams. I traded that for a new rural commute winding through farm fields while watching eagles fly overhead. I could become part of a community in a way I never could manage in the city, visiting with friends at the grocery store, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church and serving on various community boards.
After the new kittens, dubbed Nutmeg and Oregano, arrived on our farm, we added even more diversity: a Belgian Tervuren dog Tango, a Haflinger horse Greta, Toggenburg goats Tamsin and her kids, a few Toulouse geese, Araucana chickens, Fiona the Scottish Highland cow, then another Haflinger Hans and another, Tamara. I worked as a fill-in doctor in four different clinics before our first baby was born, then settled into part-time practice in several different clinics for most of my career.
With those new commitments, life was fulfilling and busy – we soon added a little brother and seven years later, a sister. Then it felt like our family was complete.
Forty years later, our children have grown and gone to homes of their own, all married to wonderful spouses, raising six delightful children for us to lavish love on.
Somehow life now feels even more complete.
A few cats, a Cardigan Corgi, and three ponies still live at the farm with us. Now retired from our professional lives “in town”, we enjoy the freedom of slower and quieter days, nurtured and nurturing.
It all started October 31, 1985 with two orange and black kittens and a pumpkin sitting beside me in a little Mazda, my husband awaiting my homecoming 100 miles north. Now, forty years later, we celebrate this Halloween anniversary of farm and family, still pregnant with the possibility that life is never truly complete when there is always a new day just around the corner.
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The world does not need words. It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted. The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being…
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always– greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon. ~Dana Giola from “Words”
The words the world needs is only the Word itself; we exist because He breathed breath into us, saying it was good.
Whatever we have to say about His Creation pales compared to His it is good
But we try over and over again to use words of wonder and praise to express our awe and gratitude and amazement while painted golden by His breath of Light.
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Just as, when you keep watch on the ground ahead of where your boots kick up the leaves, the path goes vague and blurred, while
if you lift your eyes the far reach of the trail comes lucid as map; so when you look at tomorrow through next year,
the way, otherwise so tangled and burdensome, clears. And if the leaves are, as they likely are,
fallen from the trees around you, then you get to look deeper into things than spring allowed. ~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”
I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. ~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River
The air tastes like autumn, quivering on my tongue – no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring to feel the change.
Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky, the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees, the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops, the crisp and shivery breezes, the new landscape peering through bony branches.
Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty, leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.
October is always a much-needed transition, keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons, reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow, remembering we are immersed in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.
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O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! ~Robert Frost from “October”
After yesterday’s travel through curtains of heavy rainfall, we abandoned plans to meet with family across state for today’s memorial service, so returned home, defeated, weary with sadness.
October is enough reminder of mortality, with winds stripping trees to bare bones, birds flocking and vacating, bright leaves reduced to rusting dust.
This morning, the rain suspended, its gray curtain pulled back briefly to view what awaits beyond the haze: this luminous brilliance, radiance, promise.
Slow down to look. Slow down to live. Slow.
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I want to be a passenger in your car again and shut my eyes while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured in your own private world, seeing all the lines on the road ahead,
down a long stretch of empty highway without any other faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger in your car again and put my life back in your hands. ~Michael Miller “December”
I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver’s seat. ~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions
Up north, the dashboard lights of the family car gleam in memory, the radio plays to itself as I drive my father plied the highways while my mother talked, she tried to hide that low lilt, that Finnish brogue, in the back seat, my sisters and I our eyes always tied to the Big Dipper I watch it still on summer evenings, as the fireflies stream above the ditches and moths smack into the windshield and the wildlife’s red eyes bore out from the dark forests we flew by, then scattered like the last bit of star light years before. It’s like a different country, the past we made wishes on unnamed falling stars that I’ve forgotten, that maybe were granted because I wished for love. ~Sheila Packa “Driving At Night” from The Mother Tongue
The moon was like a full cup tonight, too heavy, and sank in the mist soon after dark, leaving for light
faint stars and the silver leaves of milkweed beside the road, gleaming before my car.
Yet I like driving at night… the brown road through the mist
of mountain-dark, among farms so quiet, and the roadside willows opening out where I saw
the cows. Always a shock to remember them there, those great breathings close in the dark.
I stopped, and took my flashlight to the pasture fence. They turned to me where they lay, sad
and beautiful faces in the dark, and I counted them-forty near and far in the pasture…
I switched off my light.
But I did not want to go, not yet, nor knew what to do if I should stay, for how
in that great darkness could I explain anything, anything at all. I stood by the fence. And then
Some of my most cherished childhood memories come from long rides home in the car at night from holiday gatherings. My father always drove, my mother hummed “I See the Moon” in the front passenger seat, and we three kids sat in the back seat, drowsy and full of feasting.
The night world hypnotically passed by outside the car window. I wondered whether the rest of the world was as safe and content as I felt at that moment.
On clear nights, the moon followed us down the highway, shining a light on the road.
Now as a driver at night, transporting grandchildren from a family gathering, I want them to feel the same peaceful contentment that I did as a child. As an older driver, I don’t enjoy driving at night, especially dark rural roads in pouring rain. I understand the enormous responsibility I bear, transporting those whom I dearly love and want to keep safe.
In truth, I long to be a passenger again, with no worries or pressures – just along for the ride, watching the moon and the world drift by, knowing I’m well-cared for.
But of course, I fret about the immense burden I feel to make things right in this dark and troubled world.
I am a passenger on a planet that has a Driver who feels great responsibility and care for all He transports through the black night of the universe. He loves me and I can rest content in the knowledge that I am safe in His vigilant hands.
I am not the driver – He knows how to safely bring me home, even in the rain.
I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the start above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” The moon approaches my window pane, stretching itself to the ground. The moon sings softly and laughs and smiles, and yet never makes a sound! I see the moon! I see the moon! Part A And it’s calling out, “Come run a way! And we’ll sail with the clouds for our sea, And we’ll travel on through the black of the night, ‘til we float back home on a dream!” Part B I see the moon, it’s shining from far away, Beckoning with ev‘ry beam. And though all the stars above cast down their light, Still the moon is all that I see ~Douglas Beam
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Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills— A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things So that they stand in the glow of ripeness. It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves: Who serves best doesn’t always understand. ~Czeslaw Milosz “Love” from New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass, And look at light reflected by the ground. There he will find everything we have lost… ~Czeslaw Milosz from “The Sun”
It’s not easy to subdue the needy ego and let the life-giving soul take control, even though doing so saves us grief and serves the world well. So if you see me on the street one day, quietly muttering, “Only one thing among many, only one thing among many…,” you’ll know I’m still working on it, or it’s still working on me. ~Parker Palmer “The Big Question: Does My Life Have Meaning?”
It is always tempting to be self-absorbed; since my heart stent placement nearly 8 months ago, I tend to analyze every sensation in my chest, fuss over how many steps I take daily, and get discouraged when the scale doesn’t register the sacrifices I think I’m making in my diet.
In other words, in my efforts to heal my physically-broken heart, I become the center of my attention, rather than just one among many things in the days/months/years I have left. I need to look at myself from a distance rather than under a microscope.
It is a skewed and futile perspective, seeking meaning and purpose in life by navel gazing.
Instead, I should be concentrating on the ripeness of each day. I’ve been given a second chance to recalibrate my journey through the time I have left, focusing outward, gazing at the wonders around me, sometimes getting down on my knees.
I don’t fully understand how I might serve others by what I share here online, or what I do in my local community with my hands and feet. I now know not to miss the moments basking in the glow of loving those around me, including you friends I may never meet on this side of the veil.
May you glow in ripeness as well.
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The rain falls and falls cool, bottomless, and prehistoric falls like night — not an ablution not a baptism just a small reason to remember all we know of Heaven to remember we are still here with our love songs and our wars…
Here too in the wet grass half a shell of a robin’s egg shimmers blue as a newborn star fragile as a world. ~Maria Popova from “Spell Against Indifference”
…I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment, and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern.
But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.
For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence.
There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.
They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death. ~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower
Each of us at times are as vulnerable as a nestling, just hatched. The world is full of those who would eat us for lunch and do.
The world is also full of those who grieve and lament the violence that surrounds us, the tragedy of lives lost, the unending wars, the bullies and the bullied.
But the bird of death does not have the final word. He will soon be forgotten, forever sidelined as we reject what he and others like him represent.
Our cries of lament, our protests of violence transform into a celebration of life – we do not abandon all we have lost, but no longer allow any more to be stolen from us.
Only then may grief’s shadow be overwhelmed by joy.
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I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. There is no seasonwhen such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature. And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them. ~Nathaniel Hawthornefrom The American Notebooks
After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth… The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her… In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible. ~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird Pond
If I were a month, I would choose to be October: bathed in a “peculiarly genial” and friendly light. A kindly and homely nature, slowly withering, yet still crisp, with mild temperature and modest temperament despite a drenching rain and wind storm or two, once in a while foggy.
Most of all, I would cherish my flashes of burnt umber as I reluctantly relinquish the light.
text by Mechthild of Magdeburg Effortlessly, Love flows from God into man, Like a bird who rivers the air without moving her wings. Thus we move in His world one in body and soul, Though outwardly separate in form. As the Source strikes the note, humanity sings — The Holy Spirit is our harpist, and all strings Which are touched in love must sound.
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The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness, the broken board, small enough for a child to slip through.
Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead, the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent and invisible from any road.
Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy as fruit, drooping their deep heads on the dog house roof.
Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods, a tractor shifting from one gear into the next, the throttle opened,
the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river, the drone of the hammer mill, milk machines at dawn. ~Joyce Sutphen “The Last Things I’ll Remember” from First Words
I turn this seasonal corner, facing deep into autumn, summer fading in the rear view mirror.
Even as the air bares chill, and the clouds sopping soak, the riches of summer remain vivid.
Let me remember: even if I too fade away, readying for the next turn.
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