...and generosity listened.

A few days ago, we were walking in the wetlands: the sun was bright, the wind was calm, the air felt full of the promise of spring. On our way home, Di kept stopping to collect dried flower pods, grass stems and a few small twigs. There was a time I would have wondered about the wisdom of this collection. But she has taught me to love the often hidden beauty of nature in winter in all its brown and gray glory. When the day came to a close, I was delighted to see a winter bouquet had appeared in the living room: all the gifts of field matched all the tones of our home. A poem by Martha Postlewaite called "Clearing" came to mind:

Do not try to serve
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.

This feels right to me: the smallness, the waiting, the trust, the humility as well as the unique blessing. For more years than I care to recall, something swirled inside me - a secret storm of anxiety? - an unresolved melody in the dark? - and it filled my quiet moments with dread. Grappling with real and imagined expectations left me exhausted. My accomplishments never quite seemed good enough: my work, music, prayers, presence, humor, and love were adequate, but never satisfying. Acceptable, but not significant. And if I sensed this then certainly God did, too. No wonder I kept trying to make things happen - the party, the liturgy, the song, the complaint, the birthday, the bread, or the demonstration - it always needed more. It was never good enough. Exhausting.

Small wonder St. Paul tells us: "My grace is sufficient for you," says the Lord. "And my power is made perfect in weakness. When you are weak, then you are strong." It is the foolishness of Christ, the folly of the Cross, the upside-down experiential wisdom of the kingdom of God right now. I still feel that old exhaustion sometimes, when the doubts try to sneak back in when I am rattled, or, when I get lazy and neglect the silence. But most of the time I feel like Fr. Aiden of St. Anselm's Benedictine Monastery telling his friend about life in the monastery in the current newsletter of the Friends of Silence. When asked "what do you do there?" Aiden replied: "We fall and get up. We fall and get up. We fall and get up again." Indeed, we fall and get up, we wait patiently and make a clearing. Another poem, "The Healing" by Pesha Joyce Gertler, gets it right, too. 

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life

all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,

those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections

and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say
holy
holy.

The winter bouquet looks to me like trust: by lifting up all that is dead, dry and withered with tenderness - sitting with it patiently and watching for its wisdom - a beauty is revealed that cries, "Holy."  

Most evenings my prayers become our supper: these meals are simple and satisfying. I no longer feel inadequate. Sometimes they are even beautiful, but mostly they just fill us with warmth, nutrition and another encounter with the words of gratitude becoming flesh. Di fashions bouquets. I prepare a meal. Both are prayers shaped by silence. Pádraig Ó Tuama puts it like this in a Corrymela Daily Prayer Book:

God of the barley loaf,
God of the boy,
God of the fish,
And God of the humble brother;
When we do not have enough,
may we use what we have
to do what we can.
Because a small boy did this,
and generosity listened.
Amen.