When your wound reveals your hidden life.

I'm trying to hide my wounds. Been trying.
Truth doesn't always look pretty. Beauty, real beauty comes at a cost.

The real kind of beautiful shatters all images.
It can't be seen on the outside of life, the pleasant, painted exteriors. This kind of beautiful can only be touched by the heart, the upper chamber, the secret place.

The path is narrow isn't it? That wasn't just a saying.

So narrow, at times, I think I might have to fold myself into nothing just to walk it. And steep.
The air is so thin, didn't really imagine that.

In my head were pictures of transfiguration's, lush greenness, hope budding wild flowers along the way.
...Scenes from the book of "Beautiful".

The real way is all darkness to the eyes, it's only beautiful to the soul.

Seems I was rescued from the cross, only to be given the choice to take it up again.

But this time for Love not the consequences of pain and fear.

And I want to, in His embrace I want to. But then the burden comes and I shrink away.

I forget that He will bring the breath, and the strength and the journey. All He asks is I bring myself, real, true, broken, wounded as I am.

He recognises my beauty through my wounds.

But when I feel so far away from refreshment, and the clarity of clean, clear, reviving air that I start to lose consciousness of what really matters, where my life really comes from. I become muddled and distracted.

I let too many thoughts crowd Him out. And a thousand voices mingle like debris around me like strangers at a party and I feel just as lonely. I wonder, am I alive still beneath it?
Has he held onto me even when I let my hand slip away?
Busy with my own "My chasing's after the wind".

I have motives I don't want others to see.
I want the honey and the sweetness, but without the sting of the bee.

I want God's breath to live inside of me but I don't want the brokenness that let's it in.
Making me touch the sharp shards, the edges of my nothingness, my emptiness, the truth of me, when I'm left to my own devices.

I gaze at the false pictures of me that flatter my walls. There are ones that look like a good imitation of everything I want to be. Holy, simple, true, pure in heart, peaceful, childlike, gentle...
Humble.
All the while knowing I'm gazing in the wrong direction. I should be looking for Him.
As the lover in Song of Songs, ran barefoot through the streets after her beloved...

I plaster, paint and build. Yet love causes me to tear down, peel back, expose the naked structure, the wound of my heart.

I know that those pieces, those images of goodness that decorate the walls of my house are like fragments of truth buried deep in my soul. And they are the shore I keep trying to sail toward in my small boat, on a tide that has been turned against it by the gravity of "me".
They are fragile images of my true life "hidden" with Him. And sometimes they haunt, ache, tremble, weep.
Like memories that reflect from the water's surface of what was once and could yet be.

But without His grace all I'm left with is the truth of me. Empty images of beauty that cover the cracks like cheap make up.
The harshness of my voice rasping from the parched land within.
The stone that is my heart, beating without love, just ambition and pride.
The dress I wear to give others an impression of who I am or (who I want to be).
Without really being.
The stuff I think I need to become closer, closer to completion? Like a never ending project that only demands deadlines (and a documented proof of existence).

So this becoming? What is that?

"The beginning of Me is the end of you. You can't make or build this image. Dig down deep, giving yourself away to love. piece
by piece. Till.
All that's left, is Me."

And I gaze at the face of Love, and the heart exposed. Wounded weeping. Salt tears, of baptism.

The desert hermits found God, carrying nothing in their hands but wounds.
Their longing was the loudest call. Louder even than their lives.
Their longing gave all away to purchase a field with a treasure. And the treasure.
Was it their own heart?
Alive, beating, real, deep, down,
down in the dark earth.
A heart resurrected by His Blood. His life. His breath.

Their wounds raised, not hidden and festering, but open wide to the healing Breath.

And they looked like fools didn't they?
Wearing their garlands of thorns.
Still how they must of gleamed like crowns in the sunlight.

Thankful for Grace

Slowly, quietly I come. Along this path again. my feet tread, my heart trembles. Like a bird inside my chest. The weeds can look like flowers too you know? Pretty, useful, important. Stuff. Entangles, distracts, turns the soil of my heart to parched clay. I stumble over briers I had not even noticed, I fall and feel, the barren ground of my soul. I need to stop. Turn. Gaze. And let the silence wash over me like a wave of clear, cool, water. These things, this stuff, worthless as dead idols. And I sacrifice to them time and time again, thinking that it's important to pay attention. Plan, organise, structure. Control. And the vine I planted is dying, the fruit is drying on the branch. And all the while I'm watering the weeds and leaving my garden to ruin. But the fragrance, the fragrance of the blossoms he left me all those years ago, Somehow still lingers on the breeze. Reminding me, waking me bleary eyed and sober. So I stand to walk again, along the waters beside the green, green pastures. A little gentler, a little smaller, a little softer, thankful. Always. Thankful for grace. "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Photo by Emmy

..."and you will find rest for your souls"...

"learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”

Jesus says there is a rest that comes with carrying the burden He gives.
Maybe this peace will not be for the body, neither the heart or the mind perhaps, but for the soul Jesus says here the soul will find it's rest. Embracing His burden, His yoke.

Maybe Jesus is saying that true peace can only be found when all is given for the soul, all is carried for the soul.
A deep peace for simply trying to do what God wills. Both simple and hard.

This peace comes along with the humble and gentle spirit which Jesus asks us to learn from Him.

These words humble and gentle rise and fall upon my heart. And I feel the sorrow of their absence well within. How I pray for them. How very far I am from them. I see patient, loving, generous, brave long suffering souls all around. While truly, I am like little fragments of mediocrity glued together by pride lol :)

A humble heart gives no resistance. A humble heart will not strive against humiliations but will embrace them.
And gentleness, is soft, crushed perhaps, broken? Probably. An empty state that cannot take or assert anymore, only give and accept.

A gentle heart must feel God's Love for hearts and their absolute need for His. Maybe only in carrying some of the burden of the broken is there relief, for the gentle soul.

And a humble spirit will stand aside while trusting simply in the stillness for itself. Knowing somehow, someway, He will come and lead her on with nothing of itself to give Him but it's willingness to be lead.

And there will not be that nagging fear of world's demands or standards or ideals. A humble and gentle spirit will be quenched by His will alone.

And there will be the rest.

There in the giving of all, to the carrying of Love's burden....

Ambition, ideals, idols, wants, desires, curiosities, failings, proofs, doubts...

There He will be with open arms giving,

The Peace Only He May Give.

Purchase the joy of full surrender...

The workings of God within us carry out in the course of time the designs which Eternal Wisdom has formed in regard to everything. In God all things have their own design, and His wisdom alone knows what that is. Though you read the will of God in regard to others, this knowledge cannot direct you in anything. In the Incarnate Word, in God Himself, is the design after which you were meant to be formed and which is the model of His work in you. In the Word, the divine action sees that to which every soul must be conformed. The Holy Scriptures contain one part of this design, and the divine activity formed by the Holy Spirit within the soul completes the design set forth by the Word. We must understand that the only way of receiving the impression of this eternal design is to remain quietly submissive to it, and that neither effort nor mental speculation can help us to attain it.

Is it not evident that a work such as this cannot be effected by subtlety of mind, skill, or intelligence, but can only follow on our submissive self-surrender to God’s will, yielding ourselves like metal to a mold, or canvas to the brush, or stone in the hands of the sculptor. Is it not clear that a knowledge of all the divine mysteries which the will of God carries out in all ages is not what makes us conformable to the design the Word has conceived for us? No, it is the impress of the divine Hand. This imprint is not graven on our minds by ideas, but in the will by its submission to the will of God.

The wisdom of the simple soul consists in being content with its own business, in confining itself within the boundary of its path, and not going beyond its limits. It is not curious about God’s ways of acting, but is content with God’s will in regard to itself, making no effort to discover hidden meanings by comparisons or conjectures, but only desiring to understand what each moment reveals. It listens to the voice of the Word when it sounds in the depths of the heart. It does not ask what the divine Bridegroom has said to others, but is satisfied with what it receives for itself, so that moment by moment by everything, however insignificant or whatever its nature, the soul is sanctified without knowing it. In this way the Bridegroom speaks to His Bride, by the solid effects of His actions which the soul accepts with loving gratitude without curious scrutiny.

Thus the spirituality of such a soul is perfectly simple, absolutely solid, permeating its whole being. Its actions are not determined by ideas or by a tumult of words, which by themselves would only serve to inflate pride. People make a great use of the intellect in piety, yet it is of little use, and often detrimental to true piety. We must make use only of what God’s will gives us to do or to suffer, and not forsake this divine essential to occupy our minds with the historic wonders of God’s work, but rather we should increase these wonders by our own faithfulness.

The marvels of these works of God, which we read about to satisfy our curiosity, often tend only to disgust us with things that seem trifling, but by which, if we do not despise them, God’s love effects very great things in us. Foolish creatures that we are! We admire, we bless God’s action in written history, but when His love is ready to continue this writing on our hearts, we keep moving the paper and preventing its writing by our curiosity, to see what it is doing in us and what is is accomplishing elsewhere.

Forgive, divine Love, these defects; I can see them all in myself, and I have not yet learned what it is to abandon myself to Your hand. I have not yet yielded myself to the mold. I have walked through all Your workshops and admired all Your works of art, but have not as yet had the self-surrender needed to receive even the bare outlines of your brush. But at last I have found You, my dear Master, Teacher, Father, my beloved Friend.

Now I will be Your disciple; I will attend to no other school than Yours. I return, like the prodigal, hungering for Your bread. I relinquish the ideas which tend only to satisfy my curiosity. I will no longer run after teachers and books; no, I will use them only as Your holy will ordains them, not for my gratification but to obey You, by accepting all that You send me. I will confine myself solely to the duty of the present moment in order to prove my love and leave You free to do with me what You will.

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade - Purchase The Joy of Full Surrender

Thanks to Catholic Spiritual Direction for the link

Which is the One spiritual habit that has changed your journey ? (Holy Experience) Walk with Him Wednesday...

Ann asks this question today over at Holy Experience...
What is the One Spiritual Habit that Has Changed Your Journey?

And the one phrase that keeps coming back to my heart is this... eat regularly!

But this is food of the soul kind! And it is delivered by..
Regular Prayer stops throughout the day.

Even though I can't always find the words to pray the words find me. They have been written somewhere deep in my heart, by The One who made me. Like a seed, they simply need the watering to grow from the darkness.
And like this little sycamore, I need the courage to fall from what I know, what I hold to, my materiel success or failure. Be opened by Love's wounding.
And trust, despite outward signs... that God alone sees the heart.

So, even when I can't locate those words myself. I find them reflected somehow. They speak for me, when words fail me. Prayer... Yes, it is more a practise of love than an active work.

And when this becomes the one priority all other priorities fall into place.

All work is useless and vain without the infusion, prompt and grace of His love anyway. For a plant to grow strong, the roots need feeding regularly.
"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." ...
And I have had to make the time. Make it!
Because I am so in need of it. I fail far too easily without it.
"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain."
And I wonder, how is it that so many things can seem important, uncompromising to the day, demands over spill before me and yet these times, just for Him and Him alone become, so very easily, secondary.

Yes I call out to Him like a child when I need Him knowingly. And I whisper praises in His ear when I am met with undeserved grace, beauty, love. But that is in the middle of my doing.
Sometimes I need to put all that aside and simply be with Him alone.
The desire to eat bread for the body comes before the desire to eat bread for the soul, so many times. I wait for restfulness, peace, quiet, my own pursuits, pleasures and leisure's, then Him. Then only. Him and I alone.

I know that my soul wastes away without sustenance. While it is emptiness and privation that motivates longing in the stomach! The longing grows in the soul only with sustained nourishment, or so it seems.

You see, a soul doesn't live to eat, it eats to live! How wonderful is that!
It doesn't take so that it can take again which is so often human nature isn't it.
No, it shares the broken bread of grace, so that it can give, and give out again.

I read again from the hours today... "Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes."

I stand upon this holy mountain of goodness and grace and look down upon my life.
How far below this beautiful ideal I am. How much I need these words to live in my own barren life. Give breath to my actions, my thoughts, my days. Turn my heart of stone to a heart of flesh.
And so someway, somehow. These hours are carved out of a day.

They bring my empty bowl to His alter each time. And each time He serves so that I may become a better servant. And learn to serve Him in those around me.

Pray the office today by clicking on the link below

For years the office of hours has sustained, nourished and
regularly fed souls throughout each day.
If read everyday for a month, 
The book of Psalms will have been completely
recited.
Complimentary readings from both OT and NT, feast days
along with spiritual writing and prayer have been the food
for many a hungry heart for centuries past.

Visit Ann today to read more reflections on the journey...

All Saints...reflection on the Beatitudes.

What I love about the Beatitudes is that they say so much about the nature of God.Our great God blesses the small, the forsaken, the persecuted, the mourners, the meek, the peacemakers, the forgiving, the just, the childlike and pure of heart.


Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10

Glimpses through trees

Everyday, the leaves fall more and the branches become a little barer.
I hear the birdsong still, dancing upon the silent bough.

A tree is like a human soul, yet there is perfection there.
Their roots take only what is necessary from the earth. The leaves absorb the whole spectrum of colours from the sun.
With it they make food.
Embracing the toxins of the atmosphere around them, transforming them in to pure air exhaled.
They make an abundant home for all creatures.
Birds, foxes, owls, rabbits...
Even we find shelter beneath their generous canopy in the midst of the storm, whose arms reach only toward heaven as the rain spills.

They provide wood for all needs, from fire to furnishings.
They warm, sustain and provide shelter.

Year upon year the leaves begin to fall.

And with them, the soil is replenished once more. From beauty, to ashes. From death to life.

Bees gather from their blossom in the springtime.
And the memory still lingers faintly upon the air like pollen.

Even now as they become, brittle, stark and naked as deadwood upon the flame of Autumn.
Hands reach quietly, obscurely, embracing the taut, white canvas of the sky.
Immovable, except for the breeze. And they don't resist it's swell.

Something, invisible, eternal, sacred.
Like church spires along the horizon.

They stand in praise of Him who made them.

Photocredit: starbeard

Come to me all who labour...

"For he calls out to everyone, saying: "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest". Is it not, after all, a most ridiculous and fruitless labour to be swollen with lust, continually to be tortured with anxiety and worry, fear and sorrow, for the objects of your passion? "

Saint Bruno

(Pray the office today, by clicking on the banner below)

‘If the bow is kept continually taut, it looses its resilience and becomes less fit for its works’.

Saint Bruno

Invisible, Elemental

The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.

There are men of the East, he said,
Who are the East.
There are men of a province
Who are that province.

There are men of a valley
Who are that valley....

The Mandoline is the instrument
Of a place.

Are there mandolines of western mountains?
Are there mandolines of northern moonlight?

The dress of a woman of Lhasa,
In it's place,
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand" Wallace Stevens


Lingering thoughts shared here, from here.





Photo: miss604

John Bradburne.... "Vagabond of God"

"God's love within you is your native land.
So search none other, never more depart.
For you are homeless save God keeps your heart."
(JRB)

I learned a little about John Bradburne when a wonderful priest called father David who works with orphans in Zimbabwe, as part of an organisation called Mother of Peace, came to visit our church some time ago.
This Holy man has a truly humbling and inspiring story I would love to share.

John, who described himself as a Strange Vagabond of God, was a layman and a member of the Third Order of St Francis.
He lived a life of poverty that seemed almost directionless to many, until he found his true vocation, caring for lepers in Zimbabwe.

Many of his patients needed considerable care which John Bradburne gave them with unstinting devotion, until his murder in 1979 at the end of the war for Independence.
After Bradburne
was shot, the local people wanted to hide the body for fear of reprisals
from white security forces. As they were carrying it away, they heard a
choir singing, dropped the body, and ran. However, when they turned back
they saw a strange white bird, with three beams of light ascending
heavenward, hovering over the body. The villagers fled in fright.

Since his death there have been many signs of John's close friendship with Jesus.


Here is his story...

Beauty.... and the Liturgy of Life.

I love it when I am put into other people's shoes, feeling and experiencing other people's temptations, ideas, sorrows, desires. I have become (over time) grateful for when this happens because it has humbled me so much, it has also caused me to sympathise with people I would have very quickly judged.
The other day I was driving through town. I had many different tasks to do, appointments, time constraints, on top of sleep deprivation and just general anxiety which I'm prone too get when stuck in town anyway. I'm sure I have sensation issues, lights, noise, crowds.... just effect me in a bad way, anyhow....
Emmy noticed this beautiful V line of geese, make it's way across the sun mottled sky above us and pointed it out to me.
Beauty has always been so important to me. It stops me hard. I am compelled by it. I have, on occasion, been caught frozen solid in the middle of a crowded street by a glint of sunlight through the branches of a tree, or forgotten my bag on a bench to wander into a little grove of dappled light on the path ahead.
But for some reason that particular day, the juxtaposition of this sacred ritual of flight in the heavens and the stress of the streets reacted toxically within me.
I felt nauseous and irritated.
I simply didn't want the distraction!
Oh, how beauty has become devalued in our highly industrialised world. We simply don't want the distraction. Everything has become streamlined to manage the practicalities of life efficiently. The sacred journey of the geese, the lichen of every green hue imaginable upon the bark of a horse chestnut tree, and the little spider upon the quivering leaf are left unnoticed by most. The deep truths that speak to our very soul within the natural world are not penetrated for the sake of gleaning a breadth superficial knowledge with the questionable agenda of our mental trawling.
Art always reflects it's society. These days even the art we see hanging out upon the walls of modern galleries has become almost utilitarian in it's aesthetic approach. Soulless and aspiring to look factory made, image after image betrays the mark of a Warhol print from his own pre fab style "factory" line productions.
In many ways, art has become about image rather than intent.
With the constant noise of technology buzzing around us and the demands of a life that turns upon it's dizzying axis, children (adults too) have very much, lost the ability to notice, to observe, to recognise beauty.
For economies sake houses are losing their individuality and workmanship. Products, estates, high streets and interiors emphasis the contemporary twin attributes of being streamlined and functional. Our cities are built, not to reflect the art and civilisation of a nation anymore, they are set into the hardened mould of capital gain.
But we humans are not soulless robots.
A thing done for nothing more than the sake of beauty is surely valuable indeed, within it's own right. It's usefulness or economy should not be it's primary reason for existing.
Is it ours?
The Bible tells us that we have been made to know, love and praise the God of heaven and Earth.
Problem is that these days, these high ideals have become relegated to the sidelines of life. The edges and the hard shoulders, for making small pit stops only when we break down completely.
Life is liturgy. It is discovering of the essence of God within all things. It is the fibonacci sequence within nature, ratio's golden rule!
It is harmony, both inner and outer. Yet we are losing segments of the sequence, we are messing with the DNA of the liturgy. The liturgy of life itself, the Word made flesh.
Noticing, observing and recognising beauty in the natural world around us and in the reflection of this in art was what the great philosopher's of the past saw as the very purpose of life.
Education and life wasn't about the repetition of tasks for the sake of both the individual and national economy, it was for the nourishment and expansion of the soul.
How many people take wonderment. How many people have been taught, or shown how through example, to take wonderment from the simple beauty's within nature.
Children, I truly have come to believe, need to been in nature regularly. They need to be taught the liturgy of life.
I'm glad Emmy noticed. It is becoming a gift, noticing. May I always be able to slow down, stop and stare at the sun glinting through the shivering branches of a city tree lifting it's leaves in praise from the 2 by 2 sqaure patch of dirt along the road.

Photo credit: NaPix -- Now in Sapa VN

Two kinds of Emptiness....

Emptiness is a very common complaint in our days, not the purposeful emptiness of the virginal heart and mind but a void, meaningless, unhappy condition.

Lives are overcrowded, filled with trivial details, plans, desires, ambitions, unsatisfied cravings for passing pleasures, doubts, anxieties, and fears; and these sometimes further overlaid with exhausting pleasures which are an attempt, and always a futile attempt, to forget.

The whole process of contemplation through imitation of Our Lady can be gone through , in the first place, with just that simple purpose of regaining the virgin mind, and as we go on in the attempt we shall find that over and over again there is a new emptying process; it is a thing which has to be done in contemplation as often as the earth has to be sifted and the field ploughed for seed.

At the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in his life, all the hard blocks and congestion's; not necessarily to discard all his interests forever, but at least once to stop still, and having prayed for courage, to visualise himself without all the extras, escapes, and interests other than Love in his life; to see ourselves as if we had just come from God's hand and gathered nothing to ourselves yet, to discover just what shape is the virginal emptiness of our own being, and of what material we are made.

We need to be reminded that every second of our survival does really mean that we are new from God's fingers, so that it require no more than the miracle which we never notice to restore to us our virgin-heart at any moment we like to choose.

Excerpts from "The Reed of God" by Caryll Houselander

Photo: Romulo fotos

Finding my life

Still
Be still heart

The storm will not last
don't let the bitter winds
turn you to ice
Come inside.

Sit still and remember
the seed I planted deep inside you long ago...

....As a child you watered it well without even
understanding, you just fell right down and
cupped your little hands into the river's depth

But now there are other concerns
and they grow up like weeds
around the garden of the child
who played among the reeds...

....Sit still a while and remember
where you found me last

I am always here.

"The eyes to see, the ears to hear"

Just sit a while with me,
your own heart is the eye of the storm
that aches in the skies of your thoughts
See my face and not
the wailing rains and swelling tides
they will subside
the waters still
and then you will recognise once more
my reflection upon the
surface of all things


Child, if you can find my heart and my life
within all
...you will find where yours dwells too.

abandonment. God at every step....

*
*
*
"Everything is intended to guide, uphold and support you. Everything is the hand of God. God’s action is vaster and more present to you than the elements of earth"

Purchase the Joy of Full Surender.

I hear singing...

I hear singing

Her voice a bubble

of certainty

and hope

rising

on the breeze

Into the blue unknown.



Poem doodle (thanks to LL for the idea:)

Just do the next thing

Just do the next thing.

Do it with all the love and purpose you can.

Without thinking further

Off into the distance, where

input must equal output

income balance outcome

and the expectation of something better somewhere

someplace, somewhen ... else

can only ever underestimate

the aching sweet

beauty of the

"just now"

I have here with you.

He loves me just as I am...

Just thought I'd do something a little different... I picked up a book at random, turned to a random page and thought I'd write the first paragraph I came across here it is... "He loves me with all my weaknesses, with all my inherited and acquired defects, he loves me as I am, with my idiosyncrasies and my temperament, my habits and my complexes. ... Just as I am." From the book "Love" by Earnesto Cardenal

With the giving... ( A Poem inspired by Mother Teresa)

In an embrace,

In a smile,
In the eyes of a stranger
who stayed
When shame danced
drunk with despair
in the rain.

In the pouring

of dreams to a child's empty bowl,
rattling along the fractured
paths falling
between the broken
seams swelling

where lonely tears
seep into the fabric
of absorbed tomorrows

And yesterdays' concrete -
covered dreams sleep
too deep
to be woken.

mutely softly,
still,

silently stepping

over lines

that divide.

That run aimlessly beneath the surface

Across the brokenness

It's in the touch

of a pencil thin mark
sound like the
one gentle voice
above the white noise

of railway stations and
police sirens
falling change...
....sun drenched rain...

In the seeking beyond

the lush green fields

and a vision
that can reach
a lower kind of ground

crossing rivers that wade
between the currents
of race, creed
colour, sound

till something once lost
may again be found

The precious cradled
gently
un-bound.

It's in the space between

the vapour of breath
where hands cup
emptiness
and call it fullness

this touch
of thankfulness

Yes

the kind of love
that sees the mess

and still loves

and a heart
that can only
grow greater

with the giving

Multitude Monday

a
w

This week gratitude started like the podding of peas.
One by one little blessings appearing beneath broken shells. Opened shells.
Bright green sweetness popping in little mouths. And a mad scrambling under a tent, peas and all, when the sudden afternoon rain shower blew over!

Yesterday, thankfulness was a birthday cake for Daddy, that was meant to be blue but ended up green because you made the icing with yellow butter cream :) (It was even more delicious)

Then two hours alone with Tani on his birthday. Talking, opening up, sharing, shedding shells, becoming real, vulnerable, making deeper connections, walking, laughing over silly jokes that make no sense to anyone else but us. Remembering when we first met all those years ago! How did all this happen four girls and this! All within what seems to be a heartbeat of a time?

Slowly, steadily with His hand the opening of the protective shell we've built around our lives, our family, so to share more, give more, bring in more, abundantly, the seeds of His own harvest, not ours only.

Recognising deep within my soul that God brought me and him together from the very beginning.
How, really we are the missing pieces of each other. Two halves of a pod around four little peas!
How I love him for his heart, his courage, his honor and honesty, his childlike spirit,
his creative mind, the sacrifices he makes for us, some little, some very big, all given as gifts, the love he has for us, the ways he shows it in small ways and big ways every day.

Then the unveiling of beauty. As summer fades seamlessly into the velvet hems of autumn. That drape like an endless evening.

The golden, dappled light of late August. pools around and swells my heart with thankfulness.

If I could swim in the light of an autumn sunset!

Indigo blots on white linen, amethyst storm clouds set in platinum sunlight.

The flush of sudden rain. The sparkling emerald leaves, when the shower is over.

Little apples fresh picked from the branch, red as little sun blanched cheeks, bitter sweet delicious to taste.

Pots of jam, plum and damson berry. Shades of Autumn, bottled, fragrant, concentrated.
Perfect spread thickly on warm crusts.

Warm cups of tea beside a basket of knitting on a quiet evening of early bedtimes after a busy, blustery, outdoorsy day.

Trusting in God in the letting go.

As one season moves toward another.