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Gratefulness
Just keeping my mouth shut is a really good practice!
My mother often baked bread, as her mother did. I have baked our bread for 50 years. Now our son bakes bread for his family, and our 3 and 5 year old grandchildren know how yeast works, and how to shape loaves.
Kindness. (Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem)
https://poets.org/poem/kindness
I bought some beautiful yarn from a wonderful local yarn shop that is closed except for curbside pickups. I’m going to start making a blanket for my little granddaughter. And this evening, I’m having a picnic with my husband, on the living room floor (It’s still mostly winter here.) Potato salad is goodness itself, this gray time of year!
That I’m not as nice as I like to think I am.
Regrets. But did I ever really need them?
For the school bus drivers and school lunch people who are making and delivering lunches and breakfasts to all the children in our area, now that schools are closed. For the people working in grocery stores and pharmacies and post offices and hardware stores and hospitals and nursing homes and prisons–everyone out there on the front line.
The sun.
My church did Zoom this morning. It was generous of our interim priest to figure out how to set it up. And especially generous of everyone to share some “roses, buds, and thorns” –the good things, the budding things, and the prickly things–going on in our lives now. I don’t feel quite so separated, knowing we’re all still able to touch.
My little town is putting together a Mutual Aid Society, and as we were doing an online meeting this morning, it occured to me that those of us who are older and staying in can still chat with other staying-in people on the phone–about gardens and birds and grandchildren and signs of Spring and the ordinary things that make life worth living. And I love to do that kind of chatting, so I’ve signed up to do it.
I’m still not sure that I am, and I’m over 70– But thinking about it, I remember my old friend Ethel who was 94 when she died. I knew her as a “shut-in.” (A wise friend of mine is saying “we’re all shut-ins these days!”) I was sitting with her in her little Senior Residence apartment and she was as usual watching the birds in her feeder and the rainbows her prism made on the wall, and she said, “Oh, every day is such a treasure!” I w...
I’m still not sure that I am, and I’m over 70– But thinking about it, I remember my old friend Ethel who was 94 when she died. I knew her as a “shut-in.” (A wise friend of mine is saying “we’re all shut-ins these days!”) I was sitting with her in her little Senior Residence apartment and she was as usual watching the birds in her feeder and the rainbows her prism made on the wall, and she said, “Oh, every day is such a treasure!” I was young enough then so I couldn’t quite understand that. I’m beginning to.
I wrote this sixteen years ago, and it still holds:
ENOUGH THEN
Enough, maybe: the owl in the tree, her sleeping face in the morning, the red tip of her yellow beak. Enough, bitter green tea in the perfect blue cup.
Time passes. Reality of the absence, indication that the presence mattered. There is no conjuring will summon it again.
Enough, the January lettuce sprouting in the cellar, under the lights.I wrote this sixteen years ago, and it still holds: ENOUGH THEN Enough, maybe: the owl in the tree, her sleeping face in the morning, the red tip of her yellow beak. Enough, bitter green tea in the perfect blue cup. Time passes. Reality of the absence, indication that the presence mattered. There is no conjuring will summon it again. Enough, the January lettuce sprouting in the cellar, under the lights. Enough? Faces of friends and strangers over their coffee cups in the corner café. Once in a dream, a baby told me it needed to be changed, but I looked for food, never asking its hunger. Once Augustine wrote of the god-shaped missing piece, the restlessness. They tell me it is enough for me to open the door. But the door is open, or there is no door. Enough, then, dough rising in the bowl, scent of soup on the stove. Enough, the love webbing like wild vines from each beginning of time. Read More
Enough, the January lettuce sprouting in the cellar, under the lights. Enough? Faces of friends and strangers over their coffee cups in the corner café.
Once in a dream, a baby told me it needed to be changed, but I looked for food, never asking its hunger. Once Augustine wrote of the god-shaped missing piece, the restlessness. They tell me it is enough for me to open the door.
But the door is open, or there is no door.
Enough, then, dough rising in the bowl, scent of soup on the stove. Enough, the love webbing like wild vines from each beginning of time.
Water. Right now, where I live, the ice and snow are nearly melted, and the sound of running water is everywhere. The ducks and geese are resting in the opened lake before they continue on their way north. And clean water comes out of my faucets.
I might start by not checking the “news” compulsively! I certainly do NOT know what will happen next, and that has always been the case. And as people have been saying, there is so much that is simply out of our control, which is. . . a good thing!
Advent has long been my favorite season of the church year. This practice reminds me that we can always be in an Advent–holding the waiting as a Real Thing, not as something that leads to a real thing. This *is* my life, this suspension, this present moment.
I was standing in the kitchen, grinding coffee and brooding over a problem with our water system that has caused the basement to flood. Again. And suddenly I remembered this practice. Oh, the smell of the grinding coffee! The light through the kitchen window! The fact that we HAVE a water system to have a problem with!
And hi, Serafina. You were very kind to me not long ago, helping me to log in to a gratefulness course!
I didn’t know that! Thanks for the inspiration. Pasta salad today, maybe.
I like thinking about the isolating as generosity. Thank you for that!
Yes. One never knows which gesture, smile, email connection or dropped word will ripple out into the world. Nearly fifty years ago I was picking up an order for my food coop group and had a question for the director (who was, I believe, the only paid employee). I went to the desk where he sat with piles of papers and a ringing telephone and people milling all around. He looked me in the eye and smiled and said, “What can I do for you?” and paid absolute attention to me and answere...
Yes. One never knows which gesture, smile, email connection or dropped word will ripple out into the world. Nearly fifty years ago I was picking up an order for my food coop group and had a question for the director (who was, I believe, the only paid employee). I went to the desk where he sat with piles of papers and a ringing telephone and people milling all around. He looked me in the eye and smiled and said, “What can I do for you?” and paid absolute attention to me and answered my question. It is a rare thing to be the only thing that matters to someone, if even for a few seconds. It mattered a great deal to me, and still does, fifty years later.
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