Tag: practice

Sitting by the river

Solitude is a gift.

Silence is a gift.

Sunlight is a gift.

Sitting by the river with a strong breeze moving the water and blowing against one side of my face while the sun warms the other.

I woke up in a warm house, while it was still dark and made coffee. Made a to-go breakfast for my older daughter for her drive to work. I laughed with my younger daughter taking her to school.

Now I am sitting in the sun and the wind by the water praying, reading, writing, listening, smiling.

Behind me is a cemetery where my grandparents, family members, and friends rest peacefully. Memories and love dance between us and connect us.

The books in front of me are titled “Pilgrim” and “Gold.”

Talking to God, Rumi writes:

“Today you arrived beaming with laughter–
that swinging key that unlocks prison doors.

You are hope’s beating heart.
You are a doorway to the sun.
You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.
Beginning and end.

You greet need with generous hands.
You flood us with spirit,

ringing from the heart,
lifting thought.”

Reading this, he and I say it together. I like to think God smiles in the sunlight.

Across the cove the sun and the wind dress a weeping willow tree. Geese float tucked away from the tide.

When I am fully here, in this moment, with a full heart and an open mind, and time alone with God, what more can I ask for? I am not alone.

Thank you for this view.
Thank you for this day.
Thank you for this life.
Thank you for your love.

Amen.

* My practice/devotion for Lent this year is to write a “proem” (prayer-poem-prose) in the spirit of Brian Doyle each day of the season. I will share some of them. This is day #3.

Thank you for things that grow

Creator God, thank you for things that grow and change and bloom in their own time.

Thank you for patience so that we can wait with hope on your timing.

Thank you for giving us grateful hearts so that we can appreciate the impermanence, the fleeting moments–nothing remains in bloom and that makes each opening, each unfolding, each blossom special.

Thank you for making us able to grow, able to change, able to seek you, to seek beauty. Thank you for making us new creations in response to the shining of your light, your truth.

God, we thank you for helping us let go when it is time. Lord, I am not always good at this. Letting go hurts. I want to hold on to the blossoms, hold on to the people, hold on to the perfect moments–I want to stay in those wonderful experiences, found and lost in time, captured and forgotten in memory. Like Peter, I want to build dwellings to stay right there.

All around us, you show us that’s not how it works. You show us in your creation that everything has its time, its season. You show us the petals, the leaves dropping off, falling to the ground, coming apart, and going back into the dirt, back to dust.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

From dust to dust.
From dust to seed.
From seed to sprout.
From sprout to bud.
From bud to flower.

Thank you for the dust we are and the blossoms we can become.

Thank you for your love that helps us grow and bloom.

Thank you for things that grow and change and bloom in their own time.

In your time.

Thank you.

* My practice/devotion for Lent this year is to write a “proem” (prayer-poem-prose) in the spirit of Brian Doyle each day of the season. I will share some of them. This quick prayer on Ash Wednesday is the first.