Thursday, July 22, 2010

Grace needed to see


Who has helped you to see?
To see grace.
Grace in the ordinary.
Not alongside you but how the
Spirit has lit up a sense of beauty
in thewords to see deeper,slowed you down,
stirred your inner being.
You are kinder. You are meditating.
You hunger for more . You seek the Word.
Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, Edith Schaeffer,
George Grant, Luci Shaw, Wendell Berry,
and Makoto Fujimura come to my mind.
Attentiveness to the ordinary is a gift these
have given me in their writings, letters, lives
seen from afar. Who have you had stir you
to wonder, worship, and awe?

Here is part of a poem from Harvesting Fog
by Luci Shaw. Her words "as if the third day of
Creation were just yesterday" made me read
Genesis. I will not look at weeds the way I do.
Well, maybe I will celebrate the pretty weeds!

I have always welcomed the perennials
but today I celebrate weeds. The arrival of
horse-tails, their primitive vigor thrusting up
under the fence as if the Third Day of Creation
were just yesterday. In penance, as redemption,
I will begin to touch the earth more lightly,
remembering to walk barefoot in the soft
forest so that I make no bruit or break…
(40, “Gardener’s Remorse”)

plant picture - horsetails

Horsetails have
segmented stems
( we call this snake grass)

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