This one rose

And so gratitude grows up like a rose among the thorns.

This is all there is.

This one rose.

This one sunlit window seat.

This one painted mug filled with steaming coffee.

This one warm moment to savour.

Look around and all is barbed and spiny.

The light does not reach, the heat does not penetrate.

The coffee grows cold.

The pottery is brittle and will one day break.

This one rose, this one moment, is not enough.

But turn back, and this is all there is.

This one precious moment is all

there

is.

This one fragrant rose still grows up,

Beautiful among thorns.

Starting the Joy Dare today - choosing to notice and catalogue the "one thousand gifts" that surround me every day.

1 -My bubbly daughter preparing for her school talent show today.

2 - This ruby red couch and warm wood that make a spot that is home.

3 - Preparing delicious and nourishing food to feed my mitochondria today! :-)

Please, sadness, don't leave me.

Please, sadness, don’t leave me.

You have softened my hard heart and opened my eyes to see secret sorrow bravely borne in familiar faces all around me.

You have unearthed my dormant soul, giving tender shoots of desire room to breathe again and slowly climb towards the light. You have revealed with sorrow what has been my delight, and with grief what remains my unfathomable love. You have given me hope that delight and love can grow to guide and sustain me, that holy desire can give birth in me – through me – to life in the world.

Your gentle tears make me feel alive and present, tender and open, woman and human.

So, sadness, why do you stand up now to take your leave? Why so soon?

Is my loss, my need, too small for you to stay any longer? Am I so shallow, my life so easy, that you cannot feel at home here with me?

Why does your gentle hand pry away my clinging fingers? And why – do you know – DO they cling?

Tell me, sadness, is it GOOD that you leave me?

Is your work complete here, your time done? What is it that you came to do, and what do you see in me now that turns you towards my door?

Sweet sadness, I cannot hide from you what I have tried to hide from myself:

That your tears have not only opened my eyes but, lately, have also threatened to close them to the gifts that crowd so thickly around me; that they have opened my heart towards others, but have sometimes also turned it away, and in, and down.

Perhaps you feel that I toy with you now, USE you – to feel alive and exceptional and entitled – and you know that the hard work of sorrow must give way to the hard work of practised gratitude in the everyday, and of life and love re-gifted to the least of these.

So, sadness, if you must go away, then take with you ingratitude and self-importance, but please leave behind soft-heartedness and thankfulness and compassionate presence.

I will leave the door unlocked for you; your tentative knock will no longer be ignored. If it is your time to come and eat with me again then you will be welcomed here, as will your sister joy whose light step I hear approaching as you bid me farewell with a final glance and a fond smile.

Seasons of Trust

I spoke at church on Sunday about 'Seasons of Trust' and what it might mean to "trust in God at all times". My thesis was that as life shakes us, trust has to take on different forms and faces at different stages of our lives and for different challenges, and that this means letting go of old or incomplete ways of trusting in God, and growing into new ways. Below is a poem/reflection on the seasons of trust that I wrote some time ago, and which I read out on Sunday morning. I hope you enjoy it. And here is a link to the podcast of my talk: Seasons of Trust podcast

“Trust in the Lord at all times, O people… at all times.

Trust in the Lord at all times.”

Trust in God when such trust is first born in you as a gift from above.

Trust in God when trust is joy.

Trust in God when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is worthy of all trust.

Trust in God when trust is stretched and grown and deepened.

Trust in God when trust comes as easily as breathing.

Trust in God when you have no choice but to trust.

Trust in God when your trust in others has been betrayed.

Trust in God when you do not trust yourself.

Trust in God when the world does not seem to contain or deserve any trust.

Trust in God when trust is too big a risk.

Trust in God when trust feels like dying.

Trust in God when you haven’t trusted for a long time.

Trust in God when you’ve forgotten what trust is like.

Trust in God when trust does not come naturally to you.

Trust in God when even God does not seem trustworthy.

Trust in God when trust feels impossible.

Trust in God when you can’t and when you desperately wish you could.

Trust in God when you see no need for trust.

Trust in God when you feel no need for God.

Trust in God when trust seems like a childish regression.

Trust in God when trust seems simplistic, or preposterous, or dangerous.

Trust in God when everything in you seems to say that this is not what you need.

Trust in God when you distrust, even despise, your urge to trust.

Trust in God when trust changes – when it does not feel like the trust you have known

Trust in God when God changes and is no longer the God you have known.

Trust in God when this means trusting in yourself.

Trust in God when this means trusting in another.

Trust in God when this means simply trusting the air you breathe.

Trust in God when trust is to get up each morning and live the day.

Trust in God when it feels you are putting your trust in a wish dream.

Trust in God when you do not know who God is.

Trust in God when you do not know if God is.

Trust in God when all trust is gone.

Trust in God when God is gone.

Trust in God in the darkness of uncertainty.

Trust in God in the desert of doubt.

Trust in God through the night of loss and fragmentation.

Trust in God till the dawn appears, till the clouds part, till the first drop of rain falls.

Trust in God who is the dawn, the day, the rain, the water that sustains.

Trust in God… for trust is fragile, but God is the air you breathe.

“…Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” (Psalm 62:8)

November 2008; St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.