How long is a gift?

Not just one rose – a whole BUNCH of gorgeous yellow roses graces my kitchen table in a tall, slim glass vase today! They are sisters, it seems, with this unexpectedly hot and glorious spring sun shining in through the windows. Their beauty and perfection restore my soul, and their colours bring joy: Golden petals atop lively green stems, green through glass, glass on black slate, slate upon unvarnished wood. And as a gift from my love, and adorning a kitchen made sparkling for me by the joint cleaning efforts of my two beloved ones together, they shine extra brightly. They are simple beauty and vibrant colour, and they are love and togetherness expressed in action.

It’s amazing to me that, when my heart is open, such simple things can fill me up so deeply and wholly. Any empty days, any bottomless pits, recede into the distant past, and I know my cup to be overflowing.

But for how long? Till the kitchen loses its sparkle? Till the flowers wilt? Or perhaps sooner – simply till my heart hits a low point, a bare place, and demands to be lifted and filled again?

I remember those Harvard students who arrived so grateful and excited for the privilege of studying in the hallowed halls, but whose gratitude was quickly lost in the stress and strain, the deadlines, dramas and dilemmas. The question struck me then, on hearing Shawn Achor’s story, and hits me again on seeing my roses:

How long is a gift a gift? How long does it last? How long can any significant privilege or simple pleasure bring joy and open the heart to love?

As long as it is remembered and treasured as a gift? As long as the gratitude lasts?

If that is true, imagine the possibility of a soul staying full forever on one gift, forever held with gratitude!

True, for those with eyes to see, each day brings new gifts, and we can notice and count each new one and be filled afresh each time. But when does the search for NEW gifts become dissatisfaction with the OLD ones? And if I am always NEEDING the new and fresh to be filled, won’t I always remain a leaky bucket?

For this I certainly am: full one moment and drained empty the next.

But I want to CONTAIN it – the joy and love and mercy – and treasure it and pour it out like precious perfume; rather than leaking it and losing it and throwing it away. And surely it is this attitude of treasuring that is the key – not the nature or age of the gift received or given, savoured or recalled.

In fact, it’s not even really about the gifts themselves at all, but the heart open to the Grace that flows through the gifts and that is their source. It’s the state of the eyes of my heart that make the difference. “If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light,” said Jesus (Matthew 6).

I long for these eyes – eyes healed by Grace, eyes open to the true Treasure. For where my treasure is (and, yes, amazingly, it’s right there in the same passage – the same message!) there will my heart be also... There will my heart be full to overflowing, whether the roses flourish or fade.

Keep Calm and Count On!

Good news! I think I'm overcoming my ambivalence towards gratitude!

This amazing video talk (also embedded at the very end of this post) about the nature of happiness, and the way that we have the equation all the wrong way round, helped a lot. Sometimes I need the message in poetry, as Ann Voskamp does so brilliantly; and then sometimes - as my friend Abigail said - "Give it to me straight forward and to the point." Shawn Achor does THIS brilliantly, and with the same practical outcome as Ann: writing down 3 things you're grateful for every day actually changes you (Shawn: your brain; Ann: your heart; both: your outlook; both true!). It's worth 12 minutes of your time for sure. I mean, it got Jeremy into gratitude-listing (with the One Thousand Gifts app on his iphone!) when poetry would never have cut it! :-)

I'm also seeing that it is often just cleverly disguised pride that makes me think writing down what I'm thankful for is too simplistic to be important for me to focus on, and too simple to make any difference in my life. In fact, I see more and more that such a simple act is the most worthy and appropriate of all for a life aiming to become more Christ-like and therefore, as he called us to be, more childlike. As I wrote last week:
"And so I present my own blank page to God, finally deigning to handwrite my simple, childlike gratitude and bathe in God’s mercy-rain right here and now (I am the just and the unjust) rather than waiting for another day, the perfect day, the perfect way, the perfect words. I am counting the ways he loves."

To simply write down my three (or more) gifts each day supports my desire to see God right where I am, in the here and now, in the ordinary and mundane.

And the Joy Dare for March turns out not to be the contrived or romanticised way of looking for God's gifts that I have at times feared it would become, but actually a way to help me 'scan' (a Shawn Achor term!) for gifts I wouldn't instantly, naturally see. To look out for '3 gifts round', for example, makes me more attentive, and opens my eyes to things I really am grateful for - both big and small - but might not have noticed without prompting. Why don't you try it too?!

So, below, I will continue cataloguing my 'One Thousand Gifts'. Feel free to read on if you want to, but really I'm writing them down for me, and for God. But whatever you do, and whatever's going on for you right now, here's some sane advice:

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.

Grieve, my soul.

Grieve, my soul.
Grieve what is and was and could have been.
Grieve the desires so deeply hidden
they have never seen the light.
And grieve the longings once covered,
Now freshly opened like a raw wound
Gently weeping;
Now freshly opened like a door
onto an imagined future never to be,
A life never to be born.

Grieve, o my soul,
the love you yearn for and have never tasted,
the life you dream of and have never lived.
Grieve, too, the love and life that have passed
so fleetingly through your hungry hands.
Grieve the person you are and the person you want to be.

Do not fear to grieve, beloved soul.
But grieve that for lack of grief
Hope has grown dim, love grown cold,
And hopelessness taken root.
Grieve to soften your hardened heart
And be roused from your slumber.
Grieve
and be raised to life again.

Grieve till all your tears are shed
For they will leave your eyes
Clean and clear,
Wide open onto the world
You have been blind to.
And each will fall
As rain onto thirsty ground
And as sorrow's seed sown for joy's harvest.

Preparing a table

How many different tables did you sit around today? Who did you share a meal with? What did that mealtime mean to you, and to those with you?

Shared time around a table is one of the simple and often taken-for-granted blessings of life, bringing us not just nourishment and enjoyment of taste and texture, but also connection, communication, and celebration. For me today, each ‘table’ – both actual and metaphorical– that has been prepared for me, or that I have prepared, has revealed a unique aspect of what the gift of a mealtime can be...

A table of togetherness and communication: The breakfast table with Amélie was a time for me to love her by laying on delicious, nourishing food for her to enjoy – a whole-wheat maple cinnamon waffle with sea-salted butter, organic apple slices, fruit juice, and fair trade hot chocolate made with local raw milk. And while she ate and I pottered, we talked about both of our dreams that night, and she shared her excitement about the day, and her thoughts on life and chance and death and heaven. As we got ready to walk to church in the sun, she said what a nice time of talking it had been, and I agreed – we had communicated and reconnected.

A table of friendship and familiarity: The early morning ‘Celtic liturgy’ service that we participate in begins with freshly brewed fair trade coffee and something home-baked – usually by gifted and open-handed Carol, today some yummy cinnamon raisin scones – laid out on the café counter for anyone to grab before they sit down at one of the tables. It is a casual, relaxed meeting with friends over a bite to eat, before we enjoy the familiarity of a home-grown liturgy that is meaningful to us as individuals and as a community, with time to read aloud the lectionary readings for the day and share our thoughts, and later our prayers. In words from the liturgy, the blessing of this time is in both its ‘mystery and predictability’.

A table of forgiveness and mercy: And then, each week as part of this gathering, we are invited by the liturgy to: “Come to this table, you who have much faith, and you who would like to have more; you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time; you who have tried to follow Jesus, and you who have failed. Come; it is Christ who invited us to meet him here.” We then pass the bread and wine to each other, and I was struck this morning by the fact that I was passed the elements by someone who I know has needed to extend forgiveness to me recently, and that I in turn passed it on to Jeremy, whose love for me must constantly be expressed in forgiveness and mercy, and to whom I too extend these gifts of love. A little later, we read part of St. Patrick’s prayer, the Deer’s Cry or Breastplate, and I was moved again by the affirmation that Christ is on my left and my right – embodied in these two with whom I exchange forgiveness – and by the prayer that Christ “be in the heart of each to whom I speak, in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.” Though I often wish the prayer affirmed Christ’s presence in MY heart and mouth, I see the profound truth hidden in the fact that Christ is always found in the ‘other’, if I have eyes to see.

A table of blessing and family: The children were leading the later, ‘family’ service today, and Amélie and I had been asked to give out the bread and wine along with other parent-child teams (two communion tables in one morning!). I felt richly blessed and privileged to be alongside my daughter as she solemnly offered the plate of bread to each person with the carefully memorized words “The body of Christ broken for you”, and as I then offered the ‘wine’. Many who came to the table we ‘prepared’ were families, children, and I was thankful for the mysterious and inexplicable yet also very concrete and simple nature of this sacrament – it is a table at which we are all welcome.

A table of celebration and laughter: It felt like the first day of spring today – finally, a warm weekend! – and we decided to enjoy an impromptu picnic with friends in the sun in St Andrews, a local seaside town where we could lay out all our offerings of French bread and chicken, hummus and olives, grapes and chips (aka crisps!) on a picnic blanket overlooking the glistening ocean, share stories and jokes, laugh, and celebrate together the blessings of friendship, humanity, good food and sunshine.

A table of generosity and beauty: The next table that was prepared for me was something of a surprise – a little side table (that Amélie laboured over setting up for me in the garden as I snoozed in the hot car!) bedecked with pretty cloth and flower vase, in order to beautify my first hammock experience of the year. It was a heartfelt, thoughtful act of generosity, much like the card and flowers she spent ALL her money on for me yesterday, and so as I swung in the hammock I was basking in this spontaneous and undeserved love, as much as in the sun. With her, more than with anyone else in this world, I am constantly aware of my shortcomings and failures, and so her tenderness and generosity towards me undoes me. It is mercy and grace poured into my cup and overflowing. I have shared so many table-times with my family – some happy, and some miserable, angry or stressful – but still we gather to meet and eat together every day, demonstrating our ongoing love and mercy towards each other as we are. I remember an idea from Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, that the Bible’s talk of compassion or mercy (both from God to us and from us to each other, especially those closest to us) would best be translated by the word pity, the point being that it is something we don’t like to admit our need of, a word we might even be insulted by, but is in fact something we DESPERATELY need. We are all so wounded (and wounding) that only pity makes life and love possible for us. So, today, I feel pitied, and I drink it in like a cup of cold water in a desertland.

A table of sharing and connection: My last table of the day was a weekly potluck meal with friends, made possible by the sacrificial and joyful hospitality of Grace and Mat. The food is always wonderful and varied, the atmosphere is comfortable and happy, good conversations take place, connections are renewed or created, and there is usually at least one song – and sometimes lots! – playing on the radio Classic Countdown (from 1975 today!) that prompts over half the room to stand up in the kitchen and boogie! The sharing of the food at such a gathering – each offering unique and often complementary to the other parts – mirrors the best of what a mealtime can be, as each person shares the truth and gift of who they are, and receives in turn the gift of the other.

“Christ beside me, on my left and my right.”

So, dear friends and readers and fellow journeyers on the path of ‘Learning to Savour’ all that life offers, I would love to hear (if you are in fact there, and have read this far!) about a recent meal of yours and what it meant to you – either in the simple enjoyment of some great food, or in the gift of those you shared it with. This will have to take the place, for now, of sharing a REAL meal together! Please share...

This little piggy went to market...

Well, almost. That is, I did go to market today, but I’m not technically a piggy. In any case, can I tell you about my spree? It was to Calais Farmers’ Market, in our ‘twin town’ just across the border, which only happens in the summer months and so is a rare and wonderful treat. I actually never made it last year, but have been spurred on in the intervening twelve months by a growing commitment to seasonal, local produce, combined with a modest increase in financial resources. I now feel very aware of what a rare and wonderful treat it is to be able to simply throw wallet and passport into my jaunty red Hessian bag, trip over the bridge (now I really am sounding like a little piggy!) into the good ol’ U.S. of A., and be able to choose from a wonderful range of luscious fresh produce from local growers.

So that is what I did today. I was running a little later than I had hoped and planned, and so noticed once in the land of the free and the brave (having very impatiently waited to show my passport at immigration) that my stomach was tied in knots from wishing I was at the market already, being annoyed I wasn’t, and rushing to arrive as soon as I could. But something about seeing the sign for the Calais Waterfront Walk ahead of me, which I rarely get to stroll along in a leisurely fashion, stopped me short and reminded me what a privilege it was to have the time and freedom to wander to market in the sun beside the St Croix River. Thus gratitude unraveled the knots, leaving me consciously present to the still-dewy grass beneath my sandalled feet, the sparkle of sun on water, and the smell of freshly mown lawns mingled with that unmistakable estuary tang. I reflected on how often I am robbed of similar gift-moments, and of being truly present to them, by clinging to some arbitrary timescale I have decided on for equally inconsequential reasons. So the best produce is there for the taking only by the early birds? So what?! Is it really worth developing a peptic ulcer over? I mean, if it were a matter of true significance – whether we ate that evening or not, for example – I would sure as heck have made certain I was there on time! No, on this journey of learning to savour, I would much rather relish my riverside promenade, stop my stomach acids from overproducing, and be thankful for the goods that remain on my happy arrival.

So that is what I did. My first stop was, of course, my friend Karen’s stall, someone whose ways with plants could just (but not quite!) force me to entertain the possibility of a green-fingered gift. With a fairly glistening bunch of her ruby-red beetroots and the lushest young spinach you’ve ever laid your eyes on stashed in my bag, I moved on to another stall where fresh peas and a frilly head of cabbage caught my fancy. As I asked somewhat hesitantly whether it was alright to pay with Canadian dollars, the jovial gent informed me that he would accept them on par since, given a year, the exchange rate would be reversed and (with a glint in his eye) “You’ll be back to buy from me again then, won’t you?!” I assured him with a smile that I would and moved on to peruse the home-baked goods, finally selecting a delicious looking focaccia and some molasses crinkle cookies. Ah, this will make the little piggy that stayed at home very happy! I left the bustling green laden with the fruit of the fertile Maine earth, and also with plans that almost made me want to run (wee, wee, wee!) all the way home: tomorrow, shelling the sugary peas with Amélie in the garden, followed by a meal involving those we manage not to eat in the process, along with delectable roasted beetroot; and today, a rustled-up picnic featuring focaccia and cookies, along with seasalted butter and ‘Seriously Sharp’ Vermont cheddar, fresh green salad, and sliced tomatoes with basil and balsamic vinegar. We could take the picnic to Todd’s Point nature park, lay out our blanket in the shade of the big old silver birches, within earshot of the waves, and eat overlooking the glistening bay.

So that is what we did.