there is something to this gratitude business..

For a few days now, I have had a small journal by my bedside. As soon as I wake up, I write down the things that fill me with gratitude. It does start the day better but I noticed something unusual that happened today. Instead of the near things: sleep, comfy bed, spouse etc, I was flooded with memories of my Mother's flowers. It was a trip I was taken on rather one that I chose.

I never saw my Mother garden but, sometime before I was born, the lilacs were planted. If you have never enjoyed the scent of May blooming purple lilacs, you are terribly deprived.They grew on the east side of the house and were as high as the second story. The lily of the valley almost beat the lilacs in the swooning scent contest.The azaleas, white, red ,salmon, pink were faithful every year. Dogwood, and daffodils.These are the gifts that surrounded me in the Spring on Long Island. I miss them.

Then came a different memory.I was laying on a gurney in 2010, waiting for my first colonoscopy. I was afraid and not too proud to admit it. Alone as I waited, I felt this: my beloved deceased dog Cooper was laying by my side next to my left arm.There was just enough room and I knew it was him. I was comforted beyond measure.

Ah, you say, nice memory but you conjured it to feel better. Maybe, but then there is this.When I got home and went on-line to Facebook, the most curious thing happened.On that day, a co-worker of my son's posted a picture of he and Cooper taken at the camp where they both spent the summers. He had taken it a few years before and posted it that day.

So, this was the second memory that surfaced to bless the beginning of my day. One miracle left. I wanted so much to see that picture again and had no idea how to find it. I went to Facebook and found it with ease on my son's timeline. I couldn't believe that I located that 9 year old post. God finds ways to let us know He is with us in whatever form He knows we are able to accept. Bouquets of flowers and a faithful dog. I am grateful.

a numinous moment

art by Alona Frankel

It was a bright, glorious May day, one that only those who lived through the bitter New York winter deserve. The sky that had been grey and dreary for 6 months was sparkling blue. The scent of purple lilacs danced across the green lawn. I was 5 years old and had just finished my lunch. Dashing out the back door,  I looked for my mother who was hanging sheets that were flapping in the breeze. She heard the little song I was singing and turned. I asked if I could go play with my friend up the street and she smiled with such great warmth and said: Yes, and have fun."I carried the glow of that smile with me all day.

This is not a scene one would put in a novel, just an ordinary moment in a day but I have held it close for all these years. Somewhere in my life I understood the significance of the remembering.  It was because most of the other interactions were not as graced as this one. Often, they were with a curt reply or shrill yelling. This was affirmed for me when my daughter was taking a course in child psychology at Georgia State. In passing, she said that children remember the unusual, the rare occurrence, not the ordinary. Yes, the fall in the lake when I was 4, I recall vividly the colors and the fright. And this unusual day with that smile.All these years I have painted that shiny day with a grey brush wondering why it had to be the unusual and not the usual.Why hadn't I seen that loving smile more?

They say that, to have a desire for God, one must have had a numinous moment, a moment of grace in their lives. Now, in this place in my life, I choose to believe this: I know my mother loved me, she had a hard life and she gave me this one moment and showed me the love of God. It was enough.

Do not soil the moments..New Zealand

Dancer in a Floral Forest-Natalie Buske Thomas


Today's reading in Matthew speaks of loving your enemies. How impossible is that? How do we get there? The other day, out of nowhere, a thought came that might give me a clue to understand this unreachable command.

If I believe that the Creator forged and called into being the world and everything in it, that must include time.Yes, minutes, hours, this moment, this day, all time.And if that is the case, this minute belongs to Him. And? So if this is God's minute, how would He expect me to spend it? This may not be news to anyone but me, but it has changed my thinking so much.

The other day, I was expecting someone to come for the week-end for spiritual direction.When this dear soul comes, I try to have flowers in the room she uses.There were daffodils out there and I knew she would relish the bright yellow of these spring blessings. But I wanted to do something else. Then: if in fact, this is God's time, how would He have me spend it. Off I went to pick.

And if these minutes have been His all along and I am just gifted with them, wouldn't I be grateful in each of them? Yes, grateful.

The Welsh painter Gwen John said this after her conversion: "Every moment is holy. Do not soil the moments".Yes, so profound, so worthy of belief. What else do I need to know ?Well, I would need to know Him in some fashion to know what He expects me to do with this time. His Word, a raft in the middle of the churning ocean that I can hang onto.

Now picture this. I am a hater, filled with self loathing, standing in the doorway of a mosque. Hating myself is so unbearable, I have to send this burden elsewhere so I am here with my weapon. I will take control of life for a few minutes and destroy because that is the only thing that makes me feel larger than a flea.Then, a small whisper in my ear: "These few moments are mine. I am a Creator and I want you to be as well. I love you and all those around you.I have a better plan. Follow me."The prayers continue in the mosque, I wipe my tears away and walk slowly out into the sunshine.

Flower and black sky

Flower and Black Sky-Ken Kiff


What an odd painting.Take the flower out and what do you have? Night sky, dim moon and a bare lifeless tree.Who even notices flowers at night ?If your friend has a rose garden, do you pick up a flashlight and go look as you leave? No, you rush to the car to get out of the dark. Night is frightful.

The solitary flower reminds me of a touching O'Henry story, "The Last Leaf." I can see the lonely, swollen eyed woman in her 30s whose husband has just left her. She is lamenting as she gazes out the winter window to the tree that has lost all its leaves but one at the top. In her desperation she yells to the sky;" if that leaf is still there tomorrow, I will know that all is not lost."Her elderly, white haired upstairs neighbor has heard it all and when the apartment complex is in sleep mode, he creeps out with his ladder, climbs to the top of that tree and tightly ties the last leaf to the branch.This night's wind will not blow it away.

The next morning, she looks out to the miracle, her leaf clings, she will be O.K. She will also find out later that the old man was found under tree where he had fallen to his death.

Another movie scene comes to mind: in the movie "Unbroken", we visit the story of an Olympic runner of the 1936 Olympics who winds up in the Air Force in World War 2.In 1943, His plane is shot down, he spends 47 days alone on a raft and when rescued, it is by Japanese forces who put him in a prison in Tokyo.The men there are starved, beaten and Loius Zamperini, being an American sports hero, is singled out for special cruelty. He survives unbroken. But is he ?

The movie sequel "Unbroken, Road to Redemption" shows life after he gets home: no job, anger boiling over his treatment, sleepless, nightmare filled nights and then heavy drinking.But he goes to a Billy Graham Crusade and finally, finally let's the Light in. Let's Christ into his heart.He is transformed.

In 1950, he goes back to Japan to that same camp where now his former tormentors are kneeling on the floor, heads bowed, captives themselves. In a touching moment, one of the kneeling men looks up and Louis slowly goes to him, lifts him up and says," It's O.K. It's O.K.", then another , then another until he has assured each man of his forgiveness in these simple words; "It's O.K."

To the lonely girl on the playground, It's O.K.", From a Grandma baking biscuits, the auntie giving love, the ancestors paying visits, "It's O.K."

That is what that small purple flower whispers:" It's O.K. It will always be O.K."

this home,this shelter

This sentence jumped out at me as if highlighted by another hand.

"Watching the commotion centered around Neville, I am grateful that my children have this shelter, this web woven of these interrelated lives that they can fall back on, wherever they may roam."The author is describing a homecoming visit of her soldier son to his many relatives who lived close by.

After marrying and moving to Denver, did I feel that I had this to fall back on? This woven web? Sadly, no. On one trip back to New York, I did go to see my Aunt Mildred, she who always made a huge fuss over me. I found that because of diabetes, she no longer drank and the person who greeted me at the door was reserved and distant. Home.

Two memories jolt me to the "now" and I share them with gratitude. Both were a result of our leaving Georgia and moving to South Carolina. On a brief trip home to Jonesboro, I sat with a treasured friend at IHOP and we caught up. Just listening to stories of her children filled me with joy. I didn't know how thirsty I was for the kind of friendship that we shared. The time together glowed in my eyes, the eyes of one who had been sadly exiled and didn't realize the depth of that sorrow.

That same year, my son and his family came to visit our retreat house on Edisto Island and the oldest boy, Aidan, who might have been 9 at the time, walked the labyrinth with the group of retreatants gathered that day. He was so attentive and respectful to this totally new experience, I was very proud.When they left, I noticed small shoes on the porch and the SUV returning up the driveway. I held out the shoes as my son rolled down the window.With tears, he said that they didn't at all like that we had moved here and they wanted us to know that.Tears.Tears.

As I type this, I recall what Aidan said after the walk as we gathered in the living room that long ago day. As he walked the labyrinth, he had thanked God for his home and family.Yes.
That is what we have created in Georgia. This home, this shelter. It is here, now.

Maddie and I on the Way

It was lovely.We had just returned from writing poetry by the river. Moments of peace. Now, I am sitting by the fire with my rosary in hand. Then, it struck me. It's Tuesday.The Sorrowful Mysteries.On Christmas. I was tempted to cheat and do the Joyful. Who would know ? But that didn't seem like it would be a true rosary, so I relented.

Tell me I am not the only one who would rather focus on joys and glorious things rather than sad ones. I think that I am a little afraid of the sorrowful mysteries and I don't even know what that means. But then something happened that was so wonderful.

The night before, at the Children's Mass, my 6 year old granddaughter, Maddie,  asked about one of the Stations of the Cross that she could see from her seat.These Stations are created out at the monastery and are of stained glass.So colorful and beautiful. They catch the eye even though that night they were hard to see for the crowds.These stations depict what happened to Christ in His last hours on earth and as He walked the streets on His way to the cross.Pretty grim and sorrowful.

Maddie's first question was: "Did He want to die?"Then," why are they taking His robe?" and on it went. I felt privileged to be holding her hand as we journeyed from place to place. I had to move  the choir bongos to see the last one; Christ wrapped up and heading for the grave. This was much like going from one sad bead to the next.

As I prayed the rosary,  this came to me; when I travel these sorrowful mysteries twice a week, I am no longer by myself on this sad trek. In some way that I know to be true but have no idea how, my Maddie is with me , holding my hand. I am not alone.

visiting graves to say thank you.

What else can you do to pay homage to those who have transformed your life ?And so it was on a startling blue fall day that we traipsed around the cemetery in Concord looking for Thoreau.Why him? Reading what he wrote and seeing the way he tried to live gave comfort to my nature loving introverted soul."I love to be alone....books are the treasured wealth of the world..we need the tonic of wildness...".He spoke my language and he is beloved.

I am not the only one who loves Henry.We finally found his plain tombstone and unlike his three siblings, the top of his was white, clean white. I could almost see the hands of the thousands who love him, stroking the top as I was.

It was by accident that we came to be looking at Robert Frost's grave in Bennington , Vermont. There he was, that American poet who wrote about the solidarity he felt with the grass mower who left a tuft of wildflowers uncut as the poet himself would have.The three of us caught in the beauty of those flowers in his poem.And yes, there were three birches surrounding his grave."One can do worse than be a swinger of birches."

Willa Cather, that writer whose gorgeous prose almost had me packing a bag and heading out for New Mexico or Nebraska, is buried in New Hampshire. Maybe,I 'll get there one day. Georgia O'Keeffe, whose art and life enchant me is spread on top of her beloved Perdenales mountain.What a wonderful trek that would be to pay my respects.

There is one person in my panoply of hero artists that I will probably never visit. She wrote light, enchanting Christian books in the 70s. These joy filled, honest memoirs helped my stumbling faith in its beginning. Ann Kiemel was a runner when I wasn't, she shared her faith when I didn't but she loved the Lord as I was starting to. And she was bold about it.

The introduction to one of her books begins this way : "every morning I wake up with a prayer: 'Jesus , i am just ann,  my city is so big (Boston), make me creative, give me ideas for my corner of the world.' I can't tell you how much I love that.

Having read most of her books, I then lost touch with her doings. A few years back, I found her blog, "I am running to win", and again, she inspired. In 2014, she passed away and I can't find where she is buried. I am sure in California where she lived then.

This Christmas, my runner granddaughter is going to get two of her books. They are used but to me those are the best. Most have a message of love on the inside; I find them to be treasures. Maybe Ann's words will stir something wonderful in my McKenna and in her time, perhaps she will visit and say thank you for both of us.