My heart swells

Where can I go
from your spirit, O God?

Opening Prayer and Thanksgiving

I awake this morning
In the presence
of the holy angels of God.
May heaven open wide before me
Above me and around me
That I may see
the Christ of my love
And his sunlit company
In all the things of earth this day.
        J. Philip Newell, Each Day & Each Night

It’s Friday morning and I usually wouldn’t write on Friday morning – it’s my sabbath – but the words came upon me with the desire to put them down. So here I am.

I drink some water and set my tea to steep. Planning to do morning prayers and yoga, I’m inspired by the rabbit I spot nibbling on red creeping thyme to take my mug and do walkabout . What beauty I find. The sun is warn, the grass wet from last night’s shower. The peony blossoms still have some life in them.

Joe Pye is a native that will grow to 5 feet.

Wild Ginger is a native groundcover.

I pick a stalk of rhubarb to add the ones I didn’t use last night. They’ll make a nice something for supper. I talk to the brunnera, the Joe Pye weed, the rabbit. Oh, and the rose. It was eaten to a nub but is coming back nicely now that I’ve stacked bricks around it.

The iris are beginning to bloom. Lovely. The white sage refuses to give up though I keep digging out whatever sprouts appear. The hostas in the corner seem to be thriving in spite of their munching neighbors.

Full of the beauty of God’s creation I come in, pour more tea and head toward my prayer chair – a rocker that fits my smaller frame (so many are too big) but I stop by the lilacs in a vase. (May is the only month I use this vase as it’s too large for anything but a mess of lilacs.) I tell myself I’ll need to dump these on the compost today but then I smell them and decide to wait. The lilac fragrance is still in them. One more day they will bless my home with their fading beauty.

There are even spider's lines on it...

I sit in the rocker, full to overflowing with the beauty I find around me. As I open my prayer book and read the verse from Psalm 139 (a different one each morning) I thank God and realize I need to share this. I continue to read first – an opening prayer, then a psalm and a bit of scripture, more prayer, intercessions, and closing prayer.

May you be open this day to the beauty that is around you. Though you may not be blessed with gardens to walk through or the time to savor them, allow yourself to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, whatever is part of your day’s experience and know God’s presentness in all of it.

Closing Prayer
The love and affection
of the angels be with me.
The love and affection
of the saints be with me.
The love and affection
of the heaven be with me,
to lead me and to cherish me
this day.
        J. Philip Newell, Each Day & Each Night