… watching for the brushstrokes of God
Whether we learn a skill, begin a task or embark on a journey, the temptation is to rush ahead toward the goal or product. Yet the key usually lies in taking care of the tedious preparation which makes everything else flow.
When and where do you rush through the preparation?
A change of pace, a new experience or foreign culture reorients us and can help refocus when we have been caught up in our own little world.
What interrupts or disrupts your life enough that the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders and God meets you in new or unexpected ways?
The rhino is a strong, horned, thick skinned and peaceful land-dweller that is powerfully fast and dangerous when disturbed. The more we know the terrain we thrive in, and what we are made out of, the easier it is to know where to dwell, how to contribute and what edges to push.
What do you look like?
Come with me into the field of sunflowers, Mary Oliver invites in one of her poems, for their wonderful stories.
“…Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds –
each one a new life!
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy…. ~ Mary Oliver
What is your long work of turning?
“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.” ~ C.S.Lewis
How do you come in out of the wind?
A phrase recently caught my eye in “The Holy in the Night” by Shannon Dycus. Speaking of Mary, the mother of Jesus, “she is expectant with a faithfulness that imagines the world differently”.
May there be peace on earth in the coming year!
In what ways are you faithfully expectant?
With the Eyes of the Heart 