New Every Morning

Nearing vesper light yesterday evening, we walked to All Saints Episcopal Church, Tybee Island, (I love being a little more than an easy half mile walk to church) for Taize music and contemplative prayer, soup supper, and discussion of the same video series we were doing at nearly the very same time back at home (SSJE Love Life). All Saints’ vicar, Helen+, is a gift to the Church, and the little congregation could not have been more gracious and welcoming. Shouldn’t church be the one place you know you can always drop in, wherever you are, and be fed?

This new day began with an early morning walk on the beach at sunrise. I’ve decided I like to be on the beach at the parenthesis of the day–near dawn and dusk. The quiet is its own contemplative prayer.

As the poet writes in Lamentations

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

Your mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,

‘therefore I will hope in you. ‘

The Lord is good to those who wait

to the soul that seeks you.

It is good that one should wait quietly

for the salvation of the Lord.

A Wednesday in Lent

From my morning quiet.

Silence

And in her middle years
she discovers silence.

Not the kind you find
In a remote abbey nor
on a grand cathedral,
Not the type you seek
in silent retreats
nor in places of meditation.

But the sitting down
in the kitchen bench type
The standing in front
of the stovetop type
The folding the week’s washing type
While dinner sizzles over fire
While the washing piles up high
While kids with sticky hands
Ask the day’s hundredth ‘why.’

And this silence overcomes all noise
And this silence surpasses all haste
And this silence provides her peace
A peace that passeth all understanding.

—Asther Bascuna-Creo

Back in the Day

It’s Lent and that means a few days in Tybee Island, Georgia with my best friend.

A couple of weeks ago a parishioner, a young man in his twenties, died unexpectedly. We’ve all been filled with grief. Well over 450 people attended his funeral last week.

The death of this well-loved son, brother, grandson, fiancé, and friend has made me ever more mindful of the people I hold dear. This Lent has been full of planned and unexpected connections with family and friends.

So I looked with even more anticipation for my daughter’s second cookbook. I woke in my sunlit room at the Bluebird cottage overlooking a sweet marsh to find The Homesick Texan’s Family Table front and center on my Kindle.

Before I got out of bed, I’d read it cover to cover, filled with joy, love, and yes, tears, by not only it’s beautiful photographs and recipes (all created by my talented daughter), but by story after story of people I love the most.

Now filled by a cappuccino and biscone at my favorite Savannah bakery, morning devotions read, we’re off on a walk.

Glory to God who working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A little meandering for the last day of the first week of Lent

Meandering as I prepare my sermon for tomorrow, this blog (The Induced Meandering of the Lenten Season) from the On Being website (a thought-provokng weekly podcast) was a fine place to stop and take a contemplative moment.

Meandering through my back yard after taking out the trash, I rested a bit with bluebonnets transplanted from my mother’s yard, and wood violets that pepper my yard with Lenten color, tucked into hidden and unexpected places, always a surprise that brings a smile.