Morning’s Gift

Tags

delight, hear, joy, light, Mary Oliver, poem, see, teachings, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

This morning as I sat down with my coffee there was a folded paper on my night stand that had come loose from a pile that I had disturbed yesterday in my rush to find something to write on. I was attracted to a picture at the top of one quadrant so picked it up to find four poems by Mary Oliver. What a delightful way to start the day! I offer one of them as my hope for the kind of day we all might have.

Mindful

by Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for –

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world –

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant –

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab.

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these –

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

Frustration or Delight?

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blocked, creation, delight, delightful, find God in everything, frustration, heart's request, psalm 37, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Have you ever had a day when you were blocked at every turn? When everything you tried to do became impossible to complete for some reason or another? You know, when the internet doesn’t cooperate and you have 35 e-mails to answer or a committee report is due or you left all the important papers at the office…Well, that’s my today. (I am only typing this message because of having left my house to do so.) I won’t go into the gory details but suffice it to say I feel as if I have wasted a lot of time today.

So now that I have the possibility of writing, is there a message in the Scripture? As usual, I end up laughing out loud at something – today, Psalm 37:4. Take delight in the Lord, the psalmist says, and God will grant your heart’s request! “Really???” I reply as I try to hold onto the feeling that laughter can evoke so I won’t settle back into the mood of the day. I begin to think about what there is in the day that could be classified as delightful.

I guess the “true blue dream of sky” would take first place in the delightful contest…and the accompanying puffy, amazingly white clouds were a close second. I was riding the lawn mower (which, happily, was in working order today!) and the breeze was cool and freeing. Thinking on that made me go back to the beginning of the quote and realize that in taking delight in creation I was obviously delighting in the Source of creation as well. I could probably – if I tried hard enough – find a flip side of the frustrating experiences…if only that I got to revel in this lovely early-autumn day rather than writing that annoying report. And how could I miss the fact that in the mowing experience of today, I know again my heart’s request to consciously find God in everything! All that is left is to say Thank You!

 

 

 

 

 

Heed the Call!

Tags

alarm, delight, Eli, God's will, greet the day, listen, Psalm 40, Samuel, sleep, Speak Lord, Thanksgiving, the call of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wakefulness

This morning I woke at 4:40am, much too early to begin the day. I snuggled back in but at 5:50 I opened my eyes a second time. I blamed this interruption of my sleep on the fact that in New York it was already nearly 7AM and settled back to wait until 6:30CST for my alarm. Five minutes later I heard the small sound alerting me that I had a text message on my phone and I knew I had a choice of how this day would proceed. With less than great gusto but with determination I got up from my bed saying to myself, “I greet this day with thanksgiving for all it will hold for me.”

God does have a sense of humor! As I began to read the Scriptures for the day, I recognized immediately the familiar story of the boy, Samuel, who sleeping in the temple near his teacher, Eli, wakes to the sound of his name being called. He goes to Eli and says, “Here I am; you called me.” Eli tells him to go back to bed because he hasn’t called him. When the scene is repeated twice more, Eli is finally awake enough to say to Samuel, “When you are called, say ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening'”  because he knew that it was God calling Samuel. (SM 3:1-10)

Whether we hear the call of God in our sleep or during morning Scripture reading or in the circumstances of an ordinary day, Samuel’s willingness gives us a good example of how to respond. Psalm 40 adds an even more generous note to the message this morning as the psalmist sings, “To do your will, O my God, is my delight!” May you be blessed with a delightful day of wakefulness in God’s love.

My Delight

Tags

attitude, delight, do your will, God's will, Here I am Lord, Psalm 40, purpose, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Sometimes life depends a lot on attitude. Often when “bad things” happen people are heard to say, “It’s God’s will.” Rarely have I heard anyone proclaim that it is God’s will when they are steeped in unbounded joy. To be fair, we tend to use other ways to express God’s presence in our lives at those times, saying things like “God has been good to me.” I wonder, though, if it would make a difference, even slightly, if we sang with the psalmist, “To do your will, O my God, is my delight and your law is in my heart!” (Ps. 40) And what if we woke up every morning with today’s psalm refrain on our lips: “Here I am Lord; I come to do your will.” For me, that line has a feeling of happy urgency, as if I am running toward God because I can’t wait to serve whatever purpose it is God is asking because it gives me such joy. I might even make a sign for the inside of my bedroom door with that line printed on it so it accompanies me each morning to the coffee pot. Can’t hurt – might help!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delighted!

Tags

aligning our will to God's, automatic, delight, delightful, Here I am Lord, Psalm 40, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The Psalm refrain (PS 40) for this morning is a familiar one to me. After 48 years of presenting myself saying, “Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will” it sometimes becomes an automatic statement. Therein lies the danger. That is not a statement to be taken lightly and I was reminded – rather jarred a bit out of the complacency of it – by another line that was a partial repetition but shifts the mood quite a bit. “To do your will, O my God,” the psalmist sings, “is my delight!” There are mornings (probably for all of us) when nothing feels delightful even if everything seems necessary. Those are the days when aligning ourselves – our will – to God’s is only possible by conscious attention. No casual repetition will do. What is necessary is the remembrance of the God who delights in so many ways. It may take a little silence, a digging deeper into gratitude, or perhaps hitting the snooze button on the alarm in order to get there. But the reward is sometimes surprising and delightful!