I end this month of posting things I’m grateful about a lot more aware of what a wonderful life I have, and I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say that to brag. And I didn’t “earn” it, either. I spent the weekend with people I love, doing fun things. I laughed. A lot. And at the end of one night with family, my son tossed my husband and I my favorite bag of cheap candy, which I mostly ate in the car on the way home. It’s the little things. It’s the huge things. It’s everything. Thank you for reading. I’m letting the Rev. George A. Chien, volunteer assisting clergy at Trinity Episcopal Church in Hartford, have the last word:
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
~~R. S. Thomas, “The Bright Field”
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
~~Luke 21:29-33
There is something in the end there is no avoiding
That is more present than breath, than self, than distraction
More present than this moment? Yes, even that —
Even than all those birds perched high in the Tree of Heaven
That broke into all your wondering — even than
That huge exotic shrine at the centre of your heart,
Your voice, your whole face turned inward…
Or mine now — as I cut it back, back
From my thoughts: to my being; then my breath
And then, not even that
And across the gulf of silence from before
Names, images — before whiteness was even born —
And now, at the heart of emptiness
Where there is no I, nor breathing even
Or only this suspended pause
‘There is only Love that made us, only Love’
And you in the vast silence like an ocean without water,
Like rain before rain —
like an unbroken mirror
You in the Womb of Love.
~~ Jay Ramsay, “In the End: The Beginning”
And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
~~1 Thessalonians 3:12 & 13
Dating Jesus 