"Waking Into a New Day"

I received this sunrise photo from a dear friend this week and it was just too good to pass up in pairing with this wonderful quote from Frederick Buechner:

Darkness was upon the face of the deep,

and God said, "Let there be light."

Darkness laps at my sleeping face like a tide,

and God says, "Let there be Buechner."

Why not?

Out of the primeval chaos of sleep

he calls me to be a life again...

...He calls me to be this rather than that;

He calls me to be here rather than there;

he calls me to be now rather than then...

...Waking into the new day,

we are all of us Adam on the morning of creation,

and the world is ours to name.

Out of many fragments

we are called to put back together a self again.

~Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace

Each morning, as you awaken, how wonderful to imagine God eagerly awaiting you opening your eyes, calling you into the self that He is daily creating with you.

He is whispering, "Good morning, Child, let there be YOU."

Let the morning bring me word

of your unfailing love,

for I have put my trust in you.

Show me the way I should go,

for to you I lift up my soul.

Psalm 143:8

Lord, Please Keep Their Lamp Burning

As I prayed for a special someone today, words didn’t come easily for me. What might they need to get through their day? How could the prayer I lifted up be more specific to their needs instead of my more typical “please bless so-and-so”? I imagined that their walk today might feel like one where darkness becomes easier for their mind to focus on than light.

So I prayed that where the darkness of pain, fear, uncertainty, doubt and more encroached, God would shine His brilliant light of faith, hope and love as a beacon to guide them.

Even in
the uttermost
depths of darkness,
I see before me

your light of hope;
your light of faith,
and your light of love
burning deep within me,

Giving me
an unspeakable,
peaceful
assurance,
Knowing you will perform
what you have spoken.
~Kathy Troccoli

“[Jesus] is beyond our seeing, but in the darkness where we stand, we see, thanks to him, something of the path that stretches out from the door, something of whatever it is that keeps us trying more or less to follow the path even when we can hardly believe that it goes anywhere worth going or that we have what it takes to go there…”
~Frederick Buechner

My friend, Jerry, writes about a light too, this week, at his Celtic Crossings blog. You can read it here.

Paying Attention

Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
~Robert Brault

One of the unexpected pleasures of getting back into my artwork has been that I have found myself noticing my surroundings in ways that I didn’t when I was too busy with other things. Now that I am painting and drawing again, I’m much more likely to stop and examine a certain cloud in the sky or a flower in my garden or a passing couple holding hands. I feel like I appreciate the life and beauty around me so much more.

Frederick Beuchner talks about FRAMING THE MOMENT in an entry about art:

“From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein. The painter does the same thing, of course.”

“Literature, painting, music – the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot.”

Automatic pilot is a familiar mode for getting through the day as we drive the kids to school, make the bed (yet again), cross off our list of to-dos, head to work. But God intended so much more for us. Framing the moment snaps us out of automatic pilot and engages us in a relationship of shared moments with God, with our children, our spouses, our friends and family that become memories (small and large) tucked away and cherished.

The boys in the picture above are from an old photo of 2 of my nephews. Now that they are grown-ups, I'm so glad that I have so many cherished memories of them as children and all the fun we had together. In some ways, I will always see them like this, even when I see them now with their own families. Photos like this one frame a moment in time, but I look at it and remember how darn cute and full of energy they were. This first batch of grandkids were all boys (four of them in all) before many wonderful others (girls included) joined us. For me, having older siblings, they were almost like brothers that I didn't get disgusted with. :0) These four boys arrived when I was 12-21 years old and I'm glad that even when I was a teenager and they were children, I was smart enough to pay attention to how wonderful they were and fully enjoy any time we had together. It would have been very easy for me to be caught up in my own stuff, but I just always loved them so darn much. Still do.