morning prayer :: Psalm 139

Routine looks a little different these days with a newborn in the house. For me, morning prayer has been taking place with my little one during her first morning feeding. I have a Book of Common Prayer beside the bed, and I find it easy to grab with one hand and flip to the psalm selection of the day. It's an honour to share the rich language of the psalms with Ivy. Yesterday's reading was Psalm 139.

~

There is a small pink person curled up in bed beside me. Her face is smooth with sleep, her hands tucked up to her chin. She is beginning to stir to the sounds of the morning and the brightness of the bedroom. I read the psalm for this morning, and the words "fearfully and wonderfully made" settle over with a hush. She is half hidden in the blankets, barely a speck in this big universe, and yet she rests in the counsels of God.

So delicately knit is she. The very handiwork of God,  a perfect poem formed into warm flesh and kissed by the breath of God. His fragrance lingers on the curve of her mouth, and when I kiss her my own lips tingle with a knowledge too wonderful to attain.

Where does joy come from? From the heart that beats eternal, whose rhythm echoes in all He has made and stops us short to simply gaze at the face of a child. Look and wonder. See what He has done!

"Marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well."



~lg

Wonder, dirty dishes, and the gift of personhood

It’s been one month since we met face to face, one month since you emerged from your wrappings into my embrace. 

As it stands today, the kitchen is a mess, but there is other work to be done - the work of wonder. 

You are still so very little, and yet you are already your own person, and in this thought I discover the gateway to many others.

Your personhood is a gift. Personhood is always relational. We exist in the image of God, Himself a Being who is eternally relational. In order to know what it means to be a person, we must consider ourselves in relationship to God. 

Your existence is a gift from God. We cannot escape the truth that we are not self-originating. There is no spontaneous generation. Only the generosity of a God who is love, out of whose overflow we come dancing out of the womb, still attached by a pulsing cord to the one who carried us into life. This cord may be cut, signifying fully our free-willed otherness, but the mark remains - the thumbprint of our Maker. 

As the poets have said, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Each breath, each flutter kick, every coo and cry - gifted being. And a glimpse into the Ground of Being. 

Your eyes are icons into eternity. They gleam with the mystery of divine life, at once concealing and revealing its presence. 

And how does one fitly respond to the light in your eye? Oh it comes so naturally when life is so new. (This is another layer of the gift, another analogy to explore.) With free-flowing joy, with a smile of recognition, with deep-welling gratitude, and the knowledge that great revelation is contained in your genesis. 

There will always be kitchens to clean, but I will never again have you so new. I will never hear God whisper the beautiful mysteries of newborn truth like in these swaddled moments. In these days, you are nearsighted, and that so you can focus on what is most important to your survival - the faces of those who love you. And perhaps I can learn from you, and let the stacks of dishes dim in the distance. So I draw near. Perhaps my survival depends on beholding your face. 


~lg

Sleep-deprived

I'm stumbling around in this stupor of sleep-deprived gratefulness, marvelling at the gift on my breast, all the while feeling every ounce of strength leaving my body. One minute I'm lonely. The next I'm pushing everyone away. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but perhaps I'm too tired for either. It's all so real and omnipresent, and if I think about it too much, it will overwhelm me. 

And I can't escape the reality that it all depends on me. Her energy to keep breathing, her warmth and comfort, her knowledge that there is good in the world. And I want so desperately for someone to take care of me, but I must keep going and I must keep giving. How am I going to make it through the day? Through the night?

There is no such thing as a day, only a shifting semblance of time as I live by the demands of food and sleep, one cycle at a time. But who cares for the clock? Certainly not she, and I will do better to set my eyes on a kinder rhythm, the kind that paces me to a truer sense of life. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

For I am holding eternity next to my heart. And it is warm and breathing and beautiful to behold. 

And though I could fall off the bed for tiredness, and she has at last succumbed to sleep, I want to hold her for a few minutes more, because God has drawn near in the crook of my arm. All that was and will be is here in this moment, and if I can just be held in it, everything is going to be ok. 

We are going to make it together. One breath at a time. 

~lg

The World About to Turn

I wrote this the day before Ivy was born. I could feel the change coming, and the heavens seemed to reflect this sense of being "in-between" one reality and another. 

~

7 am, and I am alone in the quiet downstairs at dawn. I woke to the subtle glow of pink in the east, and over the river’s source the sun will soon rise. All this I will welcome from the dining room window. Yet in the kitchen and in the west, the beautiful full moon still lingers, suspended round and gold, but whose glory will soon fade and fall beyond the pines on the hill. 

I don’t know where to look. At the fullness of this moon which I will not see again, which lingers as if to bid me farewell and keep me a few minutes longer in its power, or at the changing colours of a sky awakening to new light.

I am in the in-between. Between the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun. Between the calm beauty of winter and the ruddy rush of spring. Present in a world where the two are meeting, yet I cannot see their coming together. I can only look west or east.

Softly now I pace the floor, not wanting to miss either wonder. The moon is falling fast, and soon I will have no choice.

And yet…

It is, after all, the same light which draws me to both. The beautiful fullness of all that has been, now quietly sinking, is lit by the energy of what lies ahead. They are not opposites. Their dance is part of this greater turning, the “marvel” of our blue-green sphere. 

I pause at the kitchen window. The moon is barely visible behind one of the great pines, who will brush it with a final kiss and tuck it behind the horizon. Good night, moon. Well have you shone.

And now the dining room fire is crackling, and another row of pines is shocked into silhouette by a bright patch of light, and I am sitting by the window, waiting, waiting, for the sky to break wide and the sun to fling its beams into the valley.

There are these brief moments in which I can see neither moon nor sun. And yet there is light. There is beauty in this hush of in-between, in the being of waiting.

I am held here, in just the right place, till just the right time.

Ah, here it comes . . . a fire so bright I cannot look, only be seen . . . the day has come. 

~lg

I Speak Joy: A Mother's Blessing

I am delighted to announce the arrival of our daughter, Ivy Joy, born on Good Friday! 

What follows is a blessing I scribbled out on the back of a piece of paper one night a few weeks before she was born. We didn't know whether we were having a boy or a girl, but I had an inkling that I carried a girl. And I had more than an inkling that this baby was somehow connected to all I have been discovering about joy. Her very name is part of my blessing to her, and God's blessing to me. "Ivy" stands for faithfulness, and "Joy," well, it speaks for itself! 

My darling,

I speak joy over your coming. 

Joy as you grow, and bloom to bursting,

Joy as you waken to life in the wide world,

Joy as you are received into the arms of your family,

And joy as our Father laughs to behold His reflection in your eyes. 

I speak joy over our meeting.

Joy as we weave our bonds of love,

Joy as we learn each other’s names,

Joy through the sleepless nights,

And joy as we count each sunrise together.

I speak joy over your future.

The wonder-filled joy of discovery,

The riotous joy of whole hearted freedom,

The steadfast joy of a deep-held faithfulness,

And the fiercely won joy of the sorrowful night.

I speak joy over you.

Unspeakable and full of glory,

Fruit of the presence of God,

Fire bright and blazing beauty,

The strength of a hundred hind’s feet on the heights.

I speak joy as my mother’s blessing,

A gift of words and of heart’s desire,

A beseeching prayer for divine bestowal,

A promise kindled by heaven’s purpose,

And my song of praise overflowing. 

~lg

The end of Lent: when all you have has run out

I cannot do it. Cannot keep up with the hunger. I cannot feed them all.

The bird feeder swings empty again in the harsh winds of March, and those who have not forsaken it by now hop about the tree with wondering eyes fixed on me, their supposed benefactress. But the supply has run out, and I am too weary and poor to replenish it. The hunger of winter outpaces my resources.

Simply to feed the birds - am I too feeble, even for this?

My joy turns sour. My ears turn cold. My kindness falls short.

Yet despite my empty vessel, the sun shines and the jays still flash blue and the chickadees sing. They have a Provider. My humble offering will not, cannot, sustain these hundreds of wings. It was never meant to.

Perhaps they have been the ones sustaining me, all this time. Here at the feeder, beauty has been gathered into my view. I have seen the colours of joy. I have heard the tongues of heaven. I have been graced with the soft brush of feathers in the snow. I thought I was doing them a favour. Perhaps this feeder has been God's gift to me all along. And he keeps giving. He keeps showing favour. He keeps sending the birds.

No matter how much I prepare, the realities I hunger for are still gifts from above. That is what Lent reveals. That at the end of the day, we are all empty handed. All in need of grace. All in need of manna.

I alone cannot create what I wish to be. But I can look to my Creator with an open mouth. And tonight, as he breaks the bread, I can swallow the grain that must fall to the earth and die. As I am brought face to face with my emptiness, once again, I remember,

"The LORD sustains all who fall
And raises up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to You,
And You give them their food in due time.
You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing." (Psalm 145:15-16)

All are welcome to gather in the swinging shadow of emptiness, where the ground is still cold and barren. He will open his hands to our insatiable, piercing hunger, and offer himself as bread for our need. Here at the foot of a leafless tree, he will spread a banquet in the presence of his enemies. From this cracked grain, he will give life to the world.

Here at the empty feeder, we will be fed.


~lg

Noon prayer: magnified joy

At the height of a mid-March day,
the sun is hidden beyond layers of stratus clouds.
Snow falls and a trio of ravens circles the sugar-topped pines, gliding above the slow footed creatures below. They glide above the slush and mud and slump of this temperamental season.

A the height of a mid-March day,
they remind me to look up.
To number my blessings by the flakes that descend,
to hold each crystalline wonder against the black pupil of my mind's eye,
to behold their beauty suspended in this moment and give thanks.

These blessings can float by unnoticed, small as they are, but now I enlarge my vision and capture them for what they are - all the little gifts that collide and stick together to shape my hallowed landscape.

The ravens move on, and so will this day.
Time to turn from window-gazing to worthy work,
but I hold these frames yet, and I will go imprinted by magnified joy.


~lg

"The Poet" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poet hath the child's sight in his breast,

And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed,
He views with the first glory. Fair and good
Pall never on him, at the fairest, best,
But stand before him holy and undressed
In week-day false conventions, such as would
Drag other men down from the altitude 
Of primal types, too early dispossessed.
Why, God would tire of all his heavens, as soon
As thou, O godlike, childlike poet, didst,
Of daily and nightly sights of sun and moon!
And therefore hath he set thee in the midst,
Where men may hear thy wonder's ceaseless tune,
And praise his world forever, as thou bidst.

A friend recently recommended this poem to me. I have discovered this power in poetry, and I hope to echo some of "wonder's ceaseless tune" in my own writing. 

~lg

Build with Kindness

Out in the roar of March’s winter prowl, it is still too cold for the sparrow to think of nesting. This is the tempestuous tugging between winter and spring, and March will have no clear winner. New life is either hiding or biding its time. Yet the sun is warming, and this patch of the world is turning steadily toward lengthening days.

Sparrow, my time will come before yours. I am nesting now. I am preparing a place for my not-so-hidden new life. The sun’s warmth spreads over me with an urgency as the days till Easter Sunday melt away. I must build.

I must gather the twigs, the soft grasses of autumn. I must gather the feathers, the string, and nature’s downy gifts. I must knit these comforts together in a sheltered hollow for my young.

Build with kindness, the wind whispers. This is the word I have heard. This is what I must circle our home with.

When kindness lines our days, the atmosphere changes.

Voices calm.

Tempers soothe.

Transitions are smooth.

We are all a little more settled, a little more satisfied.

There are more smiles, more hugs, more opportunities to share moments of wonder together.

When kindness lines our days, our hearts change.

Wrath is turned.

Mercy learned.

Compassion confirmed.

There is more repentance. There is more grace.

The Spirit’s fruit tree blossoms and bears good things, and by it were are sustained.

Kindness brings the warmth of spring to chilly days.

It is a simple investment, and small, but made mighty layer by layer. It is a habit of moments, of gathering the minutiae of life into a more gracious form. Kindness is never insignificant. By it I may build and bolster our home to be the haven I desire.

By kindness I will prepare a nest to receive you, little one – to sustain us all in the great change ahead, to soften the edges of tiring days, to warm this humble space with whispers from our good Father. His is the open hand wherein we may all rest. 

~lg

Letters to Arden: First Born

Dear Arden,

Can we believe it's been almost six years since you were re-making me into a mother? And now you are the big girl helping to make smooth the arrival of the third born.

When Jack came along, you were not yet two years old. You practiced with a baby doll, but did not understand the change your brother brought to our lives. He was so needy, and so were you, in many ways. There were times I pushed you away, out of exhaustion, out of frustration, out of a desperate need for you to not wake the baby. And you cried on the other side of the door, and I cried looking at you shut out and wondered how I could ever make it up to you. There were times you needed me, and I wasn't there. Days and nights I had nothing left to give. And I prayed for grace to fill the gaps I could not stretch to bridge.

I wonder sometimes, did you hold it against me? Is there something in you, even now, that cries out against the voice I raised, the arms I stretched to shoo you away? I wish there had been two of me, or more of me, and I could have rocked you both to sleep.

But now, my darling, you are nearly six, and thrilled at the prospect of this new baby - though prospect and reality will soon clash, I'm sure. You sing to the little life, say "good morning baby" and "I love you baby," and you are brimming with ideas for its care and keeping.

What's more, you have been taking care of me. You see my growing tiredness, and are quick to come to my aid. You have prepared bed and couch for my rest, complete with all the little things you think I may need - books and pens and a glass of water and carefully turned down blanket. (You know me well.) Your generosity has left me humbled, delighted. Just where this kindness has come from, I do not know.

I have done my best to love and care for you, but I know I have fallen short. I know I am no shining example some days. I can only hope the light of Love, that I reflect imperfectly, is warming the places I cannot reach.

Arden - your name means eager, shining, ardent one. I have prayed your name over and over, as thanksgiving, as blessing, as petition. There have been times I have dampened your spirit and snuffed out your flame when I should have coaxed it into life. Nevertheless, six years on, you are shining bright. The flame is in your eyes and in your kindnesses and in the way you show what love is made of. And you will kindle fires wherever you go. You are already warming our family. You are already making us laugh in your light. You are already bringing something more than I alone have given. This is grace, and wonder, and joy, that love can expand beyond the kindling we offer.

You were the first to make me a mother, and in your forge I have been reshaped. You will keep shaping me even as I shape you. Oh, we will rub each other the wrong way, but let us keep close for all that. Let us keep learning love together. The sparks may fly upward, but a greater flame shall warm us.

Now, as our lives are about to shift once more, and we must make room for another, remember this - when my hands are full you are still and always welcome in my heart.


~lg

John Donne's "Batter My Heart"

Just popping in to share this poem from Malcolm Guite's The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter. I've been enjoying this anthology which includes a wide selection of poets (and Guite's insightful commentary on their works), as well as some of Guite's own poetry.

This poem by John Donne, written four hundred years ago, leapt off the page as a poem kindred to my own soul. It speaks the language of Jacob's midnight wrestling, of Paul's living sacrifice, the kernel of desire at the heart of Lent's journey. It is a prayer of raw beauty and power.


Batter My Heart

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am bethroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.



~lg

Swan Joy

Joy is a longing,
a passageway with the white wingbeat of swans overhead,
and the silent current of a spring river beneath.
You cannot live in water or air, and yet they push and lift you into realms of beauty and desire,
so much the more powerful for their being out of reach.

Joy is this pulling of the soul right out of the body and onto the swan's back,
a dreamscape more alive than your waking vision.
It is forever captured in your mind's eye,
a trumpet call from a far country,
which even now sets your feet dancing on the rippled water,
dazzled by the bright sun toward which you run.

Joy is the elemental force you cannot contain,
yet which defines your every movement,
now from beneath, now from above,
the wave that buoys,
the wind that breathes,
the holy, humbling wild of spring unleashed.



This poetic reflection draws on C.S. Lewis's understanding of joy as desire, and is formed by memories of canoeing down the Salt River with my father one spring. In an afternoon I will never forget, we set up a tarp sail and the wind carried us downstream toward hundreds of white tundra swans that had returned to the river. As we neared, they rose up by the dozens and dozens, and flew overhead to resettle behind us. We were surrounded. I look back on that day as a gift of beatific vision. 


~lg

The return of the birds

The blue jays arrived first. They still startle me with their plumage. I didn't grow up with blue jays, and they've always seemed rather foreign to me, like creatures out of a jungle picture book. They are colourful and noisy and somewhat obnoxious, rather like children. They crowded around the feeders, calling to each other with their piercing cries, alerting the bird world to their discovery.

The chickadees came next. They are the bravest of the little birds, willing to dart in between the bossy jays for their share of sunflower seeds. With their black caps on, they seem game for anything. These are the birds which landed on my head last winter when I stood out in the cold for half an hour with seeds on my toque, pretending to be a statue. It was one of those childhood dreams fulfilled. I had tried many times as a kid to stand still enough, for long enough, in our backyard in Fort Smith for the chickadees to land, but they never did. Perhaps I've gained some patience as a "grown-up." Or perhaps this variety is a little less wild. Either way, they braved my humanity long enough to settle and snatch what they were after, and left me grinning like a fool.

Later in the morning I came back to the window and the snowy ground was spread with juncos. I cannot say why these in particular should captivate me. Perhaps it is the distinction between their smoky grey backs and white breasts, or the way their eyes gleam like shiny coals through the smoke. It might sound silly, but I think it's the way they look at me. They prefer to forage on the ground, picking out what has scattered from more careless birds above. And that's why we make sure to scatter a few handfuls of seed just for them.

And up among the chickadees, a downy woodpecker, alternating between feeder and branches, gripping bark with its four-toed feet, always head up. How is the grub finding in February,  I wonder? It is smaller than its hairy cousin, though just as persistent. It must pick and drill for its food, if easier pickings are not to be found. "If any would not work, neither shall he eat." I admire its determination, and the way its thrusts its whole upper body beak-first into the search.  On Ash Wednesday morning, I woke to the sound of one of these, knocking on doors in the sky.

"Ask and it shall be given unto you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you." This was the message I heard on the day we consider and mark our frailty.

Such little creatures all, with only a feather's breadth between them and starvation. Fragility like this cannot afford complacency. And so I am happy to spread this small banquet in a sparser season. Sometimes you just need a table prepared. 

When you are tired of drilling and foraging through a crust of ice, there is this grace that arrives like manna. In  the deep winter, a hand stretches out, offering seed for the sower and bread for the eater.

Be brave, little bird, and come closer!

The search never ends, but neither does the provision. There is always food enough for the journey.




~lg

Lent Is For the Birds

Winter is truly here with a respectable -22 C morning. The snow is crunchy and crystalline, and the river shivers under its growing skin. Life stirs house by house, as first one plume of smoke and then another rises out of the neighbours' chimneys. All seems still, silenced by the cold, except for the birds of winter.

I've neglected the birdfeeder lately. The odd chickadee hops over to investigate their previous source of food, then flies off to search for other, more generous backyards. I miss them. I miss the chatter and flutter and closeness of small life.

I miss the messages they carry from another kingdom. Over the years, they have been to me heaven's carrier pigeons. (For God's voice is woven and wafted throughout all creation.) A year ago, a bird was somehow tied up with the beginning of this journey of a life of prayer.

Lent is a time for fasting. But it's also a time for feeding the soul.

This Lent, I've decided to feed the birds. 

Junco - Carrier of secrets, she knows where to find the hidden seed. She knows the song of the wind.

(Give me ears to hear!)

Chickadee - Cheerful herald through winter's cold, constant companion of woods and windowsill, bright bringer of joy.

(Give me a heart of joy!)

Sparrow - Common beauty building her nest, crafting a refuge of kindness out of bits and pieces, gathering nature's scraps into a soft bed for her young.

(Give me wings of kindness!) 


We will go out into the cold and fill up the feeder, scatter the seeds, and send our invitation. We will watch and wait for the birds to come back. We will listen, and learn, and lean close. We will feed the hunger of winter.

We will wait for the return of the birds . . .

~lg

The Heart of Lent

I've been practicing Lent, in some fashion or other, for about the last decade. Lent is the forty day period (excluding Sundays) from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. It is part of the recurring rhythm of the church calendar, another way to mark time by following in the footsteps of Jesus.

It is a time of fasting and prayer. It is a penitential, preparatory season. During Lent we focus on the life and teachings of Jesus, all the while preparing to embrace the terrible beauty of his death and resurrection. For me it is a much-needed shift in perspective.

At its heart, Lent is about hunger and humility.

Hunger - Where would we be without the recognition of our lack? We live in a supersaturated society, where desires are gratified smoothly at our fingertips, and our stomachs growl right along with the ceaseless roar of consumerism. Through fasting, through denial, and self-sacrifice, we acknowledge that we have needs we alone cannot satisfy. We don't fast to gain brownie points with God. We fast to remember our great need of Him. And in mercy He fills the empty places.

Humility - Where would we be without this unpopular position? With our noses so high in the air that God becomes merely a stumbling stone to our vain ambition, when He wants to build us a sanctuary (Isaiah 8:11-15). The only way in is through a fearfully narrow gate, and we must crawl on prayerful knees. But once inside, we find a fortress of shelter and strength, a sacred dwelling. And in mercy He gives us the ability to receive.

Hunger and humility soften our hearts. They make us search after our upside-down King as he makes his way from the Sermon on the Mount to the Mount of Olives. They make us strain to hear his whispers and climb trees to see his wonders.

Lent is an invitation to a forty day journey with Jesus. A journey of hunger, humility, and honesty. A journey to His heart.


~lg