Whose hands planted the seeds
carrots and peas in the cool spring
sweet corn and green beans when temperatures rose?
Who set out the young tomato plants
and celery and the onion starts
who weeded and watched them grow?
Who stripped ripened corn from the stalks
and fattened peas from the vines
who gathered the plump tomatoes
and bent low over the bean plants at harvest time?
What are their names?
For this bowl of warm goodness
who do I thank?
This is what happens when the plants design the garden display.
As the vixen screams in the darkeness from the field across the road
I acknowledge the gift I've been given.
As the red-headed woodpecker calls from a black locust in the back woods
I realize I have been heard.
As tree swallows swoop above waving meadow grasses
for a moment I am living in Eden.
As the oriole's sweet song floats from the treetops
I lift my own quiet song of thanksgiving.
As the catbird chatters into the evening
I know I am where I belong, after all.
"O God, you have searched me and you know me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to comprehend."
Psalm 139
In honor of the 5 years of spring in this place we've been given.
or the red fox in the field across the street
or the merlin in the front yard
and the fox sparrows in the back
or the tundra swans
or the bald eagle sailing through the yard
with prey clutched
in its talons.
I didn't think to ask for toads
and tadpoles
and spotted salamander eggs
in the old backyard pond we inherited
or the raccoons who come
to wash their food
at night.
I didn't think to ask for the two columbines
or the ancient peonies
or the softest soil I have ever worked.
Or that I might bring
redemption to this land
and blessing to those
who loved it
long before.
For all I didn't think to ask...
Thank You.
Reposting this from last year in honor of my deep gratitude for the simple gifts I've been given.
There's a cat in my lap on a cold and cloudy morning
and tea from a place I have never been,
wooden chairs, wooden floors, wooden tables
from trees I had no hand in planting,
water from the earth pumped by a well
I did not install,
apples I did not grow in a bowl I did not turn,
milk and cheese from cows I did not raise,
hay I did not bale
in the barn I did not build,
birds' winter songs I did not write,
snowy tracks left by foxes I have never met.
All is gift.
Gratitude my offering back.
We waited all winter for signs of life,
skunk cabbage poking through the muck,
the eastern phoebe's song,
the red maple's crimson cloud.
And now spring is here,
the early garden swiftly morphing
from bare ground and fallen leaves
into rosy bleeding hearts and creeping phlox,
golden ragwort and bellwort,
and Jacob's ladders' delicate blues.
We waited so long for what is too soon over.
Ephemeral beauty beckons,
inviting us into the moment.
Gifted by what we cannot control,
is this not grace?
There's a cat in my lap on a cold and cloudy morning
and tea from a place I have never been,
wooden chairs, wooden floors, wooden tables
from trees I had no hand in planting,
water from the earth pumped by a well
I did not install,
apples I did not grow in a bowl I did not turn,
milk and cheese from cows I did not raise,
hay I did not bale
in the barn I did not build,
birds' winter songs I did not write,
snowy tracks left by foxes I have never met.
All is gift.
Gratitude my offering back.
We never know who will join
the feast,
sometimes familiar faces,
sometimes strangers
we have never seen
before.
I don't cook for them,
but they may forage
on their own
where they will.
The menu is quite varied.
There is plenty for all.
The dining room looks
unkempt,
neglected even...
just how our guests like it.
We offer spaces to rest
when they are weary
and all the food they can eat,
sap, insects, seeds, berries,
and some lingering greenery,
everything a feast should offer
hungry travelers.
November's bounty.
Thanksgiving with the wild ones.
gifted by a friend who had one
to spare
and knew
I'd be grateful.
Gratitude,
that generous spirit
that sometimes surprises,
spilling
out into a weary world,
welcome as sunrise,
sowing kindness,
germinating
and rising
like new shoots
springing
from the dark earth
ever towards
the light.
The referenced prayer below is from the Northumbria Community's Mid-Day Prayer liturgy.
The work of my hands is
the work of my life.
Not in halls of academia,
nor business, nor healing,
nor ministry, but
in the earthy dealings of
the everyday.
Hands that have long labored,
often when no one was watching,
at the myriad, ordinary, sometimes-dirty,
consecrated tasks,
to which I have
been called.
Holding my babies.
And theirs.
Guiding bewildered newborns'
tiny mouths to
their mother's milk.
Turning, feeding, washing, dressing
gentle souls who could
no longer
care for themselves,
work demeaned by others,
caring for the least of these.
Milking sixty cows.
Or one.
Caring for goats and sheep,
and chickens and turkeys,
an unpredictable donkey, two pigs,
and a couple of geese.
Feeding, mucking stalls,
stacking hay, carrying water,
collecting eggs,
stringing fences that contained the beef herd,
cradling a just-born calf as its life faded
away into the snow.
Decades of plants,
decades of gardens,
digging, planting, weeding, harvesting
to sustain humans,
body, soul and spirit.
Returning to the land its
glad abundance and inviting
the wild ones to dine,
one small,
or sometimes large,
plot at a time.
Hands on the latch,
opening the door
to God and to
those who come
seeking,
creating spaces of safety,
spaces of welcome,
spaces of
communion.
These hands are no longer young,
nor beautiful.
They are worn and sometimes rough,
slowly becoming misshapen,
often tired,
yet eager, still,
to take up the work
yet before
them.
And so, gratefully,
I pray,
"Let the beauty of the Lord be upon me.
Establish, Thou, the work of my hands.
Establish, Thou, the work of my hands."
"The stable earth, the old salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks." *
Eternal rocks.
Forged at the beginning of time.
Now my rocks,
these ever-present impediments
lurking under grass and soil,
pesky, heavy, nuisances
that impede my digging,
dulling my spade and bending
the fence posts, thwarting
my desire for seamless effort,
for moving ahead without interruption.
These rocks I unthinkingly toss aside
adding to piles at the edge
of the woods.
Piles begun centuries
before when plows cut the earth behind
the horses who dragged them,
and later, tractors.
The farmers' present
now the past.
Eternal, enduring rocks,
tellers of ancient stories I cannot read,
tales of mystery,
of hidden history written
in the depths as
the earth was forming,
recently recognized,
carefully placed,
incorporated into the landscape of now,
and seen with
new eyes.
