In Praise of all Growing Things

 

Greetings! My garden has called me and I've already planted lettuce, salad turnips and sugar snap pea pods. All have germinated, but not at well as I would like, so yesterday I put in a few more seeds.

Growing a garden is a new experience every year. Some plants flourish, some are eaten by rabbits. Some perennials thrive, some are flooded out. It's always a challenge, and always carries some reward.

Two plants I'm pleased with just now are below.  The pulmonaria at top, also called lungwort, pleases me every spring with its beautiful spotted leaves and purple flowers. This year I wrote a praise poem about it.

A Song of Praise

I praise all nature for purple lung-

wort, I love its wealth of leaves

pushing up from spring's cool dark earth,

deep green and pointed, mottled with silver

spots, lovely in vision all year long.

I give praise for its purple flowers

royally nestled in their soft leafy bed.

© Karen Eastlund

This poem is a form called kwansaba. It is a praise poem with 7 lines, 7 words per line, and 7 or fewer letters per word. The 7 letters per word was tricky and I had to adopt new words, or split words, as I did the word "lungwort."

The photo below is of my peperomia, which originally was given to me by my future husband a few months before we were married. It has had ups and downs over these 52 years, but this year it is glorious and I love it!

Gardening teaches patience and perseverance. It reminds me that life can be messy, and it forces me to get down on my knees. As I pull weeds and water my plants, I witness many blessings of the earth, and I marvel at the power of nature and the webs of interconnection. Gardening promotes respect for the earth, the importance of work and gratitude for each edible morsel. It helps me to appreciate beauty and accept its ephemerality. Each plant has its own family, habit of growth, weaknesses, and needs for flourishing. Keeping track of the names of plants both challenges and fascinates me. Gardens are full of surprises. Two years ago a tiny deep blue liatris showed up under my peony! I have put liatris in pots in the past, but hadn't seen one in some years. What a joy! Gardens and growing things are continual blessings, and upon consideration, I believe lessons from the garden are endless.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

  The song of the birds for mirth,

One is nearer God's heart in a garden,

  Than anywhere else on earth.

These words are from the poem "God's Garden" by Dorothy Frances Gurney, born in 1858. 

I can't leave without a song or two, since SONG is my OLW for 2024. Here's a cute one I just found, perfect for a little one.

And here's one I learned years ago. There are many videos of this song, but I chose Pete Seeger's because his words are a little different, like a personal prayer. 

Thanks to Jone Rush MacCulloch for the prompt this month, and for hosting the Spiritual Journey Thursday group. Find Jone and links to others in the group HERE.

The Language of Gratitude

 

Welcome to this sharing of Spiritual Journeys, hosted this month by Denise Krebs at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org. Our topic is gratitude. Please join us and chime in.

A sermon pointed to the connection between gratitude and grace.  When I look at the words grace and gratitude together it seems obvious, but I had not thought of gratitude that way. But consider this... the word for thanks in Spanish... gracias.  And in Italian, grazie. 

The thing is, the connection surprised me. I couldn't get it, and I'm still not sure that I do. Am I overlooking the obvious that all good gifts (graces) come from God?  Am I making something out of nothing?  Why doesn't this work for me?

Frederick Buechner writes this about grace: Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

But what did I know of grace? Was it a "wow" moment from above? Did I think grace had to leave me with my mouth open and tears in my eyes? What about the time that our car broke down in the middle of Iowa, and a guy pulled in right next to us, his family in the car, the back seat full of diapers and baby clothes, and the trunk loaded with nothing but car parts. He insisted on giving us the exact part we needed, and would take no money for it. I was pretty sure that was grace.

And what about gratitude? I knew that an expression of gratitude was the expected response to every kindness that came along, but maybe somewhere in that practice I had become jaded. I often said thank you only because I should. I uttered it for each cookie and pencil and open door, but it didn't seem to mean much. Had I lost the connection to grace?

I'm pretty sure we never fully realize our blessings, but now I have to ask if I discern them at all. Maybe the work of the day and the juggling of this and that gets my mind so cluttered that I forget the important things. And then, by the grace of God, these important things, these graces, sort of slap me in the face and say, "Hey! Pay attention!" Maybe with this challenge of connecting grace to gratitude, I'll begin to get it.  

In Thessalonians we are urged to give thanks for everything, in every circumstance, because it is the will of God. I'm sure I could only do that by grace.  Maybe that, for me, is the connection. Only by the free gift of grace...

Mary Oliver expresses gratitude so beautifully in her poem Mindful:

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.

  (read the rest here.)

She goes on to mention both the exceptional and the drab and ordinary. Her poem is another impetus to give thanks in every circumstance, for both beautiful and drab. 

I have surely been blessed well beyond my ability to discern grace, and well beyond my depth of gratitude. I can only pray for new insight, for a new heart, for the courage to share. 

Of the exceptional graces shown to me, I will share one which is appropriate to the season...

Years ago, shortly after the sudden death our little Andy, when gratitude was so hard to find, our 3-yr-old son Carl came home from preschool with a Native American grace he had learned for Thanksgiving, complete with gestures:

May the Great Spirit overhead                      - make a big circle above your head

In the future                                                      - extend your hand in front of you

As in the past                                                     - extend your hand behind you

Bring to our hearts                                           - put your hand on your heart

Much love and happiness                               - cross your hands over your heart

At a time when we most needed grace, there it was, a beautiful blessing, a fountain of grace from our own little one. 

November turns us toward Thanksgiving, and opens the door for grace. May our hearts overflow with gratitude.

PS: One practice of gratitude is to say grace at meals. Here is our traditional one:

Come, Lord Jesus

Be our guest

Let these gifts

To us be blessed.

Amen.

If you have a grace tradition, I would love for you to share it in the comments. And may the grace of God be with you and yours this Thanksgiving season.