Prayer

When I am feeling bleak and have more than usual difficulty with prayer I turn to the words of others if withdrawing to silence is harder than I can cope with. Mostly I turn, again and again, to the Psalms. Recently though I have been reading Richard Fosters book of prayers and today I found this gem that was exactly the prayer I needed to pray today....

Today, O Lord, I accept your acceptance of me.
I confess that you are always with me and for me.
I recieve into my spirit your grace, your mercy, your care.
I rest in your love, O Lord. I rest in your love.
                                                      Amen

Packing

I have been reflecting on a moment that happened the morning we left for holiday. It concerns that trite phrase "carrying a lot of baggage".......

It happened like this.

My husband and son and I were packing for the trip.

Small said  to me "Mom, I've grown out of most of my clothes so I only taking a couple of changes and a smart set for Vetboy's dinner, I'll buy what ever else I need there (perhaps it helps to know that we don't have vast Malls here and some of our shopping is done outside the country). It took him ten minutes to pack.

My husband, who travels a great deal for work, simply took clothes and washbag and other stuff out of his "work" case which is permanently packed, added some more casual clothes and was done in about fifteen minutes.

Me, it took half an hour to pack as I had to start completely from scratch. I don't travel as much, had no need of a new wardrobe. In the end I also had the heaviest suitcase and took too much clothing, and generally travelled less lightly than either my husband or Small. 

Which makes me wonder about what else I make laboured when it needn't be.

Coming home

We have been on holiday partly to celebrate Vetboy's 21st birthday and partly to just spend time sitting on the beach. At the last minute I decided to disconnect from the world and left my laptop and blackberry at home. I didn't think it would be as easy as in the end it turned out to be, and I did enjoy just not being available and I think my assistant liked my trust that she would run my office perfectly satisfactorily while I was away - which of course she did!

We were back a couple of days ago  and so this morning I picked up my duties as holiday sacristan and went early to the chapel to prepare it for the Mass. The weather had deteriorated resulting in overcast and so the empty church was darkened and quiet as I moved slowly and softly and respectfully lighting candles, laying out vestments, setting out out vessels and missals and filling stoups with holy water.  It was peaceful work, full of deep seated pleasure and still happiness. When I was done the candles and brass and bright flowers shone with hushed and waiting expectancy.

As I finished the first congregants were trickled in. Familiar faces, elderly folk who like to come early and say a decade or two of the rosary before Mass. Gradually the chapel filled and Mass began in familiar cadence and song and prayer.

I thought

I am home, amongst my family of faith and it is a good place to be.

Opposites

Terri comments of how reading here makes her aware of the oppositeness of our seasons - hers and mine. I am in winter looking forward to summer and she enjoying summer bounty and preparing for winter. She is not alone. Since beginning this blog I have been made aware that my seasons in the southern hemisphere are not those presently being experienced in the North.

Some things happen at the same time.... it dawned on me that our cherry trees blossom at the same time as those in the North, and that was a wondrous thought to behold.

But mostly I like the yin and yang effect that this oppositeness of seasons has.

I loath being cold and here in this part of Africa when the "real" cold (no snow of course!) lasts a mere six to eight weeks and the heat for months our houses are built airy and open and  not ideal for keeping winter chill out. Yet reading of summer in the North I am reminded that the cold does not last forever and that the world turns, and in time summer and warmth and heat will be present again.

Spring? I don't think so! A taster perhaps.

I have had pneumonia and bronchitis. Been bored to death in bed.

Yesterday I heard the large warty toad who lives under the large pot that serves as my courtyard fishpond give an experimental croak or two.

I knew what stirred him from his winter slumber - slightly warmer weather and an rapid increase in humidity. Sure enough the humidity level stood at 58% when only days ago it was 23%. His skin and whole body was giving him the message that it is spring. Nice as that thought is, I don't think so. It will get cold again before true spring arrives. All two days of it. Then it will be summer. Yay.

I thought about how easily I fall into despair if  I think something is over or healed only to have it come back again. Grief. Sadness. Anger. And the like. Yet sometimes perhaps what I felt was only a taster. A snifter of spring. A promise of what will come. With promises of summer beyond that. Perhaps now I am just experienced enough to be able to enjoy the 'warmer" weather, without dreading winter's inevitable last fling.

Now there's a thought to make me smile.

Birthdays

August is a month of birthdays in our household. There are sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and cousins and friends and relations all who have birthdays this month. So we leap from birthday to birthday with barely a day in between sometimes. In many ways it is a lot of fun and I have learned to begin gift buying months in advance or the budget gets a little strained.

But as I have gotten older some sadness has crept in.

Today for instance is my Dad's birthday. He and I had a tricky relationship so sometimes I am ambivalent about him but today I simply miss his hearty enjoyment of the celebration of his birthday. He was a big noisy man who loved to party and it is very strange to be still and quiet this evening. He and I were so close in so many ways and in recent years my mother allowed me to cook his birthday dinner. I am thinking this evening that we would have been at the planning of the menu for weeks. He would have changed his mind a dozen times and oh we would have laughed our way through the process of choosing a menu. A path that lay between what I could cook for however many were invited and what he wanted.

This month I am also looking forward to Vetboy's twenty first birthday on the 19th. Again it is a day that is a little strained and has been since his younger sister was stillborn on the same day when he was two. Always I wonder on this day, what would she have been like? Would she be a tomboy or a girlie girl (in which case she surely would have picked the wrong mother)? Would she have liked books or horses or dancing? Yet I have a living, breathing son who equally deserves to have this day celebrated. Sometimes it is very hard to deal with the joy and the grief all together.

Other birthdays are mercifully easier and simpler.

So here's to the birthday boys and girls. Have a very good year all of you.