All Together in One Space

May 19, 2020

Beloved:

So much rain today.  But also beautiful.  Lots of business at my backyard bird feeders:  finches, cardinals, bluebirds, cowbirds, nuthatch, chickadees, woodpeckers, and hummingbirds.  A pair of squirrels do all the deck rails and floor clean-up every day, burying the corn kernels in my flowerpots like treasures.  The forest seems to draw closer to the house as the leaves fill in the space between branches.


The time saved getting ready for work, driving to work, doing errands that didn’t need doing leaves time for watching the bird feeders in the morning and walking to the mailbox at lunchtime if I want.  After the first two weeks of pandemic I learned to leave my desk at a decent hour and marvel at the time saved by not having to pack up, lock up, drive home and unpack, change clothes and figure out supper.  Now I just walk down the stairs and the evening begins.  Someone is always cooking something, so there’s nearly always yummy stuff in the fridge.
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Does quarantine have rough spots and lonely places?  Of course.  But I’m finding it easier and easier to recognize the joy embedded in the rough and lonely spaces of pandemic quarantine.  And I find that joy by choosing to be altogether in one place:  heart, mind, body, soul, and strength.

• Heart – gratitude for this day’s gifts instead of regret about yesterday or longing for some future day;
  
• Mind – focusing on the work to be done right now;
  
• Body – eating, sleeping, moving for the body’s needs today. Not too little and not too much.
  
• Soul – Trust.  Faith.  And oodles of grace – toward myself and toward the others in this house, toward the people in my neighborhood, the country and the world.  Grace made possible by my confidence that God abides in me and in the whole creation.  God is managing God’s part.  I’ve only a tiny part to manage.
  

I pray the day finds you abiding in your place of quarantine in joy, with oodles of grace to go around. 

This one has worked hard to figure out how to get onto this bird feeder but so far hasn’t figured out how to get any seed out of it.