Patches of You

Sometimes
— let’s face it, a lot of times–
I think I would be happier,
if life wasn’t clouded
with conflict,
unsolved problems,
deadlines, tension,
and unpleasant feelings.

Sometimes life just works.
Things fall into place.
We have summer days of endless sky
with no dark clouds anywhere.

I want to live there

and if I’m not there,
I think something’s wrong
or, to be more specific,
I’m doing something wrong.

But it isn’t so You tell me
through sages and poets.
Clouds come and go
but that sky of endless blue
remains–
surrounding all
within all
within You
within me.

When I return to rest within
and see the view from there,
I’m more able to find
patches of You
in everything.

We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer, and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of an equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun; an endless, unvarying high season. But life’s not like that.
–Katherine May, Wintering

May I receive the love of Your presence in everything that is.
May I offer love to everything that is.
May your peace envelop my entire being.
And may the longing of my heart take me deeper into You.
–Anonymous

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Love Mischief for the World

I loved listening to Krista Tippett’s interview with Katherine May about wintering.

Here’s another quote from Katherine’s book. “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”

What love mischief are you and God doing for the world?
Let me know and I will include it in an upcoming post.