renewal

Spiritual Journey: Blossoming

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

On the first day of May, Carol Varsalona offered the theme of “blossoming” to our group of Spiritual Journey Thursday writers. Carol’s husband passed away at the beginning of April. She writes in her post: “When I signed up to host the Spiritual Journey, I felt blossoming would be an appropriate theme for May since it connotes a renewal, a new beginning, and personal growth. I did not think that I would face the sudden death of my husband and go through a period of grief.” She dedicates this month’s post to his memory, along with a beautiful poem about him; you can read about her spiritual journey here.

Carol is one of the people who aways inspires me to see and savor the beauty of nature. Whenever I read her blog, it’s like taking a rest stop in a flower-filled garden, where one can breathe the fragrance deep and be strengthened for the journey. In her present loss, she writes of May flowers coming along to remind us of renewal and resilience.

To me the blossoming flowers are a metaphor for faith itself. The beauty of the earth pointing us back to the Creator, in a world that buffets us with fear, uncertainty, sadness, brokenness, rage, and loss. The peace and healing our human hearts desperately long for will never be found on this path. “All the world’s a rage,” to put a twist on a Shakespearean line. An ever-maturing faith is able to cut a path through anxiety, blame, and fear with which the world deliberately keeps distracting and demeaning us, where some of the worst pain is inflicted by those we care about most. As the saying goes: Hurt people hurt people. Faith does not retaliate. It withstands. It endures. It continues to bloom, and its fragrance beckons others to carve a better path through the the world’s dense, thorn-filled forest, to the inner garden. It is there, in our hearts. It has always been there…if we choose to see it.

In her poem, Carol wrote of her husband collecting a bouquet for her. I am reminded that one day, our faith will be made sight. We will BE the bouquet, the Lord’s very own, gathered unto him not as cut flowers but ones that shall bloom eternally in his presence, in that promised place where there will be no more tears, no more death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain (Revelation 21:4).

When I am still, I can feel the warmth of the sun on those flowers of peace; they open up, releasing their perfume in the soft breeze that infuses my soul.

Beyond this world’s brambles
Lies a garden of faith-flowers—
Opening, ever-opening to
Sunlight—yes, the
Son’s light.
Our hearts are filled there
Mind-rambles stilled there
In the hush of His garden
Nurtured by the Gardener’s
Grace.

Parched

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

She perches
atop the hummingbird feeder
at my kitchen window

Mama Bluebird

haven’t seen her in a while
she keeps a low profile

when new fledglings
are about

I think she’s playing defense
watching me
watching her
(bluebirds are
ferocious guardians)

until I see
her open beak

she doesn’t close it

I’ve never seen
such behavior
before

from any bird

I look it up

she’s suffering
from the heat

trying to
cool off

birds can’t sweat

she stays on this perch
watching me
watching her

I sense a plea…

I take a cup

run a little water
at the kitchen sink

carry it out
into the drought

(she flies away)

pour it on the top
of the hummingbird feeder

(it’s really meant
to be an ant moat)

and as soon as I return
to the kitchen

I see she’s back
sipping
sipping
sipping

she stays a good while

perched
parched

until she’s refreshed enough
to close her beak again

and fly

maybe back
to help her children

all I know
is that my soul

(sometimes just as parched)

rejoices
that I was able
to provide

this little oasis

when I have felt
so utterly unable

to ease
the longsuffering

of others

Thank you
Mama Bluebird

for refreshing
me

******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Spirit lifter

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

Upon arriving
at church
to teach a lesson
on the work of
the Holy Spirit
what should greet me
but the wafting fragrance
of cinnamon coffee
brewing serenely

so good and perfect
restoring my soul

even though the world
is no less broken

it is no less loved

for God so loved

as I read
the Scripture
sipping my
cinnamon infusion
what should appear
on the windowsill
but a little bird
looking through
the glass
at our class

a swallow
who’s built her nest
under the eaves

Even the sparrow
has found a home,
    and the swallow
a nest for herself,
    where she may have
her young—
a place near your altar,
    Lord Almighty, 
my King and my God

they know, birds
they know

wingbeats flutter
in my struggling
human heart

it’s all
the work
of the Spirit

I came to teach
I am being taught

I know
I know

my cup
runneth over

Heart healing

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

“Heart” is the Spiritual Journey prompt for this first Thursday in February.
Thanks to Linda Mitchell for hosting our group of writers.

On a Sunday afternoon at the end of July, 2019, my husband had a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest. He was resuscitated by EMTs and went straight into surgery after arriving at the hospital. He got four stents and spent several days in induced hypothermia to reduce trauma to his brain, which can happen when blood flow has ceased and is suddenly restored. He recuperated slowly, painfully; his sternum had been broken by the CPR which saved his life. He came home. One morning in September he woke to jolts in his chest and tingling down his arm. I took him back to the hospital. More heart attacks. This time he had four bypasses. The surgeon mended his sternum with a little metal plate.

He is doing well now. In fact, up until winter settled in, he was doing eight-mile hikes in the park a couple of times a week and feeling as good as he ever has.

As this first Thursday in February drew near with Valentine’s Day and “heart” as the Spiritual Journey prompt for the month, I thought of a couple of things I might like to explore. I had chosen one, in fact, when I saw the heart-shaped hospital pillow that remains in our bedroom. This pillow was given to my husband after the bypass surgery. His attending nurse wrote on it with a Sharpie: “Keep hugging your heart!”

I thought, this is it. This is what I need to write about.

These pillows are given to all patients recuperating from open-heart surgery. The patients hug them when they have to cough or sneeze, lessening the severity of the jolt. The pillow protects the incision site whenever the patients move and when they practice the necessary deep-breathing exercises for their lungs.

It just so happens that the hospital where my husband’s surgery and recuperation has the lowest mortality rate in the country for heart bypass patients (according to reports from 2017-2019). It also just so happens that the county’s resuscitation rate is the highest in the nation. So, if you’re going to have cardiac arrest and need cardiac surgery, it’s the best place to be.

My husband is evidence of this.

I think about the surgeon who held my husband’s heart in his hands, who grafted those bypasses. He told us that as soon as the first graft was done, my husband’s heart immediately began beating stronger; it was hungry for the blood. It wanted to live.

Now. Where’s the spiritual element in all this, you ask?

Beyond the miracle that one human can cut open another and repair his heart, and that this repaired person can heal and live life awhile longer, is the Great Physician who is able to transform hearts and lives. When I was young, I attended a Bible study group in which a couple of guys could play guitars and we’d often sing this version of Psalm 51:10-12:

Create in me a clean heart, O God
and renew a right spirit in me
Create in me a clean heart, O God
and renew a right spirit in me
And cast me not away from thy presence, O Lord,
take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation
and renew a right spirit in me.

Godly heart-grafting, I would say. Cleansing, taking away the bad parts, restoring. The heart must be transformed before the spirit can be renewed. Sometimes a great deal of work must be done…but the Lord is able. If we let Him work. If we are hungry for it. We often think of letting Him into our hearts but it’s really more a matter of offering our hearts—battered, damaged, tangled, sick as they may be—to Him. He knows exactly what is needed. Psalm 51 is the cry of David’s heart after Nathan the prophet confronted him with his adultery and murder. It can be the cry of any of our hearts as we place them in the healing hands of Almighty God, craving His mercy.

I rejoice that my husband lives, that he was made well, that the hospital and the EMTs are the best around.

I rejoice more that the Lord forgives and heals hearts and spirits. He works on my own, daily. He is the physician and the pillow, the healer and the comforter. The ultimate heart-hugger. He is the best place to be.

Not to mention that His own mortality record is unsurpassable.

Winter meditation

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

with thanks to Stacey Joy, who shared the monotetra form this morning on Ethical ELA’s Open Write: quatrains ending in monorhyme, lines of eight syllables.

Winter Meditation

On this dark morning, falling snow
fills the spirit with candleglow
the bliss-blessed silence, calling so:
Hush. Take it slow. Hush. Take it slow.
 
Claim the quiet for your healing
be free as the hawk, a-wheeling
your crystal-scoured heart revealing
wounds are sealing, wounds are sealing.

For now, nature’s red tooth and claw
newly blanketed, without flaw
is still, peace-covered, filled with awe.
Time to withdraw, time to withdraw. 

All things new: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 27 Comments

An offering for the Spiritual Journey group, comprised of faithful friends who gather on the first Thursday of each month. Today’s theme is “all things new.”

Spring arrives, clad in rich new vestments of green. Every day, more of the color ripples across the landscape. Here in the central part of North Carolina the Bradford pears have already exchanged their ethereal veil-clouds of wedding lace blossoms for something more matronly and verdant. A whirlwind ceremony, that five-minute flowering of pear.

The birds began preparing back in winter. Flashes of electric blue on my back deck; a brilliant bluebird, dropping by like a friendly neighbor. Darts of fiery red across the road while I’m driving; cardinals, making me stress over potentially ensnaring them in the grille (why DO they fly so low?). Today, a darling brown Carolina wren on my back deck—clearly doing Deacon of the Week rotation with the bluebird—singing its heart out, full-throated, unrestrained, magnificent. How can such a small bird have such a big voice? Bocelli can’t hold a candle to you, Little Wren. From the pines and budding hardwoods, bird choirs swell, as in the song “The King is Coming”:

Regal robes are now unfolding,
Heaven’s grandstand’s all in place,
Heaven’s choir now assembled,
Start to sing “Amazing Grace!”

All in earthly bird language, naturally… but no less celestial.

All but the finches, that is.

For several consecutive years a finch family has built a nest on my from door wreath and raised generations of little broods. I’d find a total of three baby-blue eggs in the nest, sometimes four, laid precisely between seven and eight o’clock every morning. My family has been treated to an insider’s view of the whole process, from nest-building to egg-laying to the hatching of tiny pink things so frail and helpless that a person might think they can’t possibly manage to stay alive; yet in no time they’re fledglings working on flying lessons. We’ve even had a batch of babies in the spring and another in summer; that makes for a long time of roping off my front-door bird sanctuary.

Then, with the advent of COVID-19 last March, a curious thing occurred. As the human world reeled, and became strapped in the strange straitjacket of pandemic, as businesses shut down, as hospitals and mortuaries overflowed, spring came anyway. Nature, in fact, outdid herself with resplendent finery. The finches came to build their nest as always and this little act of constancy lifted my flagging spirits: At least there will be baby birds to watch while we are all under stay-at-home orders.

But there were no eggs last spring. The nest remained empty all season. The finches… they vanished. No warning, just—poof!—gone. I didn’t see when, how, or why.

After a while, bereft, I quit looking for them.

I didn’t take the wreath down until late fall.

I saved the little unused nest.

I didn’t have the heart to throw away such a labor of love (you can say instinct all you want but the perfect craftsmanship of nests amazes me).

With the return of March, I waited for the finches to join the rest of the avian throng having revival beyond my windows. Every day I looked.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Then, day before yesterday…on the top of the wreath, one lone strand of grass, lying in a telltale curve…could it be, could it be…?

And yesterday…

“THEY’RE BACK! THEY’RE BACK! COME SEE!”

My family humored me with only a slight rolling of eyes…my granddaughter, at least, seemed interested. She made my son hold her up high for a better, bird’s-eye view.

I marveled at the greenness of the nest. Is it just me, or is this how they always look? This green, this fresh? I do not think so. No, they have never been so green before.

And today…

Almost complete. Look at that leafy lining, so carefully placed.

By Easter—dare I hope?—we might have an egg.

A tiny, age-old symbol of rebirth and resurrection.

I marvel at this fresh greenery, this new grass, this preparation for new life, the hope that’s in it. If not for the birds, then for me. Especially after the year that’s passed, marked by so much bleakness and loss, down to the former little nest that contained no life.

I recall the promise of Christ: one day there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. Behold, I am making all things new (Revelation 21:4-5, ESV).

Every spring hints at it. My personal winged messengers, harbingers of blessed assurance.

A little foretaste of glory divine.

Hymns of the heart. I step outside, away from the constraints of the house, watching the two finches take flight, zigzagging skyward, sunlight gleaming on their sandy backs, calling, calling, calling, how sweet the sound.

I come to the sanctuary in the cool of the day to behold
these moments of Earth’s remembering, an altar call where I
respond, walking the greening aisle just as I am
to a fanfare of wingbeats and music-making.
Holy holy holy, I surrender all
in wordless doxology on the returning. Let all things
their Creator bless, with ancient morningsong, yet ever new.

*******

Update, Thursday evening… first egg!
Holy Week blessings to all.

*******

with thanks to Karen Eastlund for hosting today’s Spiritual Journey

and also shared with the writing community on SOS – Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog, in response to the open invitation to write around the many meanings of “spring.”