The Sylvr Pen

Free-writing on FMF‘s prompt word for today:

hide/

go!

my body wants to hide. it feels weighed down and sluggish.

but my soul longs to fly.

I am hidden in these days, often through no choice of my own, through neither the preference of my body or soul…

but that could be good.

A “hide” is a place where you can observe life better than if you were moving about out in the midst of it, disturbing what’s around you with your presence and therefore not seeing it as it really is, maybe even causing it to take flight and go hide itself, where you see nothing of what it is or can be.

That’s a nice thought: that when I don’t really want to hide myself away, yet end up hidden in a sequestered spot, that I’m in a hide, a great observation point.

I think I’ll make my day today one of observation, from my “hide” look and study and perceive and learn.

The baby chicks know: There’s a time to hide and a time to venture forth. I observe them and consider…

These chickies with no mama full of fluffy feathers to bury in and peek out from at timid intervals, still they use their hover to hide in the self-same way. A step on the stairway, the bang of a door, the appearance of a huge human foot, and in they scurry, till they get to know what’s a clear danger and what might be safe…

“Stupid chickens” I’ve heard them called. Yet  in short time they’re far more able than we “highly intelligent” humans to discern when to conceal themselves and when to reveal. Too often we hide when we ought to venture forth, and too often we’re fooled into venturing forth when we would be far wiser to hide.

Thank you, feathered friendies, for your lesson of the morning.

And thank You, Faithful Friend Divine, for being there for us as our refuge and hide, just like a mother chicken (Mt 23:37), and for giving us the instruction and guidance we need for our own discernment, if we take the time to listen and attend (Ps 32:8).

(More Mama Hen Musings on Mindday (Monday))

Meanwhile, 

Q1: Right now, do you feel like hiding or charging forth?

Q2: What appropriate wisdom might God have for you about which to do?

*****

It’s Easter.

Snow drops in blobs.

It catches my eye as I pass the window.

I look out more intently, and see snow drops of another kind. Green shoots poking, strong and brave, out of ice soil, down between the ragged herbs sleeping dormant.

I think I see a bloom or two!

I must retrieve a treasure! I scoot out dodging snow blobs, and pluck them: one, two.

An extra bonus for the Resurrection Day table. Two harbingers of hope.

Nearly buried and unseen.

                        Had I passed this window two minutes later I wouldn’t have seen the barest sign of their being.

But still they would have been there.  Life hidden but true.

Sooner or later, hope will out. Like snow drops rising.

And resurrection.

*****

It’s Whimsday! (as I’ve decided to name it), and Wordsday, as I’d already named it. Both. The day’s whim is a delight. The day’s word… is “difficult.”

I’m here typing at the computer—words, on a whim. It’s 4:58 AM, says the little toolbar date-and-time, up beside the search symbol. And I feel fresh.

I came here in the first place, for other reasons than to write.

I woke considering what whim I might pursue this day, and my saner self said to my silly self that I really better make the planting of seeds my “whim,” because otherwise the seedlings won’t be big enough to set in garden soil, come warmth beyond final spring frost. So I lay abed a while, considering how I might plant vibrancy amid vegetables, sheer joy of floral beauty alongside practical produce.

But first things first: Prayer to and readings from the Creator of both. To the computer for those things relevant to the eternal I wanted to find…

Before me on the screen arises the profusion of blossoming delight I’d put there to replace the tired autumn scene so out of sync first with winter’s glacial covering I’d sheltered under, and now with spring thaw and the whispering hint of emerging buds making fine filigree  on branch tips.

Back four years ago, I went “out on a whim”* and bought that merry rainbow of floral colors. I figured my eyesight might soon lose its ability to feast on  color nuances and fine-veined designs of petals and leaves. (It didn’t happen; God gave me better vision, in fact—through worse cataracts, go figure—and the corneas have been holding pretty steady, so I can still get a heady and quite clear view of beauty everyday.)

After that spring I neglected to plant so colorfully… But this year, again I want to go wild with color, even in the veggie beds.

This planting plan speaks a parable of victorious living amid the hard stuff…

You see, if I were to write about a Wordsday word today, it would be “Difficult.”

That word jarred me, back early in my Lenten reading, in Matthew 7:13-14. It’s Jesus’ word describing the path we must travel to follow Him: Not an easy-peasy highway of believe-a-tidbit-of-truth-with-your-head-and-get-a-free-ticket-to-heaven.

“Difficult,” He says, “is the way that leads to life, and few there are that find it.” A tight squeeze and a hard trek. Similar to the hard and painful path He had to tread to blaze the trail for us.

Stark, piercing, practical truth.

Yet, though that word jolted me at first reading, as I pondered it gave me unexpected encouragement, comfort, assurance—as it has continued to give since.

I have known difficult. I know it now. And sometimes it leads me to suppose I must have made a lot of wrong turns.

But this word He speaks, “Difficult”… It tells me otherwise. It tells me He knows. It assures me I’m on the right route after all. It advises me that if I make the choices He desires, difficulty will result. But it also reminds me that my way will never be as painful or tough as the one He took, for love of such as me…

Hard and practical truth, yes—with great blooming beauty in its midst. May my garden’s duet of these two elements this year remind me that this is how His truth, and way, is. Hard sometimes and practical always, but nonetheless glowing with beauty and joyful bloom. And may I nevermore fail to plant, amid the hard practical, the softening beauty of thanksgiving and rejoicing in Him who is here with me through it all.

*****

*(Quoting Mary Engelbriet)

“PLAN”

That’s the Five Minute Friday word for today (March 13, 2015). So, without a plan (because that’s the plan for Freewrite Fridays), let’s see what rambles out of my keyboard…

Go!

Plan. That’s what I need most right now. A good, concrete, flexible but unshakeable plan for my month, season, year… I’m talking spiritually. I think I’m drifting back to Egypt…

I do make plans. Lots of them. Like right now, I’ve been planning my days around alliterations flowing from the first letter of each day’s name…

Monday is Mindday, and Moneyday, the day to mind the money and the mail and the magazine accumulation and, as far as writing, to Muse and record my Meditations…

Tuesday is To-do’s Day, when I Trek or Trade to do the errands, running about on roads or streets or internet. It’s when I also try to tackle ten “Ten-minute-tidies,”** often in ten different areas, and Toss out twenty-two tidbits.

Wednesday is Wordsday, for Writing, when a word that has struck me in my scripture reading gets focus, also Work with Wool or Weave day—and Water the plants and Wipe up the counters and maybe Wash a Window or two…

Thursday is ThoroughsDay, when I purpose to “thoroughly clean three things.” Each thing might be a shelf in a closet, a drawer in a dresser or cabinet, or a floor that needs special polishing up—and, in the process, to aim at Throwing-out thirty-three things. Think I might have clutter issues? You’re right. (But less and less)

Friday is… FreeDay, as in FreeWriting of couse, also Follow through and Finish up what didn’t get done through the week, and Fix Ahead and Free up for the weekend. Yay!

Saturday is SaturateDay, when I (hope to be able to) sit (or stroll) and soak up beauty, and fresh air, and sunshine, and Sonshine, which brings me to

Sonday…

Might sound whimsical and wacky, but it works! However, except for the weekend, it’s mostly earth stuff. Now how might I translate each of those focuses for spiritual use? Because that’s where I need, right now, more of a focusing plan.

(Stop? This time I ran over. But I had a plan, once I got started, and plans are no good if they lack follow-through, right?)

(** The ten-minute-tidy term did not originate with me. I first read it on someone else’s blog. But whose? And who originated it? I don’t know. But there’s a lot on the internet about the concept, even a whole book, it looks like!)

Moonset:     

Moonset in the smoke of morning.

Moonset: A gift.

“The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it…”

and around it.

Like “the faithful witness in the sky.”

Thanks be to God for His beautiful gifts.

*****

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