January 23, 2024

I begin most days in the area of the house I call the snug. An enclosed front porch is how it would be described in a real estate listing, I suppose. Not very big, but spacious enough for two comfortable reading chairs and two sets of bookshelves against the inside wall. A few months ago I rearranged the space to make room for a small desk.

Cozy. Full of light on sunny days. A welcoming space for beginning the day.

Before making the bed and getting dressed, I settle into the snug for my morning meditation and devotion time. Most days I am there an hour or so before moving forward into the rest of the day.

That was not the case this past Saturday.

My time in the snug began in its usual way by reading the day’s reflections in the two books I have selected to accompany me through the year. Joyce Rupp’s Fragments of Your Ancient Name, 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation and Margaret Silf’s Daily Readings with Margaret Silf. I have used the Rupp book before, and It is interesting to me to see what I underlined before and what resonates with me now. The Silf book is new to me, but I have loved other books by her and in 2023 I re-read one of her other books, Wayfaring, A Gospel Journey into Life.

Each reflection in the Rupp book is a “name” for God, a way to describe God, and on January 20 the name of God is “Joyful Journeyer.”

...
When love accepts both ease and struggle,
When prayer includes a heart of acceptance,
...
When silence serves as a source of listening,
When dying no longer frightens or dismays,
...
Then we know how it is to engage with you
As the Joyful Journeyer on our road of life. 

Each line moved me deeper into stillness, pondering those hopes within me, but also how I yearn for the hope to become truthful reality in my life.

Silf quoted Mark 3:20-21. “Jesus went home, and such a crowd collected that they could not even have a meal. When his relatives heard of this they set out to take charge of him, convinced he was out of his mind.” Silf reflected on how “the ordinary cannot tolerate for long the presence of the extraordinary,” but that isn’t what struck me about these verses. Not this time.

Instead, I focused on “Jesus went home.” First of all, how glad I was that Jesus had a home and could return there. I thought about him being welcomed. I imagined him finding comfort; the kind of comfort that comes from knowing where everything is and not having to introduce yourself or even be on your best behavior, because you know you are loved.

I thought about all the times I returned home –my parents’ home and my own homes. When we lived in our country home in Ohio, I often drove or flew home to be with my parents or our daughter and her family. How fortunate I felt to be able to do that and to know they waited for me and wanted, even needed my presence. At the same time, oh, how my heart lifted as I approached once again the driveway to our beloved Sweetwater Farm. Home.

(I arrived home, but in my case the crowd that collected were all our animals always eager to be fed!)

I opened my Bible to see if I had ever underlined these verses, and I had not, but I noticed a difference in the word choice and translation. In the version Silf quotes, the word “relatives” is used, but in the New Revised Standard Version, which I read, the word is “family.” That feels so different to me. A change in intimacy and even acceptance. A difference perhaps in the way we know and see one another. I will think about that more.

I spent some time musing on these thoughts in my journal, and by that time the streetlight was off and dawn had become day. The young mom across the street had headed off to her exercise class–at least that is my guess–and several dog walkers had strolled past our house. Most days I would blow out the candle, my first companion of the day, and move into the rest of the day.

Instead, feeling chilled, I wrapped my shawl around me and read the last chapter of another book in my meditation basket, Thin Places, A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri ni´Dochartaigh, a memoir by an Irish woman born in Derry, on the border of North and South of Ireland at the height of the Troubles. One parent was Catholic and the other Protestant, and terror reigned around her. Not only did I learn about how it was to live during those harrowing (a word she uses frequently) times, but I thought how what she experienced is an aspect of what I imagine those in Gaza are experiencing now.

Much of the book, however, is about place and time — all places and all times.

There is a time for everything–for sowing, planting, harvesting. A time for holding on, and a time to let go. A time for sorrow, and a time for healing. More so, there is, simply, time. There is time for it all. We still have time to step in or out –of places, of relationships, of thought processes, or our own selves. Sometimes the snow will still be here on St Brigid’s Day, and sometimes we will have a year without it coming at all. There will be years when the autumn trees seem more vibrant, more sublime, than we ever remember them being before. There will be years when we have suffered so much that we can’t pick out one season from the other, never mind one day. Days when we cannot imagine ever feeling okay again, thinking that we have taken enough of it all, enough already, enough. Then, a change in the wind, the first bluebell, the smell of snow in the sky, the moment courses on, and everything has shape-shifted–everything is okay again, more than okay, maybe, even.

p. 247

Today was my time to move slowly, deliberately. Today was my time to soak myself in stillness.

My only goal was to make the bed and get dressed by noon.

I just barely accomplished that.

An Invitation

What does your Sabbath time look like? I would love to know.