More beauty than our eyes can bear

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. . . . I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

(thanks to Leslie, who let me know of this quote)

Thanksgiving

IMG_3004

The truth?  It has been a difficult month.  For a few weeks now I’ve been having that world-is-slightly-off-its-axis feeling more days than not.  A soul-level unease that manifests in clumsiness, over-reactivity, and exhaustion.  Do you know this feeling?  I’ve been dropping eggs and feeling more impatient than usual in various parts of my life, taking things personally (despite my own constant reminders to others and myself that I realize things are almost never about me) and forgetting things, sleeping hard and soundly but never feeling quite rested.

I’ve also been more aware than usual of trust, feeling cautious about where I place it, observing that everywhere I go people seem to be talking about other people.  This makes me more and more uncomfortable, this behavior.  As I’ve acknowledged many times, I’m a porous person, but lately that aspect of my personality is frankly overwhelming, and I can’t get out of my own way.  Every day I am startled by sharp words and sliced by unexpected, jagged emotions.

And still.

And yet.

The parade of glorious sunsets out my window takes my breath away and almost every night my heart lifts as I tuck my children in.  There is so much beauty here, even in a month that has been difficult for reasons I don’t understand.

Is this what happiness is, the awareness of all this grandeur even in the midst of painful hours?  I don’t know.  I told someone recently I’m not sure traditional, unalloyed “happiness” is part of my emotional arsenal.  But this feeling may well be contentment.  And that, I’ll take.

This is relatively new to me, this thrum of peace underneath all of the emotion.  In July I observed in myself a sturdy sense of joy and it’s this that is carrying me now, I think.

Inside me there has been a kind of deep settling and an emotional sigh.  Now, when I glance at all the corners of my life I notice both the piles of dusty regrets and the glittering treasures.

I can’t imagine a better way to live my life.  And for this, I offer the most profound thanksgiving I know how to express.

I say the only prayer I know how to say: thank you.

What you see is what you get

Seeing.  

Seeing this ordinary life of mine.

Seeing the sacred that’s strung in between the many, many mundane moments.

Seeing the holiness that exists inside those prosaic, everyday things.

This seeing has been a preoccupation of mine for a long time.  I searched my archives and found pages of posts that featured either photographs of or stories about my life’s small moments.  The “grout in between the tiles” of life, as I’ve called it.  Which is where all the magic resides, I’ve found.

In her essay titled Seeing, Annie Dillard said, what you see is what you get, imbuing those familiar words with a new layer of meaning.  Pay attention, and your life will be rich.

Lately my friend Aidan been writing about noticing the small moments in her life.  The messy, the in-between, the oft-overlooked experiences that, in fact, add up to life itself.  She’s one of many, many people who I know who are out there, noticing and stringing pearls onto the strings of their days, one at a time.  What they – and I – are building is a masterpiece.

This blog began as a catalog of these small moments.  I wanted to remember all the things I knew I would forget in those first exhausting, chaotic years of Grace and Whit’s lives.  And as I kept blogging, and kept noticing, I realized that the practice of writing about the divinity in my days had actually changed the way I existed in the world.

Now I can’t stop noticing.  Every day I trip over pieces of beauty, unexpected, unanticipated, often unimagined.  This is really what Instagram is, for me now: a gathering of the tiny, sparkling shards that glitter in my days.  I would love if you would find me there!

One thing I know for sure, as I barrel towards my 40th birthday, is that these things, these details that I notice and observe, these moments that pierce me: they are my life.  With that in mind, here are some things I have noticed lately:

IMG_3265

Watching Grace and Whit ascend a rock wall with grace and grit.

IMG_3151

Last week was one non-stop, breathtaking, outrageous sunset after another.

IMG_3104

Grace’s fifth grade class is participating in NaNoWriMo.  In the afternoons she likes to sit on the floor of my office and write while I work.  I can’t wait to read her novel.

IMG_3061

Whit doesn’t make his bed, but every single morning, without fail, he lines these three (Beloved, Bear, and Beloved’s Brother) up against his pillow.  I like to go in there during my work day and every single time this sight brings tears to my eyes.

What are you noticing right now?

 

 

Proud flesh

… see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before.  There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds, wears them as honors given out after battle, small triumphs pinned to the chest.

– Jane Hirshfield

They make me a better person

photo

Veteran’s Day was  one of those days fraught with the potential for yelling.  The kids didn’t have school, but I had to work.  How difficult would it be to cram my job into a few hours so that I could be present to and with them for the others?  I managed to clear a couple of hours in the morning.  We went to paint pottery, specifically ornaments for the grandparents.

The painting was somewhat frustrating, and Whit had a hard time with the small, detailed work of writing his name with a paintbrush.  We muddled through, though, and after a while it was time to go.  Grace and Whit cleaned up while I took our painted ornaments to the kiln pile.  The children were picking out lollipops and I was paying when I noticed that our table was still strewn with paper towels, half-filled water cups, and a wet paint brush.  Frustrated, I went to clean off the table.

As we walked out of the store, I vented my dismay at Grace and Whit.  I told them sternly that I was disappointed.  And then Grace, not looking, stepped into the busy street as cars approached.  I yelped and grabbed her arm, panicked.  The morning’s happy mood disintegrated with lightning speed.  As we drove home toxic clouds of aggravation filled the car.   Suddenly I was in a terrible mood.  Isn’t it amazing how fast things can change?  In both directions, indeed.

We got home and I stalked upstairs to my desk.  Intellectually, I knew I had overreacted but I was prickling all over and felt overwhelmed with irritation and frustration.  I answered work emails in silence.  I heard Whit puttering with the Legos in the other room.  After a solid twenty  minutes he crept in and offered me a green flower made out of Legos and a hand-written note.

Dear Mummy,
I love you more than Legos and books combined.  I hope you know I’m sorry for not helping you clean up. Love Whit

I began to bawl. This is what love is, I thought.

I asked him to come into my office and he did, gingerly.  I pulled him onto my lap, which is awkward now because he is so long.  I buried my head in his shoulder, crying.  I apologized, and after a few minutes we went down to Grace’s room.  She too had written me an apology.  I sat on her bed, a child on each side of me, tears running down my face.  I told them I was sorry.  I told them I had overreacted and I had been wrong.  “The two of you make me a better person,” I said, and I meant it.  I want to be worth of their devotion, their faith, their love.  The redemptive power of their willingness to abide with me, even when I am wretched, was tangible in the room.

“Should we start this day over?” Grace asked.

“No, I don’t think so.  It was a really nice day until the last hour. Maybe we should just erase an hour,” Whit offered.  I nodded.

We decided to go out to get burritos and as we drove we talked about forgiveness and the ability to move on.  I’ve told them many times, and I firmly believe, that this – the ability to put something behind you, to say I’m sorry and mean it, to start fresh – is one of the true keys to happiness.  It is unrealistic to imagine that we won’t all have bad days, with yelling and irritation and black moods.  But being able to roll through those, devotion and affection intact, to forgive and to move on?

That is where true love lives.