One morning
we will wake up
and forget to build
that wall we’ve been building,
the one between us
the one we’ve been building
for years, perhaps
out of some sense
of right and boundary,
perhaps out of habit.
One morning
we will wake up
and let our empty hands
hang empty at our sides.
Perhaps they will rise,
as empty things
sometimes do
when blown
by the wind.
Perhaps they simply
will not remember
how to grasp, how to rage.
We will wake up
that morning
and we will have
misplaced all our theories
about why and how
and who did what
to whom, we will have mislaid
all our timelines
of when and plans of what
and we will not scramble
to write the plans and theories anew.
On that morning,
not much else
will have changed.
Whatever is blooming
will still be in bloom.
Whatever is wilting
will wilt. There will be fields
to plow and trains
to load and children
to feed and work to do.
And in every moment,
in every action, we will
feel the urge to say thank you,
we will follow the urge to bow.
‘One Morning’
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
(This poem is part of a poem-a-day practice found at A Hundred Falling Veils.)
The second morning after an encounter that might change my life, if I let it.
Where do I start?
I go back to basics. What did I learn as a child? I say “thank You”. Even if a bit of me whispers quietly, “thank You, but …”; what is most important to me right now is to recognise that all around me is gift from the Giver.
I want to say “this can be”; yet a “but” still hovers at the end of that sentence too.
What did I learn as a child? I say “Please”.
“Please be with me.”
“Please help me.”
“Please show me what I’m supposed to be doing now.”
The popular image of a mystic is of someone who spends a lot of time alone in solitary prayer, cut off from the distracting world. The mysticism of nature, however, is a gift for everyone in the audience!
The Pope says:
To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope. This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since for the believer; to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice (85, Laudato Si’)
To be a mystic, then you don’t have to be a person whose knees are wearing out – though God draws some hearts to that silent intimacy. All you have to do is to look long and lovingly at creation, and let it speak to your heart. Do this for a while today, and you will experience what it is like ‘to live joyfully in God’s love and hope’. Every garden is a divine schoolroom.
from Finding God in a Leaf :The Mysticism of Laudato Si (pp 23-24)
Brian Grogan SJ
look long and lovingly. Canon 7D. f5.6. 1/41. ISO 3200.
image into ikon 
Beautiful, Kate!
LikeLike