Dear Reader:

It has taken me a lifetime to finally get it! When we fully realize that self and Spirit are the same …just like what I sang at camps and youth retreats growing up…”We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord” …then all the missing pieces of life’s puzzle miraculously fit together.

My epiphany has been similar to Sarah Ban Breathnach’s “extraordinary metamorphosis” while writing her popular book titled: Simple Abundance. She started out thinking she could solely make analogies between doing more with less in all facets of daily life…like eliminating clutter in our lives to clean out the attics of our minds…but she soon dropped this overly simplistic approach. She realized she was making the wrong connections.

Wholeness isn’t a clean house devoid of clutter…it is a clean spirit dwelling within each of us….when we accept and make the choice to live in a “state of grace.”

When talking to friends my age I have noticed one commonality mentioned more often now than ever before… everyone admits that they have to have more quiet or private time in their daily life now. For me…the garden, my refuge, my sanctuary, provides this for me.

Every seemingly mundane event in our lives (grocery shopping, paying bills, exhaustion, cleaning out closets, changing sheets, unexpected interruptions, too much noise, broken appliances, annoying  little health issues that won’t go away) is actually significant enough to be an on-going source of “reflection, revelation, and re-connection.” 

In other words…we can now see those daily miracles in life that were hidden from us while living in an unconnected, self-centered universe. Once our eyes can finally see God’s presence in every aspect of life…then life becomes the most personal form of worship. It becomes our daily prayer.

Now I understand how I can get so excited over a new bloom(s) on a bush or the growth of a new tree…I am watching God watching over my garden…while watching over me.

Two days of on and off showers have kept me inside the house more…so last evening when I finally walked through my garden path…my hydrangea bush had bloomed while I wasn’t looking. A gift from God.

So until tomorrow: (Nineteenth-Century Shaker  Hymn)

“Tis a gift to be simple, Tis a gift to be free, Tis a gift to come down Where we all ought to be. And when we find ourselves…in the place that’s right. “Twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh