Day 31

A hard couple of days so I am methodically jotting down moments of gratitude amongst the bad.

The babies chubby legs sticky with suncream.

The smell of wild garlic in the shadowed trees, just like in the sussex woods I walked as a teenager.

Remembering four years have passed since Clara arrived, four years since that hard labour, and the change it wrought in me. Four years since I was broken and remade.

Watching her learning to read, haltingly, worlds opening up to her. The best gift I could ever give.

Easter day,
 he is risen even now, he has shrugged off the grave clothes even now.
 He reigns here and now.

Hammock cuddles with each of them in turn.

Yoga in the garden, woodsmoke and sunset.

Planting things with dirty hands, wondering at the strangeness of the suffocating soil being the means to grow life.

Claps and cheers for the NHS floating up into that same sunset.

New woodland spots.

Clara got into our first choice of school. Things are changing even as they stay the same.

Lindor chocolate.

Mudcakes being made every day on repeat.

here endeth the list.

I fell in love with the following poem a decade or so ago. Back then I had both time and inclination to savour the loveliness of life.

In the years that have elapsed since I have carried these lines in my head, like a constant refrain;

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost

Increasingly I am doing this, my time constraints have changed over the years but my desire to encounter beauty has not.

Even more so in these days, 

pursuing that beautiful 'white singing hour of peace' and the relief it brings to connect with God even

for a tiny moment, in being present and practicing gratitude. 

Here is the poem in full;

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,

Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Sarah Teasdale

four years old!!!

yesterday it seems!