Do you see all that stuff up there? We put it out on the curb about six weeks ago, relieved to have our garage looking neater, waiting for the local thrift shop to pick it up on their rounds through our neighborhood.

I must admit that I still get misty-eyed when I look at this picture. These were my mama’s things, you see. I had sorted them soon after she died in April. I put a few things in my house, let my daughters and my niece look through them to see if there was anything they wanted, and then I bagged up all that was left. It all sat there until about the middle of September.

It felt odd to see her life reduced to a curb full of leftovers, but that’s what happens to us all, isn’t it? Every time we moved her, life got smaller. From their retirement home to a retirement community. From their shared 2-bedroom to her 1-bedroom. From there to assisted living across the street, and from that place, 100 miles up the coast to a dementia unit near us. Last of all, there was that hard, hard day when she and I slowly walked down the long hall from her lovely 1-room home for the past 4 years into the skilled nursing facility to which that unit was attached. “You are hastening my death,” she moaned to me — the first sensible sentence she had uttered in months, at least the first one that wasn’t a part of her increasingly limited ‘script.’

And her words devastated me.

They proved to be prophetic. She was gone two months and two weeks later.

This is where I do a lot of listening these days. This is my small study and these are the chairs that I use for spiritual direction appointments. I sit in the one on the right, my directees in the one on the left. And together, we listen.

We listen to his or her life, we listen for the whisper of the Holy Spirit, we listen to the silence. Listening is a tough thing to do well in today’s world. We love noise, don’t we? We like being busy, getting up and getting going. We distract ourselves in all kinds of ways. We all do it, and none of it is terrible. In fact, reading, watching well-done television or movies, napping, talking — these are good things to do. But I wonder, how well are we learning to listen while we live these busy lives of ours?

It took three years of special training for me to learn how to do this kind of listening and I’m still learning about it, every time I sit in that room. It takes time, patience, intention. And it takes skill, which is something that only comes with time and experience. This ministry is very old, having been a part of the more liturgical wing of the Christian church for centuries. But about midway through the last century, the rest of the church began to catch on. Learning to listen to our lives and to discover God speaking through them is a great gift; I love the privilege of doing it with others who desire to go further up and in.

The guy in the sailboat didn’t plan to get stuck. No, he did not. I’m sure he had high hopes of being blown gently into harbor at the end of his late afternoon sail. But something went wrong, something got stuck, or something got broken. I haven’t a clue what happened, but we could watch the crew flailing around, trying to get the sails to billow in the direction they had chosen. 

No luck.

No luck at all. Then a small powerboat made a beeline for that sailing vessel. We recognized that boat — it’s the one the local sailing instructor uses to corral his young charges when the tiny teaching boats are all out on the water at once. Maybe these folks were having a private lesson? Who knows?  All we know is that we were immensely relieved to see that small, silver craft pull up alongside the floundering sailboat. Almost immediately, the sails began to fill and the boat began to tack.

Sometimes even the best laid plans can’t happen without a little help from an expert, you know??

I’m taking my truth in small slices these days, looking for the narrowest places to land. And here is one: this beach. It is gorgeous. The cliffs add color and interest, the harbor is just around the bend, the next point along the California coastline is visible just up the way a bit, and the seaweed is almost gone.

Even a tiny window into beauty is healing me right now, just a little peek, now and again. Beauty and gratitude are the only cures I know for a broken heart, and mine is in about a million shards these days.

So I walk.

Usually, my husband comes with me. We choose from a list of about a dozen walking routes around our town, most of them beaches, and take a vigorous 45 minutes almost every day. Just moving our bodies lifts our spirits. Couple that with beauty on every side, and the recipe is complete: heartbreak momentarily assuaged. Thank you, Jesus.

And that, my friends, is the truth for today.

There are seasons in this life where it is hard to find something firm to hold onto. This is one of those seasons for me. Hit by loss after loss, suffering after suffering, I too often feel rudderless, like clouds adrift in the blue expanse of sky. I flutter from pillar to post, searching for something, someone, someplace to anchor myself, to stop that feeling of being caught in some kind of cosmic pinball machine. 

Dear Amy died on Thursday morning. Her heart just stopped beating at the age of 46, leaving a husband, parents, brother and friends gasping and bewildered. How can this be?

Boing.

And this is just the most recent hit, the latest big bounce in our circle of family and friends. Oh, Lord, give me a handhold, give me a place to stop, to breathe, to reflect. Yes, to weep, but also? To see beauty, to grasp permanence, to find sustenance that will help carry me through whatever tomorrow might bring, for good or for ill.

I will anchor myself in Jesus, the one who never had a safe place to lay his head, and yet managed to exude life and hope and peace. Anchor me, Lord. Anchor me in you.

There’s a story to this necklace. I’ve worn it quite often since the 19th of April, the day my mama died. The pearl and opal drop was a gift from my children, one Christmas, over a decade ago. The small ring was on my mother’s finger until just a few hours before her death, when I gently twisted it off and dropped it into my pocket. I knew it would not be long now, her breathing was labored, her cheeks were sinking. And I wanted that precious ring in a safe place, somewhere far away from death and dying. I wanted it as close to my own beating heart as I could get it. So it went on the chain, next to the gift from my children.

That seemed fitting to me, an inclusio, a circle of life, if you will. A continuation of the line, a union of my beginning and my continuation, a reminder that we belong to one another, even across that final demarcation line called death. My mother is forever and always a part of me and a part of my children and my grandchildren. Somehow, keeping the gift from my children and the gift from my mother connected is important to my own story, to my understanding of who I am and how I, too, will be remembered some day.

I also happen to find if beautiful.

Ah, yes. Trust. 

An ongoing challenge for me. How about you?

Will I trust that, ‘all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well?’ no matter what is happening around me and around the world? Or will I allow myself to spiral down, in unending cycles of worry, frustration, anger and angst? 

It comes back, of course, to trusting in the goodness of God, despite what might appear to be evidence to the contrary. It comes back to trusting in the people I love, to be there when I need them to be there. It comes back to trusting myself, and all that I’ve learned over this long life of mine. It comes back to trust when the crunch times hit. 

And, of course, the crunch times hit on a regular basis, don’t they?

Why, yes. Yes, they do.

Will I remember to use the tools I’ve gathered around me when anxiety builds and hope disappears? Will I remember the words of scripture, the prayers I’ve memorized, the breathing and exercise that have helped me learn to center myself in goodness rather than fear? 

Sometimes yes, sometimes  . . . not so much. But I’m learning. I’m growing, even though slowly. Even though aged and tired and saddened by so much of what I see and experience in this crazy world of ours. 

Even so.

I will trust. I will lean. I will let go.

When I first discovered I was about to become a grandmother for the first time, I began to collect a diverse and wildly fun collection of dress-up gear and placed it in a basket in our family room.

That was over 26 years ago! Now our youngest two (and a third, who lives further away) are the last ones of our eight to avail themselves of these fine resources. We had our grandgirls last month for an long afternoon and evening and the first place they headed upon arrival was straight for that basket!

I had been adding to the collection over time, especially enriching it when a lovely parishioner passed away and some of her finery was donated to our church fund-raising rummage sale one year. The bright pink robe Grace is wearing came from her, as did the pearl-studded crop top directly beneath that robe. That woman was a fashion plate, choosing bright, bright colors and lots of glitz. Her stuff was perfect for a dress-up box!

The other dress was actually one of the bridesmaids’ dresses from our wedding, almost 52 years ago. We were married one week before Christmas and shared the sanctuary that day with another wedding, four hours later. We both chose to use red and thus cut our floral expense in half! These dandy things were empire-waisted, with a detachable bright red train, making the back view of the gowns much more interesting than the front one! Each girl word a round circle of red net in the form of what used to be called a pillbox hat on her head. It was a grand occasion, I tell you.

Still, I think I like that dress better on Lilly, in 2017!!

What story do these blooms tell? A wedding story, I believe. Hopefully, a happy one, presaging a long and fruitful life together. They showed up in our sanctuary one Sunday morning, after the big event the previous afternoon. Their beauty struck me, all the way in my back row seat, and I simply had to go forward and view them more closely.

Aren’t they lovely? Subtle shades and variations, differing textures and sizes, some round, some spiky — all of them testimony to the glorious diversity of floral beauty so easily available to us. I used to work with flowers. I began with my eldest daughter’s wedding in 1987 and closed up my small shop after my middle girl’s big day in 1994. Enough was enough. By then I had completed my seminary degree and was working through the hoops for ordination while pastoring in my home church. Within two years, I would move 100+ miles away and begin a new life, a new career, find a new home and build a new community. I was more than happy to let others work with flowers in this new place and to appreciate their beauty whenever they showed up in our altar arrangement. 

This one caught my eye and caused me to stop and ponder — again — the healing, comforting, encouraging power of beauty in this world.

If I’m honest, this is what it comes down to for me: the eucharist. In fact, it is the thing that keeps me honest. At least, I hope that’s true. Yes, I love the music. Yes, I (usually) enjoy and get something important from the sermon. But it is this monthly bread and cup that fills me must fully.

I sometimes wonder why that is true, but then I realize — again — that the simplicity of it, the tactile nature of it, the liturgical framework for it and the act of doing it in the midst of my community are the things that matter, the things that make this particular part of our communal worship experience particularly valuable for me.

The longer I live, the more I understand and appreciate that we do not — we cannot — walk this road alone. Everything in our scripture, in our psychology textbooks, in our life experience, points us to the truth that we need one another to live life well. And that means we need one another to worship well, too. 

And time is up . . . here’s what I love about 5 minute prompts, something I’d forgotten in the years since I stopped doing this each week: these prompts almost always get something going inside me that’s important and needs reflection, ‘chewing on.’ And this one is a biggy!

What about you??