Beauty and Grace

“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. 

The least we can do is try to be there.” 

― Annie Dillard

Today I was there - and I am thankful.

Hope

The following is a duplicate of a post on my other blog, http://ginnysgarden.blogspot.com

HOPE
–noun
the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.

I would like for all of you to hope with me.  If you pray, I ask you to pray with me.  

As I write this my brother is having surgery for a malignant brain tumor.  No matter how successful the surgery, some of the tumor will remain - it's that kind of tumor.   But we are full of hope - for successful surgery, for a swift recovery from surgery, for successful chemo and radiation treatment with minimal side effects.
  
One of my hopes for the coming days is that my brother is able to spend time at our family house by the lake, sitting on the porch and feeling surrounded by God's loving arms. It's a healing place.  I took the photos in the slideshow below early Sunday morning, a few days after he was diagnosed, when our family gathered there in support.  We are now gathered at the hospital - waiting, hoping, praying.

 

One photo, many blessings

So many blessings in this picture

• The man leaning against the lamppost is my husband.  He would soon be leaving me for four months in Coast Guard Officer Training School.  We swore we'd never spend another night apart after those four months.  His draft number was 29, but he escaped the draft by joining the Coast Guard.
• The coat he's wearing was his daddy's Navy pea coat, worn in World War II.  One day, years later, I left it in my unlocked car and someone stole it.  My husband wrote about it in his weekly newspaper column and a kind woman knocked on our door with her own husband's pea coat in her hands.
• The house in  the background is the much loved family lake house when it was only a few years old.
• The larger dog is Sam, who adopted us one summer.   He appeared one day and was so hungry that he tried  to eat the hose.  He loved us all but he and my dad had a special bond.
• The smaller dog is Zippy. She came to us when we were children and she was a puppy.  When Sam came to live with us Zippy was an old lady of a dog,  but Sam gave her a new outlook on life.  
• The car in the carport, a Carolina blue Toyota Corolla, was our first new car.  We kept it until our oldest child was old enough to drive it.

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.  ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

How sweet the moonlight. . .

“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.”

William Shakespeare 

What a blessing to be in this place.

You can't put a price on a piece of your heart

It was a restful weekend spent at one of the most relaxing places I know. When we arrived there was a cool breeze off the lake.  Sitting on the porch it was hard to believe how hot it had been at home earlier in the day.  On our two morning walks we saw deer cross the road and rescued a turtle.  The tiger swallowtail butterflies were everywhere.  On Saturday my daughter and her family joined us and my grandsons found out how much fun it is to play in the water.

When the thunderstorms rolled in we all retreated to the porch and watched the rain come across the lake.

This black-crowned night-heron was posing on the pier when I woke up Sunday morning.

Watching the rain, feeling the breeze, waking to a heron on the pier - all was peaceful and relaxing.  But whenever I sit on the porch of that house,  there are other pictures in my mind.

My dad, entertaining my oldest daughter, Tracy (the daughter whose sons enjoyed the water so much on Saturday.)

My dad swimming with my daughter Emi, about 1980.

My sister, expecting her first child, resting in the hammock with my daughters and my dad.

My daughters and their GrandPatty doing arts and crafts on the porch (when it was still a screened porch).

Enjoying popsicles in the butterfly chair on the porch.

My son and his Great-uncle Charles at a gathering of my husband's family.

Celebrating my brother's and my son's birthdays, just a day apart in May.

My son (right) and his cousins.

Just one of many family gatherings when the children were young.

There are hundreds of pictures of vacations, holidays, and family gatherings at this house.  I can see many of them in my mind's eye when I sit on that porch.  The value of this house can't be measured by an appraiser.  You can't put a price on a piece of your heart.

"Rest in the grace of the world"

When despair for the world grows in me ... I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry, from his poem "The Peace of Wild Things"

When I read this in the Verse and Voice e-mail from Sojourners today, I thought of the place where I have always felt that I could "rest in the grace of the world".  Where there is water, and wild things.  Over the years that place has been considerably tamed, but when sitting on the porch, looking out over the water, it's easy to forget that.