Grace Table

I come to Your table, out in the little woods.

All is present here. Needles fallen, bronze, gone to earth, mouldering as day fades. And the leaves of maple so lately yellow, now brown and too disintegrating. The asters, white with seed like down, have lost their supple bend and sway.

But the hemlocks dance in the sharp breeze, evergreen, as does the pine. Wood-winged bushes reach, half-dressed in peach and yellow tongues of fire. Spirit licked. The dog next door is filled with zeal, barking, wagging at noisy birds.

I come to Your table, out in the little woods.

All is present here. The loss of a year, the hope of a spring. Sorrow and joy. Death and life. Spread thick over the ivy and the earth.

Thanksgiving comes soon, I think. And then, Let my table be as Yours.


(Do you have a Thanksgiving prayer or reflection? Come share it at the Thanksgiving Celebration.)

Mending

Rain ticks lightly against my face like blunt, cool needles. I walk slowly up the small hill. Grass is long. So, so green. Flecked with yellow maple leaves. No, carpeted. I like the way everything feels soft beneath my feet.

Under the pine, the woods are illumined as if from the inside out. Day is almost gone, the sky a deep grey. But the yellows of maple and various unknown bushes glow. Light without source, so it seems.

One leaf hangs from the swing rope, and a tiny brown bird is foraging in the ivy. Cardinals dart from the pine to masses of bird-berry bushes. Maple leaves flip and bob— like hands of a dancer or maybe old men who want to say hello.

Each thing, each and every thing here seems to heal me from the inside out. As if each were put here just for me, just for this moment... to mend. Rain ticks lightly against my face like blunt, cool needles. Mending, mending.

Consumed

The woods are aflame with autumn. Lemon yellows, burnt oranges, luminescent reds glazed with pink. Grasses bend amber, wave gold. Leaves drift and swirl on invisible eddies of warm air.

I search for words of praise, but find I am speechless. Instead, I close my eyes and become a wisp on the wind. Diving past the neighbor's dog, a near collision, then on again over the grey house... now flying with sparrows. Something inside me feels like fire, a sure melting, a merging with Spirit I sense in beauty. All this beauty.

Setting the world afire.