Opening reading:

The star in the center of every heart
Creates us in love.

Listen to how everything sings:
The streams and stones,
Leaves and branches,
Fish and fur-covered ones,
Birds leading the chorus.

See how your desire to praise 
Is echoed in every living thing,
How in quiet moments
The heart is moved to gratitude
For all of Creation,
For the lavish abundance of it all,
How nothing is earned,
No achievements are needed.

May you simply show up with breath, blood and bones,
And your loving attention to hymns erupting
Everywhere, until you can no longer tell
Where yours begin and nature’s ends.

Reading chosen and read by Amy W. (Jan. 16. 2021)- Source Unknown

Listening to the wind in the magnolias – bathed in warm sunlight – grateful for the beauty of this place and the blessings in my life.

Photo and reflection by Bonnie L. (Jan. 16, 2021)

Photos and reflections by Nancy L. (Jan. 16, 2021)

…………………………………………………………………….

Opening reflection:

There is river that runs through time and the universe, vast and inexplicable, a flow of spirit that is at the heart of all existence, and every molecule of our being is a part of it. And what is God but the whole of that river?

When I look back at the summer of 1932, I see a boy not quite thirteen doing his best to pin down God, to corral that river and give it a form he could understand. Like so many before him, he shaped it, and reshaped it, and shaped it again, and yet it continued to defy all his logic. I would love to be able to call out to him and tell him in a kindly way that reason will do him no good, that it’s pointless to rail about the difficulty of the twists in that river, and that he shouldn’t worry about where the current will take him, but I confess that even after more than eighty years of living, I still struggle to understand what I know in my heart is a mystery beyond human comprehension. Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.

My tale of the four orphans who set sail together on an odyssey isn’t quite finished. Their lives went far beyond the rolling farmlands and high bluffs and river towns and remarkable people they encountered on their meanderings that summer. Here is the end of the story begun many pages ago, an accounting of where the greater river has taken all the Vagabonds.

Source: Epilogue of This Tender Land, by William Kent Krueger

Reading chosen and read by Patty M. (Jan. 30, 2021)

Please do not enter

Danger greets you.

Spent limbs, jagged rocks,

fragments of stories 

uneven this narrow ground, 

castles of fire ants dare

one more step,

vines trip,

hard angry grasses mound

around hidden holes

deep enough to swallow soles.

…..

You decide 

If it’s worth the risk

to find the river beyond

its splip splip sloshing

of fullness against the bank;

worth the risk 

to sidle up to marshes where 

dry stalks of spartina

clap against each other

whisp whisp whispering

a song you can hear only

when you are still

but the wind is not.

…..

YOU MUST LISTEN!

…..

There, too, at the river’s edge

you will hear

the mourning of doves,

their echoes of choked sighs

stolen lives

broken hopes matted in

slave sweat under your feet.

Merge, merge you must

with all this truth

its beautiful and bitter

before retracing 

the path to where 

you started, knowing 

you could not help 

but enter.

Photos and poem by Amy Webb, January 30, 2021

While walking today listening to the birds, I was thinking that the trees in Winter have a unique beauty with very little color. The oak covered in gray moss was very striking. In another area the reflections in the still water were so clear. Everything was quiet and calm. Just when I thought I would not see any color , I looked down and discovered one dandelion emerging from the brown leaves. Now that is joy!

Photos and reflection by Nancy B. (Jan. 30, 2021)

Wonder, mystery, sacred seeing… Regardless of having a basic understanding of the biology and science of the natural world, I am forever in awe of the incredible wonder and mystery that nature exudes. Science and mystery and faith walk hand in hand in hand. I look at a star filled sky and I am star struck! I watch the grasses dance in the old rice fields and I am awe struck! I see a mighty oak draped in Spanish moss and I am full of wonder! I gaze at a new bud on a tree and my heart and soul smile deeply for life’s renewal!

Photos and reflection by Nancy L. (Jan. 30, 2021)