there’s got to be a word for this
…a wonder-filled book in the hands of the right reader at the perfect time. serendipity? yes, that’s a part of it. grace? yes, that too. luck? well, i certainly am lucky to have crossed paths with Lyanda Lynn Haupt. her words about birds and her wee daughter and the life she was creating for her family turned on lights for me. when i just beginning to see the wild lives of creatures all around me in this city, her book, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds, offered me ways of organizing and thinking about this new realm. just enough. at just the right time.
then at the beginning of Advent Lyanda shared her plan for welcoming the coming light. it included spending time reading in the quiet and dark. reading Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander. oh! a new book, a new author. and just as we are waiting to welcome our own child in winter. oh! our library doesn’t carry any of Houselander’s books. so i sent in an interlibrary loan request. and the book flew to my local branch from the Benedictine brothers at Mt. Angel Abbey. so, on an ordinary Wednesday, during the second week of Advent, i opened to this passage:
God speaks silently, God speaks in your heart; if your heart is noisy, chattering, you will not hear.
Every ordinary thing in your life is a word of God’s love: your home, your work, the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the food you eat, the friends you delight in, the flowers under your feet are the courtesy of God’s heart flung down on you!
All these things say one thing only: “See how I love you.”
: : from The Comforting of Christ by Caryll Houselander : :
my copy has to go back to the monks in just a few days and already i have more passages marked than time to copy them into my journal. maybe that’s what this baby is waiting for. in that case, pen to hand, hand to paper!
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