Nothing…and Yet Everything

It’s been a quiet season of the soul

… one of those seasons in which the light dawns and you realize you have nothing, and yet everything, to say.

I look out from my morning chair, draped in woolen blanket, coffee in hand. It’s 5:30 in the morning and the sun is just beginning his course across this small outdoor cathedral of my universe. Last week, Summer warmed this early morning sanctuary of mine… but today tastes like a sip of Autumn.

Around the corner comes my fifteen year old cat. Out all night these summer nights, he struts by me like a young, brave tom — neither of which he is … or maybe he is both. In the distance I hear the morning dove cooing her new day’s song, and a sprinkler sputtering to life racing to make rainbows in the coming light.

I look out at the green carpet that transformed that hard, dry place where once I tarried too long. And I watch the breeze gently nudge each tender blade, as it nudges me, into a morning dance of thankfulness.

Everywhere I look in this quiet season, I hear peace. I taste goodness. I smell hope and sense joy.

Everywhere I look … I see home. Life, full and complete – hidden – in the everyday.

In front of me, the daisies, like an eager marching band, line up proud and ready. So ready. Waiting. Hoping. You can just sense them busting at the seams in anticipation to unfurl their colors.

And beside me, Daylily tickles me with her swaying arms as she joins the morning dance. She took years to grow so full and strong – a long quiet season to stand tall in her beauty. Reaching up. Reaching beyond. I see her too, like the daisies, holding her breath as she waits for Sun to tease her open, to warm her beautiful.

And beautiful she will be. She will blossom and she will shine — and she will glow whether she is noticed or not.
… I want to be like that.

It seems like everyday I notice something new. Everyday I’m a part of something old. Everyday something catches my heart in that fish-nibbling kind of way and I am changed -I am changing.

Changed like the flowers, one day closer to their grand premier.

Changing like the root that pushes up against the fence – bending, nudging, forcing the boundary line beyond itself. Bit by bit. Day by day. A mighty force – imperceptible -yet earth-shatteringly real.

…  like this quiet season of my soul

in which I have nothing much to say

– and yet everything –

to be.