Monday Morning/Evening Musing

May 3, 2021

Columbus, Ohio

As my Beloved and I spent time digging in the earth yesterday….planting fruits and vegetables and herbs….I’ve been thinking about the rhythms of Creation. There are seasons for planting and seasons for harvesting as the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us.

B and I were talking about how, in this new venture, we have lost the rhythm that we kept for so long--- of Saturday as Catch up Day and perhaps Day Off, Sunday as a Work Day, and Monday as Sabbath. With the return of a regular weekend, Monday as a work day sneaks up on me. Some of the tasks that find themselves in that former rhythm have gotten lost in the cracks.

I mean to offer reflection and prayer and poem in this space on Mondays, for instance. But Mondays don’t feel as generous with the hours anymore. Mondays have become a time of engagement with this new work, of beginning the week with joy, of considering how God is using me in this season and responding as faithfully as I am able.

So, dear Reader, if you have not given up on me yet, I ask your patience and forbearance as I offer sporadic musing and prayer and poem. Perhaps I should re-name them and call them Maybe Musings instead of Monday Musings.

And, if you are reading this, would you be so kind as to lift up my friend Jenny and her beloved, David, in your prayers? David was in a terrible accident last week and lost one of his legs. But thanks be to God, not his life. They are dear to me and to many.

Here’s a poem prayer by Nancy Rose Meeker, that speaks to rhythms and cycles and Creation and the way the earth bears witness to God:

I watch.

I watch, I wait

and am still,

abiding the cycle the moves

as it will.

The beauties,

the struggles

that most do not see,

the hidden and secret

are open to me.

The new and the full and the dark

of the moon,

the shapes in the shadows,

the brightness of noon

all have their place

in the turning of time…

both coming and going

have reason

and rhyme.

The herbs of the field and the

symbols of land

bring healing and bless

as they come through my hand.

I welcome the fruits,

I welcome new birth,

as old wounds are healed

in the joy

of the earth.