Saturday, August 27, 2011
The Beautiful Flower in the Broken Pot ~ Author Unknown
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face... I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch.
He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come again.
And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning.
As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning.
"Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.
I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse, as she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago - and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Grace
Some sharings this Sunday morning on one of my favorite subjects...
Grace...
"This day boldness is manifested in a simple grace: gratitude." ~ Mary Anne Radmacher
...
"Grace defies reason and logic." ~ Bono
"Grace isn't just a little prayer you say before receiving a meal. It's a way to live." ~ Jackie Windspear
"I'm becoming more and more myself with time. I guess that's what grace is.
The refinement of your soul through time." ~ Jewel
"Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately." ~ Saul Bellow
"As in nature, as in art, so in grace; it is rough treatment that gives souls, as well as stones, their luster." ~ Thomas Guthrie
"Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart...Grace is available for each of us every day - our spiritual daily bread - but we've got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow." ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
"Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected." ~ Jonathan Edwards
"Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God." ~
Karl Rahner
"Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity." ~ William Hazlitt
"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." ~ Anne Lamott
"To experience the miracles of everyday grace is not just a privilege for the enlightened few. It's your birthright!" ~ Marianne Williamson
And For me,
Grace is the supreme Power of all Powers and Highest Law of the Universe, which transcends all others...
Founded upon Love,
We reach the state of Grace when we realize that we are all Perfect Creations of the Divine and no harm can befall us or come from us...
We reach the state of Grace...
When we open ourselves up to the unlimited possibilities of a Benevolent Universe...
We reach the state of Grace...
Simply because we are Loved by the Mighty Heart of the Great Divine Creator
There are no lessons that need to be played out...
No dues or debts to be payed...
No Karma to be experienced...
No place of Supreme Enlightenment to be reached...
No conditions of worthiness to be met...
All other Laws are suspended and mute in its Presence...
Once you have accepted the state of Grace as your birthright from a Perfect Creator...
You BECOME the Perfect Expression of Love, Joy, Beauty, Peace, Wholeness, Abundance and Compassion...
And there is little need of anything else.
After my harrowing and yes, most blessed physical ordeal last week...
I am in such a state of Divine Gratitude for the gift of the Perfect Grace of God...
And so Blessed to be fully embracing this beautiful Sunday...
This beautiful Life...
Upon my Beloved Mother Gaia...
And sharing these thoughts with you...
I invite you to please add your own comments and musings on what Grace is for you...
Many Blessings my Friends...
And May the Face of Grace shine down upon you in Miraculous ways, this precious day!
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