March 14: God’s Love in Ordinary Time

Maybe it’s because it’s warm outside

I could sit on the stoop with my coffee

Maybe it’s the tiny flowers all over my yard

Without regard for boundaries

Maybe it’s St Francis

Standing steadfast in the barren garden

(I’m sure he smiled at the song of the birds)

Maybe it’s the words about hands and feet

Penned by a writer whose work I enjoy

Maybe it’s because I’m a widow

Alone in my house and garden

Without the movement and ministrations

Of a spouse—the embrace and the kiss on the cheek

Or everything combined

To make me feel enfolded and embraced

By Your love

It flows around my furniture and

Out my back door—filling the space around me

It envelops me as I sit with my coffee

It leaves me wiping tears of unknown origin

I know a bit of the height and depth and length

I receive it all

A miracle renewed this morning

Nancy Perkins

March 14, 2012

Advanced Directive: Thoughts on Ending Well

O Cross that liftest up my head…

No to oxygen

No to tubes and forced breath

I dare not ask to fly from thee…

No to institution

No to needles in veins

           

I lay in dust life’s glory dead…

Yes to the circle of daughters and sons

Yes to the hand of her beloved

And from the ground there blossoms red…

Yes to family gone before

Yes to voice and words restored

Life that shall endless be.*

Yes to eternity and the face of God

Wake the song of Jubilee!

(*From the song, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, by George Mattheson)

Reflections after an evening spent with our elderly parents in honest, albeit difficult conversation about end of life. They are amazing. My mother’s resolute smile, her sometimes trembling chin, and the occasional tear-filled eyes speak to her inner strength and longing to finish well. She inspired in me the above thoughts.

Nancy Perkins

March 2012