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Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.”

Isaiah 40:4

Greetings to you all in this spare time of dark days and great expectation. This morning I lightened my day with a meditation on simple abundance brought to us by Ardine Martinelli at https://listeningtomylife.blog/2019/12/08/simple-abundance/

I thought you might also be nourished by Ardine’s reflection. She relates a spiritual practice offered by Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her book Simple Abundance: A Day Book of Comfort and Joy. The practice involves meditation on the place of gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty, and joy in our lives.

Enjoy! I hold you all in my heart today, sending peace.

Rita

Photo Credit: https://binged.it/2PuZHNz. @ pexels.com

In another post I told the story of this photo,

On my walk along the lake I spotted a maple leaf, dried to death by the intense summer heat, stunning in its aridity. Unable to ignore its call, I snatched it up and carried it home to await the muse.

It called to me again as this season of Lent commenced, but I wasn’t prepared to receive its unexpected power. The liturgical artists from my spiritual home, Seattle Mennonite Church, extended an invitation for us to engage our lenten theme, Parables of Abundance: “We are interested in creating a visual piece that reflects both the abundance we experience in trying to live with less, as well as our feelings of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.” We are invited to bring our image or our written piece to the sanctuary to create a rich collage of our experiences of abundance.

As the photographer, I instinctively positioned the leaf one way and have only seen it from that direction. Until now. I decided to let the photo speak to me from all four possible positions. I invite you to do the same. You have my permission to position it as the spirit urges.