Shadow Dance

I go from window to window, stunned, as I regularly am, by what I see in every direction.

Carefully groomed lawns, dotted with trees and shrubs, transition to fields with wilder beauty.

Crops break the ground--the brown earth vanishing from view--giving way to stalk and leaf.

The alders--how I love the alders--with their tall, waving, ostrich-feathery plumes, swaying side to side in the breeze like lumbering Indian elephants in royal procession. A princess could not be carried with greater dignity through the streets.

Through the front window I see that the lawn is a dance of shadow and light in the morning sun. Every bough is bending or bobbing or waving . The garden is astir and full of movement--light and leaf and blade.

Free to move where I wish--I am not rooted in the ground. Yet I seem more constrained than the trees and grasses that celebrate their freedom by waving at the world of man hurrying by.

Dear Lord, free me up to taste the simple joy of "being." Let me reflect peace, and celebration at being alive to those around me--just like the trees.

Psalm 1:1-3 (New King James Version)
1 Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Sheer poetry. I have always admired your gift of description. I look out my window and see trees and a lawn that's not been cut for a couple weeks, you see elephants and princesses. It's a gift to be able to see beauty, in nature, in people, in God. You have that gift.

Dave
5:55 PM
Belinda said…
I love making beauty come alive and catching it to live beyond the moment. Because you read, you saw it too, just like you've taken me into diners and hotel lobbies and introduced me to people I've never met in your writing! How cool is that?
9:38 PM
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