Spirit cuts like water though it all Carving out this emptiness So inner eye can see The soaring height of canyon walls within Walls whose very color, texture, form Redeem in beauty all my life has been The darkness and the light, the false, the true While deep below through my parts To resurrect my gravebound heart Making, always making, all things new.
"Peacemakers who sow in peace
raise a harvest of righteousness" (James 3:18)
We lay down our seeds in the dark.
Spring has been exceptionally cold
this year. Reluctant daffodils
have done little to convince me.
But we do the work of the faithful
farmer, rising in the pre-dawn hours.
It is a chosen hiddenness, a subtle
stretching over time, ear bent to listen
to the ground, ready for instruction.
Slow rhythmic movements are best.
Sometimes we simply show up,
holding borrowed pain, applying tears
or not. With a gentle
but demanding attention
to detail, we prepare the soil.
We plant. We wait.
~ Nancy Thomas from "Secret Sowers" in CLOSE TO THE GROUND
