Incarnation, part 2

Alongside pictures, and more pictures, and poems by other people, there are also words I’ve shared on Instagram - not enough to fill a blog post, but moments that hold incarnation too. Moments of God, unknown, being surely in a place. Moments of love becoming.

And so I’ve shared these, unedited, below. With the pictures that went with them, and at the end, a blessing I came across just yesterday. A blessing for the story.

An ordinary walk

Today I just walked.

Not idyllic. Traffic fumes, nettles, cowpats, cows. A day when the things that break my heart were especially present.
I was reminded of Jan Richardson’s Blessing For The Broken Hearted, thought of how footsteps are like heartbeats.

Also of things I’ve read recently about moss, and a reminder that I want to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book about it.

Walking didn’t change anything, except (my) Robin rolled in a cowpat so she is now extra clean and soft.
We will just keep walking.

A harvest

Harvesting something from this year, stepping into briars and nettles, reaching right through thorns, like a long uphill climb in the rain, costs more than spines left in the skin and long scratches raising red and stains and stings.

Listening to the little voices of tiny fruits amongst the tangle and tearing and shrinking and dying branches

and hardening hedgerows and muddying paths.

Holding these with their fragile shining skins and sweet and sour juices.

Making something.

And Robin patiently waits, with her blackberry shiny nose, until we keep walking.

My nana, Ann Finlay, 1935-2021

Things I think you gave me
A wild heart
And a contemplative one
Anger
At the pain of the world
That we need stories
A full to brimming table of trying to make new and beautiful little things
The wisdom in the eyes of a dog
The mystery of what they dream about

That God dwells in the space between
That God is in it all
To walk up a mountain with a small faithful furry person
Look over a lake or the sea
Being barefoot in water
Writing poems

The Pilgrims’ Way

Saw this blackberry that didn’t get the memo not to boldly offer its sweetness to a winter world.
And what I think was a stonechat.

And these yews that held a silence and stillness different to the tall rustling trees I’d walked under on the Old Way the day before.

I think walking IS a prayer.
Not just praying while you walk. Not holy thoughts. The assembly of bones on the ground. The weary muscles and small movements onward and honest conversation with each bit of land, along this path of many pilgrims.

A blessing for Christmas

May the comfort of the mountains

The sweetness of alyssum

The wonder of a mossy forest

The wisdom of a spider

The brave love of winter blackberries

And the peace of a sleeping puppy

Be yours this Christmas

And the blessing of

(as my nana would say)

That Which We Call God

Present, creative, full of life

Be with you

And remain with you always

And so in this new time, with all that is unknown, with all that is already present, with all that is dreamt of and dreaded, with all that is coming, and that has been, with all that will be made, and all that is mystery, a blessing for the year ahead:

Blessing the Story

You might think
this blessing lives
in the story
that you can see,
that it has curled up
in a comfortable spot
on the surface
of the telling.

But this blessing lives
in the story beneath
the story.
It lives in the story
inside the story.
In the spaces
between.
In the edges,
the margins,
the mysterious gaps,
the enticing and
fertile emptiness.

This blessing
makes its home
within the layers.
This blessing is
doorway and portal,
passage and path.
It is more ancient
than imagining
and makes itself
ever new.

This blessing
is where the story
begins.

Jan Richardson

A Proper Walk

Incarnation, part 1