Life is a little like a thrift shop bag sale-- Here's your sack- fill it up and do with it what you can. This morning, I rummaged around and dug up a well worn item called gratitude, and here's a little patchwork quilt that I'm going to make with the bits.
scrap #1: My parents. Although by the world's standard, they are undeniably OLD (mom just turned 80, and dad 84), my parents have got to be among the most gracefully aging pair in the bunch. Where one expects age to cement "getting set in your ways", they have proved to soften with grace and mercy with each passing year. Never known to meddle, they nonetheless offer support, love, and acceptance to their eight offspring in more than one heartbreaking set of circumstances.
scrap #2: Nature. I don't begin to understand the mysteries of God, and don't like to dwell on the big, huge, "WHY" questions. But when I see the prairie ditches swaying magically with bullrushes that no man planted there, I watch the bizarre beauty of backyard campfire turning dead wood into uncontainable dancing colour, when I watched flawed humanity act in selfless and loving ways, then I can't help but be grateful for my big, mysterious, creative and loving God.
scrap #3: Cheese. Have you ever gone to the grocery store and indulged in picnic food like olive spread, baguette, camembert, cheddar, Boursin, and maybe some pastrami or shaved turkey? Oh- but you should!! It's remarkably easier to be grateful when you have savoured the sharp flavours of cheese with a little red wine to wash it down.
It goes without saying that there are heaps more scraps. But on this particular bag sale, these are what I've made use of.
9 comments:
mmmmm... cheese
i think i prefer your picnics to our KFC adventures...
Love it! This is a rich quilt, glowing with velvets, brocades, Chinese silk, in glowing colors of burnt red, deep purples, buttery golds, and midnight blue. Peiced together in a crazy patch style with an artist's hand stitches.
And you might want to point out to Brian that you just got ANOTHER response! Love you too! Laura
patch #4 COFFEE.
xo
You're brill.
From another cheese fiend xx
Good cheese, pure dark chocolate and fine red wine. Those are some of my scraps. Thanks for reminding me.
What a spectacular post.
I am awed by you. You are in the midst of a very difficult and shadowy circumstance...and you pull gratitude out of your bag...with grace and humor.
Thanks for the beautiful quilt made from your wonderful scraps!
Your parental units sound wonderful with a capital W.
I am glad that you have a nice worldview that allows you to enjoy the world and not waste every second deconstructing it to see how it works.
My Doctor always says "What's Life without cheese?...Longer!"
Love. This is what life has boiled down to for me in the last 2 1/2 weeks. Without love, nothing makes any sense. Love is the stitching that keeps the quilt together. Sometimes the stitching comes apart in places, but it's always repairable.
Post a Comment