I
My alarm rings at 3:20 a.m. (How bad do you want it?) No snooze button anymore: feet on the floor, quick bathroom trip, then outside I go by 3:30, carrying a butt-pad and a rarely-used flashlight. I can’t see much before the sun’s up: good, because neither can the neighbors (two- and four-leggeds all). At that hour, it feels like the world is mine: nobody’s awake yet, no responsibilities to attend to, plenty of time before I start the routines of prepping for the day. Actually, this has become the most essential part of getting ready, my morning recharge, a time set aside for prayerful observation.
I sit on a low marble bench facing east, staring over and around the peaked roof of my neighbors’ looming Victorian house. Facing west, I’m stymied by my other neighbor’s nightly insecurity light which illuminates three lawns at once. Looking north, my far-back neighbor’s kitchen light may go on when they get up, forcing me to shift my gaze to offer them some privacy. Good-old south: my house blocks street and streetlights both.
Such is the inglorious place that I sit each morning. This inglorious, yet natural temple, surrounded by peoples, yes, but also by brushy rose bushes that conceal mice and squirrels. And by a rare quarter-acre of suburb woods that taps my wilderness mind when I face slightly east of north. And my island of overgrown dogbane plants that save me some mowing and provide plenty of natural cordage material. Plus the big-‘ol catalpa tree as the lawn’s centerpiece and privacy screen in the summer. Across the street is a fenced-in, thickly-wooded park which once sported a gap in its fencing that allowed the local deer herd (twelve at its peak) to migrate back and forth between secluded forests and the maze of manicured lawns and hedgerows on my side of the fence. It seems that the Deer-ty Dozen got trapped “over there” when maintenance patched the gap. I hope they took their ticks with them.
Sometime around late August, I celebrated one year of daily morning sit-area time. A whole year! Not perfect, of course, with a few travel days that prevented my regular outings. For all the rest, though, I’ve come to know 3:30 quite well, and 3:30 has come to know me. How many times in the past I’ve heard testimony proclaimed by my nature-mentors: go to your sit area daily! Unspoken law! One of the most important rituals, they say! The greatest of all teachers! I finally did it. And was it as good as people describe?
Most definitely, yes.
It ain’t all puppy dogs and unicorns, though. Monotony exists, for sure, as do trials and tribulations. My droopy eyes and nodding head were a battle when I didn’t get enough sleep. Other days I had to pep-talk myself outside, remembering the sub-zero warnings from last night’s news. Donning layer after layer of warm gear, the cold wind greeted me at the first crack of the door, and even a couple of gloved fingers could barely move by the end of my sit. Other days I went out in shorts and a t-shirt, weighed down by sticky humidity and swatting at the skeeters whining in my ears. There was that time when I misjudged the clothing-to-temperature ratio, thought I’d be fine, then ended up shivering uncontrollably by the end and warming up in the hot shower ahead of my usual routine. All good twists in the cordage.
I used to be envious of my night-owl brother who would share stories of stars and constellations and planetary alignments that he’d enjoy well after I collapsed into bed. Guess what: stars are still there in the morning for the early-birds amongst us. Stars! Such wonder! A glimpse into the unfathomable abyss of miracle that our existence is. (Stare too long and hard into the night, and that massive void sometimes notices and stares back into you.) Shooting stars are a treat: every one of them sparks child-like glee and an audible gasp at the glory of it all; they, like four-leaf clovers, aren’t so rare once you start looking for them. I watched constellations rising in the east during the forty-ish-minute sit, marking them against the silhouettes of the surrounding landmarks. When I started last year, Orion was lounging flat-out on the eastern horizon. I knew I made it to home plate the other day when the clouds parted and I saw him in the exact same position, his belt perpendicular to the ground: a whole year of traveling with the cosmos! Oh, and the daily surprise of seeing where the moon will be situated that morning, and how far it will slide as I observe. Did you know: it changes phases too?! Like, every night! OMG, this show is so worth the admission ticket!
The animals never really warmed up to me, nor I to them. Freekin’ deer with their stomp/fake-feed/head-bob/stompagain ritual. Just go away if you’re going to be all pissy like that! I had to gently tell a baby raccoon that he was headed totally in the wrong direction—straight at me!—and that he’d better reroute. The rare fox carried an air of royalty when it graced me with its presence, moonlight reflecting silver off its back. One even paused not fifteen feet in front of me in the snow, two paws on a stump, two paws on the ground, and head tilted in a classic NatGeo photograph position. Good fortune gave me a daytime glimpse of a juvenile bear hightailing it through my back yard a few months back: a reminder that even in the suburbs, you never know what wildlife will pay a visit. My biggest fear before the bear: that the neighborhood skunk would sneak up on me and send me out and about that day with a full advertisement of my morning encounters. The one time a skunk did sneak up on me, I was upwind of it, and my scent scared it away! (You know you need new deodorant when…) In other olfactory news, a deer came passing through—not one of the Dozen—and it was so close that I could smell it. Months later in a similar set of conditions, I was able to note that raccoons smell very different than deer.
Migrating autumn birds tapered off into the introspective silence of winter; sometimes even a lonely silence, out there before the world wakes up. It was a morning cardinal that registered the first bird call of the coming spring, and then a season of cacophony that began at the faintest hint of light each new day. More light greeted me around the summer solstice, leaving me more exposed to neighbors’ eyes, but in exchange for the pinks and oranges of high clouds kissed by sunlight. Then in late July (I know the exact day!) came the first drone of a cricket that marked midsummer and the slow descent towards autumn again. Fallen leaves were covered by snow, snow became water and mud, mud burst through with grasses and wildflowers and lawnmowers, and we all now await the next shedding of tree leaves. I rode the seasons as on a gentle carousel of lights and colors and sounds.
It wasn’t fleeting foxes or birdsong symphony or astronomical awe that solidified my year-long commitment, though. It was prayer. This was forty minutes or so each morning just to pray; all that nature stuff was bonus. The world needs more prayer. I need to pray more. And pray I did. And I learned about prayer. The biggest discovery: I really suck at it. But I kept showing up anyway. And I’ve come to believe that simply showing up is well over half the offering in itself. Take all those hours, add them up, divide by twenty-four, and I did a ten-day prayer retreat this past year, split up into insightful, bite-sized, deer-stompin’, fox-posing, starstruck chunks.
I can now add my crotchety voice to the lineage of nature-yea-sayers, spouting the same-old same-old: unspoken law! One of the most important rituals, I say! The greatest of all teachers! Or so declares this hypocrite who waited way too long to change my life like this. The plants, the animals, the stars, and the Creator of it all: they’re all there waiting for you, putting on a magnificent show whether you’re part of it or not. The earth is in desperate need of love and prayers. When the alarm goes off tomorrow, let your feet hit the floor and glide quickly from carpet to grass with foxlike royalty. Spend time each day in even the most inglorious sit-area locale, and it will quickly become the most remarkable temple of God: a temple surrounding you, and a temple equally within you.
II
“Serapion the Sindonite traveled once on a pilgrimage to Rome. Here he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always in one small room, never going out. Skeptical about her way of life — for he himself was a great wanderer — Serapion called on her and asked, ‘Why are you sitting here?’ To which she replied, ‘I am not sitting; I am on a journey.’”1
Still I sit as I sit still. My legs are stiff from the position, but the lack of movement encouraged two foxes to dart across the dark lawn with hardly a glance in my direction. The stillness coaxed in a curious screech owl silhouetted against the less-dark cloudiness, cocking its head as it worked to determine my identity. Stillness and a fixed gaze upwards were eventually rewarded with a shooting star streaking across the sky, mirrored by the smile stretching across my face. I sit. I watch. I pray. While the world and the sky and the night-animals spin and stalk and run and fly around me.
Among the many and varied gifts of the sit area, I’ve come to most appreciate its stability over this past year. Each day I sit on the same bench, in the same yard, but it’s never the same bench nor the same yard. Today a thick fog rolls in like an all-enveloping curtain; my lungs relax as each breath mingles a medicinal mix of air and water. And I sit. Tomorrow the chill of fall will catch me off guard, as will the crisp, clear view of the stars after a week of that lingering morning fog. Again I sit. A month ago (or three…who knows?) Orion was laying on the horizon; today he’s up and racing across the cosmos, bow drawn in active pursuit of his eternal hunt. And still I sit. The deer snort and run away, the skunk noses through the mowed lawn, the raccoons follow each other in a line as if commuting to work. And I experience all of this because I sit still. I watch. I pray.
I sat and watched last winter’s soils thaw and spring forth with tiny shoots. Those tiny, indistinct sprouts matured into recognizable plants as they inched upwards day by day. As they grew their stems airward, they also grew roots earthward. I’ve grown over this year, too, and I can feel that my own roots—mostly unconsciously—have taken hold and grabbed firm to the soils below. As my body sits each morning and experiences this place through my senses, my heart also sits in this place, experiencing itself as a temple inside a greater temple. As my body roots and stills itself within the swirl of experiences, my heart, with similar stillness, holds watch within the spirit of the place: physical reflected onto the spiritual and back. Rooted in the stable centeredness of heart and landscape both, I do not become the center of my world, but simply one more centered, native inhabitant among thousands. By sitting, and watching, and praying, I make this place home as the surrounding life rolls out its welcome mat.
Not limited to my backyard, I can experience the same sense of rootedness even when I travel and find sit areas in new and different locations: lakeside in a small Pennsylvania community, or beachfront on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, or even streetside while visiting my nephew. The stability and regularity, the rooting effects of my regular sit-area practice created a skill of place-connection within me that doesn’t rely on benches or property boundaries or street address. By practicing the sit area in one location, I’ve been able to transfer that same sense of connectiveness to every place that I’ve dropped my butt. The lake becomes a familiar mirror, the ocean a loving Grandmother, all while the roadside foxes move with the same recognizable body language that I’ve observed in the foxes at home. My being knows how to sit and watch; my being is slowly becoming a sit area no matter where my body wanders.
My hometown of forty-six years is positioned at the junction of three interstate highways, four major state roadways, and two large rivers that join in the heart of downtown; I once blamed the transience of friends and family on the many escape routes this city offers. As I’ve expanded my circle over the years, though, I see that transience has become the norm in many hometowns. Where once people put down roots and connected to their immediate environment, now jobs and salaries have become replacements for landscapes and investment into a community. Today’s big-warm houses take priority over the cold, alien neighborhoods they reside within, as will the next house after that, and the next. People today have forgotten how to sit in one place.
Humanity is in chaos right now because it lacks stability. The mental-health crisis, incurable political feuding, abuses of nature, wars and violence, all manner of addictions: the world needs to stop and sit and find its center again. And soon. Doing my part, I will choose to sit each morning, not just for my own uplifting and growth, but as a drop of stability added to the ocean of our human consciousness. Rooting myself helps hold the soils in place for others. May stillness itself be my prayer for all of humanity.
God, like the North Star, is the still, fixed, and unchanging center of the universe. And by imitating His stable stillness with body, mind, soul, and heart, I mysteriously journey nearer to Him. I pray that the effort will invisibly beckon a few others towards the same.
Still I sit as I sit still. Not in stagnation, nor in a rut, but as a dynamic and ever-evolving quest which proclaims, “I am not sitting; I am on a journey.”
III
One morning while St. Brigid was sitting with the blind nun Dara, she was struck by the grandeur of the earth and sky in the fresh dawn light. Realizing that Sister Dara was unable to appreciate this beauty, she prayed a blessing over her, and at once, the blind nun’s eyes were opened and she saw for the first time the sun in the east, and the trees and flowers sparkling with dew. Dara looked for a while, then turned to St. Brigid and said, “Close my eyes again, dear Mother, for when the world is visible to the eyes, then God is seen less clearly by the soul.” St. Brigid prayed again, and Dara became blind once more.2
I awake in the early morning darkness and stuff myself into seven layers of clothing; a winter’s sit takes extra preparation. I feel my way down the dark stairs, holding tightly to the railing. Grab the flashlight, slide on the clunker boots, walk the short path to the near-bench. The cold wind knocks bare tree branches together; I pull my hands deeper into my sleeves. A light snow tickles the tip of my nose; I tug the wool hat a little lower onto my forehead. A lone deer snorts at me for a while then runs off through the crunchy snow, all while my neighbor’s dollar-store windchimes tinkle their worthless noise. Whoever characterized the “silence and stillness” of winter clearly never lived a suburb’s winter sit area.
I’m now over a year and a half into my daily sits at the dark edge before dawn—six seasons of experiences. Animals are sparse visitors these days; birds are long-gone south or sleeping still. The raccoons shifted to winter routes that mostly bypass my yard. This area of the country is notorious for cloudy days…cloudy nights too, I’ve found. The stars and moon add occasional inspiration, but it’s most often a featureless sky that glows from the city lights below. Gone is the fresh excitement of the outdoor experience. Gone are the daily discoveries of natural delights.
What’s left after the dissolution of novelty? The same thing that inspired this commitment in the first place: prayer. It draws me unquestioningly out into teeth-chattering wind chills. It calls me to sit, huddled for warmth and covered in snow. I cannot refuse its command to press on, no matter the weather, no matter the fatigue or the lure of warm bedding just a few paces away. I couldn’t bear the remorse of skipping even one day now: what wonders would I miss in my natural temple?…hardly a concern. What desperately-needed prayers would I fail to make for the world at large?…now you have my attention. I sit to give, not to get.
Locations for focused prayer-time seem best chosen for their closedness; grand vistas would likely hinder the process of surrender with miles of landscape and hours of delights for the mind to feast upon. A cave might be the ideal location: nothing there to face but yer-own-self and God. I don’t live in cave country, so instead I arise early in the cave of night, I walk the rutted path, I pray the rutted prayers, I bow my head and offer all of it for the goodness of the whole.
As an experiment, I once went out and sat in the light of afternoon. The usual landmark silhouettes of branch tangles revealed their inner architecture and took on whole new shapes in the light. I could distinguish the individual blades of yellowed grass and the nearby deer tracks pressed deep into the muddywet lawn. Birds were a delight, flitting, singing, chick-a-dee-dee-dee-ing a smile onto my face. Such life! Such a spectacle when I can see the surroundings! My eyes darted left and right, up and down, trying to take in the whole show: clouds, treetops, sunshine, animals, all. Not too long into my reverie, though, I wondered with concern: where did my prayer go? Close my eyes again, Mother, for God is now less clearly in my soul. So exquisite a Creation naturally leads to contemplation of its awe-inspiring Creator, but sometimes it’s easier to see the Light when all the other lights have been extinguished.
There is, of course, a time and a place to revel in the beauties of nature. God exists in every nook and cranny of this grand world, everywhere present, if not with equal fullness of experience: like I’d expect to realize more divinity in a shimmering alpine lake than in a casino’s custodial closet. But whether lake or closet, prayer can open the door to that divinity wherever you are, no matter what your eyes see or don’t see. It’s just an easier process with the temple of nature as refuge and catalyst both: the earth lovingly reaches out and folds us into her singing of praises to our common Creator.
I want to join that chorus too, but to be clear, I’m no good at prayer. The world needs prayer artists; I’m still gripping a broken crayon in my fat spiritual fingers. An ascetic once commented that the hour between four a.m. and five is golden for prayer, between five a.m. and six is silver. I opt for gold, grasping at every advantage I can get. Unfortunately, morning “prayers” are too often spent thinking about yesterday’s dramas and today’s worries-to-come. I can at least consistently intend the sacrifice of my time and free will, hoping that these might be acceptable offerings in the name of healing and goodness. The alarm stirs me from sleep and still I don the winterized clothes, still I sit in the stillness of pre-morning’s relative peace. O Lord, teach me to pray; pray Thou Thyself within me, ‘cause if You leave it to me, it won’t even rise to the label.
There have been a few rare days, scattered like jewels amongst gray stones, when I’ve unexpectedly tapped into something larger…or more accurately, Someone larger tapped undeservedly into me. My heart is opened, nature opens, and we all, like hollow vessels, are filled with the outpourings of grace. Prayer bubbles forth like water from a spring, welling up in heart and mind, softly flowing outwards through trembling lips and teary eyes. In a single moment, a flash of insight floods my being; love and compassion become real—visceral—and my spirit bleeds with heartache for the suffering of our injured world, along with crushing regret for my own sinful contributions to that suffering. I’ve learned to savor these rare glimpses through unveiled eyes, because eventually, and in its own time, the glow fades, the tears cease, and my yard descends from glorious temple back to its nowhere status again. I’m left shellshocked with lingering sensations of both overwhelming gratitude and humbling contrition. Heart-memories of these gifts of prayer will beckon me out again tomorrow.
Sadly, my time is up for now; I’ve had generously more than my allotment of grace. I pick up the unused flashlight and stamp my return tracks over the dozens of others still frozen on the rutted trail. The sharp wind takes one more bite at my hands and wet cheeks before I escape back into the warm capsule of the mundane, closing the door behind me. My blind eyes have seen more in today’s morning darkness than I ever have at high noon.
When I started this sit-area adventure, I feared skunks; even a distant sighting of black-and-white had me running back to the house. One time a skunk snuck up close, scented me on the wind, then ran away before I had the chance to retreat. Another day, I had no time to react as one bounded under my bent legs next to the bench. Having built some understanding of their habits through these encounters, I recently steeled myself and let one approach me to sniff around, a female by its size. She moved behind me and out of my peripheral vision while I sat still as stone. Then she poked the outside of my bare foot with her cool nose, followed by lick, lick, lick from heel towards toes. After several tense moments of being tasted, I gently—politely—lifted my leg to shoo her off; I didn’t want her to think that she had found breakfast! Even then, with raised tail (gulp) and nose bobbing at scents, she seemed confused rather than scared, and soon turned and waddled off in search of more cooperative food. Exhale. My heartbeat and shaky hands let me know that my adrenals still work!
I learned about skunks through observation, and slowly came to believe that they posed no immediate harm. Ultimately, the slow transition from retreating-feet to licked-feet is a symbolic journey of faith. Which got me thinking…
A literature professor of mine once declared that synonyms are a myth, that each word has its own particular flavor and presence that can never stand in for another. Speaking of flavor: the words “tasty,” “delicious,” “scrumptious,” “yummy,” and “delectable” all share similar real estate in a thesaurus, but they’re as different from one another as a dog’s track is from a coyote’s, and from a fox’s. Read those words again slowly—feel each one—and you’ll see what I mean. Heck, even spelling it “flavour” changes its character!
“Belief” and “faith” are a pair of not-synonyms that I’ve pondered for a while. I can’t speak to any standardized usage of these words within my faith tradition, but I’ve come to my own understanding of the contrasting shades of meaning between them.
Faith is the target; belief is the journey towards. Faith is the fire; belief is the fuelwood. Faith is an eternal continuum; belief resides in temporal experiences. Faith is the solid foundation; belief is the hard-earned bricks that built it. Belief realizes; faith Knows.
(Might be worth another slow reading of those comparisons, too, before you move on.)
Faith gets me up each morning before dawn: I Know that this day’s sit will bring great reward; this day’s sit will challenge me. I build my belief in that statement every time I catch glimpse of an animal visitor, every time a scent on the wind tells the story of its journey, every time my heart melts into a new spiritual discovery. So too when I wrestle with my failures and inadequacies and find strength and perseverance in the struggle.
Faith anchors me in the consistent act of outdoor morning prayers, never needing or wanting to know the long-range effects of the efforts. Faith convinces my heart that even my poor prayers ripple out to the world as concentric rings on the pond of the universe. Belief sprouts from the miraculous answers to those prayer-questions, from those moments of deep and expansive dips into the enormity of prayer’s power. When the ripples hit the other side and bounce back my way, another few grains of belief-sand are added to my tiny anthill of faith.
Faith opens my heart to the world as reflection and reflector; internal and external are but a breath apart. Belief rides on the scent of rose petals, in the voice of a fox’s bark, within the awestricken pondering of stars suspended in the vastness of space, and each encounter deepens my relationship with the surroundings. My brain believed in the harmlessness of skunks from sensory observations; enough belief, in fact, that my heart had just enough nervous faith to let one approach.
Faith is the still, small voice which beckons me forward towards its ever-ascending heights. I want to be at the peak of its mountain, bumping my head on the heavens. Instead, I’m slashing through weeds and tripping on stones just beyond the trailhead. The sit area, for me, isn’t so much about the sit, or the area, or the skunks or trees or winds or soils. It’s much more about prying open my heart with the tools of belief, hoping and praying that faith might squeeze its way inside. Every raindrop, every birdsong, every squirrel track and shooting star and sunrise and teardrop: each of these tiny miracles can gift another inchworm’s-length of belief forward on this path of faith. Perhaps some day belief will completely dissolve into faith, in the same way that I don’t need to drop another stone to bolster my absolute faith in gravity.
A second-rate question these days: Do I believe in God? Yes, because I’ve seen His presence in so many sparkling facets of life. Better: Do I have faith in God? Yes, enough to keep me going, while accepting that there’s never a final destination, but instead an endless process of “faithing.” Which leads to the best question: Am I faithing in God? I sure hope that I can keep following this signpost pointing towards eternity. Faith, then, seems to be the purpose of life, an active growth, an assisted journey, the Vision behind all visions; a mustard’s-seed portion is said to move mountains.
The believing heart always lives in the space of a miracle . . . depth is present in everyday life, every day. With faith, life is a great mystery . . . we seek the eternal in the temporal, the invisible in the visible, and God in the human, constantly searching for divine gold in the earthly mire where it is scattered everywhere in every meeting, in every glance, in every little conversation we have.3
I see God as the sun; the saints like the stars. I hope that my life can squeeze out at least a few ephemeral blinks of an earth-bound firefly; faith declares that even these tiniest sparks of light still make a hurricane’s-worth of difference.
The alarm will ring again tomorrow. I’ll wipe the sleep from my eyes again tomorrow. After two years, I’ll walk outside tomorrow as if for the first time. Upon the anvil of my sit area, I’m pounding and shaping raw belief into a forged tool of faith. I’ll sit, I’ll watch, I’ll pray—again—and I’ll open my heart to the possibilities of eternity. Seated as finite, open to the infinite; believing in the action, faithing through the commitment. Skunk kisses and all.
V
I sit to egg.
Distractions are minimized within the confines of four walls. A padded dining-room chair substitutes for the hard stone bench while the warmth of forced-hot-air precludes the need for layers of clothing. The elements are mostly muted through double-paned windows, but the sun’s light still filters through the lace curtains. Instead of surrounding myself in nature, I envelop the natural shell of an egg with body, mind, and heart. I know how to sit outdoors and pray with the winds; I know how to sit indoors and pray with wax and shell. It’s the same heart no matter the surroundings; faith anchors me to the task, believing in the artistic potential of an egg-prayer sit area.
Here the fresh smell of morning dew is replaced with a hinted scent of hot beeswax. I swap the rustle of leaves and birdsong for recorded choirs of human voices raising ethereal hymns to the heavens. Stars are here, not hung from the concave roof of the black sky, but shining from the convex dome of a white shell: eight points, diamond-shaped, embellished with netting and fiery red, sparkling with symbolism and sliding down to earth, through my hand, dragging the whole cosmos along with it.
Plants rise from the edges: leaves unfurl on grapevines wrapped round in eternal circles. Stylized flowers pop golden petals in the midst of banded borders. Pussy willow branches—the first-budding sign of spring—stretch from top to bottom as if supporting the entire design, perhaps crossed with wheat’s abundance or the strength and persistence of oak leaves. I may even conjure the tree of life, spreading her arms as both bowing shelter and raised invocation.
Those branches sit light with perched birds while trapezoidal deer forage beneath. Chickens strut with forward lean across a shell of their own making. Stylized spiders and rams’ horns and bear paws offer more gifts from the animals: industry, leadership, bravery, respectively. Butterflies on the wing lilt through as reminders of childhood and the beauties borne through transformation. A menagerie of metaphor, a sanctuary of symbolism, the animals from my yard now dance their blessings upon my dining room table.
A decorative egg is not really the end-goal of my efforts; it’s merely the final landmark of those still and holy hours spent in prayer. Here the journey towards is the ever-blossoming goal: the sit, the gentle focus, an homage to beauty, to love, to symbol, and to shell. The whole world shrinks and squeezes itself through a tiny funnel’s hole from which flows my molten, waxen prayers. A repetition of lines becomes repetitions of invocations upon the altar of an egg. A circled band links me to infinity as I surrender myself like a warmed kistka in God’s hand. I sit in stillness, yet I journey through space and time, from the depths of forests to the heights of the clouds, from my heart to the recipient’s heart to the edges of the universe to the depths of the sea; all from the stable stillness of an unmoving body, journeying outwards and inwards within the span of each quiet breath. This intimate and private journey is finally betrayed by the completed, prettified shell. A pysanka is a journal entry which records my journey of prayer through its beauty. Indeed, its beauty will continue radiating that prayerfulness long after I’ve returned to the distractions of life.
Its ultimate purpose, whether indoors or out, is to sanctify this present moment with my attention and intention, to elevate the mundane to the celestial, to join earth to heaven through my hands and by the grace of God. I sit outside and surrender to the rhythm of prayer sheltered within the pre-dawn hush of anticipation; I sit inside and join my being to an infinite shell. Through the kistka of my body pours the fullness of my ancestry; it spreads outward through wax and prayer towards an infinite future. I am the point of connection, the one who stands in this present, holy moment and holds hands with the past and with the future. Outdoors in the temple of nature, my heart is saturated with prayer and beauty meant to elevate an indoor art to the same level of prayer and beauty. Nature etched onto my soul, and my soul etched into an egg, one wax-scratch at a time. No inner or outer, no subject or object; just an invisible oneness of experience within the sanctified temple of each blessed moment. So my faithing indeed declares.
That is to sit.
That is to egg.
Won’t you join me?
.
.
.
1 Benedicta Ward, ed. “The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers” (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 42.
2 https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2023/02/01/100406-venerable-brigid-bridget-of-ireland
3 https://orthochristian.com/158628.html