‘Tis the season for making lists
There’s a lot of list making this time of year. Gratitude lists. Christmas lists. New Year’s Resolutions. Join Salvage Garden in creating a list of 10,000 reasons or ways to give thanks/ be grateful/ keep trying/ hold on to hope…
Number and add short phrases or anecdotes. List your name or remain anonymous. Collect responses from others! Email your list to [email protected]. Responses may be used in oral and/or written reflections/publications by Salvage Garden and the Rev. Melissa Guthrie. Your submission authorizes Melissa to edit and/or publish the content.
What’s on your list? Why 10,000 reasons or ways to keep on…?
At a recent sensory worship service, music minister Danie Jones played “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord),” by Matt Redman. We read “What We Need is Here,” by Wendell Berry; and “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver.
What We Need is Here by Wendell Berry
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Our reader added, “It’s not a summer day.”
We traced our hands and cut out the tracings. We made cutouts for some community members who couldn’t be with us that (not summer) day.
I invited Salvage Gardeners to think of a time when someone “gave them a hand.” What comes to mind for you? Someone helped you or encouraged you with their words, with some gesture of kindness…
Over and over I heard that “what we need is here.”
And still, I forget.
I have days when it’s hard to do… anything. Grief is a beast. Depression is depressing. Life is hard. Elementary and middle school and high school are hard. Parenting. Relationships. All difficult at times for any number of reasons.
There are emotional, spiritual, tangible realities that limit our capacity to give thanks/ be grateful/ keep on trying/ hold on to hope…
And still, STILL, “what we need is here.”
Help us create our list of 10,000 reasons. Your list will help me and others on difficult days. Our list will magnify hope, peace, joy, and love that so many are longing for in their lives, in our world.
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before us, Let us be singing when the evening comes…
When I can’t sing, when you can’t sing, may we know there is a song surrounding us. If you cannot hear the song, taste and smell and touch and feel the goodness and love, the 10,000 reasons to keep on.
