A Sabbath Table: To Re-call is to Re-turn

I was talking to my Prince (my fiance) and telling him i like the nature here so much i might just start getting up for the sunrise. Knowing me too well he just smiled and said "are you sure you don't mean staying up for the sunrise?" And while that sure wasnt the plan, its actually what happened today, here i am still up and the birds out there are singing their predawn "Morning Offering"

The Morning Offering was mentioned in the last post, about setting a hopeful, grateful and trustful tone for the day. But it doesnt stop there of course, things can go astray throughout the day and we sure may need to "call ourselves back". This site wisely suggests a simple prayer such as "All for Thee, Jesus!"

Personally, what helps me, if i will let it that is, is just simply remembering....remembering that i have permission to be happy, permission even as fill in the blank is happening. Permission to be happy because it is safe to be happy. Safe to be happy becuase i am truly in His care. If i had to translate this into a prayer it would be perhaps, "Lord i put my trust in you". If i had to translate this into an image it is those very birds out there doing their "morning praise" like they do every morning before the dawn...and who then re-new and re-turn with little songs coming forth throughout the day. If the birds can re-call like this, surely we might as well....and its such a healing image i feel.

In traditional Judaism there is a phrase i love, "he who has returned". Its referring to one who has returned to their faith, and i think this re-mem-ber-ing is a sort of return we must do daily, its qoutidian. I was listening to a radio interview with Genevieve Kineke the other day where she was reminding that the righteous man sins seventy times seven times a day. We should just know this, be prepared for it, prepared to forgive. I'm not talking about staying with folks who are deliberately harmful, but rather those that care and still fall...becuase we all do. Yet each morning its wiped clean, a new start with a song of praise...and we need to give that new start each day to each other too i feel, and to ourselves. A realizing that this is qoutidian, something we must do over and over...and yet there is healing there.

Its like cleaning and ordering, that great "qoutidian mystery"...it has to be done over and over again for sure, and yet thats no reason to give up and not do it, becuase as we do it there is truly healing, there is beauty, and there is fruit and growth as well. So it is with our re-turn-ing i think. Our re-turn-ing is perhaps a hidden gift He has given us.

I love this qoute from The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and "Women’s Work" by Kathleen Norris:

"It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to despair and yet also be at the core of our salvation. We express this every time we utter the Lord’s Prayer. As Simone Weil so eloquently stated it in her essay, "Concerning the Our Father," the "bread of this world" is all that nourishes and energizes us, not only food but the love of friends and family...She reminds us that we need to keep praying for this food, acknowledging our needs as daily, because in the act of asking, the prayer awakens in us the trust that God will provide. But, like the manna that God provided to Israel in the desert, this "bread" cannot be stored. Each day brings with it not only the necessity of eating but the renewal of our love of and in God."

A Blessed Sabbath everyone : )

(Image from Chant Art)