It is a rather dreary Easter Monday. My morning has been slow and demands are low. I have provided room service to my two sleepover granddaughters, I’ve washed eggs, written in my journal of course and looked back at Easter last year and the year before. Regular morning things that make up so many of my days. It occured to me the other day on my wood road walk how predictable my walk regime is. I begin with petitions, prayers and requests of sorts that mirror the concerns of the day. I begin that lineup with thoughts of putting my oxygen mask on first, breathing and believing that I must be all right before I can do anything else. I thought how repetitive my petitions are. I thought perhaps saying them over and over and going through the same motions every day might be undermining any belief I have in a higher power that hears my prayers. The words ‘pray without ceasing’ came to mind. I thought of young children asking for something and how it seems more effective if they ask over and over. Then I thought of food and how it is required daily and medicine that is taken repeatedly until it is no longer necessary.So why not prayers and petitions and the very routine that feeds my soul day in and day out; waiting for answer to prayer , for respite, for a calm acceptance and for the deep assurance that whatever I am given strength and grace will accompany it. Several days ago my eyes were somehow cast on a particular tree in the foreground of hundreds of trees . In the white oval patch on the trunk of that tree I saw my son’s name.I do not know if it was carved there.Perhaps he himself took a tool and etched his name twenty some years ago, or someone else on this same walk stopped and holding him in their heart scratched the letters of his name. Or maybe nature, time and the tree’s natural growth split the bark in the exact configuration of the three letters spelling my oldest son’s name. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I came upon it excactly when I did and for me it was a gift , a connection and a place to stop and ponder on my daily walks. And these wood road walks are as nuturing as food and as healing as medicine.
