To sit and watch the leaves dance in our sunroom– this is healing. After all of the rushed and busied things– the hundreds of things I did today, the mundane, taxing tasks– the ones that were, I forget, of infinite importance to a child’s life–to sit, now, instead and watch the movements of leaves.
Sunlight alights without warning, and what was lovely grows lovelier still. My detail-numbed mind stretches its wearied body in the vast simplicity of this thing, these movements. And all is quiet. Those leaves are being stirred in the breeze by an unseen hand– constantly. When are its leaves ever still? How delightful to watch something that is always moving yet hardly ever makes a sound. All of my students– all 27 of them– are an eternal gift– of unfathomable significance. The mere sound of their voices, every time they speak, is of far grander importance than these leaves could ever be, even with these movements that seem to utter a secret language. But we need this– this time to sit and watch, to just be, to let our tired eyes rove over something so simple– this living, breathing beauty being offered to us just for rest.
Have you ever realized? This tree– this one right here– you might be the only one in the whole wide world looking at it in this moment–really looking at it, loving it, I mean. You might be the only one in the whole world praising God for it right here, right now. And those leaves are saying something, something of their joy in your noticing, your realizing where they are from, saying something of how glad they are their Father is being praised for each one of them in particular.
If we are meant to praise him, if our souls find rest there, then what a privilege it is to thank him for that branch right there that no one else in the world may have noticed.
Perhaps we are continually in the act of laying gratitude on the things of this world like blankets, tucking each glory in before we can finally tip-toe out to see the milky way.
My job– teaching 27 hearts to love each other, 27 minds to love the good things, the true and beautiful. Numbers are nothing, grades are nothing– their faces, their names, their souls– this is what matters. The complexities that make up their mind and their heart, their thoughts and their feelings–all of it is an utter miracle that cannot be contained in words any more than their energy and joy can be contained by our classroom walls. Their love can’t be contained either. They, perhaps more than any of us adults, love with everything in them– the world has not taught many of them the sting of leavings yet, and even those who have learned it do not understand it, and have not given up on loving.
Have you ever realized? What a gift it is to encounter people? No matter the age. To talk with another living soul, another body housing an infinitely complex soul, entirely unique and– yes– full of glory? And when you notice others, when you really look at them, love them, I mean– you might be the only one in the whole world to praise God for that person’s life in that moment.
There’s a never-ending harmony morphing and clinging to every changing pattern of this wild life, like that chord that dawns on you when you’re sitting in symphony hall and you know in a moment that all shall really truly be well– all manner of things. This harmony, this undercurrent—it is the sound of never-ending praises floating up, up into the rafters of this earthly house, mingling with the secret voices of saints before and after– and by some extraordinary grace, we get to take up these harmonies so that there is never a moment that goes by where our Father is not being praised.
Oh Lord, when we leave this house, may we leave behind us so many tucked-in glories that those rafters are reverberating with our songs of gratitude. Are they lullabies, Lord? I feel somehow that in our loving, we are working alongside you to set this world deeper, deeper into sleep so that she will one day awaken to the final, true dawn. Let it be, Oh Lord, let it be.
"For Quiet Confidence.
O GOD of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen" (BCP).