The Beginning Of March

The coffee tasted especially good this morning; my wife found a new variety at a local store and it is now a favorite.

I stepped outside to clip my fingernails, careful to keep the sun behind me as it slashed across the needle points and glass shards of frost on the grass. While I was about my business, I listened to the birds calling to each other across the hollers. Are the back-and-forth songs merely a “Hello! How are you this morning?” or are they a communication of important information, the inflection and tone and volume carrying nuances that only an avian heart can catch and decipher? The feeders were already quite busy, and a chickadee sat up in the Japanese maple by the front door and laughed at me while I performed my staccato self-manicure.

We’re reading this morning, my wife and I, and Dixee is curled up next to my legs, sharing the blanket thrown across them. She was looking out the window earlier, and my wife remarked on how the sunlight reflects back the color of her eyes like pennies. “She blinks slowly, as if she’s sad,” said my wife. Poor little double-chinned dog with her pink sweater and her role as sole dog in the farmhouse. She is ill-tempered these days with the barn cat; when she goes outside, he has to be on his guard, which is unfortunate, because he is exceedingly affectionate for a tom, like unto no other male cat I’ve known.

The ashes in the wood stove are cold now. Are they really the remnants of last night’s fierce red nuggets beneath the sticks of wood with the flames lashing at them like liquid, the damper adjusted just right, the play of firelight on the floor a counterpoint to the whisper of fingers turning pages and a crabby little dog’s snores?

And here it is, the morning speeding down to noon, and then the gloom of Monday’s workday in the spiritually-malnourished world out there, the place where the wrong questions are asked and the right ones remain locked behind grim mouths. But the day itself is a gift. It is a grace, and is not to be refused or looked at as a light thing. There will not be another like it.

The Valley of Our Lady Monastery in Wisconsin, a cloistered group of Cistercian nuns, are quietly asking for assistance in building a new monastery to replace the outdated and unsafe one in which they have lived for so long. Here is a beautiful short video of the nuns. If you are so inclined, a donation to their efforts would be of more lasting value than a pizza or a magazine.

A blessed winter Sunday in this season of Lent to all of you who are kind enough to stop and read here.

~ S.K. Orr