The obligations of the day

The sun is singing, singing over my head and over the clenched heads of morning-drenched daisies and the few glistening drops of rain that still huddle in the grass.  The week has been windy and cool and we have shut down from the summer and retreated into internal affairs.  But today as I walk distractedly down the garden the sun is calling, calling over my head and welcoming me back into favour. 

I am carrying the obligations of the day, folded in on them like a fist which is now opening and dropping, opening and dropping like a petal.  I have things to do but I have lost my rush and bother, and the hours ahead have stopped moving so fast, have stopped clamping the edge and sucking time into a tight box.  There are roses here to notice, sprays of yellow-flushed white adorning the hawthorn, and the lavatera is opening, pink-veined cups with sceptres at their centre.

I will take my troubles and lay them down, I will breathe in and hold the peace of the day, then pour out my pressures into the patient air.  I will plant roses in my hara to perfume and still my dark, moving centre.  I will listen to the babble of voices there like a friendly aunt, listen and hold their fretting until they feel safe to stop.  And I will invite the steady sweep of the spirit of God that is singing, singing over my head to fill and enfold my inside and outside world.