Saying Grace Over It All

The beauty is the message

Does anyone feel pre-apocalyptic vibes right now before this forecast heatwave?

I’ve been gardening upstate, which I lovingly call Xtreme Gardening™️, consisting of hacking through vines, brambles and pioneer growth that is making its way from the forest into the small plots I’m trying to tame. I’m covered in itchy no-see um or chigger bug bites (not clear which) from last weekend and am praying the insect gods will grant me a week’s relief from itchy welts and hives. My Benadryl cream is always at hand.

But this is my favorite time of the year upstate. My delphinium has bloomed, the foxglove make the front garden look like a cottage in England, the peonies burst into cream and oxblood powder puff, and the Scarlet poppies are an embarrassment of raw hot sex in the front yard. What must the neighbors think?

I sometimes fantasize about leaving New York City and living in the country. A simpler life, one of quiet walks and writing in the gazebo, the sound of the stream beside me lulling back into a white noise nap, the warm air that smells like green flowing in and out of my nose.

What would it look like to live in this quiet at all times? How would my brain fill the silence with my own chatter, anxieties and (wo)man made noise? Could I let it be quiet here? Is my fantasy just a seductive desire to feel nothing, to escape? Will life continue its relentless pace — illness, death, capitalism! — alongside dancing fireflies in late June, groundhog babies eating side-by-side with their mothers, a McDonald’s hash brown in the car with Ben days before his birthday? Yes.

I’m conscious of that feeling again — of holding dread and beauty at once. It is a difficult thing to hold both and the awareness is itself a type of work. The cottage garden dream and the tsunami that always seems to be coming. A perfect day visiting yard sales and s’mores on the deck followed by the news that the U.S. has now entered the war with Iran.

This is what life looks like today: learning to tend what you can while the warning bells ring, Benadryl cream in one hand while the other keeps reaching toward something whose name you’re still learning to say.

I received a rejection letter for a fellowship I’d applied to participate in this coming year in Paris. I felt sad, but also knew this is not the right time for me. How do you hold both the disappointment and the rightness of it? Another thing requiring grace — saying yes to a door closing when you’re not sure what door might open. I need to focus on publishing my first book. I need more time living the topic I plan to study: the role of beauty in times of uncertainty, sorrow and grief. I don’t want to write too much about it now. I am always wary of “wasting” the juice by writing about something before it’s ready. But I do want to say that the hardest thing is living in this duality. Pragmatically reviewing the news of the day, the appointments to keep, while taking in the truth and beauty of this broken world, remaining open to awe. Asking for grace and not gritting my teeth too hard while waiting for it to arrive.

When I was young we always “said grace” before dinner, showing gratitude and thanks for our meal.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Despite not having recited that in easily 30 years (I am not a practicing Catholic) the prayer came to me in its entirety as I was remembering our pre-dinner practice. And yet, I couldn’t even really tell you what it meant until I paused and examined the words.

The prayer asks for blessings, both of self and of the food already bestowed upon — for the current moment, for what is. But there’s something else: “which we are about to receive.” It’s holding both gratitude for what’s already given and a plea for strength to receive what’s coming, wanted and unwanted alike.

Maybe this is what my psyche was offering me — not nostalgia, but instruction. The spiritual technology I need now: how to bless what is while asking for help with what’s coming.

This is the work of today — learning to say grace over everything. The Benadryl cream and the reaching hand. The tending and the waiting. All of it requiring blessing, all of it requiring me to ask for grace not to grit my teeth too hard while I wait.

Maybe this is the work for all of us right now, in whatever garden we’re trying to tend, whatever warning bells are ringing in our particular corner of the world. Learning to hold both hands full — one blessing what we have, the other open to receive what’s coming. The fellowship rejection and the perfect poppies. The war news and the yard sale day. Not knowing which will be gift and which will be burden, but asking for the grace to receive it all without gritting our teeth too hard while we wait.