Blue Iris

With a move to the cooler climate some fourteen years ago, I began to add plants to the property from my childhood. Plants I knew would grow where I now lived. Lilac, Mock Orange, Iris. The iris were planted along the driveway, and every Spring the iris would appear.

About 4 years ago, only the green leaves would appear. No buds, no blooms. Then this year one plant decided to bloom. A beautiful white and purple bloom. The sight of the single iris with the woods in the background, literally stopped me in my tracks. I was driving out of the driveway, saw the iris, and pulled up next to it and took this photograph.

Stunning.

Mary Oliver penned the poem, It Doesn’t Have to Be a Blue Iris.

Praying

“It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

I’m learning to pray. Of course I’ve been praying for a good while, but not in the way I am praying these days. I feel like I’m in conversation with God. Right now it’s not as shared a conversation as that I crave. That’s probably because I’m better at speaking to God than listening to God. Nonetheless, the praying conversation is off and on during each day, and at night I drift off in mid-conversation.

As Mary Oliver reminds us, prayer does not have to be elaborate, dramatic, scene-stealing– just pay attention to what is around us, patch a few words together into thanks; with silence for listening.

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