Every year I make small loose leaf 5×7 inch calendars for my daughters and their spouse/significant other. I try to use only photographs made during the year. So for my 2021 calendar all of my images were made in 2020, except for the December image which I made last December. This year because of staying closer to home from March through the end of the year, I thought I might have difficulty finding images I liked for the calendar.
Calendar Time
But I discovered that though my photographs were made close to home I had actually made new photographs almost every single day from early March to the end of the year. One of the benefits of the pandemic for me has been that because there was little else to do I focused more on creative activities than ever before. And focusing on creating has lifted my days from ordinary to extraordinary.
“What is needed is only a pausing of the heart so the spirit can take wing and be lifted toward the infinite.”
― Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
What have you learned that you want to take forward?
So my question for you today is, what is one thing/activity/learning that you will take forward into your post-pandemic life? My one thing is to keep my days much more open and free so that I will have the energy and motivation to create every day.
I have walked a quiet path today. I have done no great good, no great harm. I might have wished for more—some dramatic occurrence, something memorable. But there was no more. This was the day I was given, and I have tried to meet it with a humble heart.
How little it seems. We seek perfection in our days, always wanting more for ourselves and our lives, and striving for goals unattainable. We live between the vast infinities of past and future in the thin shaft of light we call ‘today.’ And yet today is never enough.
— Kent Nerburn, Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
Making Space for Creating
I choose making space for creative activities because I experience great joy in writing every day and making images every day, painting and making things.
“Now is the moment when I must pause and lift my heart — now, before the day fragments and my consciousness shatters into a thousand pieces. For this is the moment when the senses are most alive, when a thought, a touch, a piece of music can shape the spirit and color the day. But if I am not careful — if I rise, frantic, from my bed, full of small concerns — the mystical flow of the imagination at rest will be broken, the past and the future will rush in to claim my mind, and I will be swept up into life’s petty details and myriad obligations. Gone will be the openness that comes only to the waking heart, and with it, the chance to focus the spirit and consecrate the day.”
― Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
I don’t want to stay home and isolated forever though. As the months of pandemic roll by I greatly miss actually seeing my friends and family members in person. And I miss hugs and playing board games around the table and laughing together as we have dinner together. As with all else in life, I need a balance of alone time and reaching outward into the world.
Gratitude for Small Graces
One thing the pandemic has brought me is an even greater realization that our days are precious and full of small graces. None of us knows how many days on this earth we have.
None of us is promised tomorrow. Today in all its beauty and sadness and complexity is all we have. This light we see may be the last such day we have on earth. There is no certainty, beyond the fact that one day we will have no tomorrow, and that is is not ours to know when that day will be.
— Kent Nerburn, Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
Each day I look for the small graces that are present and give thanks for the gift of life and moments of grace. Every morning I tell myself, “Today is going to be a wonderful day.” And every day I do what I can to share the moments of grace that I experience and to care for the earth and all beings.
“We are not all called to be great. But we are all called to reach out our hands to our brothers and sisters, and to care for the earth in the time we are given.”
― Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Several years ago a friend from college gave me the book, Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life. I recently reread some of Nerburn’s beautiful essays in this book and was struck once again with the beauty of his writing.
0 Comments