"The Garden" A Guest Post by Kathleen Deyer Bolduc

In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. James 1:21 (The Message)

This morning I bring my Bible, journal, and cup of tea into the garden. A light mist hangs over the fields across the road, and I am surprised to see tender green shoots of corn forming rows where yesterday there was nothing but dirt. All around me, Dame’s Rocket thrusts purple and white spires toward the skies like holy hands reaching toward heaven. Boxwood shimmers greenly in the breeze, and a yellow weed at the fence line bursts into flame as a sunbeam peeks through the clouds.

The words of Psalm 63, my reading this morning, reverberate through my mind. “O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.”

In the sanctuary of this garden the desert landscape of my heart—that dry and dusty place where worry and anxiety about my son, Joel, who has autism, sometimes threaten to overwhelm me—turns to an oasis of green, flowing with streams of living water. Prayer rises up within me as praise.

No wonder poets and songwriters often refer to the garden as a metaphor for prayer.

            And yet, gardens are not always lush and beautiful. Think of the garden in the midst of drought. Parched plants wilt. Green leaves turn to brown. What was abounding in exuberance just weeks before suddenly sags under the weight of cloudless skies with no promise of rain in sight. Nothing will revive the drought-stricken garden like a soft, gentle, soaking rain.

            It is no different for the gardens of our hearts. Sometimes, in the words of my son Joel at the end of a major melt-down, “We need Jesus!”           

            As the mother of a son with autism, I was first drawn more deeply into prayer because of an intense thirst for God’s presence. I was desert-thirsty, parched for the living waters Jesus promises in John 4:14: “. . . but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The more I spend time with God the more the garden of my heart blooms with an unquenchable love for the things of the Spirit. I need God’s presence just as my garden needs the rain.

Take some time today to be quiet and meet with God. Listen to what rises up from within. Have a conversation with God. You may have questions to ask Him. Ask, expecting to receive an answer. Tell Him what’s on your heart. Be honest with Him. Bare your vulnerable places. And then, once you’ve emptied your heart, simply listen. He has much to say to you.

Lord, I thank you and praise you for your living waters. Open me up, Lord. Open me up to your thirst-quenching presence. Water me, Lord. Water me.

·         Where do you most often meet God? Nature? Bible study? Service? Worship? Journaling?

·         How might you establish a pattern of going there to pray on a consistent basis?

·         In what way do you most often pray? Do you feel “pot-bound”? Might God be calling you to a new prayer avenue?

·         What kind of prayer will help you more often to be aware of Jesus’ presence with you?

Excerpted from The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities (Judson Press, 2014)

Used with permission

The mother of a 29-year-old son with autism, Kathleen Bolduc is a spiritual director in Oxford, Ohio, and The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities and Autism & Alleluias. Kathy blogs at www.specialneedsparenting.net. 

the author of several books on faith and disability, including

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Join Kathy at a free webinar: The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities: Learning to Let Go and “Be” - Thursday, May 22^nd, at 1 pm. If you can’t attend at that time, register and participate at your leisure. You are promised an hour of rest and refreshment using art, music, and Scripture. Sign up here:  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/381076121

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One lucky reader will a free copy of this good book.  To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment about the blog post or leave a question for Kathy about the book.  You'll have until Wednesday evening at 8:00 to be entered into a drawing to win the book.  To enter, you must leave an email address with your comment (so I can contact you to get your mailing address for the book!).  Books can only be send to addresses in the United States and Canada.

The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities

Have you ever sat on the beach, on that part of the sand where the waves have just receded, where the sand is damp and tightly packed? You take a plastic shovel, or perhaps your hand, and begin to dig. You dig and dig until water begins to burble up from within the sand, finally filling the hole you’ve so carefully carved out. The poet Kahlil Gibran writes of sorrow carving deep into our beings, leaving more room for joy.I'm happy to recommend this important book.  And hope you'll stay tuned to this blog -- as Kathy will be guest posting about The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities soon!

I know what it is to grieve—parents of children with disabilities grieve the death of a dream—the dreamed-of child for whom they waited so long. My third son, Joel, has autism and moderate intellectual disabilities, along with an anxiety disorder and severe kyphosis of the spine. Everything I valued in my life before Joel’s birth had to be rethought and revalued—intelligence, efficiency, logic, self-control. The old rules no longer applied, and my spirit, which craves peace, order, comfort, and security, withered as I struggled to make sense of the seemingly senseless—a beautiful boy with a damaged brain. 

I was stuck in denial for a very long time, and when I finally broke free, I raced headlong into anger, self-blame, and depression. Through this grieving process, which lasted several years, I never stopped calling out to God. Even on my darkest days, when my mind was too numb to form a prayer, I repeated four words over and over. “Hear my prayer, Lord. Hear my prayer.” The grief itself became my prayer.

The above is from the opening chapter of my friend Kathleen Deyer Bolduc's newest book The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities.  The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities uses the mosaic as a metaphor for putting the pieces of life back together again, and the spiritual disciplines as a framework for daily works of healing and restoration. It offers bite-sized pieces of poetry, scripture, personal narrative and teaching on the grief process, the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God, and the spiritual disciplines. Each chapter concludes with a reflection exercise to gently lead the reader into a deeper conversation with God.

I'm happy to recommend this important book to you.  Please stay tuned, because Kathy will be guest blogging here soon!

Slaughter and Love: A Poem In Response to Sandy Hook

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a nova lighting the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour and truth were trampled by scorn—
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by greed and pride the sky is torn
Love still takes the risk of birth.

Madeleine L’Engle’s “The Risk of Birth”
copyright 1974 Madeleine L'Engle

In this time of darkness following the senseless slaughter of the innocents in Sandy Hook (and other children whose bodies are ripped apart by war and disease and hunger around the world), I am grateful that Love still takes the risk of birth.  Let us all, especially those of us who endeavor to follow the Prince of Peace risk loving and working for peace.  Let us incarnate the almighty Love and Light of God in a world seemingly filled with hatred and darkness.  May the God of Love and Light bless us -- the broken-hearted, the down-trodden, the safe in our cozy homes -- everyone.

 

With love,

Brent

Prophets -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

Once in the Advent season
When I was walking down
A narrow street

I met a flock of children
Who all came running up to me
Saying that they were prophets
And for a penny they
Would prophesy

I gave them each a penny

They started out
By rummaging in trash-cans
Until they found
A ragged piece of silk

It’s blue, they said
Blue is a holy color
Blue is the color that
The mountains are
When they are far away

They laid the rag
On a small fire
Of newspaper and shavings
And burned it in the street

They scraped up all the ashes
And with them decorated
Each other’s faces

Then they ran back to me
And stood
In a circle ‘round me

We stood that way
In a solemn silence
Until
One of the children spoke

It was the prophecy!

He said that long before
The pear tree blossoms
Or sparrows in the hedges
Begin to sing

A Child will be our King.

--by Anne Porter

Noël -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder

Noel
by Anne Porter

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20503