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 I 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 belly 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.