What do spiderwebs, journals, sunshine in treetops, old photographs, iced tea, chairs with good back support, and the scent of honeysuckle have in common?
For the last few weeks, a friend (whom I’ll call Claudette, the name she was almost given) and I have visited by phone each evening. We used to be colleagues at work. We became good friends during those years and have remained so. She’s still on the job, though now remotely, from her home.
Claudette once shared with me an idea from a book she’d read: noticing the “simple graces,” the things in our daily lives that give us a quiet joy when we encounter them. The joy may be so momentary and familiar that we fail to pay attention, taking these simple things for granted. But because of taking the book’s lesson to heart, Claudette has learned to pay more attention to her surroundings and pause to enjoy the surges of gratitude, to notice the small lifts of joy. During one of our conversations about a month ago, Claudette mentioned a “simple grace” she’d noticed that day.
Since then our phone calls include our simple graces for the day, and we’ve both felt the effect in our level of awareness, gratitude, and joy for such things as the smile-shaped spiderweb in the photo that accompanies this post, Claudette’s journal and glasses of iced tea, and the many other simple graces we’ve begun to pay more attention to as we continue sharing them with each other.
The reflection for Sunday, July 26, in Give Us This Day (which I discovered through Blessed Trinity Shrine Retreat and now subscribe to) is titled “So Simple.” In the reflection, Deacon Greg Kandra recalls a line from a Leonard Bernstein Mass: “Sing God a simple song . . . God loves all simple things. For God is the simplest of all.” Simple graces remind me to “see the ordinary with God’s eyes” (a quote from my spiritual director at BTSR).
I believe God is inviting me—and inviting you—to “be still and know” that God is with us, here and now, loving us in and through countless simple graces. And now I invite you to share in a response to this post: What are some of yours?
