Last Saturday afternoon, a group of us were on a silent, meditative walk around the pond and into the pasture. We were walking slowly, noticing our footfalls, considering who has walked these pastures before us, paying attention to everything around us.

And so I heard birds that I couldn’t see. I noticed where the cattle must be sleeping at night (there are lots of cow pies and round areas where the grass is flattened.) As we moved along into the stillness, I began to feel my heart sing and I really wanted to stretch out my arms, throw my head back and twirl around a time or two.

It was a warm, sunny, clear January day. I felt happy and free.

I climbed the rise up the hill on the other side of the pond from the house and was negotiating through the waist-high dried weeds when one snagged the arm of my woolen coat. I tried to brush it off, but it clung to me. I brushed harder and it caught on my glove. When I tried to brush it off my glove, it stuck to my other glove. Then, somehow it attached itself to my coat sleeve again. This weed would not let go.

Suddenly, I felt like I was wrestling with God; that God was toying with me. I laughed right out loud. I stopped walking, smiled at the weed on my sleeve, gently picked it off and began carrying it home. It sits on my coffee table at this moment, along with a very pretty, furry piece of golden grass that got my attention because it was pretty – and didn’t cause me one moment’s stress.

Ah…there we have it: I wouldn’t have brought home the stickery weed, had it not persisted in attaching itself to me. I choose things in nature that are pretty. I didn’t pick up a cow pie. The rocks I choose to carry home usually are shaped interestingly (like a heart, for instance) or have nice coloring or a glint of mica.

Why do we only choose the things that please us? Isn’t there value in the stickery weeds?

At our last Sabbath Supper, one among us decided to do a special prayer and needed some rocks. So the youngest among us – a small boy and his sister – were sent to bring in a rock for each one of us. They brought back tiny pieces of gravel from the driveway – the most colorless, ordinary kind of rock.
As each one held their stone as if it were a diamond, we prayed.

And now that sacred piece of gravel lives on my prayer table.

Pat
30 January 2008