The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
           ------Anonymous 

Anne Creel’s novel, The Magic of Ordinary Days, is one of my favorite books. Made into a beautiful Hallmark movie, it stars Keri Russell as a bookish minister’s daughter who, like us, is thrust into a sweeping new normal.  

Against the backdrop of global war, Olivia Duran finds herself in a world she could not have imagined. A brief and regretful encounter with an airman, on leave from the war, changes everything. He leaves her alone and pregnant. Her life is now drastically altered. She is forced to abandon her graduate studies to marry to a stranger in distant rural Colorado.  A quick ceremony is arranged. She is in a paper marriage to an uncomplicated farmer, who is grieving the loss of a brother, another casualty of war.

Having been a student of anthropology and archeology, Olivia finds herself on a different kind of excavation. Living on a isolated farm with little to see in all directions, she digs into her own layers of beliefs. Steeped in despair, she slowly unearths the essence of life. She uncovers truths in the small ordinary workings of the day.  And, while searching for meaning, love quietly tiptoes in.

In this new world we are in, I am on my own archaeological dig.  At first my new horizon seemed as bleak and empty as the windswept plains.  But unlike 1940s America, I have devices that keep me connected to a larger world.  Yet the search for my own concept of existence lingers.  In the gentle quiet, it clings.  It whispers and waits. 

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
           ------Anonymous 

In Creel’s novel, absent a world of noisy comings and goings, Olivia notices simple acts of kindness. Like fine lace, sweet expressions of love delicately fold into her new life. Inwardly, she nods to this grace. She is comforted. She begins her journey of namaste. So are we.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
      -----Psalm 23:4

Namaste in the Ordinary Things

Last week I wrote about my new friend, George, who happens to be a small brown cow. Is there anything more ordinary than a cow in a pasture? Yet I came to enjoy spotting him each morning. This morning, continuing my pre-dawn routine, I returned to the farm and no George. Disappointed, I headed toward home, but one quick glance back and I saw something moving in the distance. On the far side of the barn, a brown dot was coming my way. I waited. George, slowly and steadily was walking to the fence that separated us. I felt such joy in his acknowledgment of me. Something inside of me bowed to the moment. Namaste.

And then this. An oyster pearl moon on the horizon. I delight in its beauty.

Let the light within me salute the light that is within you. Namaste. 
       -------William Kuhn

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
      -------Henry David Thoreau