Monday, August 10, 2009

Radiant Dew – CREDO LXXVIII

   
We bought our home here in 1983 and called it Rosecroft. It is a very old white clapboard New England house whose history dates back to the late 1600s, according to the history we had researched. When we moved in, there was a tiny two-room addition, a cottage that had no cellar. We called it the Lovecot because most of our guests were lovers. We then bought an orange tented, screened gazebo that could be put up in spring and taken down for the snows of winter.

This gazebo had flagstones under it, a large round white table, chairs, and potted plants. I spent many happy hours in it with my Jung volumes open on the table, doing research and writing The Dove in the Stone and The Web in the Sea.

Walter, my beloved Polar Bear, and I had a habit in the summer of getting up very early and taking our coffee out to the gazebo, sometimes even in our dressing gowns. Then we would sit together blissfully looking out at the dew carpeting the green lawn, shaded in spots by the tall maples and pine trees that surround it. It still is a large unbroken glorious green today though the gazebo is long gone and the Lovecot sacrificed to a permanent annex to our house in which my daughter and family happily dwell.

I remember one glorious morning, looking at my husband with his white hair and handsome face, even in his late seventies, and watching a deep smile slowly spreading across it, followed by a sigh of satisfaction. “How rich we are!” he exclaimed. To which I responded, “If you want to be rich, count your blessings!” The chirruping robins agreed.

“Not just blessings,” said he,“Jewels! Jewels!” and he pointed to the sparkling of the dew on the grass. The sun was turning the tiny prisms of moisture into a carpet strewn with glistening diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and topaz. It was such a magic moment, I held my breath – one of those moments to make things conscious and share them with one’s Divine Guest. How rich, not only in the jewels of the radiant dew, but in the love we shared, the good sharp taste of hot coffee, and the consciousness of being conscious in the first place!

Grace falls like the dew … Just think about the nature of dew itself. It is moisture so fine, it refreshes everything in nature that it touches, almost daily –every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, cobweb, creeping thing, every rooftop, in short, the entire landscape. It is miraculous by nature of its tenderness. Unlike rain which can in excess flood and destroy, dew’s function seems to cool, heal, and truly, like grace, calm those that it silently blesses. It does this in total silence and most of us, including myself, take it for granted.

So before this summer ends, I just thought to suggest that it would be nice to get up early one morning and notice this great gift given so freely and maybe even see those jewels strewn by nature that make us richer than rich, because once truly received, nothing can steal them nor can you lose them. Trust me, their radiance has fallen upon your heart,

lovingly,
ao

1 comment:

Roslyn Ross said...

I am now reading The Web In The Sea. It's like spending time with an old friend. I do like the way you write and must go to Iona for a visit. It has long interested me. Beginning to write, as you did, at 60 is encouraging. I started at 40 but six books, and 20 years later, later am still not published, but who knows?