A spacious place

A few days ago August glided into September; meteorological summer into the first day of meteorological autumn, even with no discernible difference in the weather. And with this turning of the seasons I completed my first year here at L's bend. Over the past twelve months I have quietly enjoyed watching these seasons, and being surprised by their various gifts. In winter, my view unimpeded by bare branches, I gloried in some stunning sunrises; in the spring I delighted in my neighbour's magnolia, easily visible from my front-room window. Soon after the view was filled with golden laburnum... more recently I sweltered through an unprecedented heatwave, whilst taking joy in jasmine scents, and flowering, bee-welcoming weeds.

Whilst the views are definitely longer and wider than where I previously lived, my home is smaller. By no means tiny, and definitely not cramped; but smaller nonetheless. And yet... when I moved here, the words which came with me were God brought me out to a spacious place... (Psalm 18.19). Or rather, God brought me to a place where I could be spacious, because true space has to be within, and not dependent on the size of a room or breadth of a view. 

A Carmelite friend once wrote to me about the paradox of enclosure - that being confined can open the heart. It is something that I, very much unenclosed, can somehow understand in an instinctive, inchoate way. We don't need to live in a palace for our hearts to be huge and our love unbounded; wherever we are can become our place of spaciousness. And in bringing me to L's bend God did indeed bring me to a spacious place... to a place where I can grow in freedom, and in unconfined love. 

And so a new year begins... May it be a year in which I continue to grow in and beyond this place, to which God has brought me...