The Surprising Predictable

“Even the predictable turns into surprise the moment we stop taking it for granted”
David Steindl-Rast

So a local walk that has been made many times and is completely predictable … isn’t, when you are consciously being alert and mindful and grateful for what is around you.

David Steindl-Rast’s saying is so true!

Glancing at the local, familiar landscape, The Wrekin seemed lit up by the golden views of harvesting…

And just looking up at the sky reminded me to wonder…

And then on the path in front of me was a beautiful common darter…

It was a case of the surprising predictable that wasn’t predictable at all!

David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, goes on to say that in the surprising there is also the element of the gratuitous. Humans didn’t make this beautiful earth, or the clouds.

So the least we can do is wonder at, and appreciate, its surprising predictableness!

Gratefulness

David Steindl-Rast is not a well-known writer in the UK but his book Gratefulness is the best I’ve read on this topic. He shares a childhood experience, surviving bombing raids in Nazi-occupied Austria:

“…Unable to find an air-raid shelter quickly, I rushed into a church only a few steps away. To shield myself from shattered glass and falling debris, I crawled under a pew … I felt sure that the vaulted ceiling would cave in any moment and bury me alive…A steady tone of the siren announced the danger was over … And there I was, stepping out into a glorious May morning … My eyes fell on a few square feet of lawn in the midst of all this destruction. It was as if a friend had offered me an emerald in the hollow of his hand. Never before or after have I seen grass so surprisingly green.”
p.10

Recently I was commuting to work on a quiet spring morning, and I passed the most extraordinary scene shown in the photograph. You do not always need a near-death experience to feel gratitude! But how many people drove out of Shrewsbury that morning and did not stop to gaze in awe at the sunrise?

Mist was rolling mysteriously down the river. The trees were silhouetted. And a bright March sun illuminated the whole scene, rising over The Wrekin.

Brother David Stendl-Rast helped to set up a beautiful website devoted to gratefulness, and you can visit it here.

And look out for those surprising moments that fill our hearts with gratitude!

Grateful, Take the Good I Find…

I came across these lines recently by the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier:

“Grateful take the good I find
The best of now and here.”

It seemed such good advice – to make the most of what is already around us, what is already within our power to do.

Surrounded by nature in Shropshire, I am very grateful for the blessings of the natural world. Espexially for the beauty of sunrises and sunsets this time of year – the images that accompany this post are of The Wrekin, taken during at dawn in September 2021.

What do you have to be grateful for today?