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    Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
    Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
    Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life

    By Kent Nerburn

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    About this ebook

    In twenty elegant pieces, writer, sculptor, and theologian Kent Nerburn celebrates the daily rituals that reveal our deeper truths. A companion piece to Kent Nerburn?s book Simple Truths, Small Graces is a journey into the sacred moments that illuminate our everyday lives. Through the exploration of simple acts, he reminds us to chart a course each day that nourishes the soul, honors the body, and engages the mind. Small Graces asks us to observe life?s quiet rhythms, the subtle shifts in perception and changes in light, the warm comfort of family voices; to feel the blessing of birdsong, the solitude of a falling leaf, the echo of footfall in snow-covered woods. By inviting us to recognize the hidden power of the ordinary, Small Graces reveals the mystical alchemy of the mundane made profound by the artistry of a well-lived life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNew World Library
    Release dateOct 14, 2010
    ISBN9781577313397
    Author

    Kent Nerburn

    Kent Nerburn has been widely praised as one of the few writers who can respectfully bridge the gap between native and nonnative cultures. His book Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder won the 1995 Minnesota Book Award.

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    • 5/5
      Kent has such a beautiful perspective on life and it really shines through in his writing. This book was a joy to read
    • 4/5
      Wonderful philosophical chapters that re-unite us with our feelings about the things that are truly important in life. Newborn's books always evoke emotional connection uniting himself, the reader and the subject matter. By reading a selection every morning, I found that the selections set a positive tone for my day, ever reminding me to be mindful of my many every day blessings.

    Book preview

    Small Graces - Kent Nerburn

    light.

    AN OFFERING

    TO A QUIET GOD

    We see no need for the setting apart

    one day in seven as holy, for to us all

    days belong to God.

    — Ohiyesa, Dakotah Sioux

    There are those who search for God in the quiet places — no churches, no public displays of piety, no dramatic or flamboyant rituals.

    They may be found standing in humble awe before a sunset, or weeping quietly at the beauty of a Bach concerto, or filled with an overflowing of pure love at the sight of an infant in the arms of its mother.

    You may meet them visiting the elderly, comforting the lonely, feeding the hungry, and caring for the sick.

    The greatest among them may give away what they own in the name of compassion and goodness, while never once uttering the word God out loud. Or they may do no more than offer a smile or a hand to someone in need, or quietly bow their heads at a moment of beauty that passes through their lives, and say a simple prayer of gratitude to the spirit that has created us all.

    They are the lovers of the quiet God, the believers in the small graces of ordinary life.

    Theirs is not the grand way, the way of the mystic or the preacher or the zealot or the saint. Some would say that theirs is not a way at all. All they know for certain is that life has a beauty and a joy that transcends all the darkness that surrounds us, that something ineffable lives beyond the ordinary affairs of the day, and that without this mystery our lives would not be worth living.

    This book is dedicated to those who search for the quiet God, who seek the spirit in the small moments of our everyday life. It is a celebration of the ordinary, a reminder that when all else is stripped away, a life lived with love is enough.

    Morning is the dream renewed, the

    heart refreshed, earth’s forgiveness

    painted in the colors of the dawn.

    THE GIFT OF THE DAWN

    Each soul must meet the morning

    sun, the new sweet earth, and the

    Great Silence alone.

    — Ohiyesa, Dakotah Sioux

    I have risen early today. Far in the distance, a faint glow paints the horizon. Dawn is coming, gently and full of prayer.

    I step quietly from my bed, alive to the silences around me. This is the quiet time, the time of innocence and soft thoughts, the childhood of the day.

    Now is the moment when I must pause and lift my heart — now, before the day fragments and my consciousness shatters into a thousand pieces. For this is the moment when the senses are most alive, when a thought, a touch, a piece of music can shape the spirit and color the day.

    But if I am not careful — if I rise, frantic, from my bed, full of small concerns — the mystical flow of the imagination at rest will be broken, the past and the future will rush in to claim my mind, and I will be swept up into life’s petty details and myriad obligations. Gone will be the openness that comes only to the waking heart, and with it, the chance to focus the spirit and consecrate the day.

    All the great spiritual traditions have known this. The Christian monastics remain silent until their first chant of morning praise. Muslims begin their day with petitions of humility and thanks. The Dakotah Indians learned as children to walk in silence to a lake or stream, splash water on their faces, then offer up a prayer toward the sun.

    Our lives may not allow such exalted devotions. But something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.

    It need not be much. A prayer whispered quietly, a gentle touching of a plant or flower, a momentary gaze upon a sleeping child, a second’s stillness in the presence of the light. Any of these will do. What is needed is only a pausing of the heart so the spirit can take wing and be lifted toward the infinite.

    I walk silently toward the window. The darkness is lifting. A thin shaft of lavender has creased the horizon, setting the edges of the trees on fire with morning light. I pause and bow my head. For this brief moment, I am held in the hand of God, and I am sent forth into the morning with the poetry of possibility beating in my

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