Summer Prayers: Thursday's Reflection

Our house is dotted with flowers--small arrangements of summer flowers from the garden. As I worked at my desk in the garret I could hear my husband in the kitchen. An occasional clink against the sink. Water running. Scissors snipping. What was he doing?

Soon I heard him coming up the steps, and in his hands he had an offering. A bouquet of summer flowers--a riot of color in a crystal vase. Orange, purple, yellow, fuchsia, and just enough white, making them all sing together. 

I was struggling with a paragraph--again--when he delivered this exuberance to me. The bouquet didn't make it easier to find the next words, the right words, but I was grateful to have a place to rest my eyes. A reassuring place of beauty. "Take it easy, Nancy, eventually you will write your own bouquet," I muttered.

Downstairs I discover more offerings.

Daisies in milk glass on the table next to my side of the bed. Milk glass always makes me think about my sister, for she has amassed a big collection of milk glass over the years. She has a summer birthday, and I imagine when she was born someone brought my mother flowers from a garden arranged in a milk glass vase. 

White dotted with pink in a dainty vase, also white dotted with pink. I've not seen that vase before, but isn't it sweet! No doubt my husband bought it at a recent garage or estate sale or in one of the bins at Goodwill. He can't resist. Later this summer he will have a garage sale, and among the pieces of furniture he has painted, giving each a new look, a new life, he will scatter vases and pitchers and other pieces of this and that.  

On the entry table is a pitcher of sunflowers, which, I confess, are from the grocery store. I had planned to go to the farmer's market where I knew I could buy sunflowers, but it was so hot. Still, it is July and time to get out the sunflower pitcher we bought on a trip to Italy one fall. I remember--or I think I remember--seeing fields of sunflowers as we took the train from Rome to Florence. My husband carefully carried the substantial pitcher home on the plane, never asking me, "Why didn't you choose something smaller, something lighter?" 

Each bouquet is a summer prayer. Each bouquet in a specific and just right vase becomes a summer altar. 

An Invitation
What invites you to pray in the summer? I would love to know.