Small connections

In recent days, I have learned to celebrate small connections.

My wish, my hope, my dream is really for great big, lifelong, solid and secure, deep and meaningful connections.

Lately, though, I've had small moments of meaningful connection, and not unlike an attentiveness practice of taking notice of small details, my awareness makes me realize that these modest connections, added together, can equal great contentment.

Rather than wait for the one or two big connections, I can enjoy and savor many, many, many small ones.

Like standing on the stairway landing today and talking with the kindergarten moms.

Like talking to a friend, ever so briefly, about dear and beloved grandmothers whose memories and love guide us still, years after their deaths.

Like having a friend at school tell me that our friendship is easy and my not only agreeing but realizing what a gift that ease is.

Like an email exchange with a respected mentor.

Like roaming the aisles of a fabric shop with a friend, surrounded by intriguing textures and colors and creative possibilities and simultaneously sharing equally rich conversation.

And it reminds me of my experience over the past few weeks at school. Each week, something new is in bloom. These exotic purple flowers I cannot name. A tree with brilliant yellow blossoms. A shurb with tiny white clusters of flower. Each week, I have celebrated a new vision and new life. Perhaps next week the bearded iris will be in bloom.

There are times when the campus smells like Texas. When I arrived late last Wednesday night, I felt like I had stepped back in time to a late spring night in my hometown of Paris. The air smelled identical. The biblical garden, too, at certain times of day, smells like Texas, sometimes like summer camp, sometimes like my grandmother's backyard. It is this unimaginable gift. And it sustains me.

Several times a day when I am at school, I walk by the aloe vera plant that was my salve last spring, but there are no blossoms. And I wonder why, since I know it was already in bloom this time last year. And, while I miss the blossom, I also feel great gratitude that I no longer need it.