Giver of the Green

My mourning for our little bit of grass got to swirling around in my mind last evening. It collided with some words from C.S. Lewis that I had happened to read yesterday morning.

Lewis was writing (in A Grief Observed) about the "right ordering" of our praise. So many good things we love are deserving of praise, but our highest praise is reserved for the Giver of those good things.

"Praise in due order...up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. To the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful."

I love these lines. It seems to me that Lewis is saying our best loves, our deepest admiration, what we value most, should cause us to look up, even higher, to the Giver behind all those things. His capitalization of Gardener, Smith, Life and Beauty leaves no doubt that he is referring to the Giver in all those wonderful terms. It is God who makes the garden beautiful, refines the silver, gives life, and whose Beauty is reflected in all that's beautiful.

It's even more poignant when you reflect that Lewis here is thinking about his relationship with his late wife, Joy. All the good in her, all that he loved (and still loved) in her, ultimately made him look up in joy and thanksgiving to the One who made her, even in the midst of his grief.

Somehow it makes my sadness over the loss of a small patch of grass seem both less significant and more significant at the same time.

All these thoughts tumbled into this prayer-poem I wrote last night.

Giver of Green

Praise for the grass
and the tiny creatures
who shelter in the
forest of its stems

Praise for the rootlets
of wildflowers and
the clover heads thick
with tempting scent
that beckons to the bees

Praise for the morning dew
and the tracings of frost
like shining jewels
flung at our undeserving feet

But most of all

Praise to the Giver of Green
who grows my life with gladness.

~EMP 8/09