Be a Placeholder For Heaven
The saguaro blooms are in full flowering as I write this near the end of May. A favorite saguaro stands sentinel in the median by the post office—a giant who extends a bouquet to passerby's and pollinators—at the end of one of its aged arms.
“We need to go check on the saguaro,” I say to Kevin one morning when we are out at daybreak. “I need to take photos.”
We have been married long enough that he doesn’t even question this statement. My husband simply takes the next left turn.
The blooming of the saguaro is a seasonal milestone for me, an annual marker to my own place of belonging.
Each flower only blossoms for twenty-four hours, a reminder of both life’s beauty and its ephemerality.
At least…on this side of heaven.
“We cherish things…precisely because they cannot last,” Benedictine Pico Iyer wrote, “it’s their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty.”
I wrote about living a life of rootedness—of belonging—in Wonder*FULL May.
This month I am pondering another word involving a deeper sense of home: placeholder.
In the book, Stay, by Anjuli Pascall, she wrote about a man who rented out the flat on the second floor of his home when they were poor, newly married, and just starting out.
His home became a placeholder during those struggling years. It held them “safe in place of heaven.”
“I believe we all can be placeholders of heaven for others,” Anjuli wrote. “We can create a seat at a table, offer a single cup of coffee, leave bread on a doorstep, or clear an hour in our schedule. God will continually bring us people who are desperately in need of home.
“If we can embrace each other’s differences, move toward the disabled, welcome the foreigner, laugh with a child, talk with the elderly, all kinds of heaven can burst open like a flower in bloom here on earth. Even the tiniest spaces can become a place for others to taste eternity.”
For all of you planting such seeds, offering such flowers, extending bouquets…being a placeholder on this side of heaven…thank you.
It’s a bit early but fall writing classes are posted on my website. I would love to have you join me. I am also offering an evening class this fall!!! I have a limit of 10 writers in each class. And yes, they are all in-person.
ALSO:
I am so excited to be part of an 8-person show of writing, artwork, and film in Tullamore, Ireland at the Esker Arts Centre this summer. Arizona creatives include fiber artist Laurie Fagen, photographer Bob Rice, and filmmaker Devon Hancock. Four other creatives from Ireland will also be part of the show.
Click here for reception details on July 26 for all you international folks and travelers. And yes, we all will be there! The show will be up from July 13 to August 24.
My contribution will be desert poetry. It was fun to collaborate with other creatives to figure out how to put my words on a wall and to pair my work with photos, fiber-art, and film.
The show will return to Arizona in 2025 and will be at the Chandler Musuem Gallery in March/April 2025. I will keep you posted.
Experimenting with lightweight mulberry paper and magnet strip frames as everything is being hand-carried to Ireland by friends. So, no heavy glass frames!
