Seek the Sacred Amidst the Ordinary

We stopped at the grocery store this morning after running errands. All we really needed was bread, but we went home with two bags of groceries. Sometimes you just don’t know what you need until you see it. So when I saw these beautiful blueberries from Hammonton, NJ, I knew we needed them. I grew up in Southern New Jersey, where my mother’s family grew blueberries and cranberries. In that area, the soil is very sandy, and packed full of nutrients. Blueberries love this soil, and grow in abundance there. I remember going to our cousin’s farm to pick berries, then packing them up in the back of the station wagon. My Mom and Aunt Audrey, along with my sisters and cousins and I, would all pile into our old station wagon. On one trip, I ended up in the back with the berries. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up as we drove home, looking up at the sunlight filtering through the trees and smelling the berries all around me. Part of me wanted to sit up and eat the berries, but part of me didn’t want to move. There was something magical about that moment, and I wanted it to last. The car was quiet and the radio was playing very low. No one was talking. I suppose I wasn’t the only one that had fallen asleep. It seems all the simple pleasures of my childhood are wrapped up in that one memory. I was surrounded by those I loved and the beauty of living in that particular corner of the world, all together and at peace. Take time today to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, to resist the temptation to make life more complicated than it already is. Enjoy the sights and sounds and smells of your surroundings, and the company of those you love. God blesses us with such bounty, and God is pleased when this bounty pleases us. Photo of blueberries at Emery’s Farm in New Egypt, NJ by my cousin and fellow childhood blueberry picker, Diane Brooks Myers