Tuesday Morning

I am grateful for my hands.

Before I sit down to meditate, or blog or read or make a phone call, I pick up my knitting and work a row or two on the project before me.  I am calmed, centered, stilled as my hands transmit the joy of yarn and knitting to my heart.  The feel of the yarn as it slides over and through my fingers, of the needles as they press against my fingertips and guide the loops of yarn in and out of the emerging fabric, these tactile pleasures come to me through my workman-like hands. 

My hands sense, they create, they grasp and they offer up gifts.  Like my mother, I accentuate my speech with the movements of my hands.  The touch of my hands conveys my caring; the things my hands feel as I examine a patient brings me information about the state of the body's being; my hands grasp the hands of others in greeting and in compassion.  Without my hands I would not be the person I consider myself to be and I can not even fathom the ways it would change me if I were to lose the function of my hands. 

They are not lovely, my hands.  The skin is creased, weathered, often dry.  The fingers are not shapely, the nails are uneven.  I do not have the hands of a dancer, or of an artist.  But I do have wonderful hands that never fail me:  they do all that I ask them to do. 

And so on this day, I am grateful for my hands and for the spark of the Divine which expresses in me through them. 

Thank you, Beloved, for the gift of my hands.