From Quarters to Chrysanthemums

Maya Angelou, a writer, actress, and activist whose creative works echo with themes of grace and faith, will soon have her image engraved on the U.S. quarter -- the first time a black woman has earned the honor. Angelou's arms are outstretched on the coins, with both a bird in flight and a rising sun depicted behind her to commemorate her poetry. The U.S. Mint is releasing the quarters this month.

Angelou rose to fame with the 1969 publication of her stirring autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and in 1993, she composed and read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration. Born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou died in 2014 after publishing seven sequential autobiographies, serving on two presidential committees, and earning a Pulitzer Prize nomination, a Tony award, and three Grammys.

In 1990, Maya Angelou published her poem "Savior" in the anthology I Shall Not Be Moved. Listen to the longing reverberating through her words below, a felt need for a savior that ripples through 2022 as well:

Savior

Petulant priests, greedy
centurions, and one million
incensed gestures stand
between your love and me.

Your agape sacrifice
is reduced to colored glass,
vapid penance, and the
tedium of ritual.

Your footprints yet
mark the crest of
billowing seas but
your joy
fades upon the tablets
of ordained prophets.

Visit us again, Savior.
Your children, burdened with
disbelief, blinded by a patina
of wisdom,
carom down this vale of
fear. We cry for you
although we have lost
your name.

As we ponder the hurt that surrounds us, seeking ways to introduce the balm of Jesus as we stand burdened and blinded, remember that the simplest answer is often found in the beauty of the creation that surrounds us ... or the simplicity of a quarter in your palm. Find moments this week to embrace God's beauty in the streets and neighborhoods around you, and for a three-minute time-lapse view of flowers exploding into bloom, look here: Watch Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

-- Psalm 96:11-12

God is good, Friends. Let us be grateful together.

Blessings on your week,

Jennie