“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I am fully known.”
~1 Corinthians 13:12

As a child I loved Highlights magazine. I particularly loved the pictures where things were hidden, images of things drawn into a scene, things that didn’t usually fit with the over all picture. The larger image might be of a forest. If you looked closely you would find a spoon etched into the bark of a tree or a camera inside the veins of a leaf. I don’t remember this magazine coming to our house. It was usually found in the doctor’s office waiting rooms. I may have been one of a only a few children who looked forward to seeing the doctor. It was all about the Highlights magazines!

A few weeks ago I was walking a newly renovated path on St. Paul’s Harriet Island. This island floods with such regularity there seems to always be some form of rebuilding happening. In the playground area I noticed the bottom part of a large tree, its roots shooting down from an elevated mound, a shiny metal slide coming out of the body of the tree. It looked like such fun. I headed over to get a closer look.

As I looked at the trunk treated to, I assume, keep small hands and knees free from splinters, I noticed the heron etched into the bark of the tree. On closer inspection, there was a fish whose body swirled out of the bark formation, whose head was created by the end of a root. I walked around the tree finding not only the heron but a large woodpecker, a tiny squirrel, a curious fox and a rabbit. A lovely large rabbit. I was filled with joy. Highlights magazine come to life!

Since then I have thought often of that tree. I wondered about the artist whose idea it was to take what may have been one of the trees damaged by the floods and to create, not only a place to climb and slide on, but an object where hidden treasure is found. I imagined the small children who discover these little unexpected gifts, their exclamations to adults nearby keeping watch. “Look, Momma! A rabbit!”

I have found that often life is its own Highlights magazine hidden game. So many times the solution to a problem is found tucked within the conundrum itself. On further reflection, questions that nag at us and cause distress, hold the answers at the edges of the query. It has certainly been my experience that each of us carry hidden gifts waiting to come into the light, waiting to be called out by the Artist within. Every parent or teacher knows this. They are the audience that is present to the joy of watching what is hidden within a child slowly become visible for all to see.

What Highlights scene is playing with your imagination these days? What gift is being teased out of the ordinary skin that is your extraordinary self? Perhaps the discovery will be yours to make all by yourself. Or maybe you need the gentle gaze of a creative eye to help find the hidden object at the roots of your life. Whichever it is, may this day, this week, this year be the time when the hidden treasures you hold become visible in the world.

“God comes to you disguised as your life. You can see how merely believing doctrines and practicing rituals is very often only a clever diversionary tactic to avoid actual life-to avoid the agenda that is right in front of me every day-which is always messy, always muddy, always mundane, always ordinary-all around me.”
~Richard Rohr

This week I received a newsletter I always look forward to finding in my mailbox. It is created by some good people at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis. It called Thin Places and is full of many opportunities,contemplative in nature, that happen around the country. On one of the pages, I read these words: God comes to you disguised as your life”.

It was a solar plexus pounding kind of moment. It is not that I had not thought of this concept. But the clear purity of the statement grabbed hold of me and shook my busy self into inaction. Which is just what I needed. I would even be so bold as to say it is an affirmation we all might do well saying upon waking every day. Imagine what impact these words might have on our daily living. On our work. In our relationships. In the encounters we have with strangers. In the ways we live care-fully in the world.

The reason I needed these words this week is that I, and all those around me, have been busy planning worship for this Sunday, September 11th, the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Depending on the time of a service, many will be sitting in church at the exact time the planes hit the Twin Towers ten years ago. From the weather reports I have seen it promises to be the same clear, brilliant autumn day many of us remember, a day so perfect, what could possibly go wrong?

In preparation for Sunday, I have been watching a Frontline program called “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” We will have the opportunity to see a segment of this powerful film which chronicles the lives of those who survived and family members who lost a loved one. The film will be followed by conversation around the implications of this event for our own faith lives, our own understanding of how God is present in the world. Those speaking in the film run the gamut from deep believers to atheists, from church professional leaders to those who had honed a faith built on what they had learned in Sunday School. Many faith traditions are represented. Each person who speaks is trying to make sense of the horrible human and psychic tragedy we experienced that day. It is a rich, deep telling of people struggling to make sense of what they had believed they believed in light of such a terrible act. I commend it to you.

As I previewed the program I came to some of my own conclusions. On that Tuesday morning ten years ago when we thought all would be ordinary and mundane,instead, our world shifted. Those of us who have made our life in the world of church or synagogue or mosque, came face to face with what we believed. For many the doctrines or rituals were empty vessels for the pain and confusion, the fear and anguish we felt. It became a pivotal moment redefining of long held truths for many.

For me, what was left was the God who had come disguised as our lives. In the horror we reached out and touched those we loved. We called friends and family, some we hadn’t talked to in some time, just to hear the beauty of their voice. We made meals that connected us with comfort we had known around a grandmother’s scarred dining table. We gathered in huddles of friends and talked in hushed tones,retelling stories that seeded our cultural identity so someone would know we lived. And we prayed. We walked into churches not our own, sat by perfect strangers whose hands were rough with work or manicured with privilege. We prayed prayers we had learned as children and found words for new longings in our collective heart. We sat in silence knowing we were enveloped in the Great Silence. We allowed our tears to baptize us once again into the family of things. We had the visceral experience of the connection we all share but forget daily. And we felt gratitude for the gentle rise and fall of our breath and the rhythm of our heartbeat in our chest.

God came disguised as our lives. I can’t imagine what it was like to be in any of those situations where terror was the goal of some for the destruction of many. But I do believe that God was in it with all those present, who started their days just as we had, believing the day would be ordinary and mundane.

As we remember and commemorate this weekend, may we remember with compassionate hearts and giving spirits. May our prayers be not only for those lost that day and the families whose lives were altered forever, but also for a new creation of hopeful, peaceful living by all. May we remember that God comes disguised not just as our life but the lives of all, regardless of what they believe, how they talk about those beliefs, the color of their skin or their country of origin.

And may we also remember in the messiness, the sometimes dark and horrible messiness, that the One who breathed us into being continues to give birth to hope through us. It is an awesome task but there is no one but us to carry this message forward. There never has been.

May your weekend be blessed with beauty…….

“Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,
I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.”
~St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

Minnesotans are walking around with dazed, goofy looks on their faces these days. The weather has been such perfection that we simply do not know what to do with ourselves. Each day brings a cool morning with brilliant blue skies and puffy, white clouds that seemed to be created, not by nature, but by an artist’s brush. The temperatures are light sweater in the morning days and shirt sleeves by noon. As the afternoon turns into evening the process simply goes in reverse. Someone said to me yesterday:”These are the days I was born for.” They are, indeed, days that cause us to use the word ‘bask’ with abandon as we act on its meaning.

But before I allow myself to get too wrapped up in my revelry over these exquisite days,I find it is important to send prayers of healing and hope to those living in Texas whose lives are being torn apart by drought and fire. Theirs are not days of perfection but of fear. Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed and helplessness is all around. And then there are those who are still cleaning up from the hurricane along the eastern coast. It seems that while we watched certain areas of that coast for the devastation only a hurricane can produce, our eyes were not poised on other landscapes along those places first settled in our country. Prayers must also be sent to those who clean up, lift and haul, and rebuild. May their spirits be lifted by at least one amazing act of hope this day.

Such is the way of the world. While some of us bask in beauty, others dig out from under trials they never imagined and do not feel capable of. It has always been this way. There is no part of creation that is exempt from tragedy or too full of beauty. It is a good reminder to carry in our back pocket.

Last night I was aware of the ways we can be bathed in and connected by the beauty of sky. Our Seattle son called and as we were speaking he said: “Wow! I can see the moon and the sun at the same time. Cool.” I had been gazing at the half-moon myself, outside our kitchen window. It felt a wonderful connection, this mother-son-moon-watching. Just a few minutes later, my husband called from the north woods. “Have you seen the moon?” Again, I walked to the kitchen to gaze at this silver globe that connected us over the miles. It was a night sky that poured both light and love.

I can imagine St. Francis standing in a field gazing toward a sky not unlike the ones by which we have been blessed. As his dusty, coarse brown monk’s robes rubbed against his body, I can imagine him lifting his face toward the heavens as he soaked in the beauty of the day. Perhaps he also walked out after the sun set and looked up at the moon, its half circle shining down on his simple life.

Same moon. Different century. Similar blessings. Let the wringing begin.

“Blue and dark-blue
rose and deepest rose
white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent
cornfield rising and swaying
in their reliable

finery in the little
fling of their bodies their
gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.
The reaper’s story is the story
of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the
reaper cannot
separate them out there they

are in the story of his life
bright random useless
year after year

taken with the serious tons
weeds without value
humorous beautiful weeds.”
~Mary Oliver

Rushing out the door in the early morning this past week, I was stopped in my tracks by the morning glories blooming on our garden fence. Their brilliant colors shining in the summer sun brought me to my senses, causing me to cease my frenetic movement, forcing me to recognize what is important. Deep blue petals. Stripes of ruby red creating an amazing star. Enough white to create the perfect contrast. As if an artist had planned it, which of course, an Artist did. These flowers which give praise to the beginning of a day were speaking their flowing,flower language to a human moving at the speed of light.Thankfully their shout out to me did cause me to stop, to look at the intricate yet simple design that reminded me of fireworks. Since I had had the good sense to stop and look, I also went back into the house and came out with my camera. Taking a few snapshots of the beauty of this simple flower, the light of the morning, will bring a certain hope in the winter that is to come. I will look forward to the rich colors of these images when all about me is white.

The poem by Mary Oliver speaks of morning glories as interlopers in a cornfield, weeds that become a part of the farmer’s story. Our morning glories were planted in one place but have now made their way to two other places throughout the garden. They have twisted and turned and climbed up the fence and for the last few weeks have been sending their gifts out into the day. These precious petals have become a part of our summer story, the backdrop in which we have lived our lives in all its fullness. As I gazed in ernest at them this past week, I felt a small tinge of jealousy. How I would like to be able to make visible such beauty as an homage to every morning!

But then I began to think about how the morning glory’s gifts and mine differ. In the final analysis, I am responsible for only the gifts I have been given. I can’t, after all, do the work of a morning glory. My work is to greet the day in my own authentically human way. With gratitude and hope. With deep breaths and prayer. With kindness and gentleness to all I meet, knowing that we are all, human and plant, all creatures, intertwined in this Great Work of Creation.

And mostly with awe. Awe when presented with the intricacies of the morning glory. Awe in the presence of the Mystery which created us both.

“Blessings on this day born of night.
Blessings on the earth wedded to heaven.
Blessings on the creatures adored by angels.
Blessings on our bodies alive with spirit.
Blessings on our minds filled with dreams.
Blessings on our hearts opened by love.
Blessings,blessings, blessings.”
~John Philip Newell 

There are times, it seems to me, that need more blessings than others. As I have been moving about my life, observing the changes taking place around me both in people’s lives and the life of the Earth, it feel to me as if this is a time that is begging for blessing.  Not only is it a transitional time in our season from summer to autumn, from vacation life to the more structured school life but we are also approaching the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Reports on television and radio and in print are trying to come to some understanding of this decade observance. Film clips of that day are being replayed and the questions and concerns that have shaped who we are as a people over the last years are once again at the forefront. It will, I believe, be difficult to escape. And I am not saying we should.

For some reason this has all put me to thinking about blessings. Where the blessings are arising. Who needs blessing. What blessings, if any, we can glean from what happened a decade ago. How I might be a person that is a better ‘blesser.’

I grew up in an area of the country that is not quite southern and not quite northern. One of the statements that is common among the people there is: “Well, bless her(his) heart.” This statement is made for all manner of times. When someone does something kind and wonderful or when someone does something right down stupid. It is heard coming from the lips of people of all ages and sometimes at the oddest of times. It is best said with a certain amount of humility, as if in saying it in no matter what the situation, you are in cahoots with the Holy. Which is of course what we are doing when we offer blessings.

In addition to this time of reflective transition, I am also thinking about the number of young ones I know who are beginning kindergarten. I was astounded to realize how many 5-6 year olds I know! In case you haven’t been around any kindergartners lately, I will remind you that they are some of the sweetest creatures on Earth. The age at which one enters the arena of school, is a particularly precious age, full of innocence and possibility. Their wide-eyed wonder at the world is a lesson for us all.

These little ones were born in the middle years of a decade which seems like the roller coaster created by 9/11. We have gone up and down the steep hills of economy, politics, faith, doubt, fear and compassion. And yet here are the ones born of this fitful time. They stand filled with the hope and promise of a new creation. During these first days of school they will walk into classrooms ready to offer them ideas, concepts, creativity, and dreams that will give shape to a world that is yet to be. They deserve and need our blessing.

And to that may we all say: “Bless their hearts.”