“God writes the Gospels not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”
~Martin Luther

Our teachers come to us in many forms. It is that time of year when new student-teacher relationships are being formed. One of the gifts of social media is seeing all the first day of school pictures that arrive in my Facebook feed. There are the sweet faces of those headed off to the first day of kindergarten. There are also those less than happy to be photographed photos of students headed out for the first day of junior high. There are even a few photos of patient high schoolers indulging their parents in this yearly tradition. If you look closely you can see the spirit of the kindergartner still present in that young adult face and petulance of the adolescent. Each one, no matter the age, is headed off to form relationships with those people who will become teacher. And any good awaiting teacher knows that among those students who arrive in their classroom will be one or two who will also be a teacher to them.

Most often we think of other people as teachers. I know I can name a long list of those human ones who have been the wisdom holders, those who have made the journey of life full and rich and filled with purpose. Some of these folks have been in the profession of being a teacher. But many, perhaps even most, have not been. They have been the people who have shown up in my life at just the right time, said or done an often simple thing that has made all the difference. Many times it has not been words that have provided the lesson but their very presence that has been the gift.

Other times our teachers are not humans at all. How many times have you spoken to a dog or cat owner who tells of the lessons they learn from these four-leggeds? I am certain that those who work and live with other kinds of animals can also tell stories of what it is they learn from these beings without words yet holders of wisdom. I know bird-watchers who can talk for hours of the lessons of the winged ones. As they speak their faces light up with something just shy of conversion.

Over the past days it has not been human or animal or fowl that has been a teacher to me. Instead it has been the clouds. There are certain times of the year when clouds seem to be more brilliant, more vivid than other times. These September days are one. Perhaps it is the interplay, the relationship, of the color of the sky and the clouds that makes it so. I don’t know. I just know that, if you have been paying attention, you will also have noticed the clouds…their formations, their shapes, the colors that they seem to pour forth into the blueness.

On Tuesday, I lay on my back in a boat looking up at the clouds dancing in a clear, azure sky. Big puffs of white that seemed set, painted in one place, surprisingly moved slowly, slowly into new shapes more fascinating and beautiful than before. Every now and then a small piece of the cloud would slip away and float all on its own, its feathery shape undulating with its own purpose, now unleashed from the larger form. Other times a small slip of a cloud would remove itself from a larger cloud and dance and move across the sky until it disappeared altogether. Gone.

Yesterday, on an evening walk, I turned the corner and walked onto the High Bridge that connects St. Paul and West St. Paul and suspends itself above the mighty Mississippi River. The Cathedral rose out of the horizon with its sister architecture, the Capital, in all their showy splendor. But last night, last night, they were upstaged by the clouds. The nearly setting sun was shining through clouds that turned pink and lavender and purple and orange. They seemed to want to draw all Creation into their beauty. Standing suspended above the earth as I was, I gave thanks for the Gospel not written in words but offered to me in that moment. A Gospel….the good news…that the Holy is an ever-working Artist whose work is the stuff of the ever day. Some place in that wisdom was the the lesson that I am….you are….also a part of that beauty, that good news.

It was a good lesson to learn.