Maybe the bush was burning all the time and Moses didn’t notice…..Maybe the miracle is when you stop and pay attention. ~ Francine Prose
Many things have kept me from these pages over the last weeks. Some of them have been important while others were the frivolous acts of the every day that are easily forgotten. The act of sitting down to write, something that brings me joy beyond measure, got pushed further and further back until it became easy to not do it at all. Whole lives are filled with such actions and it is a sad and perhaps even sinful thing. Sinful is not a word I use lightly so I am paying attention to the fact that it slipped so easily from my mind into my fingers and onto this page.

And paying attention is, after all, the point. The point of this living, I mean. Which is what drew me to the quote above whose source was the ever present calendar of lovely pictures and words that graces a space my eyes fall easily on several times a day. “Maybe the bush was burning all the time…..” Moses, called out by God despite all his human qualities and slow speech, had perhaps walked by the burning bush many times but he simply didn’t notice. And then one day he did. It happens to all of us at one time or another. We are awakened by what has been in front of us all along. A person whose gifts have been quietly being offered day after day. A sight, full of its own beauty, which we have walked by and ignored. A word or a phrase that we have heard or even spoken without noticing its meaning, its fullness, its true intent. 

If we aren’t careful, our days can be filled with endless tasks that lead only to the ability to mark another day off the calendar. This is dangerous work. Bushes are burning all around us and our real work, just like Moses, is to notice. It is the kind of work that can have a person flinging their to-do lists aside and sitting down to pay attention to all the miracles that are happening in the smallest and widest spaces of each and every day. It is the kind of work that can propel a person into walking into a wilderness, into being present to seas parting. It is the kind of work that can have a person accepting bread that falls from the heavens. Yes, stopping and paying attention is radical and life changing work.

While these last weeks have not been filled with writing for me, they have been filled with noticing. I have been noticing how this particular summer seemed more amazing than others I can remember. The days more comfortable, the colors more beautiful, the air fresher, and the sunsets more stunning. I thought perhaps it was just me but then over the weekend I read an article in the Star Tribune that confirmed my feelings. The article reported on something known as the Summer Glory Index, a tool devised by Kenny Blumenfeld, a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. A ‘Glory Index’! Who knew? Apparently there is an actual tool that measures temperature, humidity, all those factors that lead to what makes for an exquisite summer day and which is declared glorious.

I would like to believe that there is a ‘glory index’ for nearly everything. When I heard this term which was new to me, I was reminded of an old hymn whose one line I have always liked to sing….”changed from glory into glory” the words ring out. The idea that each creation,both human and otherwise, is created and moves from one state of glory to another is such a beautiful idea and I believe it to be true. Everything finds itself someplace on the ‘Glory Index’. And like Moses, our real work in the every day of every day is to notice the glory that is always present.

The season is now turning. It is time to pay attention. It is time to get to work.