Yesterday two unrelated experiences came together to cause me to ponder all the ways in which we can believe our differences create impossible opportunities for coming together. So often it seems, as we listen to the radio or television or read the news, the ways in which we have named our different ways of seeing the world, of believing and worshiping, of understanding and using power, seems impossible to overcome. Backs are turned. Words are said that can’t be taken back. Wars are waged. Any notion of acting in unity seems beyond the realm of human imagination. We see it played out over and over on the large and small scales of human living. Just writing those words brings a certain sadness, I have to admit.

But yesterday at worship during prayers one from our circle shared his experience of watching his grandsons playing at an indoor playground. As they played, other children of different skin colors and even different languages came into the play area and seemingly without missing a best, all the children were playing together. Children can have a way of doing this. Whatever the game at hand, children can welcome another player to their mix. Running….jumping….throwing a ball….and almost always laughter. Sweet, child laughter.

Later in the day I received a photo by text from my husband who is traveling to places warmer than here. Places where grass is visible and water moves. There were no words to accompany the photo. I believe he knew I would get the message without any explanation. Sitting on some kind of nest or at least round pile of dirt and vegetation in the water sat an animal, woodchuck, muskrat?….two mallard ducks…..and a turtle. All within a few inches of one another. Co-existing in the sunshine and warmth. I laughed out loud and also felt warmth flow throughout my body. It seemed a continuation of the hope lifted in the prayer earlier in the morning.

So many times our only lens in life is the one of difference. We use to it to build walls and create definitions of class, status, politics, gender, religion, sexuality. There must be something in doing so that creates an illusion of control, of a certainty about order that helps us breathe easier and that calms our fears. But I wonder, does it serve us well? Does it hold the common good of all Creation? Does it bring us to a more evolved place of being the creatures we were created to be? My experience says not.

Yesterday afternoon, I gathered with a group of people to watch and discuss a DVD series called Painting the Stars that celebrates the communion of science and faith and looks at the ways in which the expression of faith in the Christian household has and is evolving. Taking into account what we have learned in the last 2000 years about how the universe works, the series asks how our faith has evolved. Do the ways of understanding the scriptures and the life of Jesus mean to us what they did to the early followers? How does what we know about the science of Creation impact our faith and our living? It was a fascinating conversation and seemed perfect to have at the end of the first week in Lent. After all, what is Lent but an opportunity to enter into this story again, mining the wilderness for ways of becoming the fullness of who God intended us to be?

Somehow the fullness of that eternal intention of unity with Creator and Creation came to me yesterday in a prayer and a picture. Someplace along his own wilderness journey, Job hears a voice saying: “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth,and they will teach you.” In an evolving faith lessons come from a variety of sources. Sometimes it is sacred text or the well chosen words of a speaker of wisdom. But other times the lesson shows up in a prayer for a rainbow of children playing or an assortment of varied creatures on a mound of soil.

And so it is. Blessed be.