“Bless the God of all
who everywhere works great wonders
and by whose will all things are made.
The shining stars are the beauty of the universe,
a glittering array in the heights of God.
Look at the rainbow and praise the One who made it.
It stretches across the sky which its glorious arc…..
The swelling sea is full of danger
and strange creatures crawl forth from its depths.
By heaven’s word all things are created.
We could say more but could never say enough.
Let the final word be, ‘God is in all things.’”
~Ecclesiasticus 43,50

The winds are rushing and wild. The ferry was halted all day yesterday and looks to be so again today. Though the rain is intermittent, the temperatures are warm. This tiny island of Iona where I am traveling with a group of pilgrims is now cut off from the land we can see just a 10 minute ride away on ordinary days. But this is not an ordinary day. This land is also held in the flow of the Gulf Stream which holds its temperature mild allowing even some tropical plants to flourish. It also is affected today by the winds that have been fueling the hurricanes that have blown through the eastern seasides of the United States. This is another reminder of how, though far away in miles perhaps, we are inextricably connected on this planet we call Earth, this planet we know as home. Looking out my window the white caps are dancing a wild and raucous dance.

Yesterday we read the words above in our morning devotion time. I was struck with how they echoed what we were experiencing outside our walls. I was also moved by the line ‘We could say more but could never say enough.’ Isn’t it always so when we are in the presence of winds that blow wildly and beauty that takes our breath away as we have been these last days? Being confronted with colors that have surprised us and landscapes that are varied within minutes…we could say more but never enough. As we gathered yesterday morning in the small Parish Church for worship, the music and words were so beautifully written and spoken. Our group swelled this community by many and we were enfolded into their ranks with grace and ease. I, for one, was overwhelmed with the way the service was so gently crafted. It made my heart full…I could say more but never enough.

Today is to be our Pilgrimage Walk across the island following in the footsteps of St. Columba who came to this 3 x 1 mile island more 1500 years ago. Our guide is willing to take us if the winds allow and many of us will try. We have learned in our days in Scotland that weather can change even more quickly than in Minnesota so we will each make our own decisions about what to try, how to enter into the walk, or not. I am taking to heart the words of one woman I met yesterday who is part of the Iona Community. Reflecting on the possibility of the weather today and our ability to make this pilgrimage Walk she simply said: “It will all work out.”

It will all work out. I walked away from her thinking these are some of the most comforting words a human can speak to another. It will all work out. Though many of us have had expectations of this Walk for some time, it may not happen…probably won’t happen…in quite the way we planned. Life often works that way, doesn’t it? Winds blow. Hurricanes move through. So many experiences are a crazy mixture of what we plan, what we hope for and the result of our connections to the greater world.

I could say more but it would never be enough. It will all work out. Perhaps the woman who spoke to me yesterday offering those words really was saying “Let the final word be ‘God is in all things.’” If we walk, God is in it. If we stay inside away from the effects of the hurricane, God is in it. If we remain dry and warm, God is in it. If we are tossed by the winds and drenched by the rain, God is in it. There are three more hours before the pilgrimage walk is set to begin. The weather could change. Whatever happens…God is in it.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

We titled this pilgrimage we are on ‘In Search of Sacred Places.’ In fact, the guiding line is taken from a book by Daniel Taylor who traveled several of the islands surrounding Celtic lands on his own pilgrimage of skepticism and searching. The inscription that begins the book says simply:’For all spiritual questers who suspect there might be more to things than what we see.’ Yesterday as our 34 pilgrims made their way through landscape varied and diverse, what our eyes could take in couldn’t do justice to the depth and meaning that was being offered. The landscape is so big, so beautiful, so harsh and strong. Frankly, being present to a world ‘charged with the grandeur of God’ becomes a full bodied experience. Today we are spending time processing, allowing the experience to find words and understanding and to sink in and find a home. In short we are taking the time to make sense of the ways in which the Holy is present at all times, if we are awake and aware.

We titled this pilgrimage we are on ‘In Search of Sacred Places.’ In fact, the guiding line is taken from a book by Daniel Taylor who traveled several of the islands surrounding Celtic lands on his own pilgrimage of skepticism and searching. The inscription that begins the book says simply:’For all spiritual questers who suspect there might be more to things than what we see.’ Yesterday as our 34 pilgrims made their way through landscape varied and diverse, what our eyes could take in couldn’t do justice to the depth and meaning that was being offered. The landscape is so big, so beautiful, so harsh and strong. Frankly, being present to a world ‘charged with the grandeur of God’ becomes a full bodied experience. Today we are spending time processing, allowing the experience to find words and understanding and to sink in and find a home. In short we are taking the time to make sense of the ways in which the Holy is present at all times, if we are awake and aware.

Yesterday in the river town of Inverness we experienced a glorious day of sunshine and warmth, not something one associates with Scotland. The river was glistening with sunlight, flowers shot forth brilliant color from window boxes and hanging baskets. The castle that anchors the town stood sentinel as it has always done. And church steeples shot into the sky signaling places of worship, many of which have stood in that place for centuries. Still other church buildings, like one we visited had been de-consecrated and had been turned into a used book store packed to the gills with old books and the musty smell that accompanies them. I have visited other de-consecrated church buildings before and I always wonder about the people who had known these places that held the important moments of their lives…baptisms, weddings, funerals. What is it like to come into the space now filled with books or a cafe? What emotions must run through them? I have to admit a sense of sadness.

Later in the day we made our way along some of the most exquisite scenery I have ever experienced. Rolling, green farmland dotted with balls of white sheep and red, sturdy Highland cattle gave way to the golds and browns and russet reds of the Cuillin Hills. Sheep still graced the ground but in more precarious footing. Photos were snapped and eyes were filled with more and more grandeur, too much really to take in at one time.

Over dinner we took the time to name aloud those places where the grandeur of God had awakened us: the azure sky at not-quite-dark of the night before…the triple rainbow brought on by the morning sun and the misty sky…the sheep standing in their calm and contented way…the conversations with caretakers of churches visited…the birdsongs that seemed to have a different ‘accent’. On and on people shared the ways in which they were awake to the movement of God in their day.

Of course, we don’t need to travel thousands of miles to do this noticing. But most of the time we do need a band of fellow travelers who will help us to remember to stop, look, listen and pay attention. It is what faith communities have always done. As we closed our evening together with the words of the prophet Jeremiah, we stood with the long line of those who continue to follow the path of seeing more deeply and staying awake in times that pull us in countless directions. “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

May it be so.

“I arise facing East,
I am asking toward the light;
I am asking that my day
Shall be beautiful with light.
I am asking that the place
Where my feet are shall be light,
That as far as I can see
I shall follow it aright.
I am asking for the courage
to go forward through the shadow,
I am asking toward the light.”
~Mary Austin

After two planes, a couple of delays, and a long bus ride, our group of pilgrims to sacred places in Scotland awoke this morning refreshed and ready to begin a journey we had anticipated for some time. Mist shrouded the streets and voices carried an unfamiliar, yet pleasant, lilt. As we gathered for morning worship, we shared the words of poet Mary Austin. “I am asking toward the light.”

We took our worship-filled selves toward the village of Lindisfarne, situated in the Midlands of England, just shy of the Scottish countryside, and known as Holy Island. Pilgrims have traveled there for centuries, waiting for the tide to recede so they can make their way to the Lindisfarne Priory to offer their deepest prayers. This village that becomes an island daily was home to two named saints…Aidan and Cuthbert… and undoubtedly more unnamed ones. These holy men held space for rich and poor and welcomed those who searched with their very lives to be closer to God. Depending on the weather, this landscape can be breathtakingly beautiful or horribly harsh. I imagine that has always been so and yet people still stream there every day filled with curiosity or hope and a deep longing. I would venture to say our group of pilgrims fit this description. I have yet to hear their stories of their experience today so I don’t yet know.

All I do know is my own experience. I marveled at the devotion and commitment of those early men and women of faith who made this place their home. The work of welcoming those with a hunger for faith can be difficult and frustrating and confusing. It is easy to believe the work is about something you must do. But all that can really be done is to hold the space, to create a container in which those seekers can do their own work, breathe their own prayers, open their own hearts to the Spirit which is always present but often elusive or seemingly invisible. I like to imagine this is what Cuthbert and Aidan did amongst the lush green grasses and intricately carved stone walls of the priory. They put out the welcome mat and let God do the rest. There is probably an important lesson there.

Those they gathered around them, artists and lovers of the scriptures, did their part. They took the words of the gospels and used syllable and image to tell the stories of Jesus so all could ‘hear’. Using paints gleaned from the minerals of earth, they formed pictures and designs…swirls and circles and spirals…to illuminate the words they held dear. Known as the Lindisfarne Gospels these manuscripts are beautiful and inspiring works of art. They represent a welcome mat for those who could not read but were doing their own ‘asking toward the light.’

Each of our pilgrims today took their own brand of asking to this place, a place that has known the feet of seekers for over 1500 years. The very stones under our shoes had stories to tell and today we added our own. We walked through whatever shadows may be holding us and left a footprint that mingles now with the on-going story of faith begun so many years ago. The tide goes out and comes in again. The village is accessible and then it isn’t. But the asking toward the light…and the Light…continues endlessly.
And so it goes.

“We saw a stranger yesterday.
We put food in the eating place,
Drink the drinking place,
Music in the listening place
And, with the Sacred name of the Triune God,
He blessed us and our house,
Our cattle and our dear ones.
As the lark says in her song:
Often, often, often goes Christ in the stranger’s guise.”

These words found in the Iona Abbey Worship Book are an ancient reminder of welcome. I have been thinking of them in these last days as I prepare to go to the small island of Iona off the coast of Scotland where Christianity found its foothold among raging winds and green and rocky fields. That foothold continues more than 1500 years later housed in an ecumenical community whose primary work is to welcome strangers. In a few short days, I will join a group of pilgrims who will travel to this remote island to be welcomed by those who will look for Christ in us. We will arrive after a journey on planes, buses and three different ferries. We may be tired and weary and worse for wear. And yet still, these people whose job it is to welcome, will open their doors, prepare meals, offer us drink and will invite us to make music and share in their worship with them. Outside our bedroom windows where we have stashed our bags and washed our faces after the long journey, the sound of sheep and cows will add to the music.

This is a journey two years in the making. Because there are only two hotels on this three mile wide island we had to put a deposit on space for our 35 pilgrims two years ago. Then the planning began. And the excitement and commitment began to simmer under the surface. Plans were made and remade. Books were read. Prayers were said. Commitments were sealed. Muscles were strengthened through hiking trails all around our cities. And now the time is nearly here.

There are many reasons people make such a pilgrimage, as many reasons as people. For some it is the desire to walk where others have sought answers and connection to the Holy for years. For some it is the beginning of a life transition or the searching for new ways of encountering their faith. For others it is curiosity and the chance to be with like-minded faithful, those who hold one another’s questions with gentleness and compassion. For some, I would venture to say they are still discerning their own brand of ‘why?’ Theologian Richard Niebuhr put it this way: “ Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.”

The journey will begin soon. My bags are nearly packed with things that will protect me from sun and wind and rain. I also know that what I leave unpacked is as important as what I have tucked into my backpack. Most of those items are less visible…worry, tasks left undone, my usual lists of “musts” and “shoulds”, any ideas I hold of ‘perfect’ travel. In the shedding, these must be left behind beside the bed where I have been organizing clothes and snacks and sturdy shoes. These invisible companions will not serve me well on this journey of soul.

No matter what I have packed or shed, no matter what I am gripping in terror or loosening in surrender, I am comforted to know that, miles away people are preparing for our arrival. What they will look for in us is not bedraggled or starry-eyed travelers but the Face of Christ. And that brings hope and comfort beyond all words.

“ He who wakes up early finds gold.”
Hungarian proverb

Summer is a time for slowing down and noticing things. There is a certain rhythm that enters our lives that causes us, if we are lucky, to stop going at full speed which is our tendency during the majority of the year. I have been blessed to observe this rhythm through a display in a case in my neighborhood coffee shop. It was created by a lovely woman who is a teacher at heart…and lover of Creation to her core. What she created may have been for children, I don’t know, but it has captivated all ages and I am grateful for her inspiration and time.

Taking milkweed in clear, glass bud vases, she has placed caterpillars on the leaves. Each day we have been able to watch them grow…and who wouldn’t eating so much of a leaf?! It is astounding to watch their jaws chew away at the green food and to see that leaf disappear in neat, circular shapes.  It is equally astounding to watch then go from a size not much longer than a fingernail to the size of a small finger in a short period of time. And then talk about astounding…the spinning of the cocoon! Now there’s an affirmation of Something bigger than us if I ever saw it! All this held in a glass case for our viewing pleasure and amazement.

But what has been the most astounding to me is that once the cocoon is spun and the caterpillar is doing its internal work of becoming, there is this amazing gold ring that appears on the green cone shape that dangles precariously from a stick. All the earthy colors of wood and earth…browns and greens of varying hues…gets a circling of brilliant, shiny gold. How have I never known this? Is it always true? Standing around the case, peering in, I have marveled at this with several people. Our oohs and aahs are really affirmations of faith.

This experience has had me thinking of all the way others in our lives carry a hidden, often surprising beauty. Beauty we don’t always notice. Beauty we didn’t even know was possible. Beauty we could not imagine. I think of the children in classrooms everywhere who blend in, don’t cause trouble, are quiet and unassuming. What ‘gold’ are they carrying that deserves to be seen? Or on the other side of that same coin, the children whose behavior and presence is so tarnished that the ability to see the treasure they carry is obscured by frustration and annoyance. Of course, this is not only true for children but for all the other humans who grace our lives. It is so easy to dismiss the beauty that might be possible, the same beauty we pray people can glimpse in us. Instead of being blind to it, how might we see the hidden treasure they carry? How can we stand in such amazement that they are able to transform that gift into something as amazing as colored wings that can take flight?

I am thankful to this woman who brought this life lesson and plopped it in my path. It would be wonderful if the rhythm of summer that allows us to slow down enough to see could be our daily bread all year round. Perhaps it can. But if not, the invitation today is to keep awake to the hidden treasures in those we meet…opening our eyes and our hearts to what we never knew was possible. Gold in a cocoon? Gold in the eyes of each person we meet? Gold in the heart of the person standing at the street corner? Gold in the person with whom we are in conflict? Gold in the mirror staring back at us?

In truth we are all treasure to the One who breathed us into being. When we notice and honor this truth, the world is rimmed in gold. And that, as has been written, is good…very, very good.

This past week I was listening to a group of people talk about how a particular political situation might unfold. One person made the statement that has had my mind reeling all week.” It really will be about the art of the question.”, he said. Sensing they were in the presence of wisdom and poetic wisdom at that, the panel of people actually stopped talking and took a breath together, something rarely witnessed in the often dry, didactic ways in which these conversations go.

The art of the question. The shaping of a good question, one that will illicit deep truth, exceptional creativity, a longed-for hope, is indeed an art. Crafting a question takes time to listen to the inward, intuitive voice. After the listening comes the sorting of the words that want to elbow their way into the spotlight, gently pushing them aside in favor of those that linger at the back of the stage. Carefully, this word and then that one is chosen until the question begins to come to life. Sometimes words are shifted around, like a puzzle, until they fit just perfectly. Then, and only then, does the punctuation mark get its proper place at the end of the outflowing letters. Spoken with that lilt upward at the end of the sentence, this artfully created question can lead to a new path, an answered longing, a definitive affirmative or a confident negative.

Hearing the phrase ‘the art of the question’, reminded me of those early days as a parent when children came home from school and I would begin the interrogation of the day in which I had had no part. Asking what were probably quite artless questions, I received the artless answers the questions deserved. “How did it go today?” “Fine.” “What did you like best today?” ”Recess.” (Or the second favorite answer, ‘lunch’.) “Did you learn anything new?” “ No.” Sound familiar to anyone? Over the years I think I learned to ask more well crafted questions and began to get a clearer sense of how our sons’ days were unfolding at school. It was all about how I asked the question.

Asking questions implies a relationship that can run deep. Asking questions says to another person that we care about their opinion, their feelings, their experience. And when we ask our questions well we also forge a connection between our own life experience and a new understanding grows. I tend to believe this to be Spirit-work…work that holds relationships in a tension with the unseen More… and work our world sorely needs.

Reflecting on questions this week, I was reminded of some that have stuck with me. “To be or not to be? That is the question.”, Hamlet ponders. “Who do you say I am?”, asks Jesus. “Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, writes poet Mary Oliver. Letting those three very different questions wrap themselves around me gives me pause and takes me in a million directions searching for the answers. This is only one of the gifts of a really good question. The asking allows the one who answers to reveal something deep and lasting and wonderful.

What questions are you walking with these days? Are the questions well formed or do they need the touch of your artist hand? Somehow I feel that these days in which we find ourselves will be best served by being present to the creative acts of listening, of crafting and asking good questions and listening, really listening, to the other. It is holy work. And just imagining it brings such hope for a way forward.

Last week I was revisiting one of Krista Tippett’s On Being podcasts. While I listen to this in real time each week, I often like to listen again to ones that are particularly rich. Her guest was Marilyn Nelson, a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a poet. I remembered being taken with this interview when I heard it a few months ago and it was a joy to hear it again. In the hour long conversation, the two women spoke of ‘communal pondering’. It was a phrase that just jumped out and grabbed me. Communal pondering…an act of being in silence, or at least prolonged quiet, with others. The actual title of the podcast was ‘Communal Pondering in a Noisy World.’

Noisy world! There is so much ‘noise’ that makes up our days, isn’t there? I think of all the ways in which sound, noisy or otherwise is our daily bread. The sounds assaulting us are not always words, of course. Traffic sounds are background music. Machines of all kinds hum or clank or roar outside our windows.  All our devices with beeps, dings and inane tunes that signal someone is trying to reach us, tell us something often not that important, rarely urgent.

Communal pondering in the midst of all this seems so sane to me. Something born of a deep wisdom that often seems just outside our reach. Rolling the phrase around in my mind, I thought of the old hymn, ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty’ with its lyric’ Ponder anew, what the almighty can do.’ I laughed thinking about what the Almighty would have to do to get our attention in the flurry of the noise that often surrounds every waking moment.

As I listened to the women talk about this experience of communal pondering I began to realize that it was so much more than being alone in meditation or even prayer. It was more active than that. What they were inviting people to consider was the experience of sitting with, fully present to others around with the intention of being still enough, quiet enough, to hear not only our own breath but the breath of the other. In doing so, we also might be able to hear the Breath of the Other. We might actually hear ‘what the Almighty can do.’  It seems an invitation ripe for our time, doesn’t it? I wondered how much calmer my days would be if I turned from the seductive noise that calls to me like a siren song and instead engaged in the deliberate act of pondering. Something tells me it might make for more grounded days.

The irises are in full bloom in our garden right now. They ask nothing more of me and anyone else that happens by than to ponder them. Ponder their beauty. Ponder their presence. Ponder the miracle of them. Ponder their fragility and their fleeting nature, not unlike our own. Perhaps, as I ponder their life, they are also pondering mine. If so, we are engaging in some very fine communal pondering.

The Almighty would be pleased, I believe.

“Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.”
~Lord Byron

I hadn’t thought of her in years. I can’t even remember her name. A distant memory of her was jogged when I read an article yesterday in the newspaper about two schools, a Catholic school for girls, and a Muslim school for girls. The wise adults, teachers, had had the brilliant, good sense to connect some of the girls as ‘pen pals’. Pen pals!  By email these young girls had been linked through the power of words and keyboards and the back and forth of language that moves slowly enough to allow thoughtful, gentle questions and answers, and the art of waiting for response.  And stories, I am sure, for what would pen pals be without sharing the stories of their lives?

When I was in sixth grade, I acquired a pen pal. I don’t remember which wise adult caused this to happen. Because I can’t remember her name, I will call her Elizabeth(which may be right). Though I can’t fully remember her name, I can however conjure up a grainy, image from black and white photos we sent back and forth several times. Elizabeth was special because she agreed to write to me. And she was special because she lived in the land of John, Paul, George and Ringo…England. She became a real-live connection with the land of the objects of my devotion and the recipients of all my allowance, the Beatles. Elizabeth and I wrote about what was happening in school, our families, our friends, what magazines we read, which Beatles songs we were crazy about at the time. It was the give and take of young girls’  letter writing. Writing to her introduced me to those tissue paper, blue, ‘air-mail’ foldable letter and envelope combinations. Walking to the post office in my small town and purchasing these seemingly exotic items meant for places I had never been but longed to go, fueled my desire to see the world, to know people whose lives were different than my own. It planted something in me that continues to this day.

In the newspaper, there is a picture of some of the girls from these two schools meeting for the first time. Their youthful, beautiful faces are full of excitement and expectation to meet the one whose words had passed between them. While their school uniforms could have marked their differences, the photos shone forth their faces full of welcome and recognition…and joy. What may have seemed difference was overshadowed by delight. I was excited for them and what they might be learning from one another. I thought of the seeds of understanding and hope that may have been passing between them. And I thought of how they were probably sharing the normal things girls that age share, just like my pen pal and I did those years ago.

Letter writing may have become a lost art. Some might say so. But the teachers in these two schools knew something and they acted on it. They knew that when people put words on paper, or a screen, and send them to one another, they become linked in significant ways. Their words become the invisible lines of connection where understanding and compassion can be built. Their words can become the world-expanding stage that catapults people to travel to places they never dreamed, to learn of ways of being in the world they never imagined. Their words can be the seeds of peace the world longs for and desperately needs.

Did you ever have a pen pal? When was the last time you wrote a letter? When was the last time you received one? I am thankful to have thought of ‘Elizabeth’ who was once my pen pal…across an ocean I dreamed of crossing…whose life helped opened me to the beauty of the world I longed to see and experience.

Maybe it is time for another pen pal.

Sometimes we need a wake up call…a moment when it becomes clear what matters, what is true, what binds us together as humans. In all the ways our last days and months have floated along the surface of roiling waters, words and pronouncements flying toward us so furiously that we are in a constant state of upheaval and confusion, it is so good to have at least a moment of reminding. Here. Look at this. Stay focused on that. Breathe. Deeply.

I had just such a moment on Saturday morning. It was a moment that extended into several minutes and held me in the rest of the way the day unfolded. I made my first trip of the year to the St. Paul Farmers Market. The colder, wetter weather and some weekend commitments had prevented it until Saturday. Parking a distance away, I began to see people, bags empty, walking in metered anticipation toward the rows of trucks and tables lining the street. There was a lightness in their step fueled by the Sun’s warm and glorious rays and the sweet smell of trees blooming along the boulevard.

Arriving at the market itself, I stopped and allowed the sights of both merchants and buyers moving to and fro to wash over me. I looked for the familiar…there were the ‘chicken sisters’, as I think of them, selling their organic eggs and various forms of popular poultry. There was the dear one named ‘Joy’ who sells gently used quilts, rag rugs and clothing, throwing her head back in the laughter that mirrors her name. There was the Hmong farmer whose lined and lovely face and dancing eyes always looks you square on as he hands you the veggies in season for that week. And standing near by, the maple syrup maker in his signature bib-overalls looking like an ad luring Scandinavians who might think of moving to Minnesota, beamed his seemingly ever-present smile. Ahh…yes. All this. Steady. Constant. True.

Walking among the rows of tables filled with early produce…rhubarb, asparagus, radishes…and other veggies that have been grown in greenhouses, I felt my shoulders relax and my breathing deepen. It was a walking meditation of sorts. I caught the eye of certain farmers filled with the hope and promise of what is yet to be in this early season. I watched as vendor and customer greeted one another with hugs of recognition happy to see that both had survived yet another winter. They had easily fallen into another season and it was unfolding for my very eyes. Periodically, I stopped and drank in the color of flowers destined for decks and yards and porches. An awesome array of brilliance and bounty! Children gawked from strollers as their adults traded money for the sugary donut treat of a Saturday morning.

“What a wonderful world!”, I thought. And how easily I forget and believe only in the steady stream of the negative always in abundant supply. Yet, here it was. So much of what is right, of what matters, was shining everywhere around me like fireworks after a 4th of July picnic. The promise of seed teamed with soil and sun, water and hard work sparkled…food full of sacrifice and lusciousness. Gifts of Creation and Creator.  People connecting, hands clasping, arms reaching out, sharing what people need to fuel body and soul. The simplicity of humanity coming together in the beauty of a spring morning, being present to one another and the gift of the day. All the arguments, harsh words, threats and fears, real or imagined, paled in the magnitude of this scene, this experience. Confronted with much of what really matters, the preoccupation with the tight-fisted nature of the past week seemed a waste of precious energy, precious life.

Headed back to my car, my bag full of beautiful food and my heart full of hope, I thought of Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for Living a Life:  Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” It seemed to make so much more sense than anything I had heard all week.

I am glad I allowed myself the gift of paying attention. I am humbled by the astonishment. And I am privileged to tell about it.