A few days ago I picked up a book based solely on its title and book cover. I was drawn to it like a moth to a free swinging light bulb. The title of the book? Where The God of Love Hangs Out. It is a series of short stories by Amy Bloom, stories that paint the picture of love and loss, of lives intertwined and torn apart or so says the jacket cover. I haven’t started to read it yet. But I was too intrigued by the title to pass it up. I’ll give an update later.

Where The God of Love Hangs Out. What comes to your mind when you hear those words? Where have you seen the God of Love hanging around? The phrase causes my imagination to spin. It also causes me to take stock of the many places where I have seen the God of Love hanging out.

I am certain the God of Love hangs out in nurseries or any place a baby is born into the world. I can imagine this Being dancing about, celebrating another ‘yes’, blessing the moment and the life of yet another possibility. I am also pretty sure the God of Love hangs out in most preschool and kindergarten classrooms, willing the young ones to hold onto their deep awe and curiosity, allowing their giggles and hushed surprises to splash about the dance floor bringing unspeakable joy.

The God of Love also walks the halls of hospitals and stands at the bedsides of those in hospice care. I know this to be true because I’ve witnessed that hanging around through the hands and hearts of caregivers, washing pained and weary bodies, drying tears that roll down cheeks. I’ve felt the space being held in peace and tenderness.

In homeless shelters and soup lines across this wealthy, privileged nation, the God of Love walks around with a look of confusion. Moving among the mats lying on cold, hard, gym floors, serving up thin, tasteless soup, the God of Love pours slowly over those who have had a hard luck turn in their lives, have fallen off the wagon, have lost their way. I image that, as the lights are turned out and the mats become filled with fitful sleepers, the God of Love stands watch over these beloved ones as a parent perhaps did once.

While I have never been on a battlefield, I imagine the God of Love walks silently among those whose work is war, chosen or not. I can almost see the God of Love trying to help hands reach out across political, ethnic, racial, religious lines, hoping beyond hope that the sight of eyes looking into eyes will mend hearts and make enemies into companions.

As I reflect on it, the real trick is to imagine where the God of Love does not hang out. Even in the darkest, fearful, hurting places of the world, I can still imagine the God of Love standing by, waiting patiently to be noticed, to be known, to offer healing.

The truth is that I don’t usually like short stories. I always feel as if they are over too soon, that I have just begun to give myself to the story, just truly connected with the characters, and then it ends. There is something poignant about them that creates a melancholy for me so I avoid them.

But at least this once I will read this book of short stories with anticipation. Anticipation for more ways I can see the God of Love hanging out in a world that is often fragile, rarely simple, and always fleeting. Perhaps the more this God of Love becomes visible, the more I can hang out in the places where I can nudge those around me, encouraging each of us to be awake, encouraging each of us to just hang out together.

Perhaps I have never mentioned in this space that at several times in my life I have been a waitress. I am sure that I have never mentioned that it truly is one of my favorite jobs. Waitressing provides those who like it with a constant stream of people with which to interact. It allows you to offer hospitality, to feed people not only with food but with attention. It allows you to earn cold, hard cash in ways that, for the most part, is commensurate with your ability to do your work. If you feel good about the food you are serving and like the people you work with you can leave at the end of your shift tired but fulfilled. And you rarely take your work home with you or stress out about the work itself. As I see it, It is work ideal for the extroverted person addicted to welcome and hospitality.

This morning I recognized another element of this service profession which I may have intuitively known but had never articulated. It happened at a little Grand Marais stronghold known as The World’s Best Donuts. Ever been there? I am not much a donut eater but this place lives up to its name and it is always good to stop by there. I figure a donut once a year or so is a good thing.

In the past I have only bought donuts to take away to a cabin or house where I was vacationing. But today my husband and I walked into a little side room where the tables were filled with people having their donuts and morning coffee. The room was a-buzz with activity and conversation. Clearly these regulars loved being with one another and loved their donuts!

Sitting at the tables crammed into this little space, my eyes fell on what lay beneath the glass covered tabletop. A jumble of pictures, comics and letters filled the surface. There was an image of a fresh faced young girl taken in 2005 whose reflection I recognized as the now young woman who sold us our rings of sweetness. In another photo, holding up a coffee mug with the donut’s shop logo, stood another young woman in her graduation cap and gown. She was proudly poised in front of the sign for the Harvard Business School. A relative of the owner or a former employee? Who knows? But this little establishment was important enough in her life’s story to warrant making it a part of the history of her important day. Still another photo was of an older man, the dates of his birth and death printed under his name. A short phrase ” the place won’t be the same without you” explained the importance of this place in his life and that he would be missed.

The entire table was covered in similar photos and as I turned to leave I made a point of looking at the other tables covered in coffee cups and donuts in various stages of being eaten. They, too, held the same kinds of photos of yet others who had shared in food and friendship around these tables. I left feeling so full, not so much of sugar, but of the beauty of life itself and the precious nature of the relationships we forge together. Often around a table. Often over a cup of coffee or tea. Often around a food that has meaning beyond its taste or nutrition.

I began to think of the tables I have served as a waitress. I remembered the people who would come into a place I worked and always sit at the same table. How I looked forward to their presence, to catching up with lives! And I thought of the table in my own house and the house of my childhood and all the many people who have, over the years, sat in those chairs. I was struck with the power of tables, how they can hold the stories and the lives of all who take the time to stop, sit and share food. Each table in some way continues to hold the memory of that presence. That was my experience this morning.

And so as I continue on my way into this day and this week and the next month, I want to hold this experience in my consciousness. I want to remember that,as I take a place at nearly every table, I am only one person who is sharing a space so many others have done before me. Their stories, their lives, also occupied this place. Though I may not be able to see them as I could those who had left their mark through photos and writings on the table I sat at today, we are somehow connected by virtue of having sat in the same place.

Perhaps this was something Jesus knew as he gathered his dear friends around a table so long ago and said: ” Take, eat, remember.”

“Our spirits would stretch out the way the light of the sun spreads through the sky. Our breaths came out, through our lungs, throats, soles, skin; we exhaled from our tingling fingertips. We breathed; we lived.”
~Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

I began this morning staring out at Lake Superior. As I quietly watched the sun’s light come up on this powerful and beautiful body of water, I was struck with the ways in which the wind moved upon the water creating patterns that moved both toward the shore and away. The dancing of this unseen force moved this mighty lake in ways it has no power over. Under the water a similar force united with the force above to create the waves that dashed against the unmoving rocks. I could hear the sound of the crashing as it formed a rhythm not unlike the one beating in my own chest, rising with my breath.

That is when I realized I had a short chant we have often used in worship echoing in my head. “The wind blows where it will, you know not where it’s coming from or where it’s going to.” This chant written by Trisha Watts carries a tune that resembles the flowing in and out of a wave. I allowed the music that came from my unconscious to flow over me, becoming a morning prayer.

The words of this chant, of course, come from the scriptures. It is an attempt to describe how the Spirit moves in and out of our lives and the life of all Creation. This breathing, this unseen yet powerful force, is like our breath. It is that which brings life. Even a life we have very little control over. Even a life that can surprise and befuddle us. Even a life that can become chaos and be filled with tumultuous questions.

Many cultures honor what we refer to as the four elements: earth, water, fire, air. The first three are visible to us, in some ways, easy to grasp. But air…..breath, spirit…can only be known by its effect. As I continue to look out the window at this enormous body of water, I see the trees and water animated by the unseen force of wind. Just a few miles north, the fires that are moving through the beloved forests of the Boundary Waters, are fueled by the air that fans the flames. Flames that will not only destroy but will also eventually bring new life to the earth through seeds that are scattered and soil that is renewed.

What to make of all this? For me, it is that unseen power of Spirit that is always present. In the Hebrew scriptures the word ‘ruach’ is one and the same for Spirit, breath, wind and air. It is the same word used to describe the Holy’s moving across the initial waters bringing life, in all the forms known to us, out of the teeming waters of chaos. Unseen yet life producing.

An encounter with the waters of Lake Superior never ceases to restore confidence in me. Its sheer presence reminds me of the largesse of the world of which I am only a tiny part. Somehow this makes any problem or distress I may be experiencing seem manageable. It is, in that sense, a grounding presence, I guess. And the wind that moves, always moves, over its surface and under its waves grounds me in the reassurance of the Spirit’s presence moving in my life. In ways I understand and that are visible. In ways that are unseen and surprising.

And yet always in ways that lead to life……..all the way to our tingling fingertips.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was greater than the risk to bloom.”
~Anais Nin

These evolving autumn days are urging me to reflect on the summer that is now only a memory. This reflection is enhanced by the small notebooks and pieces of paper on which I have jotted down words said or read, ideas that came to me in the humidity and heat. You see, I have this habit of writing down things that, at the moment, seem paramount but on further reflection can cause me to furrow my brow.

I do this ‘jotting’, I think, in a concerted effort to keep myself from writing in a journal as many people do. I guess I think that if I simply write these things down on 3×5 notecards or on the back of a napkin, I won’t give the thoughts too much weight or take myself too seriously. After all, what might happen if someone would find my journal and read words I found important? So, while I may have started countless, beautiful journals, they are mostly left free of any real, important thoughts in favor of the jotting,scrap method.

So on this autumn day I took the opportunity,while under the guise of cleaning out my book bag, to look over the little bits of this and that that has grabbed my attention, lifted my spirit or just seemed like something I should spend more time with. The quote of Anais Nin above was tucked among those scribbles, some of which have lost their meaning to me as the temperatures have turned cooler.

Risk. Frankly, I don’t like to think much about risk. And yet it infuses all our lives and is the stuff of growing, of deepening our lives in any significant way. I probably like to stay in ‘bud’ form rather than take the risk of blooming. It is safe. I know the landscape, understand the soil. Blooming requires being seen, being known for what I really am. And sometimes I don’t like the petals I can put on display in the world. Petals that are less than kind. Petals that make judgments and are gossipy. Petals that don’t make room for other bloomers around me. It is easy to focus on these more negative blooms.

But I have been thinking about risk these past several days. Our older son is having a life adventure, camping and surfing up the West Coast. He is traveling with his dog and making it up as he goes along. It seems, from the mother-point-of-view, to be filled with risks. And yet, it is so much a part of moving from bud to blossom, finding the next thing in his life after college. The adventure has allowed him to have rich and enlivening experiences which have included surfing while seals looked on as he was surrounded by a pod of dolphins. This is not a ‘bud’ but a ‘blossom’ experience.

As I think about our faith stories they are all about people who could no longer stay in the bud. Moses. Esther.Abraham. Mary. Ruth. John. Paul. Jesus. Each came to the point, over and over again, when staying in the bud would have been to deny God’s call on their lives.

And so they took a risk. Many times blossoming led to beautiful and rich experiences. Other times it led to tragedy and hardship. The same holds true for us. To remain in the bud means never coming into our fullness. Each breath, each moment, each day, each year, holds out bud and blossom.The question is, what will choose?

What is longing to blossom in your life these autumn days? What risks are held in the promise of the bud? As the leaves begin to turn and fall, may the buds you are holding find the courage to take a risk.

“There are nights that are so still
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake and listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.”
~R.S. Thomas(1913-2000)’ The Other’

Reading this poem by Welsh poet R.S. Thomas, I once again connected with a feeling that can sometimes be disturbing and other times reassuring. His image of the one who lies awake at night thinking of ‘the other’ who is also awake on a far flung shore is one I have wrestled with most of my life. While I believe Thomas was probably speaking of his understanding of the Holy, what this poem dredges up in me is that deep sense of connection I often have, at fleeting moments, to those I have never met, those who live ‘across the sea’ of my experience.

This feeling often comes to me in large groups of people. Looking out across a wide expanse of humanity at, say, a sporting event or concert, I think about the fact that I do not know these people. I have no idea of the intricacies of their lives, what they love, what troubles them. I search the faces to look for familiar features that do not materialize. At the same time, I realize that the faces that look back do not know me. They do not know that my favorite color is green, that I love poetry, that I will choose pie over roast beef any day.

And yet here we all are. In this mix of people traveling the Earth together at the same time. Each of us making decisions and hoping for the best. Each of us seeking meaning and a way of being known, of being loved, of being heard. We all do it in different ways but the desire still wells up in us in similar ways. This somehow brings me great comfort when the specifics of my personal problems or the weight of my daily rounds threaten to overwhelm my sensibilities.

While R.S. Thomas thinks of the ultimate being that waits at the edges of the sea of prayers, I think of all those other beings, much like myself, who lie awake in the night worrying about their children or dreaming of a solution to a hovering problem. I think of the mothers, in the wee hours of the night, nursing their infants as I once did, trying to keep awake through sheer will. I also think of those mothers who cannot feed their children, who don’t know where the next meal will come from, and the despair that lives in them.While the poet imagines the prayers washing up on the shore of the Sacred, I imagine the person, on the other side of the world, looking into the night sky, gazing at the full, white moon, just like I am. Are they imaging a person who lives a life unlike their own yet with the same hope for a better world for their children, their grandchildren? Are they imagining me?

This may all sound silly but it is something that swooshes in on me every now and then. This feeling of traveling on this spinning planet with so many fragile, yet hopeful, beings seems such a gift. To feel the rush of the realization of all ‘the others’ that are spinning with me, seems rich, deep, not unlike a prayer.

Have you ever had this experience, this feeling? If not, I offer this to you: The next time sleep eludes you in the middle of the night, begin to think of all the people on the other side of the world who are already living a day you have not yet been given. Imagine them moving about their daily lives, just as you will when the sun rises. Imagine the ways their lives are so different, yet similar, to your own. Imagine sending them all the hopes you have for goodness in your life and the lives of those you love. Allow the prayers of your heart to connect with the hearts who, perhaps,do not speak the same language or share your faith tradition. Allow the rising and falling of your breath, the words of your prayers, to wash upon the shore of ‘the others.’

It is my suspicion that in doing so, those same prayers will also break upon ‘The Other’ for this hour, this day, this year, for eternity.

“Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling
All thy faithful mercies crown!”
~Charles Wesley

I have been visited by an ear worm, one of those songs that gets stuck in your head and seems impossible to shake. Songs that find a home in the deep unconscious of waking in the morning and become a mantra when trying to find the keyhole of sleep at night. Songs that create a soundtrack for washing the dishes, eating lunch, walking to and from the car. You know those songs. Ditties like ‘It’s A Small World’ and  ‘Feelings’. Tunes that can drive you to the edge of reason.

But my ear worm for some reason is this old Charles Wesley hymn of my childhood. I can’t even remember the last time I sang it in worship or any place else. So why did it come to me? In fact the whole hymn did not come to me. What has been floating through my brain was my favorite phrase as a child: ” Changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.”

I loved, I should say I love, the idea of being changed from glory into glory. Don’t you? The crown part is not too bad either. After all, to cast a crown must mean wearing one! But it is the glory I want to stand in. By definition glory means ‘great honor, praise, or distinction accorded by common consent, to be renowned.’ Somehow this definition does not do the word glory justice. When I say glory, I think of shimmering, of shining. To me, the idea of being changed from one shimmering glory-being to another is a lovely thought.

As I reflect on this hymn, I wonder what was going through Charles Wesley’s mind when he wrote the words. I have to also admit that I don’t often think of him as someone who might think that, as humans, we are glory that can then be transformed into even greater glory. It makes me feel more warmly toward him knowing he wrote these words.

As a little girl I remember certain older people use the phrase ‘Well, glory be!’ These people were mostly older women in flowered aprons with ample bossoms who hovered over church dinner tables and served up mounds of mashed potatoes and fried chicken. At the sight of something they thought amazing, like a new baby or a perfect cherry pie, their voice might rise above the supper din, ‘Well, glory be!’ Heads would turn and take in the glory recognized in the moment.

What does glory feel like to you? Have you had an experience of glory these days? How are you moving from one glory to the next?

More importantly, how are you be-ing glory? The world needs more shimmering and shining. I expect we all best get busy.

“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become…..”
~John O’Donohue

Today I met with a young couple whose wedding I am conducting in a few weeks. They have been a delightful pair with which to meet. I have to admit to finding something intriguing and fun in the relationship that happens with each couple whose wedding I participate in but this couple has been particularly enjoyable. Partly it is that they are so sure of what they believe to be important in their relationship and the words they have chosen for the ceremony reflect that. It is a great thing to witness.

It is also rare to have a couple show up with words of someone like John O’Donohue for their wedding. This beloved Irish poet, theologian and wisdom figure is dear to my heart. I hadn’t thought about his work for awhile. His words bring a groundedness….always a good thing. His untimely death three years ago at age 54 is still heart-breaking.

How often do you feel like an artist of your days? How often do you even feel like you are the driver in the car of your days? If we allow our days to flow out one after the other, doing the things on our lists, driven by some outward sense of ‘what must be accomplished’, it is easy to come to the end of a day exhausted but with no art to hang in the gallery. Ever have that feeling, that experience? I know I have.

And yet if I allow myself to be challenged by O’Donohue’s words, I begin to feel a sense of exhilaration. What if I paid more attention to the canvas on which I am painting my life than to the handwritten list of paints I never take the time to buy? What if the song that is waiting to be sung through me is the one that someone needs to heal the hurt that is killing them? What if I move from the chairs that line the wall to the center of the floor and begin to dance the joy, or the sorrow, that lurks just beneath the surface? What if?

To be the artist of our days requires we know ourselves well. It requires we put aside the masks we wear to feel safer,in control. It demands we become aware of the gifts the Spirit is birthing through us with every breath we take. This can take some digging but if we want to become artists of our days it requires getting dirty, sometimes requires even making a mess.

What is the art the Great Artist is calling forth from you this day? How are you listening for that sometimes quiet voice that urges you to the awareness of the gifts the world so needs, the gifts only you can offer? This art….. that is our lives…… is not for the faint of heart. But it is for everyone. Everyone who has the courage to be their authentic self, to pick up the paints in whatever form they arrive at the door, and to paint with brushstrokes unique and enlivening.

On this day I am thankful for the art created by John O’Donohue. For his challenging and inspiring words. And for the art that was his living.

“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.