Monday, November 05, 2007

A Drop of Morning Dew

"Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth." - Wisdom 11:22. Rebecca and I went to the 8:30 at Holy Cross this weekend. We needed to get an early start to the day! This church has a massive stained glass window just behind the altar. It's actually an entire scene (the morning of the Resurrection) with three basic panels capturing different moments from that immortal Morning. I found myself drifting into it during the Mass. The reading was from Wisdom 11. Sometimes a line from Scripture can just take you places... "For you love all things that are..... And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!" The video embedded above was taken a couple weekends ago in NY at the in-laws. Again, I was heading out the door to Mass and captured by the soft fragility of beauty. That thought from the book of Wisdom - about God's "imperishable spirit... in all things" - has been sticking with me this week. Despite the rush and the frenetic pace and the noise and the busyness we subject ourselves too, His imperishable spirit is in all things.... Even though we brush past beauty a thousand times a day.... His imperishable spirit is in all things... ALL things.... So I find myself this week drifting back to those spots of time, flashes of light where He was and where I knew He was and sometimes where I did not see Him until just now. But His imperishable spirit is in all things... In the light on the horizon driving home from Grandma Donaghy's when I was a kid in the backseat. In the wet fields off of Sykesville Road, and in the white wings of the gulls hovering over the soil... In the music of my youth....in the games we made up, in the intoxicating freedom of riding our bikes all over Burlington County. In the smell of those Star Wars trading cards, the music of John Williams, the gilded edges of holy cards, the smell of my baseball glove, the walk of wonder to the parking lot under a starry sky after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. In the swimming hole at Rancocas Creek... in the card games with the guys on Jefferson Street, laughing... always laughing. His imperishable spirit is in all things... And there is nowhere where He is not, and in Him all things are. The universe is a sacrament, and in faith we can see Him, meet Him, love Him, as He comes to us streaming through the memories, and the moments that surround and shape us every single day.

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