sunday reflection

Today in gathered worship something happened. The Spirit moved and we could feel it all the way up to the back row of the balcony. Someone coming into the sanctuary afterward felt it too and they hadn’t even been there for it. If I were a better writer I would describe it.

I just know that I felt something very deeply and didn’t mind it at all despite being tired and burned out on deep feelings earlier this week. Questions were going off like popcorn in my head: What if God does choose today to send the Holy Spirit to us in power? Would we notice? Would we squash it? Would we embrace it? Would we love it? Hate it? Run from it? Face into it? Accept it? Reject it? Join it?

I was writing more questions for myself and for God when my friend Jo said something profound. She said, “I pray for the courage to surrender.” Then we were invited to walk into the embrace of Jesus in God the Father. Images I ‘felt’ include: Turning into the arms-open-wide embrace of the holy eternal Trinity and surrendering to love.

I wish I could better describe what that was but there aren’t enough words, there isn’t enough time and, I don’t really know. How might this connect to my 4 year old prayer for the Holy Spirit to come - to NFC and to me?

i like this

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Originally uploaded by kjwatson103.

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music dies, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

(From “When Death Comes” By Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems)

heaven's gain

There is heartbreaking news tonight. Tom Fox, Quaker Christian Peacemaker kidnapped in November, has been killed. I signed the petition for his release months ago, asking his kidnappers to lead us toward peace. They did not hear.

May the prayers of the saints continue to go up for Tom's family, his companions, his captors. Who will lead us toward peace now?

what season is it?

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Originally uploaded by kjwatson103.

Yesterday it snowed on the daffodils. As I trekked around outside to take pictures, I felt a keen connection to the bunch that was bent over together, a pile of snow on their heads that cascaded over the top and down to the ground. Two seasons collided yesterday and as I was going through my seasons pictures for women’s retreat a couple weeks ago, I noticed that happens a lot. Crocuses growing up through old oak leaves. Astor seedpods from last fall lying in a bunch of new violets. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what season it really is (inside and out) and now I think I know why.