A Moment Aside for December 29, 2020

 A Moment Aside – 29 December 2020

(I’m writing this at the risk of sounding all “Polly-Anna” and saccharine. But I’m going to risk it.)

   A number of years ago, I lived in a place with a grotto that was home to quite a few birds. When evening came, the birds sang so much you couldn’t help but hear them. I used to think that they were praying “Vespers”, the church’s evening prayer. Although I didn’t and still don’t know the biological reason for the singing, I still enjoyed it.

    This had been a tough year and maybe we should sing at dawn and at dusk with all the rest of creation. As hard and as lonely and as obtuse has 2020 has been, creation continues and a lot of it is beautiful. Squirrels run along my backyard fence and up and down my next-door neighbor’s roof. Snow can be beautiful as it falls – peaceful and lovely (provided of course that you are inside to watch it.)

   Despite the horror of what this year has become, we can still be grateful for what we continue to have and in the case of things we’ve lost, that we ever had them at all. It’s hard, no doubt, but it can be done.

   Nature and creation might never cease to amaze us. It is how we can encounter God at certain times, even in watching snow fall with a cup of tea in hand. Nature and our own existence is God’s continuing gifts to all of us.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

-         From The Canticle of the Sun by Francis of Assisi (1224)