Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
Today I am leaving for a three week vacation. Amazingly, the world will carry on without me. You will be fine without me. The sun will burn, the tides will rise and fall, children will grow, the nations will rage, without me. I will not lift a finger.
But here’s the mystery. Though I will not be there, the fate of my friends, the blessing of my community, the ministry of the church I serve, the well-being of the trees where I have walked every morning and even the orbit of the moon will all depend on me. They would all be changed if I were not to be. It’s not that by my effort I sustain them, but that I am created as a part of their whole. It is not my doing but my being that blesses all creation. Even while I’m on vacation.
And the same is true of you. Your very being is a blessing for this world, though the world will not know it. Your particular presence—not your skill or effort, but your soul—is essential to the world as God desires it.
The flower in the field, the mountain on the horizon give you a gift simply by being there. God looks at you, and is delighted. Even when, like the beautiful child you are, you are asleep. Enter that sabbath place where your being, and everything’s, is all there is.
___________________________ Weather Report
A day of belonging
as the universe enfolds you;
a low-pressure area
of merely being created
will push aside a high pressure region
with its hailstorm of accomplishments,
leaving light,
such light that emanates from within.