Day is Done

Both T. Bone and Miss Bit reported that they had good first days.  He was happy to not have homework and that he took cold lunch.  It's only his second year of middle school, yet he astutely anticipated cafe lines would be long as fellow students struggled to remember lunch account numbers.  He chilled on the couch until football practice with a slice of his favorite pizza.  She was most pleased to meet up with all her favorite girls on the playground since they are separated in different classrooms this year, and also to get home to rendezvous with her neighborhood BFF. I promised her a trip to the beach in a moment of desperation the night before.  It was an incentive to help her get through the day wearing a smile.  It worked and she cashed in as soon as A. left for soccer practice. 

In true end of day fashion, I would rather have taken a pass.  Of course, I absolutely knew that wasn't an option.  A promise is a promise.  My girl was abuzz the whole way to the lake, but what we saw when we greeted the great expanse filled us both with quiet awe.  Do you see what we saw?  In the sky above and before us was an airy angel.  Her hands were gathered in reverent prayer as she took flight her wings aflutter in the gentle wind..

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As the clouds shifted in the evening sky, the angel morphed into a dove.  On that, you'll have to take my word.  I was head deep in the refreshing water without my phone to capture an image, but I was where I should have been.  I was living the moment, not capturing it.  I was immersed in the lake, in life, not watching from the shore or the sidelines. It's not lost on me that the dove symbolizes the holy spirit, peace and tranquility...and love.  It wasn't a stretch to see how any one of...how all of...these attributes spoke to the moment, or held quiet meaning for the day.  It's true I am a bit of a sucker for signs, but it seems foolish not to acknowledge them when they are so blatant to be beheld.  Look and you shall see.  The Bible tells us: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.  Matthew 7:7  

My girl...she is a seeker.  She sees what I see.  We share a search.  A search for simple joy in our surroundings.  We worship in church some days, but everyday in the natural beauty that surrounds us.  I am never as pious as when I take in the sights and sounds of His creations.  As we bounded up the path energized and restored, Miss Bit paused to capture one last look.  It was a sight, and this snapshot does not do justice to the way the horizon melted into the water as if they were one in the same.  You cannot see how the azure edge of the sky blended to include petal pink and the lightest of lavenders.  You have to see the almost startling juxtaposition of the ethereal clouds and the stark white seagulls in flight with your own two eyes.

When I opened my book to read before bed, this passage was on the first page:

Pondering was a special kind of thinking.  It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence - intuition rather than thought - lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce.  Life was a scurrying mouse, amusing in its way but ultimately helpless before the fixed bead of the contemplative gaze.

(Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life, Patricia Hampl)

These few words struck me like a bolt of lightning that was flashing through last night's suddenly squall filled sky.  To feel is to know.  I ponder, therefore I am.  If I don't see, I'm not really living fully.  It's true the day was done and what I took away from it allowed me to sleep soundly straight through the stormy night.