Praise God in the swirling mass of shapes and sounds—this cosmic expanse of spiraling galaxies, shrouded planets, streaking comets, sprinkled and strewn about like wild flowers. Praise Holy Mystery, enshrouded, fecund, actual—creator/creation, distinct yet inseparable.
Praise God in the rust forming over my old Rambler, its wonky front wheel spinning off into the ditch at the end of its working life, now oxidizing in place, the wet air corroding, the freeze-and-thaw pitting, dismantling, and grass rising to encompass and retrieve the rest.
Praise God in the bud. That dart of love aimed at honeyed glands, the glowing breach, the nectar’s release, like a clarion call in some dewy dance hall. Bright tip splits the light of vernal sun and venal night, bud-scale breakdown, leaf pirouette, and shimmy of green.
Praise the Holy in my hometown. Its gravel streets, its Caterpillar grader leaving a raised ridge down Railroad and Main where three towering silos shelter grain, cast shadowy dreams across the coming season. Praise Reg and George, Lydia and Julia, and the beer-stained terry-cloth tables and flecks of tobacco and claps of laughter and the evening coming on like smoke and fresh hope.
Praise God in the mystery of our grass-like lives, brief as a wind gust, with storms of pain and arid tracts of sorrow. Praise the soaring, disabling dawns that reach for eternity, last a second, leave a scar of joy.
Praise God in the pulse of jellyfish, their cellophane bodies, like spirits, guided by currents unknown; praise the honeybee awakening at the whisper of an unfurling blossom; and the scribe awakened to intractable reality, disclosing and furthering human consciousness.
Praise rebel and mystic, prophet and painter, builder and blaster, praise every detonation that cracks our cultural languor and spiritual inertia. Praise the poet that shatters my calcified consciousness through an unflinching head-clearing instress of truth.
Praise the equation: God IS Love. Praise Love, the essential nature of all that is, and all that is changing and emerging. Praise unfinished God, sailing with us into the wind, close-hauling, tacking, sighting the quay.
Praise God with lungs and limbs, volition and action; praise every newborn rave of elation and every late-day waltz of contrition. God is Love; Love is God in evolution.
Just incredible
A medley of ordinary and soaring beauty
Thank you, Ananda, you encourage and bless.
As always, gorgeous, expansive, thought-provoking. Thank you, Stephen!
Thank you so much, Cara!
As I read these words I feel the invitation to participate in praise. This line I love especially,
“Praise the soaring, disabling dawns that reach for eternity, last a second, leave a scar of joy.”
Sue, deeply grateful for your response.
Me too…
Thanks Anne!
Yes, and yes! What would it be like to walk through each of my days with the specificity of this awareness. Would it not change my life? It is time to remember to remember! Thank you, Stephen.
Thank you for this, Ann!
Oh Steve! Your imagination soars, and stretches ours who read.
Thank you, Ike. That means a lot to me.
Steve, your words invite, nourish, and expand. Thank you!! <3
Thank you, Mel, your words replenish me.
“The unfinished God … trying to plumb the depths of that. The God who is Love is unfinished…. What does he require but to love mercy and to do justice….
Loved the picture mosaic presented in this!
Thanks, Sam. The unfinished God: I’m trying to plumb the depths of that as well. Broadley, it’s the rejection of God as static and absolute (classical, patristic theology), in favour of God-in-process, being and becoming, which concords with quantum science as well as scripture. That God is in deep, constant relationship with the world, with us. We are not simply related to God, we are part of God’s own life (Herschel). “The feeling remains, that God is on the journey too.” -Teresa of Ávila