Leaves, Leaves, Leaves. I have been raking leaves this morning. It seemed that the more I raked more of a battle I was having with the wind. Just when I had things in my neat little pile here came the wind and whipped the leaves up and around, a snow storm of thin pin oak leaves swirling around beautifully, but no longer in the neat pile ready to be raked and dealt with.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit seems to do exactly the same thing in my life. Here I am focusing on my life trying to make things neat and orderly, doing what needs to be done, when the Spirit blows through. My neat orderly life is swirling in a whirlwind of new possibilities, a tornado of grace creating something I had never even thought of out of my somewhat orderly life.
Two years ago the Spirit blew through my life and as a result I am no longer sitting safely in the comfort of my Lutheran congregation of almost 30 years. I am instead enrolled in a program learning to be a Spiritual Director. I am leading SoulCollage® classes and have started a Women’s Sacred Circle. So when the Holy Tornado or even the small still breeze of the Spirit flows through someone else’s life, they will have someone to witness the miracle of God at work. In my new role I can be that safe haven where others can ask those questions about God that oftentimes frowned upon in our churches, helping others find a way to be still and know that the Spirit is at work swirling the possibilities of hope.
We only need to take a look at the stories in the Bible to know that Holy One never does things the way we expect. The shepherd boy is called out of the fields to slay a giant, a teenage girl is called out of her chaste life to birth a savior, a persecutor is blinded by the Light of the Spirit on the road to Damascus to be a missionary for the very cause he has been so adamantly fighting. No, just when it seems that we know what it is we are supposed to be doing; God calls us out to do something beyond our imagining. The Whirlwind of the Spirit is at work swirling around beautifully. How grateful I am that new possibilities abound.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Walking the labyrinth with the light of the full moon
shining down on the path lighting my next step, I am amazed at the brightness
even in the darkness. Perhaps I need to
remember this light next time I am in a dark spot on my life’s journey. Knowing that if even in the darkness of
winter, the full moon will come and shed
light on the next step I need to take. As
I bask in the light of the full moon, the tiny stars
come out one by one, reminders that the light is always there. Even as I wander amidst the pain and despair
that life has delivered, light will always shine upon the path, and twinkle its
message of hope. So I look up at the
moon and at the tiny stars that pop out one by one and feel the eternal message
of hope that these lights bring to me night after night; messages of hope built into the fabric of
creation. 
There was no beautiful sunrise on this gray and cloudy December morning; nothing to dazzle you with its indescribable brilliance. No, the beauty of this day is in its softness. The very air itself envelopes me like my grandmother’s pillowy embrace. Without the brilliant colors of the sunrise, I am drawn to the ever changing patterns of foam in the surf as the waves roll forward and pull back. What lessons there are to see in the ocean? Some days of my life are overcome by brilliant sunrises, new beginnings, color filled possibilities. I seem to tend toward wanting my life to be full of sunshine days. But today witnesses the small beauties of the cloudy day, morsels of grace that would go unnoticed in the brilliant light. The small still voice speaks and says look at the glorious ever changing waves. Even in the turbulent gray ocean is the possibility of beautiful patterns of foam. What patterns of grace have I missed in my life when on gray days I wish for sunshine rather than living with the moments that are here and now in these quiet cloudy days of grace?
