Labyrinth at Sunset

Thank you God for most this amazing sunset!  After a lovely lunch and visit earlier today with my friend and mentor, John Kerr, I decided to walk over to the labyrinth for the sunset.  God did not disappoint.  It was a perfect evening for a walk - coolish with a slight breeze, but warm enough to be comfortable in shorts.  Not too humid.  Sky full of color.  Insects and birds singing sleepy songs.  On my way over I saw a flock of Canadian geese milling around in the grass.  When I got to the labyrinth, I walked and breathed and thought about the dance of the Trinity and how marvelous God is.  In the center I sang one of my favorite John Bell songs from the Iona community:
    Take, oh, take me as I am,
    summon out what I shall be.
    Set your seal upon my heart,
    and live in me.
Arms stretched out, palms upward, offering myself to God.  I am yours, my creator - work through me. 

Not long after I finished singing, I heard a sound and looked up to see the flock of geese flying over in their classic V formation.  One goose trailed behind, finding his way into one of the lines.  The leader honked.  I could hear the whoosh of their wings beating against the air as they flew.  I smiled up at them.

A few minutes later I noticed something dark moving across the sky over my head.  At first I thought it was a giant spider.  My memory flashed to a Piers Anthony Xanth book, read when I was a teenager, that described a spider ballooning itself across vast distances on a line of spun silk.  As I looked at it longer and rational thought set in, I realized it wasn't a spider, but it might be a leaf.  Since I was in the center of the labyrinth, I couldn't imagine where the leaf had come from.  As it descended, floating gently down, a bit of light caught it, and I saw that it was a white feather, a bit of down from one of the geese, separated from its source, fluttering down to the earth. 

One of my spiritual directors used to say that in centering prayer, when we return to our sacred word, we need to do so very gently, "floating like a feather on the breath of God."  She was quoting Hildegard of Bingen.  Tonight it looked as if the feather was floating on the breath of God until it landed on in the grass at the edge of the labyrinth. 

I felt a bit like that feather this evening as I walked, carried gently on the breath of God.  In a world that grows less and less safe, where refugees flee and police folk are shot, where it's criminal to be black and the distribution of resources is completely out of whack, where mental illness and addiction are treated as crimes to be punished not diseases to be treated, where you turn off the news to keep your heart from breaking, where there is so much that is horrible that we numb ourselves to keep from weeping - in that world there is also beauty and goodness and light.  Dynamic sunsets and caressing breezes.  Geese flying and feathers floating.  Birds and insects saying good night.  The groaning of our planet and her people continues, but for a moment there is a glimpse of something else, elusive and fleeting.

Breathe your breath into us, God.  Fill us with your peace.  Hide your children under the shadow of your wings.  Bring us all safely home.