An Hour of Soaking It In

As one of my seminary classmates would often say in response to something he heard in a lecture or in a message in chapel...my, my, my.¹ That describes the first moving-around hour of my morning.  As you can probably guess I was out early this morning and what a glorious hour it was as I arrived at the lake about 30 minutes before sunrise.  There was a low fog moving over the water, the cool air led me to wear long sleeves (unusual at this time of the year), ducks and geese were doing their thing, I saw the young duck family, and I also was blessed by the lectio divina reading of Genesis 1 about the Spirit moving over the waters.  So, not a lot of words to say but simply images, video, lectio, and music to try to give you a taste of the beauty of this morning.

Scout and I just kept looping around the same paths at the harbor to take in the beauty of this morning which led to photos about every 10 minutes or so of one of the benches.  But as we walked, I listened to the guided lectio divina reading of Genesis 1 from my Dwell app (which BTW you should definitely check out if you are a smart phone user - so good).  The first words of Genesis say:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Ruach (wind/Spirit/breath) from God swept over the face of the waters.

If you would like to take a listen to the guided lectio, click here (highly recommended).

Here is the progression of one of the benches as the sun rose this morning.

Here are the individual images:

But there was also the beauty of the fog moving across the lake which felt like that beautiful Hebrew word, ruach, spoken of in Genesis.  Wind / Breath / Spirit...

Once the lectio reading finished, I switched to my Creation playlist as I soaked in this beauty and the songs that came up on the shuffle were:

What a Wonderful World - Jon Batiste
The Color Green - Rich Mullins
The Rainbow Connection - Kermit the Frog :-)
Path Through the Evening Woods - Carrie Newcomer

Here are the remaining photos from the morning, including seeing the wonderful little duck family as they were swimming around the edge of the lake.

And of course, Scout too…

Finally, as we got back to the car, I went to one of the blessings from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us.  It is entitled, “For the Artist at the Start of the Day”

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,

A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.

May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.²

It was a glorious morning - soul filling, beautiful, magical.  I hope that sharing it here has given you at least a tiny taste of this stunning hour of my morning.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

PS - The Imago Scriptura book club starts on Saturday! Woot!

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1. Thank you W.B.

2. O'Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (p. 17). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.