Noticings - Sparkles and the Storm

Getting back "on the trail" a bit...

So it’s been a week since I “stepped off” the path and I really feel like I experienced a beautiful “reset” over the last week.  It isn’t that everything stirring has been taken care of but there was a wonderful reboot with my short retreat and then some other great things from the weekend (the Colorado-TCU game was a part of that).  I was looking back over the last few days of video- and photography and there was a lot that I simply wanted to share.  First, this video…

That really reflected (pun intended) what I was feeling a week or so ago.  There was this undercurrent of unsettled waters in my spirit.  It wasn’t entirely clear where it was coming from but just that it was there.  It wasn’t huge waves but it was an unsettledness that I needed to pay attention to.

The night before I left for my mini-retreat, I had gone out to Winton Woods for a sunset walk and I saw this on the water.

There were all these majestic little sparkles on the water as the sun was setting.  It was so simple yet so beautiful and it spoke to me once again of noticing - where are those sparks even in the midst of challenging times?

So, here are some of the sparks that have fed my soul in the reset from the last week.

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At The Springs...My favorite labyrinth, a stunningly beautiful moment on one of the paths as the sun was starting to set, and then the view from a hammock where my wife and I were able to spend some time together.

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Three from a walk Friday morning at Glenwood Gardens including getting up in that “hand tree” that I wrote about recently...

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A moment of being in the exact right spot at the exact right time on Sunday morning

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And then a gorgeous morning this morning as I was praying and talking out my sermon...

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And of course, the required image of Scout...

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While I was at The Springs, I finished MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s book on Hope that I wrote about previously.  I loved how she ended the final reflection (which was rooted in the story of Jesus stilling the storm)...

But we stay with it. We stay in the storm, hard as it is, because that’s where love requires us to be. Riding out the storm together is why we are here.  ¹

It reminds me of the beautiful piece from John August Swanson that we have over our mantle in our house...We’re in the storm together, but we’re in it together and we have Jesus in the boat with us.  But that line...because that’s where love requires us to be.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

1. Dana, MaryAnn McKibben. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 191). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.