Touching God

I miss walking.  I miss walking outside.  I miss walking out in the open air, in the woods, in the field, on the deserted roads around my house where you could literally walk naked and nobody would see you, where you can pick wild iris in the spring at an old abandoned house at the end of the dirt road and wonder about the people who lived there when the house was in its prime.  I love to let my mind wander along with my feet: who planted the flowers? Was she young and pretty? And how have they survived so long without human care?  And wouldn’t she be happy to see them now so many years later and still so pretty?  I love walking in the springtime when my mind can go wandering along with my body.

I miss walking in the house: popping up to do something on the spur of the moment—throw some laundry in the washer or dryer, give a plant a drink of water, refill the hummingbird feeder.  I miss being able to do what my body needs to do as my mind instructs. 

I miss all the projects I had to let go when my ankle bent over and the bone gave way.  The list is growing instead of shrinking.  Lists are supposed to shrink.  And there's nothing on the "approved" list that appeals to me right now.  I don't want to read.  I've got books piled all around me and I just don't feel like reading.  I've watched all the TV I want to watch, all the movies I want to see.  

And then Fake Monday came.  Fake Monday is the day after Fourth of July holiday.  It’s not really Monday but it’s like Monday.  Since we retired we don’t really have Mondays and we cling to any slight reminder of calendric reality we can get.  Usually it’s Sunday worship or Saturday market in town.  But holidays throw everything off kilter.  But Fake Monday helps re-start our lives. 

And here it is: Fake Monday and I remembered the one project I had in my bag of tricks that I can do sitting down—that one that would take a tap on the shoulder from God to get me to do. I don't need to read a book; I need to write one. The book I’ve been putting off.  The book that’s had about four titles but only one graphic, Cyndie Woodbury’s morning prayer from about four years ago that I knew immediately was what best expressed what I wanted to say in words:

And the book is already mostly written.  All I have to do is scrape together all the essays I’ve written on this subject and gather them into one folder.  I think I’ll set up a blog to organize them and see how it flows.  I started out calling it "Thin places.” and you can see from Cyndie's graphic how easily it fits.  But lately I've started thinking of it as "Touching God."  I'm not sure what I'll end up with.  

The blog will be quiet little stories of quiet little events.  There have been so many times I got close to God and when I finally shook God's hand back in January I didn’t even realize that was what was happening and it wasn’t the earthshattering event you might expect.  My essay describing it wasn’t even all that exciting. If there is one lesson in this maybe it is that touching God is a quiet little event that can happen on a routine basis and can be a routine quiet event. 

So, I’m ready to start.  I already have an idea for tomorrow.

About this graphic:  Cyndie Woodbury is an Episcopalian spiritual director and artist based in San Diego.  She draws as her morning prayer exercise.  Her pallet is an ordinary index card and sharpies are her brushes.  She lets the Spirit guide her hand as she prays and never tries to understand what shows up as a result.  She posts her drawings to a facebook page called "A Table Before Me"