Do Not Want to Miss It

The small things are the things which in their millions make the world work.  The craftsmen, the traders, the men in white vans who bring stuff and fix stuff; the people in the factories who knit my jumpers and weave the wool to make the tweed for my trousers; the farmers — the individual men and women who care for and grow the things we eat and wear, who look after the landscape for the love of it.  The steps that we take that lead us to where we are.  The small things, the tiny, tiny interactions, are the journey.  ~ Marc Hamer, How to Catch a Mole

​July 18, 2023
Beloved,
          How to Catch a Mole is positively the loveliest of books:  a mashup of Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, with a voice all his own.  It’s available at the local library (downtown and southwest branch) and at https://bookshop.org/.  It’s worth the $16 to me just to pick it up and read a page when I need to see words strung perfectly together in the way that resettles me in this world and inside my own skin.
          Last night’s storm was harder on Birdy than me.  She slept in my armpit, when she slept.  When she didn’t, she dragged baby clothes from the guest room and shoes from my closet.  She drank all of her water and then didn’t wake me up to go outside, because it was too scary of course, so I got to scrub the carpet first thing this morning.  Once we went for a walk and she realized the world is still as it should be, she settled down and is snoring by my chair.  As the vet likes to remind me as he snugs and loves on her, she’s just a baby.
          My yard may struggle to grow grass but the mushrooms are magnificent, great big speckled white umbrellas beneath which I keep expecting to see a toad, like a story in a children’s book.  Also smaller but by-no-means-little, rosy-pink ones, a brown cone one at least 4 inches tall, and whole crops of wispy gray ones in my flower beds that wither as soon as sunlight touches them.
          This is me doing my best neither to hurry nor to dawdle, to give the proper effort to the work at hand, as Wendell Berry wrote, so as to do the work as well as I can do it.  And also, not to miss the splendor of this moment by being in some other.  I don’t want to miss this summer, this rain, these flowers, the hummingbirds or the mouse that died of unknown causes by my barberry bush.  They amount to Life bursting through the rush and worry of these days, the assurance of the Creator’s power still doing business in the universe.  I simply do not want to miss it, and the only way I know to partake is to go slowly enough to pay attention.
          I pray you find room enough in this day to see and hear something of the million little things to remind you that Life is still in business and there is great cause for hope. 

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette