Small Great Pleasures

For the better part of a year, maybe more, in the fifteen minutes before the noon mass at St. Victor, I go outside into a little non-public patio to watch the plants, and the birds. The mockingbirds make nests in the bougainvillea and steadfastly chase any creature that intrudes on the space around the bushes. Sparrows pop onto the grass and into the trees. Hummingbirds take their nectar from all the other colorful plants.

In those few minutes my belief in God cannot be shaken. And I breathe the air of paradise. And wish I could stay there henceforth. Of course, that is not to be, yet anyway.

All of this activity is going on in the city amid our bustle. Ever notice when you are at a stoplight that the sparrows have made nests in the openings of poles holding electric wires? Outside the office window right now, a bevy of bees are hovering over leaves as the kids on the other side of the bushes play an idle game of basketball. Peaceful co-existence.

At any rate, I almost need that little prayerful space outside the Church every day, as much as I need moments before the Blessed Sacrament inside the Church. I have always been let's say, "high-strung" and of late various tasks that have come to me in "retirement" have triggered all my fears and anxieties. So those moments of whistling birds and wispy breezes close to the noon hour are indispensable to my body and soul.

Prayer comes easy while observing the markings on a sparrow, or the iridescent tiny neck of the hummingbird.

Hmmm, just now I went out into the afternoon sun to get the parish mail. And I noticed that a cloud looked a great deal like a sleeping German shepherd. That really brightened the day!

I was thinking that perhaps the best way to approach life, and it is no new idea, is to recognize that daily life is just plain hard, and every so often it is interspersed with these brief experiences of what our lives ought to have been, had we not been willfully grasping at becoming gods ourselves. People say, rationalizing, that it would be boring, this everyday a paradise.  Really?  I don't think we would know what boredom is because our lives would be entire, whole, infused with Divinity. What a mess we made.

But at least there are these small great pleasures that remind us to hang in because it has been recovered for us, this paradise, if we persevere now, here, in that daily grind. At this moment I am willing. I know that in an hour or less I could be in a lamentable lamenting state.

And then I hope I can abandon myself into God's Hands--just long enough to get back on track in anticipation of eternity.