One of my many favorite Psalms:
Psalm 139
R/ (24b) Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
O Lord, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar. R/
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works. R/
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you.
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth. R/
Alleluia, alleluia. Blessed are those who hear the word of God/ and observe it. Alleluia, alleluia.
It occurred to me that I ought to put words down that were edifying before anyone got to my words. My words, as we used to say, are a crap shoot. The metaphor is dice, I believe. In any case when I woke up in the middle of the morning today, 3 or 4 a.m., there was an image in my mind. There is first sunlight on a fairly new concrete sidewalk; the wall of a large brick building on the right if you are going down; there is a black, pipe-like railing on the left; behind the railing going down there is a sloping hill of green grass from the top of the walk to the bottom; the grassy section is only about two feet wide and leads down to the ever present blacktop parking lot. I knew where I was: the left side of the mall movie theater in Richmond. The emotion is the utter delight I used to take in walking down that sidewalk to get to the car. I was outside; we had seen a movie that we enjoyed, and life was and is a good gift. I miss, terribly at times, the joy at being out and about; now the image is what I see out my window that’s close to the end of my bed.
It’s a beautiful new window thanks to the efforts of my wife and the craftsmanship of the man from Lowe’s. The view is filled with leaves of 4 or 5 different trees: maple, oak, dogwood, redbud. The view is like a kaleidoscope of changing images: bare branches in winter, the sunlight on gray bark is surprisingly beautiful; the various variety of buds in the spring; then the profusion of wonderful green leaves throughout the summer and into the fall before the withdrawing sap turns them into a rich colorful tapestry of yellows, golds and numerous shades of red. The leaves fall, the deep blue of the sky becomes visible and winter is once again upon us. Life is a very good gift even when one is afflicted. I read a passage from a book today called something like A Year with the Mystics. There is a reading, usually from one of the church fathers, for each day of the year. I find Brother Lawrence’s perspective quite helpful:
I will not ask God to deliver you from your trials, but I will ask him earnestly to give you the patience and strength needed to suffer as long as he desires. Find consolation in him who keeps you fixed to the cross; he will release you when he judges it appropriate. Happy are they who suffer with him. Get used to suffering, and ask him for the strength to suffer as he wants, and for as long as he judges necessary. The worldly do not understand these truths, and I am not surprised; the reason is that they suffer as citizens of this world and not as Christians. They consider illnesses as natural afflictions and not as graces from God, and therefore they find in them only what is difficult and harsh for our nature. But those who regard them as coming from the hand of God, as signs of his mercy and the means he uses for their salvation, ordinarily find great sweetness and perceptible consolations in them.
I wish you were convinced that God is often closer to us in times of sickness and suffering than when we enjoy perfect health. Seek no other doctor but him. I think he wants to cure you by himself. Place all your trust in him, and you will soon experience the benefits we resist when we trust more in medical remedies than in God. Whatever remedies you may use, they will only work to the extent that he will permit. When suffering comes from God, he alone can cure it, and he often leaves us with physical illness in order to cure our spiritual illness. Find consolation in the sovereign doctor of body and soul.
—Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, On the Practice of the Presence of God
I am not certain whom Brother Lawrence was addressing though it seems as though he was addressing me.
One other thing: there is a comet out there that may be visible with the naked eye in a few days. I shall be sorry to miss that. When we were setting out for my wife’s relatives in the Rio Grande Valley back in the last century, ha!, 1975 probably, we left late at night, 1 a.m. I seem to remember; there over the house across from us was a comet with a magnificent tail spread out across the sky. Speaking of gifts: I can still see it in my mind’s eye. I didn’t know it was there when we set out; I don’t know its name to this day, but it was magnificent. What a universe we live in. Deo gratias! Thanks be to God!
After the barn door was closed. Comet west must have been the one I saw. I almost began to think I had imagined it though the image is clear: in the northeast with the tail extending south. The information is from Wikipedia.
Comet West, formally designatedC/1975 V1, 1976 VI, and 1975n, was a comet described as one of the brightest objects to pass through the inner Solar System in 1976. It is often described as a "great comet."[3]
History
It was discovered photographically by Richard M. West, of the European Southern Observatory, on August 10, 1975. The comet came to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on February 25, 1976.[1] During perihelion the comet had a minimum solar elongation of 6.4° and as a result of forward scattering reached a peak apparent magnitude of −3.[2]From February 25–27, observers reported that the comet was bright enough to study during full daylight.[2]
Despite its brightness, Comet West went largely unreported in the popular media. This was partly due to the relatively disappointing display of Comet Kohoutek in 1973, which had been widely predicted to become extremely prominent: scientists were wary of making predictions that might raise public expectations.[4]
The New York Times, however, reported on March 2, 1976 that West was "a comet that may prove one of the brightest in this decade" and would be "visible to the unaided eye
