A wing and a prayer

Wandering through my files this morning, I found again this wonderful image, taken a year or two ago of the reflections in my neighbor's window.

I think it calls to me today because I've just been listening to Desert Spirit, a long-favored recording of Native American flute music.  That music awakens in me a hunger for the stark intense colors of New Mexico -- which then in turn reminds me I spent most of yesterday in class, seated across from a woman who flies up from Santa Fe to attend our courses. 

Yesterday she was wearing Santa Fe colors, and her scarf and earrings fed my eyes as I sat listening to all our final projects, my classmates' explorings of the workings of metaphors in the arenas of faith and education, marketing and activism, environment and corporations.

It was a wonderful day, and a delightful and inspiring conclusion to an amazing course.  And as usual -- I'm learning not to be surprised by this -- I suspect I learned way more about myself than about the subject.  Going back to school has been an incredible blessing... but I confess I'm grateful I have only one course to go: this work is really intense and challenging, but I'm itching to carry my learnings into some other sphere.

But in the meantime, let me share with you this wonderful quotation from Annie Dillard (in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book I read and loved some 30 years ago): My teacher sent it to me after reading my final paper, and I think it perfectly captures what I have come to know and love about my excursions with my camera:

"I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell." 

I think one of the biggest blessings of my time at Antioch has been the way it has worked to unite all the disparate parts of me -- past and present, left and right brain, heart and mind, masculine and feminine....  I feel as if I have been tucked under that enormous wing; been cherished and adored and taught again to fly; as if the promise of those wonderful lines in the Episcopal Compline service have finally been realized:

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit;
For you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth.


Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of your eye;
Hide us under the shadow of your wings.

... which brings me to this, my favorite prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.