Awe & wonder
Last week my husband, Jon, and I were on a small island off of the coast of Belize for our thirty fifth wedding anniversary. It was a twenty minute boat ride from the coast of Belize City where our plane had landed. We were surprised that our resort only had room for thirty five people. It had originally been a divers resort because Belize has some of the best diving in the world. Each night, we would sit on the dock outside our over water cabana and look at the galaxies. At our home in south Tulsa, we really can’t see the stars. Jon has an app on his phone that tells what we were looking at in the inky black skies. Every night we could clearly see both Mars and Venus. We saw a swath of light that was filled with stars just to our right as part of the Milky Way. We saw the little dipper and the stars that were supposed to be a bear. We were struck with awe and wonder every night at how vast and beautiful the night sky showed off. Another thing that we loved to watch was the sun go down over the harbor at 6 pm every night. Some of the fellow temporary residents would kayak and paddle board out to the edge of the cove and just sit there watching the horizon.
If you had told me that I would thoroughly enjoy eating dinner with 30 strangers from all over the United States, I would have scoffed at how awkward it was going to be. But each day we met new people, shared life stories and celebrated what we had each done with our time for that day. Many of the other vacationers would spend their days fishing on a boat and we all got to enjoy eating whatever they had caught that day. It was amazing. I am so glad that we had those five days of resting and just being together. You may not know but Jon and I only have one day a week where we get to wake up together and that is Monday. It is my Sabbath day of rest.
I wanted to share my vacation stories with you because they reminded me of the spiritual retreat that I went on last fall. Our presenters talked about how to cultivate awe and wonder in our lives and how important it is for our souls. I have come to realize that we have an opportunity to explore this theme together. What brings wonder to your life? What are some things that we could do together that create awe? I know that the new labyrinth will be one of the ways that we can cultivate holy moments in our lives and I look forward to all the creative ways that it will impact our community. I am working on creating some things for us this summer that might help us explore this part of our souls.
Lastly, I want to thank Judy H., Susanne G., Priscilla P. and Nema B. for all their hard work to host the beautiful reception for Bishop Merrill last Sunday. She was very impressed with Faith and had a lot of nice things to say about our church. Thank you to all the volunteer greeters, set up folks and all those who came and introduced yourselves to her. Well done Faith. You made me so proud. See you on Sunday!
I love you and God loves you,
