SPRING 2009Ice covers the pond behind my house. A few snow flurries wing through the air, portending the three to four inches weathermen say will fall tomorrow and tomorrow night. A thin grey squirrel looks in through the glass on my basement door. She is probably hungry.
This winter has not been friendly to the small creatures that live in my back yard. Occasionally, I feed them seeds and crumbs of bread. I debate whether to share my cheese sandwich with her, and decide against it. I am inordinately fond of cheese sandwiches, and I am hungry. The squirrel scampers away from the door, across the frozen ground, toward the leafless weeping cherry.
The phone rings. I spend a few minutes chatting with a friend; I settle back in to work, only to be interrupted again by an American Indian boarding school survivor who wants to talk about handling flashbacks.
The squirrel, my friend, this particular American Indian, are the highlights of my afternoon, the main events around which I weave the writing of this article and the creating of my poetry. I expect they are also the highlights of this afternoon for God, along with the homeless man who sleeps on a bench in Woodbury, N.J., the little boy laughing on a beach in Florida, the porpoise pod dancing together in the Pacific Ocean, the fierce wind blowing through a small town in South Dakota.
The world is so full of details. Nothing exists outside those details. One blade of grass after another creates a lawn. One petal after another creates a daisy. One snowflake after another creates a drift. One drop of water after another creates a sea. God seems to glory in details. I can find no other explanation for why there are so many of them.
And for me, these details (the grey squirrel, the falling snow, the taste of cheese) are the strands that lift my heart upward, sending it soaring in love and awe toward the heart and mind of God. They form the fiber of my meditations and the framework of my walk with the Divine. They create all the moments of my living, holding me in a circle of love and of joy.
Sondra Ball
Clerk, Salem Quarterly MeetingRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Sunday, March 01, 2009 at 12:13 AM
