Backstage pass: Attention to everyday miracles

Including red and indigo

Gentle reader,

Here’s what God is drawing me to in this season of my life: the slow and steady, the daily bread, the gift of manna—just enough for today—and the multitude of miracles that fill every moment. I’m trying to slow down, to breathe, to attend to the birds on the feeder and the light through the leaves.

“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12

One fall, more than a decade ago now, I was driving my son to preschool. The Midwest’s autumn colors were out in full glory, and, from the car seat behind me, my three-year-old said;

“I’s so gwlad God made rwed.”

Me too, buddy. Me too.

Red is a miracle. Color is a miracle. Sunshine through fall leaves and spring green are always miracles to be reveled in, miracles to be jumped into—like piles of yellow, orange, and red leaves—raked into a tantalizing mound in the backyard.

Fall leaves, Matt Longmire, image from wikimedia commons.

And now, my little buddy is more than six feet tall—his voice as deep as his father’s—and he’s graduating from high school, and my heart is so full with red that it’s liable to burst.

Miracles on miracles on miracles:

heartbreaking,

and fleeting,

and mundanely glorious.

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In the image below, of a pair of indigo buntings, I’m struck by the improbable glory of the male being matched in glory by the neutral-fawn-taupe-downy glory of the female.

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