I’ve just come from a magnificent walk outside in the falling leaves.  I don’t remember ever experiencing anything like this before.  It is a virtual storm of falling leaves  – and they float down gently on the uncharacteristically warm fall breeze on this overcast day.  Everywhere – yes, everywhere – the leaves are falling!  And as I walked the words of one of my son’s songs kept repeating itself in my head:

“Outside the leaves are falling/ all the Mysteries are calling/ me to live my dreams/ and find them out.”

The Mysteries are definitely calling today!  And They call to each of us.  Are we up to the task?  Let the leaves be a symbol of letting go and dare to live your dreams to find them out!  Grace is the result of our efforts.  Don’t be shy!

Today, some more fortune cookie wisdom.  With the political debates continuing, I thought I would share this fortune that I’ve been carrying around.  It actually did come out of a fortune cookie and it speaks to me profoundly today.

To think is easy; to act is difficult.  To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.

Discipleship requires that we not only think, but also act as we think.  And, yes, that is the most difficult of all.  Unless we can do that – act consistent with what we think – what we think alone makes little difference.

Reflect on that for a moment!  Then absorb the grace that is bestowed from thinking and acting with one mind, one heart, one will, and one determination.

Author, poet, and retreat leader, Jan Phillips, has written in her book God is at Eye Level that all we see can be a window into the heart of God.  Her words:

My eyes find God everywhere, in every living thing, creature, person, in every act of kindness, act of nature, act of grace.  Everywhere I look, there God is, looking back, looking straight back.

I find it to be true – especially on a beautiful autumn day with egrets in flight and reflections shining to meet the fine line of reality.  Everywhere we look, God is looking back and grace abounds.

Take a look.  Take a closer look!

Where do you go for inspiration?  Last week I spent the entire day at the National Art Museum.  Even at that, it was difficult to see the entire museum!  Still, the experience was one of total inspiration.

There is something about art that makes me remember that nothing is instant.  It took years of practice and learning and doing and doing again to perfect the beauty that hung on the walls of the art museum.  Few of the paintings there were the first product of their masters.  Claude Monet painted over 100 versions of his lily pads in his garden!  Can you imagine working on the same masterpiece over 100 times?   There is inspiration in that for me.  I can keep at it.  I can try again.  I can do something – be it painting or writing or poetry or pottery or sculpture – or whatever – over and over again and maybe,  just maybe, with time and patience, our skills will improve and our masterpieces will be recognized as well.

Sometimes inspiration is hard to come by.  Just go to an art museum and see what grace you find there!

Watching the presidential debates sometimes it is hard for me to believe that a person has such self assurance that they could enter into such a debate!  But we do have amazing qualities, don’t we?  And we enter into experiences that we may not be able to accomplish or even succeed at.  Such is the spirit of the individual.

I couldn’t help but think of this when my kids casually took the podium at the Smithsonian.  “You Be the President” was the name of the display.  What does it take to have the skills and self-assurance to speak our mind to the public?  What does it take for us to speak our mind and still be honest with ourselves?  What we desire, in ourselves as well as others, is the ability to be consistent in both arenas, public and private. It is not an insignificant thing!

Belief in ourselves needs to translate into action and that action needs to be consistent with our beliefs and our abilities.  Simply saying what we think someone else wants to hear will not affect the action that we may need to be taking.  Only honesty with ourselves and personal commitment will do that.

What are your special gifts and talents?  What can you share with others?  With the grace of God, most of us are capable of whatever we believe we can do!

It was so much fun to play tour guide and take our kids through the sights and sounds of the city while they were here.

The grace I remember the most was their thrill and excitement at seeing the monuments for the first time and recovering the history associated with each of them.  It was like seeing with new eyes to share in their amazement and amusement.  And, the fact that we spent so much time among the monuments allowed the day to pass and the sun to set and a whole new world revealed itself and became possible in the fading light.  While we had been to the monuments at night once before, we had never before been there at sunset.

There was something holy and sacred at that time of day.  The people were dispersing and the shadows were lengthening.  It allowed for a whole new perspective.  A beautiful and softened perspective.  A graced and silent perspective.  A reflective moment.

When have you taken advantage of the sunset hour to see the world from a new perspective?  When have you allowed grace and holiness to fill your eyes?

Well, today it is raining and a wonderful time for it to start since we spent all last week playing hosts to our kids who were visiting.  We walked the Mall and the Monuments, went to the Smithsonian and quietly strolled the halls of the National Art Gallery.  It was a beautiful time and one we will not soon forget.

Our son’s girlfriend had never been to the East Coast, so of course, we had to try to include everything.  And, of course, that’s totally impossible.  To add to all the excitement of the city itself, the kids did some preliminary work and scheduled a “gig” at a DC night club.  They came ready to play guitar and sing for a totally new crowd.  And, it was fun to play tourist and go to see them perform.

We enjoyed the singing; walking; conversation; bus riding; sight seeing; eating; and even watching movies together in the evenings after we were completely spent.  Their excitement and enthusiasm allowed us to see our surroundings with new eyes.  Their presence and their joyful attitude were grace.

Receiving guests and being hosts was grace as well.  Who can you host and share grace with?  Who allows you to see with new eyes?  Make some plans today to spend some time with them.

And, still I wait!  But, in the meantime over the long weekend we had a lovely side trip through seven states:  DC; Maryland; Delaware; New Jersey; New York; Connecticut  and Pennsylvania.  It was intended to take our minds off of waiting.  And, it did the trick, as well as being beautiful! Fall was in full display and we enjoyed many points of interest as well as the lovely countryside.  More about our trip and the graces we encountered in the future.

But, about the still waiting:  Our son and his girlfriend are finally in the air and on their way to visit.  I got a call early this morning to say they had missed their flight, which means they missed their connecting flight, which means . . .

But through the grace of a sympathetic airline scheduler, they were able to get other connections getting them here only one hour later!

So those of you who come here regularly, I will be suspended for about 5 days while I enjoy their company and show them the sights of this fair city.  Come back in a week and I’ll have stories to tell.  Grace abounds!

There is a line from a song – long forgotten now who sang it or even the name of the song – that keeps floating through my head these days.  The line says “I’ve waited longer for lesser things.”  Why does this keep coming back to me now?  Because I’m waiting.

Much of our days seem to be taken up with waiting as there are few things in this life that are instant.  The challenge for us is to use this time of waiting to our advantage.  That sounds much easier than it actually is.  But we are encouraged to make the most of each moment and to find the grace that is disguised in the waiting.

This interminable waiting could be a call for us to be ever more attentive to the environment around us and to deepen our appreciation for what is.   It could be an invitation for us to simply “be” and not to worry about the past or the future, but simply “be” in the present moment without trying to design tomorrow.  It could be an exercise in sharpening our desire by asking ourselves:  do we really desire what we are waiting for?  Or, it could be an opportunity to divert our attentions to other things and not be so consumed with the waiting.  Yes, it does sound so much easier than it actually is!

And yet, there is grace in this moment also.  Wait with grace.  Perhaps this time is an invitation to make the very time of waiting itself a prayer.

How would you describe the grace of movement over the passage of time?

There are no better words to describe how Vatican II moved through the church than these by John W. O’Malley, S.J. taken from an article in National Catholic Reporter this week titled Vatican II has already made us free by Robert Blair Kaiser.

Kaiser says “The council moved us to a new vision of the church.”  And, in the words of O’Malley that movement was

“. . . from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to service, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from fault finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principled, from behavior modification to inner appropriation.”

I can only pray that this movement continues to grace the church and that we continue moving in these directions.

What are we doing to make sure the momentum of this graced movement continues?