Category: Winter

Planting For The Harvest

Giving More than a 10th

Saturday 4 February 2023

Cold Days,

Time to Plan

And Plant

for the Harvest.

Genesis 28:22

… and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.

2 Corinthians 9:6

The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Words of Grace For Today

Henri put in a garden. He’d been meaning to do it for years, and now the prices of groceries finally put the fire in him to do it. He wanted a huge harvest, so he tilled up a good two acres of deep, rich soil. Then he bought manure from a neighbour farmer and tilled that in. He marked out the areas, made the lines, and after the last snow in late April he planted seeds of all kinds: corn, peas, beans, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, squash of 5 kinds, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, zucchini, 2 rows each of raspberries, strawberries, and blue berries.

Looking at the huge area he anticipated lots of weeds and he wasn’t into picking them for hours on end, so he went out and bought a small tractor with a harrow that he could adjust to the width of his rows. Then he thought about all the deer and rabbits that would eat out garden before he could harvest it, so he bought fencing materials and built a 12 foot fence all around with the bottom 6 feet a tight woven mesh.

Next he thought about the dry summer that he’d heard were so possible and he built a reservoir for water, a powerful pump, and mobile sprinkler system so he could water the whole garden when it needed it. Then he modified all the eaves troughs on his house, garage, and shop so that the water was collected, filtered, and piped to the reservoir.

Next he realized that a huge harvest would need to be picked, cleaned, and stored, either by freezing or canning most of it. So he built a special insulated and heated shed, adding fresh water and waste water and electricity to it. In it he built a processing ‘kitchen’ for canning and for freezing. Next came two large stand up freezers, and shelves upon shelves for the pantry.

Since he really did not think he was at all interested in spending hours harvesting the garden he hired five high school students for the whole summer. They had helped him with everything starting with the planting. Yet Henri still spoke to everyone and to himself as he had done everything himself.

Francine, an ‘on-again, off-again’ friend of Henri’s for as long as she could remember, had been putting in a garden for decades before Henri finally got around to starting his. She started off with 2 raised beds, each 3 feet by 12 feet, and slowly increase it to a total of 6 last year. Each bed had a gravity watering system for it from a tank she filled when it needed it.

It was a small garden by local standards, but those small beds produced more than any other garden in the area, mostly because she had learned so much through the years and tended to the beds with tender care.

She shared her produce with a number of people in the area, usually in exchange for some good manure for fertilizer or help fencing, tilling, planing, weeding, and harvesting. But she was in her garden working at it more than everyone else combined.

At the end of every year she would tally up her expenses over the grocery store value of her harvest (just her own). She usually came in at about 1/3. Her worse year it was 1/1, and her best had been her third her when it was 1/6.

She met Henri this past summer, and having heard of course about his garden, congratulated him on finally getting around to his dream garden. She asked what he expected his expense-over- harvest would be. He hadn’t stopped to consider that. At home he sat down and calculated out that he’d spent nearly $150,000 on infrastructure, $40,000 on the tractor, $2000 on seeds and another $5000 on 1 each of 5 different fruit trees that should grow in the area. Then he added in the cost of fuel he planned for the summer and the wages of his workers. If he divided the long-term assets over ten years he figured the summer would cost him around $30,000. Then he thought of how much he had spent last year and anticipated spending on the groceries his harvest would replace, that came to about $5000 or so, maybe more with prices rising. Even if he estimated it at $6000 that still meant his ratio was 5/1. He spent five times as much for his large garden than he would get out of it! He nearly had a heart attack!

….

This year, with the increase in groceries, no less that 2 dozen new people had contacted Francine about ‘helping’ in her garden in order to share in the produce, so she invited everyone of them to come on over. Each family built a new raised garden if not 2. One large family built 4. Everyone chipped in as they could with money, materials, fertilizer or muscle to build the new fencing and establish the new beds. The same went for all the work throughout the summer.

….

When the gardens in the area had just started to produce a harvest, the carrots always seemed to come in first, a hail storm hit and wiped out nearly half of Henri’s garden and everyone else’s, except the beds at Francine’s. They were small enough that people had put up a steep-peaked frame work over one or two off them at a time, and with the threat of hail they’d thrown tarps over the frames, anchored them well, and watched most of the hail bounce or rolled between the beds. The ice was a foot deep in places, but when the tarps came off only a few plants had been destroyed by hail that broke through the tarps.

…

Everyone knew (except apparently Henri, and he was just stubborn and a bit slow to pick up on the obvious) that while the Bible said those that plant much will harvest much, it rarely turned out that way in life, not just in the garden, but in all of life.

Makes one stop to think that Jesus’ story is about God ‘planting’ and us getting the benefit of the ‘harvest’ of forgiveness and renewed life! Francine reflected Jesus’ story as well: We receive great bounty so that we can share all we have with others, so that they will live abundantly. Most of all we get to share God’s bountiful, merciful forgiveness, compassion, and healing presence!

The question each day is: what are we planting today, that someone will harvest in the future?

Proud Potters

Or Humble Clay

Friday 3 February 2023

The Potter Makes Beauty Like This,

And We Mess It Up Real Bad!

God Planned For That, Too!

Isaiah 29:16

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?

Ephesians 2:10

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Words of Grace For Today

We are the clay, God is the Potter.

We are created to do good works, God is the one who demands it of us, since we are made that way.

Well, not quite so. That is all upside down!

If one wants to control others and make demands of them that they cannot fulfill and thus make them guilty and thus all the more susceptible to one’s control, then this is the right thing to say and teach and demand.

But Jesus came not to lay an impossible guilt trip on us, yet again, as the writer of Ephesians does so well.

God created us so that we will be demonstrations of God’s Love, Grace, and Compassion for all people. That is by our visibly, humbly, and gratefully accepting God’s forgiveness for our inevitable sins, failings, imperfections, and downright ornery stubbornness at wanting to the the Potter instead of the humble moulded clay, God makes us into demonstrations for all other people of how God works. God works not by demanding perfection or good works. Instead God makes us free to choose to love (and also then free to choose not to love – which is to sin). In our freedom we lose life and all that is precious in it, because we simply cannot always choose to love. God also made us to strive to be better, and in that striving we inevitably choose to be Potters of our world, and then of our own lives.

Ahh, if we were made just to do good works, then God did not need to give us freedom to love and not to love.

But God created us to love. And knowing we would choose to sin, inevitably, terribly, wretchedly, God planned for that, with compassion, forgiveness and unbounded love.

We were created to receive that love, and share it with others, first in being demonstrations of God’s love for us and all people, and then in being that love for others,

which is to do good works …

It’s just cutting it down to that we are created to do good works would make our lives impossible! That is the curse of scripture that asserts we are not potters of creation, and then tries to lay the guilt trip on us that we are made to be doers of good works, ie. good little potters and putterers.

That leads us to futile living (trying always to do good works), and at the same time surrendering our ability to choose to love (replacing it with blind obedience to others who tell us what good works are), and inevitably trying to become the ones who tell everyone what good works are … and there ya go, right down the rabbit hole of everything that is not love.

So simple. So complicated. So impossible.

And for that God planned the power of love, which is self-sacrificing giving so that others may live with the freedom to choose

to love or not to love,

and be forgiven when it is so often needed.

Up-Right!

OR Upside Down?

Thursday 2 February 2023

Don’t Let ‘Em Snow-job ya!

Let that be the pines load.

Jeremiah 1:12

Then the Lord said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.’

Matthew 5:17

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. (Jesus)

.

Words of Grace For Today

Jesus did so much that challenged the understanding of the Law and the Prophets, as it applied to daily life.

Yet, Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfill them, which out to scare the ebiejeebies out of us, unless we have listened well to God’s Word,

and understood that most of the time we humans turn God’s Word upside down to fit into our own plans for our own lives.

And Jesus did not do that, so seemed to ‘upset the apple cart’, when he actually set it back upright.

And Jesus demonstrated God’s attitude of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice to save us … in such a way that we might know we are saved from all that should scare the ebiejeebies out of us, the work of the devil, which we too often embrace, and which in turn grips us tight in a death spiral …

until God frees us.

So this day we live free, now

what will we do with it?

Return to Humble Gratitude

Wednesday 1 February 2023

It’s Not Much, And It’s Everything,

A Snow Crystal Covered Branch

Just Like

Life Abundant.

Zechariah 1:3

Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Words of Grace For Today

Return, and I will return to you.

The IF-THEN is right there, and that’s not how God works.

Rather God says: I have always been with you, and you have not noticed. I make it possible for you to return to me. This is my standing invitation, return now.

Or now.

Or now.

For God does not want any of us to perish, though we all seem deadset on that being the end for us. Rather God wishes that all of us will repent, return, and discover the abundant blessings God has poured over us since before we were born.

Jesus’ story makes clear to those who will listen, that God wishes for us to live filled with humble gratitude, ready to be sent and be the ones who deliver God’s bountiful gifts to others, so that they may live filled with humble gratitude as well.

Some of us need to survive a car crash, engine failure in a single engine plane, or a terrorist attack (or one or more of a huge number of ‘accidents’ that should have claimed our lives). Others cancer or some other life consuming disease. Others conflict of war or violent crimes. Others being framed, accused, convicted, and destroyed by the scheming of those closest to us, the police, the lawyers, the courts, and the judges, or some other blatant misuse of authority and power. Others need more than life provides and they never surrender to humble thankfulness. Sad.

Others seem to learn from other’s experiences and find humble gratitude early in life and return often to enjoy it in the arms of a loving God.

Whatever it takes for you, may you find humble gratitude your way of being this day. It’s what please God the most.

And It Begins

And It Continues As Before.

Tuesday 31 January 2023

Since the Murky Mists Of Time’s Beginning,

We and Creation Have Evolved

From Generation to Generation.

Only One Never Changes!

Psalms 102:26-28

Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

Revelation 1:4

John to the seven churches that are in Asia:Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne …

Words of Grace For Today

The week is underway.

The news reports things that have long since been: football wins with the last play, a field goal; inflation giving way to recession and jobs underpaid and worker shortages and ticket scalping, which are all the chaos of capitalism or called more honestly, futile efforts to limit legalized and unchecked greed; movies that win awards which makes money for more greedy people; and fear of the survivors and refugees in Canada as those, who darn near succeeded in finishing them off in a nearly ‘successful’ genocide, return to Canada; and the weather forecasts a dip to below the mid minus 30’s tonight.

John starts his writing with a greeting, one that had been underway for sometime: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come …

But these people John writes to live under great oppression and threats to their lives, thus the coded manner in which John writes.

After pleading that his life not be cut short, as he has taken ill, the Psalmist honours God as the creator long ago of creation. God will endure always even as people age and die and are replaced with others. In this cycle God has established the children of God’s servants, of God’s people, and the children of the children, and the children of each generation as it passes from life leaving the living to the following generations.

And this has been underway for quite some time now.

Not that getting ill and anticipating ones early death is easy or to be taken lying down (so to speak.) Nor that getting old and anticipating one’s timely death is easy nor should be taken ‘lying down’, if one can ‘stand’ at all any more.

But there is comfort in knowing that God provides for all God’s people, and all their children. The future, as we have seen it come to be our history, is and was in God’s hands, as it always will be.

So even the particulars of this day are in God’s hands, even as the temperatures drop near -40⁰.

Still, there is work to be done, to prepare, to survive, and to flourish in this life abundant that God provides for us, holding us always in God’s hands.

With

Monday 30 January 2023

Wherever the paths and tumbles of life take us,

God is with us,

Our Shining Light

Joshua 24:17

for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed

Matthew 28:20b

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Words of Grace For Today

A pilot, a rather sane, sober and sombre individual most of the time, lands after a transatlantic flight, just a routine flight. But he expects in New York that day he will find an answer to a puzzle that has challenged his sanity. It even sent him banking a plane for no good reason (apparently) to avoid another plane that was not there, a ghost plane as it were. But today, he knew he would unravel the mystery and his life could return to normal.

As he steps off the plane he realizes that, in stark contrast to his regular orderly and stayed mood, he is rather giddy. More than giddy even, an over-drive of exuberance he could call it. And that makes him wonder, yet again, if he really has, perhaps, started to go insane. Not something too attractive in a pilot who is trying to move from the right seat to the left seat, or stay in any seat at all.

Then he realizes, whatever is going on with him, whether he really is mad or not, he is no different than everyone else, we all have to work with the equipment we are given, Right!?

Sounds of Wings, paraphrase from p. 79 and before, Spencer Dunmore, Tom Dohetry Associates, 1984

It’s just some of us are given some very special equipment that makes being a pilot possible. And for a few of us it makes us extraordinary pilots, the creme of the creme as it were.

In the rest of life, and maybe even for us gifted with equipment that makes flying possible, the real ‘equipment’ that counts is hardly our brain, our hands, our coordination, or our heart. What really counts is the gifts God gives us that help us recognize how God has accompanied us, as God did our ancestors through the generations, even as they ventured into foreign and hostile lands, as God does for all the saints.

Knowing that God protects us along all the ways, with their twists and turns and setbacks, that we journey in live, gives us a piece of unequal ‘equipment.’ It is God’s presence each day, which guides us, and picks us up when we take a tumble into horrendous sins, and heals us, and walks with us out into the world of …

everything.

Again today, we work with the equipment we are given, right!

The DawnShine

From On High

Sunday 29 January 2023

Blues, Peaches, and De-Light

Psalms 80:20

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. ’

Words of Grace For Today

After a long, dark night, after many days of snow and clouds, freezing rain and wind, nothing quite compares to the light of the dawn breaking in on this life with blues, peaches and golds spraying the white snow-laden ground with all colours of the rainbow.

These are reminders of God’s promise not to abandon us, not to the floods, nor to the disasters of any kind, nor to the darkness that can creep up on us and catch us, drawing us down, down, down.

God’s promises renewed, our hearts buoyed once again, and our minds set on what lies ahead, even the shadow of death cannot steal the peace from us. Our enemies that would do us harm have no chance, nor have they had any chance of succeeding in bringing about our demise.

Instead we have found refuge in God’s great light, in God’s great forests, and beside God’s great waters. The sun powers our shelters, wood heats our bones, and clean water refreshes us each day, as we feast on simple foods, enjoying every bite.

Even as the cold winds blow, there are moments to find the solitude warming our hearts, bodies and minds as we work outside to provide the basics for the coming days.

And writing, writing, writing keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, as we explore the truth of the past, present and future.

This is the light of Christ, God’s countenance that shines brightly here on us, and everywhere.

May the light find you today filled with gratitude for God’s gifts and the opportunities to share life with those in need (which is pretty much everyone.)

Giving Up!

Surrendering to God With and For Us

Friday 27 January 2023

The colours of dawn show the glory of God,

whether we see it or not.

Psalms 1:3

They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

Philippians 1:9-11

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Jonathan worked hard everyday, as he had since he was 5. He remembered what his mother had taught him, that you had to work hard to make it in life. He had definitely wanted to make it in life. First he had wanted to make his mother proud. He may have wished something of his father, but he had left them before Jonathan knew anything about him. Then as he grew older he saw that people with money got to do what they wanted, so he decided that he would have lots of money by working hard.

A quick three years earned him his first degree, another two his PhD and he was on his out working hard everyday. At first he worked for someone else. After a year he figured out that the only way to be wealthy was to have people working for him, so he quit his job and started his own little design and engineering company. Just five years later he had grown it to 1000 employees in 20 different cities. He’d sold that company for his first real billion in his own bank account. He’d invested half in safe stocks and the rest into a new company, this time architecture, engineering, and construction. Within 3 years he had more than 3000 employees in 30 different cities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then he’d met Michelle on a worksite in Vereeniging and again on a project outside Dar es Salaam and all the sense of his working everyday dissolved like his nightly antacids in hot water. He’d taken a year to be with her, working every other week or so, getting just as much work done, still adding to his assets and investments, and the value of his company, all privately owned. They’d been married in Cape Town, had a week long honeymoon in Stockholm, Oslo, and Sankt Peter Ording.

Then he’d gotten back to work, even as the children arrived. First Olevia, then Petrus. When he came back from working in Hebron on a new project, his first in Israel, he found Michelle in the hospital. No one knew what made her ill, but she could barely lift her head or hands, and she whispered at most a few words each day. He’d sat by her for 4 straight days, as her condition got worse and worse, until ….

Looking back on the week that had followed, Jonathan could not remember what had happened. He sat on the edge of his hospital bed now. People told him he collapsed at Michelle’s funeral. He had no memory of it at all, or of the previous days in the hospital.

He rubbed his forehead. It did not help the headache or the dizziness. He tried to stand, but the room spun and he sat back down. Minutes later he woke up laying on his bed.

All the money that he had, and he could not save Michelle, and now he could do nothing for himself. Give him a building project and he’d excel, but this! What was this!?

When he found these verses (Psalms 1:3 and Philippians 1:9-11) beside his bed that night, he thought, yes, he’d prospered, but to what good end? He thought his love for Michelle had overflown all limits, and he had acquired great knowledge and wealth. But had he any insight to help himself determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ he would be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness?

It was like another test, and he was failing this one badly.

The pastor that visited his roommate the next morning talked about how we could not do anything good without the Holy Spirit guiding us to do that good. Otherwise it all turned to dust and hopeless evil. We could, of our own freewill, choose to do evil and turn from God; but only God could help us live in God’s good grace.

He was more confused than ever. How could he do what was right if that was impossible? But he could still do what was wrong, because that was fully possible for him?

His roommate got up later that day, and saw that he had not even made it to the bathroom at all that day. He walked over, and saw Jonathan’s confused, hopeless look, and simply made the sign of the cross on his forehead saying, you are marked with the cross of Christ, and you are precious to God. Be at peace.

And then it all changed for Jonathan. He died.

They revived him. A month later he went home. He spent hours, days, weeks and months making no sense at all of what the pastor or his roommate had said. Not until Olevia walked into his study and told him that God walked with her, whether she liked it or not. But it didn’t help keep the bully girl out of her face at school. So she was reading about Gandhi and nonviolence. She knew that what seemed to be weakness was going to be her strength.

And it clicked for Jonathan. He stopped trying to do everything right, to earn enough money, to read the right things, to think the right things. He just prayed to God that he surrendered.

He woke the next morning and for the first time ever, doing nothing except waiting to see the sun rise, paying attention to the glorious colours of the dawn slowing push the darkness away until the deep blue sky shone bright above the pink and cream in the clouds on the horizon … and he knew that God was with him, and had been his whole life, even when he had never paid attention or cared.

For the first time ever life looked wonderful, even while he felt profound guilt for leaving Michelle so often and the grief of her leaving him with an un-fillable hole in his heart.

Gladness In Our Hearts

Thursday 26 January 2023

So Many Steps To Take,

To Preserve Creation

For The Next Generations!

Psalms 4:7-8

You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound. I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Former Calgary mayor, Naheed Nenshi, in his November 2022 ‘In Defence of Democracy’ speech for the Samara Centre for Democracy’s at the Toronto Public Library outlined five simultaneous crises that we face, which threaten more than just democracy, but also democracy:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/keep-fighting-to-build-strong-communities-naheed-nenshi-1.6679094

Public Health, which the pandemic showed us all too clearly is broken so badly and so unfairly and so unjustly.

Mental Health, which is buried, hidden and denied, yet officially effects 1 of 4, and realistically is a crisis for every single one of us at some time in our lives.

Economic Injustice, which is fuelled by systems that we rely on, which as much as slavery did[does] needs to mistreat so many people in order to keep our societies functioning.

Environmental Crisis, which has shown us that we’ve used up most of our ‘carbon budget’, climate is changing in years (changes that used to take millennia), and change cannot come soon enough, though the wrong changes will leave us worse off than we are now and will be otherwise.

Inequity, which is the fundamental crisis underlying all the others, so that while some live opulent lives now, most of us live in the dregs of their leftovers, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is getting wider, faster than ever before.

Of course, in the past year we must add a sixth crisis, that of inflation and the rising cost of borrowing money, of paying for housing, of buying groceries and gasoline and everything else that is basic to life as we live it.

…

These crises are familiar to anyone who has not been ‘asleep at the wheel!’

Nenshi provides illustrations: from an immigration system that promises educated, certified, even practising professionals entry to Canada, where we then deny them the right to exercise their professions and instead relegate them to hard, manual labour like long-term care work, or the new driver’s lecture for youth of colour that concludes: always keep your wallet out and visible so that if/when you are stopped you do not need to reach for it, do as you are told, and do not resist: do not let being pulled over be the last thing you do!

So what are we to do?

Nenshi offered three ways to get to an anti-racist culture: empathy, sacrificial service, and love.

Nothing new there either.

So if we’ve know and practised these things, while we may not have made any progress, we know personally and communally that the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That God has put gladness in our hearts more than when grain and wine abound. Therefore we will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make us lie down in safety.

Yet, there is so much that God’s good creation needs from us still, while we still have breath, before it is too late!

‘Work with us, again this day, God!’ we pray

‘Bring gladness to our hearts once again.’

Dance, Dance

Dancing to the Music of God’s Spheres

Tuesday 24 January 2023

The Moon Dances,

At Sunrise,

Inviting Us

Into God’s Dance of Life

for All

Psalms 91:9

Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place,

John 14:1

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.

Words of Grace For Today

Were it so simple, that we could make God our refuge, and then we would always dwell in God’s Most Wondrous City, home for all the saints.

Were it so simple, that we could just choose to believe in God and in Jesus, and then our hearts would not be troubled.

But life is not like that. Nor are we able to always seek God as our refuge or choose to life in God’s wondrous city. Nor are we able to set aside all that troubles us and rest secure in our belief in God and in Jesus.

God planned for that.

God sends the Holy Spirit to guide us

into the city of God

into the care of God’s loving hands,

into God’s refuge

into a firm belief in God and Jesus the Christ,

and away from all that troubles our hearts.

…

Yet we often choose the trouble of this world as our dwelling place and our hearts contents!

God planned for that, too.

And sends the Holy Spirit again and again,

even today

to guide us into God’s dwelling for us, and life abundant, by moving us to share all we are and have with those who are in need.

This day, a wonder-filled day it is, as always, because God walks with us, through our darkness, and gives us hearts that sing and dance and fly

with grace to the mysterious music of our Creator, always with us.

A waltz if you will,

so dance, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three ….