Once more the wonderful frozen water falls from the sky and coats the ground in a blanket of white. It is peaceful in many ways and brings a sense of calm and focus. Something that is perhaps needed in a time when my mind is full of thoughts and ideas that are jumbled together in disorder.
On Friday I have a presentation and paper to give and turn in. It is an interesting exercise, of which I have ideas of how to do, and even to some degree have outlined, but still am some distance from forming that outline onto even semi-coherent phrases that attempt to express meaning, thoughts, understandings, and ideas.
On Sunday I am scheduled to share in the spoken word, to proclaim the Good News of the Living Christ. Ideas and thoughts are running though the end. A few sermons started, yet nothing folding together into that which I feel it needs to be. The texts, the theme, and more are presenting unique challenges.
I also need to prepare in the next week my mid-year field placement evaluation. which is a struggle as I am often hard upon myself, and don’t want to be to hard, but at the same time don’t want to be to easy on myself as well.
Yet in all of this as the snow falls around me, my mind is at ease, my spirit is at peace, all that is me is in an amazing calm. Perhaps it is the falling snow, perhaps it is the needed conversation and meeting I had to day with my mentor and friend that lead to discussions and reflections, insights, allowing myself to be vulnerable, and his to be as well. Perhaps it was last night as I went to go to bed but instead found myself in an hour of reflection and prayer as I explored my grandpa’s scriptures and thought of the words I was to say today as I shared with a companion on a journey. Perhaps it was the sharing with another friend about various ministerial things, or with a third as we stood out in the falling snow. maybe even it was the music that was formed as my heart entered prayer and my fingers danced upon the keyboard of pianos, or the time spent in prayer alone in a sacred space many have prayed in before. whatever it was, I at this moment find myself at peace as the snow falls around the building in which I sit and write as I think and reflect upon the future empowered by the past.
Peace be with you,
— Lyle II