I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see...

Today the ecstatically yellow tree in the wetlands has burst into being, full of color and presence, full of truth and grace. We have lived in this place through 12 autumns, but I only saw this tree last year. Had it always been? Was it only now ripening into beauty? Why were my eyes only ready to honor it last year? What else have I missed? I can't help but consider the prayer of confession from the Book of Common Prayer: "Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone..." Unseen. Overlooked. Neglected. And "Amazing Grace" is singing within me, too: "I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see."

Having kept watch since September, I give thanks to the holy that at least for this tree I now have eyes to see. It has returned once more to share its passing grandeur with us at the edge our forgotten field. What gratuitous grace is this? In a few days, when the weather shifts and more rain pours down, the golden majesty of this maple will fade and become naked and brown once more. Yet for now, in this moment, it is glorious. Oddly enough, as I took in this tree this morning, the words of Jesus to his disciples in St. Matthew's gospel popped into my heart:

Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Please understand that I am not thinking or praying about the end of time. Nor the so-called rapture. Nor any other theological mumbo-jumbo. No, what I want to celebrate is just the humble yet holy invitation to "be here now" as Ram Das put it. To be present and awake to the ordinary glory that fills each day. Just last week, there were no clues that a shift from the bland to the beautiful would take place. I took this picture of the wetlands to document the anticipated metamorphosis. When we left for our weekend birthday party in Brooklyn, this is what was real: just a hint of red at the top of some trees. Four days later and the entire scrub had been changed. Or transformed. Morphing from its regular shades of green into a palette of gold and orange and even a bit of red alongside the brown.  Marsha de la O's poem, "God," warrants a repeated hearing.

In the canyon I suddenly know
that God is here, so I pull off
onto the turnout fumbling
at the knobs of the radio.
It’s getting dark.
In a tenor’s voice God sings to me
a passage from La Boheme
over the vast plain, the twisted arms
of the Joshua trees stretched wide,
the red rock holding the last light

beyond the rim. I feel God
inside my body, shuddering
with sorrow, with the dusk
and glisten of salt pan, with the
heart thump in the high place
on the rock chute where the whole
torso presses in the cleft. Cliffs
are the temptation to go on
living. God sings in a tremulous
voice, sobbing into the music,

filling the night sky with dark
water and I do go on
because of the gray-blue berries
of the juniper stirring
in the wind, because God sings
in the cross hatch of crows’ wings
with his tincture of death in blue lass,
weeping the tears in everything
while I keep blinking and stars
breathe on, making that mewing
sound, that flutter near
the edge of our eyes.

In these unsettling days of impeachment, violence, hyperbole, and uncertainty this tree teaches me that there is much more going on than I can see, grasp or even comprehend. Beauty breaks into my world like a thief in the night. Angels show up unawares all around me. All around you, too. When we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, where once we were lost, now we are found, blind but now we can see millions of simple acts of kindness and prayer bubbling up from below. Children showing the world's leaders what wisdom and courage look like. The prophet Joel of ancient Israel put it like this: There will come a time when "I will pour out my Spirit on all people," says the Lord. "Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your elderly will dream dreams and your young people will see visions." (Joel 2: 28)

Fr. Richard Rohr, deconstructing the mythology of St. Francis and St. Clare, wrote that after Francis spent time living with the lepers of his era, he began to "leave this world." Not in a mystical/magical way, but as a radical reorientation to what is truly life-giving. 

When Francis said, he “left the world,” he was not talking about creation, which he loved. He was talking about the “rotten, decadent system” as Dorothy Day called it. He was giving up on the usual payoffs, constraints, and rewards of business-as-usual and was choosing to live in the largest Kingdom of all. To pray and actually mean “Thy Kingdom come,” we must also be able to say “my kingdoms go.” 

He then adds this insight from the Dominican friar Augustine Thompson:

This encounter with lepers, not the act of stripping off his clothing before the bishop, would always be for Francis the core of his religious conversion... Wherever the leprosarium was, Francis lodged there with the residents and earned his keep caring for them... It was a dramatic personal reorientation that brought forth spiritual fruit. As Francis showed mercy to these outcasts, he came to experience God’s own gift of mercy to himself. As he cleaned the lepers’ bodies, dressed their wounds, and treated them as human beings, not as refuse to be fled from in horror, his perceptions changed. What before was ugly and repulsive now caused him delight and joy, not only spiritually, but also viscerally and physically.

Today I need to spend more time in the garden so that God's first word in creation - nature itself - might clear away a few more cobwebs from my vision. I want to deepen that dramatic personal reorientation that transforms what is ugly and repulsive into beauty, delight and joy, not just in my heart, but in how I live. I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.