Notes for the Week Sixth Sunday after Pentecost July 21 2019

Dear friends, 

Now you see him, now you don’t.  Amid the immensity of all that surrounds him, the lone fisherman is brought down to the perspective God must have of all we humans.  Small, vulnerable, alone, and yet part of the beautiful whole, we call Creation.  

For what is one without the other?   How does habitat survive for any of us, without the complete participation of each and all? How do any of us manage to survive without the unending largesse of the One who created us all at the start? 

When one notices a lone figure like this, one can’t help but wonder what propelled him to come to this place? Solitude?  Peace? The challenge of hunter and the hunted?  Food for the table and nothing more?  Regardless of his motivation, he is in no hurry to move away, and is content to simply stand, gaze, and allow his mind to move from particular worldly demands only he knows, and from the rush of worldly expectation which binds us all.   Perhaps his are thoughts of anticipated pleasures, thoughts of loved ones in the here and now, or in the past, or who could still be. Perhaps his is a simple determination to come back to this place more often in order to gather his thoughts peacefully, and to know that somehow the trees and the still waters will hear them, like the prayers that they are.  Prayers for peace.  Prayers for sanity.  For direction through the confusion.  For compassion, in the midst of misunderstanding.  For a calm heart amid ricocheting strident rhetoric.  All his prayers mingling together in a quest for peace and a little tranquility, for course correction and new direction, searching for someone to listen, in a place that is big enough to hear each prayer clearly. 

Look up, fisherman.  Look up for us all so that we, too, can add our prayers to yours.  They are much the same.  Look up, around, down and across.  No matter your questions, no matter your prayers, in the place where you stand, the answers are all around you. 

We journey together, 

Mother Esme+

“Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes…

most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,

Almighty victorious, thy great Name we praise”

Hymn #423

Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908)