Last night the moon shot through a spruce tree and into my bedroom window. The ocean glowed gold, a wet lit highway to the horizon. Music played, classical cello, and I could smell the jasmine hand lotion I had used. It was a heavenly way to go to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I trundled off a bit wearily, grumpily to the room where I have my devotions. Just me and God and his word and silence. I read the chapter, wrote in a journal, closed my eyes to pray in whispers. I tried to stay awake. But I was bored. And though the Bible says God neither slumbers nor sleeps, I’m sure I’ve put him to sleep many a time.

What kind of ritual is this? It began for me with “quiet time” in high school, when I gave my life to this man Jesus. (Are you sure you love me just as I am, Jesus?) The youth group I went to encouraged us all to have “quiet time” with God, and gave us a journal to use. It was immensely helpful. I loved it. It began a lifetime of studying God’s word.

But all these decades later, and after hundreds (thousands?) of somnolent morning sessions, I wonder why we approach God by shutting our eyes, cloistering ourselves away from God’s squirming beauteous world in all its wild array of colors, aromas, textures, weather, creatures——and people.  

I do know a few answers, and know there are whole sections of libraries on Platoism and the gnosticism that pervaded the church for centuries (the belief that the material world is tainted, evil, and the unseen spiritual world is pure and good.) The Church is working hard to erode this dualism, But we still do it, don’t we?! In pursuit of spirituality we shut away and shut down all that is blessedly human, denying all the avenues God has given us to “taste and see that He is good.”

Last week’s Harvester Island Writers’ Workshop brought all this home to me——again. (be sure and click through the photos)

But taste is not just about food. (And many thanks to chefs Jo and Tammy for all the spectacular meals!)

We were placed in a world so dazzling, watery, deep, so bitter, sweet, with snow and fire, with creatures slow and fleet, with northern lights and caves, monoliths and peaks. There’s no end to its magenta, azure, sunflower color wheels, its bird arias and whale song, its volcanoes and heaving seas. Who can begin to count or capture or gaze upon it all? Gerard Manley Hopkins gives it a whirl:

PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

——-Gerard ManleyHopkins

And what about US? I cannot get enough of US, God’s beautiful human poems walking about, each one of us rigged up with all we need to see, hear, taste, smell, breathe and feel the jellyfish, the spawning salmon, the rising tide, the breaching whales and—-one another. (slideshow here)

I will always study and treasure God’s words, but his words are meant to lead us straight into the beating shumping drumming heart of all God’s vast world and wild people.

Those blessed people and GOd’s great zoo, all unleashed last week, reminds me:

If we open our prayer closet and let in some pied beauty and some crazy holy people, we’ll stay wide-and-deep awake when we worship. And God will too.

Dear Friends! What are something you are doing to enliven your “quiet time”? Please share!!