8:32 p.m. The night is beginning to settle in and I decide to dust off my tiredness and go for a ride around the neighborhood. The sights and sounds, the cool air and trees are like the opening collect of evening prayer, launching me into an awareness of how God is truly holding me and all of creation.
As I wind through the neighborhood, I turn off at a little park and greet the dog, bunnies, human, and red-headed woodpecker along the way. A pause at the creek gives me a chance to be more focused in prayer, centering myself in the midst of so much beauty and God-holded-ness.
That's right, God-holded-ness.
I close my eyes and try to be as open as the sky to allow God to be however God wants to be with me. I try to set no expectations on God or on myself.
Geeked about the bunnies hopping about and the ducks trolling the creek, I peek open an eye, and the the other. As my vision shifts in focus from the creek 10 feet away to the wood bench upon which I am perched, I notice the graffiti. It's not your high-school variety graffiti (M.T. & L.F. forever, heart symbol, arrow) -- it's more of a note of desperation, hastily written with a black marker on an awkward part of the bench.
"Hide your Beauty & you will DIE!?"
W
hoa. That made for an interesting turn in my conversation with God!
I remembered a photography that my friend Marguerite posted on Facebook recently. One powerful word: "Lonely." I have been praying for that person ever since.
And it got me thinking as I rode back to the convent, what are the words that we would want to leave for the world to discover? What would our graffiti say? Please join me in conversation!
P.S. Apparently I have a fondness for meditations on graffiti.
