Winter Fog

bare branches reach

waiting in a gray veil

to wear green again

On Christmas day,  Nora and I rode in the back seat of our car to church, watching for trees. She said the leaves were all gone away and I agreed.  I said they would come back in the Spring and be here for her birthday. This is an often repeated story recently as she widens her 2-year-old world to pay attention to things that go away. I thought of this the last few days in our early morning fog. Most mornings, I can see beyond our fence and across the lake to a house that is being built there.  I see duck families and herons on the water. But the fog here obscures all but the most pronounced and closest objects. So it is with these days approaching year’s end.  I know what recent days have looked like, but the new year coming holds no clear vision for me.  I am called to trust, to practice discernment, to watch for markers that remind me I have been and will be guided.

“Spiritual discernment asks us to pay attention…on many levels:  to sensus fidelium ( the collective ene of the faithful), to read widely and deeply the best ancient and contemporary thinking, to pray, to attend to the prick of conscience, to watch, to wait, to listen.”

~from “Passing Angels: The Arts of Spiritual Discernment” by Wendy M. Wright in Weavings, November 1995