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16
May
2020
A goldfinch landed on my windowsill. According to Peterson’s Guide, a male American Goldfinch, with brilliant gold and black feathers.
Goldfinches tend to come every year around this time, as they migrate north to whatever address they use for their summer home. But I’ve never had one land on my windowsill before.
The tiny bird perched there, as proud and erect as an Emperor Penguin, staring in at me.
And then he opened his little beak and pecked on the glass. As if he wanted to come in.
In our church, we usually open a worship service by sharing “God-moments” -- moments when, in some way, we feel closely connected to whatever we call “God.” That visit from a goldfinch was definitely a God-moment for me.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: goldfinch, God-moments, reincarnation
8
During my wife’s last calendar year of life, she knitted a prayer shawl a month.
You may not be familiar with prayer shawls. Some are square; some triangular. Joan’s tended to be about five feet long and two feet wide, knitted with the warmest and softest wool she could buy. (The wool shop was always glad to see her!)
In the days when we could still gather for worship services, our congregation periodically held a blessing of prayer shawls. Every person either laid a hand directly on a shawl, or on someone connected to a shawl.
People have different understandings of the efficacy of prayer.
Regardless, I have no doubt that those shawls carried with them a sense of warmth and comfort to people who needed both.
Tags: knitting, bad news, comfort
3
A new word crept into the language while I wasn’t watching – “liminal”. None of my dictionaries include it. And they were only published 20 years ago.
Not “limn,” which means to paint or portray.
“Liminal” derives from Latin “limen” meaning the threshold of a doorway. It marks the division between inside and outside, between warm and cold, between calm and stormy.
It is the moment of transition, when one state of being transforms into another.
A liminal moment is easy to identify if it’s a doorway. It’s more difficult with geography, for example. Exactly where would you say the mountains end and the prairie begins? Which do the foothills belong to?
Or with light. At what point, as light fades, does day become night?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Rohr, COVID-19, Liminal