Present Over Perfect

core of silence and substance, unshakable in the business of
life. I listen more; I picture God’s heart, red and beautiful; I
breathe deeply and try to imagine my faith as protection
from this frantic, soulless way of living, instead of one of its
motivators.
Many of us who have found ourselves to be useful in
Christian service have found ourselves unable, if we’re
honest, to connect with God any other way. We do for him,
instead of being with him. We become soldiers, instead of
brothers and sisters and daughters and sons. This is
dangerous, damaging territory, and I’ve spent too much
time there.
These days, I’m relearning daughter-ness, and I find it
most through silence and nature. Nature, of course, connects
us back to that innate sense of having been created—of
order and beauty and humility. We have been made. We are
fragile. We live in connection to water and air and plants
and sunshine, and when we acknowledge those things, we
acknowledge our Creator. Far too often, in the winter
especially, the natural world is simply something that
disrupts our plans—flights delayed, schools closed.
One snowy morning recently, I felt at loose ends,
disconnected from myself, from God. I’d been sick, and my
mind had been anxious.
I practiced lectio divina, selecting a passage from Psalm
8:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is