Where-ever I am (Smacking myself in the Face with Reality)

       I am sitting here in the Hy-Vee dining area in Mankato drinking my $1.75 coffee from the Starbuck's kiosk that I paid.16 cent for (because I used a gift card).  I know, not very romantic...not very typical to describe the mundane like this for me but I had a thought just a little while ago as I was here.  I looked outside to the horizon (here's the romantic in me again) and I thought, "looks like a suburb...wish I was in Minneapolis."  Then I thought..."the better half of my time I am wishing I was somewhere else...this is not healthy."  It just smacked me in the face that I need to just realize that I am here in Mankato -- for better or worse.  I don't love it here but I don't hate it.  I have found some things that I appreciate though to help me -- going on walks and hikes or bike rides for one.  There is a good church here with some pretty solid teaching, worship and friendly enough people.  There is a women's craft collective with an emphasis on crossing cultures with women who have immigrated here with refugee status and women who have lived in the States their whole lives.  I, at least, get to work with children and even do music with them.  I actually have quite a few things to be thankful about.  I also am with my Love, the man I married and even though it's not all rainbows and tulips and sunshine all the time, we love each other and still know how to have fun.  I am glad he is here to do the thing he feels called to do - physics - and I am proud of that.
        The truth is that the Holy Spirit can use me wherever I am and I just need to be willing.  I need to be willing to take the mundane and make it holy.  That stereotypical suburban looking mom in the Starbucks line, maybe she needs encouragement?  I mean, I guess I'm just telling myself I need to realize that just because I'm not doing the thing I *love* and feel "fits" me doesn't mean that God can't use me.  I need to get over myself and my snobbery and ask God what he wants me to do right now.  It may be actually talking to someone who I have some preconceived notion about and not judging them.  It may be seeing the good things in my life instead of focusing on what I don't have.  It may very well be all that and more.

A Murder of Crows

           I witnessed a murder of crows.

          No, not the kind where crows are mercilessly munched on by a pterodactyl (wouldn't that be something?!) but the kind where crows glide around the sky and call to each other in their distinctive caw. Momentarily they may stop to rest on a wisp of a tree branch and then take up flight again.

         I am not sure what they were talking about (although it could have been bloody and sundered wing of some bird laying much lower in the valley below)  but watching them made me pause.  They were, although merely crows,  majestic as they soared circling the treetops. I breathed out in wonder, "What did we forfeit?"  Something so beautiful that I saw has been lost in our good intentions for "civilization."  Understand that while I know that the natural world is not redeemed any more (or any less) than humanity it appears to be something not so shrouded by evil. 

        As I stood there watching, 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 came to mind: "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are."

        Humanity has the pride that does not seem to accompany the "lesser" creation.  We, although the God proclaimed pinnacle of creation, also seem to have fallen the farthest from where we were originally intended to be.  We think of ourselves as "wise" and, in truth, are really foolish.

       I can only wonder, what will we be like when we are restored?  How much more transforming will nature be when it is remade?