In this month between winter and spring, I am keenly aware of longer days, of budding trees and greening grass. Where I now live, newly hatched salmon have begun long journeys downriver through multiple dams and locks, making their circuitous passage out to sea. Last fall, we watched mature fish – 4 or 5 years old – return to the same routes, swimming against the hard current, climbing fish ladders upstream as they labored to wend their way home to spawn a new generation before dying in the same rivers that gave them life. Long skeins of melodious geese fly north again. The promise of new life is everywhere.
Together with Saint Francis, a 13th century monk who revered nature and all living things, we stand in awe over the astounding presence of God in the world around us. Reverence and awe are forms of prayer, responses to the wonder and sacredness of life and all of creation.
This message is excerpted from “Reverence as prayer” by Julie K Aageson in the March 2016 Gather magazine.
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