Leaving on a Jet Plane

On my last flight out of town this month (I have one more next month) I flew to Asheville, North Carolina for a meeting at the Lake Junaluska Assemby. This lovely retreat center is owned by the Southeastern Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church. Nestled outside of Asheville in the Great Smokey Mountains, it is a great place to visit.

My flight left Duluth early Thursday (6:30 a.m.). I flew first to Detroit and then on to Asheville. It was on my way to Detroit that I was greeted by a beauty wholly unanticipated, and experienced a serendipity of grace.

It had been cloudy leaving Duluth, but on our way to Detroit we flew above the clouds and between the clouds. Looking out my window, the sun was rising – or rather peering through holes in the walls of clouds off in the distance. With the light of this fiery red sun illuminating them, the clouds below looked like a warm cotton blanket. It was all a feast for the eyes.

I was also reading, coming toward the end of a book I began earlier this month, Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life. In his final chapter, Needleman quotes poets Rilke and Rumi. They were the perfect accompaniment to the beauty I was witnessing from my airplane window.

Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may
shudder with joy?

Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday? – O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Rilke

Deliberation is one of the qualities of God.

Deliberation is born of joy,
like a bird from an egg.
Rumi

And so there was beauty and in that invitations to deliberation and to shudder with joy. Serendipitous grace, a grace wholly gratuitous.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David