a morning with two owls

Jason and I went for a run this morning, and on the way back, he spotted someone looking over the bridge on 20th Ave East out at two owls in Ravenna Park.  We went back to the spot with Anna and a few cameras and watched these amazing birds in awe for quite some time this morning.  We all knew we were walking on a bit of holy ground and had been given such a gift to get to start our day with them and to get to be in their presence.. 

“Reverence may take all kinds of forms, depending on what it is that awakens awe in you by reminding you of your true size. ... Nature is a good place to start.  Nature is full of things bigger and more powerful than human beings, including but not limited to night skies, oceans, thunderstorms, deserts, grizzly bears, earthquakes, and rain-swollen rivers. But size is not everything. Properly attended to, even a saltmarch mosquito is capable of evoking reverence. See those white and black striped stockings on legs thinner than a needle? Where in those legs is there room for knees? And yet see how they bend, as the bug lowers herself to your flesh. Soon you and she will be blood kin. Your itch is the price of her life. Swat her if you must, but not without telling her she is beautiful first.  The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on  the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate, including the saltmarsh mosquito that lands on your arm. Just blow her away and ask her to please go find someone else to eat. With any luck, you will soon begin to see the souls in pebbles, ants, small mounds of moss, and the acorn on its way to becoming an oak tree. You may feel some tenderness for the struggling mayfly the ants are carrying away. If you can see the water, you may take time to wonder where it comes from and where it is going. You may even feel the beating of your own heart, that miracle of ingenuity that does its work with no thought or instruction from you. You did not make your heart, any more than you made a tree. You are a guest here. You have been given a free pass to this modest domain and everything in it. .” 

― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.” 
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” 
― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith