The last week here in Southern California we have been able to see the Perseid meteor shower in all its glory. However, my sense is that most folks were content to read about it in the newspaper or see it on the Internet, foregoing the 2:00 a.m. opportunity for the best show. It reminded me how much of life is spent reading, observing, studying; one could easily move into a “spectator mode” of life…physical life and spiritual life. Like a sports fan in the stands, one is always watching, sometimes cheering and sometimes booing, but never playing the game.
Author Caryll Houselander reminds us that EXPERIENCING God through love is the core of our genuine reality, the core of a living faith. She reminds us:
“The being of God, then presses upon man. It is his (her) environment. It sings to him in the winds. When he touches grass or water, he touches it with his fingers; he smells the hay or clover and in newly cut wood; he listens to it in the falling of the rain or the murmur of the sea. He tastes it in the food that he eats; he sees it in the flowers beneath his feet; he is clothed in it in silk and wool. Its measured beat in his own blood rocks him to sleep with the coming darkness and wakens him with the light. He receives it in the sunlight like a sacrament that gives life”.
From “The Reed of God” Sheed & Ward, publishers, New York 1944
Perhaps it’s time for all of us to make sure we have not become “once-removed” from God, absorbed by reading about him, reflecting, talking, etc. The small child who sits in the dock while others swim will never drown, but will not have genuine happiness of joy in the experience, either. Experiencing God is sometimes risky, but I think we will be pleasantly surprised by the joy that it brings.
In the Hands of the Potter 
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