Do you sometimes find yourself doodling? The other day I drew a part of a mobile and stopped, as if it were complete. But of course, a mobile is all about balance. As I pondered the lop-sided image it seemed to me that maybe what I drew was representative of the things I could see, touch, feel, taste and smell, those things we call real.

But what was holding what I had drawn in balance? I wondered if the blank side the page could represent the love God gives to me.

A friend suggested that I scan and post the initial drawing here, but with other slips of paper, I mistakenly threw it out. So I sketched another. I recognize that it is very simple and not all that interesting as mobiles, and yet it may be telling me that I am perfectly cared for.

As I am singing as I wash the kitchen floor and I wonder if time could be a state of being in which we experience God in a sort of diluted form. By diluted I mean that most of time I am not keenly aware of God’s presence, in fact, there are times that I have imagined that God has forgotten me and others. 

Yet, I believe that all of God's promises to us written in scripture, in the text of the lives of so many who have gone before us, and in our sense of the goodness of the world, will come true. Could it be that God’s provision takes time to mature, blossom, or ripen?

If so, my life, my existence in time, may be necessary not just for my salvation but for the salvation of the world.

So give God time, give time back to God. I believe that we will see the faithfulness of God in time.

In this week's Sunday Routine column in the the Metropolitan section of the NYT, Robert Wilson describes Sunday at the Watermill Center on Long Island. At 10:30 a.m. when he and the group of young artists gather, they start their time together with 30 minutes of silence. Wilson describes the purpose this way, "I find that it's a way of opening and clearing the mind, and it brings people closer. It makes people less anxious and less hostile about the rest of the day."

I may begin the meeting of the space allocation group with at least two minutes of silence tomorrow evening when we gather to discuss paint colors for the narthex of our parish. Perhaps our anxieties can be lessened, too.