A Shimmer of Something

As we continue this journey in the wilderness of COVID 19 I find myself looking for signs of grace, signs of hope. 

Our parish spontaneously began sending pictures of spring to each other! Gardens, flowers, birds! I realized I was looking at Easter books to read to the grandchildren! Bunnies and colors! I found myself smiling, a sign of grace in itself!

These are "shimmers" of something! Shimmers of a holy creativity which resides within and is in these times being shown without in new ways! Calls and notes and waves have become benedictions once almost forgotten. Music has aroused old and new meaning, witness to new mergers in time.

And so as I pondered these firefly fleeting moments and desired to catch them, I let go and prayed them travel to my loved ones. The shared experience still being more profound than the isolated one.

And I found myself remembering one of my favorite proems by Brian Doyle. I am re-membered as I do so! We too are in that liminal space between the mass and the electric bread, between the here and yet to come. May we all realize the shimmers of somethings today:

A Shimmer of Something by Brian Doyle

Well, the aged mother of the woman who married me died,

And there are so many stories both sad and hilarious to tell,

But let me tell you just one, because it is little and not little.

At her Mass, after the miracle, but before the electric bread

Went into every soul, as people are shuffling slowly toward

The altar, everyone in the line on the left side, as they came

To the front pew, touched my wife. Some bent down to hug

Her. Some touched her hair gently. Some just placed a hand

On her shoulder. One woman reached down and cupped her

Face in her hands for an instant. Sure I wept. We touch each

Other when we have no other way to speak. We speak many

Languages without words. We are so much wilder and wiser

Than we know. There are so very many of us without words,

Speaking the most amazing and eloquent languages; we sing

With our hands. I have seen it happen. You have seen it, too.

It's a little thing, but there's a shimmer of something beyond

Vast. See, I am trying to say an epic thing in this small poem,

And here we are at the end of the poem, where I stop talking.