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During a wander in the botanical gardens this summer I watched these two bees doing their work.  The one near the top of my photo has pollen sacks full of the flowery resources at the garden and ready to take home to his community.

Our capacity to love and provide for one another is an amazing aspect of our creation. We have the capacity to be kind, generous, and aware of our gratitude.

When life gets hard, it helps me to look beyond myself to the majesty of this planet.  The species, the flowers and animals, the people who are so kind and open – they remind me that while we work and gather, we also are quite beautiful.

That beauty can be enough.

The clergy are on retreat on a mountain top in the Great Rocky Mountains.

At a distance are views which make one’s legs go weak.  Up close there are bugs and hummingbirds

whose beauty and color make human creations pale in comparison.

As Liz and I meditated on a deck looking out at the mountains early this morning

I had been distracted by the color yellow.  I was thinking about yellow in nature. The dots of yellow on this bug are surprising brush-strokes.

It was hard to know if I had been distracted from my prayers.

I became anxious about the distraction in a Calvinist sort of way.

Why would yellow come to mind?  Was it a distraction.

Just then a brightly colored yellow and lime hummingbird few to the porch on which we sat.

It loudly flew to us and hovered in front of our faces and stared at us eye to eye.

It then flew away.

The canticle (printed below) followed and I realized that the little bird

was a liturgica flourish from the Chief Presider.Let the earth glorify the Lord, *