the work of your hands

I didn't speed on the way to work tonight. Instead I listened to loud music and watched the clouds slouching, Simpons-esque, in the sky (though I'm sure there are even better things up there than yellow cartoon letters).

Here at the shelter we got to see a perfectly executed kickflip. Got to hear some really good advice, from a guy who was silent for about four months, and then suddenly sprung loose with all sorts of wandering wisdom: "In the winter, you know you need sunshine. So you just gotta take the summer in while it's here, because winter will come again...". Another guy talked about playing Ponyboy in his school's production of The Outsiders (best jr. high book ever).

It's been a good week, bittersweet. I miss my sisters -- the newly wed Mrs. Rachel Tomalty!!! (honeymooning it up in Cuba), and the not-so-newly wed Mrs. Katie Wong (teaching again in Thailand).

So I've mellowed out a lot in the past few days. Moped, slept, barely "help!"-ed my way into prayer (as if it's "my way"). Baked bread and ate it, honey-spread, by the river with Josh one night. Visited Ratch in Tofield and went for a bike ride on a flat highway, then a flat gravel road (the extremes of rural Alberta!). Intended to fold laundry, clean the bathroom. Sat chatting and eating Gouda cheese with visiting relatives instead. Picked lettuce from the garden and got bit by stinging nettle.

In the field behind our house I saw an albino thistle. Those recessive blades of grass that look like they've been dipped half-way in red paint. A dandelion gone to seed, the size of a mini-basketball. Robins grown hefty like the high school football team, prepping for fall. A fuzzy Remy-orange caterpillar, primed only to win the gorge-yourself-on-a-leaf race. A beetle with a green shell, as tough as the top-coat nail polish Katie forgot in the bathroom drawer, but shimmery like velvet. Dragonflies with cool maneuvers that would beat a fleet of helicopters hands-down, any day.

It may be a blithe assumption, but in these, the details of my days, I can't help translating care. There's something intricate and generous and a little bit stunning in the people and places I love.

O Lord,
our Lord,
how majestic is Your Name
in all the earth...

When we consider the work of your hands...
who are we, that You are mindful of us?