Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent

They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.

I use a prayer practice called lectio divina. I use a very simplified version--Sr. Jean Frances, my oblate director, thinks it's gotten fussy over the years and lost the point. It's an easy way to go deep into a brief passage from the bible and live in it for a time. It isn't study, it isn't explanation or historical reference. You don't use anything except the bible, opened to whatever page. And you read until something strikes you and then you dwell there. It lets in a richness that has nothing to do with history or voice or purpose. You read, you think, you pray, and you leave yourself open to what comes after.

As I read today's readings to get ready to write this, I read it through once. Then a second time. I left it behind and went through part of the day Tuesday. Then I came back and really took a look and tripped up on the word eagle.

They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings. Soar. I know that feeling surrounding hope, smaller hopes, even, the excitement and trepidation and desire. Heart racing and almost impossible not to move or sing or call something out.

As with eagles' wings. I think about my girl scout troop heading up the Mississippi to the Clarksville dam and watching eagles in the wild, bald eagles. And I turned to Mike and said, "when we were kids, bald eagles were in the zoo or at Grant's Farm or on TV. Our kids get to see them here." And I remember my voice breaking as I said it, struck by the power of that, of how we as a society were able to end the use of DDT and help bring these birds back to where they truly belong. How impossible such a task seems, to bring an animal back from the brink of extinction, but with practical work and education and hope, this time it worked.

Seeing them makes your heart soar, makes you think other things are possible. That maybe there is hope for change that is real and it can happen here and with our help. Maybe we aren't as useless as we feel sometimes in a larger society. It makes you want to do something else, just to see. Run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

They tilt and catch the wind and dive down to the river. We stand there in our parkas with binoculars that we don't even need. I catch my co-leader's eye and I know she's feeling what I'm feeling and I'm so glad we came to see this.

It's a small thing, but God works in small things.