A Steady Walk

Do you know “The Serenity Prayer”? I think most people have read at least the first stanza somewhere at some point in their lives. Attributed to Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, a German-American theologian (1892-1971), the prayer is still common today yet also set apart because its words are profound. One of the dictionary definitions of serenity is the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled . This while walking over uneven landscapes, through difficult treks. That’s the theme for the “The Serenity Prayer”. At the heart, it’s finding and keeping peace regardless of what’s happening around us, through us, to us… or even because of us. Having peace in any circumstance. It’s about grace. In fact, last night I had a dream where someone was reciting “The Serenity Prayer” and when I awoke in the night, the Lord said those words: It’s about grace.   My beloved mother was the real deal when it came to the Fruit of the Spirit. She walked it every day, and when she wasn’t walking, sh...

While having coffee on my back porch this morning, everything sounded normal, or as usual, I should say. Until suddenly the forest began to hum with a new sound, and the humming grew in volume. It was like nature’s conductor, GOD, moved his baton down indicating the first beat, and the unified humming began. I felt privileged to witness this song. A  few days prior, I’d noticed the nymph cicadas on the porch in their molting process, then they morphed to the winged, red-eyed adults. And now we have their melody, a humming or buzzing which is produced by the males for mating. What makes this more fascinating (if you’re a nature geek like me), is that these are the Brood XIV , or Great Eastern Brood periodical cicadas that appear once every 17 years. They stay underground for that long time, then emerge. Hidden and quiet, nourished by sipping tree saps, they lay low until their time to arise and celebrate in a full-on spectacle of life. And the highest concentration of them is expe...