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Reflections in Watercolors
Liz McAlister

After the hardest of winters
Irises bloomed across the back garden wall, row after row of them, straight-backed as dowagers,
coated in purple and blue, trimmed with gold braid. Unexpected

as a sweepstakes win, unearned as salvation, they flaunted themselves against bare stone,
guaranteeing that there is a reason for winter:
resurrection is more than mythology.

(poem by Rebecca Baggett )

EVERY DAY IS HOLY;
EVERY PLACE IS SACRED
THE DIVINE INFUSES EVERYTHING AROUND US.

Sometimes God moves loudly… spinning to another place like ball lightning… Sometimes.., God shows an edge of Godself to souls who seek her, and the people who bear those souls, marveling, know it, and see the skies carousing around them, and watch cells stream and multiply in green leaves. God does not give as the world gives; God leads invisibly over many years or wallops for thirty seconds at a time. God may touch a mind, too, making a loud sound, or a mind may feel the rim of God's mind as God nears. (Annie Dillard)

THERE REMAIN VESTIGES OF FOREST ,
CRYSTAL CLEAR WATERS
AND NATURE'S MUSIC
THAT MANIFEST God's face.
One can reach out to God's embrace in all of these.