From My Nature Journal: A Bow in the Snow

Early this morning I saw something I had never before seen, a rainbow in the snow. The rising sun was very low, ascending through broken skies, and I had just found myself coming into an alpine meadow in a sunny opening. The Twin Sisters loomed on my left, Longs Peak behind. Fragile hoarfrost clung to the taller grasses from an overnight fog, and the ground was covered with two inches of fresh powder, interlaced with coyote tracks.

Then, gently and slighter than a whisper, almost as an undertone, it began to snow. There was no wind. Tiny, brilliantly flashing crystals flitted like falling leaves or apple-blossom petals, dropping thinly from a wispy cloud, through which shown a cerulean sky. Bright sunshine beamed and all was dazzling when just as gently, just as whisper-like, the bow appeared. Was it something on my glasses? I wiped them clean. No, it was a rainbow, small and pale but still distinct, actually a bowed sundog, that hung before me as if I could reach out a hand and pierce the spectrum with a finger.

I actually tried, twice. Finally I held my palm open.

The promise, touched... The covenant,

come to rest upon my hand...

The promise, touched… The covenant, come to rest upon my hand...

I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth… I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. (Genesis 9:13, 16)

~~ RGM, from an old entry in my nature journal, written several 

years ago while attending a board meeting at Covenant 

Heights Camp and Conference Center, Estes Park CO

From My Nature Journal: Open Hands

I hold my open hand outstretched toward a tiny bird. It is full of nuts, and I am hopeful the little guy will light on my palm and receive what I have to offer. Sometimes it works. Most often it doesn't. But it is always worth it to try.

Open hands... 

An open hand can symbolize many, many things. Held simply open it can mean, as with the bird, that I have something to give; or if it’s empty and held forward, it can also say, “I have need.” Upheld alone and facing forward it can be a simple acknowledgement of hello or goodbye, formal or informal, enthusiastic or reticent. Upheld with the other hand it can be a figurative or literal sign of resignation or surrender, “I give up,” a show that my hand hides nothing that can threaten the one to whom the signal is made. Angled at my side, palms forward, it is a beckoning gesture, a motion that can mean welcome, come nearer, stand by me. Yet waving forward from the elbows it says go away. Palms down it says, “I’m finished, I’m staying put,” or that things have settled. Held high overhead it symbolizes the desire to be chosen, noticed, “Teacher, pick me!” Held palms up at shoulder height it says I don’t know, I’m confused.

Such variability from a simple open hand gesture, sometimes even contradictory! Hello or goodbye. Come or go. I’m staying or I’m coming. I have need or I have excess. I’m settled or I’m confused. I know or I don’t know. And that’s just gestures using an open hand! It’s a pretty diverse appendage.

I hold an open hand outstretched toward God in prayer, hopeful God's presence will light and receive what I have to offer. What is the meaning of my gesture? Is it an offering? A symbol of resignation or surrender? Of confusion or of being settled? Of openness to receive? A welcome? A beckoning that the Object of my prayer advance, that He come nearer? A desire to be chosen? All of these? Especially in times such as our country and church are experiencing now?

We never thought of our hands

as being empty so much as

caught in the act of receiving…

A friend sent me a poem once about a man who had grown up poor, but somehow still provided for, who had lived a simple and unpretentious life. “We had so little,” he said, “that there was no point in our asking God to protect what was ours. We had life and limb, friends and kin, time for play and work. It was enough.”

The poem ended with these lines: “We prayed with our hands open and turned toward heaven. We never thought of them as being empty so much as caught in the act of receiving.”

It’s a lovely image. And perhaps made especially so since the image is of an open hand and not a clenched one...

Lord, let my open hands before You be ones that have something to offer, to You and to others, in these critical times. And let me never, ever see them as empty, only caught in the act of receiving. Amen.

~~RGM, adapted from an old entry in my nature

journal, after a morning on the beach at Hobe

Sound National Wildlife Refuge near Jupiter, FL