Had I looked in the Mirror of Erised, I would not have beheld the sheer enormity, wonder, eternally complex and simple design of God as I have seen it today.

There are no grounds for my deserving it. I simply do not. As a mortal, I have not even the faintest idea of what scholarship of mercy I won to live in such a place and time that makes my heart stretch with happiness.

Yesterday, well, there are always reasons for yesterday. But my behavior and attitude in it was simply a flop. Today, I have witnessed extreme miracles in peace, and tranquility, and virtue, and...some other word...I feel it does not exist...some other word to describe everything, this enormous everything I feel.

In a worldly way, it has been a good day thus far: Wake up at noon, find a new Reader's Digest, the annual humor addition to be precise, have mini-Reeses cups for breakfast, and lay about on the couch. Unproductive, mortal, bliss. However [and I make a reference back to my first blog of the summer], my mortal bliss[ness] was not conducive to God's plans for me today. Not at all-- and the day is not yet over. (Goodness, I feel as if He is typing through me almost). Now, the reference: Thunder rolled in. And an afternoon storm, the likes of which we have not been able to see for months because of a terse and immobilizing drought, brought me out to the back porch. I plopped into a white molded plastic chair, and continued to read. The dogs came and asked for petting, and then lolled about as well. I glanced up, and it was beginning to sprinkle..drizzle...a tad. The wind whipped my hair and it got somewhat chilly. It rained harder, the absolute perfect mood and atmosphere for the article I was reading about NOAA Hurricane Planes--going into the storm. It reverberated between hot and cold, at least every couple minutes. It was absolutely beautiful. The rain tilted and slid on the air at a perfect forty five degree angle to the right. Sprinkles and dew drops splattered my page, and the dogs moved closer. Like a chemical reaction, everything was instantaneously green, as if, the mere touch and stroke of rain induced some mindblowing speed race of photosynthesis. The roosters crowed down the thunder. The thunder crowed back. The rain picked up and the temperature dropped several degrees. I just had to sit there...to know what it was like to sit through a whole thunderstorm outside. It wasn't a bad one at all....and after a time...it faded away..trickled off, with the clouds puffing across the sky in fraction bars, in degrees.

After the storm, the clouds are always best. Orange to the left, blue to the right, rolling tufts of sky-beard. Funnels of round, holes poking upward, and small, ever growing patches of blue..breathing life into everything. Clouds fit for the Second Coming dusted and reigned on the southwestern horizon..you know the type, with the sun illuminating their turrets and folds, and flat, dark fronts and underbellies. Really...I haven't breathed since the storm began...but now I inhale deeply. The worms break through the soil and birds of every type come to our back yard. No one else's, just ours. There are times I wish I was a gifted student of birdwatching, but now, not knowing their names gave the afternoon a reverence I adored. Kind of like Eden, before Adam named everything.

They climbed the tiny pine, chased each other in couples, flew singularly calling into the great unknown, to some goal their bird hearts knew. Hopped, skipped, jumped the fences, ever picking the ground, then darting so suddenly back into the trees behind the pasture. It was a major conglomeration of birds. Do they understand each other in their different bird speaks? I hope so, otherwise the bird world would be a giant toppled tower of Babble, with feathers and worms. Silhouetted against the sky, and entire scraggly tree top was filled to bursting with some sort of sparrow things. Wings, looked like they were bent backwards, wings, with a neon white flashing stripe. Magic.

My day is not done. My day will never be done.