It was late. . . I just wanted to get home and be with my family. . . As I reached for the back door I looked up and in that moment spied a glorious spider web delicately strung from the top of the door-frame to its side, glistening in the moist night air, illumined by a bright halogen lamp light above it.  And I was in a hurry. I pushed the door open and in an instant the work that must have taken hours was gone.  The moment of oblivion caught me and I stood there pondering what just happened.  I wanted to take back that moment of awareness and dwell in it longer.  Had my desire to go not been so urgent, perhaps I would have taken time to experience and explore the beauty and complex creativity that captivated me there.  I wondered if the spider was disappointed, enraged, scared, or had the had the temperament of a seasoned Buddhist and just let my moment of thoughtlessness be and returned as if in one motion to rebuilding its web.

 

I occurs to me that this experience of rushing pell-mell into the next moment is something most of us have in common.  It is also one of the reasons that I find the spiritual discipline of engaging in weekly worship and participating in spiritual community so compelling and completing. For me, the weekly discipline of gathering for communal contemplation, celebration and cooperation is a ritual of reverence, much like the pause I wish I had taken during my exit and encounter with spider and web described above.  This opportunity that we afford ourselves and each other is as precious as the fleeting moment of awareness that catches us off-guard and gives us pause to stop, see, and study our experiences.  These are the moments too that give us the insight and energy to take on the challenges which we must inevitably face by virtue of our choices, chances, and charges.

 

So please take this "moment" as an invitation to come again to worship with us, to engage in regular rituals of reverence and thus, to find those pathways to extend, expand, and explore your spirit.