At that age my experience of a window was something you got into.  As a little girl growing up near Corpus Christi Bay on the Gulf Coast before the days of air conditioning, I would push my bed against the wall, put my pillow on the window sill, and be gently cooled by the soft lambent breezes undulating across my skin to the rhythm of swaying palm fronds.  Cuddled up like that in the window, I was caught up in the rhythm of the chiming, gonging, and cookooing clocks resounding from the house next door just across the crushed shell driveway.  Getting into the window was like getting into the rhythms of life.
            Another window I saw recently was just as remarkable as the transom.  I had to look up.  It was the oculus at the Pantheon in Rome.  A wide open gaping round over a mystical rotunda of harmony and grandeur.  I stood there in the middle of the ring and allowed myself to be suffused by the light from the sky and accompanying energy from the heavens pouring through the open round.   I have long been fascinated by the oculus as built into ancient and medieval churches, many at the direction of primitive augurs. 
            Common in European churches are ornate stained glass windows which are works of art.  Before the printing press, the windows were intending to tell the stories of faith, to educate the illiterate bourgeoisie.  These treasures intended for the mind served to lift the eyes up and beyond oneself to something greater, something beautiful to behold, reflecting the light and giving life to the little pieces of glass.  These cathedral windows are not the type a little girl would want to nap in.  But then maybe she would get into the rhythms of life - however in a different way.
            This inaugural issue of Soul Windows-Reflection opens us to many possibilities: entering into the rhythms of life and being attentive to what we might experience when we look up.  As this newsletter develops in future issues, many themes will unfold just as varied as the pictures set in glass at medieval cathedrals.  The invitation is open today as it was back then.  Enter into the rhythms of life and look up.  Oh.  And just now when I remember the first transom I saw, I remember the surprise - when  I went outside the door and looked up I could see my face reflected in the glass.