For the fourth time in the past week, I’m in the air again. My two week Covid bout in July resulted in a slew of rescheduling. The last two weeks of August, which were planned as quiet, are now full of appointments and travel.

This trip is my rescheduled July trip to Oregon for the second leg of the Percy Jackson trip (Chicago and St. Louis) with my grandson, Austin. But more on that in another blog. The bonus of the rescheduled trip is that I will get to be with my son for his birthday.

I’ve been up since before 3 AM for my 6 AM flight.

I was at the airport a little after 4 AM, a time when many service people work while others still sleep.

There was no coffee to be found until 5 AM, and I waited in the airport chapel.

The only sounds I heard were suitcase wheels rolling down the terminal halls. As I read the morning scriptures and prayed, another early flyer came into the chapel and kneeled in prayer.

Waiting.

A friend had given me a Starbucks card, and I was the first to be served when the store opened.

I boarded my flight, and was welcomed by friendly United crew and my seat mate who hoisted my bag into the overhead bin and then took it down at the end of the flight, volunteering to do both.

Welcoming.

I had gotten so busy getting ready to leave last evening that I had completely forgotten to look for the blue moon. What a gift to be welcomed by it outside my window and to be able to watch it the entire flight to San Francisco, from night sky, through sunrise, until it faded with daylight.

Watching.

Where shall we wait and welcome and watch this Ordinary (not ordinary) time day?

This long weekend of not so ordinary time in New Mexico has been observed with amazing drives where the greens of summer, punctuated with the colors of flowers, continue to fill my spirit.

Worship has been not inside churches but in stops along the road that are so beautiful we have to pause. I paint. We pray.

Centering prayer on Sunday was in a space in the Harwood Museum that has been a chapel for me for years. Seated on the aspen yellow stools placed in the shape of a cross in the Agnes Martin room, I used her painting, The Perfect Day, as my visual icon.

Vespers on Saturday night, from the Book of Common Prayer, were framed by the sunset near the Rio Grand Gorge.

Prayers in the evening, called Forgiveness (from Daily Prayers for All Seasons), with an emphasis on how we have cared and not cared for God’s creation, were prayed on a road to Arroyo Seco.

More prayers from Daily Prayers for All Seasons were prayed at midday on a road through the Taos Pueblo.

Beauty has been my invitation to pause to pray, that is, worshipping God in the beauty of holiness. (Psalm 96)

Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century mystic, Benedictine abbess, and one of the rare female “doctors of the Church, ” wrote about and lived the theology of virditas. From the Latin for green and truth, Hildegard proclaimed the wisdom of the holiness of God’s creation.

Is there a better word for the long green season of Ordinary Time? Virditas.

My best traveling friend and I are back in Taos for a long weekend to attend the opening of our friend, Abby’s, opening of her show at a local gallery.

Since we usually are here in the grays, browns, and whites of winter, the summer virditas of New Mexico is full of gob-smackness.

The colors are even more stunning because we’ve had rain everyday. It has been a perfect amount of rain—not too much, not too little; no mosquitoes, and leaving it cool enough to sleep with windows open. Meals can be pleasantly eaten outside.

We had an unplanned midday walk yesterday due to unexpected car trouble. Our steps along busy Paseo del Pueblo Sur between the car repair place to our favorite coffee place down the street, where we waited, was lined with wildflowers. A midday walk without a drop of sweat, parenthesed with color.

Virditas.

The rain has brought more color with surprise daily rainbows.

Virditas is ever with us. The gift of slow travel in familiar places has given me eyes and pace to sink deeply into the virditas.

Isn’t that a kind of prayer?

Having lived seventy-two years, pivoting has become a way of life. Divorce; back surgery; floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes; dying and death; pandemic; raising children; serving as a priest; and, oh yes, the adventures of travel— the unexpected and unplanned is the way of life.

A week ago I was in Portland, Oregon, enjoying a wonderful, joyful day with my grandboys. I was given the gift of an anything can happen day with them while their parents went to a concert. A largely unplanned Sunday, with church in the peace of Lan Su Chinese Garden.

And then the more unplanned. The surveyor helping with the division of my mom’s land in Chambersville could meet with my brothers and me at the end of the week.

Instead of flying back to Houston, as planned, I flew to Dallas to spend a long weekend at the farm. I got to spend the 4th with family. Unplanned. And delightful.

I flew home on Sunday to our unplanned hurricane.

Still. Even if I don’t have battery powered fans to keep me cool, I found these two hand fans left from a march a few years ago:

Still. Even if I didn’t have an ice chest or generator, I found good coffee, ice, conversation, air conditioning, and a free outlet at a well-named local place:

As I sat and looked around this rare place nearish my home with electricity, among the assorted, random group gathered, I pondered the common bond we shared of the unplanned life. No one seemed particularly full of glee (except for a toddler who had found a table number that made the perfect toy); but in our common bond, we shared what we had (an empty chair, an unused outlet), we were kind, we smiled, and we were safe. We had access to food, to drink, and clean restrooms. We could sit a spell. I read my Bible and prayed. Others set up their office at a table and had meetings. I had enough financial resources to buy delicious food and not be concerned about spending the money.

It may not have been the answer to prayer I’d wanted (pleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod restore our electricity), but it may have been the yes to my prayer for peace.