“Held in the Motion of God’s Hands”

It’s not easy for our mom to talk these days, but when she talks, we listen. 

A couple weeks ago, I walked in on a phone call between our older sister, Kristin, and Mom.  She was remarking to Kristin, “Not everyone celebrates the fact that we are all held in the motion of God’s hands.”  Kristin’s response was, “Yes, but we are all held whether we realize it or not.”

On these crystalline September days, we see nature shimmering in the motion of God’s hands.  On one of the last days of the summer season, I was sitting on the steps in Michigan overlooking the place where our mother brought us every summer.  The lake was glittering, the waves rippling rhythmically up the shoreline, and the soft sand was radiating a gentle warmth.  Her words came back to me.  “Held in the motion of God’s hands” -- and I was celebrating like mad!  I felt the love my mother and father had poured into us, their deep delight in helping us bond with nature and each other every summer, despite the sacrifices that had to be made.  This place was and is Good. 

I cannot separate this little stretch of Lake Michigan from my experience of love. My mother’s smile is like a triumphant, glittering summer day.  My dad’s smile is/was, (do past and present really make any sense here?), like the light flung high off a crashing wave and bursting with joy into a million pieces.  Every time I smell spicy pine needles on hot sand, I feel again the excitement and delight of our bare-foot walk to the beach as children. The soft dunes grass I know intimately for the pockets of sand it offered up to our towels.  I still feel the warmth and comfort of my belly lying on the belly of the warm, sandy earth.  The comfort is inextricable from the warmth of our mother’s and father’s love and sibling bonds.  This place is sacred ground.  It helps me remember, and it helps me reconnect with my mother’s utter conviction, her bedrock belief that we are all held in the motion of God’s hands. 

I know I was extremely lucky to have had the childhood summers that I did, to be an adult who is able to celebrate nature and family-love in the same breath.  It is certainly because of this upbringing that my siblings and I care so much about what happens to our Mother, Earth.  But I believe that we all have our sacred grounds, places in nature we seek to find realignment and peace of mind.   I think that the gardens at St. Paul’s is a sacred ground, one way in which God is showing us how to love His/Her creation and how to love each other. 

I also know that God lifts us out of our worry zone and into a place of quiet celebration whenever we find ourselves in His/Her creation.  What is it about a plunge in the lake, or a walk on the beach or in woods, or time by a creek listening to the current, or at the foot of a waterfall where we lift our faces to the rainbow-filled spray that brings is to our senses and is not unlike the comfort of a parents’ love?  I don’t think Jesus was chiding us when he told us not to worry, because the lilies of the field were gilded in a glory greater than Solomon’s.  I think he was telling us to GO OUT in nature, get outside, because there we would wake from our illusions of control.  There we will realize we are part of God’s community of Creation. We will sense something that transcends the destructions and suffering we know are underway, an ultimate Good.

No matter what, we will celebrate that we are all held in the motion of God’s hands! 

Thank you, Mom!

The author, Melissa Foster, chairs the Green Team at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Evanston, Illinois.