Teen in flight. Happy Sunday!

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

Watching a Tern (a winter Forester’s Tern in Florida in this case) swoop and dive and hover, who would not want to be able to fly? Perhaps only figure skaters and downhill skiers (and maybe at a stretch, swimmer’s underwater) among humans ever approach the particular grace and beauty of the flight of Terns...and then we are always just a bit strained...always operating right at the ragged edge of what we can do. Nothing at all, really, like the effortless  agility of the Tern. 

Unless of course you consider the flights of spirit we achieve in art and imagination...the grace we sometimes achieve when we tap into the creative spirit of all that is, and let it take our lives to shape some work of wonder in the world...some work that makes us all catch our breaths in awe even as we do while watching Terns in flight. And most wonderful of all are the works of love that we sometimes manage, almost despite ourselves, in a world where love is both the easiest and hardest act of all. God grant me the grace to love as the Tern flies...agile and quick, full of purpose, riding the air of the spirit with intention, skill, and delight. Even more, God grant me the generous eye to appreciate such flights of love in my fellows, to see every soul around me in its wonderful attempt to navigate the currents of love with the grace of the Tern in flight. What a generous eye that would be...and how bright the light within. And may God grant you the same. Happy Sunday!