My daughter bounced onto the porch after returning from her one night meditation retreat. “How was it?” I inquired. “Mom! It was the most boring…”she began. My heart dropped, for that is what I’d feared—that once she was away from home and doing the hard work of sitting on a meditation cushion, the romance of an out-of-state overnight would evaporate. “…most wonderful time I’ve ever had!”

Last night I couldn’t stop staring at Nastia Liukin’s scowling face as she processed her loss to He Kexin on the uneven bars despite their tie score. Her features expressed almost a painful dissatisfaction with the present moment. Nothing around her—not her father, the cheering crowds, or her own lithe and muscular body—was able to penetrate her utter rejection of her loss.

For me, heat is linked with sin—not in the sense of steamy illicit liaisons or medieval images of the flaming pits of hell, but the fire of anger. Heat liquefies reason. Provoke me on a hot night and risk being splashed with molten rage. Last night was such a time. The thermometer topped 103, and I could feel my inner coals banking.

Watching the Olympics makes me think of the vulnerability of spinal cords. Thirty feet over the surface of the water, synchronized divers rise up on their toes before flinging themselves backwards into space. I wince at the thought of their heads cracking the diving platform as they somersault and imagine them “missing their dives,” smacking into the water at the oft mentioned speed of thirty-five miles per hour. In a different arena, gymnasts whirl and flip.

“But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go. Which of the two was obeying his father?” (Matthew 21:28-29)

“God loves Nathan!” “Benjamin is going to heaven!” “God loves everyone!” So proclaimed the sidewalk of a nearby church in brightly colored chalk. These and similar words jostled among rainbows, filled the outlines of small bodies, curved around hearts and lopsided worlds. Apparently, Vacation Bible Camp had gone outside to bring their message to passersby.

On the way to the playground, my son and I came across 10 feet of plastic tubing, the remnants of someone’s irrigation project. “FREE!” a sign encouraged. I draped it around my neck and dragged it along. As my son raced his bike around the field, I embraced my armature of tubing. Dog owners looked at me expectantly until one finally approached. “What can you do with that thing?” she inquired. I realized she thought I had some special talent, like a stilt walker or a juggler. “Ahh. I can’t do anything with it, but I’m hoping my ferrets can.