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.

Tonight my daughter and I went into the sleeping church so that she could be trained to be a lector. The sanctuary was dim and icy cold. In the sacristy, the vestments and candles, books and banners were laid away. In a niche outside the window a stone Jesus held out his hands to us through the glass. The stark space was a well of holiness awaiting its dipper. It was the indrawn breath before exhalation—for evening prayer, midday Eucharist, the next wedding, the next funeral. In such quiet, God waits for us to notice our need for him and waits for us to respond.

For years, the meaning of one of the most well-known passages of the book of Genesis in the Bible eluded me. It reads:

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Gen 1:27

After years of pondering it occurred to me that there is really one God-like quality that is universal across our species: the ability to Create.

“I am like an owl in the desert,
like a lonely owl in a far-off wilderness.” (psalm 102)