Time out for a nature break

Life overwhelming? Take a nature break!

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed lately. With my sister sick and in the hospital and some other major issues I'm not sleeping very well and the temptations to anxiety are many and frequent. I spent yesterday on the road leaving home at 8:30 in teeming rain to make a 10:15 appointment in Chantilly, then on to Frederick Memorial Hospital an hour away to visit my sister, then back to Winchester to COSTCO, and finally home to make dinner. Whew!

I consider my car a little chapel and said two rosaries on the road as well as taking some silence breaks between finishing a book on CD and listening to talk radio. I can only stand so much noise.

Today, however, it's time for a nature break!

Our Lady's Lamp

I love Flannery O'Conner's work because she uses the sun and moon as Eucharistic images. In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey offers to lasso the moon and give it to Mary. What should she do with it, she asks? "You can eat it," George responds and the light will come out of her hair and her fingers.

Capra was a Catholic and whenever I see that scene in the movie I wonder if he was using the moon as an image of the Eucharist. Eat it and you will become a bearer of the light, reflecting it to the world.

The moon is called Our Lady's lamp. Mary reflects the light of the world, her Son Jesus, like the moon reflects the light of nature's sun. And how beautiful it is! How many gifts God gives us! Let us never forget to say thank you. And if you haven't gone out to look at the night sky lately, Be sure to do it often.

The stars are brilliant in northern Virginia tonight with a little sliver of moon that looks like a smile in the night sky. Thank you, Lord, for the constant reminders of your love for us.