Check Your Messages

In the book, The Color Purple, the free-spirited Shug Avery says at one point: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple

I love this quote from Alice Walker. God is always "trying to please us back."

Here, next to Lake Koshkonong in the Township of Sumner, Wisconsin, it's not just a small whisper of purple that we see in the field. It is an effusion, an announcement, an absolute celebration that would be really hard to miss.

When we look, when we pay attention, I believe messages of love are flowing in, to and for us all the time.

When we listen to the voice, that "still small voice" in our heart, we can remember that whatever we’re traveling through, whatever may be painful right now--God, or Life, or Spirit, or the Universe (whatever you may choose call this energy that holds and sustains us), has a way of saying, "Look, I'm here. I'm right with you. Are you looking? Are you listening?"

Sometimes it's been a sunrise that took my breath away and did the trick for me. Sometimes it's been a nearly forgotten song that I suddenly hear in the middle of a mall at a perfect moment. Sometimes it's been a line of poetry. Once, I remember, it was the kind, good nature of a bartender.

So many things have happened to us. Loss. Grief. Loneliness. Pain. Confusion. We humans can spend a lot of time trying to get it all "right." To live "right." And we can tend to believe we're alone in the world.

This is just a little reminder, with a wink and a hug, to check your messages: The birds calling to one another. The squirrel scampering up a tree. The rain. The moon, so stunning in all her various phases. Those are the Everythingness, the Isness, saying, "Here I am. I'm walking right with you."