Burning Bushes

For the past few months I've been reading books by Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian priest and writer who discusses many issues I find interesting - both in her autobiographical accounts and in her sermons.

I am currently reading Mixed Blessings, a collection of sermons that date back to her early years as a parish priest. One entitled "Uncommon Light" has given me food for thought. In it she speaks of Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush in the Sinai Desert.

Quoting the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, she says that, in noticing details in nature, the poet (Hopkins) "...saw everything and in everything he saw God. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," he wrote at last. "It will flame out, like shining from shook foil." That is something the poets among us have always known. "Earth's crammed with heaven," wrote Hopkins' contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "each common bush aflame with God. Yet only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest set round and pluck blackberries." ... Or run errands. Fill in your own blank. Then stop, if you are willing. Stop and take off your shoes, knowing that wherever you are is holy ground. Risk getting burned, looking foolish, being wrong. Drop what you are doing and turn aside, to look into every bush, every face, every event of your life - the big and the small, the hoped for and the feared, the bad and the good - look into every one of them for God's presence and call...

Finally, if you are still willing, go the last step. Once you have gotten the knack of seeing burning bushes everywhere, consent to be set on fire yourself, to be for someone else the presence and call of God..."