Burning Bush

A thought from Barbara Brown Taylor's new book An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith:

"Reverence requires a certain pace. It requires a willingness to take detours, even side trips, which are not a part of the original plan... The bush required Moses to take a time out... What made him Moses was his willingness to turn aside. Wherever he was supposed to be going and whatever else he was supposed to be doing, he decided it could wait a minute...
I have never been presented with a burning bush, but I did see a garden turn golden once. I must have been sixteen, earning summer money by keeping a neighbor's cats while she was away. The first time I let myself into the house, the fleas leapt on my legs like airborne piranha. Brushing them off as I opened cat food and cleaned litter pans, I finally fled through the back door with the bag of trash my employer had left for me to carry to the cans in the back. I could hear the fleas inside flinging themselves against the plastic, so that it sounded as if a light rain were falling inside the bag. I could not wait to be shed of it, which is why I was in a hurry. On my way to the cans, I passed a small garden area off to the left that was not visible from the house. Glancing at it, I got the whole dose of loveliness at once... all lit by stacked planes of sunlight that turned the whole scene golden. It was like a door to another world. I had to go through it. I knew that if I did, I would become golden too.
But first I had to ditch the bag. The fleas popped against the plastic as I hurried to the big aluminum garbage cans near the garage. Stuffing the bag into one of them, I turned back toward the garden, fervent to explore what I had only glimpsed in passing. When I got there, the light had changed. All that was left was a little overgrown sitting spot that no one had sat in for years. The smell of cat litter drifted from the direction of the garbage cans. The garden was no longer on fire.
'I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it,' says Shug Avery, one of the wise women in Alice Walker's book The Color Purple. I noticed the color gold, but I did not turn aside. I had a bag full of fleas to attend to. While I made that my first priority, the fire moved on in search of someone who would stop what she was doing, take off her shoes, and say, 'Here I am.'"

What bag of fleas are you carrying around right now? What is it preventing you from experiencing? What really needs your attention? What is your golden garden? What is your burning bush, calling you to listen, to turn aside?

Be willing to kick off your shoes - you may be on holy ground. Be willing to set aside your flea bag and say, "Here I am." If only for a short time, just try it. You may be surprised how it rocks your world.

Amen.

In Wisdom,
Brandi Calhoun Diamond