God as Jazz Musician and Other Benedictions from Morning Watch

I have been doing Morning Watch since late March; when the technology is working, at 5:30 a.m., I broadcast live from my church's Facebook page which is then recorded.  I read many of the readings from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours.  Then we take 5-7 minutes of quiet time for sketching, journaling, meditating, or whatever grounds us--I work on a sketch each morning.  I close with the last prayer, which Tickle calls "The Concluding Prayer of the Church," and then I say some encouraging words.

Some days, the encouraging words are similar, some version of "God is with us, walking beside us, cheering us on."  Other days, I say something different, just to keep it interesting, for both me and those who tune in.

On Tuesday morning, I was feeling tired and sloggy.  Just before Morning Watch, I had gone outside to look at the moon, which wasn't the gorgeous full moon I wanted to see, but something obscured.  At the end of Morning Watch,  I talked about looking for the full moon, which sometimes is gorgeous, or might appear as a glowing disc beneath clouds--not exactly what we were looking for, but beautiful anyway.

And then I had a new idea.  I talked about God as jazz musician in our band, master improviser.  I talked about God as the one who could lead us through unexpected twists and turns, that we could create something more beautiful than anything we had planned.

Yesterday was the feast day of the Transfiguration, along with being the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.  I talked about all the ways we long to be transfigured.  I also talked about danger of letting those longings for change make us want to bomb everything to rubble and start over, the way that public policy seems to do these days.  

Some days, I make up a benediction as we close.  Yesterday, I said that I wished for all of us that we would find ways to be transfigured and ways to go out and transfigure the world to make it closer to what God intends for us all.

Most days I end with that kind of benediction, regardless of the words that I choose to express it.