magnum mysterium

Today I fell in love with a baby centipede.

Yup, I know what you are thinking. If you are a boy, it's "Awesome! I wanna see it!" and you already have about twelve plans in your head for scaring a sister or girlfriend or blowing it up or pulling it to pieces or putting it under a microscope and seeing it wiggle. If you are a man, it is probably more along the lines of "That's a little strange, but hey, if that's what you want, I'm cool with it." (Large smile to all you men out there.) If you are female of any age, it is probably something like "Eww!" (Unless, of course, you are like me and find such things fascinating.) If you are a grandparent, you probably don't really care as long as I am happy, well fed, and loved. (and that is why we love grandparents so much.) In any case, now I have reached out to all my audiences, please let me explain.

I was sitting on the back porch this frosty morning, happily enjoying sunshine and the air filling my lungs after my morning exercise when I saw what looked like a tiny worm squirming along the sidewalk in front of me. Upon closer examination, I found that it was, indeed, my new friend the baby centipede. The angle of the sun was such that I could see the shadow of all of its hundred legs as they moved beneath it, and stillness of the morning and the falling leaves and gratitude something shifted. Did you ever stop to think how cool light is, and all of creation, for that matter? Suddenly, I had a moment of complete identification with Einstein and his fascination with light, and Galileo's discovery of the Solar System, and Beethoven's inspiration for "Ode to Joy," and probably Adam and Eve as well - after all, can you imagine just waking up one morning into this world? Yet, it is something I get to experience every day if I will just look. Whatever the actual process of creation, this planet certainly has a Creator. I had a moment with Him and a centipede this morning.

On Monday I found my calling in life. Really. It was kinda out of the blue, and after weeks of seeking I wasn't really looking for it at all in that moment. In fact, I was looking for something completely different. I'd been experiencing a lot of doubts and fears, and was attempting to practice through them, when suddenly I stopped playing and asked "What is going on?" I knew that I had been making the right choices, and it was unusual for me to face such a bombardment when I demonstrated such a determined desire to be in the right state of being. After a prayer, I felt to improvise for a moment on a familiar theme. Leaving that one, I moved on to the next, and suddenly I knew. It was almost like remembering something I'd always known, so obvious that I didn't even know I'd forgotten. It fits my family, my education, my dreams, and is so different that I never would have recognized it had it come in any other way.

What, you may ask, does all this have to do with the title of a Catholic Mass? Everything. Way too often we divide things into separate chunks and pieces, forgetting that they are really about Him, and the "great mystery" really is that the greatest events and people and things are inseparably connected with the small ones; just as the Babe who had the biggest effect on the history of the world came first to animals in a stable. It really is all connected. Even the centipede.