Soul-scape take three

As the cloud reached down to touch the top of the trees,
Or billowed up like a plume of smoke from the earth,
I sat rapt in amazement.

I am used to clouds sailing across the blue sky above my head.
I am used to big clouds and small clouds that seem far away.
But one reaching down?
One that if I started chasing it with the dream of touching the pillow-y softness?

I wonder what would have happened if I did race and run off in search of this cloud?
Would have I discovered the place where the sky and earth met in this cloud?
Could I have entered this cloud the way the airplanes do countless times each day?
Could I have touched the pink hues of the sun on the edge of the cloud?
Could I have heard the silence of being surrounded by cool vapor of a cloud?

Suddenly what once seemed to distant came down to earth.
What once seemed far away was remarkably close.
Beckoning, calling, asking for us to pay attention.

Is this not what the dance with the divine is all about?
Is this not what church should be?
The place where our lives find an interaction and intersection with what too often seems out of reach?

When the landscape around us etches the soul-scape within us,
that is where prayers are formed by more than a trace of God's grace.

Amen.