fragments of glory

I tell him that it is like this: when you write, when you create, you carve out of the ordinary a sculpture, a story of the beauty of God, a story of the beauty of your own being that moves and shifts and desire and builds. We are meaning-seekers.You carve out with pen to paper, and fragments fall around you, dust swirls through the air. You don't always notice, how the pieces fall to the floor near your feet, because you are seeking and carving the big story, because you want to know the wildest version of it - the biggest vision, the brightest horizon.But I want to know the fragments.The fragments are glorious - the stories of the one afternoon of insignificance, where you ran along the same path you always run along, but perhaps, for a moment, you thought about how nature teaches you to sing of God. The stories of the coffee where you were ten minutes late and she forgave you, with the fullness that astounded you as you slid apologetically into the chair, as you listened to her, and as you realized that perhaps forgiveness is simple like bread, like manna, daily, quiet, and good.The fragments are glorious - the days driving along the highway alone, the seemingly unimportant and anonymous stories of how you sat in the library writing a paper for yet another class you don't totally understand the meaning of, the yet-again of school meetings and parent-teacher conferences and board rooms and emails.I tell him, that's what is beautiful about blogging, isn't it? That in the spaces we create online, we don't have to always seek a sculpture of the most beautiful, biggest story? That sometimes, we can pour out the fragments of our lives, watch them spill over the edges of the table, and see -they are fullness of glory. I used to want to quit blogging every other day, stepping half-in and half-out, convinced that without a big story how could I possibly be considered a writer. I spent so much time at the foot of my bed with this thought, that I didn't have a sculpture, a grand weaving together of things, a purpose in my words or in my tiny online home.But then it is years later, and somehow I have still promised that I would do this thing that I hardly know how to do, that I would still write, and I am sitting on Skype with him and feeling the ache of those miles, and I wonder, out loud, about the fragments of story that so often fall to our feet. I tell him that this is his gift - that he weaves back the fragment bits and reminds us of the glory that lies in them. That this is what he teaches me to do.And perhaps that is the beauty of these online spaces, that they are wide and broad and wild enough to show the light of our everyday, to reveal that our fragments are glorious.Light shines through fractured windows, doesn't it?Maybe these are all fractured windows with the fragments of our glorious, every day living.Maybe that's what makes them so beautiful.Love,hilary