Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

As promised, here are a few pictures I took at the Philadelphia Flower Show last week. This year's theme was "Bella Italia," and I thought the show was even better than usual. My friend and I wandered through the displays for nearly two hours, before we ever made it to the vendors! If there were ever a welcome tonic to a long, cold winter, it's the sight of thousands of spring bulbs all in bloom at once, in great profusion. I don't know how the little Celtic cottage made it into a show on Italy, but I'm very glad it did. I'm already looking forward to next year!

At long last, it is Flower Show Eve. Never heard of it? I celebrate it the day before my friend Jess and I take the afternoon off to go to the Philadelphia Flower Show . This year's theme is Italy. Here in the Northeast it has been brutally cold (for us), with highs in the 20s and single-digit lows. This has been the coldest, windiest winter I recall in my not-so-short life. Last weekend, the first weekend of March, to add insult to injury, we had snow. I love snow -- in January and February. In March? Not so much. Winter gets old by March. I can hear you New-Englanders snickering at me as I write this ... The Flower Show is perfectly timed to arrive just as the spirit is pining for a tender bud or two. My friend and I will probably start off with a festive lunch in Chinatown before hitting the show. Then we'll spend the afternoon taking in the colorful sights and sweet fragrances, and try to restrain ourselves at the vendors' displays -- always a fruitless endeavor. Next

So, in 12 full months of dieting, I've lost 25 pounds. I'm grateful, even thought it seems like it should be more. My husband lost 100 pounds in seven months! But then, he was perfectly single-minded about it. I am rather hit-or-miss about dieting, as about much of the rest of my life. It's nice to feel better on the subway steps. Walking is also a lot easier. But there has been one unintended consequence: I'm cold all the time! It used to be that I would be the one the neighbors saw, in the throes of a hot flash, sitting out on the porch in a tee-shirt when the temperature was 9 degrees! Now I am huddled under an afghan, with a large dog cuddled on each side and one on my lap. Isn't it spring yet? Anyway, just 15 pounds to go. I hope this doesn't take me another year !

Happy Double-Digit February, everyone! I am always a bit happier when the tenth of February arrives. Most years, the weather has begun to moderate somewhat; we have often had our last snow; and if you look closely ( very closely, with a lot of hope!), you can see the very tips of crocuses peeking from the earth. This morning, the birds were having a convention in my yard -- at first light, when they woke me up! Thanks, birdies ( grumble, grumble). At the Church on the Hill, we are beginning to gear up for Lent. The Julian Gathering's first official meeting will be on the 19 th of this month, and the chapel we are constructing from an old Sunday School room now has a new rug (rolled up and waiting for paint to be selected). At home, our sometimes -wayward son is back in college and doing well (at least, today!). Our daughter has had several dental-school interviews, and is hoping for a few more. It seems like it will be an exciting spring, once it arrives. How about you? What are

I'm just your basic wannabe mystic, I'll admit. But I've slowly been reading my way back though the works of Annie Dillard, whose writing I first encountered while teaching Freshman English. Now, Annie seems like a true mystic to me, and I never get tired of her muscular prose and her visionary approach to the world. My favorite of her books, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, has a fascinating chapter entitled, "Seeing." At the end of this chapter she describes an experience of seeing the "tree with the lights in it": I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I'm still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors