March Beauty

I. Driving down to Compline at Christ Church with James, past his bedtime, making our way into the silent, candlelit church, and sitting in a pew as the organ prelude starts.
"Daddy, what am I going to do during your rehearsal?"
"I don't need to rehearse at all tonight. We're just going to sit together."
Beautiful music, and ever so softly between psalms the sound of James counting candles to himself. "Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three."

II. A thunderstorm rolling in as I read through the book of Amos with my legs perched up on my desk and a cup of coffee in hand. "So I will send a fire...a devouring lightning strike. For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his though, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth--YHWH, the God of hosts is his name...Seek the Lord lest he break out like lightning in the house of Jacob...He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the land, YHWH is his name, who makes destruction flash forth against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress...but let justice roll down like waters...Shall not the land tremble on this account?"

III. Listening back to the previous day's practicing on a pair of earbuds while everyone naps and hearing strong, clear, trumpet playing that sounds much more confident than it felt at the time.