Osler's Razor

Once, my dad and I went to a football game at the University of Michigan.  It was just the two of us together, but there were over 100,000 people there at the game.  Michigan was playing Purdue, and the Boilermaker quarterback was a phenom named Drew Brees.

It was a day I will never forget.  For the first time, my dad told me a remarkable story that he mentioned again recently.  He went to Cornell, which was  a little unusual for a guy from Michigan.  He said that he based his decision on another game (maybe the only other one) he had seem at Michigan Stadium.  On that day, the Wolverines were playing Cornell, which at that time was a genuine rivalry.  My dad, a junior in high school, surveyed the crowd.  The Michigan fans were intent, focused.  The Cornell fans, though, were having more fun.  There was a sense among those in red that there might be something bigger in life than football, even on game day.

Yes, we were surrounded by 100,000 people all singing the same song, but there was a grace and beauty and intimacy to that moment.   I learned to watch people's eyes and laughter to know where truth may lay.

One week ago, I stood beside my dad again.  We had gone to the 5 o'clock service at St. Stephens, which was dedicated to the blessing of the creek.  There were few people there; perhaps ten of us followed Neil Alan Willard down to the fast-flowing water.  Behind us, above us, before us, was the Holy Spirit.  It was a very short service.  We prayed, we sang, and Father Willard talked about the creek and what it does.  There was a profound gentleness to it.  I will remember it in the same way I remember that game and Drew Brees and the rest.  It was a moment that mattered.

It is hard to tell when those will come along, and they don't depend on a ticket or a spectacle or 100,000 people singing the same song.  But they come, like the fog in the morning, not of our bidding but of something greater that is suffused with a love we have not earned.