Nightly Ritual

I am unable to locate the exact source but I'm pretty sure it was Fred B. Craddock who gave me the idea. Each evening he steps outside for a few moments just to look, to really look at his surroundings. For quite some time, I have been doing the same.

Last night when I stepped out on the porch, it was 14 degrees. I wanted to see if the stars were out. They were and they were absolutely brilliant. The night before, it was cloudy but through the woods I watched the head lights and then the tail lights of a pick-up truck rounding the corner. I wondered what the driver was doing out so late. Not long ago there was a shooting star.

On another night I aimed a flashlight into the dark woods and five pairs of greenish eyes shone back at me. Deer had bedded down in front of the house. Sometimes there's an owl calling to see if anyone else is in the neighborhood or geese announcing their late arrival at the neighbor's pond. A pack of coyotes trotting along the bottom land might start yipping excitedly for reasons known only to them.

I notice how sounds change. There are the early spring peepers. Later there is the sound of new growth as plants shoot up over night after a good rain. In early summer, as I watch the lightening bugs, I listen to bullfrogs warming up. Later in the summer the sounds of cicadas and tree frogs seem to crescendo with each passing night. On pleasant evenings I linger longer if the mosquitoes don't drive me inside.

There are the distinctive smells of fresh manure, a passing skunk or honeysuckle. Last night I breathed in woodsmoke on lung biting frigid air as I looked up at the stars, the same stars which, in the time of Solomon, inspired Job to write "He made the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades and the chambers of the south."

Fred Craddock calls this Doxology. I can't think of a better name.