“My dear, what shall I write today? Shall I write of Lauds, joined in the chant by nearby blue jays — taking over our morning song with their beaky insistence.
“Shall I tell you that Sister Farm writes again from Oconomowoc that the Sisters there name their chickens but never their cows, a sure sign that Sister Farm has sights on coming back, I think, but I am too hopeful to be an astute judge. I can notice a thing — a glance, the way colors shift during the hours of daylight, the driest summer air praising God along with the statuary of saints in our chapel, and swimming all around them. I notice the heavy feet of Sister Anne, a mix of steady and vertigo, her slow pace along the empty hall, the metal click of the cane, her steadying force, her salvific metal.
“Those I can notice or describe, but Miriam, isn’t it hard to interpret things rightly? Is there anything that the noisome jays mean in the morning? Is there something that the male red-winged blackbirds mean, when they offer you a quick glance at their bright shoulder patches. Is there some hidden line of God’s that I don’t know how to know when I see these things?
“And the little blue heron comes knee-deep to the bay in the waning tide, appearing, disappearing, sudden, quiet, gone.
“I guess an understanding to bring to a moment is all I’m thinking of, but the thing I bring is looking, and gratefulness. And then if we, chanting the psalms, find a way to God, a little note, that is the thing I will have found, that thing.”
