Observations: What Brings You To Your Knees Today? Or High Five God!

I have a tradition with someone very dear to me. Periodically, as we move through our days and weeks, we will text or email each other small quotations - snippets of poetry, observational quotes, little brilliant pieces of literature we have stumbled upon or deliberately sought out. Today I sent her a piece from Rainer Maria Rilke.

"But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places we can still sense the source: a play of pure power that - when you feel it - brings you to your knees."

That got me thinking about what brought me to my knees today...

I began the day in a prayer. I woke up and the first thing I did was say a small prayer of thanks for life and for the day. Sometimes I wake up and my first impulse is to take a moment or two and drop to my knees beside the bed.

I often pray as I move though the day, usually short little prayers of gratefulness. My own little way of saying "Hey, God, I just saw that! That was cool!" I think life continually surrounds us with mystery and majesty. All we need to do is take a few moments to notice it.

There are times though when I feel the necessity to pray on my knees. Part of it is a Catholic upbringing of course, but part of it is a tremendous sense of humility. I love God. God and I have a complex relationship that spans decades. Sometimes we've been close and sometimes we haven't. I consider God as a constant companion who is always there with me, wherever I happen to be. God is mostly silent. It is the comfortable silence you find with those that know you. The silence where words are unnecessary.

God, Life, Creation, Nature, Mystery - they all just fill me with a tremendous sense of awe. It is that sense of awe, wrapped in either the grandly complex or the simply sublime that sometimes brings me to my knees. It doesn't drive me to my knees. It doesn't force me to my knees. It brings me to my knees. I want to go there. I want to kneel in humility before God and simply say - "I saw that. That was far to cool. Thank you." Then we high five and I get on with the day.