I'm trying to take more time to ponder...just ponder. To stop and observe, listen, touch, take in whatever the moment around me brings. The desert fathers say "a monk should be like the seraphim: all eyes." I think we all should be like that: observant; paying attention to what is happening around us. Some ponderings from a recent Saturday at home...

• I was walking in my labyrinth/woods/meditative garden this morning with my prayer rope. Unfortunately Lady Gator was with me and she happened to find a rubber ball. She kept bringing it to me, dropping it at my feet, begging me to play fetch. So I threw it, she sprinted after it, and sprinted back with it. Again, and again, and again. She is so fixated on chasing things. It's like it's more than a game, her life depends on it! So as the game goes (I'm learning to ponder and take in the moment, prayer can wait) she starts anticipating where the ball will go. One time I throw it, she turns away and runs the wrong direction, and can't find it. For the next 5 or 1o minutes she scoures an acre, looking for that ball. She sniffs me thinking I'm hiding it. Finally she stumbles upon it by accident. Is that me? Do I try and anticipate where God is leading and end up lost thinking He is playing a bad joke on me? I get frustrated when things aren't as I perceive they should? Is that me searching and searching for inner peace in contemplation, and in exasperation I stumble upon the contemplative moment with no idea how I got there?

• On a hike at Ft. Ben, I stop to look at a huge spider web glistening in the morning sun. I could have stayed quite a while but someone with me is impatient. Amazing how precise and fantastic this web is. What a creation!

• Things that make you go hmmmmm....after mowing the grass I'm sitting on the bench in my front garden, the one with a couple dozen hostas and a statue of St. Francis. A hummingbird lands on a paw paw tree limb next to St. Francis looking for food. I say (yes, out loud) "hummingbird, there's a feeder for you in the back yard." The hummingbird flies off over the top of the house. I have to get up and go see, and sure enough as I come around the side of the house...the hummingbird is at our hummingbird feeder drinking nectar. Hmmmmm....St. Francis?

• I glance over at a small napkin from a Northwest Airlines flight from May. I can't throw it out, as I have something written on it and like it catching my attention every day at the computer. "Celebrate the present moment by accepting God's will in peace and joy."