I went to the mailbox yesterday and had a glorious surprise. Yes, there were a few late-ish Christmas cards and a couple rogue packages from Amazon and Zulily. Always fun. But that’s not what took my breath away. My surprise had nothing to do with the mail.

Perhaps it would help to know that it is a seven mile drive to my mailbox down isolated, snowy, twisting mountain roads and back up again afterwards. What surprised me when I put the car in drive and headed back up the mountain was the sky.

“Sky, Schmy,” you snort. “Of course you saw the sky. It’s been there since, what, Day Two of the creation?”

It wasn’t even sunrise or sunset. Sunset was an hour to two away. But, I swear, the sky was cavorting.

Describing the spectacle in pedestrian words cripples the effect. This nudge into poetry will have to suffice:

Wispy clouds form broad arcs,
Alive and dancing.
Higher up, in the distance, tucking in along the sides –
Cloud choruses swirl,
Clapping, shouting, “Amen!”
In jazzy cloudstrokes –
Beyond the talents of any Impressionist –
The sky shimmers and exults.
Emphatic fronds of joy
Span out their Alleluias
From the bright white
Light.

When I got to where the road plateaued I saw another dazzling feature – like a soloist in this heavenly choir: a rainbow!

It’s a wonder I ever made it home. I could have just stayed there staring at the majesty.

Two messages linger with me.

1. How do I become more attentive?
If I’d been preoccupied with the rowdy behavior of internal gremlins (what my friend Peg calls “the itty-bitty committee”) I would have just slogged on up the hill fretting, having missed the whole sky-side romp and the chance here to muse on it.

As it was, I was listening to an engrossing book, but the visual cacophony of the sky forced me to turn the book off and snap several shots on my iPhone during a mile of switchbacks. (Another treasure: a phone that takes photos! Maybe everyone takes that for granted now, but for those of us with some years on us, that hasn’t always been the case.)

How often have I missed these wonders in my midst? How can I hone my abilities to be aware and present to the majesty around me? It doesn’t need to be the showy ones Nature puts on like this from time to time. I want to revel in even the tender ones, those little grace notes all around me. Pleasing spices in a meal. A refrain in my head trying to communicate to me. The feel of fresh towels.

I want my eyes to hear and my ears to see.

We’re talking abundance here, folks.

2. This isn’t about “proving” something.

If a scientist out there wants to explain what it is I saw in rational terms – involving temperatures, air currents, refractions, prismatic effects, etc. – I’d be delighted to know. I find that kind of complexity dazzling, too. I don’t have the bent to grasp all the physics involved, but I can stand to be all amazed by that, too.

I know that no one can prove the existence of God by teleological efforts, though many philosophers and saints have tried. I, too, don’t leap from “if the sky can do such remarkable things, there must be a Divine essence at the root.”

I don’t need proof for what already feeds me, sustains me, and is the most reliable conviction of my life. This is just one of many examples of faith putting on its fancy duds and confirming my hope with jubilation.

A favorite hymn from my childhood captures the wonder:

This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.