Daily Devotions

Each morning put on my clogs and I take the walk down the driveway out to the street to get the newspaper. Each morning I greet the day and it greets me - with rain, wind, winter darkness, summer sun and warmth, and this morning, snow. I feel the air temperature on my face, the sounds of neighbors going to work, the crunch of gravel underfoot, often birds flitting and chirping.

The arches of my cathedral are more Romanesque than Gothic, more loosely formed than stone. They provide a changing canopy overhead -bare branches, sometimes filigreed with snow, spring blossoms of pink, green shade in summer, gold overhead and beneath my feet in fall. Like cathedral arches, they draw my eye upward. Tree towers rise up into the sky.

Several weeks ago I posted a photo of the first branch bearing the opening blossoms of spring. After 60 degree temperatures last week, the blossoms have been emerging, somewhat tentatively, because they know it's only February, and anything can happen yet weather wise. They have been weighted down with snow before. And today it happened again.

I'm home this morning because school is starting two hours late. The Obamas, and apparently Chicagoans, would scoff, but it is still below freezing and we do have hills here. It has given me time to take my camera with me on my way to the paper box, and time to share it with you.

The newspaper is waiting, wrapped in plastic, snug and dry. Each day it is getting thinner and thinner. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will cease to exist in a month or two. We'll probably switch to the less progressive Seattle Times, but it, too, may be doomed to Internet only before long.

I don't usually leave much footprint, but today was exceptional.

And look, soon the storm will pass and the sun will shine!

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Call this morning ritual my pagan nature worship, my praise to the god of all living things, my awakening to all the day holds, even my substitute for a cup of coffee, but when I can't, or don't do it, I miss it.

- When the newspaper is relegated to history, sitting at the computer reading the news on line will just not be a proper substitute for my daily devotions.