The word means “to turn or bend…” I like that definition. It gets away from the image of Saul knocked from his horse. Even Saul needed time to adjust. Conversion is a journey. It takes, well, a whole lifetime. But where exactly does it take us?
When we were kids we used to grab anything that floated and take off down the Salt River. All afternoon we simply went with the flow. There was no other way to go. But from the moment we shoved off the river changed as if it knew we were there. From rushing and splashing around us it hushed to a whisper of pebbles and sand sifting below us on the riverbed. Mesquite groves slipped past–it felt like we were sitting still out in the middle of the water while the rest of the world headed upstream in a grand dance. Perspectives. I suppose the way things look changes depending on whether you’re in the river, or just sitting on the bank.
They say that time was one of the first things God created. That came first and then God put us into the middle, just a bunch of kids, really, clinging to destiny like a claptrap raft. And it’s all we ever needed to experience the most incredible journey in the universe.
When the Secular Franciscans asked me to write a history of our Order in America over the past dozen years I thought “Can’t be much to write about…” I was wrong. History unfolds like the petals of a chrysanthemum. It interweaves like threads in a loom. Each bit and piece of it is alive, whispering deep in its belly like the sand in the river. One listens and is mesmerized. It’s… addictive. I spend hours chasing the tiniest facts simply because I hunger for them. They don’t weigh important. People won’t read a book that has the word “history” on its cover.
That’s why I’m calling this one “Loom of God”. It is a history, but it’s also a living thing. Because the fabric of human existence is still being woven. There is much completed, and there is much still to come.
Sometimes, looking at it closely even while God weaves, we can get a clear sense for the pattern developing under her hands…
