“You gleamed and shine, and chase away my blindness. You exhaled odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after You. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst.”   St. Augustine

Throughout that winter of 1968, we would notice her at the 10:15am Sunday Mass, nine rows from the altar on the pulpit side.  Or more accurately, we would notice her hat.

The hat was a beige-ish color that today’s Etsy merchants would call “ecru,” but which to my eight-year-old mind was milk-in-the-bottom-of-the-bowl-after-you’d-eaten-all-the-Cocoa Puffs color. The hat’s distinguishing feature was a panoply of dangling sequins, nickel-sized discs that would make gentle clicking sounds whenever the hat-wearer bent her head in prayer. With the reliability of a road sign, the hat would draw us towards the pew in which my family normally sat.  Even my distractible and directionally-challenged little brother would simply head for the glinting discs when my mother, late as usual, hurried us into church during the Epistle.

After our quarter-mile walk through winter weather, the hardwood pew was as inviting as a hearthside.  There, after completing our weekly shuffle of glove-peeling and hat-doffing, my brother and I would be hastily placed in reverent postures by maternal hands. Once we were settled, I would be free to indulge my senses until the Concluding Rite.  I’d listen contentedly to the church sounds:  the voice of the priest echoing in the cavernous church, the click of rosary beads, the hiss of dwindling candles, the clink of coins in the collection basket.  I would smell the lingering incense, the melting wax, the wet wool of my coat, my mother’s Sunday perfume.

And I would watch the light shimmer, dance, and wink on the ecru sequins in front of me.  In those moments, the world was as perfect a place as I could imagine.  There was comfort, light, security, and warmth.  My family was with me, and God was there.  Right there.

More than half a century later, I still am mesmerized by sequins.  In any craft goods aisle I’ll stand transfixed, fingering a package of sequins and turning it this way and that so as to see the light play on the smooth, shiny shapes. Invariably, the image of those dangling ecru discs will come vividly to mind, and I’ll be mentally transported to a place that’s welcoming and warm, fragrant and familiar, sublime and – above all – sacred.

It’s easy to encounter God in the natural world; even those who don’t know Him can feel His presence in a glowing sunrise or a sparkling waterfall.  But God also speaks to us through the little things: “Little” in either size or significance, “things” that are either abstract or concrete. He is the Communicator whose voice may be heard in the stuff of everyday life. How is God speaking to you today? What trinket or trial, parley or picture has brought Him to mind?

“Creator God, thank you for the gift of my five senses.  Help me to encounter You through their rightful use.  Give me an attentive spirit so that I may say with Samuel, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”