Church mouse column: Taking off the gloves

If only I’d been about a minute sooner, I probably would’ve scored one of the special music inserts. I almost considered stopping the guy coming down from the balcony who was pleased to declare to someone nearby that he’d “found more.” 

They use the big screen there, so I thought I’d be fine. But it was only the words. The melody is a bit intricate. I did the best I could. It helped to have a clear view of the choir director, which was extra special because the first time I’d heard this prayer service music she’d been singing one of the main parts. I could read her lips to some extent to further discern range and rhythm.

Later that day, I walked around town, up to the history center. I carried my black fleece gloves. I recall having the right one off when I peeled the paper with neat little folded square corners off of a vitamin I had in my jacket pocket. I’m pretty sure I had both of them in my right hand and kind of clapped them together on the palm of my left hand celebrating seeing a couple eagles out on a limb above the golf course parking lot — they were vocalizing to each other. 

One flew a short loop and landed back in the same spot. 

Blocks later, shifting things around to find my door key, you guessed it, only one glove. Really? Sigh. I turned right around to retrace my mostly straight and narrow route. No luck — that day or the next. 

There was the same clump of leaves, sculpted mud and other materials. The second day I was looking as much at half-walls and shrubbery as at the sidewalk, hoping someone might’ve set it up closer to eye level.

I was optimistic about the blue drinking fountain and the Little Library. But to no avail. I did enjoy seeing a robin drinking out of the same puddle where later big snowflakes dissolved.

I’d held up my mismatched hands to three separate sympathetic women. A nice guy told me the name of his dog as she was tugging on her leash. The cheerful fellow at the golf course was willing to believe, with a chuckle, that it very well might’ve landed up in an eagle’s nest, as I like to wonder.

A recent devotional encouraged readers to “stay faithfully with whatever new life is being hatched within us” — not to get distracted, move onto the next thing too quickly and leave our eggs untended.

I saw other dear familiar people at the church I attended that day, who at first seemed out of place because I remember them from other pews and staffing positions. (I also remember two of the three jokes from the sermon.) 

I witnessed each of them devotedly tending to their callings then and there. And am quite willing to believe they took flight and landed faithfully on a different nearby branch to fulfill their purposes and move forward —remembering— toward the greater good in the here and now.