Busted ribs feel a lot like a busted heart.

To You I lift up my eyes, to You enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, So my eyes look to the LORD our God, until He shows me His mercy. Have mercy upon me, O LORD, have mercy. Psalm 123

The practice of contemplative prayer is the discipline by which we begin to see God in our heart. It is a careful attentiveness to the One who dwells in the center of our being such that through the recognition of God’s presence we allow God to take possession of all our senses. Through the discipline of prayer we awaken ourselves to the God in us and let God enter into our heartbeat and our breathing, into our thoughts and emotions, our hearing (great blog on listening, btw) seeing, touching, and tasting. It is by being awake to this God in us that we can see God in the world around us. Henri Nouwen

I am trying to pull off this one great big finale with my science kiddos, combining the ideas of science methodology with Rachel’s Challenge of being part of the chain reaction. So everyone is divided up into self-selected (yikes) teams designing a project proposal of how they want to address a physical, emotional, social or academic need around the campus… in theory they will put together one of those famous science trifold boards, prepare a propaganda poster and be reading to publically sway the class to choose their project to put into action.

No problem.

So the first Rachel’s Challenge verb is Awake. And I have taken it to mean, Open Your Eyes and See What Is Around You, both needs and resources. Oh yeah, I could spend an entire year on the idea of Awake. And this includes a silent walk around campus just noticing, and then researching on the library computers (don’t even get me started on how fun that was yesterday) on what other schools have done to solve the now-noted area of need, then of course, my old stand-by, interview an expert, thank you Mike Birrer for answering so many letters–it made my kids like real people–and the survey, asking people in the Doolen community what they think.

Once again, no problem.

And I sit here and pray for my very-most-unawake kiddos. I evaluated 78 five-paragraph third quarter TUSD ELA 06 Gr. Q3 essays last night, which was eye-popping. How can you think without words?

And think about old very-barely-awake me.

All of my senses. Enter my heartbeat and my breathing.

Thoughts and emotions.

To You I lift up my eyes.

Time for another swing through the desert. The desert trembling with beauty and life.