Make even these days count

This Sunday in our congregation, we begin a new year of Confirmation Class, when 8th and 9th graders explore their own faith--not the faith of their parents, or of their Sunday School teachers, or of their pastor, but their own. The hope is that they really dive in to their questions and wrestling and come out on the other side with a desire to keep asking questions and keep wrestling for the rest of their lives. 

I came across a poem by Mary Oliver, and it made me think about how we share faith with young people. I'm wondering whether any such endeavor might begin with Mary Oliver's words: "I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty."

"Angels" by Mary Oliver

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads. 

I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance. 

-Rev. Kate Jones Calone, Setauket Presbyterian Church