On the grand scale

I find myself reeling a bit today from the extraordinary confluence of huge, global scale events events over the past weekend, from the ridiculous  (the Royal Wedding hoopla seeming to focus mostly on people's necklines and headgear); to the sublime (Blessed John Paul II's Beatification Mass on a stunningly beautiful day in front of St. Peter's); to the supremely courageous (the execution and planning of the mission locating and killing Osama bin Laden). 

In the middle of all of this, I also spent four hours at the Regional Special Olympics tournament, watching my 15 year old son and his fellow teammates of all sizes, shapes, and physical and mental abilities compete on the bars, hurdles, rings, floor exercises.  The same sorts of drama being played out in all those world stages was replicated on such a smaller scale in that little, local gymnastics studio:  the ridiculous sight of everyone, team members, coaches, judges, doing the chicken dance on the floor while the scores were being calculated; the sublime sight of the dignity radiating from the faces and grace of the flowing hands of young women whose shapes conform to no conventional standards of beauty during their rhythmic floor exercises; and the courage of the young autistic man daring himself to hurl himself over the hurdle in front of a crowd of people.  

I kept thinking about how busy God must have been this weekend.  He was equally present to give courage to the guys on the mission in Pakistan and the boy on the hurdle at the gymnastics meet; he was equally present to share the joy of the and pride of the Polish pilgrims at St. Peter's square and the athletes being given their ribbons on the podium in the little gym in Minneapolis; he was equally present to console the parents of the woman reportedly used as a human shield and killed during the mission in Pakistan and the parents still mourning their children killed on 9/11. 

It's a humbling thing, sometimes, to remember that God is equally present in our pride at the 100s of SSRN downloads that tell us we might be having some effect on the global scale, and in our waking at 3 am to calm one of our kids' nightmares.