"Feast of booths"

Under the big top, attending into presence a portable past, cool breezes whisper the Holy Spirit's heart: "Behold, I am doing a new thing." Nudged into a season of change, I envision my daughter and sons ecstatically walking another generation's promise down vaulted heritage halls; taste their autumn interaction, feasting, with friends, on shared potential; feel their souls' twinings, into wee hours, around self-revelations on cold winter nights; hear them achingly and uprootingly saying another spring's goodbyes; touch the depths of who, by degrees, they will have become after faith and understanding have graduated into love. Today, we fully sense that the Creator is good, humbly welcome the Redeemer to this incarnate ground, and praise our hovering Sustainer for renovating a small universe in which to learn and live the providence of grace.

This poem is dedicated to the prophetic early envisioners; the prayerful, divine-leading listeners; the steadfast, nuts-and-bolts implementers and the generous supporters who have helped, over the last 22 years, to make the CMU dream a reality. It was written on September 24 during the CMU opening program under a tent. The title alludes to the biblical "Feast of Booths," during which the Israelites lived in tents to remind themselves of their tenuous beginnings.