• Delight From Delay

 

Setting: This Monday afternoon I was greatly delayed in leaving home for church ten miles north. As a consequence I am treated to a spectacular delight as I drive and then spend the first quarter hour in my study gazing at the celestial show.

 

An icy white lenticular cap of cloud hangs just above Old Baldy,

       otherwise and officially Mt. San Antonio,

       at 10,064 feet the highest peak in southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains.

    Old Baldy itself is coated in glowing pink snow,

       all the more brilliant by contrast

          with the almost black combination of cloud and shadowed mountain

             below the 9,000 foot level.

          The foothills, hit by the oblique light of the setting sun,

             magnify the contrast, especially having spouted

             the palest green thanks to the November rains.

    In front of the intensely dark storm clouds,

       a ninety degree arc of pink and gray stratus

          stretches from northeast to northwest.

    Farther out and toward the west another distinct bank of cloud

       colors the picture with bright coral near the zenith,

          building into flaming orange midway,

             and becoming an even more fiery orange near the horizon.

    Directly west and slightly to the southeast a luminous area of yellow-green sky

       highlights clouds shaped like orange angels.

    Still farther southeast the stratus bands are broken

       into gray angels headed north.

    By now the nearly black mountain base

       is topped by dark gray clouds but for that same lenticular cap,

          which has turned a ghostly silver

             in the midst of ominous, perhaps angry, dark gray pillows.

    In the west the colors have faded to somber tones,

       yet a splash of deep orange remains

    where the sun is sinking into the Pacific.

 

I raise a prayer of praise for magnificent delight enabled by undesired delay!

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