This morning while I was ruminating on two friends whose lives have taken them on some of the most transitional and transformational journeys, through change, loss, and just unexpected veers in the road, one of my Orioles left her feather while picking her breakfast at the feeder.

I thought about these rocking transformative times in our lives that feel like cyclones. I thought about the gold thread of faith, community, and other powers of the universe that remain spun into the cyclone that will be the plumbline in the new milieu at the end of the cyclone.