He started out by timing how long his toddler brother would last -- four minutes as it turned out. When it was time to sing, he did not open the hymnal but he did look on with me. I don't know if he was singing or not, but I think he was humming along sometimes. During the confession through the scripture, he took the bulletin apart and start carefully folding it. I thought he was making a paper airplane but I was wrong. During the sermon, he handed me a lovely origami butterfly, made out of the page in the bulletin with the church's prayer list. I don't know that he thought this was significant but I did. I thought of all those people on that list, cocooned in illness and trouble and loss, and the folded paper seemed to me a prayer for all them. It was a prayer that they would be transformed, that there would some new life and beauty for them, and the prayer was shaped by the hand of a little boy.
I don't know what he got out of that service, but I do know what a blessing it was for me to sit next to him.
