Follow the Fox!

I was sitting on my back porch when a caught the fox out of the corner of my eye.  It had been raining, he looked very wet, but he also had a sense of mission about him. Once he reached our fence, he flew over it as gracefully as possible--pranced through the backyard looking at nothing and then glided over the fence on the other side of the yard. Fence to fence -- levitating. 

What a comparison I drew with myself--so easily distracted; could I have made it across the yard without stopping on the way?  When I hit a barrier, can I glide so gracefully over it?  We do have fox around, so I was not surprised when this once showed up.  But what I saw was focused attention and grace, the ease of concentrating on the barrier ahead and then gliding over it. 

The Episcopal Prayer Book has a wonderful sentence--"singleness of heart." (which is very similar to Kirkegaard's statement, "the purity of the heart is to will one thing." Now let's not attribute too much to that fox, but what I saw was a single-minded purpose.   Doesn't the spiritual life evolve into that "singleness of heart" so whatever we pass through in this life, we have our eyes "surely fixed where true joys come, our Lord Jesus Christ." (Prayer Book)