For the Unanswered Prayers, Missed Trains, and Blessings to Come

I have no idea how I wound up here.  Over 7 years into this almost ludicrous adventure it still baffles my mind and teases my soul.  A constantly schooled, city-bound, office shaped guy living on a farmstead, raising vegetables and chickens…and smiling in the company of an indulgently loving and endlessly curious wife, observed by amazed and amused kids who still wonder what happened to their Dad.  It is not what I prepared for.  It is not the brass ring toward which I had reached.  It is…fascinatingly…gloriously…laughably…different.  How did this happen?  

Some have speculated a lost mind.  Some have guessed “mid-life crisis.”  Some have indulged my enigmatic, inexplicable sense that this was where I was being called to be.

Who can say?  It still takes my breath away.

 Years ago, Garth Brooks famously gave thanks for unanswered prayer — that divine dispensation of grace that saved him from the myriad consequences of the stupid, or even well-meaning but misguided, things for which he had earnestly asked. I always loved that song, even though I had no real clarity about the hypothetical eventualities from which I’d been spared.   Regardless, perhaps that accounts for some part of an explanation.  

Years later, my brother introduced me to a song by Walt Wilkins with a similar but differently turned sentiment:

Here's to the trains I missed, the loves I lost

The bridges I burned the rivers I never crossed

Here's to the call I didn't hear, the signs I didn't heed

The roads I couldn't take the map that I just wouldn't read

CHORUS

It's a big ole world but I found my way

From the hell and the hurt that led me straight to this

Here's to the trains I missed

Lunacy.  Unanswered prayers.  Missed trains that led me straight to this.  Perhaps.  All I know is that this is where I am, and this is what I am doing, in partnership with a beloved whose very presence in my life amazes and blesses me and constantly surprises me -- all despite everything that I had intended, prepared for, dreamed of and practiced.  I know all that, and that I am grateful.  Unspeakably grateful.  And happy.

Standing here in the waning candlelight of an old year ending, approaching the threshold of a New Year still gelatinous and unformed, I wonder what insight my past has to pass along to my future.  At the very least it suggests that I am not as bright as I like to think I am, and certainly not as prescient.  My bigotries and preconceived ideas lead me to think I know what’s best — for myself and quite possibly others.  My experience, however, suggests an humbler reality.  As often as not, I don’t.   I hope and pray I can take that to heart.

In this New Year erupting I have no idea what’s ahead, nor which trains I should catch — or miss.  I will do my best to pay attention and discern; I will run down the tracks in pursuit of those engines that seem promising and prudent.  But I pray for the circumspection to anticipate that, as often as not, I’ll be wrong.  

And to be relieved and thrilled by what that mistake and missed opportunity occasions in its place; that I had no way to predict.

Here, then, to the ever-surprising possibilities of the New Year, whatever they may be.  I’m open to them.  

“Night is drawing nigh,” wrote Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the United Nations in his journal, Markings.  The night of this day, to be sure, but more poignantly the night of this old year.

“For all that has been — Thanks!

To all that shall be — Yes!”

Thanks…

…and Yes!

That's a pretty good way to say "goodbye" and "hello."

Happy New Year.

The Great and Holy Circle Of Love

After singing “ Do You Hear What I Hear” a couple of weeks ago with friends, all of us hauntingly implored to “pray for peace, people everywhere,” I confessed that most of my life I had thought peace to be all about absence — absence of stress, absence of conflict; absence of war; absence of fruitcake. And while all of those things are blessed contributions to it, I’m finally coming to comprehend that more than any absence, peace is above all a presence. 

I should have known it. Scripture is pretty forthright about it — in the flood story where Noah is instructed to make sure that every animal is represented on the Ark; in the Gospel parable in which the servants are commanded to go out to the highways and byways and urge everyone to the feast; in the vision that Peter has of a sheet being lowered down from heaven bearing every imaginable creature, with the instruction to take and eat; to which Peter responds, “I can’t eat what’s unclean.”  “Don’t call unclean what I have called clean,” the voice pushed back. 

In fact, I should have caught a glimpse of it in the very first chapter of Genesis, at the end of the creation story, where…“God looked at everything created and said, ‘It’s very good’”.  Everything.

As if to drive that point home, Paul writes to Timothy what may well be the most challenging assertion in scripture:  that “Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks.” (1 Timothy 4:4, MSG)

Everything, which is a challenging affirmation on the farmstead where bugs and rabbits invade the vegetables and possums and raccoons invade the chicken yard.  But there is the biblical insistence:  Everything. It’s the reason Jesus came among us according to John 3:16:  because God so loved this world.

We borrow the Hebrew word for it — shalom — without bothering to grasp the expansiveness of its meaning.  Far more than the mere absence of fighting, shalom refers to the presence of wholeness; fullness; completeness.  

In recent months Lori and I have had the joy of organizing and teaching a Sunday School class for Burmese refugee children.  Nearing the end of one of the first sessions, helpers began distributing snacks.  One little boy immediately tore into his packaged treat and began to nibble away.  Another boy, perhaps 6 years old, touched his arm and kindly, but sternly, told him, “You need to wait.  We all do this together.  And first we need to pray.  

Together, with a prayer.  Shalom.   

Peace, then, not so much an absence, but rather the beloved presence of all that God loves.  Like each one of us, and each other.  On his new CD released last month, Minnesota singer/songwriter Peter Mayer sings of just that expansive awareness…

Jesus spoke, entreating them

To live together in a great circle of love

When his followers asked him then

“Who should be included?”

Jesus said…

Let everybody in, everybody in,

Everybody in to the circle, circle.

Everybody, everybody; everybody, everybody,

Everybody into the circle, circle.

 Everybody.  That which God managed to communicate to Noah, and to Peter and the other disciples we are still trying to get our hearts and minds around:  that when any one of us is excluded, we are all diminished — which, more than stars and snow and stables and shepherds, may well be the bigger Christmas message. 

Shalom, then.  Peace on earth, good will to all. 

All of us in this great circle of love. 

Light in the Longest Night

There is a full moon tonight -- forthrightly there, anchoring the night sky just beyond the Christmas tree window.  On first impression it might seem that we could use the extra light because tonight also marks the Winter Solstice — the point at which the earth’s axis is tilted as far away from the sun as it will be all year.  For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere that cosmic tilt results in darkness; the longest night of the year.  It doesn’t soothe us much to know that those in the Southern Hemisphere are simultaneously enjoying their longest day as a result of precisely the same phenomenon.  That these things eventually balance out is little consolation.  Culturally, and perhaps even psychologically speaking, being “rich in darkness” has never really seemed like wealth.

Ours the pity. How else would we see the stars?  How else to fully embrace the perfection of this glorious moon?  How else to give our eyes a break and flex our other senses?  Absent sight we hear more acutely, smell with heightened discernment, and feel our way around with fingers become antennae.  Pressed to eat, we taste with a sharpened mixture of caution and exploration.  All of which is to indulge the reality that darkness both invites and occasions awakened attention.

To my knowledge, no one survives who attended the birth of Jesus.  Nonetheless, absent first hand verification, we persist in locating this occurrence “after hours”.  Whimsical or not, I rather like the idea.  Whether or not the night was “silent”, I’m certain it was holy.  Births, of course, are always holy; but more than that, the darkness would have added a kind of wondrous pregnancy all its own.

Capacity.
Possibility.
Wonderment.
A crackling electricity of fearful hopefulness...

...the very kind of essential nourishments so easily overlooked or crowded out in the light of day.  We are so distracted when the sun is up -- frenetically trying to "get it all done", trying to see it all and do it all.  But, of course, in the urgency of such pursuit we miss more than we catch. 

When else would grace be born but in the expansive infinity of darkness?

I have heard these present days referred to as darkness, and I am aware that the description is not intended as a compliment.  I’m inclined, though, to receive it as such.  If, indeed, it is only at night that we see the stars and appreciate the full splendor of the moon; if, indeed, it is only amidst the darkness that our senses flex their muscles, then let this be a long and deep darkness in which we can “see” most clearly...

What is true...
What is bright...
What is noblest...
What is our highest aspiration for ourselves and the community we hope and help to fashion.

Let it be dark, so that we might feel the pain of others, taste the bile we have churned, smell the stench of injustice and hear the cries of those who are lost.  If it is, indeed, in the dark of night that our soul’s antennae are most exposed and receptive, then withhold even longer the sun.

Minnesota-based singer/songwriter Peter Mayer offers this musical invitation:
Come with drums, bells and horns
Or come in silence, come forlorn
Come like a miner to the door
Of the longest night
For deep in the stillness, deep in the cold
Deep in the darkness, a miner knows
That there is a diamond in the soul
Of the longest night
Of the year.

There are diamonds, then, to be discovered; work to be done this Winter Solstice.
Lots of discerning, healing, birthing work.

Thankfully, this longest night of the year affords us a little more time — a few extra and darkly precious minutes to get it done.

Don't be afraid. 
Use it well.

Happy Solstice.