Looking Beyond the Ripples and Falls

“{People} see God in the ripple but not in the miles of still water. Of all the two-thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows — pilgrims go only to Niagara.”

     ——- Henry David Thoreau 

The sun is rising on a day in which nothing much is planned.  

The calendar is empty.

There are no errands to run.

No packages are anticipated in the mail.

Leftovers will satisfy the needs of all three meals.

At zero degrees, it’s too cold for outdoor projects.

The chickens are fed.

The dogs are snoozing on the sofa.

The laundry is done.

The dishes are washed.

The bills are paid.

It’s quiet — a “still water” kind of day.  

With a sheepish smile I think of how much of my life would have considered such a day a waste of good opportunity.  “Surely,” I would have told myself, “the responsible thing to do is figure out how to make some dominoes fall, some mountains move, some towers get built.”  You know, make something happen....  
     Light a fire.  
          Ring a bell.  
               Draw a sword.

And God knows there is plenty to do — in the world, and around the house.  It doesn't take much imagination to name them.  They are glaring...jarring...clamorous.  Tackling some of them -- checking a few off the list -- in the course of this "empty" space of time certainly wouldn’t be bad.

But busy, it wouldn’t automatically be helpful.  As Thoreau observes, Niagara Falls only occupies one small fraction of the River.   What else might there be upstream?  Or downstream?

It’s easy to hear when the music is loud.  What is to be heard inside the sounds of silence?

Quite familiar  -- and in some ways more comfortable -- with Elijah's experience at the mouth of the cave, hair parted by the great wind, teeth rattled by earthquakes and eyebrows singed by nearing fires...though only occasionally experiencing divinity within them, I will spend this day on different, more muted terms.

I’m rather determined this day to make a pilgrimage to the stillness -- to listen into the "sound of sheer silence" that Elijah described; to attend to the "still small voice" -- rather than the roaring attractions and the ripples that are conspicuously and unusually absent from the schedule, trusting in the holy wonder to be discerned in quiet hours...miles removed from the Falls.

Hungering for Humanity

We are living in a very odd and disturbing time.

I suppose there have been unsettled folk in every “time” who have felt that way, but seriously.  This is an odd time, indeed.  In recent days the press has served up stories suggesting that the U.S. President was placed in office by God Almighty, and that his orange skin is a sign of the Holy Spirit's movement within him.   These are the serious matters with which we are consumed.  Never mind the degradation of the environment.  Pay no attention to the generalized decline of healthfulness in favor of a managed, somewhat mitigated state of illness.  Ignore as irrelevant the violence become epidemic in neighborhoods, houses of worship, dance halls, concert venues and schools.  We’ve got the President’s unnatural skin color to talk about.

Whatever. Never mind my hunch that God isn't registered to vote in our elections, I have larger concerns than political/theological dermatology. I'm too puzzled by — and sleepless over — our culture’s ineluctable and passionate adulterous affair with fear that drives us to belittle and demean each other...

• like the generously hospitable Muslim Imam and his community who have welcomed us to their prayers, their hearts and their table; 
• like the differently gendered campus minister — one of the the most faithfully compelling and spiritually rich Christians I know — who is constantly — constantly — facing charges from her denomination that devalue her humanity and jeopardize her ministry; 
• like the precious Burmese refugee children whose Sunday School Lori and I are privileged to teach on Sunday mornings; 
• like the various hard working immigrants we routinely come into contact with from "suspect" countries whose paperwork is a constant source of anxiety and frenetic maintenance.

We are so afraid; fearful in ways that are robbing us of our heart, paralyzing our souls, suffocating our basic humanity, imprisoning us behind our gated fencelines and blinding us to our neighbors.  It would be one thing if the roof was actually caving in or the infidels were actually clamoring at the gate.  But despite what the politicians are shouting, and the media outlets are repeating, and the social media channels are reposting, the facts don’t support the paranoia toward those unlike us that has become our national pastime.

I know we all don't see these differently raised, differently religious, differently colored, differently oriented people through the same lens, but do we have to be so brutally carnivorous in our disagreements?  Before we became so angry and frightened we tethered ourselves to some fundamental, core beliefs about the value of human beings.  We still pretend to in our pitched battles over abortion and capital punishment, but our behaviors defy our rhetoric.  We may love “humanity” as long as they are kept at some safe, philosophical distance, but we expend a lot of time and heated energy vilifying actual people.

I say let the President dye himself whatever color makes him happy.  While I don’t think it has anything to do with the pigmentational effects of the Holy Spirit, it is certainly his own prerogative.  Meanwhile, I intend to do my best to feed my aching hunger for a little basic humanity.  

To Who Knows Where...

The morning is veiled in fog.  Soft gray blurs the prairie grasses near at hand and dissolves the tree line beyond.  After the successive waves of snowfall in recent weeks and the bitter cold of the past few days, the sudden winter warmup is inviting the intemperate air and all the resident moisture on the ground to dance.  It is beautiful, mysterious...

...and treacherous.  The drive home last night from an outing with friends was treacherous, with visibility extending only occasionally beyond the hood of the car.  We inched along slowly; grateful for the absence of traffic behind us, and for the occasional Sherpa-like taillights guiding from ahead.  The turn onto gravel toward home off the county road was more hypothesis than certainty, but our creeping caution successfully compensated for our lack of confidence.  Finally turning into our driveway, and easing into our garage, we pulled ourselves into the house, slumped wearily onto the sofa and offered silent prayers of thanksgiving for our safety.  It was foolish to be out; a gift to be home.

Today, however, the fog feels more evocative than dangerous — like a Holmesian mystery set among the murky back streets of London.  Anything can happen.  Clearer-headed in the light of day, the prudent are sitting tight.  The roads remain deserted and the airport is closed.  As a sequel to this week’s polar vortex-imposed paralysis, nature has devised yet another mechanism for slowing us down; for summoning us to stillness.  Suddenly there is time to think, to process into insights the data that has windrifted against the fencelines of our consciousness.  Finally, a moment for creative, reflective brooding.  How long we will acquiesce remains to be seen — restlessness has a way of overriding our caution — but only thrill-seeking fools bluster ahead full throttle with their eyes closed.  The more prudent pause, squint discerningly into the mist, and only then pick their way slowly into the ambiguity.  Inevitably, some will sneer at the caution; but it isn’t timidity that fuels the hesitation, rather sagacity.

What, then, shall we do?  How might this wisdom nourish and instruct us rather merely frustrate?  It would be a helpful discipline to learn, after all, for while there are those blessedly clear, blue sky intervals when it seems like we can see forever, in a metaphorical sense fog is more ubiquitous than sun.  It is delusion to think the way ahead in life is obvious or clear.  Most of our steps are best guesses; more intuitive than sure.  On a good day — the sunniest, most cloudless day — the furthest horizon is not actually that far away.  We hypothesize where to turn and best guess at what’s ahead, but finally we walk by faith and not by sight.  We are flying...or creeping...blind.

But caution is prudent; patience, ennobling There is something to be said for pacing our steps, bowing to visibility, and leaning forward with humility...

...to who knows where.

Day and Years and the Gift Of Sunshine

“How do you measure a year?” the cast of Rent famously and musically asked.  

“In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights

In cups of coffee

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

In five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes.

How do you measure a year in the life?”

It’s a big question; a bigger one, still, if the unit in question is not a year in the life but the life itself — a coil that is still joyfully, curiously, hungrily spiraling longer and higher even as it grounds and roots itself ever deeper.  If the song’s 525,600 minutes sounds like a big number, consider these:
 

31,536,000 minutes

525,600 hours

21,900 days

Or…

60 years. 

Those are the celebratory numbers that pop and dazzle the sky today like fireworks on this benchmark birthday of my beloved.  At least they dazzle me; I’m not sure how excited she is about arriving at this decadal threshold.  And it’s true that the numbers aren’t ultimately the subject of celebration.  As the song suggests, it’s all the beats and blinks that pulse behind them.   It’s the cups of coffee, the sunsets, the laughter — even the strife.  It’s the first days of class, and the last; it’s the paychecks, and now the pension checks; the harvests picked, the eggs gathered, the flowers cut.  It’s the meals playfully prepared and then shared together; the kisses and hugs, the nuzzlings of a dog nose.  

But it is more, still, than those.  It’s the kindnesses shared, the laughter spread, the forgivenesses tendered.  It’s the lives stretched, the minds stimulated, the curiosities piqued.  It’s the indifferent and aloof, dragging her or his feet, drawn in and deftly intrigued.  It’s the broken and clumsily mended heart softened and reopened.

I am gratefully acquainted with most of these measures, but by no means all.  I came late to this party.  She, after all, was an Iowan and I, a Texan — miles apart in more ways than one.  I was inching toward 40 when we were first introduced, at a time and circumstance in my life when I evinced a reputation for competence but rarely sunshine.  She, of course, changed all that, encouraging the competence; evoking the light.  Intellectually and spiritually I trust the conviction that some of that light comes from within.  To whatever extent that is true, the delight of my experience in her company is more moon-like, reflecting the radiant cascades that spill my way.  I’ll not gush and bore you with details, except to say that it is a gloriously bright place to live, here in the company of her incandescence — minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.  

Happy birthday dearest Lori Jo.  I’m so grateful for the Waterloo hospital that sheltered your first moments in this world; for your Alexander parents and siblings who nurtured and shaped your subsequent years; for the co-workers and companions who broadened, comforted and challenged your growth, and for the intuitive mutual friends who nudged me into your orbit — a gravitational pull to which I happily submit.  I can’t wait to experience whatever fills and animates the clock ticks, rooster crows, and calendar pages ahead of us.

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.