How Many Days

How many days I lived and had never used

the holy words.

Tenderly I began them when it came to me

to want to, oh mystery irrefutable!

Then I went out of that place

and into a field and lay down

among the weeds and the grasses,

whispering to them, fast, in order to keep

that world also.

I have been on leave from my home congregation as I shift from parish ministry to my community multispecies ministry.  I don't know how many days exactly it has been since I was part of the Sunday morning ritual, but it will have been nearly a year by the time I return.  Yet I wonder if I have ever left.

Aren't we in this blog exchanging holy words?

And what about the red-winged blackbirds by the sinkhole  who squealed at me yesterday so that I wouldn't miss their fine red epaulets? 

And the red-shouldered hawks who coupled on the telephone pole during last week's morning walk?  He flew off, I hope satisfied. She remained, all fluffed and still, unashamedly content.

Their world is our world.  May we treat it holy, to keep it whole.

How do you keep the world whole? Yourself whole?

The Trees

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again....

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?

Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and advancement!

But I think it would do us good if we would think about

these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

the trees, the trees, jut holding on

to the old, holy ways.

Today a couple of friends are coming over to home to help remove a fallen tree from our neighbor's backyard. This past Sunday, in our wooded back lot, a rotting snag fell over, luckily only hitting one wire fence.  The neighbor, whom we had not met before came knocking on our door asking me if we could clean up the mess.

The question comes up, who is responsible for the damage?  Do my spouse and I "own" the tree and it is up to us to repair damage and remove the broken log on their property?  Someone wrote us and said that if the tree had been alive and healthy, then it would be the resposibility of the neighbor to remove the downed tree, and not us.

Alas, it comes down to thinking of trees in terms of ownership, responsibility, and financial damage. 

So we walked our property line looking for any suspect trees that might cause damage, and discovered a plethora of downed trees on and near our property. While walking I noticed not just dead trees, but the skulls of several deer. What happened to them this winter?  Did coyotes take them down, the cold, or the lack of food?  What happened to the trees who will know no more green shoots, flowers, or the letting go of old leaves?

May I during the sound of chain saws today really listen to my siblings in the woods and wonder what their lives are and will be.

Who are your brothers and sisters?

.

Both Worlds

Forever busy, it seems,

With words,

Finally

I put the pen down

And rumple

Most of the sheets

And leave one or two,

Sometimes a few,

For the next morning.

Day after day’

Year after year’

It has gone on this way,

I rise from the chair,

I put on my jacket

And leave the house

For that other world’

The first one,

The holy one

Where the trees say

Nothing the toad says

Nothing the dirt

nothing and yet

what has always happened

keeps happening:

the trees flourish

the toad leaps

and out of the silent dirt

the blood-red roses rise

I have been over 40 hours in transit to get home from Central America to Northern Florida.  I leave one world where life seems evidently harsh no matter where you turn to this world, where abundance hides the sacrifice of others. 

While waiting in the San Jose, Costa Rica airport yesterday I met an owner of a Honduran banana plantation. He and I swapped stories of violence in the daily lives of Guatemalans and Hondurans, including vengeance killings, gangs, narco lords, assassin squads, murderous politics of militaries and governments, gunfights, and people bound and thrown into rivers to die with no threat of penalty or discovery.  To me he seemed hardened by the life he had led, willing to do whatever it took to protect his interests. 

Then we began to speak of birds and he smiled for the first time .He stood up as his very soul seemed to become lighter. He spoke of how he loved birds and how he enjoyed taking his children to a bird park in Honduras.  It was like we had been transported to another world, this one of light and not of darkness.   We shared a magic moment where we had both reminded each other of the light within and without.

The theme of light came up in a movie I also saw yesterday in transit, “The Christmas Cottage.”  In it a character says that there is a light within us all and goes with us down all roads.  It ended with an artist painting a snow covered house, brightly lit up from within and without.  This image brings me back to Mary’s poem of yesterday where there are many roads leading from home.

We all travel far in our lives, one way or another.  How often we tragically forget that the light stays with us, no matter our paths, no matter the brutality and cruelty we encounter.  In this mess of our lives, life with daring audacity, flourishes.  Why should we not as well? 

Where do you travel between two worlds?

What I Have Learned So Far - September 5, 2010

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

So much like E. B. White is Mary this morning. He wrote, "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." So like Mary, like E.B. White, we awake torn. So many plans are lit up with the first thought of sun's arising, and then the Barred Owl hoots or I recall a dream last night when two wild Scarlet Macaws flew down to me and invited me to hold them and to stroke their rainbow feathers. I am astonished into stillness, savoring each feeling and vision of that dream. I am in love. It burns. My soul flares with 5 more projects that spark from that dream. Is this what loves brings us to, crazy wild fires that take down the old forests and urge new seeds to grow? In my ignition, I am gone.

How do you balance saving and savoring?