I can remember the early days
when there were so many hours
between dawn and sunset,
I could tell myself the story
of a whole, entire lifetime.

Recently I came across a list of “getting to know each other” questions. One of them asked about one’s first memory. I do have memories of sitting at the table in a highchair, a bib tied around my neck, insisting that I be read to (remember Golden Books?) before I would take the next bite of food. My mother tells me that I demanded so many pages per spoonful eaten. I suspect that is part of why I learned to read so early in my life. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with books. Not necessarily in paper format—I am more comfortable with electronic books, than paper—but fascinated by the written word. It’s like I took in words like the air I breathe. I wanted to know about everything. I wanted to understand the how and why, not just the “what” of how it’s all put together. And reading and thinking and experimenting was the road to that knowledge.

There is another early memory, though, that haunted me for years. I remember running down the street, as a young child, trying to catch the car that my father was driving. I remember being left behind and feeling a profound despair and hopelessness. I felt alone. My father was driving to the other side of town to see, I believe, how the work was going on the house that he and his friends were building for our family to live in. Somehow, I had it in my head that he and my mother were going to the new house to stay, and I was being left behind. And the feeling didn’t go away. My mother recounts the time when I came home from a day at school during my first year, and neither she nor my father was there to greet me. I’d opened all the dresser drawers to see if their clothes were still there, and they found me in a corner, hysterical. I can clearly recall hiding food in the back of my clothes closet, so I would have something to eat, should they leave again.

I’m sure it didn’t help that the first book I read that wasn’t a picture book, was Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I remember especially Helen’s dying at school during the epidemic, and the fire that burned down the house. I was frightened for years of becoming ill, as well as being burned to death, buried alive, or some other all too imaginable horror. Still, reading was a good defense against fear, and I read lots of books and magazines, encyclopedia articles and plays.

I spent a good part of my life, until age 17, reading or walking through the farm and pasture lands near our home or sitting on a tree branch, where I’d read a book or talk with myself about what I’d been reading or make up stories. I was very solitary, and I think that a lot of that was due to a quite groundless fear of being abandoned. I steeled myself against loss by denying the need. That people noticed me came as a surprise. I worked hard at ignoring them. 

Meeting Jesus was such a change, it took me a long time to sort out what was happening and what it meant in terms of who I was and am. I’m not talking about the Bible or religious studies. I’d done that, gone through the motions and talked the talk without having the foggiest notion of the reality that should have been the source of the talk and actions. The camouflage that kids who are really different develop to protect themselves. Playacting one’s way through life in order to avoid being identified as “other” and getting hurt.

I think that the people who are most desperately in need of the Good News are the ones who truly understand it and fight back when the Gospel is appropriated and redefined by others so as to obscure or reverse its message and render the Gospel ineffective. The Good News is about risk and truth and honesty with oneself and doing good without counting the cost. It certainly isn’t about becoming like other people. It isn’t ceasing to be different. It is about growing in a different direction, multiplying objectives and perspectives, and reworking values and priorities. 

And so, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17). The old self isn’t exactly gone, but rather, reworked, recreated, renewed—redeemed. I enjoy people, now, and have for a long time, which I’d never expected I would. Not that I’ve become an extrovert! On the contrary, I now value my time alone even more, now that it is a treasured resource and not an escape. It’s a whole different life.

“Life Cycle”

one more winter, coming soon
too many days before the warm returns
to bake the chill out of my bones
when spring comes, coming late
my bones will sink beneath the thawing ground,
feed plants that burst through the surface
green and vital, ashes to ashes and dust to blessed dust 

###

I was happy to hear that there is a “return to the earth” movement that is encouraging use of only biodegradable materials for coffins. It’s always seemed strange, locking a body away in a metal box sealed inside a concrete vault. Myself, I’d prefer to be cremated, my ashes scattered. I wonder if the resulting ashes are alkaline or acidic. 

waiting for new life . . . to become a spring flower after death’s long sleep

I’ve been doing some thinking about the prevalence of anger in our society in conjunction with the increase in intolerance of differences. I remember when I went back to the Lutheran church after an absence of 15 years or so, having read about the merger of ALC, AELC and LCA and responding to their motto of “Unity Without Uniformity.” The organizations really didn’t merge very comfortably, and “without uniformity” really meant “without uniformity coming in,” but with the expectation uniformity would shortly result. Not a uniformity of skin color or nationality or other irrelevancies, but a uniformity of thought and language, goals and ongoing culture. 

There is, first, the point that when high church and low church merged and the national organization set off in the direction of “higher” church, there was an understandable hesitancy on the part of the folks at the other end of the spectrum. The “magical” thinking also was off-putting. As though God could be invoked (i.e., summoned into action) by recitation of certain words or the carrying out of the proper rituals! It’s in a totally different category from the admonition in Philippians: “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank Him for His answers.” Sometimes it was carried to an extreme that seemed to parallel the use of candles and invocations and kabalistic symbols. 

I’ve been out of circulation in those environments for a long time, but it seems to me that aside from the movement toward high church, those excesses of magical thinking have faded into the background. In its place, I see a polarization in process as people on both ends of the spectrum (figure of speech, only) try to firm up their world views and beliefs into absolutes that they can stand upon. They fight off their lack of certainty by establishing a house (seemingly, built upon a firm foundation) that will stand against whatever might be contrary to their particular set and arrangement of facts. 

I see a lot of anger at not being able to impose one’s own viewpoint on the rest of the world. There is a need for agreement, a need to establish specific, universal standards of “right” and “sinful” and the need to both know and be right. No risk taking, just certainty. One who does not agree must be deluded or deliberately blind or evil. 

I have a certainty of eternal life. I know that I have already passed out of death and into a new life. But my knowledge is limited, and there are always risks, I’m always finding new layers of understanding, and I’m still seeing imperfectly, through that obscured mirror. I’m less certain now than I was thirty years ago, when it comes to lots of things having to do with walking by faith and what God might be leading other people to in their lives. 

I don’t want to argue with people who feel safer with proclamation than dialogue, and I don’t want to live in an environment that is, for want of a better word, uncivil. I love my family deeply and cannot imagine a more stimulating setting in which to learn and grow, but it was also a battleground of strong opinions and stronger personalities. Always worried that someone is going to forget zirself and throw something at someone. Too much adrenaline!

 I think it’s helping me, in any case, to write some of this stuff down. I get a clearer look at what’s going round in my head.

I had not realized that so many people were afraid of change until I started looking at individual reactions to the U.S. elections, a few weeks ago. Reading through “It All Depends From Where We Begin” brings home to me the idea that some people were, are genuinely afraid of the new administration in Washington, D.C., and of the economic decompression. Admittedly, it is not pleasant to see the economy imploding as it is. (Or, if it comes to that, the implosion of my own cash flow.) But the new administration? I should have thought that that, at least, would have brought a surge of relief and hope and confidence in the future. Most of the people I know were more in dread of there not being change. 

Risk taking is so very evident in the Bible. Immediately the names of Moses, Joshua, Esther, Ruth, Jonah, and John the Baptist come to mind, and there are so very many more. It is inevitable, when one follows God, that we are taking risks with the outcome of our lives in this world, where we live as strangers in a strange land. We walk across invisible bridges, and we depend on miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes and on the kindness of strangers. The reassurances that God gives to us seem flimsy:

Take no thought for tomorrow! Observe the lilies of the field! God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Having become Christians, we look ahead, placing our lives from this moment to eternity into God’s hands. Talk about risk! No matter how firm a person’s faith, it is challenging to put one’s life into someone else’s control, someone else’s keeping. Even into God’s hands! After that, though, I’ve taken the greatest risk I’m ever going to take. So why do these lesser risks threaten me? Because putting my hand to the plow, and then not looking back, might be a one-way trip. No way back. God is first in my life. Not me, but God. I may be first in God’s life (along with how many other people–all creation–that are first to God), but how can I keep God first in my life? How can I be sure that God wants the best, does the best for me, when he’s looking out for all those other people, too? (How can I cheat?)

Norman said, “Here is my point: God has given us what we need for the day. For those who have more than they need, there are those who have less and should be helped. Or we may one day find ourselves facing the dilemma of The Rich Man.” As much to the point is the belief that God has called us to love one another as Jesus has loved us; we are called to live in his love. If it is the case that “Truly I say to you, because you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,” then how can we not help others? That is our calling. To love one another as Jesus loved us. Loved us enough to die for us. 

I remember spending my summers as a child wandering through the fields and pastures. I didn’t do much watching of the wind blowing the grass. Got caught in some fierce summer storms, though. I have never felt so alive as when walking through the storms. Anyway, I spent a lot of my time, when I wasn’t trying to catch mice or snakes, telling myself elaborate stories, having adventures. 

In a way, this life as a Christian is as intangible as those adventures. But the invisible bridge to this adventure doesn’t collapse under my feet.

I have put together a page at PostcardArt.net with links to some of my photo slideshows, mostly flowers, trees, and sky.

“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matt. 6:28-29.

Lilies of the Field

And if I had the faith to walk this truth, the eyes to see beyond this world into the next and hear the voice of God, who makes good such promises, the mind to truly fathom such a sacrifice…

I might accept the gift that’s freely given, the joy and freedom of unending love.

Listening to the music at 12th Gate, last night, and then going on to listen to more spirituals and some music from Louis Armstrong (I played french horn, cornet and trumpet in various school and community bands, and have always loved brass instruments in jazz, even more than tenor sax), I was reminded again of how much I used to like composing music. Nothing fancy, but song lyrics for worship and some songs with my own melodies. One of them, “Share the Gift,” taken pretty much from the Gospel of John, has been a joy to me ever since I wrote it, back in 1991. I find myself singing it a lot. 

As I worshiped, this morning, the fourth verse kept coming to mind. It starts out, “I’m leaving you a gift: peace of heart and of mind.” It is sometimes difficult to stay grounded in that peace, because I am sensitive, perhaps too much so, to antagonism and argumentation. I lean more toward the “Come now and let us reason together” environment. [I think that maybe I also have a compulsion to try to end the bickering, but I cannot, and it drags on me and I cannot let it go.]

I have been called out. I have been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and specifically, the gifts that Jesus promised: faith, hope, love, joy, and peace of heart and mind that is not fragile like the world’s peace, which rests on a different basis. Learning to persevere in that peace is not easy.

My ego–my natural self–wants to make everything in the world better–to make the world perfect. But what has the Holy Spirit called me to do?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. 

And to make a joyful noise to the Lord. 

To that purpose, here is another of my favorites, “Swing Down, Chariot,” in blues style: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xniKAv7GmvQ]

And another performed by the same fellow, “Soon One Mornin’,” which is new to me:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQdDLj6znvA]

melding of seasons
blades of grass reach up through snow
to stroke fallen leaves

Winter Leaf

scratch of windswept leaves
rising on cold winter’s breath
murmuring of snow

The first snows of winter do seem to be upon us, and I find the sound of the wind, bearing with it the fallen leaves of autumn, to be invigorating, encouraging, renewing. There is hope. The land will be covered. It will sleep, rest, and wake renewed, come fourth month.

Flowers will emerge, the light will return in the spring, and there will be time for resting in the sun while the sun and gentle rains encourage the fields to bring forth crops to harvest in the autumn.

Fall and winter call for our best, for strength and purpose of action. In the spring and summer, rest.