Uncategorized | Michael Valliant

Adding it all up

I’m not sure there is a math to moments. You can’t sum up your life or your heart with an equation, nor can you quantify those days that you feel like give you some semblance of why you are here.

I’ve had a habit of sitting on the deck and writing with coffee for a number of years now. There was the time that Anna, also an early riser, came out and asked if she could sit and write with me.

There was the time I was on my way out the front door for an early run, when Anna came down the steps asking if she could come too. We grabbed her bike, my longboard, the dog, and drove to St. Michaels Rails to Trails.

There was the time I won Wilco tickets and Anna, not really knowing who Wilco was, asked if she could go with me, and it became her first concert experience. All the leaf piles raked just so the girls could jump into them. Turning the back of the truck into a play room on a sunny day. Digging for sand crabs on any beach trip. Any time I have gotten anything about being a father remotely close to right, it has been the times when I didn’t let a moment pass us by; the times when I showed up, leaned in, and we created memories together. Any parent who hasn’t learned a huge lesson from listening to Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” should go listen to it right now. We don’t get that time, or those times, back.

When I look back on all the best moments in my life, almost none of them have been about me; there is almost always a “we” or an “us.” And so many of them have been about Anna and Ava.

Yesterday, May 13, Anna graduated from Easton High School, the same high school I graduated from 29 years earlier. Her graduation ceremony was co-opted by a pandemic, which also took the entire spring of her senior year. Honestly, the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020 was maybe more special for being unique and because of the care of so many people who organized it.

Yesterday morning, before the girls were up, I read Jim Harrison’s poem, “Adding It Up.” He’s looking for a rubric, or some way to summarize his life.

“…two daughters, eight dogs,
I can’t name all that cats and horses, a farm
for thirty-five years, then Montana, a cabin,
a border casita, two grandsons, two sons-in-law,
and graced by the sun and the moon, red wine
and garlic, lakes and rivers, the millions of trees.”

His mind is already wandering from things that can be quantified–it’s a flawed math. And then he goes further into experiences which don’t fit equations at all. He talks about a hiding place underneath a huge stump, through which…

“I’ve watched the passing legs of sandhill cranes,
napping where countless bears have napped,
an aperture above where the sky and the gods
may enter, yet I’m without the courage to watch
the full moon through this space. I can’t figure
out a life.”

He finds and enters into a sacred space, where he has to pause, unsure. And that’s what parenthood, at it’s best, can do–create sacred spaces through which we watch our children grow and accomplish things, while also falling, failing, and getting hurt.

And I have to pause, unsure.

And all of those moments, every one of them, come together in a moment like graduating from high school; walking through that particular gateway that opens up the next part of life, and the world.

Fatherhood and church have both made me soft. But it’s a soft-heartedness I will take. When my father sends a card he’s written a note in to Anna; when her mom makes a photo memory board of so many of Anna’s friends and experiences through her 18 years; when her sister Ava–who doesn’t cry–gets teary before a photo; when my sister and her kids show up and turn the front yard into party central and have an impromptu social distancing back yard graduation picnic. It all makes my heart overfull and trips me up. But tripping on those moments helps me recognize them.

These are Anna’s moments, not mine. She drives them. But I get to be a part of them. When I think of what yesterday meant, what it means, through Anna’s struggles and accomplishments, which we watch as parents, but can’t fix or do ourselves; when I realize how little words can actually do or say about the biggest moments our hearts experience; I maybe get a glimpse of the things my parents watched and were a part of for my sister and me; and I can tell you how much more Anna’s graduation means to me than my own.

Drawn in Crayon

“Things in life never come full circle. Maybe once or twice they’re hexagonal, but to me, they are almost always misshapen, as if drawn by a toddler in crayon.”
Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock)

That’s how Ad-Rock of Beastie Boys fame described the feeling of looking back on Bonnarroo music festival, where the group was headlining, and not knowing it would be the last show they would ever perform together, before to Adam Yauch (MCA) died.

That hits hard. I paused the documentary to write it down, such a profound way to look at things. Misshapen, drawn by a toddler in crayon. And there is sadness in that, but there is also hope. I want to hold on to the fun, spontaneity, and fresh/beginner’s perspective that comes with drawing in crayon.

Our lives are built from the past. That’s what’s gotten us to where we are. Not just our past, but further back. The picture above is one of my all-time favorite photos. It is my grandfather, my Dad’s father, sitting in what was his father’s oyster shucking/packing/canning house. It’s about 1905 in Oxford, in what is now Oxford Marina & Boatyard; growing up for us it was Mears Marina. Where he is looking at is now the restaurant Capsize. I am looking at the framed black and white photo on my desk as I write.

I think of the things he saw in his 95 years; how his lifetime included the birth of my father, out of whose life I came into the world. So in a real sense, this moment I am having, sitting here typing and thinking about my grandfather, is built out of, is contained in a future state, in that photo. And that world is so different from the one we are living in now. And if you tried to connect the dots from that moment to this, it would look a whole lot like a child drawing in crayon.

Life should be drawn in crayon. It shouldn’t be angular, or too detailed, or a map from which there is no deviating. I like thinking about the enthusiasm and creativity that is in the eyes, mind, and hands of a child sitting down to a blank piece of paper. What if we could bring that to each day?

An old friend and I were writing back and forth about “Beastie Boys Story.” I said they are the soundtrack of our lives. A place it took him:

“Takes me to another place and time for sure. Lots of great memories of a time that can never be again- but I’m glad I got to live it.”

And I know he’s right. The same way that the life my grandfather lived can’t be had in the same way in today’s world, the things we did, the experiences we had in our earliest years of albums coming out and being played over and over, that is a time and era that our kids don’t get these days. Especially these days of quarantine. “Licensed to Ill” came out when I was a freshman, like my daughter Ava is now. By the time I was a senior, like Anna, “Paul’s Boutique” was the most played album in our cars and sung regularly at parties.

But then I also think about how music can still be a part of the new memories going on–further along the crayon arc. I think of Ava in her car seat in the backseat of my truck on the way to daycare asking to listen to the Beastie Boys “Grass Monkey” (I will wait on my parent of the year award)–I think of the song “Intergalactic” constantly playing in the Latitude 38 kitchen when I worked there; I think of newer albums and the song “Make Some Noise” (if you’re living) was an anthem for us in 2011. And about how all their albums are still in constant rotation on my playlist. And I love how thinking and remembering the band and their impact on my life even got to be a part of my writing, and how old lyrics still make sense in new ways to me today.

But there’s more. Adam Horowitz, talking about Yauch/MCA, says he was “a living contradiction of people’s ideas of how or what you are supposed to be or do.” They talk about how they were able to spend most of their lives to this point creating art, hanging out, and having fun as a group of best friends. They talk about how Yauch was the driver in learning new things, taking new adventures, growing and outgrowing old ways of being and thinking. And I wonder, what can we take from that? What can I learn from their example? How can we/I be those people who keep pushing boundaries?

I think about the number of times I have laughed at lyrics, or laughed watching the documentary, and how much we need humor in our lives, both day to day, but also a sense of the cosmic scale/sense of humor. And I love the idea that MCA was “drawn to the Dalai Lama because he was a funny dude.” And it makes me smile and remember that humor is so important in our spiritual lives.

What if watching a documentary about your favorite band and the life they’ve lived further inspires us to spend time and go on adventures with our friends–actual physical adventures, but also spiritual adventures, or literary/creative/musical adventures, depending on what form your creativity takes?

We can get nudged by life, by God, in different ways, if we are paying attention. And during a time when we are largely at home and isolated, our nudge can come in the form of documentary movies, from music, from books, from connecting with friends in new ways. Our nudge can help us to have new eyes to look at the things around us.

When we look forward, we don’t know what those special, transcendent moments are going to be or when they will happen. I like to think that each of us has so many more of those moments ahead, not just behind us as memories.

Looking back at the moment of my grandfather sitting among oyster shells captured in a photograph taken more than 100 years ago, and all the possible moments contained in it, that became real moments in his life, my dad’s life, my life, my daughters’ life–I wonder what those captured moments, what photographs or objects, or stories that are taking place now, are going to be those things passed down and talked about and laughed over 100 years from now?

And I can’t know that. But if I had to guess, when you draw a line and connect those dots and moments and stories, it will look “misshapen, as if drawn by a toddler.” And I hope they are using crayon.

Pilgrimage at home

There’s a good chance that a whole lot of people are feeling stuck at the moment. Stuck at home, stuck in a rut, stuck in the time warp of several weeks known collectively as blursday.

And this won’t do. We are far too busy, we have too much to do to be sitting at home. We believe Tom Cochrane when he tells us, “Life is a highway, I want to drive it all night long.”

Of course, if you are like Holly, Michael, and Daryl from “The Office,” or me, or a lot of people, you realize how old that song gets, how old that way of thinking gets, and how easy it is to get “stuck” and restless with that approach to life.

Maybe we needed to pull the car over anyway. And get out and look around. Thomas Merton helps me do that. The photo at the top of the page was taken by Merton in northern California in 1968. I first came across it in an incredible multimedia piece by Emergence Magazine. One of the most calming, soul-opening, wonder-producing things I have ever watched, if you have 11 minutes, this video captures more of how I feel about God, spirituality, solitude, and pilgrimage than just about anything I have found.

I say this frequently, but Merton has been one of the most influential thinkers in my faith walk; he not only speaks to my soul, he often speaks my soul, and sends me into wonder and awe and connection and helps me find my own words for my own journey.

In the film, Merton talks about the metaphor of the journey.

“Going off where God leads you… We’re all on a journey, we’re all going somewhere… The geographic pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. Every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in their soul.”
Thomas Merton

In the photo, Merton and company have pulled over. They are out of the car. I think that’s significant. Journeys aren’t always about traveling physical distance; you run the risk of missing what’s going on around you.

Pilgrimage is one of my favorite words. It has been since the first time I heard it–it imprinted on me in a deep way, like it was already waiting in me, just to be woken up, and it may end up as part of a tattoo. Pilgrimage is equal parts an interior word as it is exterior/geographic.

There was a great deal of care and thought given to the house where I live by people who lived here before me. There is a winding path of stepping stones from the back deck, around the yard, to what has become my writing shed/sanctuary. The stones sit above the puddles when rain collects in the yard and it also makes a meditative, mindful, intentional walk in any weather. There are days when I try to make each stone a prayer. Among the stepping stones, there are two with pottery, stones, sea glass, rocks and found objects incorporated into them.

“Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.”
Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”

If I think about it, a walk across the yard can be a symbolic pilgrimage. It can take me somewhere new, even while taking me to the same place each day.

If I take each step as a prayer…

“God utters me like a word, containing a partial thought of himself. Let me seek then the gift of silence and poverty and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer. Where the sky is my prayer; the birds are my prayer; the wind in the trees is my prayer. For God is all, in all.” (Merton, Emergence video)

At the door to the shed is the second art-dazzled stone. It puts creativity right at the doorstep. The kind of journey, the kind of art we need right now, maybe the kind we always need is the kind that connects us. It’s the art where we can see another and be seen by another, in the truest sense. And it’s a journey into and from our own solitude that shows us how we are connected.

Into our solitude…

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon, if we’re not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous.” (Merton, Emergence)

And back out…

“Our task now is to learn that if we can voyage to the ends of the earth, and there find ourselves in the stranger who most differs from ourselves, we will have made a fruitful pilgrimage. This is why pilgrimage is necessary, in some shape or other. Mere sitting at home and meditating on the Divine presence is not enough for our time. We have to come to the end of a long journey and see that the stranger we meet there is none other than ourselves.” (Merton, Emergence)

Pilgrimage, really faith is about transformation. It’s both about finding ourselves, which we have to do first, and then seeing ourselves in others and them in us.

Whether we are at home or when we can get back out into the world, we are on the same journey. And if we want to get the most out of it, we are going to have to get out of the car. We’ll want to meet the strangers. And meet ourselves. Maybe we will come out of this pilgrimage at home finding ourselves more connected than when we started.

What’s Next?

I have two kinds of reading: work/church reading and other/personal reading, though they almost always overlap.

Work/church reading is reading that goes toward discussion groups and Bible studies. Over the past few years, we have done chapter by chapter group studies of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians; shorter survey’s of Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, book studies of two Bob Goff books, one Brene Brown book, Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and a deep-dive into The Lord’s Prayer. We have groups that have become like family, who have been meeting for multiple years now and when one study is done, they ask, “what’s next?” And it’s awesome.

When we could no longer gather together as groups this spring, Zoom meetings became our way of getting together. And for the past several weeks, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we have had folks on screen together, live from their homes in Wittman, Sherwood, outside Cambridge, all around Easton, and it has helped–both with the stir crazy, cooped up feelings, but also staying connected to each other and connected to God.

As we finished our long studies of John’s Gospel and our Lent survey of Matthew’s Gospel, we kicked around some options of what to explore next. The thought of Paul’s prison letters resonated, as we quarantine in place. A reliable, accessible commentary can be hugely illuminating for Bible study, and we have loved N.T. Wright’s New Testament for Everyone books. His “Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters” is what we used for our Philippians study a couple years ago and we are heading back there to start with Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

From Wright’s introduction:

“This book includes the four short letters Paul wrote from prison: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. His own personal circumstances make these especially poignant, and give us a portrait of a man facing huge difficulties and hardships and coming through with his faith and hope unscathed. But what he has to say to young churches–and in the case of Philemon, to one man facing a hugely difficult moral dilemna–is even more impressive. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul has worked out a wonderful, many-colored picture of what Jesus achieved, of God’s worldwide plan, and how it all works out in the lives of ordinary people.”

Paul’s letters from prison give us plenty to think, pray, and reflect on, and something to work towards. I always recall the line from Ephesians about putting on the “full armor of God.”

Something has happened in the shift from being able to come together at church, or anywhere, to now being distanced. Maybe we realize how much we need each other, how much we miss each other. And creating content to engage, inspire, and give hope, as well as creating interactive opportunities and experiences is more important than ever. So as we start with Ephesians and go through the prison letters, I want to throw out there for anyone who wants to, to do the same. I’ll be blogging and trying to find some creative writing opportunities with it; I will look to have some video conversations with Fr. Bill Ortt, Fr. Charlie Barton, and others to get their thoughts on issues and chapters that come up; possible podcasts with staff members and others; I will see if I can find some special guest stars to weigh in; and we can open up some Zoom meetings during the week where people can drop in and share and discuss their thoughts. The more the merrier–and has always been the case for our small groups, you don’t have to be a member of the church or any church to be a part of what’s going on. If it sounds interesting, give it a shot. With Zoom, Facebook, Instagram and the like, you can be in Florida, California, Maine, or in a different country.

In January 2017, I had started working at Christ Church Easton part-time in addition to my job as director of the Oxford Community Center. Our rector/pastor, Fr. Bill Ortt, asked me to put together a short (5-6 week) Bible study, whatever I picked to study, find 10 or so people to be a part of it, and he and I would co-lead the group. I had led small groups before, but this would be my first Bible study. I picked Ephesians. Many of the guinea pigs…er… willing participants, have become close friends, and are still both involved in and leading small groups at the church, with one woman finishing up her work to become a deacon. It’s been a wonderful journey together.

I was reminded recently (by Wright, in our John study) of lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which is one of my absolute favorite poems/books ever written. Eliot says:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot

I feel like that is the case for me with Ephesians. It’s maybe the case with small groups. It’s maybe the case with church and communities, who are having to re-examine what’s important and how to do things.

Fair warning though: it seems the longer you study with and work with someone, the more likely you are to dress alike.

Gratitude and Grace

Maybe you have these moments. Sitting in the back yard by a fire. The night sky is clear and stark and full of stars, even with light pollution from the town. It’s the end of a long day and my birthday, so it’s a day where memories are ripe, just below the surface, and waiting to bubble up.

Deep breaths, easy smile, a moment of clarity. Sturgill Simpson plays at low volume on the bench next to me.

Moments and memories extend and swirl and I feel like every second of my life to this point, every person I have met, every setback, every success, every heartbreak, everyone and everything I have ever loved, every bit of pain felt, every joy, every experience, all add up to and come together in this one moment, the present moment, and all of it, every bit of it, is gratitude.

And what it looks like is tears running down my face, with no attempt to stop them, because I know I haven’t done anything to deserve any of it; that it’s a gift that I can never repay, all I can do is be in awe of it; all I can do is start to put my finger on it.

But I know what it is.

It is grace.

It’s grace that even though I mess up and do the wrong thing, even though I lose my temper, I can sit under this incredible sky and find solace and a reset button. I can try again.

It’s grace that getting lost in the enormity of the night sky, that I am here and that there is place for me in all of it.

It’s grace that the sun comes up and there is another day and a chance for something new–that I’ve never seen or thought about or encountered before.

Grace maybe begins when we remember. We remember and are grateful for this gift that we can’t earn, but which ought to shape who and how we are in the world. It’s a gift that isn’t for us to to keep to ourselves but to try to extend to someone else.

“Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God’s grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word … it’s that God makes beautiful things out of even my own [stuff].
Nadia Bolz-Weber

I sit in the back yard, next to a fire, under an expansive night sky, and memories and people and life dance with the stars and the flames. Stories swim in my head and they all rise to the sky.

If “prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God,” (Baltimore catechism), then this fireside chat is prayer, maybe the best kind.

I think of Meister Eckhart, who said, “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”

Thank you.

Maybe grace begins with gratitude.

Quarantine All-stars

I’ve come to realize that living life in quarantine isn’t that much different than my daily life. Less nature than I would like, and my work schedule may actually be busier working from home, but on the whole I dig being at home. In the case of the Coronavirus and everyone being home, and teenage girls having to change their mindset; and just the general mental and emotional uneasiness of a global pandemic, there is something different afoot.

When we look back, everyone will have different things that buoyed them, or helped them re-acclimate, helped them connect. So I thought I’d look at some of my quarantine all-stars to date.

You can’t overstate the importance of music. I concur with Friedrich Nietzsche when he wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake,” and Kurt Vonnegut who said his epitaph could say, “The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”

I am a fan of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. I’ve dug hearing them on 103.1 WRNR. Hearing the title track from his new solo album, “And It’s Still Alright” on the radio, I’ve always let it play. Then multiple people started weighing in with how good the whole album is. Rateliff started writing the album at the unraveling of his marriage and later had to get through the death of a close friend. From his website, talking about the album, and how he worked through what the album wanted to be:

“out of his restless subconscious, helping him address some big life questions — the ones that have stumped philosophers, statesmen and profound thinkers since time began, exploring the unsteady terrain of love and death. But in the end, what he really was doing was creating an homage to his friend.”

It’s an album about questions; it’s an album about getting through things; it’s an album with lines that stick in my head, such as, “If the world goes strange, its dying flames / Would light the end of the last morning.”

Questlove, live from his house, paying tribute to Bill Withers.

A different take on quarantine soundtrack has come from Questlove of the Roots. With the band staying home, Questlove has been holding DJ sessions from his house, raising money for different causes, and paying tribute to eras of music, with his Native Tongues Review, and to Bill Withers who just died, with Bill Still. I am telling you, if you want to put something on in your house and let it play for a couple hours, Native Tongues brings back an era of hip hop with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, you name it, some formative bands, and just blending it altogether. And Bill Withers, man, the whole session is just smooth and flowing and feels good.

I’m used to Questlove being the drummer and front man for one of my favorite bands. He’s written books and been featured in great articles, and this social media scholar and DJ is just another aspect of a guy who carries the cool banner for this, and other eras.

From music to movies. I’ve watched Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” multiple times now. I didn’t catch it in the theaters, so one night I kicked back and pulled it up at home. And I knew I needed to check it out again. So a few nights ago, I pulled my daughters into the next screening. Both girls loved it, Anna (18) said it was the best movie she’d seen in a long time, and maybe one of her favorites. It’s a great whodunnit-typed movie; it’s got James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Captain America (Chris Evans), who play roles nothing like their famous characters; and as someone who likes to figure movies out, even when halfway through the movie you think you know everything, you don’t. Not even close.

Screens certainly dominate media these days. And I am psyched that “Cheers” is now on Netflix; “The Office” is a constant connection, time-filler, and connector between the girls and I, who quote it back and forth frequently; and I have them part-way through the series “Lost,” which was a favorite show of mine while it was on TV.

You know I have to finish with books. We have had substantial reading going with work–studies of John’s Gospel, which started last October, a quick devotional through Matthew’s Gospel for Lent, and looking for our next online classes–but in this case, I am looking at the just for fun reading.

On the graphic novel front, Kieron Gillen’s “Once and Future” plays King Arthur’s legend into our modern world, which is a trippy, mythical, re-imaging as a kind of ghost story. I ate Arthurian legend stuff up growing up (named our Golden Retriever “Morgan” after King Arthur’s sister when I was nine) and Gillen has become a writer who I try to read about everything I can from. Christian Ward is known as an artist, but is trying his hand at writing and in Machine Gun Wizards, he looks at Eliot Ness and prohibition, but if prohibition was outlawing magic, not booze. And what can I say about Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman,” which was cited as one of the 100 best books (not graphic novels, books) of the century. It bears reading and re-reading. And since a friend and I are currently taking Gaiman’s masterclass on storytelling, this seemed like a great time to dig back into the world of dream and open my imagination.

I’m 180-something pages into Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven,” which we will be doing an online/Zoom book club for in the very near future. I am having a lot of fun with it. It’s set after the collapse of civilization due to a global pandemic virus. This is one of the blurbs that pulled me in:

“An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.”

A motto of one of the main characters is “Survival is insufficient.”

Sometimes when we enter new territory, it’s not novelty we need, but familiarity. We need something to ground us and help us get our footing. I’ve written a lot about Jim Harrison, who I consider one of the writers to have the biggest impact on me, both through his writing, his persona, and how he lived his life. And despite having written numerous great novels, novellas, and short stories, it’s often his poetry that I end up keeping nearby.

I was reminded recently of Harrison’s poem, “I believe.” He lists things he believes in, which include: steep drop-offs, empty swimming pools, the overgrown path to the lake, abandoned farmhouses, gravel roads that end, leaky wooden boats…”

You know what? I’ll let you read it for yourself, noting that the poem ends with “struggling to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.” Let me just say that music, movies, books–these thinks aren’t just diversions that distract us from what’s going on in the world; instead, they are connection, connecting us to the artists, connecting us to something bigger than ourselves; connecting us to each other through music, art, and stories; and in the process of creation, connecting us to God.

Don’t bury your talents

We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.

This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.

The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.

Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:

“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”
N.T. Wright

We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.

None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.

Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.

There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:

“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”
Wright

In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.

It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.

What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.

Contributing a Verse

Sometimes it’s there, just below the surface. My mind is distracted, looking for the familiar, but knowing it won’t come from there. It’s something new.

A beautiful morning, or evening, outside, smelling cut grass, swooning in the start of spring. It seems like normal. But go to grab groceries and it hits: it’s eerie. Off. Something is not right. You can feel it.

We are all called to respond in our own ways. To stay home, yes, but also called to look differently, think differently, maybe to live and be differently. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.

Before COVID-19 arrived, Fr. Bill Ortt put out a Lenten challenge at Christ Church Easton: 1) Find a word that speaks to you; 2) choose a Bible verse that uses your word; 3) Memorize your verse and pray, meditate, reflect on your word/verse as a Lenten mantra of sorts; 4) Write your word on one of the small, wooden crosses the church gives out. And if you are inspired to, take a picture and share your cross-verse.

There have been some wholly wonderful responses. “Heal,” “light,” “love,” “pray,” “faith”–it’s been inspiring to see and read how people came to their word (or their word came to them) and what they are doing with the experience.

My word wasn’t there at first. Or it was, but I wasn’t listening.

As a church, when it was clear that we weren’t going to be gathering together for a time, we had to figure out what that meant; what it looked like; how to stay relevant, be there for people; how to continue to shine a light; how to connect; how to help people be hopeful. We had to do things differently.

We had to create something new. Or at least new to us. We moved our meetings, small groups, and prayer gatherings to ZOOM. Worship services (what would worship look like now?) to Facebook Live. And our music ministries became video artists–I stop every time I hear/watch “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” or “Be Still My Soul.” These are videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times now on Facebook and shared widely. They strike a chord, they speak to hope and faith and love and connection. They weren’t a priority before social distancing, until they became one of the key ways to communicate. This is a time that is teaching us how to create, how to be differently, how to look at what’s important. And it’s not about adapting to a temporary predicament–it’s about moving toward, embracing something new.

I am fascinated by stories. As a writer, I read them, listen to them, think about them, and hope to share and tell them in new and interesting ways. But with between work, two teenage daughters, life, it’s not always easy to make time to write.

As I sat, prayed, reflected, my word, both professionally and personally was there all along: CREATE. And when I started looking through Bible verses, Isaiah practically smacked me upside the head:

“For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.”
Isaiah, 65:17

In this time, our time, maybe we are called to look at our lives with an eye towards creating better lives.

Maybe we are called to look at our personal and collective stories, and tell new ones.

If our world is necessarily knocked off its axis, perhaps we can look at how to get it spinning around love, kindness, community, sustainability, and creativity.

If I stay home, simply waiting, doing things as I’ve always done them, and at the other end of this pandemic, just shrug, and go back to business as usual, what have I learned or gained from the experience?

This isn’t meant to be some Pollyanna motivational speech. I know my shortcomings. I know I will be lazy, I will fall short, I will miss opportunities. I try to own my humanity, my flaws, and my mistakes. But the idea behind a word, a mantra, a verse to think, pray, reflect on, is what I set my eyes to–what I aim towards, what I strive for. And in the face of a global virus the world is responding to in ways that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it is a legitimate time to look at our lives and think about where and how we are and where we want to be.

Each spring, I go back to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s become a way to enter the season of rebirth, of resurrection. And this year I am hit especially by his “O ME! O LIFE!” in the same space and way that Robin Williams quoted it in Dead Poets Society.

We are here. We exist. It didn’t have to be, but it is. And in life’s powerful play, we may contribute a verse. That is what we create. But it’s up to us.

I want to wake up open to what it is God is creating in the world and creating in me.

“Create in my a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
(Psalm 51:10-12)

One bloom might hold it all

The magnolia in the front yard is a ten-day tree. For maybe ten days at most, there is nothing like it; it’s in full blaze glory. Then it drops its bloom and doesn’t say much the rest of the year. But those ten days.

As our unplanned retreat/social distancing kicks in, we are in the middle of ten-day Magnolia time. It’s an excuse to sit on the bench under the tree, to walk around it, to put my head between blooms and breathe in. If I’m honest, I don’t need a virus to do this, it’s life everyday as long as I’m paying attention.

The sky is still dark, but the birds are noisy. It’s transition time, just before the sun changes the horizon’s color. Morning routine: coffee, prayer, reading, writing. Cat purring on the armrest against my left arm, dog curled up against my right thigh–demanding bookends with fur. As it warms, morning time will be on the deck or in the writing shed.

This early dark time matters. It frames the day with attention. It sets the tone before the day’s demands start. Lately, I’ve been thinking about writing, storytelling, the force of words that point to something words can’t really get to.

One of the books currently traveling with me–in the car, in waiting rooms, to work, the spare minutes picking the girls up from school.

In the preface to “The Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction,” the Rose Metal Press folks point to Bernard Cooper’s notion that short nonfiction needs “an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens… until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

Mull that last phrase as you sit to pray, read, or write, “some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

Overshadowed by the Coronavirus these days, is Lent, a season where we look to pare away those things that distract us so that we can draw closer to God. When I spend time in the Bible, it’s the Gospels that sing. It’s not Paul’s letters, it’s Jesus’ stories. Christ tries to show us and tell us what it means to be human in a way we too often overlook.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Matthew 13:31-32

Ummm… thanks, Jesus. What the heck are we supposed to do with that? Even his followers want to know why he always talks in parables. And this is a parable told after the Parable of the Sower and after Jesus broke it down for them. It was part of our reading in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” on Saturday. Wright points out that, Jesus, “told parables because what he was doing was so different, so explosive, and so dangerous, that the only way he could talk about it was to use stories. They are earthly, and sometimes heavenly, stories with an emphatically earthly meaning. They explain the full meaning not of distant, timeless truths, but of what Jesus was up to then and there. This is what is going on, they say, if only you had eyes to see. Or, indeed, as Jesus frequently says, ears to hear… Jesus’ parables invite the hearer, to look at the world, and particularly at Jesus himself, in a whole new way.”

I am guilty of not catching anything the first time, or first several times, I hear it. It takes time for me to learn things, to let them sink in. I need seeds. I need seeds that take time to take root, take time to grow, but once they are there, they stick, and maybe they bloom in each of us uniquely, in ways that can only be made manifest in the exact way, with our particular eyes and ears.

Often my eyes and ears work against me. Words I’ve heard or used too many times or sights that have become ordinary and overlooked. We don’t see God if we don’t look, or take the time to make the connection. Maybe the more we connect, the more we awaken ourselves to His presence.

American Goldfinch, by Michael Brown. Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Reading further in the Flash Field Guide, there is an essay by Lia Purpura called, “Augury.” She walks up on a dead Goldfinch hanging in a tree, caught up in fishing line. It’s jarring, disturbing, unexpected, confusing. It’s wrong for what is supposed to be there, how things are supposed to be.

Her description of this moment, this encounter is eerie and uncanny and beautiful all at once. In maybe a why moment for the experience, she latches onto, “It’s good to stand beneath a thing that takes words away. It’s good to be in a place where thought can’t form the usual way.”

Experiencing things that take words away, where thoughts can’t form the usual way.

I prefer my encounters to be with live Goldfinches, as I am sure Purpura does as well. But I appreciate her flash essay in the way it helps me to look at Goldfinches with new eyes. It helps me to look at writing with new eyes. Hopefully it helps me look at life with new eyes.

Life and death loom large. While I sit here, for the time I have, life looms larger. It’s part of the ten-day tree time. New birds, Goldfinches included, are appearing at the feeders, and at the edge of woods where I hike or trail run. Crisp, spring sunrises and sunsets are punctuated with cool, clear night skies full of stars. in the midst of it all, the magnolia makes a statement.

If I have eyes to see, one bloom might hold it all.

Grace leans out of the alley

As a people, we get in our own way a lot. We make ourselves so busy, so manic, so overscheduled, and so quick to be heard that we rarely listen. And what and to whom we listen are often suspect.

“[A]lmost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of ‘psst’ that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.”
David Foster Wallce, Infinite Jest

I dig David Foster Wallace’s image of destiny leaning out of the alley, but we’re too busy to hear it. And the reason destiny, the big, epic, cool, yummy ideas and things that could fill and direct our lives, is left hanging out in the alley is that we’ve unknowingly designed the cities that are our lives and that is the space we’ve often left the stuff that might really matter.

Yesterday (Ash Wednesday) was the beginning of Lent. In N.T. Wright’s devotional book, “Lent for Everyone: Matthew, Year A,” he gives us a reading and some thoughts each day of the season. He begins with reminding us that when God does something new, he often involves unlikely, frequently surprised or alarmed people:

“He asks them to trust him in a new way, to put aside their natural reactions, to listen humbly for a fresh word and to act on it without knowing exactly how it’s going to work out… we may have to put our initial reactions on hold and be prepared to hear new words, to think new thoughts, and to live them out.”

I wonder if destiny isn’t the only thing we’ve shoved in the alley; I wonder if we’ve put grace there too. As we head into Lent and look for fresh words, new thoughts, and seasonal and spiritual renewal–maybe grace leans out of the alley to remind us it is there for the taking, our taking, our lives, and our hearts.

Preaching at an Ash Wednesday service at Christ Church Easton, Fr. Bill Ortt put it like this:

You are loved
You are forgiven
God wants his grace to be a part of your life.

And he quoted Psalm 90, which says, “Teach us to number our days, so that we might apply our hearts to wisdom.” (verse 12, KJV)

Mortality has loomed large in our community lately. We don’t need reminders. But that is one thing that Ash Wednesday does for us anyway. We come from dust and to dust we shall return. So we need to use the time we have the best we can. In numbering our days, we feel and learn the urgency and necessity of wisdom.

Allowing grace to speak to us, allowing grace into our lives, living into forgiveness so that we can let go of our past and be present now, and step towards what will be.

Seen/scene during Ava’s stay at Children’s Hospital in DC for testing and observation.

After Ash Wednesday services, I headed to Children’s Hospital in DC, where younger daughter Ava is staying for a few days for tests and observation to see if they can learn more about her seizures and spells. As we’re sitting in her room after breakfast, she puts on “Into the Spider-Verse,” a movie we both love.

Miles Morales is a young teenager in a new school and he doesn’t have a clue how he fits in or who he is supposed to be. After he tries to fail his way out of the school, his physics teacher calls him out and assigns him an essay.

“I’m assigning you an essay, not about physics, but about you and what kind of person you want to be.”

That’s a question we need to continually ask ourselves; an ongoing conversation. During the course of the movie, Miles finds his own way, not the way that the other Spider-Men and Women have, but a way that is his. He takes the book “Great Expectations,” turns it into street art of “No Expectations,” and lives into his personal destiny.

Maybe grace is how we get to our destiny. Maybe by reconciling and letting go of our past and the world’s designs for who we are supposed to be, and stepping into God’s grace, forgiveness, and vision for us, we can become who we are meant to be.

“My name is Miles Morales. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and for like two days, I’ve been the one and only Spider-Man. I think you know the rest. I finished my essay. Saved a bunch of people…. And when I feel alone, like no one understands what I’m going through, I remember my friends who get it. I never thought I’d be able to do any of this stuff, but I can. “

Through God’s grace, we can. So when destiny, clothed in grace, leans out of the alley, stop, lean in, and listen.