Treasure is time plus experience yielding gratitude and wonder. Finding sea glass is the same as skipping shells.
If your mind and body are tuned to a task, you are the moment.
“You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” I carry that Annie Dillard quote in my soul, the reminder of a feeling that has always been there.
Unplugged.
Astonished.
Around the world in a 20-minute drive and a short walk across the cosmos.
Holly reads Mary Oliver out loud:
“I have become older, and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger.”
When I am open and receptive, I am not alone. Sitting outside sipping coffee, I am connected to all the hands and all the lives that were involved in picking the beans, making the coffee, and getting it here.
Listening to and watching birds opens me to a symphony of sounds, colors, and graceful movements.
I see the greens of summer above and around me and I feel the slight breeze of the morning.
In the background, I can hear vehicles heading more east than west on Route 50, starting a long holiday weekend. Though I can’t know the people driving by individually, it’s not hard to picture or remember the feeling of heading to the beach for the weekend.
When I allow myself to be open and receptive, perceptive, I don’t feel isolated. I feel connected. It’s a feeling that sets the tone for the day.
In “The Book of Awakening,” Mark Nepo writes, “The dearest things in life cannot be owned, but only shared.” Last Sunday afternoon and evening, Holly and I shared a show of God’s handiwork that was awe inspiring.
Outside to watch the sunset, we listened for birds using the Cornell Ornithology Lab Merlin app’s Sound ID. We heard Indigo Buntings, Purple Martins, Cardinals, American Goldfinches, Chipping Sparrows, Carolina Wrens, Red-Eyed Vireos, and Blue Grosbeaks.
Blue Grosbeaks were new to me and they were the noisiest and most active of the birds we were hearing. As we walked down the garden, Holly pointed out a nest in a bush and as we got near, the mother flew out and into a nearby tree. As she chirped her annoyance at us being there, Sound ID showed her to be a Blue Grosbeak. Looking up more about them, their nest is exactly as described. Hope to see some little Grosbeaks soon.
Next for our evening in the yard, despite very little rain, a rainbow appeared, developed, and thickened right over the house. It was an amazing light show.
There was a stretch in my life where I loathed rainbows—they carried some baggage I didn’t feel like unpacking, and I wrote them off as illusions of light, nothing substantial, nothing of substance. And that’s all true.
But how much of the beauty we find in life and in Creation is transient and fleeting? We know that and we can still appreciate it and marvel at it when it’s there. I live for sunrises and sunsets and they are also impermanent plays of light, which need to be enjoyed in the moment.
If I want to be available to the full spectrum and experience of God’s works in Creation, I need to be open to rainbows. It’s to my benefit and God’s glory.
The next part of the show for the evening was the sunset itself, which incorporated the clouds and the whole sky.
The Sunday evening show was on the last day of June. The month of July does not include vacation or travel for us, it’s about being open to rainbows and experiencing what is around us each day and every weekend. The idea is to “carpe” the month in every way we can. I am a list maker, here are some of the things on the radar screen:
Kayaking/paddleboarding
Parks (both new and known)
Birding
Sunrises and sunsets
Be out under the stars
Live music
Fire pit nights
Beach days
Cooking/grilling
Summer reading
Skateboarding
Gardening
Walks/hikes
If we do things on that list each day and every week, we should have a shot at carpe’ing July.
A skateboarding friend Landy Cook already put some of that into play when on July 2 he organized a social skate along Rails to Trails and at the pump track and skate park in Easton. It was a good first turn out and stellar evening, to be repeated weekly.
A number of author Annie Dillard’s words dance through my head regularly. One of the main quotes is this one:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
There is no getting around that. If I daydream but never do anything, my days won’t reflect the life of my mind, and neither will my life.
Each day is an opportunity to do something. Beyond making a list of things I hope to do, what would a meaningful day, any day, look like?
What if every day included doing:
Something creative
Something prayerful/meditative
Something physical
Something practical
Something productive
Something peaceful/soothing
Something loving
Something selfless
Something outgoing
Something spontaneous
Something sensory/sensuous
If I can think about those kinds of things to do each day and look back at the end of the day to see how I did, how I spend my days might add up to a life I want to live.
Let’s begin with intention. This is a blessing/prayer shared by Rev. Susie Leight:
Been praying this on repeat for the last few weeks…trying to utter it before my feet hit the floor (if I’m awake enough) …thought it would be a good one to share again…
May I…may you…may we…
May I live this day Compassionate of heart, Clear in word, Gracious in awareness, Courageous in thought, Generous in love.
–from Matins, by John O’Donohue
What we do with our time, how we spend our days, months, years, lives is who we are to those we encounter. Our inward lives of thoughts, dreams, desires, may be infinite, but our worldly lives are the result of our time and actions.
Part Four of John O’Donohue’s book “Anam Cara,” looks at “Work as a Poetics of Growth.” The work that we do in the world helps shape us, helps us grow.
Thinking about this chapter, two quotes that come up a lot for me came to mind. The first is by writer Annie Dillard, who said:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
And the second is by poet Mary Oliver, who wrote:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one precious life?”
How we use our time matters. It is so easy to let one day run into the next without thinking about it, but when these days string together, they can become large stretches of our lives if we don’t pay attention.
O’Donohue writes:
“Everything alive is in movement. This movement we call growth. The most exciting form of growth is not mere physical growth but the inner growth of one’s soul and life. It is here that the holy longing within the heart brings one’s life into motion. The deepest wish of the heart is that this motion does not remain broken or jagged but develops sufficient fluency to become the rhythm of one’s life.”
In the preceding chapters, he has taken us through our senses, our interior lives, our solitude, and now he is pointing out that these interior lives, our thoughts, dreams, and gifts, want to be brought into motion in our outward lives. It’s not enough to have them swirling around within us, we have to find a way to give them expression.
This is our work.
But in our society, there is a bit of a rub. Let’s think about what happens when we meet someone. We say ‘Hello, how are you?’, we make some small talk, and often the next question is ‘What do you do?’ Generally speaking we mean, what do you do for a living, what is your job?
If you feel like your job is a good reflection of your life, or points in the direction of who you are, then that is great. But if you don’t, how much better do we know someone, or do they know us by knowing what job we do?
Maybe you work construction, but your passion is being on the water fishing. Maybe you work an office job, but the thing you most look forward to is tutoring or coaching kids. Maybe you are a server, but you get home and paint or write or garden or have some way to express your creativity.
Our work is bigger than our day or night jobs. O’Donohue writes about a gravestone in London:
“Here lies Jeremy Brown born a man and died a grocer.” Often people’s identities, that wild inner complexity of soul and color of spirit, become shrunken to their work identities.”
This takes nothing away from our work identities, which can be life affirming. If people think of your kindness, your smile, your creativity and talent and know you as a teacher, a landscaper, a bartender, a boat builder, a painter, then that is a wonderful thing. But we are more than our professions–we are also sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, partners, etc.
Part of the problem, O’Donohue poses, is that we get stuck looking at life, jobs, the world around us in one particular way and that can become limiting. He suggests that we visualize the mind as a tower of windows that we are looking out.
“Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that greet your gaze. Through these different windows, you see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity.”
In the last chapter we discussed that how we look at things determines what we see, what we find. In that same way, looking at things, including our work and our lives, in different ways can be so important.
Each day brings us new opportunities.
I recently got to be the grunt labor, branch-hauler for a tree expert friend who helped me cut up a downed branch that reached over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Listening to him talk about his love for trees and hearing his knowledge, then watching him work chainsaws and pole-saws like an artist, I knew I was watching someone do the thing they were created to do. It was a joyful and awe-inspiring experience. I’ve felt the same thing when I was a line cook watching an incredible chef do what they do. I’ve seen it in gardeners, teachers, preachers, and watermen. I’ve experienced it being around parents and grandparents, around birdwatchers, and skateboarders. I’ve seen it in a friend listening intently to someone sharing something that was big for them.
When we witness or experience those moments of calling, meaning, and connection, time moves differently.
Do we make time to do the things we love? Do we find ways to express our inner-longings in our daily lives? If we don’t, what will our lives become?
“In order to feel real. we need to bring that inner invisible world to expression.”
We want to seen, known, valued for who we are. In order for people to know us in that way, we have to find a way to express who we are in our lives. If we aren’t doing that, people can’t know us and we can feel frustrated that we aren’t finding a way to express ourselves. It can’t stay inside us. O’Donohue points out that if we want to change our lives, until it enters the practices of our days, it is all talk.
Work is maybe a misleading word here. O’Donohue also talks about the danger of productivity becoming God, which reduces each individual to a function. He talks about needing to think less about competition and more about working together. And he talks about the danger of reducing time to an achievement, when time should also be for wonder and creativity.
On Monday (August 15), the same day our class met, Frederick Buechner died at 96 years old. Buechner has been one of the most influential writers, thinkers, and theologians in my own spiritual growth. And he has written a lot about vocation. Vocation might be a more complete word to use here instead of work. Buechner has called vocation, “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”
That says so much, but Buechner explained a bit more. He points out that vocation as a word comes from:
“Vocare, to call, of course, and a person’s vocation is a person’s calling. It is the work that they are called to in this world, the thing they are summoned to spend their life doing. We can speak of a person choosing their vocation, but perhaps it is at least as accurate to speak of a vocation’s choosing a person, of a call’s being given and a person hearing it, or not hearing it. And maybe that is the place to start: the business of listening and hearing. A person’s life is full of all sorts of voices calling them in all sorts of directions. Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from outside. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are. Which do we listen to? What kind of voice do we listen for?
Vocation. Listening and hearing. Where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.
Our friend and brother Bruce Richards recently died. He spent his professional career as a pilot–in the Air Force during Vietnam, then as a commercial pilot. He was retired when he moved to Easton; he came to Christ Church Easton to buy a crab cake during the Waterfowl Festival and for the next 18 years helped create a new caregiving ministry, took Communion to nursing homes, and was an inspiration and loving friend to everyone he encountered. He was living out a vocation.
Bruce worked closely with Carol Callaghan, who was a mentor to him and to so many people. Carol was a school teacher who found and felt a calling to ordination later in her life and became the first woman ordained as a Deacon at Christ Church Easton. Carol paved the way for Rev. Barbara Coleman, Rev. Susie Leight, and those of us who are now discerning and following a path that may lead to that same place.
Like Bruce and Carol, may we all find a calling, a vocation that speaks to our inner longing; that connects us to God; and that inspires and encourages others to live lives of love, creativity, and service.
Let’s close with O’Donohue’s blessing at the end of the chapter:
May the light of your soul guide you. May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart. May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul. May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work. May your work never weary you. May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement. May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences. May the day never burden. May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises. May evening find you gracious and fulfilled. May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected. May your soul calm, console, and renew you.
A blind girl sees for the first time after getting her sight from cataract surgery. Annie Dillard describes the girl’s experience visiting a garden:
“She is greatly astonished and can scarcely be persuaded to answer, stands speechless in front of the tree, which she only names on taking hold of it, and then as ‘the tree with the lights in it.'”
I don’t know how many times I have gone back to Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” but I’d forgotten that passage until coming across it again, afresh, while reading John Eldredge. I love the description of “the tree with the lights in it.”
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. In his sermon this morning. Father Scott Albergate invited us to look at Advent as a time to “pause and seek a fresh start in your life.” He described Advent as having a couple points, which resonated with me: 1) to live in hope, and 2) to live with a sense of a call to action and a purpose.
This has been a year of a lot of reflection for me, of trying to figure things, life out (nothing new there). It’s been a year where I have felt God and Christ in my life in ways I haven’t before, and I have tried to get out of the way, to surrender to these rolling waves that come over me, which I don’t have words to describe. They come in prayer, on walks, while running, while writing, raking leaves. All I can do is ride them as best I can.
Advent is new for me in that way. I’ve been through 40-some Advent seasons, and yet T.S. Eliot could have been using my eyes to say:
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.
It’s not coincidence that I’ve written about Dillard and Eliot before, quoting some of the same passages, but now they circle back via Eldredge or others, and they are new, changed, even though the words are the same. I read them differently.
These waves of faith and feeling and newness aren’t constant. I misstep, get turned around, make mistakes on a regular and frequent basis. Life is still confusing and I still struggle.
But I hear Father Scott invite us to look back at “where we see God’s movement in our lives in the past year,” and I know He is at work in new ways; starting things this year that haven’t been there in the past.
There are times when I feel beat down by life. And there are times when I feel like the tree with the lights in it.
Light. Having new eyes, seeing things differently. Starting life afresh is choosing to be awake to what is going on around us; choosing to be awake to God at work around us and through us.
I was pulled into this photograph today, and the photography of Pete Muller more broadly afterwards. There is something about the landscape, the river, the boys tending their cows, a beauty in the present moment. It takes me around the world to Kenya, a place I have never been, and connects me through the human experience, nature, caring for animals (it is Muller walking his dog that puts him there). I can’t say for sure why, but the scene gives me a deep sense of peace; if a scene can smile, this one does for me.
Glory be to God for dappled things– For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty–”
Hopkins, Eliot, Dillard, each are awake to everything around them, each moment.
Advent is a time to pause and reflect and a call to action. It is both a looking forward with hope, and a being awake to life and what God is doing right now. Part of our job, going back to Father Scott’s sermon, is “to usher in the realm of God in the present moment.”
