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.
“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” That line from Shunryu Suzuki and the idea of beginner’s mind have stuck with me as much or more than anything I’ve read. It applies to pretty well every breath and step we take each day, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately with different things–particularly practices and passions where you have to hit reset every time you do them.
Beginner’s mind has been loud for running, something I started doing when I was 15, but running doesn’t care how long you’ve done it. Every run is its own thing, no matter how good or bad the last one was. On a nine-mile run this morning, the races and distances I have run in the past don’t count. They don’t get me a step further. In getting ready for the Tuckahoe 25K (15.5 mile) trail race in November, I’m two minutes per mile slower than I was three years ago, when I was running more and in better shape. I may get some of that back, but I’m not really worried about it, I just like going out to run.
Seeing birds scatter from phragmites and cattails, watching cardinals and blue jays in trees along the rail trail; stopping to look off bridges at the sun coming through clouds; or watching a monarch butterfly fly across my path, followed instantly by a leaf of almost the same color, moving in the same way, mimicking each other, as God smiles and says, “see what I did there?” Even running on the same roads and routes I have run for years, there is always something new and different to hit the reset button and dial up the wonder.
Beginner’s mind has turned up during prayer or meditation, where what I did yesterday or last month or last year doesn’t mean I will show up, or make time, or connect today. If I want to get something out of prayer, I have to be mindful. N.T. Wright, in his book “The Lord and His Prayer,” says:
“Whenever we pray, that is what we are coming to do: to pursue the mystery, to listen and respond to the voice we thought we just heard, to follow the light which beckons round the next corner, to lay hold of the love of God which has somehow already laid hold of us.”
N.T. Wright
It’s funny how you can take something like the Lord’s Prayer, which maybe you’ve heard or recited enough not to even listen to the words anymore, but when you take it apart, pray or reflect on it line by line, or read about it, how it can take on new life, new meaning. Whether prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, or meditation, coming at it with beginner’s mind opens it to wonder and newness.
Each year, Uncle Chad and the kids make sand sculptures, just so they can wreck them.
Every year at the beach, my sister’s husband comes up with new ideas for sand sculptures. He and the kids have created airplanes, dragons, castles, all intricately and painstakingly built. But his end goal, the highlight of the creation, is when he has the kids destroy it. Sometimes they line up youngest to oldest to take their shots at it. The joy is in creating it, not trying to make it last. In that, their sculptures are like the sand mandalas the Tibetan monks create, simply to wipe them away. You start anew, every day.
Beginner’s mind applies to having new ears as well as new eyes. On the last mile of this morning’s run, the farthest I have run in a long time, Arrested Development’s “Tennessee” shuffled up.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this song, both when it came out, and from being on my running playlist for a while now. But it’s come to mean more over the last few years. The singer is talking to God and about their relationship. The song is a prayer.
“Lord it’s obvious we got a relationship Talkin’ to each other every night and day Although you’re superior over me we talk to each other in a friendship way…
I ask you, Lord, why you enlightened me without the enlightenment of all my folks He said, cuz I set myself on a quest for truth and he was there to quench my thirst. But I am still thirsty. The Lord allowed me to drink some more He said what I am searching for are The answers to all which are in front of me the ultimate truth started to get blurry..
Speech (Todd Thomas)
There are songs whose lyrics wash over me new and differently maybe each time I hear them. At the end of a run, when legs are heavy, mind wants to be on autopilot, breathing is conscious, in a moment created and shared with the Universe, is an old song, a prayer, between a man and God.
Beginner’s mind is coming back for more. It’s seeing possibility. It’s starting again. It’s realizing we aren’t perfect and we don’t really know anything. It is finding wonder in the same roads, in the same songs, in the same body, but seeing it differently. It’s being thirsty for more.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Who wouldn’t want more of each of those in their lives? Those are the fruits of the Spirit as Paul describes them in his letter to the Galatians.
April 13-15, Christ Church Easton went to Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, Delaware, for an Alpha Weekend retreat. More than 40 people headed for the woods, the beach, cabins, bonfires, camaraderie, laughter, and discussions in small groups about our own journeys, struggles, questions, and where we are.
This is our third Alpha Retreat in the past year, running the Alpha Course in the spring and the fall, and I have been blown away each time with amazing and honest people and generous spirits. And the deep laughter that comes with spending a weekend with people in cool places, talking about stuff that matters.
When you ask questions like “How does God guide us?” and “How can I make the most out of the rest of my life?” and people get real with their stories and experiences, profound and unexpected things can happen.
It’s often the unscripted time that makes the weekend. Try showing up at a camp with cabins on the water on Friday the 13th and get ready for the Jason stories. Give people a beach, bonfire, marshmallows, hot dogs, and guitars, and you have an instant party. Break bread together on the beach and in the dining hall, gathered to talk and learn about faith, and in my experience, the Holy Spirit is present in those moments, with these people.
Some people think of worship as what happens at a church service. And it is. But worship is also much more than that. The entire weekend was a celebration, worship. Worship can connect us to God, to people, and to nature, creation. And Camp Arrowhead is a setting to allow all those things to happen. On Sunday morning, before breakfast, I wandered the camp, finding Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Cardinals, Blue Jays. I sat down to read and think about Galatians again after Saturday and read in Gary Snyder’s “Turtle Island,” which is a book I almost always carry.
the path is whatever passes–no end in itself.
the end is, grace–ease–
healing, not saving.
singing the proof
the proof of the power within.
Joining Snyder’s words, the path, the weekend was grace, ease, healing, singing–the proof of the power within.
After breakfast, and our last small group gathering for the weekend, we gather for a worship service proper, a celebration and culmination of the our time together. Jerrett Hansen, our interim pastor who joined us for the weekend points out, “When the church is in its proper place, we don’t have to go through this thing called life alone.”
He talks about the power of simple signs that we can see throughout our lives if we aren’t too busy looking for the big signs.
“We have been given the great gift in our community to be signs to each other.”
This morning (Monday), I woke up thinking about the Saturday night bonfire on the beach; of everyone coming up with the best way to roast marshmallows or hot dogs; the laughter and conversations. And I got this in a daily e-mail of Frederick Buechner’s writing:
“In the pages of Scripture, fire is holiness, and perhaps never more hauntingly than in the little charcoal fire that Jesus of Nazareth, newly risen from the dead, kindles for cooking his friends’ breakfast on the beach at daybreak.”
And that’s maybe what a weekend like this is about, what a faith community, a church, is all about. During the Easter season, post-Resurrection: being signs to each other; helping one another along the way; staying connected to God, to the Holy Spirit, to each other, through Jesus Christ.
Faith and wonder are siblings. They begin in a curiosity, a fascination with something beyond us that we can’t fully comprehend, but we want more. Maybe they are intertwined, spinning around each other like a spiral shell.
Some people may feel like they outgrow either or both faith and wonder–they fill their minds only with facts that fit inside what can be understood and categorized. And there is little time for things that don’t fit.
In his book, “Simply Christian,” N.T. Wright works with the metaphor of hidden, living springs. He says to imagine those springs paved over with concrete so thick the springs couldn’t penetrate it, and that a complex system of pipes was built to use the water, chemicals added, and the water was controlled and brought to people, so that they didn’t have to do anything to get it. Useful, regulated, controlled, right to your door with no work. No thought. Wright posits that an explosion, something between a volcano and an earthquake taking place, that none of the water regulators could explain. The water, he says, is “‘spirituality,’ the hidden spring that bubbles up within human hearts and human societies.”
I started reading Wright to get to know the man behind Bible study guides that we will be using for classes on the Gospel according to Matthew and Paul’s Letter to the Romans this fall at Christ Church Easton. It has felt pretty quickly like I may have found another member of my tribe of writers–Thomas Merton, Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, John Eldredge, Anne Lamott–who look at the world through a lens of faith.
The other book in my beach reading stack this week is Victoria Erickson‘s “Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being.” I’ve written about it a lot, think about it even more, and try to live and spark it when I can, but I often feel like wildness, passion, wonder, is the thing we (I) have the hardest time keeping in sight when daily work and life can keep us (me) so focused on what needs to be done–all good stuff, but all demanding time and attention.
Erickson gets us back to the wonder within us. “Are there equal parts magic, contentment and quiet beauty when you’re just being simple? If not, then wait for it.” She writes about walking, something I see also in running:
When I walk, I can no longer feel fear or weight or worry or pressure, as they vanish beneath the rise of movement, breath and creative fire. To me, walking is recharging my life.
This morning I ran barefoot along the beach in Ocean City. This dance of spirituality (Wright’s water), faith, and wonder spiraling in my head; my head which wasn’t clearing itself as it was directed.
I passed a stretch of beach where people were learning to surf, kids and adults. I stopped and watched for a bit, and smiled. In a world where there are a million options for things to do and demands on our time, people are learning to surf.
If I want to play Wright’s metaphor into the physical world, where water is spirituality, that’s a response that makes me happy. Be in it, be a part of it, learn to ride it. We know the ocean is bigger than we can see, we know it is beyond us, and so, we learn to surf.
Faith and wonder both start from within us. They are a part of us, our response to something bigger than our minds, which we want to know more about.
Summer means different things to different people. If you are a kid, it means no school. If you dig the water, it means game on. If you are in Maryland, it can mean eating steamed crabs, rockfish season, river swimming, and/or lightning bugs. Maybe it means family vacations.
Winter and spring this year were fully scheduled. Events and programs at the community center; three different evening small groups at Christ Church Easton; lacrosse season and school for the girls. All great things, which drove where and when to be and what to do.
Summer right now is an opening up of the schedule. But in some ways, I can already feel this notion of chaos taking over from order, or inactivity as a response to hyperactivity. So it’s time to create fun and balance and challenge all at the same time.
Yesterday morning, I found Paul’s Letter to the Galatians staring at me:
…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control… If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Galatians 5, 22-25)
That is a great reminder, note to self, and guide for how to approach summer, or life in general, every day.
With all that as backdrop, I like making fun “to do” lists. Here’s one for the summer months.
1. Summer reading – read three unread/unfinished books from my bookshelf. My “to be read” stacks of books grow and books I have started or wanted to read get cast off. I started yesterday by picking back up T. H. White’s “The Once and Future King,” White’s wild take on the King Arthur legend, an imagination-shaping story for me as a kid, a favorite book of my brother-in-law, a book I have started and not finished. I am giving myself to the end of June. Other likely contenders are James Hillman’s “A Blue Fire,” Richard Rohr’s “The Divine Dance” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions.” Every summer should have some Vonnegut.
2. Regular running – as a 5-mile run yesterday evening can attest to, I have some work to do. I let my running slide this winter/spring, and it is one of the habits that rights my body and mind.
3. Paddleboarding – at least 50 miles of summer paddleboarding. More than doable without being a stretch goal at all. I’ve just written about stand-up paddleboarding on the Shore, I live walking distance to the water, make the miles happen.
4. It’s called Natitude – go to five Washington Nationals home games (September counts). When I worked in DC, it was a habit. The girls are Nats fans and enjoy live baseball, and we haven’t caught a Nats home game the last two seasons. Time to change that.
5. Prayer – My deepest connections and most meaningful moments are when I can feel the Holy Spirit at work, when I “let go and let God” to quote a friend and small group leader. That happens more frequently when I silence and open my mind. Making time for prayer is an integral part of being guided by the Spirit.
6. Life’s a Beach – we’ve got our annual Ocean City pilgrimage on the map for July. But Assateague Island is easy. Boat and paddleboard beach exploring. Make more time beach time.
7. Go new places – I’m going to keep this broad. It could be trails, small towns, road trips, scheduled or unscripted.
8. Grow things – summer mulching has begun. I need to plant tomatoes again and regain that connection to the earth, even potted flowers and plants and the habit of watering in the mornings while drinking coffee.
9. Make a skateboarding adventure – there are a few folks who I think will be on board with this. We’ve pondered the Western Maryland Rail Trail before. I don’t know what this might become or where, but I want to recapture the feeling skater Jason Adams talks about here.
10. Live music – summer and live music are meant to go together. In June, we’ve got Josh Ritter at the Avalon Theatre and The Specials in Baltimore on the books. The Avalon has outdoor music on Harrison Street, the community center will be having Philip Dutton and the Alligators, just to name a few.
This list is hardly exhaustive, but it’s a way to shape thinking about the summer. A way to carpe the diem. John Eldredge wrote something that resonates with me: “We are created for adventure, and if we cannot find one, we start blowing things out of proportion so it feels like we have one.”
In the case of adventure, or summer, it can also be a state of mind. Be guided by the spirit, and approach these days, weeks, and months for all that they, and we can be.
