The expression, “It takes a village to raise a child” is incomplete. The thing is, as we go through life, it never doesn’t take a village. The more I have opened myself up, welcomed friendships, been with family, worked at the church–there is never an age we don’t need a village around us. We lose people we love, we go through illnesses, life gives us things we don’t expect and aren’t ready for, and we need people. And we can be there for people.
One of the places I have seen that most clearly in my life is with our daughter Ava. I have written about her story here and there (this Tidewater Times story is maybe the best summary), Ava developing epilepsy at age 10 after brain swelling has become a defining part of her life in a way no one wants.
The village around us has included people from the Oxford Community Center and Oxford Fire Department, people from Christ Church Easton, people from Caroline and Talbot County Schools, family, friends, churches, social media, prayer lists, and goes further than I came name or be grateful enough for.
As we enter into a next phase of Ava’s care and world, I want to give an update and background for those newer to the village.
Since 2014, a range of medications have not been able to control her seizures in a way that doctors, Ava, or any of us are good with. But since moving her care to Nemours A.I. DuPont Hospital a few years back, there has been progress and some hope.
Late this past fall, we found out that Ava is a strong candidate for epilepsy ( resective brain) surgery. It comes down to what part of her brain is causing her seizures and what other cognitive functions that part of the brain is responsible for. After a number of tests, it seems likely that the seizures are coming from her left temporal lobe. They were originally worried that they were coming from her frontal lobe, which would have ruled out surgery.
The goal is for her not to have seizures any more, or total seizure freedom as the neurologists like to say. Given Ava’s case and how things have progressed, resective surgery is the best chance for her not to have any more seizures. But there are other options if that isn’t a possibility. Her neurosurgeon told us that from where Ava is right now based on test results, studies, etc., 95 percent of patients have some form of surgery available to them.
In December and January she had a contrast MRI and an angiogram, both of which are to help map where important things are so that on January 30 they can do a “stereotactic implantation of depth electrodes” to then do a long-term monitor of her seizures. Simply put, they are going to drill small holes through her skull and put monitors on her brain, then pull back her medicine and watch her having seizures.
Her neurosurgeon gave a solid analogy: when they monitor seizures on the outside of her skull, it’s like listening to a conversation through a wall; they need to step into the same room to really hear what’s being said. Because they need to know exactly where her seizures are happening and what part of her brain it is to know whether they can remove it.
This is incredibly exciting and hopeful news. It is not experimental surgery, it is something neurologists have been doing and feel is her best chance to live without seizures. And we know a young man in our community who has had the surgery and has been seizure free and thriving since.
It’s also a lot to take in, process, and sit with, both as a parent and for Ava. Excited, hopeful, nervous, and scared are all words that are tossed around regularly.
For Ava’s part, she is a rock star. She knows what she wants and she sits through medical procedures like she is eating lunch. This past year, a tattoo artist friend was ready to do a big cherry blossom tattoo on her shoulder. He asked how she did with pain/needles. She didn’t flinch or seem at all bothered through two-plus hours of drawing, coloring, and shading.
As a parent, and as a family, there are small things that make you sad. We will be in the hospital for Anna’s 21st birthday, and depending on how long they keep her (one to two weeks), Ava may be in the hospital for her 18th birthday.
If she is a candidate for resective surgery, recovery would be three to six months. Ava is scheduled to graduate from high school in the spring and is especially looking forward to senior week after graduation. So surgery would be in the middle of the summer.
But one procedure at a time, one day at a time. January 30 and the stereotactic testing is coming up. Before that, and before having to be in the hospital for two weeks, both Ava and Anna will try skiing for the first time. There are experiences to be had and memories to be made every day.
“Thank you” isn’t enough for all the love, all the prayers, all the reaching out, all the positive energy, all the good vibes and thoughts, that have come from so many people. I am, we are, so grateful.
At no point in life does it ever not take a village surrounding any of us to get us through.
The world can break our heart every single day. We can wake up grateful and things beyond our control can devastate us and leave us asking questions and feeling shattered.
The world can also show us love, connection, friendship, laughter, warmth, and spark our sense of wonder.
For all the times we don’t get to choose what happens, how do we make the most of the time that we have? How do we cultivate and appreciate moments? How can we lean into connection rather than withdraw into isolation?
As the sun comes up through the trees, I have coffee in my mug. I have a dog next to me who wonders what we’ll do today and for whom whatever the day brings is enough. I have books at my elbow that inspire and provoke me. I have pen and paper to help me record and communicate life from where I sit.
There are birds coming and going at the backyard feeders—Woodpeckers, Tufted Titmice, Chickadees, Wrens.
Whatever the day brings is enough. Because that is what will be. And at the same time, there are days when we get to decide something of what the day will be.
Jesus tells us, at the end of the Sermon on the Plain in Luke’s Gospel, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)
If we want to spread joy that will last, let’s think first about the heartbreaking days that crush us. What if on those days, someone reaches out to you; someone checks in on you; someone lets you know you are not alone—that you matter.
Let’s say that is how we want to be treated. What is stopping us from treating other people that way—today, now. If you have anyone in your life who you are thankful for, or concerned about, or who is on your heart or your mind, reach out. Say hello, say thank you, say I am thinking of you, say I appreciate you, say I love you.
Not because you will get something back, but because it is how you want to be treated. Because that is a gift that we can each give. And when we are more concerned with giving than with getting, we find we need less.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.
“Faith and Gratitude”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.
He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?
They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.
When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”
They were the fringe of the fringe.
The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.
He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.
And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.
One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.
It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.
Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.
We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.
The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:
Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?
Why the Foreigner?
This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.
But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?
I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:
“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock
I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?
Reading Scripture: WWJD?
Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.
We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.
And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?
Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.
But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.
And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?
So in this story, what does Jesus do?
Seeing and Doing
First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:
When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”
In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.
And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.
If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?
We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.
We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?
Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.
Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.
What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?
Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.
Gratitude
Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.
Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.
We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.
I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.
My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.
A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.
Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.
And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.
When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.
I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.
Salvation
Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”
Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.
Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.
That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.
Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”
Living with a Grateful Heart
What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?
I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.
Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.
It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.
So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.
As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.
We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.
Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.
And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.
Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.
Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.
I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.
Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:
“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”
I love Shel Silverstein. I have never wanted to punch a character in a story more than the boy in his book, “The Giving Tree.” (as he gets older, not when he was a kid). I had a hard time reading it to the girls because the boy just takes and takes and blows off the tree, and never gets it. My blood is boiling a bit now just thinking about it. But Silverstein couldn’t describe humankind in our time any better.
I aspire to a more complementary relationship to the trees in my life (I get the irony of having a wooden skateboard in the photo). Over the past several years, a particular tree stands out. It’s an Osage Orange tree on the shoreline of the Oxford Cemetery. I have made a point of sitting under it for some time now.
Of late, rest has been hard to come by. At lease the right kind of rest. Rest, for me, is about tuning out the constant demands of what is coming up, and being completely in the moment. It’s when time doesn’t matter and actually passes differently. It’s not the kind of rest that comes from sitting on a couch or sleeping at night. Frequently, it comes from being outside–hiking, walking, skateboarding, reading, bird watching, exploring, kayaking, paddleboarding, reading or writing. I haven’t had enough of that time, those moments lately, and I can tell.
When I rest is when I am open to wonder. When I rest, gratitude overflows–in part because I am not rushing to the next thing. I am not in a hurry.
Thursday morning, I fought the pull of the couch and hit Oxford Conservation Park with longboard, binoculars, and notebook. “Skatebirding” has become a new favorite thing to do. I skated to the cemetery and pulled up under my “Sitting Tree.”
Double-drop longboards make for great birding seats. As I sat to clear my head, think, pray, and take in the morning, a raft of ducks was just off the shore. Watching them move about as a group, they were doing what ducks do. And what is it that people do in that way? What is it that is natural to us, that puts us in a place of doing what we should be doing?
Beyond Mallards, Canvasbacks, and Wood Ducks, I don’t know all the duck types around by first sight. Watching them and checking Cornell’s Merlin App, I pegged them as Ruddy Ducks, but pinged a birding expert friend to make sure. As I watched them, time moved differently. A solo Bufflehead swam up to the Ruddies a couple times, thinking they were his peeps, and then both times flew away skimming the water in a hurry when he realized they weren’t.
These are not my photos, they are from bird ID sites, but the top left is a Bufflehead and the others are male and female non-breeding Ruddy Ducks.
It was the tree, the ducks, the cove, the breeze, the sunrise, the shoreline, and I got to be a part of it. Sitting there, gratitude and joy welled up and started coming out of my eyes. I know I can’t communicate it, but maybe you’ve had moments like that.
Skating back to the conservation park, I wanted to write all this down–something I haven’t been doing enough of except chicken scratch in notebooks.
We’re looking headlong into the holidays. It’s a busy time of year, it’s nighttime dark at 5:30pm and it’s getting colder. Mornings like yesterday remind me that I need to rest. And to rest, I need to get outside. The Sitting Tree is still there. Where am I?
I didn’t find Big Foot. Or an Indigo Bunting, for that matter, but neither of those things is the point. It’s about searching. More than that, it’s about being out there, and being grateful.
September has been a month of making the most of weekends and doing things that I’ve been wanting/meaning to do for some time. Earlier in the month, the girls and I drove to Asheville, NC, to catch up with friends who moved there three years ago. We hiked, played in streams, visited some breweries (not the girls), sat on decks and caught up, and I even got a happy hour, back porch haircut. It was a great reminder to stay connected to good friends and change the scenery.
After a spring and summer at home and working, September made for a second opportunity to do something different. I stumbled across the C&O Canal Trust. The canal and tow-path are so close to home and so cool–we would occasionally run along it for cross country practice at St. James School, and then I got a 26.3-mile taste of it as part of the JFK 50-Miler more than a decade ago. Future adventures will include staying in canal houses, but in this case, the Trust website pointed me towards canal towns. And in particular, to Shepherdstown, WV, the former stomping grounds of a friend, artist, and mentor of mine. And the weekend assembled itself upon finding Sundogs Bed & Breakfast.
I can’t sing enough praise about Shepherdstown or Sundogs.
Shepherdstown is a college town that reminds me of Chestertown, MD, here on the Shore, but if you put it in the West Virginia mountains. It’s cool, funky, with shops, cafes, restaurants, theaters, a weekend farmer’s market, all built around Shepherd University. And as cool towns do, Shepherdstown has a get-lost-in independent bookstore in Four Seasons Books. It’s still COVID time, there aren’t any sort of gatherings or events going on, and masks were the norm and required to go in anywhere.
For us, looking for a weekend to unplug, unwind, and recharge, it was more about being outside than in town, and Sundogs hit the spot.
When one of your B&B hosts is a horticulturalist who has designed and revitalized gardens for Dumbarton Oaks, The American Horticultural Society River Farm and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate, you can bet you are in for something incredible.
It’s maybe a 4 to 5-mile drive out of town, to a 46-acre retreat with trails running all over the property. The five rooms are named after dogs that the owners have rescued, and it’s a dog-friendly inn. Small B&Bs reflect the character, passions, and interests of the owners, and a horticulturalist who designs gardens and a NOAA meteorologist, who are both conservationists, animal rescuers, and fix vegetarian breakfasts for their guests in the morning.
Holly and I spent early mornings with coffee literally surrounded by hummingbirds, reading and bird watching, before hiking trails late mornings and early afternoons. I’m not much of a birder, but the list of birds I saw includes: Goldfinches, hummingbirds, Nuthatches, Tufted Titmice, Cardinals, Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Eastern Bluebirds, Carolina Wrens, Cormorants, Pileated Woodpecker, Red-Shouldered Hawks, and Cedar Waxwings.
Shepherdstown and Sundogs are both places I hope to return to. Which brings me to Indigo Buntings, birds that are around Sundogs, and I am sure were around us. It’s a common enough bird, even on the Eastern Shore where we live, I’ve just never really gotten good eyes on one (I may have seen one fly across the road into the woods while I was driving in Caroline County, it was the right blue, but I can’t count that).
We spent some time at Sundogs searching for Buntings, but not much time. We tried to learn and listen for the song, and walked the edge of the woods and trees in the field where they are often seen. But didn’t make it the focus of the weekend. Nor have I made it too big a focus of watching birds–just something that will be cool when it happens.
What it requires to be ‘in search of’ something is to be out there, to show up, to make the attempt, and that means something. A few years ago, I wrote about being in search of the Snow Bunting (Buntings are a theme), and so much of what I wrote there still stands. It’s more about being tuned in, mindful, and grateful for the search and for the experience. What it means is to get out in nature, to look around, to keep my bird feeders filled and notice who shows up.
As we gear up for fall, there are a number of adventures I am gearing up for, some physical, some mental, some spiritual.
One adventure coming this fall that has been more than a decade in the making is skateboarding the 26-mile Western Maryland Rail Trail in and around Hancock, MD. A friend read about the paved trail when we first found long distance longboarding/skateboarding, it’s just never materialized into an adventure. We’re looking to change that in early fall, likely with a camping/backpacking element to make the most of the trip.
The Western Maryland Rail Trail (WMRT) is a 26 mile long paved trail that stretches from a mile west of historic Fort Frederick State Park in Big Pool, Maryland to its western terminus at the Potomac River in Little Orleans, Maryland.
Spectacular river views, vistas of hardwood covered mountains exploding with color in the fall, rock formations, dramatic tunnels, transportation history and pristine wilderness all within a few hours drive from Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD and Pittsburgh, PA.
The WMRT is perfect for hiking, biking, inline skating (rollerblading) or, weather permitting, cross country skiing. One excellent feature is that the entire trail is handicap accessible. The trail is especially suited to families, novice cyclists (it’s almost completely flat), and for anyone seeking a pleasant, leisurely ride.
Biking is the most popular use of the WMRT, with 26 miles of paved trail. The excellent western section follows the rugged mountain terrain west of Hancock, offering great views of the Potomac and surrounding mountains, and no interstate noise!
The more time I spend skateboarding, the more I realize, for me, it’s not about doing crazy tricks or accomplishing epic trips that are hard to pull off–it’s about being outside, having fun, skating with friends, with wheels rolling on pavement. In the spirit of being “in search of,” it’s a way of being in search of fun/stoke that only requires you to do it in order to find it.
Adventures of the mind can happen daily. And as a book nerd, those are journeys I look forward to every morning with my coffee. And there is something just cool about mind adventures with a group of fellow readers. We’ve had group reads of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (some actually finished that doorstop of a tome), and some of Thomas Pynchon’s “Mason & Dixon,” which also involved hiking to find Mason Dixon markers.
This fall’s first literary journey was inspired by the trailer for the forthcoming movie Dune. A fairly common view is that Frank Herbert’s epic novel is the best science fiction novel ever written. And I’ve never read it. So we have a group of five of us (so far, two of whom are English teachers, which speaks to the book being literarily legit) who are making the journey through the book. I am a little over 100 pages in, and I am looking for more time to read because it has pulled me in already. I am sure there will be more to come on this front. After Dune, I have been really looking forward to Robert Macfarlane’s “Underland.”
Another adventure of the mind and heart I have begun is reading and learning about Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Bendectine monk, who along with Thomas Merton, has been a big part of conversations in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue (for which Br. David was given Vatican approval in 1967). Through this pandemic time I have been a big fan of “A Network for Grateful Living,” without knowing much about its founder. Much more to come about Br. David. For any who would like to watch, here is a conversation he had with Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh about gratefulness. Each of them glow and laugh and remember, as if they were gratitude personified.
“We were doing peace, not demanding peace… If you are not able to be be peaceful and happy in every step, a peace march is not a peace march.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
The kind of “in search of” that is common to all of these things, is that to search, I have to show up. I have to be an active participant. And that is where the adventure is. Adventures in life, of the mind, and in gratitude.
On any given day, my mind travels far more places than my body does. On the best days, both get to roam free and find beautiful places and experiences.
Yesterday was Saturday, a day that started in downpour and ended in sunshine. It was a typical day on the outside–I didn’t have a single in-person conversation with anyone, which isn’t unusual on weekends I don’t have the girls.
Saturdays start with coffee, reading, prayer, daydreams. When the rain let up, rescue dog Harper and I wandered around the yard a bit.
TANGENT 1 – BACKYARD PURPLE. If I don’t notice flowers, birds, and butterflies in my own backyard, how will I spot them anywhere else? I can’t count how many times I have walked out to the writing shed since our COVID-19 quarantine began. Each time I try to take in and appreciate something different. As we’ve discussed with Alice Walker, God gives us purple in our lives, it is up to us to notice it.
Three men who shaped the Black Panther. From left: Christopher Priest, whose epic and iconic run writing the Black Panther comic book made the character cool again; Chadwick Boseman, whose incredible on-screen performances brought T’Challa to life for all new audiences; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the powerhouse writer and thinker who currently writes Black Panther and who has elevated him even higher in cultural relevance.
TANGENT 2 – CHADWICK BOSEMAN/BLACK PANTHER. Friday night brought the sad news of Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 43. When actors, musicians, or athletes that we’ve never met die, maybe it shouldn’t feel like a big deal, but the ones who have touched our lives have real presence with us.
The three biggest common interests my daughters and I share are: Marvel movies, Washington Nationals baseball, and the show “The Office.” We’ve watched pretty well every Marvel movie together, multiple times, many in the theaters on their debuts. It’s a way I share my lifelong love of comic books and stories with them. More than any other Marvel movie to date, Black Panther was a cultural event. If you want to get a sense for why, check out this clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they had Boseman surprise movie-goers who thought they were filming a video thanks to the actor. Boseman’s graciousness, humility, humor, and humanity off-screen, in his personal life made him every bit the king he portrayed on screen. Do yourself a favor and Google his name and watch clips and read articles.
Yesterday I spent time watching Marvel movies with Black Panther in them, as well as reading more of Christopher Priest’s character-resurrecting run, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s mythological and epic first arc.
TANGENT 3 – RUNNING IN THE RAIN. There are times when I have to let my body catch up to my brain. Early afternoon the rain had stopped for a bit, so I added a run to the day. As I started up Rails to Trails, about a mile in, the rain started again, first as a slow drizzle, building to an ever-present curtain, then to a downpour by the last half-mile of my 4.5 miles. There is a feeling that warm rain on a run on a hot day brings, that makes the run worth it just for that.
TANGENT 4 – MIND FOOD. I’m a believer in the notion that what we take in is what we put back out, and formative in who we become. If I read Scripture, imaginative, thought-provoking stories, poetry, cosmic graphic novels, world-building fiction; watch movies and documentaries that open my mind and heart and help me see and dream, maybe that is part of my path?
Krista Tippett, in her book “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living,” reminds us that, “what we practice, we become. What’s true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully.”
After running, it’s orange slices and water, it’s chopping peppers from the garden into tuna salad, and making time to read, to imagine, and to be still.
Tippett continues:
“I believe that mystery is a common human experience, like being born and falling in love and dying. A new openness to the language of mystery–and the kindred virtue of wondering–across boundaries of belief and non-belief, science and faith, is helping us inhabit our own truths and gifts exuberantly while honoring the reality of the other.”
I want to believe that. And I can see evidence in pockets, or more like veins running through rock, but there is a lot of rock too. Tippett published the book in 2016 and wasn’t looking at the nastiness and yelling and how divided people are right now. But maybe it’s times like now that we need to focus on the veins of hope and not the rock itself. Maybe now hope and love and mystery and wonder are everything, in part because of their scarcity on the national stage.
The apostle Paul wrote letters of encouragement and hope and thanksgiving from prison and gave shape and direction to a young church. He was looking forward. Poet Ross Gay, in his book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” and poem of the same name, in giving thanks to different aspects of his life, looks back:
...thank you the ancestor who loved you before she knew you by smuggling seeds into her braid for the long journey, who loved you before he knew you by putting a walnut tree in the ground, who loved you before she knew you by not slaughtering the land; thank you who did not bulldoze that ancient grove of dates and olives, who sailed his keys into the ocean and walked softly home; who did not fire, who did not plunge the head into the toilet, who said stop, don’t do that; who lifted some broken someone up; who volunteered the way a plant birthed of the reseeding plant is called a volunteer…
And there it is. There are our options laid out before us. This is our time (and I have “The Goonies” in my head typing that); we are here as volunteers the way plants are–we aren’t here by our choosing, but this is where we have sprung up.
What will we do? What will I do?
Will we choose to bulldoze, fire, and plunge heads with our words and actions? Will I incite violence, confusion, and add to the hate?
Or will I bring seeds, plant trees for shade and sustenance? Will I throw the keys to hate’s bulldozer that everyone is so quick to put in our hands–will I sail those keys into the ocean; will I say STOP, and instead try to lift some broken someone up?
Saturday was a day of running down tangents and seeing what was down each. When I take the time to follow tangents, to follow those paths my mind and heart open up, I find things I might not find otherwise. Down each of them, I find gratitude, mystery, wonder, and hope.
Those are the things I choose to share and hope to pass on.
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.”
Most of us won’t get to everything on our bucket lists. There’s a good chance we won’t accomplish everything we hope to do in life. And some of that could be on us, but there are plenty of factors beyond our control. Does it make our lives less than?
Mary Oliver’s poem, “Praying” found me this week:
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest, but the doorway Into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
Maybe we spend too much time waiting for the blue iris–the extraordinary to show up, when we could make more out of a few small stones.
Don’t get me wrong–I want to savor the blue iris moments when I have them, if I have them, but not at the cost of the stones all around me. Those moments, the ones we have right now, are all we know we will get.
Two friends have died in the past few weeks, unrelated to each other. Their deaths were unexpected and tragic and they left behind kids and families. I’m sure each had more they wanted to do, to say, decisions they’d love a do-over for. But when I think of each of them, I smile for how they made me feel; for each of their smiles; their stories; the way they approached each day during the time that I knew them.
We remember how people made us feel. I know I need to be more conscious of that. We remember the time we shared with someone, the stories we told. What I know of Chris and Mike is a small section of their lives, but an intersection I am grateful for. Each of them gave me a gift in knowing them and I am glad Christ Church Easton’s Alive @ 5 service connected and/or reconnected us.
As I think about friends dying, we are reading Chapter 11 in our study of John’s Gospel, which is where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. There is a scene where Mary, Lazarus’s sister comes out to see Jesus as he has arrived.
“When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep.” (John 11:32-35)
It’s a profound thing that Jesus weeps with us in our grief. Jesus knows that he is about to raise Lazarus, that things will be okay in the long run, but he cries with his friends in their shared grief. As we are reading John, we are using N.T. Wright’s commentary in “John for Everyone.” Wright talks about this moment of grief like this:
“It’s one of the most remarkable moments in the whole gospel story… Throughout the gospel, John is telling us… that when we look at Jesus, not least when we look at Jesus in tears, we are seeing not just a flesh-and-blood human being, but the Word made flesh. The Word, through whom the worlds were made, weeps like a baby at the grave of his friend. Only when we stop and ponder this will we understand the full mystery of John’s gospel. Only when we put away our high and dry pictures of who God is and replace them with pictures in which the Word who is God can cry with the world’s crying will we discover what the word ‘God’ really means.”
God is the creator of the Universe. He’s larger than life, the spinner of the cosmos, author of the Mystery, beyond comprehension. And at the same time, He becomes human and cries with his friends. And that is a part of who God is. And it is a way we can get to know Him and draw closer to Him.
In the raising of Lazarus–John doesn’t tell us it was because Lazarus had so much more to do with his life, he doesn’t tell us what he had done up to that point or what he goes and does after–that’s not the point. God just does it. As with so many stories in the Gospels, it’s a story of hope. And hope comes in so many ways at so many different, and unexpected times.
We don’t all get Lazarus moments that we can see in this life. Not all our outcomes are how we want them, nor are we on our time. But we can find hope.
And we aren’t guaranteed blue iris moments. But we are given this moment and a few small stones. And we can build something with them, in this life, with those around us, right now. If we are lucky, those moments, those few small stones we share with those we meet, maybe, as Mary Oliver says, they can be “the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
The ocean overpowers words, on the page or spoken. The sunrise defies fancy language, or maybe any language, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.
Words come for prayer, words and emotions well up in gratitude; questions can come like waves, and maybe waves are answers in themselves.
In three days at the beach, there have been more brown pelicans and porpoises than in other years combined. The sounds at sunrise are the same color as my soul.
If prayer felt like sunlight… if prayer felt like cool morning sand between our toes… if prayer tasted like coffee or brought us into the present moment like cold ocean water up to our knees before 7:00 am, I bet we’d do it more.
We choose what we give our time and energy to. We choose how we see situations. We choose what we will do with the time we have.
This is oversimplifying things, but if it rains on a day off when I hoped to be outside, I can throw up my hands and give my day away to disappointment, or I can change plans, change course, and even notice flowers and plants getting what they need from the rain. We can look for, or try to create, small moments of joy, even when things don’t go how we wanted them.
Life hurts. It is full of war, sickness, death, anger, jealousy, hatred, injustice, suffering, and so many crappy things that it is an entirely justifiable and sane reaction to say, it’s too much, what can I do, I am insignificant, what I say or do won’t matter anyway. But it matters in your life. And it can matter for others.
Joy is a choice. In his book “Return of the Prodigal Son,” Henri Nouwen writes:
“once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.”
Henri Nouwen, “Return of the Prodigal Son”
Nouwen talks about the parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, and others, where God goes out of his way to reach the one lost or wayward soul who chooses to return, and to celebrate their return, not because He doesn’t love those already in the fold, but because He loves each of us uniquely, and it is a reason for joy.
“If that is God’s way, then I am challenged to let go of all the voices of doom and damnation that drag me into depression and allow the “small” joys to reveal the truth about the world I live in.”
Henri Nouwen
Allowing the small joys. That’s a thought worth sitting with and trying to live into. It could be a spring breeze coming through the window in the morning. The first sip of coffee. A Red-Bellied Woodpecker at the feeder. The smell of cutting the grass. A thought or phrase spurred from reading that hadn’t occurred to me in just that way before. Watching the dog bound through the back yard. And that’s all without leaving home.
“There are only two mantras: yum and yuck. Mine is yum.”
Tom Robbins, “Still Life with Woodpecker”
It was more than 20 years ago when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, “Peace is Every Step. Nhat Hanh is known as a Zen master, peace activist, teacher, community leader. There is a ton that has stuck with me from that book, much of it on interconnectedness, cultivating inner peace, and daily wonder and miracles. He has a great section on doing the dishes and household chores and how, done mindfully, they can be sources of joy and happiness:
“The secret to happiness is happiness itself. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, the wonder of our breathing. We don’t have to travel anywhere else to do so. We can be in touch with these things right now.”
It’s Monday evening. As I am at the desk, the dog lies on the stone path through the back yard, smelling the air, watching for birds or squirrels, or neighbor dogs to come to the fence. I’ve got box garden beds to weed, dinner to make, the work week to get into full swing and the girls back to school. There is some small joy in each of those things, but right now it is even more simple and immediate: the look on the dog’s face as she takes in the evening; pinwheels spinning in the breeze; birds carrying on conversations and being able to pick out one or two I recognize; and a grateful heart for just saying thank you for a moment.
In the scheme of things, all that’s wrong with the world, that is not much. But it matters for this moment. And it might help to make more moments like it. And it all starts with a choice.
