Oneing Weekend: Let’s

I want to spend more time “oneing.” “Oneing” is a term the mystic Julian of Norwich used to describe the encounter between God and the soul. It’s a word and idea so meaningful to Franciscan Richard Rohr that he named the publication of his Center for Action and Contemplation “Oneing.”

It’s a feeling I get frequently when I sit quietly outside.

April 19

Skateboard, notebook, pen, binoculars, an issue of “Oneing,” reading an essay from Scott Avett of Avett Brothers fame about “Creating Faithfully.” On the shore of the river, purple flowers pull my attention until watching them and taking pictures and listening to the water, I just feel like an extension of the scene, part of it. A feeling of oneness.

Skating, gliding along pavement, has been a oneing experience for almost 30 years.

Around the Oxford Conservation Park, there are Eastern Bluebirds and I sit on a bench and watch a bluebird house where one flew out of and I read.


In addition to being a world famous singer, songwriter and musician, Scott Avett is a talented painter and a moving writer. His essay is on his faith and the creative process. He talks about contemplating Jesus’s identity and how Jesus knew exactly who he was, something most of us struggle with. Avett writes, “I think this truth alone, separates him from us. I can see how this knowing of who one is can be the most loving truth one can offer.”

He talks about going into the studio in solitude to create.

“This time alone is fertile ground where I cultivate my purpose. My contribution is my engagement in it. The studio is my cloister. To pray is to be drawn nearer to my existence. The only control I have is to show up and respond. I build from that simple idea… I long to create faithfully rather than successfully, productively, intelligently, or even truthfully. Creating faithfully is not knowing how to do it. It is believing that it is worth doing… With this, I replace the anxiety-ridden aspirations of arrival with peace in a true being. This is who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me… What a precious revelation. Simply put, to create faithfully is to be me.”

Avett arrives at this oneing through creating art. I read and sit with his words waiting on bluebirds, greeting walkers, dog walkers, and folks riding bikes as they loop the park.

April 20

It’s the last day of classes for our three-year Iona Eastern Shore seminary program, a day retreat at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, which is about a mile down the road if you don’t turn left to go to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. Seminary day retreats are the only reason I have been to Old Trinity, which is a beautiful church and campus. I smile that their parish hall is named “Valliant Hall.” I’ve now preached from the pulpit there twice in front of classmates and instructors, working on our homiletics.


On days when the weather is nice, I get there early so I can sit out on the dock or on a bench by the shoreline to pray, breathe, drink coffee. It’s another experience of oneing, of an encounter between my soul and God.

It’s the last time our class will be gathered together for the purpose of learning, when we are one in that way. We will graduate together on June 15.

April 21

Oneing is an encounter between God and the soul. But it can and does also include other people. According to Richard Rohr:

Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.”

We are connected to each other and we are connected to God and we can experience God in each other. In my experience, some people make us more aware of that connection, or more quickly and intuitively aware than other people do, and there are people who show and remind us of our own connection to God. Those are people to treasure and spend time with.

The first time I met Holly was on a retreat in late October 2017. Despite both living on the Eastern Shore for our whole lives, and having a number of mutual friends, we had never met. The first real conversation we had was a few weeks later at the Waterfowl Festival. We met for coffee a few times at Rise Up Coffee to continue our conversations.

In December we went for a five-mile hike together at Tuckahoe State Park, which we consider our anniversary. We walked in as two people and by the end of the hike, we were different, together. That was almost six-and-a-half years ago. Tuckahoe has been a holy, sacred, thin space for me since 2005, when I went trail running there. It is a place I called “church” long before I was going to church. Oxford and Tuckahoe are two places where oneing and walking are almost the same for me. Holly and I have hiked there a number of times since.

On April 21, we decided to hike our anniversary route.


Time passes differently with Holly. We can get lost in the backyard together, listening to and watching birds, lying under the stars; we lose track of time making dinner together, or sharing something we are excited about.

If you’ve taken time and put in work to get to know yourself, in the way that Scott Avett talks about, knowing who we are and being ourselves as the most loving truth we can offer, my experience with Holly is that you can be even more free and encouraged to be yourself by the presence of someone else. In oneing, in being together, you can be more than you were. And you can do and be that for someone else. That’s love and freedom together.

Tom Robbins, a favorite writer of mine in his book “Still Life with a Woodpecker” said, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”

There are people who increase your yum exponentially, and you theirs. That has been our experience together. From our earliest conversations, talking about life, and dreaming about adventures, “Let’s” has always been our response to each other.

On this day, we walked into the woods together. We talked, we dreamed out loud, we watched and listened, we encountered friends along our Sunday walk who we hadn’t seen in a while.

And we said, “Let’s” to our next adventure together. Further experiences in oneing.

Presence

There was a stretch where Led Zeppelin’s “Presence” was my favorite album. I would listen to the long songs “Achilles Last Stand” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” over and over. But that’s not the kind of presence I mean here. I am talking about being fully present.

People make and walk labyrinths to bring them into the present moment; to tune out distractions, all the things that fill our minds and take away our ability to be present. Maybe we need some daily ritual or mental labyrinths to help walk us into our morning, to allow us to connect. Pulling into work last week, it was flowers growing on the fence in front of me.

They stopped me for a couple minutes. David Bailey in his poem “Village in a Labyrinth” talks about just this kind of experience:

“Let me see in a cup of tea, a fire, a fern on a desk,
the favorite hiding places of outlandish
miracles–how all of this is knit
from a nebula’s rainbow, stars reincarnated.”

Hiding places of outlandish miracles. The extraordinary in and through the ordinary.

Fr. Bill Ortt at Christ Church Easton talks about making minutes into moments–when we transform the passage of time into a transcendent experience, something that becomes more than time, it becomes a memory. For those moments to happen, we have to be present, we have to be engaged, and we have to be open.

In her book, “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead,” Brene Brown talks about the openness as being vulnerable:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

Being open to the moment also means being vulnerable to things being too much at times. We can’t just shut off the valve and close ourselves off, or we cut off our ability to experience those moments we live for. It’s a process: we spend much of our lives building armor to protect us or numbing what hurts us. It’s a balancing act where we will fall, get it wrong, get hurt, hurt others, and repeat. But we work to get out of that pattern, to overcome it, to get it right. It’s part of being human, or part of what Brown calls living “wholeheartedly.”

Being present; making moments; living wholeheartedly. Maybe we can build reminders into our days.

This past weekend, it was a set of stairs that led down to the creek. It was making time to kayak and paddleboard in the shallows, sun and shade of a narrow creek full of sunbathing turtles, low-hanging branches, and not knowing what was around the next corner.

We are all invited to be present, countless times each day. We are invited to pay attention, to make moments, to experience something new, to share something with those around us. The questions become: will we hear those invitations? And will we invite others?