Purity Of The Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”   Matthew 5:8

An unexpected snow fell last night.  Not much.  Just about an inch.  It turned frigid again too.  Temperatures in the low teens made the snow light and fluffy.  Picture perfect, like a department store display.

After I walked the dogs, I went back out to shovel.  Before the snow got packed down.  Mine were still the only foot prints on the sidewalk.  The only marks in the thin white blanket that fell across boundaries and fences and property lines and stitched a single tapestry of our neighborhood.

It’s easy to see God in this iconic image of purity.  The driven snow.  Blinding in its purity before it is toned down by life.  The cars of people on their way to work.  More footsteps from dog walkers and kids on their way to school after the 2 hour delay today.  The sun rising higher in the sky, reducing this white blanket bit by bit.

That’s the trouble with purity.  It doesn’t hold up well.  Our images of God can be as fragile and fleeting.  Ruined by something as innocent and necessary as a man walking his dogs early as the pink sun breaks over the trees.

The snow is easy to clear.  It’s not the heavy snow we usually get here in Northern Virginia, that pushes back belligerently against the shovel and feels like a load of cement when you try to lift it.  This snow is agreeable.  Co-operative.  It yields happily to the shovel and I am able to clear the walks quickly. Except for the white footprints, where I stepped this morning, left on the cleared sidewalk like a very boring Arthur Murray dance step routine.

At the edge of the property, I look back over my work and see the traces of my steps from when the world was clean and unspoiled.  But it’s not despoiled landscape.  A different purity has emerged.  The purity of cleared sidewalks, and straight lines, waiting to receive more walkers, more footsteps to join mine, that mine may disappear into something larger.

I see the purity that Jesus means. Not the purity of the pristine.  I see the purity of labor.  The purity of care.  The purity that allows the passing footsteps of God to be clearly seen.

In Praise Of Serpents And Sheep

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”   (Matthew 10:16)

Jesus defines two things for his followers; their reality (sheep among wolves), and the proper response to reality (wise as serpents and innocent as doves).   

The reality description goes without say for most of us.  Goodness seems overmatched and on the run just about everywhere.  The stream of daily news offers ample proof of that every night.  I don’t need to rehash that here.

It’s the response that Jesus lays out that I find most important.  Wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  First the fact that Jesus pairs these things and then goes on to give the serpent top billing.   Bet you didn’t see that coming. 

The wise serpents I’ve known have been anything but innocent and the doves have been anything but wise.   Rarely do you find these two things together.   

In fact, in the church especially, there is almost an implicit expectation that doves will disown their inner serpent.   In the world, vice versa.  We like things neat and clean.  More than anything else, the expectation that things be neat and clean has done more damage than all the serpents and all the wolves combined.

Jesus was always bringing opposing concepts together.  Sheep and wolves, serpents and doves.  The mark of faithful discipleship (authentic living) is found in the interplay between opposing realities.  Not in how well one reality dominates the other. 

The truth is not in the sheep, nor is it in the wolf.  Not in the dove, nor the serpent.   Sheep, wolf, dove, serpent; all are blessed.  The truth is in how well these opposing realities coexist and find a home in us.   How well we integrate and incorporate them into our lives. 

Could it be that Jesus is saying that this is the mark of faithful discipleship?  That this is what Jesus expects from us?  

Or in other words, in these polarized times when orthodoxies everywhere have run amok, faithful people, by the standards Jesus lays out, are marked not by how much they reject, but by how much and how many they can manage to bring together.   

A Lost Afternoon

Yesterday was a lost day.  No, I didn’t come down with amnesia.  I wasn’t wandering the "Alice in Wonderland" streets of DC.

I spent the day at the Nissan dealership buying out the lease on our car.

You’d think that would be a pretty straightforward process.  Sign a few things, shake a few hands, and on your way.  Ha.

No, our car had to be inspected first. I was told I needed new tires to pass inspection.  I pointed out that if Nissan didn’t put such crappy tires on their cars in the first place, I wouldn’t need tires after 25,000 miles, but thank you, I knew that and would be stopping for new tires on my way home.

“Oh, we can do that here,” they said.

“Oh, how nice,” I said.

My Odyssey had now begun.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shuttling from person to person.  I saw the service manager, the salesman, the lease specialist, the appraiser, the business manager, back to sales, back to service.  I learned their first names.  I met the cleaning people.

Now it worked out OK.  In fact, everyone was very polite and courteous.  They all apologized continually about the process and thanked profusely me for my patience at every opportunity.

I was given a loaner because they kept our car overnight to do the tires and alignment.  Which could be considered pretty devious once I'd already decided to keep the old car.  But that's another story.

The bottom line is that despite spending a lost day, and now a follow up later today to get the car back, the end result was good.  Took a while to get there, but here we are.

It was like having the flu for a day.  At least you get to choose which day.  And on the bright side, nothing can make you quite as grateful for an ordinary gray Wednesday afternoon in January, as driving away from a car dealership with a fat envelope of carbon copies and a complimentary pen.  This must be what a caught and released bass feels like!

I couldn’t help but wonder though, while I was wading through this process, if this kind of paper work, background checking, DMV statements, papers signed to verify that I signed other papers, is what you go through to get a gun?

And, if not, why not?

Asking For Money. Receiving Forgiveness.

Just sent out our stewardship letter today.    End of the year.  Sunday is Christ the King.

The rap on churches is “they’re always asking for money.”  Turns people off.  I guess I bought into that because “asking for money” has not been a particular strength or interest of mine.  Maybe it’s part of the “oldest child” syndrome.  It’s hard to ask for anything when you’re raised to be self-sufficient and independent. 

Congregations tend to shy away from raising the issue of money, and a lot of other issues, afraid to alienate anyone.  Keeping people quiet and calm and in the pews.  Except, that hasn’t worked so well…

Still, we try to keep the lid on politics, issues of justice, equality, or anything controversial that might get people riled and excited.  As if keeping people calm    

was a Christian teaching of the highest order.

Isn’t faith, by definition, controversial?   Isn’t obedience to the God of love a sure-fire recipe for push back from all the places in the world where love flies in the face of “business as usual?” 

Was for Jesus.  King of the Jews.  King of all that was a laughing stock, broken, despised and contemptible.  God’s chosen One.

Can we be disciples of Jesus and live irrelevant lives in communities that value everything bland and innocuous and avoids anything controversial?  Especially when the heart of our faith demands of us: open minds, open hearts and open arms? 

Faith is permission to ask for what we need, because faith requires us to be open to the needs of others.  Even when it’s controversial.  Especially when it’s controversial. 

Faith is a whispered plea for pardon, improbably granted in a moment of utter forsakenness.  “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

These are the moments our faith lifts up.  This is where we are directed to look for meaning and peace.   

Faith is not a means of avoiding the unseemly, for tip-toeing around disagreement.  Faith is a means of living authentically by living for others. 

That in itself is the height of controversy. 

Leaves

I have lived a long time without a leaf vac/blower.  Without the obsession or the sense of personal affront that leaves scattered across the lawn seems to evoke in some suburban neighborhoods.  As if the summer was a party that got out of hand. People come out on their lawns in the fall like tired hosts after the guests have gone, clearing glasses, dumping ash trays, before climbing the stairs and turning in for the winter.

Admittedly, I have lived an atypical life.  Most of my life has been spent either in church owned parsonages, or in cities where leaves were rare things.  All the fall leaves required was a a rake, if you absolutely just couldn’t ignore them.  Get them to the curb and the city will come by in big sucking trucks and haul them away.  Usually by Thanksgiving.  It was all  very casual, and in its own way, a little pathetic.

But all that’s changed.  I own a leaf vac/blower.  It blows leaves into a big pile, sucks them up and mulches them in a zippered bag.  You empty the bag into larger, clear plastic bags and line them up by the curb.  Monuments to a kind of communal Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder.

Our house now has three deflated sacks of minced leaves out at the curb.  The sight fills me with an ironic sense of pride.  

Blowing leaves around your lawn is a kind of absurd thing, and being new to this, I was very self-conscious, heightening the absurdity factor even more.  So many questions came up.  Do you blow the leaves out to the curb?  Get them into a pile on the lawn?  Do you clean the gutters by the  curb?  How far into the street should you chase strays?  Where do “international waters” start on a neighborhood street? 

I was sure the neighbors were all looking out their windows thinking, ”Amateur.”

I knew that I was jamming my leaf vac/blower into the spokes of the circle of life.  Fallen leaves were meant to return to the soil.  To nourish the tree.   But something bigger was going on here. 

I was standing in solidarity with my neighbors.  Holding up my end. Buying into shared meaning, and I had to admit, grudgingly, the lawn looked neat and unnaturally green for this time of year.  Shared meaning does that. 

But meaning doesn’t just happen.  We create it, and in creating meaning we are shaped and created ourselves.  Our communities.  Our families. Our selves.

Meaning is the mirror in which we see our own reflection.  We wash our face, comb our hair in it.  We shave in it or put on make-up before going out into the world. 

Meaning is the blood that carries oxygen to the organs and limbs of our lives, and it carries away the wastes and toxins our lives produce. 

Sometimes meaning overwhelms you like a wave.  You move from one place to another as we have just done and start again.  What does it mean to be starting again at our stage in life? 

Or, you have children, they grow and leave home.  People die, leaving great holes.  Foundations without houses to cover them. It’s all variations of a theme.  These are meaning tidal waves.

And sometimes meaning just floats out of the air like a bright leaf you can chase all over the yard with a high powered leaf vac/blower, to bag for someone to take away.  Because you just do, that’s all.

A deep silence fills the chilly twilight, our three bags of leaves at the curb like the bags in front of every other house.  Behind them, up and down the block, the house windows are all beginning to shine.

Stumbling Into Heaven

I’ve been going through a dry spell lately.  I get these every once in awhile.  Writer’s block seems too lofty to describe it.  Writer’s blah is more like it.  

One of the ways I cope is by trying to write my way through it.  Reviewing the day and trying to get one small thing right.  Easier said than done.   

Life in the abstract seems a priceless gift. In the particular however, it’s often pedestrian, mundane, arbitrary and hardly worth noting.  That is unless you want to get really depressed.  I’ve certainly lived more of my life distracted and bored than enthralled.      

I say this knowing that a life is these mundane events, strung together, morning to evening to morning again.  A seamless progression.  Brushing teeth, sorting socks, picking out a tie, or shoes for the day, walking the dog, heating leftovers; all of it the form and substance of what somehow adds up to our one priceless life.  Yes, this is grace.  

That knowledge is fleeting though.  Through a glass darkly, as Paul says.  My greatest fear sometimes is that this will all become painfully clear to me on my deathbed.  My greatest hope is that it won't be too late.  

Maybe all the convoluted theological jargon about Heaven is nothing more than a life lived where the ordinary is finally seen in its sacredness.  And maybe ushering in the Kingdom is nothing more than honoring that sacredness.  Attending to it in our own life, and in the lives of others.  

I keep coming back to the image of Jesus, raised from the dead, on the lakeshore at dawn,  squatting over a fire cooking a few fish for the disciple’s breakfast.  

In such is heaven found.  

Truth....

From my journal today.... "Truth is not complicated. We make it complicated so that we don't have to own up to our lack of courage to simply name it, change and grow accordingly." 

Moving Is Like Playing Whack-A-Mole

It is amazing how disruptive moving is, or, to frame that positively, how important routines and disciplines are to creativity.  I think I've placed far too much emphasis on inspiration in my writing and in my work.  Moving has reminded me, inspiration is mostly a matter of just showing up every day.   

Now, things are coming together in our new home.  Moving a short distance helps us whack one mole before the next one pops up.  That's what moving feels like.

Last night, sitting out on the deck in the early evening, the thinning leaves and trees dark shadows dissolving into the darkening September sky, I actually wrote a few lines.  The dust may be settling.

I am surprised how comforting it is to be in a neighborhood again, surrounded by other houses and other lives.  Maybe that stems from the simple animal comfort of presence.  Of other people carting their trash to the curb, walking their dogs, leaving in their cars in the morning and coming back at night.


Or, maybe it is the familiarity of this floor plan in our new place.  We lived in a house like this with our boys through middle school and high school, and left for college.  This place takes us back and moves us forward. 

The places we go and the stops we make along the way become part of our evolution as people.  We think we leave a place and move on, but we never really leave.  It comes with us as the people we have become from having lived there.

My Summer Vacation

This summer, we went back to the Gulf Coast of Florida for our vacation, and I discovered snorkeling.  The Gulf of Mexico was exceptionally clear this year.  Something I am profoundly grateful for after the BP oil spill.  Stepping into that warm, clear water felt like standing in liquid forgiveness, the limits of which I hope we never test again. 

So I went to the tacky t-shirt shack, a fixture at all beach communities, and I bought a mask and a snorkel that sealed itself if I went completely under water.   What a world they opened to me.     

Suddenly, our little beach was like swimming in an aquarium.  I felt like the plastic diver  in the aquarium we used to have in our living room, forever about to discover the treasure chest with the lid that kept opening in a stream of bubbles.

As soon as I put my face in the water, connected to my world through the plastic tube by my ear, I found myself in the middle of a school of bait fish.  Shiners the locals called them.  They were about an inch long with green backs, blue eyes and sides made of a thousand tiny mirrors.  They swam straight at me like snow flakes when you’re driving at night through a snow storm.

Below them, I could see the larger fish, Jack and Redfish, darting up from the bottom, feeding on the stragglers.  The sunlight,  a spidery web of light underwater, created endless patterns, brilliant flashes as the fleeing shiners turned to avoid me.  A garbled cry of amazement and joy caught in my throat.  What beauty lay just below the surface!

I realized that water is just another kind of atmosphere, and as I swam connected to the world above by the thin pipe whooshing full of my own breath by my ear, I felt like I was flying, held by the water, my shadow gliding across the rippled sand bottom 12 feet below me.  Startling the small fish for whom every shadow means danger.

After awhile some would swim along just below me, using me for shelter from the birds above and the larger fish below.  What grace to pass through this new world extending shelter to these temporary little traveling companions.

How many worlds exist like this, just below the surface of my life?   I get the uncomfortable feeling that there are undiscovered worlds like this at my finger-tips all the time, and that God is so much grander, so much more present around me than I ever imagined.

We often make redemption and salvation a personal matter.  Turn Jesus into our personal savior, like the personal flotation device my seat cushion can supposedly be turned into if the plane we arrived here on were to go down over water.  Some things you just have to take on faith I guess, because I’d surely drown trying to figure out how to do that.  It takes me a couple of trys to locate the correct buckle for my seat belt.

Swimming in the blizzard of these shiners extending my accidental grace and protection, gives me a sense of the grandness of creation.  Can God's redemption and salvation be any less grand?

The Spirituality Of Moving

Living in an area with lots of military personnel, moving is a fact of life.  Clergy aren’t quite as mobile, but we do our share of relocating too. 

My wife and I will be moving again in about a week to the new church parsonage in Riverside Estates.  The process of moving again helps me understand, just a little, the lives of the military families that are part of our congregation and community. 

For the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging about our move here.  I’ll be sharing tips, mistakes, hopefully some small successes, and exploring the spirituality of moving.  You’re welcome to come along...  

Yesterday, I rented a 16’ truck and picked up a new sofa, recliner and area rug at Costco.  I remember when our entire lives fit inside a 16' truck.  The fact that it doesn't now is a testament of the way our lives together have flowered.  Children. Children's spouses. Grandchildren. Dogs.  So many blessings. 

Sure, some of this accumulation of "stuff" represents the typical postponed decisions.  Even after only a couple of years.   Lots of this stuff is headed for the trash.  Probably should have been there long ago.  Many of my books fall into that category.  I still have my books from college and seminary.  A lifetime ago. 

For a writer, books are companions.  They are relationships, lessons learned, a record of the questions and collective wisdom that has shaped my life.   In the age of ebooks, the time has come my friends... 

Things are coming together in the house.  The congregation has done a great job getting things ready for us.  Looks good…hopeful…with our new rug down, the empty bookcases in the study waiting to hold the books I’m not ready to part with yet.  It becomes possible to imagine a life here.  It begins to take focus and shape. 

The sofas, the chairs, the rugs, the pictures on the walls, the books on the shelves…these are all the silent witnesses to our lives.   I haven't always paid them the attention and respect they were due.  I've mostly taken them for granted.  I realize that as they are taken down one by one, wrapped or sealed in  cardboard boxes.  This is exhausting work.  Slow and painstaking.  Thankfully, my wife shoulders the bulk of this.  Driving the truck, lifting and sweating is the easy part comparatively and  I’m better suited to that.

I believe it's true that a life observed is changed simply by being observed.  These things carried from our old place to our new feel like an extension of ourselves.   A bridge to take us from who we were to who we will become.  They are the immense gratitude, sealed and delivered,  for all that has been.  They are gestures of faith in what is yet to be. 

I (Still Have) A Dream

Today is the 50th anniversary of the “March on Washington” and the "I Have A Dream" speech.  I’ve noticed how our remembering the “March” tends to disconnect the “March” from its original purpose.  Civil rights.  The end of inequality, oppression and injustice. 

There are isolated attempts to re-connect the “March” to the struggle for civil rights, but as an event, with an anniversary, the 'March' becomes an institution, nestled safely in the arms of history.  Because the “March” represents many things.  Civil rights, and in equal or greater parts, nostalgia for the time when we were young and things mattered and the music offered us a version of ourselves we embraced and remember to this day.  Part fiction, part hope, and all of it fading faster than we'd like to admit.    

Today, we stand on the verge of military action in Syria.  An action that seems a foregone conclusion.  Should it be?  Shouldn't there be some discussion or debate? 

On one level, it is an all too present reminder of how oppressive power opposes change and the means it will use to preserve its interests.   We stand at this anniversary trying to celebrate how far we've come and swallow the bitter sweetness of what that means individually, while all around us are the signs of how far we still need to go. 

The things the “March” helped bring about, today are systematically under attack.  Even while we celebrate.  Even as we’re encouraged to remember. 

Dr. King recognized the systemic nature of oppression and injustice and how race was (and still is) a big piece of an even bigger puzzle. 

He began to speak out against the Vietnam War and was criticized for doing so.  He was in Memphis when he was shot and killed, organizing for the end of segregation and better, safer working conditions for the city's trash collectors. 

The “Dream” was opening new vistas and wider fronts.  Calling on him to travel new places and develop new ideas and grow in new ways.  The “March” soothes us, the “Dream” challenges us and equips us for what’s ahead.

As sweetly nostalgic as it is to remember the “March,” to revel in the grainy black and white images of our history, it's not the “March” we need to commemorate, it's the “Dream”. 

It's the “Dream” that points us to where we are going.  And, it's the “Dream” that needs our vigilance, debate and protection to keep it from becoming just another piece of history.     

In The Fullness Of Time

Timing is everything in life.  I believe that.  I also believe that I have squandered far too many opportunities waiting for “the right time” which never seemed to come.  Especially if I felt intimidated or overwhelmed.  I can always find something wrong with the timing when I’m feeling overwhelmed.  

Out of a certain degree of necessity, I have perfected the art of procrastination.  Procrastination gets a bad rap sometimes.  I’ve learned to value procrastination.  Some truly forgettable ideas have come and gone in a flash.  I go to bed thinking I can’t wait to get started and I wake up wondering “what was I thinking?”  Procrastination has saved me an awful lot of embarrassment.

I’ve come to understand that timing in life is not a matter of finding the right or wrong moment, but learning instead to trust the moment.  Whatever the moment.  To seize the opportunities each moment presents and understand the limitations.   And I’ve also learned that the more I can get my ego out of the way, the easier that is to do. 

I know that God has a way of slipping a burr under my saddle when God wants me to set out in a new direction.  Trusting the moment is sometimes nothing more than acting on the desire God has placed in my heart, acting in good faith, and waiting for the “fullness of time.”  Which is always God’s time, and not mine.  Thank goodness.

Holistic Worship

Our dog walker's worship has been filled with surprises.  Our little "pack" has grown each week.  This week, we met a 3 month old Swiss Burmese Mountain dog.  Cute and fuzzy, and when full grown, will weigh in at 150lb or so.  We’ll want to stay on his good side.

Each Sunday, a couple of labs run out to greet us and insist their bath-robed, coffee toting owners come out and meet us too.  This has sparked some good, impromptu conversations with our neighbors.  Conversations that wouldn't happen without this ministry. 

I think this is what I appreciate about our "dog walker's worship."  The "holistic" aspect of it. 

We tend to "compartmentalize" worship.  It happens outside our everyday lives.  On a Sunday, a day most of us are off, though not as many as there used to be.  We come to a special place, designed for well behaved adults, where we sit and sometimes stand, to praise God.

Pets are not allowed.  Heaven forbid!  Though pets play such an important part in the lives of so many of us.  They are companions for the elderly.  Trusted confidantes to the young navigating the treacherous waters of adolescence.   Their presence in a household is a blessing a thousand times over.  But worship makes no provision for them. 

The same dynamic happens with children.  In order to worship, children are expected to behave like little adults, because worship is designed for adults.  Children's sermons, and activity bags notwithstanding.  Aren't these really designed to keep children entertained so they will sit quietly, like little adults? 

And if they don't keep a child occupied sufficiently, parents are often left with no other option but to rush their child out of worship to a nursery, or a "cry room" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth" often feeling embarrassed and apologetic.   I remember those mortified feelings, though I learned that I was bothered by my kids making noise more than the people around me.  I think that’s still the case today, but I don’t know that it helps parents now, anymore than it did for me. 

Our dog walker's worship offers a welcome, holistic approach to worship.  We don't need to step out of our lives to join God.  Our lives are a blessing from God, and God is found in the everyday living of our lives, walking the dog, playing with our kids.  God is present in all of it.  

I'm wondering how we can bring this holistic approach to worship and apply it to children.  We have a dog walker's worship.  What about a liturgy of the playground? 

Finding Forgiveness

 I have a system for walking the Mount Vernon Trail with the dogs.  I walk down hill on the left side, and up hill on the right.  You see, downhill bikers are going a lot faster, with less time to react to a man and two collies, than uphill bikers.  Everyone gets more time this way. 

The only time this system doesn't work is in a valley.  Then, everyone is barreling down hill no matter which way you’re going, and it’s run for your lives.   

This morning, we'd just gotten to one of those valleys.  Lots of them have bridges, which makes sense when you think about it.  We were walking downhill on the left, when I saw a cyclist on the other side of the bridge also coming downhill, on the same side of the path.  An older guy, clipped mustache, like an accountant or a banker in spandex.

We stepped to the right on the bridge in plenty of time.  He gave me a withering, contemptuous look, as he flew past.   

What a jerk, I thought to myself.   

From my reaction, I was immediately aware of the tenseness and stress I had been carrying on this walk. The pressure behind my eyes, the tightness in my shoulders.  I had been grinding my teeth too, without being aware of it.  Now I was. 

My brief encounter with “spandex man” had opened my eyes to what was going on inside of me.  For this entire walk, hadn’t I been as unconsciously annoyed by the cyclists as spandex man had been with me?  They felt like an intrusion.  To what? 

We continued walking, and I thought about that.  We were on a level stretch so the dogs and I were walking on the right side of the path.  I heard an "on the left" from behind me, so we stopped to let the cyclist pass, and I said, "OK. Got it." to acknowledge I'd heard. 

It was spandex man again.  He said something to the effect that I wasn't giving him enough room to pass…eh, more or less.  I guess he thought we should jump into the bushes and let him have the entire path.   

It was like a match hitting the remaining fumes of my anger. 

"Stupid a**hole, get off and walk if a bike's too much for you."   

Wow, I thought.  I hadn't reacted that way to anything in a long time.  Not that it was wrong.  Actually, my knee jerk description was pretty much on target. 

Was I really carrying that much tension?  On another day, a stupid a**hole like that wouldn't have gotten a rise out of me.  What was going on in me today? 

Maybe spandex man came back because I had more to learn.  I began to pay attention to the cyclists, and my reaction to them.  And God sent another almost right away.  Almost the identical scenario. 

"On the left" 

"OK Gotcha." 

We stopped and waited.  Another cyclist.  This guy was more like Yogi Bear on a bike.  Ear phones in.  Shirttail flying.  No helmet.

When he passed, our eyes connected and he said, "Nice dogs" a little too loud because of the ear buds.  I nodded and smiled.  He wouldn't have heard me anyway. 

It was like that with the rest of the cyclists we met on the trail today. 

What had changed? 

Spandex man had awakened me to the stress and tension I was feeling.  Even had me express it.  That awareness prompted me to hold myself in compassion.  I extended that compassion to the cyclists, many of whom are out here on a hot day riding to deal with their own stress and tension.  We were all here, me, the dogs, the cyclists, to get our bit of exercise. 

My interactions with cyclists became opportunities to practice compassion.  We were all out here together, trying to cope with our lives.  Dealing with our own a**hole-ness.   I can be a royal a**hole.  To spandex man, I was. 

By the time I got back to beginning of the trail, my tension and anger was gone, lifted like a cloud.  I finally got around to wishing compassion for spandex man. 

Words like those that passed between us have a tendency to burrow under the skin.  To stay there and fester.  I'd been on both sides of those exchanges.  I know.  Awareness and compassion had enabled me to enter into a different future. 

This is what forgiveness is.  Not diminishing the event, or forgetting it ever happened.  It's about how we carry an event forward into our lives. 

We can use an offense to create separation, and if we do, we remain frozen in a solid block of resentment.   Or, an offense can be an opportunity to connect compassionately with others.  Including the offender. 

Forgiveness isn’t about the past.  Or about making wrongs right.  It’s about what kind of future you want. 

So, let me say thanks, spandex man.  From one a**hole to another. 

What Is God?

I walked the dogs early this morning.  The steamy heat is already building in the air, a small down payment on what’s to come later today.  

So we take the shade walk, down Surrey Ct., through the wooded path to Mount Vernon.

When we get to the woods, I let the leashes out so they can run and explore.  FanCee likes to linger over each scent.  She stays close to my side.  Savoring.  Moving slowly.  

Prince covers lots of ground.  Excited nose gorging on the pungency of the cool damp earth, wet leaves, the invisible scent markers of every animal that has passed this way.  Exuberant, tail high, waving like a flag.

All of this lost on me.  A human’s sense of smell is a tiny fraction of a dog’s.  As I watch them, I can’t help but wonder, why does all this exist?   All these smells and aromas, scents and traces of things.  An abundance.  

Almost instantly, I realize that for me, it doesn't.  None of it.  These scents and smells are called into existence when the dogs sniff them.  

I'm not talking about whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one hears it.  Who cares unless the tree falls on you, and then if it's a big tree, it makes the last sound you'll ever hear.  

What I'm talking about is God.  More specifically, God's presence in the midst of it all.  Let me be even more specific.

What is God?

This morning, I understand that God is a dog's nose, close to the ground, greedily delighting in every scent treasure there to be discovered.

And God is my eyes watching with a different delight and happiness, my heart perceiving the layers of meaning, my ears suddenly aware of the cardinal's throaty song in the branches above.

God is the trees around me erupting into the heavens, leafy faces turned to the searing sun, sheltering me, the dogs, in coolness, providing shelter for the cardinal and every other bird I hear at this moment I am too ignorant to name.

Could it be as simple as this?  We are God's senses, the instruments of God's delight.  We are the means by which God experiences creation, indeed, calls creation into being.

Every living thing is God's eyes and ears.  God's taste and touch.  God's nose, low to the ground, in loving communion with the cool damp earth, taking it all in.   

The Circle Unbroken

The journal app that I use provides a writing prompt every day.

Today’s was: “Talk to yourself in your writing.”

Hasn’t that been my greatest fear as a writer?  Any writer’s greatest fear?  A believer’s deepest anxiety?  A prayer’s most profound doubt?  That we actually live in an echo chamber.  The words we write reach no further than our own eyes.  The petitions we pray from the depths of our hearts land on our own deaf ears.

Isn’t this the root of the existential nightmare that reality is nothing more than my own projections, and I stand in the middle of an unbroken circle, utterly alone?  I am reduced to  inventing dialogue partners which end up being just different aspects of myself.

Today though, I was prompted to ask a different question.  Or perhaps, the next question, because all of what I wrote above is certainly true.  The question is, so what?  Why should any of that be a fear?

The most basic truth in not that we’re alone.  It’s so much bigger than that.  The most basic truth is that we’re alone, together.

Press your ear close as I address myself, because I can’t address myself without addressing you.  I can not pray my heart’s deepest desires without praying yours.  And maybe the reality is that when I write, when I pray, I’m not praying or writing to God as much as I am praying and writing through God.  And God through me.

Yes, the circle is unbroken.  It is just much bigger than I imagined.  Everything is in it, nothing is outside...both utter isolation and complete communion.  It is all here. 

Trending Fear...

I had some flyers made for our “dog walkers” pet friendly worship service starting on Sunday, June 30th (7:45AM if you’re interested).  I posted them in places with a community bulletin board; supermarket, pet shop, the gym.  I always asked permission first and at each place they were fine, until they saw it was for a church.  Then, they needed to ask a supervisor. 

Now they all posted our flyers (thanks!), but their hesitancy was something to consider. 

Some will interpret that hesitancy as proof of a secular war on religion.  I think that’s baloney. In fact, that self-serving explanation is another symptom of the larger problem. 

Religion today has somehow become associated with the worst tendencies of human nature.  Intolerance  Judgmental.  Divisiveness.   

A recent Gallup Poll shows that people’s confidence in religion went from 68% in 1975 to 48% in 2013.  While their confidence in the military has gone from 58% to 76% over the same period. 

These trends indicate the high level of fear present in our society today.  When fears run high, the most regressive and reactionary voices sound the loudest.  Those voices have helped push the Christian voice in particular, far afield of what Jesus actually taught. 

Jesus teaching spoke to the best in human nature.  Jesus called us to live up to our best, not down to our worst.  We are at our best, living to our fullest, when we reflect God’s nature. 

How do we do that? Jesus didn’t teach fear.  He taught love, acceptance, forgiveness.  Compassion for the poor.  Mercy for the downtrodden. 

Jesus said, over and over again, “Fear not!”  In fact, it’s the first things the heavenly messengers declare in the Bible. 

This is what we need to hear today.

Rivera Blows Save. Reveals Secret Of His Success.

In an interview following his first blown save of the season against the cross town rival Mets, Mariano Rivera inadvertently revealed the secret of his storied success. 

“I guess someone went to bed before the end of the game, didn’t they?” 

Rivera declined to name names.  “They know who they are,” is all he would say. 

Rivera has announced that he will retire at the end of the season, and barring some miracle, tonight was the last night he will pitch at Citi Field in Queens.  He has enjoyed tremendous success against the Mets, converting 22 of 25 save opportunities, including tonight’s blown save.

He shook his head with profound disappointment and said, “Could you not watch with me one hour?  Twenty minutes!?” 

Looking directly at the camera he said, “Let’s suck it up now.  If you don’t get on the ball, I’ll never get my playoff bonus this year.” 

Queasy On The Circle Of Life

I mowed the lawn today and I ran the mower over a garter snake.  I didn’t realize it until I saw a big chunk of it coiled in the driveway.  I thought it was the whole snake, until I got close and saw the truth.  Until I saw bits of snake in the grass.  For some reason, I wanted to find the head.  I stopped the mower, and like a macabre Easter egg hunt, searched the grass for it.  But I never found it. 

I’m not sure why this bothered me so much.  Why I felt this overwhelming need to apologize.  To ask forgiveness.  I wasn’t sure to who, or what exactly.  But that didn’t make the urge any less.

Of course the act was unintentional. Of course I couldn’t be held responsible. In fact, I never would have known if a large piece of the snake hadn’t landed in the driveway.  I would have finished and simply admired the uniform beauty of even an imperfect mutt of a lawn like mine.

I know “circle of life” and all that. Spinning in circles can sometimes make you sick to your stomach. 

Like the time I ran over the rabbit hole with the mower, the sickening thwack, thwack that stopped the motor.  I had no idea what had happened until I looked underneath, astonished, heartsick, the bloody pulps unrecognizable, and the single baby rabbit left, peering up out of the fur lined nest. Stone still. Practicing being invisible.

I've never been in a tornado. I’ve been following the news out of Oklahoma.  Is a tornado like a lawn mower passing overhead? 

An ELCA news release about the tragedy mentioned that two ELCA congregations were in the path of the storm.  They were not damaged.  The reporter who wrote the story quoted the rostered lay leader of the congregations, who proudly said that the “hand of God had protected the buildings.” 

I thought about that surviving baby rabbit peering out of the nest.  And I remembered how inadequate everything felt after that.  How I removed the dead rabbits, careful not to disturb the nest any further, and continued mowing because there was so much more left to do, and very little that I could say about it. 

Someday Maybe I'll Have A Great Lawn

Lawns.  They can be an obsession.  On the TV sitcoms I watched growing up, men were concerned with three things.  Going to work.  The family car.  And the lawn. 

These were the tacit boundaries of a man's life.  You were either going to work, under the car, or doing something on or to the lawn.        

Now, I was a little worried.   I didn’t have a car, didn’t have a job and lawns where I lived were not much to write home about.  The houses where I grew up were spaced like kids in first grade gym class, at arms' length.  Kids in first grade have very short arms.     

But we lived next door to the church where my father was the pastor, so we probably had the biggest lawn of anyone I knew.  It felt like a little park.  The neighborhood kids loved to bring their sleds in the winter when it snowed because we also had a hill. 

When there wasn't snow on it, the lawn was pretty much green except the dirt parts where we played run the bases and home run derby. And the parts where we threw the ball for the dog to fetch.   Didn't seem like all that much to worry about. 

Maybe a job and a car wouldn't be such a big deal either when the time came.  I attribute this to my overriding, and sometimes unfounded, sense of optimism.  

Turns out jobs and cars were a little more complicated than I first believed.  Lawns?  Forget it.  Lawns always been way beyond my control.  Most of my adult life, I’ve lived in church parsonages where no one would ever consider seeding the lawn, not when they already put in electricity for Pete's sake. 

And besides there was always all those kids around playing run the bases, home run derby and the dogs slobbering after tennis balls.  Green looked pretty good to me most times.  Whatever was actually growing in it.   

It’s taken me a long time to appreciate a good lawn.  The kind that feels like a lush carpet.  A green so deep it seems right off a paint card from Home Depot.  I am in awe.

And, maybe some day I’ll get into having a great lawn and all the dedication and work involved.  But I’m still mostly happy with green.  And with grandkids now, and tricycles,  and dogs chasing squirrels, balls and each other, it’s just as well I think. 

When I want to appreciate a good lawn, I take the dogs and we go up the street, where the houses have some of the lushest lawns I have ever seen.  I stand and admire them and the dogs flop on their backs and roll around, groaning contentedly.  Then after awhile, they get up and shake and we go back home, where there’s squirrels to chase and balls to fetch on well worn paths of dirt that for me at least, have always been the surest path to happiness.