Shining Spirit

It seems like only yesterday I got this bowl and towel.  The bowl is cracked, the towel worn thin; I would have wagered there and then I’d never use these things.

We sat at table with our Lord and talked of happy times.  The meal was done, the hour late; we all began to speculate about what he would say.

But when he stood, he turned and moved toward one end of the room.  With no word said, he turned his back, picked up a bowl and from a rack removed a common towel.

The room was now completely still.  He walked to Peter’s chair, bent low and from a pitcher near poured water cool and crystal clear, then reached for Peter’s foot.

“My Lord, what are you doing?  Please!  It’s I who should be there.  I cannot let you wash my feet; it is not right for you to treat your servant in this way.”

“If you refuse to take my gift, you have no part of me.”  “Oh, Master!  Please!  I cannot live without the hope and love you give.  Wash feet and head and hands!”

From Peter, Jesus moved to all and washed our dirty feet.  He then called each of us by name and one by one to him we came to get a bowl and towel.

My earthen bowl is smooth with age, my towel is frayed and torn.  But these I cherish more than gold for they remind me how he told that we must do the same.

The years have gone, and so has he.  No longer can we share an evening meal, a pleasant song, a desert breeze, his handshake strong.  Just these of him remain.

A reflection on John 13

This morning as Maggie and I walked, we passed an Echinopsis Pachanoi bending under the weight of more than fifty yet-to-be-birthed, brilliant white flowers.  We’ve watched her begin to show signs of motherhood and each morning we wish her well in her waiting.  Maggie gives her a sniff for encouragement.

With one bloom or fifty, she beautifies the world and causes passersby to stop and sigh appreciatively.  But I worry a little about her future because, and don’t spread this around too much, the Echinopsis Pachanoi is from the Andes Mountains where for more than 3,000 years her ancestors have thrived, producing traditional medicines for humans and animals and offering themselves in ancient religious ceremonies.  They contribute beauty and practical service in their mountains.  They are valued.  Now, here in my neighborhood, she shares her gifts and makes our lives more amazing.

But, I fear for her because she is a transplanted “foreigner”.  She is not one of “us”.  She wasn’t “made in America”…not that much is anymore.  And given the wacky times in which we live, I’m concerned that one day she might be unceremoniously dug up, stuffed in a box and sent back to Bolivia or Peru.  She might even be under surveillance right now because she’s about to populate my street with beauty.

Some people say, with moral certainty,  that you just can’t trust foreigners.   Send all of them back to where they came from.  Round ’em up, boot ’em out, build a wall.  Poor Echinopsis Pachanoi.  All she wants to do is be herself where she’s planted and do what she does best…fill the world with something good.  My life just wouldn’t be the same without her contributions.

I hope we wake up out of our wackiness and welcome some wisdom.

This morning a mockingbird sang to me

from the highest branch of

an oak tree on the far side of

the barbed wire fence.

Her song trebled and tumbled across the pasture;

rolling notes up and down the scale,

spilling out into the bright morning,

filling the air with joyful elegance.

I am happily reminded that joy is found in the song,

in the singing, in the unrestrained release of

soul and spirit given to the world freely.

May the song of my life bring joy and peace

to all who hear.

May I sing with hope born of trust,

nurtured in the mystery of living.

There was a day when you could go into a store for a pair of socks, pick out the ones you wanted, note the posted price, go to the cashier and pay for them…even if there was a discrepancy in the advertised price.

“Pardon me, sir.  The posted price for these socks was $2.00 but you’re charging me $4.00.”

“Oh”, the clerk would respond, “that is certainly our mistake.  Glad to let you have the socks for $2.00.  Sorry about that.”   It was called “good customer relations” or “commercial hospitality”.

Now, however, computers rule.  I made a sock run this afternoon at a local store, found the ones I wanted under a sign that read: “Buy one package, get a second for $1”.  Sounded fine to me.  Off to the cashier I go, present my new socks and reach for my faithful credit card.  I figure the total will be $15…$14 for the first package and $1 for the second.  “That will be $21”,  she said.  “I beg your pardon?  I think it’s $15, given the sign in the socks section.”  I explained in detail.  Then she explained in detail.

“Sir, I’m very sorry.  Even though the sign is as you report, the computer says I have to charge $21 for this purchase.”  “But you advertise them for $15”, I countered.  “I understand what you’re saying, sir, but I can’t argue with the computer.  It controls our prices.  I can’t change what the computer says.  It’s in charge of all pricing.”  Somebody pinch me and tell me I’m dreaming.

What have we come to?  I’m dealing relatively well with the insanity of politics right now.  My anxiety level is under control concerning global climate change, at least for the moment.  I’m even rather serene remembering that my dog peed on the living room carpet the other day, requiring a visit from  professional rug cleaners.  Now, though, this is it!  This may be the moment that sends me mumbling into the Sonoran Desert.  The computer rules!?  Really?

At home again, while removing my blood pressure cuff, I calmed myself by concluding that I have the last laugh on that computer.   I didn’t really need the stupid socks, anyway.

So there.

This is not an easy time to be a human being on planet earth.

Some of us have canceled newspaper subscriptions and sworn off electronic news reporting.  It used to be said that “no news is good news” but that’s not true anymore.  Many would say that “all news is bad news”.  The earth and its inhabitants are suffering in alarming ways.  Under these circumstances we hold on tightly to philosophical or political ideas, defending them to the death…literally in some cases.  Religion for many has become an important anchor in the storm, but then we fight savagely about who is right and who is wrong…more often than not it’s the other person who is following the wrong dogmas and doctrines.  The average person on the street seems to feel disconnected, powerless to make much of a difference, and resigned to take one day at a time, hoping for the best.  In our worst moments discontent produces despair, despair leads to fear, fear to anger, and anger to violence.  One wonders how long humanity and the earth can stand the endless assault of fear and her children.

I don’t know anyone who has practical answers to the perilous problems that wake us in the morning and send us into the darkness at night.  I certainly don’t.  But perhaps instead of fretting over the problems, each of us might consider focusing on the possible, which is finding a meaningful balance in my own life and choosing to live each day in that balance.  To that end I offer three words that are engraved on the little pendant on my neck chain.  In these three words I find a measure of hope, not for solving world problems but for helping me hold onto my humanity while at the same time honoring yours.  The words are Serenity, Wisdom, and Courage.

Serenity is not easy to come by, but it’s possible when we are intentional.  Decisions made from a state of anxiety, choices born of fear, actions taken in knee-jerk reactions to hatred or prejudice only deepen the abyss.  On the other hand, decisions and choices and actions that are the products of thoughtful reflections of a calm mind, an intentionally quiet spirit, are much more likely to find common ground with my neighbor who seeks the same balance.  Serenity does not mean withdrawing.  It means finding the better way, a way that unravels the tangles of our turmoil.  So, seek Serenity…find a way to tap into that which is already available…use any method you can find to calm your mind and hear creative possibilities.   Serenity.

Wisdom is not knowledge.  One can know a great deal but have little wisdom.  Wisdom is most often the product of engagement and experience, the give and take of living, a synthesis of information and experience that produces insight.  It is accumulated, acquired through interaction, and it is much broader than one’s opinion or personal preference.  Wisdom takes the other person or culture into account, considers broadly, and then seeks congenial conversation toward a common solution.  Wisdom is not weak.  It is sorely missing in current cultural, political, and religious arenas.  Knowledge is useful only when it is tempered by wisdom, and wisdom is acquired when people are more concerned about drawing circles rather than lines in the sand.   Wisdom.

Courage is not bravado and bluster.  It does not hide behind weapons or words.  Courage is the ability to overcome fear or despair, an ability that is too often misrepresented by threat or intimidation.  There is no courage pill to swallow; rather it is developed over time when one risks, takes a chance, tries the unusual, dares.  It is fraught with uncertainty and few guarantees, and in some cases it requires great sacrifice.  But without courage based on wisdom that comes from the balance and stability of serenity, we will continue to isolate ourselves from each other while doing great harm to our home, the fragile planet that gives us all life.  Courage.

Serenity. Wisdom. Courage.  In my life and in your life, those essential ingredients just might make a lasting difference.

Several days ago I posted this photo on the internet with the caption: “Wonder where I can find a huge rubber band?”  I thought it was rather clever.

When one of my children saw the posting, he transformed the image into something quite different.  “It’s a furcula,” he declared, “the fusion of two clavicles found between the neck and breast of a bird.”  Well, what he actually said was “Hey, Dad, that looks like a wishbone.”  And that sent me off into childhood memories, one of which was the ritual act done at the dinner table every Sunday, the pulling of the chicken wishbone.   Chicken every Sunday?  Yes, in my home you knew what you were getting each Sunday.  Sit down and enjoy it.

In case you were deprived of important rituals in your home, like the chicken wishbone pull, let me educate you.  First, whoever got the piece of meat that contained the wishbone was considered lucky.  All the kids asked for it.  Most of the adults secretly hoped for it.  Then, when the meat was devoured and the bone exposed, the lucky holder could pick one other person who would grasp one side of the “U” shaped bone and on a signal from my grandmother, the pull was on.  The bone would flex and finally snap into two pieces, and whoever held the longest (or was it shortest) piece was declared the winner and would get a round of family applause.  Of course the winner would make a secret wish which was guaranteed to come true…sometime…somewhere.   The chicken wishbone ritual!  A little furcula fun!

All of that sets me to thinking about wishes and hopes, and reflecting on what I might wish for today if I were picked for the pull.  How about you?

It’s too late to wish for more hair or fewer wrinkles.  That train has left the station.  But I do wish people would be a little kinder, maybe gentler, with each other, especially in this depressing season called “political campaign” time.  I’d like to consider voting for something or someone, not against everything and everyone smeared with mud.  Have we lost track of what this process is all about?

Another wish I would send across the dining room table is that my great-grand children might have enough earth left to prosper in their time.  We’re not doing a very good job of stewarding the earth for them.  I worry about how little we regard the only home we have.  I haven’t heard of any substitute earth…this is it.  I know we are smart enough; I just wish we had the moral courage to look beyond ourselves and consider the essential value of the nest we are fouling.

I also wish someone would invent chocolate doughnuts without calories, smoke alarms that are guaranteed not to go off at 2 a.m. when the battery decides to die.  I wish for TV journalists who don’t begin each sentence with “So” or “Now”, larger print on medicine bottle prescription labels (ah, the “small print” conspiracy!), physicians who don’t begin each sentence with “Well, Roger, at your age…”  Shall I go on?

Pass me that furcula, please.

Morning comes gently and holds out her welcoming hand.

I will wrap my arms around her as she lifts me into the light and takes me out to play in the long shadowed dawning.

We will watch hummingbirds dart among the yellow flowers, rub the black dog behind her floppy ears, smell pink blossoms bending long green arms, return the quail’s call into the cool air, share the sound of a train’s faint whistle that comes and goes on the wind.

I will lay my head on her neck and she will sing a song into my heart.  It’s a different song than yesterday’s, words are not the same, but the melody is so familiar.

Then when the shadows have reversed their path, when all is spent in the living, she will gently lay me on soft blue sheets and cover me with a cloud she has borrowed from the sky.  We will be apart but not apart.  She will sit with me as night spreads his arms over the mountains, filling the canyons with darkness.

In time, with a gentle hand, when the moment is right, she will lift my cloud blanket and whisper:  “Come, let us play again.”

The sound of water falling from the green ceramic fountain reminds me of the life force flowing through all living things.

The fresh fragrance of the crisp morning reminds me of the new growth in all that springs from the earth.

Touching the cool, brown stone by the gate and feeling its gradual sun warming reminds me of the power love brings to an embrace.

The gray finch resting among the brilliant yellow blossoms reminds me of beauty upon beauty in this new day.

What does it mean to be re-minded?  Re-minded?

Is it being momentarily called back to a primordial perspective?  A mind that once looked out upon creation and said: this is good?

Yes.

“It was you, O God, who made my inmost self, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Psalm 139:13-14

These two verses appeared today in a devotional resource I use to begin and end each day.  I’ve read them many times, but this morning two words forced me to pause and reflect:  fearfully and wonderfully.  What?  What do those words mean to a person living in the 21st century?

My guess is that if I asked five people to share their understanding or interpretation of the words, I would get five varied responses…maybe more.  What did the Psalmist have in mind when “fearfully and wonderfully” went onto the page?

Fearfully is the harder of the two.  How about these possibilities:  God was “fearful” when humankind was constructed because God knew the possibility, or even the probability, that we would wander off on our own, become self-focused, cross the line of obedience.  Or, maybe fear was built into the final product so that you and I could experience the full range of human emotions.  Or, it was designed into us so that we would recognize danger or trouble and take two steps back.  There must be other possibilities for the strange word…I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Wonderfully, on the other hand, is commonly thought to mean that we humans are constructed with amazing, complex, intricate magnificence.  We are the top of the totem pole, the crown of creation.  The human body is a marvel that no human can replicate.  Wonderfully made, indeed.

So, with this in mind, let me offer two observations.  First, language changes over time; words from one century might not fit exactly into another century.  Second, sometimes it’s interesting to take words at face value.  For instance, “fearfully” might mean “full of fear”, which would lead you back to paragraph three above.  But remember that the word fear in the bible, particularly in reference to God, really means “awe”.  To fear God is to hold God in awe.  Quite a difference.  Fear’s companion, Wonder, is astonishment and a deep desire to comprehend, quest, search, know.

Here, then, is my own conclusion.  To be “fearfully and wonderfully made” is to possess the inherent ingredients of awe and wonder, built-in traits that come with the whole package.  I disagree with my dictionary when it says that awe is “profound and reverent dread of the supernatural”.  Dread?  Really?  I think the human capacity to stand in awe and to live in wonder has little to do with how one approaches the supernatural, God, but how you and I can experience life itself.  Within this complex construction called “me” there is the potential to receive each day in awe, reverent respect; and in wonder, which for me is amazement and sacred surprise.

Awe stops me in my tracks and makes me gasp.  Wonder moves me to ask questions of and seek relationship with this mystery.  Together, they sit me down on a big rock along the mountain trail and remind me to be “awe-fully” grateful and “wonder-fully” connected to creation.

Works for me.

May I walk through this day hand in hand with all that is gentle and beautiful, warm morning sun waking all living things, yellow blossoms falling like mist from soft green palo verdes.

May I walk through this day heart to heart with the pure joy of hearing bird song, holding a sacred hope that all will be well with the world, discovering kindness, returning goodness, standing in awe, remembering all that is important while releasing all that isn’t.

May I walk through this day convinced of mystery, concerned for brokenness, and at peace with myself.  May I hold Love’s hand until the evening comes.