Bringing Faith to Life
nature
Invited to Rest
0The lake is glorious. Restful, peaceful, serene. It doesn’t shout, “Come, play with me!” It doesn’t tease, “Lookie what I’m doing.” It doesn’t tempt with rowdy revelers splashing and sailing and fishing. Well, there are quite a few fishing.
No, the Lake at Junaluska just is. It is rest. It is peace. It is serene. It is not a place to get things done. I realized this as I set up my computer facing a window overlooking the lake, and sighed. Ah, now THAT is a view.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It didn’t distract me. More, it called to me. “You are here. Come be with me.”
I had come to spend the week at the lake, catching up on all the things I hadn’t gotten done in the middle of my busy life. The things that needed reading, needed writing, needed sorting, needed attending to, things that I just hadn’t found time for. Now, I had all week for them, but the the Lake said, “Come be with me.” And that invitation is strong.
I had come to be alone, and found solitude.
I had come for quiet, and found silence.
I had come for refuge, and found welcome.
What I didn’t find was space to organize my disheveled self. Rather, there were sights and sounds to be shared. Things to be remembered and recorded. There was activity to be investigated and experienced. There were people to visit with, dogs to pat, birds to listen to, storms to respect and, of course, the Golden Hour to photograph.
But what were any of these things without someone with whom to share?
We are communal beings. In spite of my ready angst about the person too loud at the next table, solo is not a natural state for me. “I just need to tell you, show you, share…” is the constant state of my being. Somehow, the solitary experience is incomplete for me. It vanishes with no one else to know it. Did I really see that? Hear that? Feel that? My testimony alone cannot confirm. I need companionship. Someone to listen, reflect, and appreciate with me the wonders of the world before me and their impact on the world within me.
I guess I’m just not cut from monastic cloth. After but a few hours, I am longing for someone, something, somewhere. My journals are but a meager substitute. It’s the Lake’s fault. It bids be come and walk and talk awhile. Perhaps I am the only one who hears, but I expect not, as the crowds on its pathways testify to its attraction for so many others. It is a wonderful conversational companion.
Sure, stop and rest a bit, the Lake says. But don’t bring what you haven’t gotten done here expecting me to help you do it. I am for reflection, you to yourself. Depart, knowing better what you came for and what you go with. The world needs you back. I send you.
I came to the Lake at its invitation of rest, but I brought work with me instead. On my last day to spend in its embrace, it speaks softly. What you need is who I am.
Go now, and I go with you.
Let it be
111 years
The icy rain came
and covered all of creation
with a shimmering sheet.
Heavy under its weight
it bent
and then dripped
and then froze,
God’s great ice-o-metrics.
Fragile. Frozen. Frosted.
The snow came
and blanketed the icy stillness
with layer
upon
layer of beauty.
Limbs bent
lower and lower.
I can ease their suffering and lighten their load with but a brush of my hand.
But then, so exposed, and so fragile, they would shatter.
So, I let them be.
Days of warming
will melt and lift
the bended to stand again.
Tall and strong
in the rays of the sun.
A Working Retreat?
0Oxymorons…you gotta love them. Verbally puzzling expressions that stop and make you think, because they just don’t go together.
- Great Depression
- Jumbo shrimp
- Act naturally
- Deafening silence
- Definite maybe
- Virtual reality
- Random order
Today, I am headed 8 hours south into the mountains of North Carolina to a retreat center at Lake Junaluska. There may be more beautiful and restful places than this, but I don’t know them.
Alas, as I prepare to depart many things clamber for my attention: things from home, things from work, things with a deadline. As I load up the car I ponder the oxymoron I am currently embarking upon: a working retreat.
I heft the last bag of provisions for the week onto the floor of the back seat. In it are my bottle of wine, two cups, and the old bread I have been saving to feed the ducks who are sure to greet us upon our arrival.
“Bread and wine?” my daughter says smugly from the passenger seat.
All I need.
Can we see stillness? hear silence?
312 years
Oh, what a welcome respite a recent “snow day” was for some. Particularly the ones whose days are hustle and bustle. Whose commutes are honking and merging. One who arrive home each evening exhausted from the effort put forth in the day just filed in the “done” column.
I know and love such a one. She enjoyed this day in her quiet spot, watching the silence and breathing in the stillness. She even took a moment to think of me and snapped me a photo to share the moment’s peace.
How do we see the stillness?... What is stillness if not absence of movement? How can we see what isn't there?
How do we hear silence?... What is silence but absence of sound? How can we hear what isn't making a sound?
Funny how a snapshot can arrest the flicker of flame and the flutter of snow. Yet, I am certain they are not stopped but active. I know this by the bend of the light — its reaching and grasping for air. And by the blur in the distance, briefly obscured by the wet lattice of flakes.
I know movement, even in its absence, by the evidence of its presence. It invites me to see it and teases me to hear it. It calls me to see and to hear with senses different from those I usually trust.
Stillness... Silence... Stopping me to focus...
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
Psalm 46: 4-6
Even as nations roar and kingdoms crash, there is a place to call Holy. Can we see it? Can we hear it? ... if we stop
Punching holes in the darkness
112 years
I had never heard the story shared by Adam Hamilton in his 2013 Inaugural Prayer Service Sermon. He said,
I’ll be telling the old story about Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson, the 19th-century author, once told how, as a boy, he’d been sitting in front of the window at nightfall, watching the lamplighter light the gas street lamps. He would erect a ladder at one post, he would climb up and light the lamp or the torch, then he’d take it down and go the next one and the next one. And his father walked into the room and he said, “Son what are you looking at? What do you see out there that’s so fascinating?”
And the young Stevenson said, “Daddy, I’m watching that man out there knock holes in the darkness.”
Nothing like a great image to hold in your mind as you navigate ski slopes on a Colorado mountain. It’s snowing and foggy and cold. I can barely see my family a few yards ahead of me. We take the lift up for one last run and there it is. The ‘orb.’ My funny daughter Stephanie coined this phrase on a ski trip some years ago. It announces the welcome appearance of the sun.
“Hola orb,” we say.
And there it is, poking through thick clouds, piercing a hole in the dim gray. It has blazed a patch of blue around a perfect circle of flame. I can’t get my camera on it quickly enough before the cloud cover shrouds it again. It teases me.
By afternoon, the blue sky is brilliant.
I marvel at the shimmer off of an entire slope of perfect mogul mounds. (I look from the bottom, of course.) I must pause to capture the moment in a photo. But I cannot dawdle. My family has already started down the slope. Soon they will be out of sight.
I start my descent but turn to look back at the lovely scene behind me. I want to stay, to keep looking, but the rear-facing rotation pulls me off balance. I must choose.
Before me is the clear, crisp snow. A wide path dotted with other skiers but ripe with options for my path down the mountain. They are no longer shrouded in fog and snow. I see them clearly now. Gracias, orb.
I’m meant to move forward in the illumination it provides.
Giving the leftovers to God
012 years
I’ve always had a bit of trouble with this story told in both Matthew and Mark’s gospels of a Canaanite woman who pleads with Jesus for help to save her demon-possessed daughter and ends up begging for even the crumbs from His table. (Matthew 15:22-28)
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Today I am thinking about how many times this is exactly what I offer my Lord. The crumbs from my table. The leftovers when I’m done with my meal, done with my work, done with my day.
This morning I woke early. I had heard there was a meteor shower that could be viewed before sunrise and the skies would be clear. I stepped out into the cold and the dark of the morning and looked upon the most lovely of twinkling lights. Constellations in every direction. Darkness interrupted by pinpoints of glistening magnificence. Not a meteor to be found, but I stood in awe, surveying the broad expanse of the masterpiece displayed on the canvas of the pre-dawn sky. Every light perfect. Clarity that defies any human light, any human sound, any human thought.
And the words of songs and hymns, of prayers and psalms sprung from …from where? I’m not sure. They were an impromptu offering. I was praising a God who provided this wonder every morning, first thing. Before He attended to anything else. God’s first fruits, just for me, just now.
And here am I, offering Him the crumbs.
Raindrops on the window, have you watched them too?
412 years
My 22 year old, bi-lingual daughter wrote me.
“Look what was on Twitter: Soy ese 99,9999999999999% que de pequeño se quedaba mirando las gotas de lluvia en el cristal del coche para ver como hacían carreras.”
She says,
“My translation: I’m one of the 99.9999999999999% who as a child sat looking at the raindrops on the car window to see how they made pathways.”
Then concludes,
“Funny how we are all connected :)”
We can be in our own world of wonder watching intriguing, persistent drops collecting others in their path as they chart a course to the bottom of the window.
We can watch our children do this and join them in watching “the fishies.”
We can travel with another family and be startled when both sets of kids celebrate the fascination of the rain drop’s plight and, yes, draw the adults into the game.
But only when we share in words with friends, in words of an email, in a text or tweet, in images, even with those in another country via another language, do we discover that so many join us and have joined us in ages past in watching this most simple of things.
A drop of water, gathering others on its way.
And then do we conclude: “Funny how we are all connected.” 🙂