Nathanael Greene -- Bad Quaker Historical Marker

"the astonishing array of whites...

from “Thoreau” by Cole Swensen


In the essay “A Winter Walk,” which predated the more famous essay “Walking”
by a few years, Thoreau paid particular attention to the astonishing array of whites

from fog to snow to frost to the crystals growing outward on threads of light. The
fact that white is separately known. That it is its own wildness, entirely exterior,

like all weather you notice is a version of an open room coming through
the wind in prisms. White holds light in a suspended state, unleashing it later

across a field of snow or a sheet of water at just the right angle to make the surface
a solid, and on we go walking. Goethe’s Theory of Colors depicted each one

as an intense zone of human activity overflowing its object into feeling there is
a forest through which something white is flying through a wash of white, which is

the presence of all colors until red, for instance, is needed for a bird or green
for a world.

"Something is calling to me..."

"In the Corners of Fields" by Ted Kooser

Something is calling to me
from the corners of fields,
where the leftover fence wire
suns its loose coils, and stones
thrown out of the furrow
sleep in warm litters;
where the gray faces
of old No Hunting signs
mutter into the wind,
and dry horse tanks
spout fountains of sunflowers;
where a moth
flutters in from the pasture,
harried by sparrows,
and alights on a post,
so sure of its life
that it peacefully opens its wings.

"In the Corners of Fields" by Ted Kooser from Flying at Night. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985. From "The Writers Almanac." (buy now)

Ohio: "I know Ohio like the back of my hand..."

Hillsboro, OH 1978

I was at home for a little while last week.  Not the home where I live, but the home where a part of my heart still resides.  Though I have been gone from Ohio longer than I lived there, it is still my place.  When I crossed into Ohio under the arch at the Indiana border on Interstate 70 there was an immediate feeling of homecoming.

Weird, huh, considering that I crossed under that arch into Indiana in 1978 and never moved back.

On my journey across the Buckeye state, I saw historical sites.  Not the kind marked with plaques -- rather my own personal historical sites.  Vandalia where some of my cousins and friends lived.  London where I spent a hot Ohio summer landscaping the year my best friend Greg killed himself.  Columbus where I lived until I was 24.  Though I was zipping by all these on the interstate, their neighborhoods, houses I lived in, schools I attended, friends I had, girls I fell in love with, jobs I had all floated by.  Headed toward the eastern border, I spotted the place where Marlon Troyer once stopped the car to scrape up a raccoon carcass for a study he was doing in biology class in college.  Floods of memories washed over me.  The roads I travelled as a young man.  The family reunions.  Church softball games.  Sunday evenings spent in Quaker meeting.

Here past the edge of town,
this one as well as any other
in the Adirondacks, the trees lock arms
and lean into each other like
relatives at a family reunion.
This is some history; listen to the names,
Sugar Maple, Black Spruce, Wild Cherry,
Sweet Birch, the old White Oaks. On and
on into the hillsides until my tongue rolls
and I whisper Ohio, imagining this is what it was
one hundred years ago, imagining this is what
whispered in the ear of Tecumseh, who fought for it
for twenty years, knowing when he started he couldn't
win, but who fought and lost anyway, imagining
this is what whispered to my great grandfather
Marvin Peabody, when he dropped down out of the
Northeast. Who left when he heard his neighbors
unfolding the arms of trees with axes and bucksaws
and headed west, rubbing the fine dust from his eyes.
But came back when he saw that like Ohio, that too
was lost. He came back I suppose because he had
nowhere else to go. Or maybe he just liked the name
Ohio. And why not. Whisper it now, whisper
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, and amid the miles of concrete,
under the culverts dumping waste, around the smokestacks
over by the river, a breeze picks up
sending a ripple, like a litany
through the family of tree.

("Reunion" by Robert Kinsley, from Endangered Species. © Orchises Press, 1989. (buy now))

...maybe he just liked the name
Ohio. And why not. Whisper it now, whisper
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, ...

I do like that name.  I love that place.  It's still my home.  And I still cry when I hear Karin Berquist sing "Ohio"

My Father's Hats: A Poem

My Father’s Hats   Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach high into his dark closet while standing     on a chair and tiptoeing reach higher, touching, sometimes fumbling     the soft crowns and imagine I was in a forest, wind hymning     through pines, where the musky scent of rain clinging to damp earth was     his scent I loved, lingering on bands, leather, and on the inner silk     crowns where I would smell his hair and almost think I was being     held, or climbing a tree, touching the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent     was that of a clove in the godsome air, as now, thinking of his fabulous     sleep, I stand on this canyon floor and watch light slowly close     on water I’m not sure is there.

Your voice broke like a flower...

Out of the dark cup
Your voice broke like a flower.
It trembled, swaying on its taut stem.
The caress in its touch
Made my eyes close.

"From The Telephone"

by Florence Ripley Mastin

"I envied his rapport with God..."

Grace

by Linda Pastan

When the young professor folded
his hands at dinner and spoke to God
about my safe arrival
through the snow, thanking Him also
for the food we were about to eat,
it was in the tone of voice I use
to speak to friends when I call
and get their answering machines,
chatting about this and that
in a casual voice,
picturing them listening
but too busy to pick up the phone,
or out taking care of important
business somewhere else.
The next day, flying home
through a windy
and overwhelming sky, I knew
I envied his rapport with God
and hoped his prayers
would keep my plane aloft.

"Grace" by Linda Pastan from The Last Uncle. © W.W. Norton, 2002.  (buy now)

From "The Writer's Almanac"

Quakers Are Weird? Yepper!

My friend Jana Llewellyn recently wrote "The Bible says that the Jews are God’s chosen people. Author Anne Lamott says that the Presbyterians are God’s frozen people. I decided last week that the religious sect I’m a part of, Quakers (also called The Religious Society of Friends), are God’s weird people.

That means I’m weird, too."

That means I'm weird, too -- which is a badge I'll add to my "bad" badge.  Not bad as in "evil," but bad as in not being very good at being a good Quaker.

Jana offers seven tips to help us deal with the not so good weirdness we Quakers sometimes experience/demonstrate --

First and foremost, we need to live a life that focuses on a deep inward connection to God.

Second, each of us needs a personal and daily practice of communing with God.

Third, stop talking about being Quaker. Stop navel-gazing. Reach out.

Fourth, cut your beard.

Fifth, humbly minister to other Quakers.

Sixth. Get out of the past.

Seventh: Look for the best in everyone you meet.

This essay is warm, quirky, funny, biting, and helpful.   Every Quaker and every Friends meeting should read the whole thing -- which you can here: God's Weird People

Silence... takes into the heart and mind and will of God...

"The Garden" A Guest Post by Kathleen Deyer Bolduc

In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. James 1:21 (The Message)

This morning I bring my Bible, journal, and cup of tea into the garden. A light mist hangs over the fields across the road, and I am surprised to see tender green shoots of corn forming rows where yesterday there was nothing but dirt. All around me, Dame’s Rocket thrusts purple and white spires toward the skies like holy hands reaching toward heaven. Boxwood shimmers greenly in the breeze, and a yellow weed at the fence line bursts into flame as a sunbeam peeks through the clouds.

The words of Psalm 63, my reading this morning, reverberate through my mind. “O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is.”

In the sanctuary of this garden the desert landscape of my heart—that dry and dusty place where worry and anxiety about my son, Joel, who has autism, sometimes threaten to overwhelm me—turns to an oasis of green, flowing with streams of living water. Prayer rises up within me as praise.

No wonder poets and songwriters often refer to the garden as a metaphor for prayer.

            And yet, gardens are not always lush and beautiful. Think of the garden in the midst of drought. Parched plants wilt. Green leaves turn to brown. What was abounding in exuberance just weeks before suddenly sags under the weight of cloudless skies with no promise of rain in sight. Nothing will revive the drought-stricken garden like a soft, gentle, soaking rain.

            It is no different for the gardens of our hearts. Sometimes, in the words of my son Joel at the end of a major melt-down, “We need Jesus!”           

            As the mother of a son with autism, I was first drawn more deeply into prayer because of an intense thirst for God’s presence. I was desert-thirsty, parched for the living waters Jesus promises in John 4:14: “. . . but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The more I spend time with God the more the garden of my heart blooms with an unquenchable love for the things of the Spirit. I need God’s presence just as my garden needs the rain.

Take some time today to be quiet and meet with God. Listen to what rises up from within. Have a conversation with God. You may have questions to ask Him. Ask, expecting to receive an answer. Tell Him what’s on your heart. Be honest with Him. Bare your vulnerable places. And then, once you’ve emptied your heart, simply listen. He has much to say to you.

Lord, I thank you and praise you for your living waters. Open me up, Lord. Open me up to your thirst-quenching presence. Water me, Lord. Water me.

·         Where do you most often meet God? Nature? Bible study? Service? Worship? Journaling?

·         How might you establish a pattern of going there to pray on a consistent basis?

·         In what way do you most often pray? Do you feel “pot-bound”? Might God be calling you to a new prayer avenue?

·         What kind of prayer will help you more often to be aware of Jesus’ presence with you?

Excerpted from The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities (Judson Press, 2014)

Used with permission

The mother of a 29-year-old son with autism, Kathleen Bolduc is a spiritual director in Oxford, Ohio, and The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities and Autism & Alleluias. Kathy blogs at www.specialneedsparenting.net. 

the author of several books on faith and disability, including

***************

Join Kathy at a free webinar: The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities: Learning to Let Go and “Be” - Thursday, May 22^nd, at 1 pm. If you can’t attend at that time, register and participate at your leisure. You are promised an hour of rest and refreshment using art, music, and Scripture. Sign up here:  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/381076121

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One lucky reader will a free copy of this good book.  To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment about the blog post or leave a question for Kathy about the book.  You'll have until Wednesday evening at 8:00 to be entered into a drawing to win the book.  To enter, you must leave an email address with your comment (so I can contact you to get your mailing address for the book!).  Books can only be send to addresses in the United States and Canada.

Book Giveaway! The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities

Last week I posted on Kathleen Deyer Bolduc's new book, The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities.  And tomorrow, Kathy is going to do a guest blog here on her new book.

To support that, Judson Press is going to give one lucky reader a free copy of this good book.  To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment about the blog post or leave a question for Kathy about the book.  You'll have until Wednesday evening at 8:00 to be entered into a drawing to win the book.  To enter, you must leave an email address with your comment (so I can contact you to get your mailing address for the book!).  Books can only be send to addresses in the United States and Canada.

The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities

Have you ever sat on the beach, on that part of the sand where the waves have just receded, where the sand is damp and tightly packed? You take a plastic shovel, or perhaps your hand, and begin to dig. You dig and dig until water begins to burble up from within the sand, finally filling the hole you’ve so carefully carved out. The poet Kahlil Gibran writes of sorrow carving deep into our beings, leaving more room for joy.I'm happy to recommend this important book.  And hope you'll stay tuned to this blog -- as Kathy will be guest posting about The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities soon!

I know what it is to grieve—parents of children with disabilities grieve the death of a dream—the dreamed-of child for whom they waited so long. My third son, Joel, has autism and moderate intellectual disabilities, along with an anxiety disorder and severe kyphosis of the spine. Everything I valued in my life before Joel’s birth had to be rethought and revalued—intelligence, efficiency, logic, self-control. The old rules no longer applied, and my spirit, which craves peace, order, comfort, and security, withered as I struggled to make sense of the seemingly senseless—a beautiful boy with a damaged brain. 

I was stuck in denial for a very long time, and when I finally broke free, I raced headlong into anger, self-blame, and depression. Through this grieving process, which lasted several years, I never stopped calling out to God. Even on my darkest days, when my mind was too numb to form a prayer, I repeated four words over and over. “Hear my prayer, Lord. Hear my prayer.” The grief itself became my prayer.

The above is from the opening chapter of my friend Kathleen Deyer Bolduc's newest book The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities.  The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities uses the mosaic as a metaphor for putting the pieces of life back together again, and the spiritual disciplines as a framework for daily works of healing and restoration. It offers bite-sized pieces of poetry, scripture, personal narrative and teaching on the grief process, the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God, and the spiritual disciplines. Each chapter concludes with a reflection exercise to gently lead the reader into a deeper conversation with God.

I'm happy to recommend this important book to you.  Please stay tuned, because Kathy will be guest blogging here soon!

Prayer for a Field Mouse: "Bless this brief life..."

Prayer for a Field Mouse

by Pat Riviere-Seel

Bless the gray mouse
that found her way
into the recycle bin.
Bless her tiny body,
no bigger than my thumb,
huddled and numb
against the hard side.
Bless her bright eye,
a frightened gleaming
that opened to me
and the nest she made
from shredded paper,
all I could offer.
Bless her last hours
alone under the lamp
with food and water near.
Bless this brief life
I might have ended
had she stayed hidden
inside the insulation.
Bless her body returned
to earth, no more
or less than any creature.

"Prayer for a Field Mouse" by Pat Riviere-Seel from Nothing Below but Air. © Main Street Rag, 2014.(buy now)

"...just as the chair slows, as if into a silence..."

A Rainy Morning

by Ted Kooser

A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.

"A Rainy Morning" by Ted Kooser from Delights & Shadows. © Copper Canyon Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

"I don't know where prayers go..."

I Happened To Be Standing by Mary Oliver I don't know where prayers go,       or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep       half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it       crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak       growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world,       along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things       of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can't really       call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,       or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don't know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don't. That's your business. But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be       if it isn't a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air. "I Happened To Be Standing" by Mary Oliver from A Thousand Mornings. © The Penguin Press, 2012. buy now)

"Evening and the flat land, Rich and sombre and always silent;..."

Prairie Spring

by Willa Cather

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

"Prairie Spring" by Willa Cather from Stories, Poems, and Other Writings. © Library of America, 1992.  (buy now)

From "The Writers Almanac"

"Waiting patiently to be named..."

The World Seems…   Gregory Orr

The world seems so palpable And dense: people and things And the landscapes They inhabit or move through.   Words, on the other hand, Are so abstract—they’re Made of empty air Or black scratches on a page That urge us to utter Certain sounds.                            And us: Poised in the middle, aware Of the objects out there Waiting patiently to be named, As if the right words Could save them.                                And don’t They deserve it?      So much hidden inside each one, Such a longing To become the beloved.   And inside us: the sounds That could extend that blessing— How they crowd our mouths, How they press up against Our lips, which are such A narrow exit for a joy so desperate.        Copyright © 2014 by Gregory Orr.

" I have not been happy enough..."

A Purification At the start of spring I open a trench in the ground. I put into it the winter’s accumulation of paper, pages I do not want to read again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents of the outhouse: light of the sun, growth of the ground,  finished with one of their journeys. To the sky, to the wind, then, and to the faithful trees, I confess my sins: that I have not been happy enough, considering my good luck; have listened to too much noise; have been inattentive to wonders; have lusted after praise. And then upon the gathered refuse of mind and body, I close the trench, folding shut again the dark, the deathless earth. Beneath that seal the old escapes into the new. Wendell Berry Source: Collected Poems: 1957-1982 Add your thoughts at inward/outward

"perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness"...

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda
Source: translated by Alistair Reid in Extravagaria

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

The toad and I have not moved...

Plains Spadefoot Toad

by Tom Hennen

Toads are smarter than frogs. Like all of us who are not good-
looking they have to rely on their wits. A woman around the
beginning of the last century who was in love with frogs wrote
a wonderful book on frogs and toads. In it she says if you place
a frog and a toad on a table they will both hop. The toad will
stop just at the table's edge, but the frog with its smooth skin
and pretty eyes will leap with all its beauty out into nothing-
ness. I tried it out on my kitchen table and it is true. That may
explain why toads live twice as long as frogs. Frogs are better at
romance though. A pair of spring peepers were once observed
whispering sweet nothings for thirty-four hours. Not by me.
The toad and I have not moved.

"Plains Spadefoot Toad" by Tom Hennen, from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.  (buy now)

From "The Writer's Almanac"