"Let us give thanks for a bounty of people..."

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:
For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind
too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember
where their roots are;
For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
For feisty friends as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've
had them;
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn,
and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem
Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as
parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be
counted on to see you through the winter;
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming
on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights,
wilts and witherings;
And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and
who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;
For all these we give thanks.

~ Reverend Max Coots 1928-2009 
Reverend Max Coots passed away in 2009 after a long and full life. He served as the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Canton, New York

Giving thanks for all of you in my life! -- Brent

A Thanksgiving Reflection

Photo by Brent

This is the time of year I love living in the Midwest, more than summer, spring or winter, which each have their own charm.  But fall has a particular beauty.  The landscape is alive with wonderful color, and I don’t just mean the trees in places like Brown County.  I mean the fields and woods that adorn the countryside.

The sunlight is softer, this time of year.  And this softer light is golden, transforming the ordinary into extraordinary, helping me see the richness of life around me.

That’s why I love driving around Indiana at this time of year,  I drive and watch the light play across the countryside – field stubble casting shadows along the dirt, bare black tree limbs silhouetted against a royal blue sky, clouds puffy and white floating serenely along.  .

But I feel a sense of connectedness with the land and that sense grows stronger every year.  Yes, I was born and raised in the city and I often proclaim the wonders of that existence compared to that of my country cousins.  But the fact is I loved visiting the farms of our rural families.  And my father was a tramper of fields and forests.  We often were out and about.

That’s one reason I am happy about our house.  Nine years ago, the home site was a tangle of briars, thorn trees, and poison ivy all tangled in old fences.  Mark Peterson, Mike LaPorte, my dad and I began clearing all that Thanksgiving weekend, getting ready for building.  We worked in the rain and mud and cold and snow.  We cut, we sawed, we pulled bushes out with the tractor.  All through that work, I smelled the scents of farm and field – clumps of mud clinging to boots, wood smoke from burning limbs.

Then, as the house was being built, I’d hike back and work, watching the seasons move through – budding spring, humid summer.  Now we’re eight years in the house, and watching fall ebb, knowing winter is coming. 

I love it.  And more than that, this move and this time of year helps me remember that I am connected to God’s good earth all the time – from witnessing it’s visual beauty to partaking of its sustenance with every mouthful of food I eat.

God's faithfulness, to me, is evident in the changing seasons.  Crops are planted, grown, and harvested.  The soil rests over winter.  Though the face of the earth changes, God does not.  God watches over it all, and has for eons, and is faithful.

We question that.  Sometimes when life is good, we imagine that it is good solely from the sweat of our brow or our own efforts.  I cut those trees and mowed the field for the view – not God after all – forgetting that all I have comes by the grace of God in the first place.

Sometimes we question it, out of our troubles, like Job.  We wonder if it is true and try to understand the mind of God.  We would do well to remember the questions of God to Job – “Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone -- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”

“Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges?…  Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?  Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?  Tell me, if you know all this.”

“What is the way to the abode of light?  And where does darkness reside?  …  Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?  What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? …  Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens?”

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?  Can you loose the cords of Orion?  Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?  Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?  Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?”

“Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?”

God asked Job these questions because it was important for Job to remember that God was not his enemy as he was coming to believe.  This encounter with the Lord was not to say why Job was suffering, but to learn, by faith, that God was his Creator, Sustainer, and Friend.

This is something we forget, but the Psalmist reminds us that the earth does not.  “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;” the psalmist sings, “let them say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns!’  Let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them!  Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth.  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

Singing trees, jubilant fields – these things we take as poetic language.  Things that don’t really happen.  Or do they?  Could it be that the golden light that transforms field trash into something of beauty is a way the fields are being jubilant, reflecting God’s light back to him?  Could the graceful, waving naked limbs of trees be hands uplifted in praise to God?  Maybe that’s all bit a mystical, yet we each could use a bit of the mystery in our lives, for true encounters with God are more than slightly mysterious.

Of course, what makes the countryside beautiful and rich are the memories it evokes. And inevitably entwined in those memories are people.  The people whose woods I walked in.  The families whose haylofts I played in.  The folks, past and present, who molded my life.  I remember Grandpa and Grandma Bill, Uncle Johnny, Uncle Burt, Aunt Orie, cousin Ernie, and on and on.  A parade of Sunday school teachers, youth group leaders, and pastors also march past.  As do people from the present.  Not a farmer myself, the seasons of my life have been blessed by a rich bounty of people, not crops.  And I am richer for them all.  They have been the jubilant fields and singing trees, singing “for joy before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth.  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”  They planted the seeds of faith in my life and watered them and watched them grow.  Some of them have sung the song of harvest home.  Some I get to see daily.  Regardless, they continue to bless me.

God’s land and God’s people are intricately interwoven.  Even those of us who rarely venture outside the city limits are tied to the earth by strong bonds and a bounty of people.  And this season is about giving thanks for that bounty to the gracious God who loves us more than we can imagine.

I came across a thanksgiving poem the other day that expresses that thought better than I am able.  It’s by Max Coots and says:

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks; For generous friends ... with hearts ... and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbage, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;

And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.

 Let us give thanks, this holiday time, for golden light, good friends, and God’s graciousness. May we open our eyes to jubilant fields and singing trees.  Soaring clouds, be they white or gray with rain.  Winds warm or chilled by the north.  People who are made in God’s own image.  Let us give thanks and “sing for joy before the LORD.  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

"a language carved in the shimmer of stubble..."

Photo by Brent

Thanksgiving

I have been trying to read
the script cut in these hills—
a language carved in the shimmer of stubble
and the solid lines of soil, spoken
in the thud of apples falling
and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak
as they gather in the fallen grain,
the blackbirds sing it over their shoulders in parting,
and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript
where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue
I believe it might sound like a lullaby,
or the simplest grace at table.
across the gathering stillness
simply this: “For all that we have received,
dear God, make us truly grateful.”. 

---Lynn Ungar, Bread and Other Miracles

Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field...

photo by Brent

On Sunday we sang a Thanksgiving song that was new to me.  I really liked it and so want to share it with you, my faithful reader ("Hi Mom!").

Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field, 
give thanks now to God in nature revealed. 

Give thanks for the sun,
the wind and the rain.
And thanks for the crops
that feed us again.
The corn safely cut is gathered inside.
We thank you, O Lord, that you can provide.
Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field, 
give thanks now to God in nature revealed. 

The trees ripe with fruit
stand proud in the sun,
we gather them now
that summer is gone.
For yours is the wonder, yours is the power.
Yours is the glory of fruit and of flower.
Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field, 
give thanks now to God in nature revealed.

So in all our plenty,
help us to see,
the needs all around whatever they be.
With food for the body, strength for the soul,
it’s healing and caring, making them whole.
Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field,
give thanks now to God in nature revealed.
("Lord of the Harvest" by Jancis Harvey)

One reason I liked it so much (beside the obvious) is the line "The corn safely cut is gathered inside."  A week ago I watched the corn in the field next to Ploughshares Farm get safely cut.  I stood out in the middle of the field while Doug Cook combined around me.  And, while standing there, I thought of the nation's farmers who feed us and others (as I don't grow my own!).  I also thought -- and rejoiced in -- how these fields and the corn and beans and all feed more than just humans or livestock.

As I stood there, a great rustling took place around me and out of the uncut corn ran two of the fattest raccoons I had ever seen.  Doug spotted them, too, and was not quite as amused as I was that they had found a feast in his corn.  Other critters ran from the approaching John Deere, their summer/autumn home slowly disappearing around them.  They all looked well fed.

The next couple of days I witnessed other animals feasting in the field.  A pretty doe was nosing through the field, shoving aside corn stubble to get to ears that had been missed by the combine due to having been knocked down by two huge wind storms two weeks ago.  Flocks of birds settled in clouds of blackness among the rows of sheared stalks and squawked and cawed and chirped their way looking for kernels.

Lord of the harvest, Lord of the field, 
give thanks now to God in nature revealed.

Indeed.

"The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe..."

What the Heart Cannot Forget

by Joyce Sutphen

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.

The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.

The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.

The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.

And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.

"What the Heart Cannot Forget" by Joyce Sutphen, from Coming Back to the Body. © Holy Cow! Press, 2000.  (buy now)

From the "Writers Almanac"

"Whose tune do you think the planets are singing..."

The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?

You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?

Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?

Lynn Ungar
Source: Blessing the Bread

" I get a kind of nostalgic craving for it..."

Baloney

by Louis Jenkins

There's a young couple in the parking lot, kissing.
Not just kissing, they look as though they might eat
each other up, kissing, nibbling, biting, mouths wide
open, play fighting like young dogs, wrapped around
each other like snakes. I remember that, sort of, that
hunger, that passionate intensity. And I get a kind of
occasionally, for the food of my childhood. Baloney
on white bread, for instance: one slice of white bread
with mustard or Miracle Whip or ketchup-not
ketchup, one has to draw the line somewhere-and
one slice of baloney. It had a nice symmetry to it, the
circle of baloney on the rectangle of bread. Then you
folded the bread and baloney in the middle and took
a bite out of the very center of the folded side. When
you unfolded the sandwich you had a hole, a circle in
the center of the bread and baloney frame, a window,
a porthole from which you could get a new view of
the world. 

nostalgic craving for it, in the way that I get a craving,

"Baloney" by Louis Jenkins, from Tin Flag: New and Selected Prose Poems. © Will o' the Wisp books, 2013.  (buy now) 

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"her great feathered cross..."

The Heron

by Jack Ridl

Whenever we noticed her
standing in the stream, still
as a branch in dead air, we
would grab our binoculars,
watch her watching,
her eye fixed on the water
slowly making its own way
around stumps, over a boulder,
under some leaves matted against
a fallen log. She seemed
to appear, stand, peer, then
lift one leg, stretch it, let
a foot quietly settle into the mud
then pull up her other foot, settle
it, and stare again, each step
tendered, an ideogram at the end
of a calligrapher's brush.
Every time she arrived, we watched
until, as if she had suddenly heard
a call in the sky, she would bend
her knees, raise her wide wings,
and lift into the welcome grace
of the air, her legs extending
back behind her, wings rising
and falling elegant under the clouds:
For more than a week now
we have not seen her. We watch
the sky, hoping to catch her great
feathered cross moving above the trees.

"The Heron" by Jack Ridl, from Practicing to Walk like a Heron. © Wayne State University Press, 2012  (buy now)

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"Silence and Shots" -- A New Way of Planting Quaker Meetings?

A friends of mine sent me an article on "Church-In-Pub" from NPR the other day with the question, "New idea for New Meetings Project? Just kidding, . . . maybe!"   Since she's the clerk of her meeting, she didn't feel like posting it publicly, though she did note, "I have noticed that the rum soaked cranberry salad always disappears quickly at pitch-ins!"

As I read the article I was reminded a photo my brother-in-law Paul sent me a few months ago (on the left).  "Spiritual Shots" in Frisco, TX.


The article reports "With mainline religious congregations dwindling across America, a scattering of churches is trying to attract new members by creating a different sort of Christian community. They are gathering around craft beer. ... Some church groups are brewing it themselves, while others are bring the Holy Mysteries to a taproom. The result is not sloshed congregants; rather, it's an exploratory approach to do church differently."

Doing church differently is something that Quakers have been doing for years.  Well, differently from other Christian congregations.  Perhaps, though, it's time to begin to do something differently from where we've been doing it.

Notice I said "where," not "how."

I think we've got a good bit of the "how" correct -- when we do it right.  But lately we've been largely locked into worshiping in the sort of place that our founding Friends railed against -- a set building.  A "steeple-house" as Fox referred to the churches of his day.  I wonder what he would say about our meetinghouses today?  True, few of them have steeples, per se, but have they become a hindrance rather than a help in being Friends?


Now I admit, I truly love our little meetinghouse.  There's comfort there.  Community there.  Deep worship there.  But I also note that there are few visitors there.

And so when I read the NPR article, I remembered John Camm and John Audland preaching where ever they could -- including the pubs of the day.  They went to where the great people to be gathered were already gathering.

Hmmm, that's a thought.  To take the Quaker way to places where people who would be sympathetic to our way of faith and life are already present or disposed to visit.  "Quakers at the Co-op"?  "Spirit at Starbucks" (whilst Starbucks may not be thrilled w/ a bunch of coffee-swilling Quakers, that's who they're named for (Starbuck in "Moby Dick")?  "Silence and Shots" at the local craft distillery?  Well, we're probably not ready for that or to serve Old Quaker Whiskey.

But what are we ready for?  And where are we ready for?  Is it time to go where "they" are rather than wait for "them" to come to where we are?  Where we are may be fine for us already gathered.  In fact, it may be the perfect place from which to launch an outreach effort at the natural foods cafe, jazz club, playhouse, bookstore, etc.  And where we are may be ideal for folks who are attracted to the Quaker way through our efforts at those public places -- it may be just perfect for entering a loving, caring, worshipful community of faith and going deeper spiritually.

Where is Spirit calling you?

-- Brent