A Bounteous Harvest: A Midwest Musing

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 hilly, forested Brown County, Indiana. 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 taking Nancy for rides around Indiana at this time of year. We get in our pick-up and 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. .

I feel a sense of connectedness with the land and that sense grows stronger every year. 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 where I live. Seventeen years ago, the home site was a tangle of briars, thorn trees, and poison ivy all tangled in old fences. My dad, my sons-in-law, 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 sixteen 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.

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

Sometimes I question it, out of my troubles, like Job. Like in this time of COVID. I wonder if it is true and try to understand the mind of God. Then I read God’s questions 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.”

God asked Job these questions because it was important for Job to remember that God was not his enemy. 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 I forget, but the Psalmist continually reminds me 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 I can always use a bit more of the mystery in my lives, for my truest 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 in whose woods I walked. The families whose haylofts I played in – and fell out of. The folks, past and present, who molded my life. I remember Mom and Dad, 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 – too many of them, for me -- have sung the song of harvest home. Some I get to see daily. Regardless, they all continue to bless me. They speak to me in the deepest parts of my soul.


For 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.

 May I give thanks, this holiday time, for golden light, good friends, and God’s graciousness. May I 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 me give thanks and “sing for joy before the LORD. Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

Spiderwebs On My Face: Another Midwest Musing

 

Almost every day, sometimes twice a day, Nancy and I climb into our utility cart and go for a ride on the trails around and through our woods and prairie. We used to go for walks, but since Nancy's stroke last March that's just not possible anymore. Yet, she enjoys and wants to experience the trees, the tall grasses, the wildflowers, the glimpses of wild turkeys, deer, coyotes, beaver, groundhogs, coyotes, and more. 

So I help her up into the cart and off we go at a pace similar to that we used to walk. Up and down paths wide and narrow, bumpy and smooth. Always watching for a new seasonal wildflower, a hawk, a scurrying skunk.

One thing we always forget to watch for -- and indeed is hard to watch for -- are spiderwebs.

I hate spiders. Have since I was little kid. It's must be a genetic hate -- Grandma Bill hated them, too. With a passionate hate. One time she called my grandad to come get rid of one in their bedroom. He'd been at the kitchen table cleaning his pump action 12 gauge shotgun and arrived in their room carrying it. "Lew, get rid of that spider!" grandma demanded. "How?" "You have a gun," she shouted. "Use it if you must." And then stormed out the room. 

Of course, he didn't. Use the gun that is. But it's always made a good family story.

But back to spiderwebs and utility cart rides. 

At least once on every ride, we run, usually face first (our cart is pretty simple -- no windshield) into a spider web. Nancy is generally pretty calm and just wipes it away. I am frantic, certain that the spider, probably a black widow or brown recluse, has scampered off the web and is at that very moment working its way down the collar of my shirt and under my t-shirt looking for a place to bite me. Probably my fat belly.

After the brushing and me smacking areas on my shirt where I think the poisonous pest might have taken up residence, I step on the accelerator and we inch off down the trail. And run into another web.

Sigh.

These head on collisions with spiderwebs have left me pondering though the persistence of these creatures. I can imagine, sort of, making a web that is goes across a six foot wide windy path in the woods, but bridging one that is twelve to fifteen feet wide? How do they do that? 

Now I don't really care what the answer is -- learning how they do that is not that important to me. What is important is that they do it at all and the work that goes into it. And the ancillary fact that the same place I drive through today and run into a spiderweb may find another there tomorrow. Ambitious little arachnids -- God's creations doing what they were created to do. In the face of politics, division, war, pandemic. Oh wait, could that stuff only matter to us people who seem too often to do that which is other than what we were created to do.

In the midst of my musings, I picked up a book of Jane Tyson Clement's poems. And, in the mysterious ways the Divine teaches me, came across her poem "The Spider"

I watch the spider fling

its most improbable thread ―
from aspen limb to birch
and back again.

 

So do we fling our faith

from star to star
and under God’s eternal, watching care
the perfect orb
will come.

Now I'm still no big fan of spiders. But I'm happy for the lesson they are teaching me -- to be true to my nature as one of God's beloved creatures. 

To do the work I'm called to do. 

To trust in the Lord. 

To know it will be enough. 

God's Good Green Earth: The Humble Stumble

  

Photo by Brent

The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious creator to the inhabitants, and to impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an injury to the succeeding age.

 -- John Woolman, 1772

How I’ve become a conservation minded fellow is beyond me. It must be evidence of God’s slow but steady work in my soul – sorta like the slow steady work of the Colorado River on that which is now known as the Grand Canyon. I only hope that someday my soul is as beautiful as that natural masterpiece.

It’s not that I disregarded the earth. Indeed I was a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout, an Indian Guide, and Christian Service Brigade member. As kids, my cousins and buddies often camped out in the summer, albeit often in our city backyards. My granddad and dad and his friends went camping and fishing and dragged me along at times, often to the Hocking Hills in southern Ohio. I had appreciation for natural beauty, but was a bit disconnected from it much of the time. I lived in a city in an era before urban hiking/biking trails and intentional green spaces meant part of the blacktopped playground was painted with industrial green paint. It was also a time that we thought our biggest danger was the God-less Russians and their H-bombs and not our own over extension of natural resources and pollution of air and water.

Doh!

I started waking up to the need for care of the earth as a freshman in college (I began waking up to a lot of things that year!). On April 22, 1970 (just a few weeks before the Kent State massacre) the first Earth Day was held. It seemed like a good thing. Who could be against taking care of our planet. Even our Evangelical Quaker college observed it (not by letting us out of class, however). Plus it was sorta fun to dress up and have a mock funeral for the Earth. Bill Roman donned a cassock and carried a book of prayer while a group of other students served as pall-bearers and grave-diggers. But conservation seemed a hippie-ish, radical sort of thing. Never mind that I had grown up attending John Burroughs Elementary School, named for one of the most famous naturalists and conservationists for his day. And the man who said, “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” Which well reflects how I feel.

Still, for years, despite a long time involvement in caring for the earth by many of my friends who are Friends, doing so myself not much on my radar. I mean, I tried to do no real harm – which was pretty easy since I didn’t own any smoke-belching, pollution producing factories. Nor did I worry about my oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere leaking and spilling thousands of gallons of crude into the ocean. I had no oil platforms. I didn’t strip mine. I didn’t mine at all. I didn’t use massive amounts of fertilizer to increase crop production. The only crop I had was usually the grass growing on the city lot around my house.

And now I find myself living in an Energy Star rated house that’s extremely energy efficient and heated and cooled by geo-thermal system. And that’s just the outward manifestation of the gradual inward change.

What happened?

Faith happened. That’s what. The slow arc of God’s grace and teaching has brought home to me this idea that it’s not enough just for me to bemoan (and smirk a bit about) the Cuyahoga River catching on fire the summer between high school and college. Nope, I actually have to do something.

If, that is, I believe in God and want to be a Friend of Jesus.

Signs & Spiritual Discernment

Recently, at a presentation I was giving on my book Sacred Compass, someone asked if I believed God worked through "signs."  "Isn't that a bit Ouija-y boardish?" she asked.

I had to think a bit before answering.  After all, I had an entire chapter in the book on "signs."  After some thought, I replied something to effect that "Yes, I believe God does work through signs.  All kinds of them -- internal nudges, outward leadings, literal signs, and more."  I don't think it's Ouija-y boardish at all.

When I got home I remembered a picture of a sign I had taken.  I saw the sign while on a stroll around a little seaside town and snapped it.  As I did, I remembered Moses demanding to know God's name before he went to speak God's truth to Pharaoh's power.  ^"God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say ...‘I am has sent me...’” (Ex. 3:14)

The sign and the story spoke to my condition.  I hope I am on "I Am Street" -- going to God.

-- Brent

Sky Crosses: A Good Friday Poem

Sky Crosses

The heavens keep telling
    the wonders of God,
    and the skies declare
    what he has done. -- Psalm 19:1

Silver crosses cross
cerulean southeastern skies, horizontal
at first, then lifting toward heaven's vault with
a roar that rends the air, trailing 
fire and fumes.  Higher the 
crosses soar, almost vertical, sound receding, fading, and 
unholy smoke transforming, as our sins, from
blackness and fury, to white contrails
trailing the cross. My eyes, cast
heavenward, behold umpteen tiny twinkling
crosses crisscrossing  my 
Good Friday sight.

-- Brent Bill, 2013

Colorado Learnings: The Upward Way

I'm a flat-lander.  I readily admit that.  A child of the Midwest, that region is my home in many senses.  I'm rooted and grounded there and love its seasons, flora and fauna.

But i like to travel, too.  I enjoy seeing different parts of God's good earth.  This summer I've seen the Carolina coastline, northern Ohio farm fields, and Colorado's mountains.

Yesterday I did something I would not, on my own, choose to do.  I went on a ride at Colorado National Monument.

Now unlike the the Washington Monument, which I have seen many times whilst in DC, there is no ... um... monument at Colorado National Monument.  There's no stone spire there, no man-made monolith.  Instead the whole place is a geologic monument.  With sheer cliffs dropping 2,000 feet.

That last part is why I would not choose to take a ride there.  I'm not a big fan of sheer drops of 20 feet -- let alone 2,000 feet.  But my sister Julie and her husband Dave wanted me to see this particular part of their state and my sister Linda who is almost as heights-impaired as I am, said she was game, so off we went.

I was fine at first.  Didn't really think much about it.  But they kept talking on the almost 2 hour trip from Montrose to the park entrance about how it wasn't so bad and which side of the car I should not sit on and how I could keep my eyes closed on the way up, if I wanted.

All that made me a mite jittery.  So did, upon our arrival at the park entrance, Linda saying, "Okay, let's switch seats."  She said it was so I could have the best views for photos, but it was really because she wanted to be on the side of the car facing the solid rock walls instead of the sheer (I have I mentioned that the drops offs are sheer?) drop onto the rocks below.

I was still pretty much okay.  Until a car pulled up next to us.  The driver and passenger looked up at the roads clinging to the side of the rock face, looked at each other, looked up again, looked back at each other ... and turned around and left.

I took a deep breathe, we pulled up to the ranger station, got our sticker and started up a gentle climb.  I looked at the map the ranger had kindly given us just as the road took a decided un-gentle angle of descent and all guard rails disappeared (to make it easier for the car to plunge all the way to the bottom of Fruita Canyon I guess).  According to the map, ahead lay Dead Man's Curve.

My goal was to make it there -- and past. 

My hands were sweaty, my breathing shallow.  I wanted to lean to the inside to "help" keep the car on the road (unknown forces were probably at work trying to suck us off the road).  I wanted to close my eyes.  But instead, I reminded myself to breathe deep.  I sat back.  I wiped my hands on my shorts.  I stole small glances out the side window while Julie and Dave "ooohed" and "aahed."  I admitted to myself and them that I was scared.  And I told myself that soon I would be at a place that was more comfortable to me than an automobile climbing along the edge -- and would be witness to some vistas that I'd never witness any other way.

Like life, I thought.  I'm in the midst of a sort scary trek now... after having left a long-term, solid, well-paying, fulfilling position with a wonderful organization to do ... to do what?  To find another  solid, well-paying, fulfilling position with a wonderful organization?  To write, edit, speak, lead retreats, consult with churches? 

The road I'm on looks pretty scary in some ways.  But the safety of the flatlands is behind me.  I'm on the climb.  The cliffs look pretty sheer.  But, like yesterday, I'm in good company.  Many other of God's children are traveling similar paths, and some are with me on mine.

And, like yesterday, I have a driver and guide who's trustworthy and knows the terrain, even if I don't.  So, like the old gospel hymn says:

I'm pressing on the upward way

New heights I'm gaining every day;

Still praying as I'm onward bound,

“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”

Now, if I can just make it past "Dead Man's Curve."

-- Brent

Step into the troubled waters...

Step into the troubled waters

the angel left for you--
the trembling unknown,
the unchartered depth.
The body descending
blurs in the refraction
of sacred Light.

"Bethsaida" by Nancy Compton Williams

Source: The Penwood Review

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

...likely to find ourselves participating in the Divine nature ...

"When beauty, truth, life, and love are all present in our relationships, ministries, vocations, life choices, then we are much more likely to find ourselves participating in the Divine nature and living more deeply."
-- an excerpt from my upcoming plenary message to Lake Erie Yearly Meeting of Friends ("Beauty, Truth, Life and Love: Four Keys for Finding Our Way")

Sunflowers & Souls: From Mind the Light

(from Mind the Light)

Light: Without it we die. Physically.Spiritually.

Our very lives depend on light for photosynthesis—energy from sunlight that converts into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fuel used by all living things. That’s why sunflowers track the sun across the sky, sea otters bask while floating in the ocean, and I look for an excuse to go to Florida in January. All God’s creatures move toward the light—flowers, trees, people. Light is constant and ever present. At least that’s what we assume. Then the power goes out or a month of clouds rolls in. We grumble and moan and whine until the light comes back.

But even more than physically, we respond to illumination emotionally and spiritually. Light—depending on its strength, tone, slant—changes how we perceive the world and people. Light sets a Midwestern sunset apart from a Western desert sunset, a Goya portrait from a John Singer Sargent portrait, and a joyful spirit apart from a mournful one. Yet even though light is all around us, we often don’t notice it and the difference it can make in our souls. That’s where an old Quaker saying—“Mind the Light”—offers help. “Mind” in this case means many things—including heed, tend, notice, observe, and obey. Minding the Light is a way of deep seeing.

I need help seeing. I’ve been nearsighted since high school and joined the bifocaled folks when I turned forty. I’m also diabetic. That means I go to my optometrist annually and have my eyes thoroughly checked. At a recent examination, Dr. Groninger talked me into trying contact lenses.

I liked the immediate results. I looked days younger with them—so much younger I considered getting a toupee and dyeing my beard. But I had trouble reading. I saw faraway stuff. But not near. The first day I went out to lunch with people from the office and picked up the check. That’s about all I did, because I couldn’t read it. I had to trust a coworker to fill in the amount for the tip.

So I went back to the doctor. She made an adjustment. Much better. I could read. But then I started driving. My distance was blurrier. Another week and I was back. “What do you think?” Dr. Groninger asked. “Well, I like not messing with glasses. I like the freedom. But I’m still having trouble— now it’s distance.” “Let’s try modified monovision.” She explained that she was going to power up my left eye for reading and my right eye for distance. “Oh, we’re going to trick my brain, huh?”

“Not really,” she said. Then she explained that sight already tricks our brains. We favor one eye over the other all the time, based on what our needs are. If we’re in a concert and someone with a big hat sits in front of us, the eye that can see the show tells the brain, “Hey, pay attention here and forget that hat.” And we do. So now I’m learning to see in a new way and tell my brain what to pay attention to.

The poet Tess Gallagher writes:

My father loved first light.

He would sit alone

at the yellow formica table

in the kitchen with his coffee cup

and sip and look out . . .

My father picks up his

cup. Light is sifting in

like a gloam of certainty

over the water. He knows

something there in the half light

he can’t know any other way.

That’s what Mind the Light is about: A way to learn things in the light, whether at Formica tables with coffee cups or quietly reading a spiritual memoir or in the middle of our workaday world. Minding the Light adds a further dimension to eyes and brain: our souls. It helps us pay attention to God’s Light around us and in us. How we see our lives changes as this illumination leads us to a deep appreciation of the soulful things of life. Minding the Light is an invitation to experience a new way of seeing that shows our brains and souls what to pay attention to. It’s a way of seeing our inner and outer lives with spiritual eyes and discovering the connectedness between inner and outer sight.

Throughout Mind the Light you’ll encounter boxed text labeled “Illuminating Moments.” These are meant as brief exercises in Minding the Light. Illuminating Moments are based on the Quaker practice of asking Queries. The Religious Society of Friends (as Quakers are officially known) have used Queries for almost 350 years as a way to examine our souls, seek clarity, and gain spiritual insight. Queries are a practice that can be used by anyone looking for God’s Light in life. The Illuminating Moments in this book are not about mystical experiences of God, though they may occur. As you read the Illuminating Moments, let your mind and soul fill with words, ideas, or images. Using the Light of God inside and outside you, look deeply into the Holy.

Learning to Mind the Light is CPR for the soul. It’s an encounter that will save your light. 

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

the above is an excerpt from Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes which is now available for $2.99 on Kindle.   You can download a free sample chapter!

Why Do We Hunger for Beauty?

We hunger for beauty. I think that’s because that hunger is rooted in our hungering for God, for a real and profound connection to the Divine. That desire for connection comes from deep in our bodies and souls. That’s because, as theologian David Bentley Hart says, “Beauty crosses every boundary, traverses every series, and so manifests the God who transcends every division.” We are drawn to beauty as we are drawn to the Divine.

Closely linked to our hunger for beauty is our desire to create. While many of us, for whatever "good" reasons, have put off much of our creativity as we age. We’ve put away the Play-doh, making music with kazoos and waxed paper wrapped combs, quite telling each other fantastic stories, and the like. We have quit doing many of the things that gave us joy and hope and meaning when we were young,

These desires for beauty and creation are part of who we are – as creatures created in the image of our God. When we open scripture, the first thing we see about God is His creative nature. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1 (NIV)) God brought order and beauty out of chaos. In that same way, a potter takes chaos in the form of clay and shapes it into something beautiful. Or a baker uses ingredients springing from the earth and its bounty and makes a cake. Or a supervisor sees the potential in the disparate talents of a company’s workers and helps fashion them into an amazingly inventive team. Or…

Quaker writer Caroline C. Graveson once wrote

“There is a daily round for beauty as well as for goodness, a world of flowers and books and cinemas and clothes and manners as well as of mountains and masterpieces... God is in all beauty, not only in the natural beauty of earth and sky, but in all fitness of language and rhythm, whether it describe a heavenly vision or a street fight, a Hamlet or a Falstaff, a philosophy or a joke: in all fitness of line and colour and shade, whether seen in the Sistine Madonna or a child's knitted frock: in all fitness of sound and beat and measure, whether the result be Bach's Passion music or a nursery jingle. The quantity of God, so to speak, varies in the different examples, but His quality of beauty in fitness remains the same.”

Seen that way, beauty is redemptive. Creativity – whether in the art studio or lived out in the workaday world – invites us to participate in God’s redemption of this world. God calls us to bring beauty and order from chaos; to bring glad tidings of great joy at this and every one of God’s seasons.

Why do we hunger for beauty? As children of the living, creating God, how could we not?

--Brent

The Stable -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

The winds were scornful,
Passing by;
And gathering Angels
Wondered why

A burdened Mother
Did not mind
That only animals
Were kind.

For who in all the world
Could guess
That God would search out
Loneliness.

--Sr. M. Chrysostom, O.S.B.

On Being Attentive -- Two's by Two

After looking at singular things for a few days, I decided I would try to be attentive to "two"s -- and started on Twos-day (okay, bad puns are singular). I thought that being attentive to twos might be a bit more difficult. After all, there are many ones -- but how many twos are there?

As I brushed my hair (yes, I have some hair that still needs tending) in front of Nancy's dresser, I looked down and noticed our senior pictures sitting on her desk. No, not senior as in the age we are now, but senior as in seniors in high school. Two very earnest looking teenagers looked back at me from their formal professional black and white portraits. I said a prayer for those teens as I thought of how their lives were turning out to be far different (speaking for myself at least) than they imagined they would as seventeen year olds. I wished God's blessings for and on them.

As I moved to my chest of drawers to pick up my wallet, keys, and superfluous comb, I saw another set of senior pictures -- those of my sons Ben and Tim. I see those pictures (and another just behind them of the boys as very young boys) every day. But today I saw them afresh and as a possibility for the primary speech of prayer. As I reflected on their lives (Ben as business man, husband and father in Japan and Tim as good, kind Hoosier fellow), I prayed silently -- God knows the words I would speak could I really name the longings of my heart for these young men.

Spotting -- and praying for -- twos has been a bit easier than I thought. Two women just jogged by my office window. Two strangers that I was able to bless with a little prayer, though they, I am sure, will never know that they were being prayed for. Nor do they need to.

The prayers and attentiveness benefit me (singular) as much as them (twos), I am sure. The act of being attentive throughout the day is opening me to a richer prayer life than my usual "Thank you" or "Help me" or other simple prayers. It also feels more "me" than when I try to pray the hours (which is not my tradition) or try some other prayer practices that just don't quite fit the Bill (so to speak).

I wonder what other twos God will place before me to notice this day?

-- Brent

On Being Attentive -- One Thing, Part 2

As I said in an earlier post, I often notice that I've driven the 22 miles (though according to Mapquest it's really only 20.59 miles) to work without being fully present to the sights and sites around me. And, in so doing, I miss living large chunks of my in the present -- the only place where I can truly live. Or experience God.

It's not that when I think of things past or solve problems future that I cannot encounter God in them. I can. But I don't really experience God in them. I remember God working in the past and pray for God to be with me in the future, but the only place I can really experience God's presence is in the present.

While I live in the country, I work in the heart of the city. I often find it easy to be attentive to the present and the possibility of God-surprises whilst walking in the prairie. But once I jump in the car and turn the ignition and make my way to the city, I lose track of attention. I slip into auto-driver mode. In doing so, I discount the possibility of an encounter with God in a place where I spend at least 1/3 of my life. So I need to learn to be attentive to both those places -- country and city -- for possible God-sightings.

Today I decided to practice attentiveness on my way to town. And, like my experiment yesterday of paying attention to single things, I decided that would do so on my way to work. I would not try to take in the civic panorama in its vastness. Instead, I would look for "ones".

It started easily enough. Traveling on the highway, glanced in my rear view mirror. A car was closing on me fast. I mean really fast. Blue and red lights flashed. It was a state policeman on a run. I prayed for him, that he would be safe in his hurry. Then I noticed a pillar of smoke in the westbound lanes. As I approached, I saw that it was a car on fire. One car. Blazing tires and engine and body; belching smoke. The state policeman had pulled a quick U-turn and was heading to the car. The fire department had just arrived and by the time I passed the scene, the car was not to be seen -- it was hidden amid the belching smoke and billowing steam from the water being poured on the car. And so I prayed God's blessing on the driver of that car -- a blessing for her or his safety and comfort.

As I rounded the bend in the highway that leads into the city, I beheld our midwestern skyline. Surely nothing nearly as spectacular as New York or Chicago's, but still with buildings reaching for the sky. The tallest one caught my attention. I can't tell you its current name. It's a bank building (at least I think it still is). And I remembered that yesterday was the tenth anniversary of 9/11 when terrorists decided to crash airplanes into tall buildings. I saw the building from the west, the south, the east, and the north as I made my way to my office. And I prayed for it and the people who would work in that singular structure. I prayed that they would experience life-giving moments inside that conglomeration of concrete, steel, and glass -- that their day there would be more than drudgery, but that it would have moments of joy.

Then, as I walked from the parking lot to my office, I passed a bench on the walkway that passes by my windows. One, stretched out, was an old pair of khaki pants. Forlorn. Tattered. Left by who? And why? And so I prayed for their owner, for whatever needs he had. For a sense of God's presence for him.

As I walked on, I thought of how often I would have passed those 45 minutes completely oblivious to the opportunity to pray and experience God. And I prayed, and continue to pray, for an attentive spirit.

Even as it comes one thing at time.

-- Brent

30 Days of Smelling -- Mulberry

I had to mow today. It seems like I could say that every day. Though much of Ploughshares

50 acres is prairie and woods, most of the woods and prairie is new and must be maintained. Plus there's 5 acres of lawn, which sounds like a lot -- and is, except for the scale of the place. Five acres is about right to frame the house, allow for a football field (I am an Ohio native -- football is our state religion -- Go Bucks!), and line the 1/3 of mile driveway.

So there's lots of mowing -- with a bushhog and a John Deere Zero Turn Radius mower. The racing mower.

Which is what I was on tonight for 2 hours. It is fast, but mowing is still a chore.

As I thought of what I might smell tonight, I anticipated writing about newly mown grass. I had even figured out where I would go with that. But that was not the scent that captured my attention.

Instead it was the reek of over-ripened mulberries. We have tons of mulberry trees and the squirrels and birds have had a feast time ever since the mulberries came in. They were so heavy laden this year, in fact, that the squirrels and birds have not been able to keep up. They are rotting on the trees and the ground underneath. As I zip by, my nose is assaulted by the scent of rotting fruit above and below. Pungent, sweet, cloying. Not at all pleasant. Good mulberry wine and pies going to waste, I think, as my tire grind the berries into the ground. An abundance of fruit just rotting while I am at work in the city.

It caused me to stop and think about what other abundance I am letting go to waste while I am busy paying attention to other matters. Matters that I think are more important. And maybe they are more important. At the moment. And yet, there is abundance all around me and I fail to notice it. Instead I focus on the lack -- the lack of love I feel, the lack of resources, the lack of time, the lack of... And meanwhile I am blessed with SO MUCH. So much is rotting while I bemoan this perceived -- though not real -- lack.

God, teach me to see and use what you have given me before it goes to waste. And to quit fretting about that which I do not have.

-- Brent

30 Days of Smelling -- Burning Human Flesh

Nice title, eh? Sorry about that. But that was the smell that was on my olfactory mind today. Except I did not end up smelling it. Hooray.

Okay, I'm old. I've admitted that before. And as I have aged, my sun-damaged skin has erupted in some interesting formation. I mean, for the most part they are not noticeable to anybody but me, but one on my back that started as small as a pencil dot had transmogrified into something that was growing larger than that US's 1960s-70s "police action" in Vietnam.

And we know how that ended for us.

So at my last trip to my good doctor (who I've been seeing off and on now for almost 30 years), she said she could remove it. Being afraid of needles, knives, and other other medical paraphernalia, I demurred. After all, I rarely see it, not being in the habit of turning my back on myself.

But I am heading to the beach soon. And I thought why should this beautifully sculpted male body (joke!) be marred by this ugly thing on my back?

So I made an appointment to have it removed. Today was the day. As we prepped for the removal (her by getting medical stuff ready and me by taking off my shirt!), we began talking about removal. "Burning it off?" I trembled. "No, we don't do that much anymore," she said.

Phew. Because I remember when I as a pre-teen I was afflicted with a severe case of warts. I had to have them burned off by Dr. George Clouse armed with what my current good doctor (Dr. Ludmilla Trammell) told me was an "electric needle."

"Oh, the smell," she said. "It was awful. It would stink up the whole office. Patients waiting would turn green." No kidding!? I turned green. And I was the patient. And I remember that smell.

In fact, I remember all day today wondering if that's what awaited me.

It didn't. She froze the thing off with liquid nitrogen. No muss, no fuss, no smell.

It still hurts like hell right now, but ... no stink.

As I thought of that smell today, I did think about how it represented a malignant part of me being excised. Something that needed to go. And burning, perhaps, was a good thing to smell in that case. Getting rid of something awful, should it be easy?

That's what our Puritanical (and I mean that in worst possible popular usage of that word -- nothing too close to the original Puritans) American religiosity calls for. Nothing worth having should come too easily. Faith is hard won and the smell of brimstone and hellfire is always in our spiritual nostrils.

Except...

Except...

There's grace. Grace abundant. As we used to sing (messing up the words), "There's a wildness in God's mercy, like the wildness of the sea."

Well, grace is pretty wild. And it doesn't reek of the stench of brimstone. Or burning flesh. And if that makes it "cheap," then cheap God's grace is.

Guilt. Well that's another matter. It stinks and hurts. And is a self-imposed burden that sometimes I need to carry. To remind me not to be so hateful and judgemental of others as I remember my own faults and failings.

But grace, like liquid nitrogen, attacks that which much be exorcised and does it fairly painlessly. Yes, there is a bit of pain now. But it is minor... a reminder of something that was ugly and harmful is no longer a part of me.

Perhaps I should apply grace more liberally to myself.

-- Brent

30 Days of Smelling -- Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I had a late night last night. I had agreed to pick up my friend Katie at the airport. Her plane was initially due at around 11:30 -- which is well after my usual bedtime of Quaker midnight. Quaker midnight, for the Methodists among the readership of this blog, is 10 p.m. (Sometimes, in my case, Quaker midnight comes earlier than 10 p.m. -- depending on how tired I am. I figure, if I'm tired enough, then it's got to be 10 p.m. somewhere in the world, and off to bed I go.)

But Quaker midnight came and went last night and I was still up. In fact, Katie texted me at around 10:30 saying they were just getting ready to take off from Atlanta. I tracked her flight for awhile on the Internet and then, when it said it had landed, headed for the airport.

I forgot about waiting for luggage. Anyhoo, it was past 12:30 a.m. before we wandered into the house. And I wandered straight to bed, after telling Katie to sleep in if she felt like it. "Will you sleep in?" she asked. "Probably not," I replied.

Sure enough, right at the crack of 6:30, just like usual, I was awake. Well, sort of. My body brought my mind out of slumber into an awareness that it was time to get up. Even though I didn't want to. At all. But I was eased into the new day by the smell of coffee brewing. Nancy, who always beats me up (hmmm, that doesn't sound quite right!) had been up for at least 30 minutes and the aroma of fresh coffee was filling the air. It made me feel almost alive.

Later, after an hour in the office, I smelled fresh coffee again. My little brother, rabbi Aaron Spiegel had made his way into the office, turned on his computer, and brewed a fresh pot of coffee as he does every morning he's here. I think it's a Jewish ritual.

At any rate, the smell perked me up again. And while some Friends joke that coffee is Quaker communion (we don't do the bread and wine thing), I did think just a bit about it as such whilst smelling that heavenly aroma.

It is a form of communion in many place -- if by communion we think of communing with each other. I know I've had many a deep conversation with a friend -- about life and God -- over coffee at the local brewhouse. And many times we officemates gather while pouring Coffeemate into our cups and recap our weekend's activities. And many is the cuppa Joe that I enjoyed in between Meeting for Worship and Firstday (Sunday) School.

While I often have enjoyed communion with my friends and family over coffee, I would also maintain that I have had communion with God in those moments as well. Both in the God whose Spirit lives in His children whether at Meeting or in the kitchen at work and in the goodness that comes from God's gift of coffee to us. Yes, I do think that all good things -- including coffee (sorry Mormons) -- come from God and are given for our pleasure.

And sometimes just to help us wake up.

I think I need to smell some coffee just now. And maybe sip some, too.

-- Brent

So What Does It Mean to be Human

That was the question I wondered after watching "Moon" with Sam Rockwell. I don't want to give too much away from this 2009 film in case you haven't seen it, but...Sam Bell is an astronaut (or is he?) who has left family behind for a 3 year contract on the Moon mining a substance that has freed those of us on Earth from dependence on fossil fuels.

What a great guy. What a great company. Except is he? Are they?

Sam remembers his life on Earth. His wife. His daughter. He even remembers his life on the Moon. And he is confused when ... well, "he" appears a bit younger and healthier in the same space --- and actually rescues him from an accident.

It's a lovely spooky film that raises questions only fiction can -- if we try to think about them rationally, we quickly lose our way. That is why, I believe, only story tells the "whole" truth -- it asks the questions we want to ask, struggles with the questions we want to ask, and dares to leave us unanswered.

Is that not the essence of faith? To go where reason ceases to make sense and to venture into the realm of ... the myterious? The spirit? The soul?

And, as a Friend who believes "there is that of God in everyone" it raised anew the question of who is "everyone"? Everyone like me? White? Privileged? Human? Animal? Clone? "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?" (Psalm 139:7).

It is, I think, a frightful, wonderful question. A question we all should struggle with. Especially when we feel confident that God's presence is with us. Is it not equally with others? Recognized by us or not?

Well, I probably waxing too philosophical about a mere movie -- wonderful piece of entertainment or not. But, because I think it was a wonderful piece of entertainment, it also challenged me -- which is what good art does.

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?"

Indeed!

-- Brent

Quaker Wisdom for Today

"Our strength or help is only in God; but then it is near us, it is in us - a force superior to all possible opposition - a force that never was, nor can be foiled. We are free to stand in this unconquerable ability, and defeat the powers of darkness; or to turn from it, and be foiled and overcome. When we stand, we know it is God alone upholds us; and when we fall, we feel that our fall or destruction is of ourselves."

-- Job Scott

30 Days of Touch -- Contacts

I just started wearing contact lenses again for the first time in about 20 years (ever since I had to wear bifocals). There were two reasons I decided to give them a try again. One was that I get tired of pushing my glasses up or down or bending the frames or cleaning the lenses or any other of a zillion things that drive me crazy about glasses.

The other was ... well... vanity. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was now 58 not 18. Where did my hair go???? And why was my beard white. So I thought contacts might restore at least some semblance of youthfulness. And, indeed they did. I put them in and looked hours younger.

They did take some getting used, of course. They are bifocal lenses so they are a little funny vision wise at first -- until my brain figures out how they work and translates the impulses into clear vision (all very scientific, I know). And the other is putting them in.

I have this aversion to anything touching my eyes. You know that puff of air they shoot you with to test for glaucoma? I start flinching from the time I put my face anywhere near the machine. And if you point your finger toward my eye, I start backing up.

So, I had to get used to putting the tiny lenses on the end of my finger and then keeping my eye open long enough without flinching to get the lens in place.

Of course, it is no big deal -- except that they are my eyes! Over the past month, though, the procedure has become almost automatic -- I can put them in, uh, not blindfolded obviously, but easily.

And I can see. Very well. These little teeny tiny small pieces of plastic suck right up onto my eye and put the world in focus for me.

Oh, and did I mention that they make me look hours younger? Very youthful. They make my beautiful blue eyes sparkle.

As I thought about these lenses and how easily they have become an invisible part of me, I began to think about other things that have become second nature and improve my spiritual vision. Attending worship is one. I rarely anymore (unlike when I was a pastor) wonder whether I will go or not... I just do. Not out of habit (well, maybe a little) but because, like putting in my contacts, I know that doing so will help me see my way through the coming week more clearly.

Looking with attention and love at the world around me is another that helps bring my God-sight into focus. It is easier to see God at work in the world when I gaze that way -- with loving attention. And though I still have along way to go in doing that well, I slowly am getting better at it and thereby seeing the Divine breaking through my day all around me.

Those are just two of the things that serve as spiritual contact lenses for me. Others include listening to music and hearing the creative forces at work, soulful reading of poetry and prose, and having spiritual conversations with friends. All of these are, in small ways, like contact lenses -- not very big, but making a big difference. Helping me focus on the important life of the spirit. Bringing sight to my soul's eyes.

-- Brent

30 Days of Touch -- Lotion

I'm not a lotion using sort of guy. At least until lately. Nancy got me a bottle of men's hand and body lotion for Christmas. MEN's. For a manly guy like me -- no generic family use stuff. Ha.

Well, it doesn't smell too bad -- no lilacs or rosewater -- so I decided I'd try it. Surely a little couldn't hurt. Well, that little trial became daily use. My skin -- usually dry and flaky (like me) in winter -- is now radiant and smooth. Well, okay, maybe not exactly radiant and smooth. But it is certainly less dry. It feels better.

I've especially enjoyed using it on top of my little bald head. Evidently my skin had been hungering for some moisture and the lotion has worked wonders.

As I put it on this morning, I began thinking of an old gospel song -- "A Balm in Gilead"

There is balm in Gilead,
To make the wounded whole

Then at work today I've been listening to Ricki Lee Jones' new CD "Balm in Gilead." Which again brought the old song to mind.

So, I began wondering, what's that about? Why all this stuff about balm?

Perhaps, I thought, it's because your soul is as badly in need of balm as your skin was. Indeed, there have been some spiritual dry skin and hurts lately -- a betrayal, worries over friends' illnesses, family concerns, relationship problems, and other disappointments. All the stuff of everyday life ... but as hard on the soul's skin as a windy Hoosier winter day is on my epidermis.

And that balm, for me, is the presence of Christ in my life. It is a presence I welcome even in silence because of Jesus intimate knowledge of sorrow. His experience of my condition brings me solace. I am with Emily Dickinson when she said:

When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his Home, we turn away, but when he confides to us that he is "acquainted with Grief," we listen, for that also is an Acquaintance of our own.

So come on in Jesus. Pour your balm on my wounded soul. Bind my hurts with your presence. No words are needed. No explanation. Just be with me -- sharing our acquaintance with grief.

-- Brent