Let us go forward quietly, forever making for the light, and lifting up our hearts in the knowledge that we are as others are and that others are as we are, and that it is right to love one another in the best possible way – believing all things, hoping for all things, and enduring all things… ~Vincent Van Gogh in Letterto Theo Van Gogh – 3 April 1878
Yet another racially motivated killing appeared in the headlines today. So much collective societal energy is spent emphasizing, elaborating, indeed celebrating our diverse differences. If anything, this separates us rather than unites us, whether it be issues of race, culture, religion, political leanings or sexuality.
Yet we are alike far more than we are different. Despite the variety inherent in all living creatures, we share remarkable similarities deep in our cellular functions – mirror images of each other, intentionally created in the image of God.
“…we are as others are and that others are as we are, and that it is right to love one another in the best possible way –“
Each of us are born from the womb of our mother and each of us will die to dust someday. Those bookends to our lives bind the pages of our lives together, rather than tear us apart.
For some, similarities are not welcome – many hesitate to admit it is true, desiring to maintain distance and disagreement.
Can we make for the Light, enduring this painful journey together? Can we be bound by striving for unity? Can we agree to agree rather than disagree – it is right and true and worthy to love one another just as we are loved by our Creator?
This is the country road we live on. I know where it ends to the east: at the very edge of the Cascade foothills, right in the middle of a small tribal nation trying to survive challenging economic times on their reservation land.
Heading west from here, there is another tribal nation trying to survive.
In between are farmers who are having to sell their dairy herds because milk prices aren’t keeping up with the cost of maintaining their business. There are families now without sustainable wage employment because large industries have pulled up stakes and closed their doors. There is land that is overpriced as people flee the chaos and lawlessness of the cities, hoping to find peace and quiet.
There is much sadness along the road we travel that leads to heaven, but as a diverse people who struggle together on this journey, we take turns carrying one another when one has what another does not. We still have the sun and the rain and the soil, the turning of the seasons and the rhythm of a sun that rises up and comes down.
On our way to there, why not share?
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Crouching on a cabbage leaf, there’s a mantis, praying. Sneak up very quietly – You will hear him saying:
Bless the cricket, Bless the slug. Bless the fly and ladybug. Bless the aphid. Bless the bee. Bless the spider and the flea. Bless the lacewing. Bless the gnat. Make them healthy. Make them fat. Guide them over. Light their way. That’s all I ask – these things I prey. ~B.J. Lee “A Garden Prayer”
When I spotted a praying mantis crawling up the opening to our century-old hay barn, I said a prayer myself:
thank you that I’m not a random bug about to become a meal.
The mantis, like few other predators, disarms its potential prey by cleverly blending in with its surroundings, innocently folding its arms together in an attitude of prayer, but actually readying to make the fatal grab.
So a word to the wise or those with multiple legs, buggy eyes, wings or a hairy thorax, or those of us who simply read the news headlines every day and wonder what’s going to happen next:
you may well be considered a tasty morsel to be consumed, so be aware of who might be praying (preying?) near by and why…
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The essence of America, that which really unites us, is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion. It is an idea, and what an idea it is—that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going. ~Condoleezza Rice
We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! ~Abraham Lincolnfrom Proclamation 97 – Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer (March 1863)
Perhaps Independence Day should actually become a day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, as Lincoln proclaimed in March 1863. Goodness knows, after all we’ve been through as a nation, the U.S.A. still struggles with understanding who we are and how to live out the brilliant idea that began our government nearly 250 years ago.
Even for those coming from the most humble of backgrounds, it is possible for any person to do great things here. The key is to never forget the blessings bestowed upon us by the courage and perseverance of our forebears. So much blood has been shed to bring us the freedoms we take for granted.
Today is a day to be grateful and prayerful, not proud. Let us not forget amid the cacophony of fireworks, the overabundant picnic food and unending parades – we the people must vow together that our unity be strengthened by single-minded commitment to peace and harmony rather than be destroyed by division and conflict.
Our God does not abandon the humble in spirit. Let us not forget such a God.
photo by Joel DeWaard
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My father swerves the team to miss the quail’s nest hidden in the furrow she rises up beating her wings her cries fill all the world of sky and cloud echoing her call…
and so he passes the caring farmer with his crooked furrow saluting life the warm round eggs hidden in the spring grass the quail rising and falling pulled by invisible heartstrings. ~Dorothy Hewitt “Quail’s Nest”
photo by Kate Steensma
photo by Joel DeWaardphoto by Joel DeWaard
I remember my father driving a wooden post in the ground where a killdeer nest held 6 speckled eggs; the mother would run off crying plaintively, flapping her “broken” wing to lure him away from her precious brood.
He drove the plow around the nest, marking their spot for the season, respecting their presence, preserving their future, without anyone saying he should or he must – only his heart had told him it was the right thing to do.
photo by Joel DeWaardphoto by Kate Steensma
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On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from their cages, clatter away, splashed with sunlight.
But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited. Then he let himself be led away. Then he let the stranger mount.
Never had he seen such crowds! And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen. Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.
I hope, finally, he felt brave. I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him, as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward. ~Mary Oliver “The Poet thinks about the donkey” from her book Thirst.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings…
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet. G. K. Chesterton from “The Donkey”
Palm Sunday is a day of dissonance and dichotomy in the church year, very much like the donkey who figured as a central character that day.
Sadly, a donkey gets no respect, then or now – for his plain and awkward hairy looks, for his loud and inharmonious voice, for his apparent lack of strength — yet he was the chosen mode of transportation for a King riding to His death.
There was a motley parade to Jerusalem: cloaks and palms laid at the feet of the donkey bearing the Son of God, disorderly shouts of adoration and blessings, the rebuke of the Pharisees to quiet the people, His response that “even the stones will cry out” knowing what is to come.
But the welcoming crowd waving palm branches, shouting sweet hosannas and laying down their cloaks did not understand the fierce transformation to come, did not know within days they would be a mob shouting words of derision and rejection and condemnation.
The donkey knew because he had been derided, rejected and condemned himself, yet still kept serving. Just as he was given voice and understanding centuries before to protect Balaam from going the wrong way, he could have opened his mouth to tell them, suffering beatings for his effort. Instead, just as he bore the unborn Jesus to Bethlehem and stood over Him sleeping in the manger, just as he bore a mother and child all the way to Egypt to hide from Herod, the donkey would keep his secret well.
Who, after all, would ever listen to a mere donkey?
We would do well to pay attention to this braying wisdom.
The donkey knows – he’s a believer.
He bears the burden we have shirked. He treads with heavy heart over the palms and cloaks we lay down as meaningless symbols of honor. He is the ultimate servant to the Servant.
A day of dichotomy — of honor and glory laid underfoot only to be stepped on, of blessings and praise turning to curses, of the beginning of the end becoming a new beginning for us all.
And so He wept, knowing all this. I suspect the donkey bearing Him wept as well, in his own simple, plain and honest way, and I’m quite sure he kept it as his special secret.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
and just for fun on April 1st, I can’t resist sharing this one ….
With great power there must also come great responsibility… ~The “Peter Parker Principle” from Spiderman Comics (1962)
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Luke 12:48b (NIV)
Jesus concludes his parable of the wise and faithful servant with this line, which has become a modern mantra – thanks to Spiderman, the U.S. Supreme Court, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates and a few recent U.S. presidents.
Yet no one actually quotes the full New Testament parable itself ending with this very concept.
The story Jesus tells in Luke 12: 42-48 makes us wince, just as it is meant to:
42 The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
The same story as told in the gospel of Matthew ends not only with “a few blows” but with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Somehow that part is left out of Spiderman’s story, even though Spiderman experiences plenty of weeping in accepting his fate. Still, this is a bit too close to home for those in power and those with immense wealth — like Peter Parker’s reluctant acceptance of his Spidey powers, we know all too well the reality of just how fragile and weak we really are despite American’s relative wealth compared to the rest of the world.
Those who live as Christians have particular responsibility and accountability, identifying by name with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who made the ultimate sacrifice for humanity. He took the blows so we would be spared – no more weeping and gnashing of teeth.
On this federal holiday honoring our government’s top executive position, we must continually hold our elected leaders to their vowed oaths of responsibility and accountability. As individual citizens entrusted with much, we have much to give even before we’re asked.
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And yes it is necessary to admit walking in the forest the heart is a lock
it has inviolable chambers like the woods, fallen trees that block
access to the river snowdrops surprising its edges moss crystalline with frost
What I thought I wanted what I have tried to be was the slender instrument that opened
a key: presence moving deeper into the forest that releases the birds from the trees and sends them ascends them to sky by definition open
but now there is nothing left to be solved like a riddle
this time the lock must be broken what’s left has to be seized
because God only loves the strong thief I mean the man who breaks his heart for God ~Jennifer Grotz, “Locked” from Window Left Open
All my life I wanted to be an effective key, unlocking life’s mysteries and opening up the world to those who are hopeless, stifled and trapped. Doctor training gave me a few locksmith tools. I found my patients taught me far more about their pain and suffering than my professors did.
Yet profound mysteries remain: some illnesses are rare or unique enough to defy diagnosis, some just don’t respond to available tools, while illnesses as well understood and treatable as depression or COVID infection still kill and incapacitate with abandon. The keys I may have accumulated don’t fit every lock. They don’t necessarily open the doors to freedom from fear or worry.
At times I feel aimless, wondering what tools I still have and if I remember how to use them. Simple knowledge is only one key, while brute force – breaking and entering – may be necessary to break the hardest lock of all – access to the troubled heart and soul.
God wants in, to pick up our broken pieces and put us back together. He doesn’t need a key to enter what He Himself has built from scratch. He owns the place.
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…if I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love. If I meet hate with hate, I become depersonalized, because creation is so designed that my personality can only be fulfilled in the context of community. Booker T. Washington was right: “Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. ~William O. Douglas from The Douglas Letters
Be careful whom you choose to hate. The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly. ~Leif Enger from Peace Like a River
We have a new definition of greatness: it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant. ~Martin Luther King, Jr. in a February 1968 sermon: “The Drum Major Instinct” from A Knock At Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King’s words and wisdom in his sermons spoken over sixty years ago continue to inform us of our shortcomings as we flounder in flaws and brokenness. To often we resist considering others before ourselves, to serve one another out of humility, grace and love.
Today we unite in shared tears: shed for continued strife and disagreements, shed for the injustice that results in senseless emotional and physical violence, shed for our inability to hold up one another as a holy in God’s eyes.
We weep together as the light dawns today, knowing, as Dr. King knew, a new day will come when the Lord God wipes the tears away from the remarkable and beautiful faces of all people — as all are created in His image.
Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault: You there are master, do your own desire; What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt? ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Candle Indoors”
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night, That interests our eyes. And who goes there? I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind What most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors“
Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east… ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
In three days, we have gone from a sub-zero wind chill ice storm from the north to a balmy 60 degree storm from the south, both winds taking out our power and plunging us into a deeper darker night.
Rather than resort to generator power immediately, I break the darkness with candle light. It is only a brief respite as candles burn down, batteries die, and we’re back in darkness again until the power lines are patched and the transformers restored.
Sometimes the Advent and Christmas season can feel like that: a recharge for my faith that has gone dark and cold, a fire lit under me to banish creeping doubt and discouragement. I need more than Advent rituals and Christmas traditions to keep the darkness in its place beyond today.
God doesn’t need beeswax or batteries to keep His Light on. He just needs us: our trust, our love, our desire for understanding, our need for Him.
We are the candles that shine forth in the world to light the way for those around us who are floundering in the dark.
And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about…
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