Praytell

Friday, April 30, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Here’s how “it” happens.

I am driving back home, crossing the incredibly beautiful fields and woods of northwestern Wisconsin.  A thunderstorm is brewing.  I have never driven through that country without the sky being full of life–brilliant light, clouds with deep textures.  It begins to rain.  A lot.  The rain pelts the car, the highway, the fields.  I wonder if it is about to break into a hail.

And then, thought begins to emerge like the rain itself.

And, like the rain, it is carried by the wind.

It is completely unimaginable to me that the God of life would exclude anybody.  If there is truth, and if that truth is life, it applies to everyone.  The idea of being “good enough,” or “perfect enough,” or “obedient enough” to merit God’s love appears to me as a dangerous idea.  If it is true, there is no need for God.  We can “save” ourselves.  Nothing could be less true.

Arizona is in the news these days.  It is in the news because of the question, “Who’s in?” and “Who’s out?”  If you’re “out” you’ve gotta go.  I believe, and trust, in life for all people.  Period.  Jesus had a penchant for foreigners:  Samaritans, Syrophoenician women, Greeks, and so on.  He constantly broadened the understanding of “who’s in” and “who’s out.”  Indeed, that was his life.

But then another thought occurs.

It is completely unimaginable to me that the God of life would not care a whit about our actions.  If we are to love, then God must surely be a bit upset if we do not love, if we do not forgive, if we do harm, if we turn away, if we reject, if we fail to see the good that begs to be done.  In short, actions matter.  If the idea of God has no influence on our actions, our behaviors, what’s the point?

And so the word grace comes into the equation.

Through grace, we are forgiven, renewed, and loved.  Grace accepts both our shortcomings, and our forgiveness.  It is in the world of grace that the two thoughts meet, that the storm meets the light.

In this past week, standing with and beside my father in the hospital, each day was utterly unpredictable.  Hope gave way to despair.  Strength gave way to absolute exhaustion.  Cogency gave way to incoherence.  Incoherence gave way to some of the deepest talks I have ever had with my father, and opportunities for prayer.  Nothing was predictable.  Fear was present.  So was hope.  I did everything I could to make a difference, knowing that we were leaning on life at each and every moment.

What we were doing, trusting, and believing, was beyond the realm of “good decision” or “bad decision.”  We were living in grace, doing the best we could, and realizing that life was carrying us both.

Where was it headed?

We know not.  But the five hour drive from Lake Superior, to Madison, with my dad strapped in his wheelchair in the back of a van, unable to move, unable to stretch, it brought us to a new place in which we live, hope, and pray.

Never has grace been so beautifully sharpened.

Rarely has the rain brought such a beautiful clearing of the sky.

Soft walking,

Larry

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Ashland, Wisconsin

There is, in the Great State of Maine, a cottage on a lake shore.

In that cottage, there is a piece of paper pinned to the knotty pine boards that make up the interior walls.  The piece of paper is beneath the sink.  On it is a handwritten note, giving instructions as to how to turn the water on and off when arriving and departing the cottage.

The writing is neat, the penmanship of a box maker as my grandfather was.  I do not know the last time he was at the cottage.  It was at least 40 years ago.  The note has something to do with how one turns the water on and off when arriving and departing from the cottage.  That’s all.  But the note has endured all these years.  Nobody has moved it.  It is right where it has been for perhaps half a century.

This morning, as I was leaving the cottage on Lake Superior, I noted a note taped to the blind in the bathroom.  Each letter, each word, was written in my mother’s unmistakable handwriting.  I have never seen a handwriting like hers.  It is both childish, and mature, showing the workmanship of an artist.  The message on the note was simple:  Do not raise this blind.  To let the light in, turn the plastic rod.

That’s it.

Nothing more than that.  I would bet that note has been there for ten years.  I do not know the next time my mother, now 90, will be able to come to the cottage.  Perhaps never again, I just do not know.

And so, in two cottages, a thousand or so miles apart, two notes have survived.  Nobody has moved them.  Our family does not have a “thing” about notes.  There have been no discussions about these notes.  But then again, perhaps there has . . . we just didn’t use words.

I wonder why these notes have survived.  But then, something occurs to me.  One is about water.  The other is about light.  In life, we must tend to water.  And, in life, we must tend to light.  One renews, and the other allows for vision.  Take either away and we’re in trouble.

And, both notes are tied to a person.  They are instructions from a grandfather, and a mother.  In scripture, notes about water and light are also tied to a person.  Jesus said, “I am the light, the truth, and the way.”  God said, “Let there be light.”  Those notes have also endured.

In a few moments, I’ll hit the “post” note on my computer.  These words will then be posted.  I do not expect them to endure.

But who knows?

I suspect that you’ll have postings today as well.  If they have anything to do with water and light, and if they come with your name on them, they are about life.

And, that said, they will endure.

Larry

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Ashland, Wisconsin

I do what I can to keep cynicism at bay.

Once done, I need to bring criticism, its twin, to heel.

Both are easier said than done.  And both are necessary.  Cynicism is unable to trust anything but itself, and so, first think you know, it talks to itself.  Criticism is always “right” in its sure-fire opinion and prevents us from learning.  Neither asks for knowledge.  Both are narrow.

And both are necessary.  Only a life without discernment, without belief, and without passion could avoid them.

And so, here goes.

For the last six months or so, magazines and television show a woman, dressed in business-like black, taking command of a large white stage.  She is in complete command.  She wants to know just how many billions of tax dollars flow into the American economy from the oil and gas industry.  Recently she has been shown in an elevator that looks like a cylinder, moving up and down . . . that’s what oil and gas do, they move us . . . and the deeper we look, the more we’ll appreciate what this vital industry does.  In each scene, she is all alone.  “Trust me,” she seems to say.

And besides, if new wells are drilled, as they will be, will we actually see them?  No, she says.  New technology has made new drilling platforms unnecessary.  It’s a wonder.  One platform can now be six.  See?  The more you know, the better things are.

I think she’s gone.  And then she comes back.  In that same black dress, with that same in-command approach.  Each time, nobody else is there.  She knows.  She’s the only one who knows.  And so she shares, and because we can trust her, we now know too.  Finally, someone is talking reasonably about this volitle industry.

But then.

A week ago.

Off the coast of Louisiana, a platform explored.  And down there, way down there, we take a deep look, just as she asked us to, and we see oil spilling into the sea.  The deeper we look the worse it looks.  The robots haven’t yet turned it off.  Perhaps two more wells will have to be drilled to cut off the leak.

Suddenly, the ever-so-clean discussion, on a perfectly clean stage, with a perfectly-cut dress, is not so clean.

Life, it turns out, is complex.  Things can go wrong.  A promising trip home leads first to a beach and then to a fall.  A relationship that was “right” becomes complicated, doing the right thing always has implications.  If we are wise, we let them teach us, and even let them lead us into what we did not know.

But this I do know.

When a single person offers a single view that solves all problems and seeks to allay all fears, truth is not at hand.

Unless, of course, the speaker is you or me.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Ashland, Wisconsin

Like you, I know what is said about prayer.

It works.  And if it doesn’t, it is supposed to.  Just because a prayer doesn’t work we’re advised to not abandon the attempt.  When a country is in anguish, when disease strikes, when an ill-fated decision is made, we turn to prayer, asking God once again to pay a bit of attention not to the universe, but to Haiti, to a neighbor who fell ill, to my hopes for the day.

Scientific studies have shown, from what I hear, that prayer works.

I don’t know if that’s true or not.  And although I am pastor, it doesn’t concern me much.  I know that whatever connection prayer yields is healing.

End of sermon.

But does it work? I still wonder.

Saturday morning, my father’s surgery was to be at 9:00.  But it wasn’t.  The hospital has an emergency backup generation system (probably known as EBGS), and EBGS needed some maintenance.  They would not start my father’s operation without EBGS in place.  Tell that to Haiti or New Orleans, I thought to myself.

And so we waited.  For five hours we waited.  EBGS had some issues that had to be resolved.  We waited.  The surgeon waited.  The anesthetist waited.  The nurses waited.  On a Saturday morning they waited.  Finally, they wheeled dad downstairs.  I went “with,” as we’d say in Minnesota.  They pushed him, we pushed him, into the presurgical waiting room.  The anesthetist was not in a good mood.  I could tell that from a mile away.  He was perturbed.  It had been a long wait.  I tried to joke with him just a bit, noting how long waits make us anxious.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, referring to the operation.

“I’m not worried about me,” I said.  “I’m worried about you!”

I wanted to say, “Take a deep breath.  Relax.”

But I didn’t.  Instead they began to wheel him out of the room.

“I’m a pastor,” I said after the gurney went a yard or two.  “I’d like to say a prayer.”  Pastors don’t have much clout in this world, but every so often we rank.  They stopped.

I took the deep breath.

And said,

“God of life . . . here we linger for a moment.  May you give the gift of mindful presence for all those about to receive my dad–the surgeon, the nurses, and anesthetist.  Be with them all that this might be a time of healing.  For this, we give thee thanks.  Amen.”

There are times one can feel tension fall to the floor; and times burdens, whatever they may be, lighten and give way to something caring, something healing, something loving.

This happened.  I could see it, feel it, and trust it.

It had nothing to do with “outcome.”  It had all to do with presence of mind as we began to cross yet another river.

Prayer.

Does it work?

It may not be ours to know.  But it is ours to find out.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Ashland, Wisconsin

This morning great waves returned to the lake.

The whitecaps were not little furls, but long runs breaking into the deep green tough of the waves.

This morning, dawn returned again to the lake.  Over there, to the east, low clouds flirted with crimson and orange on the horizon, fading into a light blue sky.

This morning, I drove down the lane, and looked up at the white pine.  That’s where the eagle nest is.  When we walked it a few days ago, the eagles were not there.  We wondered, my father and I, if perhaps they hadn’t yet returned from one migration or another.

Eagle nests, as you probably know, are huge.  I looked up, and saw something dark.  Probably a branch.  Maybe some moss.  Then it moved.  Wind can do that.  Wind moves things.  I looked up again.  It was thicker than a branch.

And then.

Two wings spread, in no particular rush, they spread, they stretched, and they lifted.  A few seconds later, a second set of wings spread, and lifted.

They were home.

“It’s going to be a good day,” I said to myself.

I know full well that an eagle is “just a bird.”  If I do not believe that a black cat crossing my path is bad omen, why would I believe that two eagles getting up in the morning is a good thing?

I don’t know.

I’m not the only one to have my heart leap when an eagle crosses the sky or lifts from its nest.  The bird that flies highest in the sky, closest to the sun, is taken as a blessing.  I am constantly amazed at how many countries and cultures have an eagle somewhere in their lore and insignias.  America.  Germany.  The Romanov dynasty.  Albania.  Mexico.  Over and again, eagles.  Eagles as symbols of war.  Eagles as symbols of blessings.  An eagle, the symbol of the Gospel of John.  Eagles.

Just birds.

But when they took wing this morning, they were more than that.  All the way into Ashland they were more than that.

I walked into my father’s hospital room.  “Could I wait a few minutes,” a nurse asked me.  “Sure.”  And so, a few minutes later I went in.  There he was, standing between two physical therapists.  A step.  Then another.  Then yet another.  And another.  He went twenty feet.  Twenty.  Enough. They had him sit in a wheelchair, and then put him back in bed.

He fell asleep.

The eagles returned.  So had his capacity to move, that seemed almost unimaginable yesterday.  All day it would be a good day and so it has been.

It’s a bone that broke.  Just a bone.  But is the spirit here that is mending, healing, and finding its way.  Its two birds that flew.  Just two birds.  But their flight has led the day, all day.

Whatever we see, if we see it deeply enough, it has the power to bless us.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Ashland, Wisconsin

Two days ago, my father and I walked a mile along two wooded lanes.  Slowly, he with a cane, we walked the lanes on a serene April morning.  There was not a hint of wind, Lake Superior was at ease, its waters calm, the weather warm.

Each step life announced itself.  Woodpeckers were at work on  the dead poplar, birch, and aspen.  A few blades of grass reached for the sky, pushing up through mats of grass and dead leaves.  Moss had started a slow return to life.  Fungus on tree barks and stones alike looked healthy as it basked in the sun.  A few buds looked like they might actually become leaves in a week or two.  The woods were open, every tree in full view.  In the distance, forests carried a bit of winter crimson, or a light gray lavender, and the white trunks of aspen.

We were surrounded by life.  Everywhere we looked, we found life.  An eight-inch tall white pine, a cypress the deer had not found, the eagle’s nest awaiting the return of the couple that has called it home for years now.  On the beach, one tree had dropped a blanket of pine cones in patterns only and artist could have created.  That night, long after midnight, stars stone through the black sky as the moon paved a pathway of light over the lake.

Life.  And death.  And life.  The two intertwined as subtly and powerfully as only resurrection can be.

Some years ago, I was in a class when the leader offered a guided meditation.  I’ll admit my spirit stiffened a bit, there is something about guided meditations that I resist, unless they are a Psalm.  She started out asking us to imagine a path through a beautiful, quiet wood.  At the end of the trail a beautiful trail appeared, full of wildflowers and green grass.  In its midst was a babbling brook. For ten minutes or so she asked us to capture the scene.

When she was done, one man said, “Oh my.  That was so beautiful.”

I decided to add my piece, though I knew I’d get in trouble if I did.

“What you have described is not life,” I said.  “It is Disneyland.  I live in the woods.  I walk in the woods.  The woods are full of death–blown over trees, rotting leaves, rocks that heave, bark that decays.  Without all that, the woods aren’t the woods.  And, to me, it is beautiful because it is alive in ways we don’t quite expect as fall gives way to winter, and winter gives way to spring, and spring gives way to summer.”

This is what my dad and I saw, what we loved, what we cherish.

And then, yesterday afternoon, he fell.  I could not reach him in time.  He fell.  Three women from the bank saw the fall and came over, so did the hardware store manager.  Something broke, and life arrived. We got him into the car and to the hospital here in Ashland I came.  The x-rays said he had broken his hip.  This afternoon, surgery.

Something lost.

Something found.

The light we saw yesterday is alive today.

Resurrection is not an event.  And it is not an illusion.

It is, to me, the truth in which we live.

Larry

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Madison, Wisconsin

Years ago, they went like this:

“We’re leaving,” and ten seconds later we were moving with the speed of light to put the skis on the rack, to throw jackets in the trunk and head for the hills.  What would the snow be like?  Sometimes we’d sing.

“Do you want to go to Maine?” my grandfather would ask my mother when she was ten years old.  Joy fell from the sky and rose from the earth itself.

Quickly, almost instantly, both imagination and reality itself had a place, a purpose, and a smile.

Ten years later, the purpose requires a bit more preparation.  I await the train in Denver that will carry me across Nebraska to Davis Junction, Illinois, a stop that isn’t a town, but is close enough to Beloit, Wisconsin, to get me to the first days of college.  Waiting for the train, single suitcase in hand, I wonder, “Do I have everything?  Have I packed the essentials?  Is the insulin there?  I wonder if they have any food at college.  The departure takes time.

This morning the dawn took time.  A blessing of the northern lattitudes is that sunrise, and sunset extend themselves for such a long time.  The stars were beautiful in their own right.  And then, the black slowly turns luminous, a quiet band of diluted rose says, “I’m here,” and then it fades as the rays of light say, “I am too.”

This morning, we depart, my dad and I, for Lake Superor.  The dawn there will take even a bit more time.  So will the sunsets.  We are to leave if possible by eight o’clock, that way we’ll make it all the way, maybe, but there are things to consider.  Will he be packed?  Will he have packed anything?  Will my mother be okay?  Will the nursing home staff actually give her a bit more attention, knowing he’ll be away and she’ll be alone.  What about the keys.  Should I drive my car or should I use their car that has been sitting without use since the state revoked their licenses?  The pills.  Are they ready?

It is going to be a slow departure.  Eight will fade to nine, and nine to ten, perhaps before we find the road.  There is a rhythm to all this.  We will muddle through the beautiful complexities of departure.  Some will be frustrating.  But in a deeper sense, in a deeper way, they are precious.  Will we have such a chance next year?  What is to be gained by getting there quickly?

Such a question to a child headed for the slopes is impossible to comprehend.  We must get there quickly, we want to get there quickly, the slopes are waiting.  Let’s go.

I would not trade that joy for anything.  But it is the joy of a moment.

These slow, tedious, complicated departures are impossibly beautiful.  They are also wise.  I left Minneapolis too quickly yesterday.  In Menomonie I checked my blood sugar.  The reading said it’s time for a shot.  I looked for a syringe.  I’d left them on my desk at home.  Had to find a Walgreens.  Get some.

Which is to say, there is an art to departure.

This morning I savor its every lesson, and give thanks to God, that still, after all these years, there is somewhere to go.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

His name, as I remember it, was Houston Waring.

He was the editor of the Littleton Independent, in Littleton, Colorado, my home town.  It is almost difficult to write those words.  Littleton is now linked with the Columbine shootings that pierced our soul.  Littleton is a wealthy community.  Littleton is an upper class community

Littleton no longer has Little Britches Rodeo where kids rode lambs as they broke into broncs.  Littleton no longer has dirt roads.  The fields and pastures I knew as a kid are now populated suburbs.  When I was a kid, “Grey Girl” was a mare, whose foal was born in the waters beneath the tree house I built buy the lake.  When we learned the foal didn’t make it, there was a sadness.  When  the magpie nests were burned and we heard the hatch-lings cry, we were also sad.

After school the thing to do was to walk the Highline canal with a .22, and see what wild plums could be found.  And, perhaps, what rabbit or dove could be shot.  Our nearest neighbors were horses.

In this place, Houston Waring was the editor of the Littleton Independent.  I do not know if it still exists or not.  Perhaps a web-search would let me know.  But it wouldn’t let me know much about Houston Wearing’s paper.  Houston wrote the obituaries.  He wrote them about people he knew.  He honored their lives, as only a friend can do.  I can remember my dad saying, “When I die, I want Houston Waring to write my obituary.”

Which is to say he didn’t want his obituary to be statistic.  He wanted it to be a story, and he trusted Houston to tell it.

This trust is essential.  This kind of trust matters.  We live in a world in which one is too poor, too remote, too small, too weak, too non-influential to merit the love of words, the dignity of respect, the honoring of life.  There is a sense in which we need a Houston Waring to make sense of our lives, to share our essence, that others may live our funerals.

That’s the thing.

Right there.  That’s the thing.

We have something to pass on.  Not fame.  Not wealth.  Not limits.  Not place.  But essence.  I have conducted many funerals in my life, and in each case, even when the facts seemed to tell another story, there was something beautiful, something teachable about the life that we mourned.  The man who was shot by the police, he had something to say . . . and he showed up in church an hour early when daylight savings time began on the edge of the prairie.

“It is for us the living,” as Abraham Lincoln said, “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.”  

He was so right.  And Houston Waring knew it.  My folks now live in Madison, Wisconsin.  That is just fine.  I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  But there is a part of me that wishes Houston Waring was still around, that there was somebody to make loving sense of our lives.

That person is surely there.

It’s up to us to find his, or her, name.

Many blessings,

Larry

Monday, April 19, 2010

Square Butte (11x15)

Minneapolis, Minnesota

When I wrote an opening line for the Leading Causes of Life, I was in search not of prose but poetry.  How does one sum up a year or two of writing when the capacity for reasoning was shaky at best?  I did not want to sum up a rational argument that would make a case for the reform of churches, hospitals, five and dime stores and family dynamics.  Nor could I.

I knew that whatever beliefs might have informed my hopes, each idea had a counterbalance somewhere.  One could never be “right.”  Your “yes” is my “no,” except that, and if, but then again, maybe, and so on.

Beliefs tend to be narrow.  They need to explain away everything except their own case.  I say that with just a bit of distain.  I recoil at the thought of armed militias organizing to defend something they think is so right they enjoy packing heat in my nation’s capital.  If they heard me give deep and lasting thanks for a health program that insures people cannot be disqualified due to prior conditions, I’m sure they’d recoil.  Some people enjoy the give and take.  I find it disheartening.  Necessary, but disheartening.

And so, how to begin?

The book of Job as 42 chapters.  After setting up the snare for Job, God has something to say in only 38 of them.  The rest are contentious, argumentative, hinging again and again on belief.  It is belief that tends to make sense of things.  The battle heats up until Job wishes he could take God to court and sue the living daylights out of ___________.

And then God speaks.

God doesn’t ask Job what he believes.  Instead, he asks a question wrapped in poetry.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?”

The questions have nothing to do with belief.

They have a lot to do with trust.

Belief is narrow, and fragile.  Trust is neither.  When it is betrayed, hope takes its place.  Life need be neither good nor bad for us to trust it.

And so the sentence finally came.  “Life has a language.”  Life speaks to us.  That doesn’t mean we hear.  And it doesn’t mean we understand.  But it has something to say.  I love a well-honed argument, but not as much as a beautiful poem and a searching heart.

It’s spring in Minneapolis.  On all sides life has its poetry, as  light green leaves gracing the trees begin to breath along the streets.  It’s spring back home in Montana.  We win or lose arguments.  Either way spring speaks.  It has just a few chapters.  And then, I trust, it will have some more.

Soft walking,

Larry

Saturday, April 17, 2010

I Look Unto the Hills

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I do not know you.

But no matter.  Here’s what I do know.  We search for meaning, for answers, for solutions to life’s inevitable questions.  When we do, something we’ve learned invariably comes to mind.

And so I’m wondering.  What quote has been your guide?  What saying or sentence lodged in your heart has pointed the way to a world of meaning?

If you are a believer, what verse of scripture might it be?

The question, of course, should be in the plural.  When I was in high school, we were required to memorize, and recite in front of the class these readings:  The Gettysburg Address; the opening lines of Canterbury Tales; Hamlet’s soliloquy; Portia’s lines about mercy, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it falls like a gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath it is twice blest–It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes”; Robert Frost’s A Road Not Traveled; Marcus Antonius’ words asking “Friends, Romans and Countrymen” to lend him their ears; the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution. All this was to be taken to heart.

And each continues to live.

Mercy is scarce these days, of instant commentary and rabid judgement.  Whenever I have a choice to make, I often wonder which is the road less traveled.  Whenever I led a funeral, I trusted though the commendation was for the one who died, the words were for the living.  And when I hear a seemingly innocence incite rebellion, Antony’s words come to mind.

I will stop there.

In churches around the world tomorrow, the 30th Psalm will be read.  Last Wednesday, I read it for our small group that meets weekly at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church a block or two away from here.  As I read, a wave of feeling ran through me as the words touched something in my soul.

I am newly aware, not for myself, but for others, how distancing disability can be.  It is unacceptable in a world bent on perfection.  It is a problem, for those with it.  But they have often learned to live with it.  They have learned how to adapt, how to harness their spirit without physical strength.  For others to accept it is far harder.  What are they getting into?  Distance arises.

Aware of this the words of the Psalm spring to life.  “Weeping may come for the night, but joy comes with the morning,” we read.  When is that morning?  How long will it be?  What if things get worse?  “You hid your face, I was dismayed,” we read next.  Impatience is part of life.

And then a gutsy assault on God’s absence.  “If I just up and die, is there anything to be gained?  Do you think the dust is going to sing a Psalm of praise?  Think it through, God.  You don’t know what you’re doing.”

But then the feelings that fell rise once again, just as they do in real life.  “Be gracious to me.  Be my helper!”And then, somehow, it happens.  Circumstances may or may not change, but the soul has something to say after all.

“You have turned my mourning into dancing so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.”

In such words, we find a way to find our way.

There are words, sights, and sounds that spell meaning.  Sometimes they contain us, sometimes they free us.  But always they tell something about us.

And you?

What teachings have inspired your life?

And why?