On that Friday, I happened to read Mary Oliver’s poem “Invitation” which begins, Oh do you have time to linger for a little while out of your busy and very important day…   

A couple of hours later, I arrived at Willow Beach for a morning paddle. I would be going out with three accomplished paddle boarders which caused me a moment of pause.  As we left shore, Brian said we should go to Great Chain Island and Merisa agreed noticing it was a calm morning.  I knew I would be challenged to keep up but I also knew these were kind people and it was a glorious day.

And I did keep up.  We went from buoy marker to marker pausing to assess the currents and scout our next crossing.  I relied on the others who knew how to navigate those currents and knew how to find a resting place between eddies. 

We crossed Mayor’s channel with the Great Chain Island at our right and the Chain Islets, 18 of them, to our left.  There is no way to capture what greeted me that appeared otherworldly and loud and smelly.  The spectacle of hundreds of birds and the magnitude of their voices was deafening.  I lived Mary Oliver’s words that reminded me to take time to linger for the birds’ “musical battle” that they strive for melodiously, not for accomplishment, but for sheer delight and gratitude.

How can I paddle and the other things I will do today— calling a neighbour, cooking a meal, watering the lingering flowers—with that same awe and delight and gratitude instead of the anxiousness that I won’t be able to keep up or whatever other bits (or boulders) of worry rob me of that way of being. Sounds so easy.  Why is it so difficult to pull off?

When I paddled through the current and came to all that noise—the wonder of all that was there—the sea, the seals, the one black shiny one who watched me pass with his head proudly above the water, and all those I could see resting on the islet in the distance. Below the clear water, I caught sight of the flamboyant orange sea cucumbers and the seal’s tail that darted past as we slowed and kneeled on our boards to go between the large rocks near the island’s steep shoreline. 

We came around to the other side of the island and I felt the lightness of being held on the water. All the way back to Willow Beach, I was grateful for this wonder that took me out of my everyday life and oned me with the whole of life that surrounds me.  As Mary Oliver describes,

Just to be alive

     on this fresh morning

            in this broken world,

                  I beg you,

do not walk by

     without pausing

             to attend to this

                 ridiculous performance.

                                From “Invitation”

I was surprised by the date of my last blog and that it was Barbara Kingsolver’s poem, How to do absolutely nothing. That seems like a lot of inactivity ago. My daily writing practices have dwindled this summer.  Several times I’ve resolved to be more disciplined because writing changes me.  However, I write a few lines in my notebook and then I simply try to get to the other side of whatever is looming.

I’ve been traveling for family things and tagging along during Mitch’s work trips. And, I’ve been reading a lot.  From the middle of May until late July, I was gone for a month and a half of days. That’s disruptive for my body and mind imagining the safety of home. The stories I read along the way provided a comfortable place to be.

I found two lines from a much longer poem by W. H. Auden in a mystery novel I was reading. The lines felt right despite not knowing the larger context.

And we are introduced to Goodness everyday,

Even in the drawing rooms among a crowd of faults.

From “Herman Melville” by W.H. Auden

I would like to meet Goodness every day, among my own crowd of faults. 

A wise professor I knew many years ago warned our class about “cherry picking,” lifting up the part from someone else’s work that meets our own needs.  While that may be true in citing research, I don’t believe that admonishment holds for poetry or any literature for that matter.  Language is malleable and shifting and illuminates what we cannot exactly see or name in our own crowd of distractions.

Traveling puts many of my faults on display—uncertainties—too many of them without the comforts of home.  The furniture is too unfamiliar for me to settle in.  When I am always on alert, it is not easy to relax.  And then, I am tacitly reminded of the faults of others that divert my attention away from my own.

Anticipating uncertainties, whether known or unknown, is one of my challenges. I anticipate time with family will rekindle my failings. Daily routines are obscured by someone else’s schedule. I’m unsure how to “help” when helping, which probably means I’m trying to fix rather than support. I forget to just listen. The trouble is that I tend to turn all those uncertainties into problems instead of possibilities.

Why are my frailties my default mode?  I’ll give you an innocuous example. This summer, I have Willow Beach weather conditions on speed dial (actually a click on my cell phone.)  You see, I believe that even a prediction will protect me from the unknown if I’m going out in the water, where I need reassurance.  Last year, when I finally got the courage to paddleboard instead of longingly watch, I just went. I put on the clothes I already had that seemed cold water-worthy and trusted the process. 

Now, in addition to checking the temperatures and wind speed, I search the water when I arrive for signs of water movement.  Is the tide high or low?  Does the water look dull and gray or bright and inviting?  Are there ripples on the water and a swell toward the shore?  Is the hotel’s flag still in the distance or blowing in the wind? Granted I need to be safe but my diligence steals the wonder of my surroundings that are full of life.

The truth is that I paddle with people and places I can trust.  If it is too windy, we change our location to the more inland waterway. If the wind comes up while we are out, we adjust our route to hug a shoreline or stay on our knees. I’m never alone and the few times I have fallen, I’ve gotten back on my board with kind encouragement. 

Perhaps, I do not appreciate the rhythms of my life after all these years of self-conscious fretting; concerning myself with what isn’t mine to hold or figure out.

Whether Auden’s poetic phrase came from his own or another’s experience, the words help me make sense of my own.

Introduced suggests newness that is not of my own making.  And I am introduced to Goodness every day, not because I am looking but because God’s Goodness is looking for me. 

What caught my attention was the shape, an inverted right triangle of words nearly perfect on the page. I admit that I read it several times to appreciate what this poem held for me.  Could I?  Would I do that? 

To borrow Eugene Peterson’s insight about the poetic language of the Bible, I’d like to say that this poetic language also “both means what it says and what it doesn’t say.”  The first time I read the poem, I relished the actual words becoming the shape. I had a hunch that there was a how-to-lesson for me hidden in what the poem doesn’t say.  Are these lessons I learn over and over, troubling things I do over and over?

How to Do Absolutely Nothing – Barbara Kingsolver from How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

Rent a house near the beach, or a cabin

but: Do not take your walking shoes.

Don’t take any clothes you’d wear

anyplace anyone would see you.

Don’t take your rechargeables.

Take Scrabble if you have to,

but not a dictionary and no

pencils for keeping score.

Don’t take a cookbook

or anything to cook.

A fishing pole, ok

But not the line,

hook, sinker,

leave it all.

Find out

what’s

left.

I remembered and responded:

If I have on sandals will I be able to hike where there are rattlesnake warnings?  I walked the length of Whiffin Spit in the same shoes I wore to the wedding party.

Do I want to have lunch where there is a dress code? My favourite jeans have ink marks and bleach spots and my happy pants (the real name) have baggy knees.

I lived 40 years without a cell phone or the internet. But, what if a Tsunami is coming or democracy fails?

I do need a dictionary. I don’t always have to keep score. I let go of many cookbooks because “close enough” recipes are online. Is that just more work? I don’t fish but I do ponder my need for the “hook, line, and sinker” on most days.

The real trouble is I think too much.

In Where I Live Now, Sharon Butala writes about what I believe is true for me.

I think too much, I go over and over events from the past as if by re-thinking and re-thinking them I can finally tease out from between the strands of memory, intertwined as they are, the real meaning, the answers to the questions that I don’t even know how to ask.

I go over events before they happen in addition to rethinking what has already happened.  I anticipate what someone might say or think or do and what I could say or think or do.  My strands of memory are laced with future speculation or, perhaps, wishful thinking.  What am I looking for?

There are moments I think I do nothing. Except, I cannot-not think about it.  How do I stop all those words that pile up in not-so-pleasing arrays? 

The truth is; I’m not sure. I will find out what is left when I leave the words behind. 

Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret,

and in exchange gain the Ocean.

Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honour,

and in the arms of the Sea be secure.

Who indeed should be so fortunate?

An Ocean wooing a drop!

In God’s name, in God’s name, sell and buy at once.

Give a drop and take this Sea full of pearls.

Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski and Camille Helminski
 

Language does have its limits.

Eugene Peterson was talking about the poetic language of the Bible when he said,

A metaphor is a really remarkable kind of formation because it both means what it says and what it doesn’t say, and so those two things come together, and it creates an imagination which is active.  You’re not trying to figure things out, you’re trying to enter into what’s there.

For me, Eugene’s wisdom fits my experience here. Perhaps metaphors reframe what is right in front of us from a different perspective.

On Saturday, before Palm Sunday, I attended a contemplative wisdom retreat at the University of Victoria Multifaith Center. I’m not a note-taker so my remembering might or might not be exactly accurate, but it is true for me.  Heather Ruce, our teacher, used the imagery of the ocean and the water inside our bodies as she discussed our conflicting human and divine nature; our physical bodies and spiritual being that we separate or see as two different parts of us. How does this water naturally flow together?

I thought immediately of the ancient prayer I say many mornings, “I awaken in Christ’s body as Christ awakens my body…” as a way of expressing this reciprocity. We say that we are not alone; yet, we speak of our divine companion in another reality. Our language belies the truth. 

When I learned to paddle board, I was instructed to look toward the horizon when I stand up on the board.  If I look down, I was told I would probably fall. This isn’t intuitive. 

Even after I’m standing up, when I gaze ahead and take in the spaciousness, I see the world differently.  When I steal a quick glance down to see if my feet are where they should be or notice the dark deep cold water and remember I’m far out from the shore, fear and uncertainty separate me from the grandeur.   

Then on Monday of Holy Week, after Heather’s words activated my imagination, I read Rumi’s words,

Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret, and in exchange gain the Ocean.

Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honour, and in the arms of the Sea be secure.

Perhaps the Ocean was wooing me. On the cold and windy Monday, I copied Rumi’s poem on a scrap of paper and headed to Willow Beach.  I walked down the first residential street with “beach access” to begin my communion in the water on the quiet end. 

I sat down on a rock and took off my wool socks and hiking boots, rolled up my two layers of pants, and walked in at the water’s edge.  The sea was clear and shockingly cool.  When I walked looking out toward the horizon, I won’t say I didn’t notice the cold but the shock faded as I took in the expanse before me.  Every now and then, I met another brave soul whose feet numbed in the wetness.  Every now and then, a seal popped up to remind me of the abundant life here.

Repeating one line at a time, I walked into Rumi’s call to me, the drop, to listen to give myself without regret in exchange for the Ocean.  Listen and receive this honour to be secure in the arms of the Sea, this Sea, that I could know in my physical body, the blustery refreshment for the worries I brought along.   

This same water stretches across the earth. I, too, am part of that expanse. In her memoir, The Perfection of the Morning, Sharon Butala writes about these moments, “This is the place where words stop.”  How can I keep looking out to the majesty and vast unknown and embrace the promise that holds me, that surrounds me in the same moment as the danger I perceive?  Sell and buy at once, surrender my drop, and accept the abundance.

Listen, O drop, enter in the metaphors that are beyond words.

Here I am—in all kinds of angst this morning, selfish angst, not knowing how to be right now.  It doesn’t matter the circumstances that I am so tempted to lay out before you. Those reasons for my discontent will be replaced on another day by other woes.

The redeeming part of this story is that I know to sit in my red chair and open to another way. Just the day before, I wrote in my notebook how I am here in the midst of lives around me that are making their way through.  I wrote that I have seen the “obscure glimmering through of grace” in the lives of those I hold close. However, I seem to cave in to the news of the day, to an imagined outcome, to a real concern.  I know I’ve been here before, more than once or twice.  And I know what is needed: to surrender to the life force around me, to take a day at a time, to not feel such consequence, to let the click and clack unfold, to know I am not the fixer of anything.

So on this day, I open what I’ve been reading and see the title, “Until,” before a few verses from Psalm 73.  That Psalm begins,

Truly God is good to the upright,

   to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;

  my steps had nearly slipped…

Clearly this day, I am stumbling. I certainly don’t see myself as any version of upright or pure in heart.  I just had a conversation with someone about their struggle.  I thought I listened until I recognized that I was jumping into the exasperating narrowness of trying to explain my own (mis) understanding of things.

Until.  In the middle of the Psalm, I listen,

If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,”

   I would have been untrue to the circle of your children.

But when I thought how to understand this,

   it seemed a wearisome task,

My life seems precisely like a worrisome task, overcrowded with thoughts of how and why and when and, oh yes, what if.  And the things that are cluttering my way are of little consequence to the whole.  I cannot see around the corner of my own self-interest.

Until I went into the sanctuary of God;

Then, I perceived their end.

Outside my dining room window, I see green.  A large evergreen and prickly holly leaves shelter my view.  Spring is showing; this is the city of daffodils and cherry blossoms. A friend left a bouquet of tulips at my door.  The light fills this room.

Until I pause to look at the life that is in plain sight.  Whether it is the sun shining brightly into my living room today or the rain the day before that greened up the grass and glistened on the dandelions. 

Until I see the whole—the gift of God’s presence in this very place that I see only through my experience of gloom.  Looking into the smallness, the dark corners that I’d backed myself into. 

Until I turn around and see the vastness of the world and surrender to that spaciousness.

In Life and Teachings, Catherine of Genoa writes,

“It is because of this tender love that I need not ask anything of God for you.  All I need to do is lift you up before his face.”

Many years ago, I came upon this truth that changed how I prayed for my children.  They were becoming young adults and for me, their mother, they were in my circle of concern but not necessarily under my influence.  They were forging their own ways in the world and I realize now how little I actually understood about their “inside stories.” 

Those inside stories are how we interpret our experiences, form ways of seeing the world around us, and, yes, our mysterious imagining about how and what we become and do.  We might be aware of this inner weaving or not.  We don’t think our way into becoming ourselves, and that is true.

Prayer is another curious thing—particularly praying for those we love up close, like our children.

Perhaps Catherine of Genoa’s way of praying has always been with me—when I held those two precious lives as infants and knew they belonged to God and I couldn’t control their entrance and way in this world. 

I imagined as a parent, many times that I did know what was best, but I didn’t really know.  Now that my children are adults, a saint from centuries ago reminds me, again, that I don’t have to know. All I need to do is lift you up before his face.  I don’t need to read God the dire news of the day or circumstances as I see them.  I simply see my beloved ones as whole.

And so, I come to what Eugene Peterson says, “prayer is not a tool for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” 

“A shovel is a prayer to the farmer’s foot when he steps down and the soft earth gives way,” Carrie Newcomer sings. Prayer is fleshed out in many individual expressions. My writing and reading in God’s presence are a way of prayer as I listen for God’s voice in the unfolding of my life each day. Prayer summons my own “living” water.

In this kind of prayerful becoming, I learn to hold my adult children in a new light.  I am not asking or suggesting or fixing or trying to change the people they are or their circumstances. Although, I do wish I could soothe their own learning and becoming.  I can only open myself to seeing my children as God sees them, whether they recognize that presence or not.

I open myself to see the glimmers of grace and goodness that sit alongside the challenges, I too often envision.  Love binds these things together and redresses them with new strength to draw upon for whatever lies ahead.

Now I must confess, I have prayed for my children all their lives, and who knows how that has impacted those lives.  However, I am learning how praying for them is an act of my faithfulness, quelling my anxiousness about the details of our lives.  Like the farmer’s foot on the shovel, prayer is my surrendering to a possibility that is out of my control or management. 

Prayer is a doorway, an opening for another voice to spea.

“… to the person that is joined to all living things there is hope…”  Ecclesiastes 9:4

This seems to be a story I write again and again—being caught by wonder in the middle of an ordinary day.  This time I have my friend Darcy to thank.  You have to be paying attention or you will pass on by living instead of joining alongside. 

Darcy walks with me every Sunday in her neighbourhood which is very different than my own. Her’s has an expansive ocean view from on high. In my neighbourhood the walk to the water is easy going and the water isn’t visible until you are there.  Getting from Darcy’s view to the water involves a long steep descent that is almost as hard on my shins as the climb back up.  We haven’t been down that literal road in a long while.

Darcy and I stick to the trails through the woods and the other cut-throughs in her neighbourhood. Some of those paths are steep too, but they are quick bridges between the streets that snake up the hill to offer a spacious view.  On a clear day, we are smitten with snowy Mount Baker in Washington, 120 km across the Haro Strait.  Yet on this day, I am smitten by a miniature view of our path that turns away from the sea.

Right before the deep descent down Sea Ridge Drive, we take a wide paved shortcut, accessible only to walkers and bikers. We walk between the houses and the path brings Darcy and me back to Amblewood Drive, a switch-back away from where we began.  It is a flat walkway, bordered on either side by a fence and hedges that keep those yards private. Part of the fence is hidden, too, by the dense foliage. You see, I hardly notice that fence; it is a nondescript structure to walk by, a worn-out wooden fence, not a place to discover wonder or encounter mystery.

So, I have Darcy to thank for what happened.  Darcy stays close to the ground and while her pace is much more lively than my own, she regularly pauses to explore a “spot” that interests her.  In other words, Darcy is open to the wonder of a seemingly regular patch of grass.  Darcy’s instinct caused me to notice a spot I could have easily missed, especially if I’d been walking with Liz or Stacy or any number of friends whose conversations would distract me.

Right above the patch of earth that captured Darcy’s attention was that old fence. What caught my attention was a laid-flat two-by-four, the top rail between a double set of pickets. Another world drew me out of the complacency of my control of the world I was carrying along with me. 

The miracle here is not only what I saw but that I was able to pause and look at something ordinary to see something extra ordinary. I am already awed by mosses that cast a green shadow on our driveway right now and clothe the bark of the tree stump in our backyard and the lichen that drips from our little apple trees.  So, I wasn’t surprised to see the lush green resting on the top rail of that old fence.

What caught me was the wonder of lives—the green mosses, white lichen, and the tiny flowers on the backdrop of weathered wood.  The first picture I took on January 8th seemed like a micro, barefoot-worthy patch of green; but, what about those tiny red blooms? 

As with any good story, context expands the truth.  On another Sunday, I took a picture of that fence from another angle.  I wanted to record the ordinariness of the path, the worn-out place that couldn’t possibly announce something newsworthy.

Wonder is a place in the real world along the paths we always travel.  A destination we must discover. My experience of worry and fear, the what if’s, is only one view of my world. There is another reality that boasts the intricacies of life that offer possibilities beyond my everyday view. Darcy helped me get there; that’s a friend indeed.

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor tells that she was invited to speak at a church in the Southern United States.  She asked her host, “What do you want me to talk about?”

“Come tell us what is saving your life now,” was the priest’s reply.

Taylor writes,

“It was as if he had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.  I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone.  I did not have to try to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church.  All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on.  All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out those same things for themselves.”

What is saving my life now? 

Today my answer might not be the same as yesterday and some practices or promises that save me endure.  Yet, some circumstances challenge those answers and there is nothing I can do except pray and trust— but what happens when my what if’s drown out those prayers.  The things that are saving me often are quotidian rather than those traditionally held notions.

Yesterday, anxious and worried, I cleaned the bathroom. I mean I really cleaned in the full knowledge that it won’t stay that way. I will not change the cycle of soap scum and aging grout. Faithfully, I cared for what I could affect. I gave my whole body and mind to the transformation of tub and tile.

My cleaning is a prayerful act. My fears and anxiousness were taken over by scrubbing and rinsing away the grit and grime.  I know all too well the cycle of worry that has to be cleared away again and again.  That physical devotion didn’t change my troubling circumstances but the mindful work allowed me to “let go and let God” as the saying goes—even for an hour or so.

I can rest in the familiarity and the comfort that comes from doing something with clear focus and maybe even love. What is saving my life right now harks back to an open ear—to listen for God in everything I do; for where God is, in spite of and in the midst of our most quotidian of lives.

I am encouraged when I wake up to the wonder of my world.  On the edge of the morning light, I know too well the things that are worrisome but somehow, in this quiet, I sense something more. Perhaps in those moments, I am more open to the mystery of what is alongside what I have experienced in the dark. 

I am comforted by what I can’t explain. I am still drawn to the Garry Oak at Camosun College, where my old dog Hunter and I used to walk every day.  I would sit under that tree, stand still beside it, and simply place my hand on that huge branch that seems precariously low and heavy with life. 

Other people seemed to glimpse the mystery, too. We would watch children swing from that low branch on a sweatshirt they’d flung over it to hang onto as they lifted themselves from the solid ground. We watched bigger people hoist themselves up and hang their feet or hammock over that branch and rest in the grandeur. My secret and not-so-secret fears were met there with awe, to experience that life force and the presence of grace that surrounded that tree.

In Psalm 40, hidden between the Psalmist’s woe and God’s goodness, the text says that God has “given me an open ear.” Between remembered miracles, what God has done in the past, and anticipated miracles, my hope that God will address my new fear, is an open ear. The Psalmist writes, “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.”  That opened ear meets my fears and what if’s if I am in a position to listen.

I’ve been particularly aware these past weeks of being between all the miraculous ways I’ve gotten through some painful times. I have remembered what it is like to be on the other side of that woe. I am aware of the loving relationships that both are the cause and result of such love.

How do I create a life where my doubts and fears exist alongside grace and wonder?  Often, especially in the dark, my mind goes to the what-ifs, the conversations I might have, and the conversations I did have that I would like to rewrite.  It is as if I continue to doubt that I won’t fall into the cold ocean of my fears and will not be able to get out.

Maybe, I can at least hang on to the scraps of wishful listening that may not square up with my made-up story of how things could turn out.  I will keep an ear open for those bits of hope and let the others go.  Keep an open ear for where God is instead of listening to the doubts and fears that seem louder. 

Hang on to that life force.

God is approached more nearly in that which is indefinite than in that which is definite and distinct. F.W. Robinson, Ten Sermons

“New Year is like riding a train into the unknown.” That was the headline of “Faith Forum” in the New Year’s Times Columnist, our local newspaper. I noted that Nancy Ford, the writer, was “newly retired.” I thought it was significant since, for me, “retired” still feels indefinite.

Actually, I was thinking that my whole life has bordered on indefinite, especially when it is disrupted like my job loss several years ago. When I accepted that job and we moved to Bristol, I imagined that the place was a final “home”—definite and distinct—that signalled my abiding connection to the Appalachian Mountains and a nourishing academia—a break from cornfields, and a large state institution.  Maybe that was one of the problems with that place, the sense that it was sure, but I don’t want to think of that time as a problem. 

As far as my search for being home and settled was concerned, I did think we’d arrived.  Our house seemed idyllic and we did welcome many friends, family, and people we’d just met into our home for a meal or to stay a night or a few. After we left, I reflected that the place was simply a respite, a time in between.

I believe it is true, as the 19th-century preacher said, “God is approached more nearly in that which is indefinite”—which is all of our lives but we don’t seem to grasp that truth when our routines appear knowable.

I made a quick list of all the cities I’ve lived in over 44 years of my life with Mitch. The places, like the New Year, are easy markers of change. Our time in Bristol, like the cities at the beginning of our marriage, was a short 2 years.  As I looked back on this list, none of our moves seemed predictable except the one when Mitch finished seminary and my career was easily relocated.  In each place we landed, I guess we had our routines and time went by.  Our lives in each of those nine distinct locations weathered the unexpected that marked our journey.

In his memoir Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner considers the course of his life.  He reflects,

…as I wrote…I found myself remembering small events as far back as early childhood which were even then leading me in something like that direction but so subtly and almost imperceptibly that it wasn’t until decades had passed that I saw them for what they were—or thought I did because you can never be sure whether you are discovering that kind of truth or inventing it. The events were often so small that I was surprised to remember them, yet they turned out to have been road markers on a journey I didn’t even know I was taking.

So as a New Year begins again, I wonder what will be next because whether we feel settled or home or somewhere in between, there is always a rupture in what is—even if it is in our own mind.  That restlessness I’ve felt many times seems to crop up anew and I wonder if that is a call to reflect and pay attention.  Victoria is where we live, a place of challenge and refuge in breathtaking surroundings that keep me now. Yet, I am reminded that God is the promise keeper who provides me with a good place to be on the journey I don’t even know I am taking.

Indefinite, as God directed Abram, “the land I will show you,” seems to me where we should always be.