From My Nature Journal: Ho-ho-hum...

Martin Luther said in the 1500’s, “The greater God’s gifts and works, the less they are regarded.” Such could be said of God’s astonishing creation gifts and works, to which, if I remember correctly, Luther was referring at the time. People would do well to pay better attention to creation, both its beauty and its care; therein they might find possible avenues toward greater peace with God, others and themselves. And that’s to say nothing of greater spiritual purpose, well-being, delight and joy.

The greater God’s gifts and works,

the less they are regarded…

~~ Martin Luther, 16^th Century

But the same could be said of God’s salvation gifts and works. Fewer and fewer in our western culture, which was founded upon the ethics of the Bible if not the Scriptures themselves, regard God’s incarnation highly, or for that matter, much else having to do with Biblical ethics or salvation history.

I’m usually not a doomsayer or pessimist, actually find the proverbial pony in the room of horse manure quite regularly. But I keep running into things that trouble me at worst, or simply mystify me at best, about our cultural depravity. This morning while checking the news online, I clicked a story about Pope Francis, whom I try to follow;  I like the man, don’t agree with everything he says, but still like him and pray for him. While reading the article, though, some video popped up featuring an unmarried same-sex couple in a sexual escapade, the dialogue complete with the f-bomb. What? I did not ask for this! I’m just trying to read the news. I turned away, but not before my incredulity kicked into highest gear. What is going on here? It’s no wonder a good portion of the world looks askance on the cultural exports of the West, let alone declares holy war against it.

Jesus, in a parable about two men who died, one who went to heaven and one to hell, tells of the one in hell pleading with ‘Father Abraham’ (the parable’s stand-in for God) to send a messenger back to his five brothers to warn them of their danger. In the parable, Abraham says it would be futile; they would disregard both the messenger and the message, remain unimpressed, ‘…even if one were to rise from the dead’ (Luke 16:19-31). Jesus sure got that right.

So, I know I have a choice here, one I am finding I need to make more and more often: I can remain in my incredulity about people’s disregard of God’s various gifts and works. Or I can do something else: I can be God’s person, during Advent and every other season, and seek to fairly and lovingly represent him even in the midst of that disregarding world and the worst that it can offer; and I can share my high regard for the works of God, both his creation works and his salvation works, as long as God gives me voice. Henri Nouwen puts it well:

The central question is: Are the Christian leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s Incarnate Word and taste fully of God’s infinite goodness?

Will you please join me in the latter choice?

~~ RGM, December 15, 2015

POTM...*: From Epiphytes to Chelonioidytes

(*Photo[s] of the Month)

OK, what do epiphytes and chelonioidytes have in common? Actually, not much, except that I encountered them both during some recent hiking in Florida!

Epiphytes are also known as ‘air plants,’ plants that can attach themselves to just about anything, from tree bark to power lines, and receive all the moisture and nutrients they need from the air, sun and rain. Obviously, they tend to be more prolific in warmer and more humid environments. Chelonioidytes are a family of sea turtles, and though I didn’t actually see the creatures themselves, I was out at sunrise and was the first to see their tracks on the beach, fresh from the lady having laid a clutch of eggs the night before.

Florida is covered with epiphytes, from bromeliads (that can also be seen as houseplants or planted in landscaping) to orchids to ferns to the ubiquitous Spanish Moss hanging from pine and oak. My favorite is the Cardinal Wild Pine, pictured here twice, a strangely-named bromeliad with a spiky red flower. They were prolific in a bald cypress swamp, the boardwalk of which was part of a hike I made in the DuPuis Natural Management Area in western Martin County. The plant can be two feet broad and the flower two feet tall and more.

Over on the coast, I went nearly every morning to my favorite place in the area, Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge on the northern half of Jupiter Island. March and April is nesting time for Florida’s three kinds of sea turtles – loggerheads, greens and leatherbacks. I would typically say that these two separate sets of new tracks were made by loggerheads, by far the most abounding genus of the three to hit the beaches there. The only odd thing was that the particular mama in the first photo was enormous, much larger than the average loggerhead: the track of the carapace alone being dragged across the sand looked to be about three feet wide, with the flipper tracks extending to nearly six feet. This made me wonder if it was a leatherback, the largest sea turtle, but far more rare and endangered. The turtles come in the night, lay hundreds of eggs, and are gone before the first hint of dawn. Several weeks later, if the nest survives predation, the little hatchlings will look for the light of the moon over the ocean to guide them toward their watery abode. I remember snorkeling in the Pacific one time and seeing a sea turtle ‘in flight.’ What a beautiful sight.

To say the least, natural beauty captures me, and I imagine if you are a regular reader of this blog, the same is true for you. One of my favorite authors is Henri Nouwen, who said in his book Creative Ministry that we must be careful we are not

…like the busy man who walks up to a precious flower and says, “What for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy someway?” and then finds himself unable to understand the flower’s response: “I am sorry, sir, but I am just here to be beautiful.”

~~RGM, April 17, 2015

QOTM...*: Nouwen on Nature

(*Quote of the Month)

Henri Nouwen

It is impressive to see how prayer opens one’s eyes to nature. Prayer makes a person contemplative and attentive. In place of manipulating, the one who prays stands receptive before the world. He no longer grabs but caresses, he no longer bites but kisses, he no longer examines but admires. To this person, nature can show itself completely renewed. Instead of an obstacle, it becomes a way; instead of an invulnerable shield, it becomes a veil which gives a preview of unknown horizons.

~~ Henri Nouwen                 

It surprised me when I realized I had not yet used a quote of Henri Nouwen for my QOTM. One of my life-long favorite authors, I guess I also realize that I have not very often run across anything by him on the subject, at least not since I began collecting these kinds of quotes. Don’t get me started on my favorite Nouwen books, though, as I probably own more by him than any other single author, even heard him speak a couple times years ago, one of the most intensely focused speakers I have ever heard.

Case in point: at a Covenant pastors’ Midwinter Conference years ago, with probably 7-800 in attendance at that time, he actually asked if the back doors could be locked while he spoke, as the constant late-comings and bathroom-goings typical with a crowd that size were causing him to struggle with focus. I’d never heard THAT from a speaker before, but wow, did he deliver it! Sure made people get there on time the next night!

It is impressive to see

how prayer opens one’s

eyes to nature…

That is an indication of the laser focus the man had, the single-minded attention he gave to things. Attentive is the word he uses in the quote. The contemplative or prayerful Christian is attentive. In fact, active or contemplative, serious Christians are attentive. And those of us who find nature an important spiritual pathway just happen to be attentive to certain natural things that most people are not, especially in our frenetic, western, non-agrarian culture; for us, nature becomes a way, a veil previewing paradise.

Thomas Merton

Interestingly, the quote is actually from a book Nouwen wrote on the work of another famous monk, Thomas Merton, the title of which is Thomas Merton: Contemplative Critic, one I have not read. But Merton was another of those whose natural, spiritual focus was sharp.

How attentive are you as a follower of Christ? And what is your attention focused upon? I am not at all suggesting it has to be the natural world, but where is our focus, and Who is our Focal Point? I think the old 1611 King James English said it this way, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

That is to say, I guess we are what we give our attention to. Thanks for the reminder, Henri. And peace to his memory.

~~RGM, March 14, 2014

From My Nature Journal: The Lesson of the Pancakes

I parked on the frontage road that paralleled the beach and scrambled down a fifteen foot pile of concrete riprap. On my way to catch a flight in Los Angeles, I found myself with a couple extra hours, so thought this spot on the ocean near Ventura a good place for some reading and prayer.  With the beach spread out like a blanket before me and waves breaking thirty yards away, I sat in the sand that cool November morning, leaned back against a sun-warmed chunk of cement, took off my shoes, and cracked open the little book.

It had been a long time that Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart had sat on my shelf, though I had been looking forward to picking it up just as long. On my way out my office door several days earlier, I scanned my ‘to read’ pile for just a little tome to fit in an overfull briefcase, and it was an easy addition. It’s a brief book about desert spirituality, including the spiritual discipline of solitude, a commodity in short supply in my life. I had just read that one of the cardinal sins a person in solitude will struggle with is the sin of greed. Solitude is a kind of fast, and whenever we fast we are made starkly aware of the props we miss, the little luxuries we wish were available, and we come to realize how dependent we are on superfluous stuff. Solitude can bring us to that place of conversion where we can see how much our self worth has depended on what we have acquired, let this old greedy self die, and allow the new generous self to be born. But first we need solitude. The thing is, when we get there, we think we are alone. But suddenly this visitor named Greed comes pounding at the door. The task, Nouwen says, is to stay in solitude long enough that this unwelcome caller gets tired of knocking, goes away, and leaves us alone.

I sat there reading, resting, thinking, praying, the surf drowning out all sounds except the calls of gulls. I shut my eyes and lay my head back on the rock. All of a sudden there was the startling cacophonous sound of seagulls surrounding me and I opened my eyes with a start. Not ten feet away a dozen or so were fighting over some round object on the beach, scores more coming in overhead, screaming incessantly. Suddenly another dozen were struggling over another round, brown object just to the right of the first melee. Something whizzed past over my head from behind up above the riprap. Before I knew it more and more seagulls -- many species, large and small, young and old, several hundred -- 

were converging around me from all points. It felt like a Hitchcock movie.

Before I knew it, more and more seagulls -- 

many species, large and small,

young and old, several hundred --

were converging around me from all points.

It felt like a Hitchcock movie.

Behind me, from the parking area above the concrete, someone was pitching pancakes out onto the beach, gliding through the air like frisbees, to be met by the squabbling, screaming, pecking birds. Ten, twenty, thirty pancakes came sailing over my head, launched by persons unaware I was on the beach below. One bird would finally get hold of the tasty disc amidst the riot, fly away, and get only a few feet before the pancake would break and fall out of its beak, creating another mad dash of juking, feinting and grabbing on land and sea. I was mesmerized. The whole experience lasted about five minutes, whereupon I heard a motor start and a camper pull away.

Though I am unashamedly anthropomorphizing, I had a stark picture of what greed must look like to God, a parable asserting itself. One wants what another has, convinces himself that he needs it, and by aggression or subterfuge seeks to get it, only to lose it to another, and on and on it goes. The story was playing before me in real time and I prayed, “Lord, let me hold this image as I consider the effects of greed on my own spirit."

The beach became quiet again. Most of the birds were flying off but several dozen remained, standing quietly in the sand, perhaps licking their wounds (though they have no tongues), perhaps interiorly celebrating the pancake they got or bemoaning the one that got away. Then I remembered: at some point during the commotion something had landed quite close to me, not two feet away, hidden from my sight by a log. Had it just been a bird landing quickly, or was there one last pancake on the beach? I soon had my answer, for some of the birds standing nearest began to move toward me. One brave bird at a time would inch my way, look down at the spot, look up at me again, and look down again, take a hesitating step, two steps forward, one step back, but always forward, looking me in the eye as if to say, “You have what I want.” Several got within three feet, then took off, giving up. The birds were so close, their eyes so sharp in seeming to search mine, it was almost like I could see into their greedy little wills (ok, admitted anthropomorphism again). Finally, one advanced close enough to leap forward, snatch the last pancake and take flight, others lifting, chasing, crying from behind.

I had my picture, though, and I have not forgotten it: my loving, benevolent, gift-giving heavenly Lord, looking into my eyes, and sadly seeing the greed therein.

Lord, teach me the lesson of the pancakes.

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry,

adapted for my blog November 1, 2013