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

From My Nature Journal: Fish Guts and the Gospel

Some people don’t fish because they don’t like the thought of fish guts.

I mean, what do you do with a keeper if you don’t know how to clean it? Or for some, if the very thought of touching anything’s entrails repulses them? Winter is coming, summer is a memory. Indulge me to reminisce about a July day several summers ago when I cleaned fish for the first time in my adult life.

Fishing is something I have always wanted to do more of.  Unfortunately, it is not something I took advantage of while living many years in Minnesota. All that lake access did nothing to bring out the Babe Winkelman in me, it took moving to Nebraska!  I bought three fishing licenses in almost two decades in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and these just to accompany several fishing excursions by men in the church – wonderful fellowship times in spite of my being ‘skunked’ in the fishing department. Yet since moving to this comparatively lake-forsaken prairie state, not only have I gotten a license each year to fish back in the north country, but I find myself longing for angling opportunities to come.

It’s not that entrails bother me.  Nor was it that I don’t care to eat fish; frankly, I think I could live on seafood.  Actually, it was because I was a bit embarrassed that I would not know what to do with the fish once I caught it.  So that summer was my big moment.  All my son and I caught that first time were a mess of little rock bass, a couple small perch, and one other fish I couldn’t identify at that time.  But since it was a whole lot bigger than any of the rockies or perch, we kept it.  I’ll admit it, though – my son Jarrett caught it.  (Unfortunately, long after it was eaten, I also determined it may have been a slightly under-legal-size bass – oops!  But it still tasted great. Please don’t report me.)

What a production it was when I cleaned them.  For some strange reason the whole family gathered ‘round and watched, as did the family friends who were visiting at the time.  I had hardly a clue what I was doing. Daughter Maren sighed with the sound of cutting the heads off and protested, “They're still alive, Dad, that’s cruel…”  Hunter Man replied, “It’s ok, they don’t feel a thing.” (I have no idea if this is true; it’s just what hunter men say in such circumstances.) My wife said, “Oh, my big, strong, handsome, meat-gathering man!” Hunter Man said, “De nada, mon petit chou.” Actually, she said I had better be careful not to cut off a finger.  When I was finally finished, most of the fillets were no bigger than the end of a teaspoon, except of course for those from the likely illegal bass, which were more the size of a tablespoon. (Sorry, I’m not into fish cheeks yet, supposedly the prime piece on the animal. I could barely see the side fillets as it was…)

Sometimes it's also like this in the spirit realm, isn’t it? Jesus asks us to be fishers

of people. But we don’t fish because we

don’t like the thought of fish guts... 

Words cannot describe the satisfaction of eating that first batch of tiny morsels.  They were delicious.  More than that, I had conquered my reticence.  And when my fishing veteran neighbor Don heard I had filleted rock bass, he said kindly, “Yeah, they’re good practice fish.  Boy, if you can fillet rock bass, you can fillet anything.”  (Translate:  “What in the heck would you want to mess with those little pests for anyway?!”)

Good memories…

Sometimes it's also like this in the spirit realm, isn’t it?  Jesus asks us to be fishers of people. But we don’t fish because we don’t like the thought of fish guts.  It’s as though we want the clean fillets to jump from the lake right into the cooler.  We don’t want to worry about the mess that’s sure to come.  And make no mistake, spiritual fishing can be messy. If one never wets a line one never has to worry about fish cleaning.  Yet Jesus asks us to reach out to all people, as they are, messes and all (theirs and ours!). “Don’t be repelled,” He says.  “Draw them in.  I will change them later.”

Maybe we’re like Mr. Wilson in the old Dennis the Menace comic.  Dennis laments, “I don’t like to play hide-and-seek with Mr. Wilson – I hide, but Mr. Wilson don’t seek.”  Do we seek?  Do we fish?

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two empty boats on the shore; the fishermen were washing their nets.  He got into the one belonging to Simon Peter, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.  Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.  When he had finished, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.  So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  He and all with him were amazed at the catch of fish.  Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”  (Luke 5:1-10)

~~RGM, from one of the earliest

entries in my nature journal

From My Nature Journal: Scattered

We shoed up a small peak in the Pike National Forest today, and near its summit came upon what had just recently been a well-populated deer or elk yard. We’d noticed hoof prints helter-skelter as we climbed through the thirty inches of two-day-old snow. But up here it was a wonder to see their body impressions as they lay under pine boughs through the storm, and to note the ways they had pawed through the wet blanket in numerous places to gnaw at grasses, yucca, and other vegetation.

We first wondered why we were not seeing animals anywhere. What might have caused them to leave the yard, considering the effort it must have taken to work through the snow’s depth? Why would they leave their clearing work behind? But as we circumnavigated the peak we came across different tracks that unfolded the drama. From the opposite side were presented the ten-foot bounding body prints of what appeared a bobcat. It must have come tearing up the hillside like a crazy banshee, scattering the occupants like an ebullient, spirited dog setting upon a flock of pigeons in a city park. What a sight that would have been to see, perhaps only hours before. But no damage seemed to have been done the herd, and the cat likely searched on.

One moment the herd was at rest, repose, or perhaps hunkered disconsolately in growing unease through the gale’s mounting cover. The next moment the scatterer arrives, making its presence known in a big way. All heck must have quickly broken loose, belying the peaceful scene now before us. Diffusion, dispersal, diaspora…

The bobcat, of course, was only doing what bobcats do. But it raised for me a Biblical image from one of Jesus’ briefer parables, a depiction of a spiritual reality that can happen when we least expect it: “…The thief (read: the enemy of our soul) comes to steal, kill and destroy… The wolf (same reading) attacks the sheep and scatters them (John 10:10-12)." Yet take heart. Jesus’ promise in the same passage is sure: “…But I have come to give life, and give it in abundance.”

~~RGM, From an Old Journal Entry,

Updated February 7, 2015

P.S. This was written some time back. By contrast, it’s 70 degrees in Denver today, and there’s not thirty inches of fresh snow within miles. Tough day in paradise… Guess I’m just doing a bit of Colorado Dreamin’ on a winter’s day.

POTM...*: Finally Christmas!

(*Photo[s] of the Month)

In our home, my dear and otherwise good wife doesn’t allow Christmas music to be played until the day after Thanksgiving, says she wants to keep it special and not get tired of it before Christmas rolls around. Never mind that we might not be home long enough during Advent to listen to Handel’s Messiah all the way through. Me? I’d play it all year ‘round if I had my druthers, at least from our own recordings, as the only thing I tire of are the cheesy tunes the radio tries to pass off as Christmas music.

So here it is the day after Thanksgiving and I’ve already kicked off the morning with Messiah Part 1 Scene 1 and Mannheim Steamroller. It has put me into enough of the holiday spirit that I decided it was time to share as my photo of the month a couple seasonally-fitting images I took while hiking in Florida earlier this year.

I was simply checking out the plants among the dunes at Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, on the east coast north of Palm Beach, and what should I come across but a small, wild poinsettia! It bore little resemblance to the cultivated variety used everywhere in
seasonal displays, what with their enormous red bracts and all, so I didn’t make the connection at first. But soon the light went on and I let out an, “Oh wow, look what’s here!” Though the close-ups below make them look larger than they were, the bracts were actually very small, perhaps a half-inch in length. So it was its unique leaf that clinched the recognition.

Only in researching them now do I find that the red bracts are always small like this in uncultivated form – it’s only a manipulated, grafted variety that gets large and showy. Poinsettias are native to Mexico and Central America, and grow in the wild into shrubs or small trees. This particular plant or its seeds may have come in as a cutting on some storm, blown ashore with other jetsam. The typically red ‘blooms,’ as you may know, are not the flower petals at all; the flowers are the tiny, tiny yellow blooms that barely catch our attention. And concern that the plant is poisonous? It actually only has very mild toxicity.

Cultivated poinsettias, of course, are wildly popular as Christmas decorations in the U.S., growing so in Europe as well, but this is a relatively recent development. Though the plant’s association with Christmas goes back several hundred years to rural Mexico (with the bracts only turning their color as night-time dark fully lengthens near December’s winter solstice), it took an enterprising German immigrant family from California by the name of Ecke, in the mid 1900’s, to popularize them there; having first sold them from street stands this time of year, the family also perfected the graft technique that enlarged the show of red color. And with the combination of the red color, indicative as it may be of the color of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and the pointy leaves, which some characterize as expressive of the star over Bethlehem, it was only a matter of time before its marketing would permeate the seasonal culture. And what could be bad about that, beautiful as it is?

Jesus said, “Walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them! And if God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers, don’t you think he’ll also attend as well to you? So steep yourself in God-reality… You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” (Matthew 6:28-30,33, MSG)

Be reminded of God’s attention and intention toward you! Have a blessed Advent!

~~RGM, November 28, 2014