From My Nature Journal: Returning Thanks

“Let us return thanks."

It is an old phrase. Some of you will remember it and some not, but those who do will recall the context in which it was almost always spoken: just before the prayer was offered for a meal. My family, as likely some of yours, called our mealtime prayer ‘grace.’ So rather than hearing someone say, “Let us return thanks,” typically one would shout out, “Let’s say grace!” Then someone (usually an older brother) would invariably bellow, “Grace!” Mom never let it rest at that, and often gave a flick to the head of the transgressor. 

Good memories, but I still find myself attracted to the formality of the old phrase. Returning thanks. Play with that a bit. When one returns something, typically they’re returning something they’ve received. Technically, that is not the case as this phrase has come down. God gives blessings. We return something else, thanks. Still, it’s a good exchange. I think our heavenly Father actually likes it. 

I’ve often spoken of gratitude being one of seven ‘tools’ every naturalist should have in their toolbox. Frankly, as far as I am concerned it is the most important, so much so that many secular therapists often consider gratitude one of the most healing practices in their toolbox. And when it comes to nature as a powerful spiritual pathway to God, gratitude is an action that can greatly assist us in spanning any perceived or supposed distance between creation and creation’s Creator. 

Think of it this way. When we’re grateful for something, we have developed appreciation for it. Now, we can appreciate things for what they do for us or mean to us, for the pleasure they give or the benefits they provide. But let’s think of the word differently. When something ‘appreciates,’ one of its meanings is that it rises in value to us, it grows in our estimation. If I appreciate something, I can simply be happy I experienced whatever it was, or I can now value or esteem that thing or that experience (or its source) more highly because I have been the beneficiary of its worth. It has come to me as a grace, a gift. When I appreciate a natural thing of beauty and awe, I can either say, “Well, lucky me! Wasn’t that great that I could be in the right place at the right time to see such a thing! What a coincidence!” Or I can say, “What or who can I thank for allowing me the chance to see this wonderful sight?” In short, having encountered this amazing thing, I have realized it has been a blessing to me. Then what?

From my perspective there are two entities to appreciate, value, or highly esteem in this way. First, appreciate what you see for its own sake, not only for what it did for you. Think it not too strange, but if the thing of beauty is alive, give thanks to the animal or flower for expressing the natural beauty, grace or power that its Creator placed within it. And value, steward and treasure the specific creature or creation more because of your encounter with it.

Gratitude. The single-most important 

guideline in the naturalist's guidebook...

Second, and this is a no-brainer by this point, give appreciation, esteem, and thanks to God for
God’s creativity, God’s awesome good-natured inventiveness, God’s playful palette, God’s holy imagination, God’s omnipotent originality, God’s absolute delight in natural diversity. Did you know there are 400,000 known species of beetles? I mean 400,000! Beetles even! I might have chosen butterflies or berries, but beetles? Don’t you think God might have gotten bored after seeing several hundred into existence? That is but one small example off the largesse of God.

Plain and simple: do you want to grow in your skills as a naturalist, an appreciator of nature? Simple gratitude has the capacity to increase one’s perception and enhance one’s natural experiences in profound ways. It’s also not only a healthy way to live a life, but a healthy way to live a faith. Gratitude. The single-most important guideline in the naturalist’s guidebook. 

Let us return thanks.

~~ RGM, November 22 2021

From My Nature Journal: Thanksgiving and the Sunshine Singer

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I'd like to share one of my absolute favorite Swedish hymns from my Covenant denominational heritage. I actually don’t know much about the text’s author, a Salvation Army poet by the name of August Ludvig Storm, except to say that he lived from 1862 to 1914 and resided in Stockholm. The one I want to say more about in this post is the author of the music, Johannes Alfred Hultman. I feel I know the man.

“J.A.” Hultman, as he was publicly known, was a wildly popular musical entertainer among the Mission Friends of Sweden and the USA in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. (“Mission Friends” was a common name for early Covenanters, a name I still dearly love and wish we used more often!) Born in 1861 in the poor, central Swedish province of Småland, his family emigrated to the states when he was eight years old and settled in rural Southwest Iowa near Essex. Early vocational ministry found him directing a church choir in Chicago (Douglas Park Covenant), and later pastoring churches in Nebraska and Massachusetts. While pastoring, however, he hooked up with Swedish theologian P.P. Waldenstrom in an 1889 speaking/evangelistic tour, bringing along his small, portable pump organ and providing music for the sessions. His time with Waldenstrom, famous and infamous in the US and northern Europe, marked the beginning of a change that led to Hultman’s taking up a full-time traveling and singing ministry that lasted half a century.

Known everywhere he went as “The Sunshine Singer,” his positive music and gregarious, sincere persona were a perfect fit to bring encouragement to immigrant Swedes, many of whom were rural or inner-city poor. The sunshine moniker came from an experience he had where he had been suspected in his travels of being a bootlegger, carrying alcoholic contraband in his wooden organ case. His response while being inspected? “I don’t deal in moonshine, I deal in sunshine.” (Last time I knew, the organ’s case was still being displayed among the archival artifacts in the vestibule of First Covenant Church of Omaha. I’m not sure of the story behind how it got there, and would love to be schooled. Interestingly, the church I am serving right now, Bethlehem Covenant of Minneapolis, also has an antique, portable and ‘boxed’ pump organ in its vestibule, one that was played by Hultman at the church’s building dedication in 1941.)

Hultman was well known both publicly and privately to have a good-natured humor which included playful self-deprecation. At a time when most traveling musicians supported themselves by selling copies of their music, in much the same way some entertainers do today with recordings, he was often quoted at concerts as saying, “I’ve brought along collections of my music that are available for purchase. The booklets cost a dollar, but I include my photograph as well and that changes the price dramatically, so I sell both for fifty cents.”

Deeply loved on both sides of the Atlantic, Hultman sang and presented evangelistic services continuously from the late 1800s until his death at age 81 in 1942. As I’ve said in the past, I’m something of a sentimentalist when it comes to music, and many Scandinavian texts from my heritage play to that sentiment, including this one. Read it below, and, if you can, celebrate it as a testimony of faith. And if you don’t know it, or if it has been a long time since you’ve heard it, check out this YouTube link.

Here it is, Thanks to God for my Redeemer, text by Ludvig Storm, music by J.A. Hultman:

Thanks to God for my Redeemer,

Thanks for all Thou dost provide.

Thanks for times now but a memory,

Thanks for Jesus by my side.

Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,

Thanks for dark and dreary fall.

Thanks for tears by now forgotten,

Thanks for peace within my soul.

Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,

Thanks for what Thou dost deny.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all Thou dost supply.

Thanks for pain and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace beyond all measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

Thanks for roses by the wayside,

Thanks for thorns their stems contain.

Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,

Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain.

Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,

Thanks for heavenly peace with Thee.

Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,

Thanks through all eternity.

I am told the original Swedish included the word thanks thirty-two times in the three verses. In this English translation by Carl E. Backstrom, it’s only said twenty-seven times, but I think the point is still well taken!

Psalm 30:12 -- That my soul may sing praises to You, O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever!

-- RGM, November 28, 2019

From My Nature Journal: How’s Your GQ, Your Gratitude Quotient? Gratitude as an Upward Spiral…

I read this morning of something an author calls the ‘spiral’ of gratitude. Upon further thinking, it’s a phrase I find I like very much.

Of course, when we tend to think of spirals, if we’re not thinking footballs we’re first thinking of the downward variety, gravitational force being what it is and all; we quickly picture the proverbial circular descent that leads to a crash as object meets earth. I’m not sure why this is so, why we first think of the downward spiral, except that gravity at first glance seems to have a much greater hand in our daily lives than does lift. But that’s only at first glance, because absolutely every single time we move we are exerting an antigravity force. It’s probably also because most people tend first to think the worst…

Contrarily, it’s the upward spiral I want to think about. No, not the first half of a Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers ‘hail Mary’ pass. Though we have fairly few examples of such in the realm of nature (again, gravitational force being what it is and all), we do have at least one. Picture the soaring red-tailed hawk, rising slowly but persistently on the thermal. It’s an almost spiritual image, and maybe can help lift the concept of gratitude as an upward spiral to a spiritual place.

How grateful am I? Are you? Such a thing surely cannot be measured, as if there’s some kind of gratitude quotient, but it’s something worth thinking about. Maybe there should be. And though it can’t be measured, I do believe there’s a gratitude intelligence just as surely as there’s an intellectual, relational and emotional intelligence. In fact, I believe gratitude intelligence most certainly must contribute to the other three, and to any other kind of intelligence for that matter. Lacking the former, I shudder to think what kind of world this might be.

Some have spoken of the sharing of thanks as the important completion of a circle. It’s a tolerable image, but doesn’t that seem kind of closed to you, a circle? It does to me. It’s significant, to be sure, especially between the two parties. But what of a possible larger grace? What of a broader sense of shalom that might go beyond what only two parties may share? What about the potential for something we might even see as a cosmic joy that can rise to a greater Reality?

My devotional writer this morning said that, when seen this way, the exchange is more like a spiral than a circle, a spiral in which the giver gets thanked and so becomes the receiver, and the joy of giving and receiving rises higher and higher. Another contemplative theologian puts it this way:

A mother bends down to her child in the crib and hands him a toy. The baby recognizes the gift and returns the mother’s smile. The mother, overjoyed with the childish gesture of gratitude, lifts the child up with a kiss. There is a spiral of joy. Is not a kiss a greater gift than a toy? Is not the joy it expresses greater than the toy that set our spiral in motion?

With all of these realities in play, it’s now almost impossible to differentiate which is the giver and which the recipient.

I think it’s possible for someone to know

if a life of gratitude is being lived, if a

spiral is proceeding upward or not…

So, though gratitude cannot be measured – and pity the place where it is, the place where everything is tit for tat, reciprocity rules, the value of every gift is calculated and an accounting is always kept of who owes who what – I think it’s possible for someone to know if a life of gratitude is being lived, if a spiral is proceeding upward or not. Not only are thanks expressed easily and genuinely, but a larger gratitude comes into play, one that has the potential to save us from our greedy selves, one that extends further that same upward trajectory in which the thanks continuously seems to be rising.

I’ve written elsewhere that gratitude is one of the cardinal personal attributes expressed by those who find nature an important spiritual pathway. There’s always something in the natural realm for which to be grateful. Thankfulness is a marvelous discipline worth developing and celebrating, and an appreciative contemplation of God’s creation can help get us there. But it’s not necessarily only thanks to the Giver that is possible; think me not odd, but one can even be thankful to the gift for helping create the grateful awareness. If it’s an animate thing, one can be grateful even to it, and through it, to its Creator. For it’s all an acknowledgement that the earth is full of the works of the Lord (Psalm 111:2) whose good pleasure is that things have beauty. It’s a confession of faith that the earth is full of the glory of the Creator (Isaiah 6:3). It’s a testimony even of anticipation that the Giver has more gifts to share if we will but acknowledge their Source and receive them (Matthew 7:11 and James 1:17). In these ways, back to the image of the hawk on the thermal, the praise and gratitude keep ascending.

~~ RGM, April 19 2016

On the Journey with Herb Frost: "Tide, Tides and Christmastide"

I’ve begun a new column on my blog these last couple months called On the Journey, through which I’ll periodically feature an essay written by a friend or family member. Of course, it’ll only happen as often as I can convince someone to share some spiritual writing on a nature theme with me! So if you want to take a try at it, or if you’ve done some writing like this in the past you’d like to share with other like-minded seekers of God through nature, be in touch with me and let’s see what we can do...

Just this week, though, I received something from my friend, ministry colleague and former pastor Herb Frost, now pastor of Rochester Covenant Church of Rochester, Minnesota. Though I’d planned something else this week, I decided to postpone it in deference to Herb’s thoughts, especially in light of the news developments these last several days. Additionally, Gail and I are serving this week on support staff at Sonscape Retreats, a renewal ministry for pastors and their spouses to deepen their walk with Christ or sort out their ministry challenges. Herb’s word is a good one for every follower of Jesus, pastors included.

Here is what he writes:

We went to Bodega Bay over Thanksgiving. The house we stayed in overlooked the bay with a full southern exposure. At this time of year, both sunrise and sunset are visible with expansive beauty, inviting the soul into contemplation, reflection and peace.

Down the hill a bit, a short drive or a longer walk, was Bodega Bay itself. A wide bay with aquatic life of the avian and mammalian kind was visible at high tide. In addition to mammalian windsurfers, sea otters were swimming on their backs, sea lions were heard across the water, cormorants, pelicans, cranes and gulls all found life and sustenance from the shallow water. Yet at low tide the mammals were gone, and the birds were bold in their search for food.

A longer drive around the bay and out onto a peninsula called Bodega Head, the waters were no longer sheltered and the waves of the Pacific crashed unabated on the shore. Yet the tides still rose and fell. Of all the rhythms of Creation, how, after all this time, do they still cleanse the beach? Marvelous and wonderful tides…

It makes me wonder: What is the equivalent of a tide in my spiritual life? Isn’t thanksgiving also a rhythmic discipline, an opportunity to experience marvel, wonder and cleansing?

It makes me wonder:

What is the equivalent of

a tide in my spiritual life?

Zechariah prophesies in Luke 1 about his own son, John the Baptist: And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace. (Luke 1:76-79)

The knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of our sins… This also is a repeating, faithful spiritual tide that comes invitationally and unceasingly because of the tender mercy of our God.

As Thanksgiving yields to Advent, and then into Christmastide, may the tides of thanksgiving and forgiveness cleanse us, and guide our feet -- as individuals, as a church and as a nation -- into paths of peace.

Indeed. May these tides wash over each of you, my friends, bringing you peace and perspective in the midst of the daily challenges and griefs of life and Christian service. Thank you, brother Herb.

~~ RGM, December 4, 2015

Blowin' in the Wind: J.A. Hultman and "Thanks to God for My Redeemer"

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or have given me joy. I trust they'll do the same for you.)

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I'd like to share one of my absolute favorite, old Swedish hymns from my Covenant denominational heritage. I actually don’t know much about the text’s author, a Salvation Army poet by the name of August Ludvig Storm, except to say that he lived from 1862 to 1914 and resided in Stockholm. The one I want to say more about in this post is the author of the music, Johannes Alfred Hultman. I feel I know the man.

“J.A.” Hultman, as he was publicly known, was a wildly popular musical entertainer among the Mission Friends of Sweden and the USA in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. (“Mission Friends” was a colloquial name for early Covenanters, I name I still dearly love and wish we used more often!) Born in 1861 in the poor, central Swedish province of Småland, his family emigrated to the states when he was eight years old and settled in rural Southwest Iowa near Essex. Early vocational ministry found him directing a church choir in Chicago (Douglas Park Covenant), and later pastoring churches in Nebraska and Massachusetts. While pastoring, however, he hooked up with Swedish theologian P.P. Waldenstrom in 1889 speaking/evangelistic tour, bringing along his small, portable pump organ and providing music for the sessions. His time with Waldenstrom, famous and infamous in the US and northern Europe, marked the beginning of a change that led to Hultman’s taking up a full-time traveling and singing ministry that lasted half a century.

Known everywhere he went as “The Sunshine Singer,” his positive music and gregarious, sincere persona were a perfect fit to bring encouragement to immigrant Swedes, many of whom were rural or inner-city poor. The sunshine moniker came from an experience he had where he had been suspected in his travels of being a bootlegger, carrying alcoholic contraband in his wooden organ case. His response while being inspected? “I don’t deal in moonshine, I deal in sunshine.” (Last time I knew, the organ’s case was still being displayed among th archival artic=facts in the vestibule of First Covenant Church of Omaha. I’m not sure of the story behind how it got there, and would love to be schooled…) in fact, Hultman was well known both publicly and privately to have a good-natured humor which included playful self deprecation. At a time when most traveling musicians supported themselves by selling copies of their music, in much the same way some entertainers do today with recordings, he was often quoted at concerts as saying, “I’ve brought along collections of my music that are available for purchase. The booklets cost a dollar, but I include my photograph as well and that changes the price dramatically, so I sell both for fifty cents.”

Deeply loved on both sides of the Atlantic, Hultman sang and presented evangelistic services continuously from the late 1800s until his death at age 81 in 1942. As I’ve said in the past, I’m something of a sentimentalist when it comes to music, and many Scandinavian texts from my heritage play to that sentiment, including this one. Read it below, and, if you can, celebrate it as a testimony of faith. And if you don’t know it, or if it has been a long time since you’ve heard it, check out this YouTube link, a simple piano-only rendition.

Here it is, Thanks to God for my Redeemer, text by Ludvig Storm, music by J.A. Hultman:

Thanks to God for my Redeemer,

Thanks for all Thou dost provide.

Thanks for times now but a memory,

Thanks for Jesus by my side.

Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,

Thanks for dark and dreary fall.

Thanks for tears by now forgotten,

Thanks for peace within my soul.

Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,

Thanks for what Thou dost deny.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all Thou dost supply.

Thanks for pain and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace beyond all measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

Thanks for roses by the wayside,

Thanks for thorns their stems contain.

Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,

Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain.

Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,

Thanks for heavenly peace with Thee.

Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,

Thanks through all eternity.

I am told the original Swedish included the word 'thanks' thirty-two times in the three verses. In this English translation by Carl E. Backstrom, it’s only said twenty-seven times, but I think the point is still well taken!

Psalm 30:12 -- That my soul may sing praises to You, O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever!

-- RGM, November 19, 2015