From My Nature Journal: Open Hands

I hold my open hand outstretched toward a tiny bird. It is full of nuts, and I am hopeful the little guy will light on my palm and receive what I have to offer. Sometimes it works. Most often it doesn't. But it is always worth it to try.

Open hands... 

An open hand can symbolize many, many things. Held simply open it can mean, as with the bird, that I have something to give; or if it’s empty and held forward, it can also say, “I have need.” Upheld alone and facing forward it can be a simple acknowledgement of hello or goodbye, formal or informal, enthusiastic or reticent. Upheld with the other hand it can be a figurative or literal sign of resignation or surrender, “I give up,” a show that my hand hides nothing that can threaten the one to whom the signal is made. Angled at my side, palms forward, it is a beckoning gesture, a motion that can mean welcome, come nearer, stand by me. Yet waving forward from the elbows it says go away. Palms down it says, “I’m finished, I’m staying put,” or that things have settled. Held high overhead it symbolizes the desire to be chosen, noticed, “Teacher, pick me!” Held palms up at shoulder height it says I don’t know, I’m confused.

Such variability from a simple open hand gesture, sometimes even contradictory! Hello or goodbye. Come or go. I’m staying or I’m coming. I have need or I have excess. I’m settled or I’m confused. I know or I don’t know. And that’s just gestures using an open hand! It’s a pretty diverse appendage.

I hold an open hand outstretched toward God in prayer, hopeful God's presence will light and receive what I have to offer. What is the meaning of my gesture? Is it an offering? A symbol of resignation or surrender? Of confusion or of being settled? Of openness to receive? A welcome? A beckoning that the Object of my prayer advance, that He come nearer? A desire to be chosen? All of these? Especially in times such as our country and church are experiencing now?

We never thought of our hands

as being empty so much as

caught in the act of receiving…

A friend sent me a poem once about a man who had grown up poor, but somehow still provided for, who had lived a simple and unpretentious life. “We had so little,” he said, “that there was no point in our asking God to protect what was ours. We had life and limb, friends and kin, time for play and work. It was enough.”

The poem ended with these lines: “We prayed with our hands open and turned toward heaven. We never thought of them as being empty so much as caught in the act of receiving.”

It’s a lovely image. And perhaps made especially so since the image is of an open hand and not a clenched one...

Lord, let my open hands before You be ones that have something to offer, to You and to others, in these critical times. And let me never, ever see them as empty, only caught in the act of receiving. Amen.

~~RGM, adapted from an old entry in my nature

journal, after a morning on the beach at Hobe

Sound National Wildlife Refuge near Jupiter, FL

From my Nature Journal: The Long Journey

A long, barefoot walk along the Atlantic shoreline at low tide...

I look back intermittently upon firm footprints, sure, distinct, uniquely paced and directed to my various digressions and curiosities along the way. They create a history, of a walk, yes, but also perhaps a symbolic portrayal of a life’s journey.

After some time I turn back. It is a rising tide now, all footprints obliterated by breaking waves. There is no residual indication they had ever existed, nor that I had ever passed that way two hours before. My presence seems to have been of no consequence.

In times of doubt and flagging courage I am tempted to see my life’s journey like this, no residual impact. But I think again. Brief? Yes. Momentary? Yes. But of no consequence? No.

Along that shore I tended blessing and grace to the myriad flotsam and jetsam I encountered along the way. To what end? Aren’t others’ storm-tossed lives also transitory, as fleeting as my own, leaving no prints along their chosen shorelines? Yes. But blessing and grace always pay forward, tend ahead, not backward, always lean into others’ futures, beyond. Blessing endures.

...Blessing and grace always pay forward,

tend ahead... Blessing endures.

Of no consequence?

Along that shore I also extolled my Creator God, that only One completely Eternal, in Whose heart my footprints still remain, etched permanently, tracked across the lasting sands of God's Father-heart. Praise endures.

Along that shore my own heart seemed to burst in joyous, aching gratitude for the simple beauties of sight and sound, touch and smell -- birds, shells and their fragments, waves, sand patterns, sky, salt-air, grasses, heat and coolness, seeds, rain, creatures strange and familiar, smoothed stones, fog, sunrise and sunset, wind, flowers, thunder, dunes, breeze on bare skin, tracks, colors, clouds -- each alternately taking my breath away, yet causing me to praise my Maker while I had that breath. Gratitude endures.

                  

Along that shore God held sweet communion with me, spoke with me, challenged me, reminded me that though my life passes as a blink of an eye, he will one day bodily welcome me in familiarity, eternally, an old friend. Memory endures.

Along that shore I sowed pregnant seeds among the dunes: I loved and was loved. I taught and was taught. I sang and was sung to. I blessed and was blessed. I instilled faith and hope, and such was also instilled in me. Love, faith and hope endure.

                                                 

Impacts as these are not as footprints further up from the waterline, prints that simply last longer than those where the waves break but still are eventually erased by larger waves, higher winds or driving rain. Impacts as these are as everlasting as God Himself, treasures laid up in God's heaven, imperishable, immortal, abiding.

My life is wrapped in his, mingled in Omnipresence, a journey without end.

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry, after a

walk at Hobe Sound NWR, Jupiter Island FL