From My Nature Journal: Soul Seasons

Lord of Creation, God of the universe,

You are not simply summer to my soul.

Yes, I do love You in the sensuousness of summer,

When leaves wax and fields are a riot of color and joy,

When Your sun warms my skin,

And Your cool water revives my strength,

And long days become a sabbath-season that allow space, grace and growth.

Yet I also love You in the melancholy of autumn,

When Your earth dies a blood-red blaze of glory

And trees rain back their yield to the ground,

When something in me saddens amid the late-season blessing,

And I come to terms with mortality and winter’s approach.

But I love You as well in the dead of winter,

When wind howls over barren earth

Both outside my window and sometimes inside my soul,

When the heart can freeze like ice, or can rest easy, asleep,

Like a garden, patiently waiting for Your beneficent, restoring touch.

Finally, I love You in the giddy burgeoning of springtime,

When quickened life bursts from somewhere deep and wonderful,

A resurrected earth mimicking a resurrected Lord,

And something also in me is embraced by resurrection,

As the cycle of life again begins its turning.

You are every season to my soul --

Summer, fall, winter, spring -- together.

You transcend them in a timeless time and space beyond Your good earth.

Grant me to walk fully awake through the seasons,

Never missing the slightest nuance of Your vast overture of love. Amen

~~ RGM, December 7, 2017 

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

From My Nature Journal: The Desert and Hope's Intimations

Saguaro NP, Arizona

Sometimes these guys have
persona: Hans or Franz?

The desert. It can be an unforgiving place, with razor-sharp margins to match its cactus’ prolific thorns. Often punishing and inhospitable, it can be an austere, life-sapping environment that can make one feel they are sucking hot air as through a straw, seeming to say, “Go away. Go far away. Get not close to me.” I hike for an hour before I even find a single spot to sit that combines a flat and open, semi-smooth space with a little apologetic shade from an ironwood tree.

Yes, there is a stark and awesome beauty here. But one had better bring along their own margins, their own safety-nets, their own protections – something that covers arms and legs from the unfriendliness of the flora, shades the head and skin from the merciless sun, hydrates the body from the moisture-sucking environment, and prepares one to be responsive to the defenses of the fauna, particularly if one is going to be out here for some time. Scorpions, snakes, lizards and stinging bugs are one’s companions.

And the periodic desert of the soul, how different? Perhaps not much at all. The draining oppression of the enemy can combine with a God Whose refreshing can veil itself so as not to be easily encountered… One must protect one’s self out here as well. Is God there somewhere? It seems He’s left the county, that the territory’s not big enough for the both of us, Pardner…

But there are moments in my wilderness wanderings where there are hints of God’s graces within seemingly unfriendly surroundings. Though there’s rarely a place to sit, let alone sit in the shade, intimations of hope are here if sought after, sometimes surprisingly so. On my third day of hiking I come across a relict sign that points to a spur trail; it simply says “Windmill.” Say what? Here? Someone’s idea of a joke? But just a short distance away, a windmill as relict as the sign looks absolutely out-of-place, still, silent. Yet as I stare, wondering of its history, a small breeze presents itself, the blades catch air, and the turbine slowly begins to turn, squeaking loudly. To my utter astonishment I soon hear a faint splash of water, a small pipe releasing water into a catch basin I had not seen in the underbrush. Upon further investigation I find the basin spilling over into a small rivulet that quickly disappears beneath the sand. But it’s there. Honeybees and small butterflies flit about and attest to it, taking advantage of the contrite oasis.

Sometimes it is only a tiny stream that is necessary to see for one to know that the desert will not stretch on forever. Sometimes a single word from God is all it takes to press on through the drought.

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry after

hiking Saguaro National Park, Arizona,

adapted for my blog October 8, 2013

From My Journal: Going Up You Get Tired, Coming Down You Get Hurt

I don’t know how many inexperienced hikers I’ve told that old adage to. Back in the flat Midwest it’s not something one says much, but here in the Rockies it is advice well heeded.

On top of Mt. Bierstadt, our first fourteener 
(and only so far)

Going up you get tired. Many trailheads, in fact most here, seem to start at the bottom of a long incline. Before I became more accustomed to the altitude, I wouldn’t be a quarter mile in and I needed to stop to catch breath, filled with the wondering of whether I was going to be able to enjoy this hike after all. But I found even then that I would finally hit a steady rhythm, "pickin’ ‘em up and puttin’ ‘em down" one foot ahead of the other, and the steady pace, even if modest, gave progress.

Goin' up...

But going up you get tired. You long for the summit, or at least time or trail’s apex, because the ascent is wearing you out. Going up has gotten all of your attention, especially if you are a novice. It’s up and to the right that is the order of the day. Maybe all the while you know you have a final scramble ahead of you, following cairns, picking or pulling your way through boulders. Your heart is pumping wildly, your lungs ache, you’ve perspired to the point of dripping, and you long for the time you can descend. You even hear your inner monologue: “Oh, going down will be so great,” you say, “all of the beauty and none of the pain, objective accomplished!”

You forget (or don’t know) that coming down is the more likely time when you can get hurt. It’s a bit counterintuitive. With the strain of the ascent one is lulled into thinking the descent can’t be much, nothing but a piece of cake. But physical exertion has already been exacting and one may not realize how tired they already are. Muscles have been taxed, and sometimes that shaky feeling of adrenalin deprivation has even set in.

'Tis the art of the skillful

descent that should require

as great an attentiveness...

Comin' down...

So coming down is usually when you get hurt. Your foot slips. Your hand fails to grip a hold. Think of it: mechanically, going up is actually much easier than coming down. On the way up your body leans into the angle’s pitch, it hugs the trail, the path almost welcoming the next footfall. Going down, the center of gravity has been reversed with centrifugal rather than centripetal force being exerted. The body now leans away from the angle’s pitch, away from the trail, and every single step is a lurch forward into space, into nothingness, into unwelcomeness. You discover that both the ascent and descent can be painful, though with different kinds of pain. Going up it’s the exhaustion of exertion, lung pain. Coming down it’s the checking of momentum, the jarring of knees and hips, and even the occasional fall or injury.

'Tis the art of the skillful descent that should require as great an attentiveness.

So in life. We long for the pinnacle, then for the chance to be done with the hard pulling and enjoy the downhill coast. But coming down from a height to a place of normalcy is where I can fail, or fall, where I need to humble myself, remove myself from my exalted position. Yes, the skillful descent requires a retiring grace.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face (see Exodus 34:29-35) so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor... And we all, with unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another... (2 Corinthians 3:12-13, 18)

                                       ~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry,

Adapted for Blog May 3, 2013