Blowin’ in the Wind: Mary Oliver -- “My Work is Loving the World”

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a periodic feature on my blog containing an assortment of nature writings – songs, excerpts, poems, prayers, Bible readings or other things – pieces I haven’t written but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

I want to share with you today a poem from one of my favorites, Mary Oliver. My sister-in-law Beth recommended her to me one time when I was visiting her and my brother’s home. And what do you know? There just happened to be a book of Oliver’s poetry there at the bedstand in their guest bedroom. Once I found that my hosts went to bed a lot earlier than me, it gave me plenty of opportunity that visit to spend some time with her writing. 

Mary Oliver was an American poet who died in 2019. A Pulitzer Prize winner for her 1983 American Primitive, much of her work has a natural bent to it, which is what attracts me to it. Some of her critics call her too accessible, but to me, that is hardly a criticism but a compliment. When it comes to poetry, I need accessibility! Though not a woman of declared religion, I find not infrequent references to the divine or sacred in her work, which is welcome to me as a person of faith. Having written twenty books of poetry and six of prose, her collection Devotions is a compilation of many favorites written over a fifty year span from the 60’s to the twenty-tens, and would be a great place for new readers to begin.

The poem I share here is titled “Messenger” from her 2006 collection Thirst. Her life-long habit of solitary walks, and the place these played in her inspiration, may easily be imagined.

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters…

 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The robin, the rosehips.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing,

since all the ingredients are here,

 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

What are three of the important things that matter? Not only in natural observation but in life? Astonishment, joy and gratitude, she says. These not only build a life but call us deeper into creation care, because we care for the things we love. 

My work is loving the world. Not a bad gig. Sounds like Jesus.

~~ RGM, February 29 2024

From My Nature Journal: "Hellooooo, Plant!"

A just for fun post… 

With a headnod and a smile at the thought of Ed Norton in the old Honeymooners series ‘addressing his golf ball’ (check it out here), I title my post today. Seems like scientists are finding further veracity in talking to houseplants, both for the talkee and the talker. 

It’s not a new concept. For me, it goes back to an experience with my next-door college dorm friend and future biologist Bruce urging me nearly fifty years ago to talk to my plants, something I’ve taken somewhat seriously over the years. Why not? In fact, the idea goes back in science at least to the mid 1800’s when a German botanist by the name of Fechner published to this end. And now, what do you know? A British publisher has produced a book of bedtime stories to be read to plants, scientifically based. I guess it was bound to happen, though I don’t anticipate going that far. Still, all the bedtime stories or talking in the world won’t help if watering and feeding is neglected.

Jesus talked to a plant at least once. Course, it wasn’t good news for that plant (Mark 11:12-25), but he was trying to get a point across to his followers about faithfulness and fruitfulness. 

And this subject of talking to plants catches me because I have been thinking a lot about plants lately. Several years ago, Gail and I gave away all our houseplants, some that we had even had our whole forty-year marriage. Our ministry work and personal interests were taking us away from home more often for weeks and months at a time, and we were finding it increasingly difficult to care for them. So after putting aside several to bring to a daughter we were going to drive to see soon, one day we put all those remaining out on tables in our driveway and emailed our Shadow Ridge Road neighbors to come help themselves. There was joy on faces as they were carted away, and I daresay a little grief on ours. These plants had become friends over the years.

And such our home has been ever since – plant free – nary a plant to address, and we’ve been missing something as a result. But a brainstorm occurred to me several days ago. We’ve got some invasive English Ivy growing in our woods that I need to get pulled one of these days. Some of that would easily keep and grow here in the house in a jar of water, and wouldn’t require any care over the time we may be gone in the months ahead. So I’m going to get out and collect some cuttings to bring indoors. It’ll at least give me something to talk to when Gail is not around!

And while I’m thinking of it, perhaps something easy that could be said to plants by any of us is, “Thank you.” They are God’s living creation after all, and I have written often before of the power of gratitude when it comes to spiritual and emotional health, here for example. Of course we give thanks to God the Creator for natural beauty, but I do not think it incongruous at all to express gratitude also to the created thing itself. A bit animistic? Some might think so, but I don’t agree. And it looks like we’re seeing a growing body of science to attest to it. Now even bedtime stories. 

So my new ivy cuttings? May they all live (and grow) happily ever after. 

~~ RGM, February 26, 2022

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 -- Celebrating Earth Day by Praying through the Creation Story: Day 7, "Gratitude"

Introduction: The ways people pursue God, or even pray, can be as different as the very people who pursue God. Spiritual writers and mentors have long appreciated these varieties of pathways that pilgrims have followed in their prayer journey. For example, many are led to deep devotion through such things as music, contemplation or activism, but others have found that it’s the beauty and mystery of the natural, created world that leads them to a humbling encounter of praise and prayer with their Creator God. Of course, the pathways mix to varying degrees according to our personalities and interests.

Those who find nature an important spiritual pathway can see their own faith story unfold in the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 in the Christian and Jewish Bible. Being mindful not to worship creation but only the Creator, a consideration of the natural world not only helps them do that, but also guides them in their stewardship of what God has created. Each day this week we will look to the ‘seven day’ creation story from these first two chapters of the Bible’s very first book. All references are from the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version.

Day 7 – “Grateful” -- And on the seventh day God finished the work… and he rested… So God blessed the seventh day… (Genesis 2:2-3)

Read: Genesis 2:1-3, Psalm 46 and Matthew 11:25-30

Reflect: God’s tasks were complete, for the time being, and he rested. Did God need it? No. But as so often the case, God first models the behavior and action God desires from his children. He knew we would need it. And as God rested, we cannot but imagine that he also reflected, gratified for a job well done.

God’s creation story is one of fruitfulness and respectful gratitude. Should our story be any different, especially if we are created in God’s image? Along with his spectacular creation, rest and a spirit of thankfulness are gifts to us from our Creator God. One replenishes us. The other defines our reason for being. But we must give ourselves time and opportunity to practice and enjoy them both.

When it comes to spiritual reflection, on the Sabbath or any day, people of faith for centuries have enjoyed a practice called an examen. Most often experienced in the evening, it is a time to reflect upon our attentiveness to the presence of God in our day. When did God seem most close? When most far? Why? For what am I thankful? When was I most attentive to God? Least? Did I represent Jesus well today, or not? When? What can I do differently tomorrow? Though the questions can vary, a regular examen can be a very important practice in one’s ongoing Christian formation.

Observe: Make a place this evening, or by the next Lord’s Day, for the last of our five-minute retreats this week. If you can and if the weather cooperates, sit outdoors or by a window where you can observe a sunset or a night sky. Do you know the simple hymn to the tune of Taps, called Day is Done? Reflect on it as you prepare for rest.

                       

            Day is done. Gone the sun

            From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.

            All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.

                        Fading light dims the night

                        And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.

                        From afar, drawing nigh, falls the night.

                                    Thanks and praise for our days

                                    ‘Neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky.

                                    As we go this we know: God is nigh.

Pray: Lord, you are ever near, revealing yourself to us through others, through your creation and through your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your creative majesty, for beauty that inspires, for marvels that humble. O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Amen.

Hymn for the Day: “How Great Thou Art”

Link for the Day: Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill perform “How Great Thou Art"

From My Nature Journal -- Celebrating Earth Day by Praying through the Creation Story: Day 4, "Aware"

Introduction: The ways people pursue God, or even pray, can be as different as the very people who pursue God. Spiritual writers and mentors have long appreciated these varieties of pathways that pilgrims have followed in their prayer journey. For example, many are led to deep devotion through such things as music, contemplation or activism, but others have found that it’s the beauty and mystery of the natural, created world that leads them to a humbling encounter of praise and prayer with their Creator God. Of course, the pathways mix to varying degrees according to our personalities and interests.

Those who find nature an important spiritual pathway can see their own faith story unfold in the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 in the Christian and Jewish Bible. Being mindful not to worship creation but only the Creator, a consideration of the natural world not only helps them do that, but also guides them in their stewardship of what God has created. Each day this week we will look to the ‘seven day’ creation story from these first two chapters of the Bible’s very first book. All references are from the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version.

Day 4 – “Aware” -- And God said, “Let there be lights in the… sky… to give light upon the earth…” (Genesis 1:14-15)

Read: Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 8 and Matthew 16:1-4

Reflect: Lights in the firmament… Yes, enjoying the beauty of sky phenomena – sunrises and sets, rainbows, shooting stars, clouds, sundogs, aurora, glorioles, constellations and planets – is all about being in the right place at the right time to see them. But they’re also about something else: awareness. How often have I lifted my eyes to a fading rainbow or gloriole (a ring around the sun -- see photo above, a shot I took while visiting my daughter in ALaska), or missed the meteorite someone else in the group is always bound to see, because I was too preoccupied to notice them. I not only missed the chance for beauty, I missed the chance for gratitude. Say nothing of the pleasures of the more heady pursuits of astronomy or meteorology; there are myriad simple pleasures to be observed.

Oh, to have the curious, wholehearted spirit of a King David in Psalm 8, or of a John Muir, the grandpappy of Christian naturalists, who was quoted, “Look at that now… And to think that God should plan to bring us feckless creatures here at just the right moment, and then flash such glories at us! Man, we are not worthy of such honor! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!” I’m not even certain what ‘feckless’ is, but I can get an idea from Muir’s enthusiasm!

Here’s the clincher, though. Our awareness of God’s constant presence can be as overlooked as our failure to notice or appreciate a rainbow. God said to Noah, “…it shall be a sign…” (Genesis 9:13) How many other signs of God’s presence and faithfulness do I routinely snub?

Observe: We’re back to looking to the sky today, as we did on day 2, but I’ll not ask for a five-minute retreat. Whenever outdoors, try today or tomorrow to simply look up several times throughout the day. Use that moment to notice what God might have up there; but then use the moment also to express your gratitude for God’s relentless, brooding presence over you.

Pray: Lord, a hymnwriter wrote that your lights in the sky “…join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.” I may not notice the glories of the sky as often as you present them, but may I never fail to notice your communications and activity in my life. Amen.

Hymn for the Day: “Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies”

Link for the Day: A blogpost of mine on the size of the universe