From My Nature Journal: When I Get to Heaven

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be woods,

          Where a sauntered pace

          May be had without needing to keep

          One’s bearings of time or space,

          Forests with birds and creatures

          And bits of splendor that take breath away:

          Spring Beauties and Forget-Me-Nots,

          Summer’s ferns and fungus,

          Autumn leaves that crackle afoot

          Belying midwinter’s absurd stillness;

          And, yes, one with whom to walk who enjoys it as I, or as You.

I do love the woods.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be canoes,

          That skim cold, pristine lakes,

          Leaving wakes

          That last not long,

          By quiet stroke and firm hand

          Easing gently over mirror calm,

          Or bobbing swell and wave

          Into bright, hidden bays

          Where eagles nest and loons dive,

          Or sliding into dark, night water

          Silver by moonshine all the way to rocky shore.

I do love canoes.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be seasons,

          When color palates fly -- 

          January’s blazing whites,

          Lupine’s spring, a rainbow’s July,

          Aspen’s or maple’s fall,

          Living greens, waning yellows, dying reds,

          Late summer suns whose early setting

          Have always made me sad

          These things have to end,

          Like winter hearth-fires that blaze like those suns

          But then look so cold when the morning comes.

I do love seasons.

And if there be foolishness in me

For laying such earthly hope upon heaven’s landscape,

Have mercy on me, Lord:

I love this world you made.

It’s what I know.

(Endnote: I saw the rough idea for this poem many years ago, anonymously cited, so it’s not completely original to me. But at that time, I added significantly to it and adapted it so extensively that I cannot now recall what was original and what is mine. To this day, though, I am still unable to come up with a source, so if any part of it sounds familiar to you and you can set me straight, I’d appreciate you letting me know so I may give credit appropriately. Thanks.)

~~ RGM, October 31 2015

From My Nature Journal: To Fly

A Brown Pelican glides effortlessly down the beachfront against a stiff south wind. To watch, one might easily deduce flight to be absolutely easy, a simple thing. This awkward, bigheaded, non-airworthy-looking bird doesn’t seem to move a muscle as it sometimes skims inches over the surface of the water, floating over the breakers like no other, to unbelievable distances, flapping slowly only after long intervals.

It seems as if all I would have to do to accomplish the same is stand on the dune and dexterously position a couple flaps of cardboard under my arms. Voila, liftoff! No wonder the bird’s face seems set in a permanent smile.

How is it that a man like me so often dreams of unaided flight? To soar, to fly, to lift above the uneven earth, its yawning valleys, its prodigious heights?

For now, though, I am a kite, not a bird: I require both string and tail. The string is my humanity, my ‘creatureliness’ created of my heavenly Father, the part that holds me back to allow me lift. But the wind of the Holy Spirit gives me to rise in concerted force, leveraged with my very humanity. And all is held in balance, stabilized, by the tail that is Jesus Christ. I know that’s a strange designation for the Lord of my life, but it seems fit to the analogy.

Just the same, my life as a kite is only a foretaste. We were made to fly. Some day…

Soon.

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry while at

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, Jupiter Island FL

Blowin' in the Wind: Akatonbo, or, The Red Dragonfly (赤とんぼ)

(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. I trust they will do the same for you.)

(photography by Gail and Rick Mylander)

In an unexpected turn of events last month Gail and I made a trip to Japan, where I had been asked to speak for a Covenant missionary conference. Always paying attention to the natural world around us, and seeking to understand that culture’s understanding of natural beauty, we engaged several missionary friends on the topic, and found that the Japanese on the whole seem to be even more attuned to nature than most westerners, especially older persons.

Somehow one day, though, a conversation turned to dragonflies, a subject in which Gail has taken keen interest in recent years. (Now, the world of darters, darners, skimmers, chasers and hawktails is new to us, and we are finding it interesting and surprising. Did you know there are nearly 6,000 species and that they can fly up to sixty miles per hour?!?) Our mission friend Gary told us of a lovely old folksong called Akatonbo, or, Red Dragonfly. Its popular lyric is a nostalgic poem, in which a person remembers an image of a dragonfly while a child that causes them to long for the home, simplicity and family of their youth. Here’s the poem, in a couple translations:

          Oh, red dragonfly, red dragonfly at twilight...

          I saw you for the first time while still a baby being carried on my sister's back.

          Could it be so long ago, picking mulberries from the mountain field?

          And our little baskets... Was that all a dream?

          My sister got married when she was fifteen and moved far, far away.

          She no longer sends news to our village.

          Oh, red dragonfly, red dragonfly at twilight...

          I see you resting there on the tip of the bamboo reed.

-OR-

          Red dragonfly in the sunset sky, in the orange sunset sky...

          Being carried on her back, I saw it at one time.

          In the mountain's fields we picked mulberry fruits

          And put them in a small basket. Is that a mirage?

          At fifteen the young girl married

          And letters, too, ceased to come.

          Red dragonfly in the red sunset sky, in the orange sunset sky...

          It's stopped on the tip of my fishing pole.

If you’re interested in hearing the song done in a folksy Japanese style, hit this YouTube link. The visuals are truly random, but the song is quite nice. Here’s another, less Japanese in style though still sung in the language.

It’s easy to feel the pathos expressed by the writer of this little poem, one for whom the simple encounter with a dragonfly brings him or her back to a childhood memory and the loss of a sister: nostalgic poems or songs that call up a longing for one’s home place are a part of every culture. In fact, it doesn’t take me long at all to think of some quick, popular examples myself from the songs of my own youth -- Gladys Knight's “Midnight Train to Georgia,” Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans” and Billy Grammer’s “I Wanna Go Home” come to mind. Many of you could come up with others fairly easily.

So it is no surprise that the Bible even possesses such a thing. In Psalm 127, a displaced person wistfully relates to another:

Beside the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem. We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees. For our captors demanded a song from us. Our tormenters insisted on a joyful hymn, saying, “Sing us one of those songs from Jerusalem!” But how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a pagan land?

 For this singer, there was no point to the music if it was not possible to be in one’s home place.

I don’t think I agree with that. Neither do many others, apparently, as the Christian tradition has example after example of songs that sing of our real homeland, heaven. And rather than feeling there’s no point to singing them, we sing them with a sense of anticipation that is not necessarily grounded in nostalgia but in expectancy.

This simple and beautiful Japanese song about a red dragonfly touched me. Yes, we, too, have a home. Curiously, this is not it. In truth, we were not made only for this world.

~~RGM, April 11, 2014

P.S. My entomologist friend Bill tells me the dragonfly shown is called a Calico Pennant!