In the Neighborhood

 In anticipation of the February 28 boycott followed by Lent, I decided it was time to renew my library card. I rarely shop in large outlets, but I am quite reliant on Amazon for books and other items. So, I have placed a moratorium on buying new books until after Easter. I have several beautifully written books on hand waiting to be read, and I look forward to immersing myself in them. 

 On my way to the library I made a couple of stops. At my first one, I saw a woman I had not seen in quite some time. She apologized for looking so frazzled. She had been out of the country for a month or so, tending to a sister who is seriously ill. As I listened, I found myself growing quite still as she told me of her fear and sorrow as she struggled to accept that her younger sister, who physically lives a long way from her, is dying.   

As our time came to a close, I touched her arm and said, "Remember, life is eternal." Suddenly, it was as if she had stepped into a beautiful light. She had come home to her body. We hugged, said our good-byes, and wished one another well.  

I then went on to the produce market and the library. I needed to renew my library card which I learned had expired in 2019. I had a book in mind that I wanted to take a look at, but obviously it had been a long time since I had been in a library. I could not even remember how to even find a specific book. A woman kindly volunteered to help me, and then a young man guided me through the checkout process which had changed considerably since the last time I was there. Yet, I eventually walked out with not just one book, but three. I also walked out pondering how quickly young people seem to be moving these days, even at the produce market. It is tempting to feel inadequate, but if I moved that quickly, I might have missed a story that very much needed to be listened to. I am well past the time of needing to be efficient.   

I have recently enrolled in a tai chi class designed for those of us with arthritis. It is held at the senior center, and the first time I walked through those doors it was as if I was experiencing a silent rite of passage. Yet, despite the lack of fanfare, I am finding those I am learning with to be quite heroic in the quest to regain balance and some fluidity of movement. My life is changing, no question. However, I also think my experiences are deepening. Technological advances have their place, but so do we. May we not underestimate the strength that can be found in community and connection, despite what some politicians want us to believe. 

My thanks to the Salt Project for this morning's poem. My thanks to all of you.     

     

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.    

 

Wendell Berry      

      

image: "Yes, There Is a Bee There"  San Leandro, July 2024

Listening to the Thistles

Tyler and I both have had the flu, and neither of us has fully recovered. Yet, this morning, I finally felt alert enough to look at some of my recent photographs, and as usual, most I discarded.  Yet, this photograph I shall keep, not because it is a remarkable piece of art. It is not even a good picture of thistles. At best, it is a snapshot taken as I was returning to my car after one of my worship services. I paused here simply because I could stand in one spot and see a glimpse of open space.  

 

I certainly cannot call this land untamed. It is a fairly small patch that is indeed surrounded by buildings.  The inhospitable thistle  in the foreground seems to be saying, "Do not tread here." I bow to that request to simply let some land be.

 

The clamor for housing here in the Bay Area is loud, and I really do understand that people need to be able to both afford a place to live that is at least somewhat close to where they work, and to be able to find such a place.  Yet, the cost of the tech industry growth is  high as more of our open space is given over to high density housing and roadways.  At what point do we say that we simply have no more room for building?   When do we acknowledge that we really do not have enough water to sustain unlimited growth?    

I suppose I am showing my age.  Well, I know I am because that eventually is what we all do.  I spent time this morning with some of Wendell Berry's poetry, a wise old Kentucky farmer who once wrote that we cannot let our hope depend on our feeling good.  This morning I must agree, so I will accept the encouragement of some prickly thistles, including Mr. Berry.  I will try not to tread where hope should be allowed to reside.  

  

     

    

Sabbath Poem VII (1982)

The clearing rests in song and shade.

It is a creature made

By old light held in soil and leaf,

By human joy and grief,

By human work,

Fidelity of sight and stroke,

By rain, by water on

The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven's gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven's Kingdom come on earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O Dust, arise!-- 

Wendell Berry (born 1934)

photograph:  Redwood City, April 2019     

The Real Work

I so loved receiving this poem by Wendell Berry this morning.  Carl Jung said that the he felt he did his best work in the last twenty years of his life.  I take courage.   

   

The Real Work

 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

 

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

 

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Panhala 

Today's Interruptions Have Been Brought to You by...

I am tempted to say the interruptions were brought by a printer not printing and no hot water.  One by one those were addressed, and yet I still have a sense of unease.  Therefore, I think the interruptions are rooted in  the prayer/poem that I received this morning from Panhala.  As you know, I love Wendell Berry's writing, but this post seemed to strike an ever deeper chord with me.  Perhaps because I love porches.  Perhaps it is the word forbearance which I almost never hear used, and lately it seems so seldom exercised that I had to look up the meaning.  Merriam Webster defines forbearance as "patient self-control; restraint and tolerance."  Oh, for the day...

However, I think my sense of disorientation lies in the first lines, "To care for what we know requires care for what we don't..."  This is where my sense of stirring lies because to me it speaks of that mystery that is worship - that experience we understand, but then again, we cannot. 

This week, I led a simple service in a skilled nursing community. Rita was there, taking time off from work as she always does to spend time in worship with her mother.  Her steadfastness moves me because her mother does not acknowledge what is going on around her, and has not for years. Our rhythm after worship was as it often is: first I greet her mother, and then Rita and I talk.  Both of us regularly spend time in private morning devotionals, yet, we both acknowledge that coming together in community deepens our time spent in community as well as in our solitude with God. This week we talked about how meaningful it would surely be if a community could come together every morning and every evening for worship and prayer.  I have experienced that rhythm in seminary, particularly in my time spent in the spiritual direction program.  For three years, we came together for three weeks every January to study and to practice listening to one another and how we are experiencing God in our hearts and lives. We also came together to pray and sing every morning and every evening.  Once that rhythm settles into your bones, and it does not take long, you are never the same.  You will long for it; just as many of those we serve in long term care long to worship at least once a week.   

 

Interruptions are important to pay attention to for they are often tangible moments of knowing that Spirit is up to something, and that something is generally a response to a yearning deep within us, a yearning that we might not have yet acknowledged.   At this altar, aka a porch in the wilderness (or in the activity room), our hearts kneel and pray at the knowing.  

A SMALL PORCH IN THE WOODS

9.

To care for what we know requires
care for what we don't, the world's lives
dark in the soil, dark in the dark.
Forbearance is the first care we give
to what we do not know. We live
by lives we don't intend, lives
that exceed our thoughts and needs, outlast
our designs, staying by passing through,
surviving again and again the risky passages
from ice to warmth, dark to light.
Rightness of scale is our second care:
the willingness to think and work
within the limits of our competence
to do no permanent wrong to anything
of permanent worth to the earth's life,
known or unknown, now or ever, never
destroying by knowledge, unknowingly,
what we do not know, so that the world
in its mystery, the known unknown world,
will live and thrive while we live.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(A Small Porch - Sabbath Poems 2014-2015)