slowing down

Something worth noting has happened recently.  Actually, it's happened twice.  Both times I was driving, and both times I looked down to realize that I was driving 80km/hr...

in a 100km/hr zone!  What?!  

It's not that I'm a chronic speeder, but I do tend to push the limit.  If I'm on my way somewhere, why waste time?...   

Trev and I agree that it has taken us a little over a month to really begin seeing the benefits of being "off and away."  The first couple of weeks, we were somewhat preoccupied with just getting here and going to the Prayer Summit and the Inhabit Conference.  The third and fourth weeks, Trev was in the midst of completing his course work and paper for the D.Min. course.  Today he received his mark: a resounding A!  We're celebrating his achievement and breathing a sigh of relief.  The course is done and well done.  

I notice that laughter comes more readily, sleep comes easily, appetites are robust and we have energy to spare.  Gideon refers affectionately to his "summer legs," as he notes the scratches and the sun tan he has already developed.  We watch Gideon and Levi run literal miles everyday, up and down the hill on the south side of the house and we marvel at how many things there are for them to discover.  Gideon has become an avid bird and bug watcher -- as avid as one can be as a five year old.  Well, he already was one in Vancouver, but time and space permit that interest to flourish here.  Yesterday, as he went walking through the trees with my uncles and cousins, on and Levi saw a ruffled grouse drumming.  My 63 year old uncle said he'd heard ruffled grouses many times in his life and had never actually seen one.  Gideon understood the thrill of seeing it "in real" and waited and watched quietly with my uncles while the grouse strutted up and down the fallen log.  

When Trev and I lived in Michigan, we met Jaco Hamman, who has since become a literary mentor to us.  Our personal knowledge of him has made his writing all the more meaningful.  Not long ago, he gave us a signed copy of his book A Play-Full Life: Slowing Down & Seeking Peace (The Pilgrim Press, 2011).  

A native of South Africa, Hamman claims that his African worldview has impacted his desire to reframe the way he lives out his days in North America and he urges others with a Western worldview to consider viewing time and priorities differently.  We are so accustomed to viewing our duties through the lens of obligation and responsibility that some of us have lost sight of the joy of living.  He shares personal anecdotes about how he chooses to carry out certain tasks with a playful attitude and how much more effective his work has become.  Not only that, working is more enjoyable to him.  

This sabbatical time is providing abundant space for slowing down and for enjoying playful moments with our family.  I wonder, though, how this can transfer to ministry?...  It seems that many of us have taken for granted that the call to work in the church is serious business, not to be taken lightly.  And we corporately haven't left much room for playfulness; meanwhile humour is seen as most superfluous - not necessary, as Hamman sees it.  He lists six obstacles to playfulness: 

• criticism ("Being play-full is foolishness or childish...")
• control ("You will do this in this way...")
• compulsion ("I have to do this..." or "Doing this makes me less anxious...")
• competition ("I hate losing..." or "Winning is everything...")
• conflict ("I can't stand that person" or "This drives me crazy...")
• consumption ("There's always something more that I want...")

Basically, he says "One becomes play-full by being rooted, redeemed and restored and by engaging in play-full activities... to be play-full is to imaginatively and creatively engage one's self, others, God and all of reality so that peace and justice reign within you and within others, and in every conceivable situation in which you might find yourself." (A Play-Full Life, p. 19)   I read the beginning chapters, I keep thinking of Paul's invitation to live as free in Christ... it is for freedom that Christ set you free.  Perhaps some of us still hear that with overtones of rigid expectation, but what if it is an invitation to let Spirit-filled imaginations direct creative ministry, rather than allowing duty and expectation to dictate what ought to happen?...

We ponder this while we sit in the pair of grey rockers overlooking the pasture, where I sometimes prop Philip first thing in the morning.  I observe how peacefully he watches the fog burn off the low lying areas and the way the birds swoop in and out of the early mist.  

Soon the day is bright and we head out to play.  

tending to life

Small joys proliferate.

The first beans pushed their way up through the ground and our chickens laid their first eggs on Wednesday morning.  Gideon reached his hand under the warm hens and pulled back treasure: two brown eggs and one white.  

Our blackish hens are a rare breed which lay pale green eggs.  They are also the most sensitive to their environment which is probably why they haven't laid any eggs yet since they've been at our place.

The other joy we celebrate is that nearly all the trees now have leaves.  The cherry blossoms are at their finest and are literally humming with the hosts of bees collecting nectar.  

The thing about spring on the Prairies is that once it begins, it begins with vigour.  There's a robust awakening.  You can almost hear the earth shout, "Ready or not, here I come!"  But, of course, everyone is beyond ready.  They have been waiting and waiting, watching for just the right time to till the ground, waiting for just the right time to put the crop in.  Waiting for the time to hang-up their jackets and stride out the door with short sleeves, rejoicing.  

I've been walking past the field which has been planted with potatoes.  So far, nothing has come up.  It has been one week since I watched our neighbour make perfectly straight furrows, stopping at the edge of the field to be eat the warm dinner his wife brought.  Flocks of seagulls hovered as they feasted on the abundance of worms and insects.  

The rows are, to me, a call to prayer.  This morning as I ran past them, I marvelled at the even rows, the satisfying heaps of dirt, the black-black of the soil.  I don't want to miss the first signs of green as they emerge from the ground even though we don't really eat many potatoes anymore.  They used to be a staple in our house as I was growing up.  We didn't plant fields of them like some of our relatives did -- and still do --  but we grew rows of them in the garden.  I remember digging up potato hills and counting how many potatoes we could get from one plant, counting our blessings, one by one into the basket.  My Mom peeled and boiled and sometimes mashed those fresh potatoes nearly daily in the summer.  My Mom even won a prize at the church picnic decades ago for her skill at peeling the potato in the least amount of time with the thinnest, longest spiral of peel.  How have I forgotten these gems?...  When those first spuds are ready for digging in several weeks, guess what we'll be eating?   I mean, not the ones from our neighbour's field, but the Deep Red Norlands we planted next to the beans in our own garden...

In the meantime, we watch and wait.  

wind and fire

It has truly been a Pentecost week: wind and fire.  Waves as high as three or four feet on our smallish Prairie lake that is often is as placid and smooth as glass.  Wind that gusted plumes of dust and dirt across the yard and laid flat the new spring grass.  Nesting swallows that buffeted the gales as they gathered straw and twigs.  We stayed inside, listening to the howling and feeling the rattle of patio furniture on the deck.  Later we heard from a neighbour about the man whose boat had capsized and was rescued, hypothermic and afraid, but alive.

But our wind was no tornado. And our wind took no lives.  While we listen to wind careening over the hills and house here, it would not compare to the deafening roar of the Oklahoma tornado or the way trees snapped and metal twisted.   The wind which stifled and ended the breath of too many.  

Winds that wounded.     

And fire... the devastating conclusion to Tim Bosma's life.  But here is the moment of truth: taken by fire, and then remembered - as his wife tenderly spoke it to crowds of friends and mourners - remembered by fire with fire.  They lit a bonfire, sparked off fire-works.  Could anyone not touched by the flame of Pentecost have courage to douse fire with fire?  Oh: irony, justice, love.  

         In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free.  Psalm 118:5

This week Trev and I have read through The Compassionate Congregation: A Handbook for People who Care.  I scrolled the index to see what wisdom it might contain.  So many sorrows... abortion, depression, illness, troubled relationships, death of a loved one.  But death by wind and fire?  No.  

What can be said or done?  How our hearts break so see such devastation, to feel the irreplaceable loss. It could have been us.  

But this is what they said - the author of The Handbook for People who Care: be there.  Nothing else that needs to happen can take place until someone else is present.  Even our prayers and our gifts can't be effective without the presence of a prompt, courageous care-giver.   

And be there in your prayers.  When we aren't the ones who can be nearby, we cry out in anguish for the wind of the Spirit to redeem the hearts and souls of those whose lives were shattered by wind, and we cry out to our God -- our God who as Fiery Pillar led his wandering people through the nighttime of their terror and we pray that He will once again bring hope with bright and warm assurance.   Set your people free once again.  

Lord, have mercy.  

  

wind

We are living on a hilltop this summer.  When a breeze blows at the bottom of the hill, we feel it up top here as a gust.  Once in a while, it even sounds like a howling wind.  

So I was captured today by the phrase, "Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting."(Acts 2:2)  I know that sound.  

My brother who lives in the Arctic said that last night a great windstorm blew with such force that when one of his neighbours stepped outside, their door blew clear off its hinges.  A mighty wind, no doubt, on the eve of Pentecost.  What did they do in the middle of the night, their door off it's hinges while they wind still howled?  Were they ready for it with an extra set of hinges?  Was their whole house filled with the gust of the violent wind? 

The wind here usually picks up in the afternoon.  In the mornings, we can see by the glassy smooth lake that the wind is hardly moving.   This is not unlike the way it is elsewhere.  Unless there's a cold front or a storm afoot, the morning is typically quiet.  But this wind, the Pentecost one, was a morning gale...  Perhaps that provided the backdrop for the bewilderment expressed at the symphony of languages that erupted, like the bass roll for a magnificent orchestral crescendo.  

I  am learning to love the wind.  The way it clears the air.  The freshness of it and even the sound.  I love the way the new aspen leaves twirl and shift in the wind and the way the birds expertly ride the drafts.  

The wind is teaching me to yearn for the anointing power of the Spirit in our lives... to yearn for the distinctive sound of the movement of the Spirit in our family and among our friends, on our street and in our church.  I wait for it in the places we live... our house, yes, our souls, and all the common places where we gather.  

Oh, Spirit of Christ, teach us the meaning of the wind.  Open our ears so that we will hear and understand.  Loosen our lips that our tongues will echo those ancient ones, delighting our neighbours' ears with familiar sounds and surprising sceptics with soulful speech they already love.  Unhinge our doors that the houses of our souls may be filled with the sound of your presence.  

Blow, wind!  

Come, Holy Spirit!  

coming to our senses

I have mentioned that part of the joy of sabbatical is a return to our senses... experiencing the heightened joys of sight and sound and smell.  But this renewed awareness also means a return to conscience, a keen turning toward the inner landscape.

It came to me while I was doing dishes, admiring the way the light shone on the pasture, when suddenly, I was reminded of something I had said.  It came back to me, word for word, gesture, inflection, tone.  I had been wrong.  But how had I not seen it before?

Lord, have mercy.

This is how I know that it is the Spirit, rather than the powers of darkness attempting to discourage me: it came as a specific point of conviction, not as a vague sense of condemnation or an all over sense of feeling bad.

The sense of conviction came when I was ready to hear it and sturdy enough to withstand the gentle blow of correction.

I'm coming to love these moments of clarity, but I know you'll believe me when I say that they are hard.  How can I not see these things before they happen?  How can I be so blind?  Why do I still say things that are so .... not just naive, but offensive, self-centred and un-loving?

This is the good news.  The heart, in a supple, restorative state, bathed in grace, can withstand the correction, can receive it like an athlete eager for disciplined training.  Things I have regretted:  forgetting, raising my voice, being distracted, lacking promptness, choosing negativity, anxiety, worse-case-scenario thinking.

Uproot those things, heave them on the compost pile and plant something good in its place.  Choose joy, act promptly and sincerely, let go of the hankering to be in control, trust, believe that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

fragrant

Today I celebrated my birthday.  I woke early, to the crisp sound of the frogs and the birds.  The heady wind of yesterday melted to a sweet breeze this morning.

Top of my list was to jog to Wilson's Beach, part of the eastern shore of Gull Lake.  As I walked (note: the jogging lasted for a while until I yearned to slow down and catch my breath), I noticed how unchanged many of the features are around here... the bushes, the buildings, the blond gravel road.   Everything about it: familiar.  I turned the last left turn into the lane leading down toward the lake's edge, past the gate, past the kitschy, but well-loved campsites, past the signs and the outhouses, with just one slight turn to get to the beach.

And then, the quick surprise of the lake: the sight and smell of it entered me all at once.  My feet on the level of the water, the gallery of the shore enveloped me.  Then the cool draught turned up sharp, like a sudden kiss on the cheek.  The fresh water smell, with a hint of recent ice-water melt, and the way the sun shone, prompted - from nowhere, it seemed - a sob in my throat.
...

If it's one thing this sabbatical is gifting us with, it's the return to my senses.  The unforced invitation to see, hear, smell, taste, feel things all over again, to come alive again, to practice the joy of the resurrection, to linger in the sweet conviction that there lives a dearest, freshness deep down things.

During one of our times of prayer at the Prayer Summit, a boisterous friend of ours sat calmly, stilled and quieted.  Then, with weeping, she whispered that she had smelled the fragrance of Christ.  That she hadn't smelled it in years, and that it felt like re-birth.  The smell of holiness and pure sweet joy that rose up in our time of fervent prayer, the crescendo of voices, the sincerity of tears all mingled together, and the presence of the Spirit was like a cloak, draped warmly over our shoulders.  The aroma of Christ.

We cannot conjure up these moments.  We can remember that we love a fragrance, but when it comes to us, it comes as a gift.  We make ourselves available and with senses alert, we wait and watch.  And when the Spirit descends, we receive God's presence as sheer gift, pure grace.

We wait and watch as the men who hung onto every detail of Jesus' ascension, seeing him rise up, shining like the sun.

Christ's ascension, the very thing we also celebrate today - on my birthday, a re-birth-day! - makes real for us the joy of knowing him through his Spirit, who comes to us as surely as the dawn, and as surprisingly as an off-shore waft of fresh-watery air.  Christ's physical farewell becomes his promise to be spiritually near.  Not just nearby, but within.  This is reconciliation.  This is the invitation to be one with him, to be awake to his presence and alive with him.  The gifts of the Resurrection and the Ascension and the Pentecost, braided together and given to us that until we are drenched in the dearest, freshest deepness of the warm, bright Spirit until we also smell like Him!

the promising land

Now that we're getting settled here, enjoying this Sabbatical space in Alberta, I suppose that some of what I’m thinking now are plain comparisons: urban vs. rural.  It’s been so many years since I’ve spent any significant amount of time (i.e. more than a few days) in a rural setting, even though I grew up in one – this one. 

There are the frogs and there is the dirt.  The frogs remind me of the way sound, the white-noise of the city, is so particular to the city.  I almost go without noticing it while we live in it, except that once in a while a siren jolts me out of my complacency, and then all the urban noises seem to be impressed on me with orchestral precision.  The bass of the trucks, the tympani of the horns, the strings on the sky train track. 

Today it was the dirt which impressed itself on me here.  In the city, we have managed to control dirt in nearly every way.  There are so few spots where dirt hasn’t been covered or manicured with carefully selected or heavily pruned vegetation.  

But there is dirt here.  Dirt for the taking. 

In Vancouver, we had a neighbour who once “borrowed” a few wheelbarrows of beautiful, fresh black soil from the playground near us when it was being landscaped.   It didn’t go unnoticed… the imported soil in her yard perfectly matched the gouge in the playground.  People were not impressed. 

But here, there is dirt to spare.  My uncle took a front-end loader full of it tonight from somewhere on this 600 acre span.  Did he notice my wonderment as we stabbed our shovels into it and filled the old fence post holes that dotted the hill?

The boys didn’t just wonder at it… they reveled in it today.  I took a rake and leveled the garden, stretching the rake out as far as I could and bringing it in toward me to make it smooth, just so.  After walking back and forth, smoothing and re-smoothing, I was satisfied with the blank canvas, no furrows or divets or mounds to speak of. 

Just as I was about to gather the seeds and bedding plants, I heard a gleeful hurrah and turned to see Gideon run across the recently raked patch of earth with abandon and delight.  Levi was close behind him, laughing and kicking up the warm earth.  Levi hadn’t just taken his shoes off: there was nothing to prevent him from fully experiencing the thrill of the dirt and before my very eyes, he laid down, and like any sensible creature, he began to roll in it.  I don’t mean any sarcasm in that.  We’ve been watching the horses roll in the pasture all week, and the newborn bison calves, and the old motherly bison cows too.  They all bend the knee, lay down and relinquish themselves to the soil.  

And so did my son.  Dirt in his ears, his nose, his hair.  And pure joy over all his being.  What could I do?  Shake the rake and shoo the boys out?  Or let them feel the earth, the loam from which they were made, the ground that produces their favourite carrots and strawberries, the terrain that defines landscape and souls cape?

I let them roll.  And when they had had their fill, I watched them run off, took up the rake again and went back to smoothing. 

Then I kneeled, and felt the soft, warm perfection under my knees and scooped a bit of it up with my hands.  Just plain old dirt.  The stuff of promise. And I felt my heart swell with the simple joy of it.     

Some of it remains under my nails.  I will leave it there for now.  A reminder, a sign, an invitation.  

a second spring

I hear frogs and the barn swallows which arrived today, searching for the nest they abandoned last fall as they escaped for warmer weather.  And I seem to hear the sky, the wide open stretch of blue-to-pale-green to a blush of rose where the sun is setting in the north-east.  It’s what I don’t hear that is also allowing me to breathe deeply.  I hear no sirens, no skytrains, no screeching of tires.  I hear no horns, no dogs.  Just frogs, the swallows and the skies.  And my own breathing. 

This is where grace doesn’t just seep in; it somehow flows up and out.  I feel it within, rising up, and then all at once coming from without, reaching to very marrow and sinew.  We just witnessed spring, the way it sprung up with the surprise of colour, and now we see it again, in another part of the world: an echo of the first spring.  

Still, the frogs.  The miracle of their sound so soon after the thaw erased the deep cold that blanketed this surface, the pond that was so recently just ice.  How is it that these creatures appear again, making this slough a fertile home, filling the night air with their joy? 

And then there are the sketches in my mother’s den: the one with a woman who cradles her newborn, so clearly newborn the way it is still curled up in one arm while her other hand carefully pushes back a strand of hair.  And she looks down while the child drinks.  How is it that after such a short time the babe has made itself a home in her shadow?  The womb that was wintered over, the breasts that were dry, now the fertile resting place.

And I sit.  Resting.  Breathing deep Sabbath breaths on this eve of Sunday when we are so often scurrying with details for the next morning.  Details, details, details which sometimes, somehow delete, delete, delete joy that could be had. 

And now this time to be reminded, to remember.  He is doing a new thing.  We see it, hear, smell it, breathe and remember. 

And we testify: He will do a new thing with this familiar, fallow territory and make it fertile again too.   And we testify that he will do this in every territory, the one marked by sky-trains and screeching tires too, and provide a descant for those sounds with the dearest reminders of newness, with the signs of spring everywhere. 

sabbatical reflections: installment #1

We woke this morning in Lacombe before dawn, to blusters below zero and faint flurries of snow.  A cold beginning of May!  Trevor is now on his way to Grand Rapids to participate in the Board of Trustees deliberations for the next three days.  

As we drove to the airport this morning, we each took stock of the way our Sabbatical has begun and commented with humour that our experiences at the Prayer Summit and the Inhabit Conference were so thought-provoking and stimulating that we need the rest of our Sabbatical to unpack what we learned at each of those events!  Such Spirit-filled, stimulating, thought-provoking, paradigm-shifting times!  

Following our trip to L.A. and Seattle, where the Prayer Summit and Inhabit took place, we couldn't help but feel that we'd experienced a form of theological whiplash.  The ethos and focus of each conference was so different from the other, it left our heads practically spinning.  There was only one other person who attended both events, and he agreed that he'd been completely overwhelmed by the intense variety of expressions of faith.  

After a week of allowing the events to percolate our spirits and imaginations, we put on our fingers on what it was that had felt like such a contrast between the two: while the Prayer Summit was focused on the divine, spiritual, cosmic reality of our faith, the Inhabit conference had it's eyes on the ground, the human and the tangible.  One without the other would have been incomplete.  Together they gave us a comprehensive perspective of the mystery of proclaiming faith in a God who is both divine and human.  Mind-spinning, life-altering spectrum of truth... 

So, the Prayer Summit gave loads of time and space for every kind of prayer... silent and contemplative, vocal and spontaneous, prompted and sung.  And in at least seven languages: Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic, Dutch, Spanish, Navajo and English.  

On the other hand, the vibe at the Inhabit conference was gritty and realistic - an unvarnished look at how earthy our communities really are and how we as Jesus followers give expression to the gospel of truth and grace while truly "inhabiting" the places we live... how we echo God's decision to "become flesh and move into the neighbourhood." (John 1 from The Message)  We heard many stories illustrated in the style of "Pecha Kucha", which potently summed up the heart and soul of Christians making a difference in the places they live. 

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKucha of a description of this method of story telling.  One of the presenters who couldn't remember the name of the methodology referred to it as her "Machu Picchu" presentation!  Almost, but not quite... )

The second week of our Sabbatical was spent largely preparing for our transition to Alberta.  While Trev took time away to read and work on his D.Min. coursework, we also managed to take care of many of our personal affairs, including our taxes, insurance policies, as well as updates to our personal wills... all the big, somewhat daunting, but unavoidable details of life!  We left feeling that things were in good order.  I also took time to simplify our household and took piles of boxes and bags to the thrift store.  Doing so exercised (in an oblique kind of way) our Sabbatical discipline of defining limits, prioritizing values, and choosing the better thing by asking ourselves what's important to us, what we want to keep, which belongings to give away.  The benefit of doing this kind of inventory and clean-up is a common practice which, when viewed through the eyes of faith, has implications for the way we are formed spiritually.   We do this on a metaphysical level when we take a close look at all that we carry around in our beliefs about God and his creation.  The task of spring-cleaning and taking care of our affairs in this realm means to simplify the spiritual household and get rid of the clutter of tainted belief, worn-out attitudes, dusty prejudices.  

So, when we packed our van on Saturday, we took with us only what we really needed and loved.  Just the things we had decided would be best for the journey and our time in Alberta.  Of course, it still amounted to a fairly impressive pile of stuff!  But, we're ready.  And whatever we didn't bring, we can probably do without and pick up a long the way.

As always, there is so much more to say.  Stay tuned.