The Great Debate

I was reminded of something missing this morning, I hadn’t heard the birds.  I was actually walking back into the house from our porch and after that sudden realization came a saddening one, I hadn’t heard them in a while.  Last night was the big debate, I didn’t watch because I don’t need that kind of event in my mind which so quickly passes it to my heart.  It’s not because it wasn’t loud enough; culture, technology, and media were in a rage over it.  We mostly choose who and what we listen to.  Popular culture isn’t hard to hear because the volume is always set on scream.  But there is Another Voice, stiller and smaller, which often comes from the mouths of birds, but one has to be quiet enough to hear and needful enough to listen.  Birds are singing and culture is screaming, the great debate? I have to decide who is worth listening to.  

   

The Looniness Response Of The Aged To Warmth

Oh, the joy of glancing up and seeing the first rays of the sun turning the leaves that glorious golden green.  It is a reminder that God is so faithful.  It is cold this morning and the sun, as only it can, is able to provide warmth.  Warmth to an old body is the balm of untold value which is often made available for free.  Walking your old body in the sun is an amusement ride of unparalleled excitement muted only by your body’s ecstasy of the experience.  Hands raised and screaming in glee is appropriate but at my age a thoughtful act more than physical.  Joyful praise, at my age, is most often a heart event, a stirring of the soul with no physical evidence other than maybe a slight smile and a certain twinkle of the eye.  So often the explosive rapture of ecstasy is contained inside ourself for to physically express it might land us in the loony bin and most assuredly in the eccentric group for our neighbors.  Oh, the wonders of life as age clarifies the magic of being alive.   

  

The Cathedral Row Crops

One of the great acts of worship for my lover and me is riding in the country during harvest season.  Yesterday we did it again and the fields are bursting with the His holiness, wave upon wave, mile after mile, as far as we could see His earth is providing a bountiful hymn of life, the verses in unison singing of His kindness.  And our machines, great mechanical marvels, the space shuttles of earth, harvesting great swaths, as they grind away engulfed in the cloud of chaff like smoke from the incense altar.  Corn and soybeans taken now and cotton coming in.  No cathedral built by man can wall in His glory like the great plains of the Mississippi Delta with its towering horizontal steeples of grain, its rolling isles of abundance, row upon row of seated crop, altars of round silver bins storing food for the world and the green stained glass tracery of tree lines dividing one cathedral from another.  Heaven as its ceiling, earth as its foundation, the Great Cathedral of Row Crops is now open daily for all the pilgrims with eyes to see and hearts yearning to worship Him.  

A Smile Warming, Cold Colding

Two parables.  

1. I often tell my students that your greatest evangelical tool is your smile.  It works! I then go around the room and smile at each student until their natural inclination occurs and they smile back at me.  I then ask them to imagine how many people will go to bed tonight without having one person look at them and smile.  You know the feeling, someone sees you and their face just lights up in a smile, how wonderful that makes you feel.  Well go out and do that.  This parable was reinforced in me this morning as I turned the corner and saw the smiley sponge and caught myself smiling back at it.  

2. I had read my Bible, The Puritan Prayer Book, New Morning Mercies, and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.  I had prayed, meditated, celebrated, and worshiped.  It is my morning routine.  I then threw a blanket over my legs to protect me from the coldness of my MacBook Pro as I placed it on my lap to write.  At that moment I wondered if there was something in my Eden-primordial spirit that knew this thing was evil and I didn’t need to let it touch me.

 

Your Senses Make Sense Of Your Senses

One of my favorite passages of reading is the story of the prodigal son, it is my story.  In the story, the wayward son finally comes to the end of himself while he sits in a pig pen and the passages reads, “When he finally, came to his senses…”. This is such a powerful affirmation of how we are made.  What does coming to his senses mean?  It means that he suddenly became aware of the truth his senses had proven to him over and over again.  He was reminded of the touch of his father’s hand as he as patted him on the head over a job well done, as he cleaned his skinned knees and carried him often to bed.  He was reminded of all the wonderful smells of his father’s home, rich with the aroma of wonderful meals the father had provided, the smell of the father’s fields abundant with crop as the summer rains nourished them.  He could hear the father's voice encouraging him after a setback, praying over him as he was put to bed, telling him a joke, imparting wisdom as they worked together in the fields.  He could remember seeing his father’s kindness to his employees, the many times he had helped the poor, forgiving those that had wronged him, seen him weary at night from a day of laboring for his family.  This prodigal in the pen remembered the taste of the cool water from the well his father had dug, the savory steaks from the cattle his father had raised, the sweet pies from the orchard his father had lovingly labored over.  But his senses also gave him evidence of the results of his own rebellion.  He could feel the slime of mud and slop as he stood barefooted in the pen.  He could smell the stench of pig dung and the filth of his new home.  The lingering taste of rotted corn, fit only for pigs, still clung to his teeth and the roof of his mouth.  He heard the rutting pigs as the pushed at him and savagely threatened him for their food he was now eating.  And he could see where all his rebellion had finally landed him.  It was him in the pen and it was him that had walked every step of his journey there.  But his senses also brought to him hope.  Beyond the pen he could feel the breeze of summer, the wind filled with sweeter pastures, cut grass, and wildflowers momentarily filled his nostrils, used to being filled with stench, with the sweet fragrance of the open glades that reminded him of his home far away.  He could hear the singing birds, the buzzing bees that even now filled his father’s hives with sweet honey, he could hear the rustled trees which reminded him of those that surrounded his father’s house providing shade in the heat of summer and shelter from the high winds of winter.  The very air tasted like fall as the tiny particle of a harvest feast being prepared at his employer’s house had, as it had many times before, filled his mouth with imagination.  And then it happened, he looked down at his feet, once fitted with the finest sandals made from the soft leather from his father’s herd, now covered in filth and he came to his final sense.  These same feet that had walked him to this sty could also walk him back home.  He saw the potential of the feet that had once tottered him to his father's outstretched arms as he learned to walk could also hobble him humbly back to his father.  He had come to his sense, after the long stupor of ignorant rebellion, his senses, a gift of unparalleled kindness, had awakened his heart to Truth—and he headed home. 

P.S. “And while he was yet a long way off his father saw him, was filled with compassion for him, ran to him, wrapped his arms around him, and kissed him.” 

 

A Fox Helps Us Acknowledge Who Is Tilting The Earth

God, you are so kind, the seasons are changing, the old summer being laid by for the mild chill of fall.  What a wonder, the earth tilting.  No one has enough wonder in their life or a sure source, but you are.  At every moment, (a small fox just lopped by unaware of me), which is a better end to this sentence than I can write.  But God you are only there for those with eyes atop a heart that wants to see.  Wonder has been replaced by entertainment, such a cheap trade.  Wonder is that which keeps us childlike and we have traded it in for a handful of Hollywood baubles and technological gadgets which dull our eyes and ears and hardens our heart.  A soft heart is a gift we have to help God give us, by acknowledging him, in all our ways, acknowledging Him.  

                                I saw him coming in time to get my phone out and ready.

It Is Still Morning

It is still this morning, the leaves, the trees, the grass all silent.  Sculptures stand quietly in my yard, each a part of the stillness.  Fall is slowly nibbling away at summer, a degree here, a colored leaf there, a silent resting morning signaling the long value colored days ahead.  It is still this morning and stillness is when God is so easily heard, for those who have ears to hear, for those that are listening with those ears, for those who know the voice of God—He sounds something like a cool wind, a small stream, a lover’s whispered love—or maybe just the warmth of their breath upon your ear.  The knowing that life is in the breath, and you are aware you are alive because you are loved.  It is still this morning.