Signs of spring on the farm... little green grass pushing up through the brown in the fields... five fawns spotted in the berry patch... the robins flying low over the field... bluebirds visiting their nests from last year... early tulips and daffodils blooming... the basset hounds, Phoebe and Zeke and Barney stretched full length in the warm sun, sleeping...the noisy chorus of peepers at the pond... four pair of wild ducks swimming on the pond... the willow tree buds...two new baby calves running full tilt down the hill with their tails held high... the sunrise comes earlier in the morning. While visiting my friend and next door neighbor Leisa, we step outside her door and both sniff at the same time... reflexively... the earth smells of spring. Everywhere I look, spring is springing. In my soul, Lent is moving still towards death but signs of resurrection in the natural world help me hold on to hope.
My mother and my friend Dianne are weak kneed about enduring cold. They hail from warmer climates and haven’t adjusted well. Spring is a season of hope and disappointment for them. One day it is warm, balmy breezes, flowers popping up, arthritis pains forgotten. The next day we have snow on the ground. Spring season, like life, cannot be depended upon to hold a steady course.
Like dogs and children, I am trying to live in the present moment... content... no worry or anticipation for the future. Of course this only works during the time I set aside for quiet and writing. Real life keeps me hopping... back and forth between family, work, church, income taxes, friends, housecleaning, picking up the prescriptions, washing clothes, planting berry bushes, feeding the cows, paying the bills, changing light bulbs, cooking (now that mama is here, that is a shared creation), picking up and cleaning up as I move through my life sometimes at warp speed.
How do I practice the art of active contentment and not let myself be consumed by tasks and feelings of fear, anger, frustration or sadness?
A quote from Euripides... "The man (and woman and child) is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of a life." Saint Paul said... "I have learned to be content with what I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and going hungry, of having plenty and being in need. I can do all things through the One who strengthens me." So there is the secret to being actively contented... the living from day to day in the moment like Phoebe and Zeke... experiencing the simple goodness of our life... at the same time being grateful for all life brings us... easy and difficult... joy and sorrow... times of plenty and times of need...resting in the certain knowledge that the One who loves us beyond all measure is our strength. For Lent, I will give up worry about the future and give thanks for the present... warm sun... loved ones close by... health... moments of pure joy passing through my life... and the steady presence of Love Divine.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Wayfaring Lent
Some of my favorite old hymns have the word ‘home’ in them.. Come home...Ye who are weary, come home... Jesus is calling, sinner, come home... Come home, oh why will you longer roam? Come home, O prodigal child come home...I’m going home to die no more... and my favorite... The Wayfaring Stranger. The words in this song have haunted my imagination and captured my ear with its minor melody since I was a child. It is the perfect song for Lent... my theme song this year. Like many of the old sacred harp songs, the images are dark and bright at the same time... joyful and sorrowful... transcendent and earthbound... plaintive... a reminder of all we have lost and all we have yet to gain... going over home.
"I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, while traveling through this world below... I am just going over Jordan, I am just going over home". Lent is the season that reminds us of our wayfaring... our unfinished business in this world. We are on a long journey towards home... at home in this world only temporarily, not forever. When we take inventory of our souls during Lent, it can be excruciatingly painful and freeing at the same time. We own who we are... name what we have done and undone... recognize the damage and hurt in ourselves... seek forgiveness from God and those we have wronged... are able to come home to our best selves.
In the church of my childhood, we sang that song year round. Our Easter was not preceded by an understanding of, or practice of Lent. We went straight for the joy, joy, joy. But every time we sang that song, the feeling of Lent trickled through our souls and raised the hair on the back of our necks. Sometimes we heard it as a solo... Mr. Thompson with his deep bass voice or Mrs. Morris with her clear soprano... or we would sing it a capella with our voices blending and distinct at the same time. It always made me cry...
I’ve lived through some of the dark clouds the hymn writer listed. My father, my sister, some of my classmates and friends are over home... some of my path has been rough and steep. But I still want to "sing salvation’s story" and I am still headed towards home. What is it about the image of home that pulls us... comforts us... haunts some of us...is both hope and fear for us?
Some of us had happy homes...homes with laughter and grace... homes that were safe harbors for our tender souls. Some of us lived through homes that were stormy, dangerous, rough and steep... homes that tried our souls. But for all of us, regardless of our experience of home, the yearning... the longing for a true home colors our living in this world. We create home for ourselves with houses, apartments, special belongings, music, ritual, people, the right color scheme... all outward symbols of our need for a place to rest where we are known and loved anyway... loved just because we are. But the only interior design that will help satisfy our hunger for home is the interior design of the soul. If we are wayfaring strangers in our souls, unable to name where our home is, no destination for our journey, how can we ever go home again?
I am going to do some naming... some naming of my homeplaces... in this world and in my soul. Cloverly, Sabbath rest farm, First Congregational, a little farm in Morven, Georgia, the Blue Ridge mountains, the music I hear all the day long and through the night as my soul sings, the sound of children’s laughter, the words in the Bible, the sunrise I see every morning through my bedroom windows, the love that washes and rinses my soul when I watch our church family come forward to take communion, the pleasure of the company of our animals... so many homeplaces... my final resting place... my sweetest home of all... the loving arms of my God held out to me in welcome as I start up the long lane towards home. Thanks be to the One who waits for me over home... for the gift of the journey through this world... for the love I have both given and received along the way... for the homeplaces in my heart and for those yet to come... I am most heartily grateful.
"I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, while traveling through this world below... I am just going over Jordan, I am just going over home". Lent is the season that reminds us of our wayfaring... our unfinished business in this world. We are on a long journey towards home... at home in this world only temporarily, not forever. When we take inventory of our souls during Lent, it can be excruciatingly painful and freeing at the same time. We own who we are... name what we have done and undone... recognize the damage and hurt in ourselves... seek forgiveness from God and those we have wronged... are able to come home to our best selves.
In the church of my childhood, we sang that song year round. Our Easter was not preceded by an understanding of, or practice of Lent. We went straight for the joy, joy, joy. But every time we sang that song, the feeling of Lent trickled through our souls and raised the hair on the back of our necks. Sometimes we heard it as a solo... Mr. Thompson with his deep bass voice or Mrs. Morris with her clear soprano... or we would sing it a capella with our voices blending and distinct at the same time. It always made me cry...
I’ve lived through some of the dark clouds the hymn writer listed. My father, my sister, some of my classmates and friends are over home... some of my path has been rough and steep. But I still want to "sing salvation’s story" and I am still headed towards home. What is it about the image of home that pulls us... comforts us... haunts some of us...is both hope and fear for us?
Some of us had happy homes...homes with laughter and grace... homes that were safe harbors for our tender souls. Some of us lived through homes that were stormy, dangerous, rough and steep... homes that tried our souls. But for all of us, regardless of our experience of home, the yearning... the longing for a true home colors our living in this world. We create home for ourselves with houses, apartments, special belongings, music, ritual, people, the right color scheme... all outward symbols of our need for a place to rest where we are known and loved anyway... loved just because we are. But the only interior design that will help satisfy our hunger for home is the interior design of the soul. If we are wayfaring strangers in our souls, unable to name where our home is, no destination for our journey, how can we ever go home again?
I am going to do some naming... some naming of my homeplaces... in this world and in my soul. Cloverly, Sabbath rest farm, First Congregational, a little farm in Morven, Georgia, the Blue Ridge mountains, the music I hear all the day long and through the night as my soul sings, the sound of children’s laughter, the words in the Bible, the sunrise I see every morning through my bedroom windows, the love that washes and rinses my soul when I watch our church family come forward to take communion, the pleasure of the company of our animals... so many homeplaces... my final resting place... my sweetest home of all... the loving arms of my God held out to me in welcome as I start up the long lane towards home. Thanks be to the One who waits for me over home... for the gift of the journey through this world... for the love I have both given and received along the way... for the homeplaces in my heart and for those yet to come... I am most heartily grateful.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
rivers in the desert...
The gene pool I swim in contains many different kinds of water. There is the bubbling spring of creativity... the swift flowing river water of passionate convictions and equally passionate language... the Scotch-Irish-German rivers of long ago homelands... and the underground river of depression. I am still learning how to keep my boat afloat on those sometimes calm, sometimes stormy waters.
One of the gifts of family knowledge is the identification of pieces of who you are in those who have gone before. Maybe that is why the Bible has so many long passages of "begats". When I remember my granddaddy, I remember his sweetness... his kindness... his love for animals and the outdoors. I can see some of those same traits in my mother and then in me and my children. On both sides of my family tree are people who farmed... loved the land... raised their families by growing crops and animals. And now, I live on a farm... a repeating pattern.
My family, like yours, is an amazing polyglot of deacons and Ku Klux Klan members, teachers and the barely literate, city dwellers and those who never left the farm, alcoholics and suicides, gamblers and traveling men, happiness and great sorrows, those who had good lives and those who struggled all their lives... a wonderful river of family history much like the French Broad River near our farm... rocky in places with falls, quiet pools where fish swim, exposed rocks with blue herons standing as sentinels, turtles dozing in the sun on a warm, flat rock, dangerous rocks we can see and some that are hidden, muddy after rains, and always in motion... going somewhere and carrying me along with it. Like a river pilot, the understanding of my particular family river informs my living. I am a part of the down river where I came from, and I am flowing upriver to my future.
The eddy of depression (to flow in a circular current) has been both a curse and a gift all my life. My father called his "the black night of the soul". Evidence of this family depression is washed up on the riverbanks of our history. It wasn’t until my second or third episode with my depressions that I began to dive under and search for the history that could help me understand and use these strong feelings.
When my depression comes, it can be triggered by stress, outside me events (deaths), inside me events (failure of some kind) or just appear sometimes for no good reason I can find. It varies in intensity... length of presence... can be creative or destructive. I am beginning to learn how to give thanks for these seasons of sadness. While I increase my dose of anti-depressant, I also look for the lesson, the gift that is available for me while I rest in the flowing circle. For years I have viewed my depressions as lost time... unproductive time ( a sin in our achievement oriented society)... a glaring example of all that was wrong with me as a person... if I could only not be depressed, I could really be somebody... accomplish something... float easily down a lazy river with grace and joy. It has taken me sixty years to see this "curse" from my family gene pool as a gift.
The motionlessness that comes with my depressions forces me to stop... to listen... to dive under and see where I have been... pay attention to what has been going on in my life. I cannot keep on running, being busy, noisy, active and inattentive when depression comes calling. It is a psychic time out... a spiritual opportunity... a gift of grace. Like eddies of water, I circle slowly through my sadness until my way out is clear.
These times have also grown my ability to feel the sadness of others. Since I really do know what it feels like, I have a sense, an intuitive aha that recognizes a fellow sufferer. The kinship possible for those of us who live with depression is a saving grace. A little black humor... a little wine... sitting in front of a fire and giving voice to your hurts to a friend... one who wears the same kind of inner tube you do while floating down the river... helps bind me closely to my larger family... the family of God.
The Bible is full of people who lived with depression creatively ( look at David writing the Psalms full of "Woe is me’s)... tenderly and faithfully waiting for the Light to come... waiting for the gift of self knowledge... the gift of knowing and feeling God’s sustaining presence in all of life. How can I keep from singing? Even when I sing in the strange land of depression, there is joy and hope and peace and contentment. Thanks be to God for this most amazing gift, this river that has taught me so much and given me so much. "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." Isaiah 43:19
One of the gifts of family knowledge is the identification of pieces of who you are in those who have gone before. Maybe that is why the Bible has so many long passages of "begats". When I remember my granddaddy, I remember his sweetness... his kindness... his love for animals and the outdoors. I can see some of those same traits in my mother and then in me and my children. On both sides of my family tree are people who farmed... loved the land... raised their families by growing crops and animals. And now, I live on a farm... a repeating pattern.
My family, like yours, is an amazing polyglot of deacons and Ku Klux Klan members, teachers and the barely literate, city dwellers and those who never left the farm, alcoholics and suicides, gamblers and traveling men, happiness and great sorrows, those who had good lives and those who struggled all their lives... a wonderful river of family history much like the French Broad River near our farm... rocky in places with falls, quiet pools where fish swim, exposed rocks with blue herons standing as sentinels, turtles dozing in the sun on a warm, flat rock, dangerous rocks we can see and some that are hidden, muddy after rains, and always in motion... going somewhere and carrying me along with it. Like a river pilot, the understanding of my particular family river informs my living. I am a part of the down river where I came from, and I am flowing upriver to my future.
The eddy of depression (to flow in a circular current) has been both a curse and a gift all my life. My father called his "the black night of the soul". Evidence of this family depression is washed up on the riverbanks of our history. It wasn’t until my second or third episode with my depressions that I began to dive under and search for the history that could help me understand and use these strong feelings.
When my depression comes, it can be triggered by stress, outside me events (deaths), inside me events (failure of some kind) or just appear sometimes for no good reason I can find. It varies in intensity... length of presence... can be creative or destructive. I am beginning to learn how to give thanks for these seasons of sadness. While I increase my dose of anti-depressant, I also look for the lesson, the gift that is available for me while I rest in the flowing circle. For years I have viewed my depressions as lost time... unproductive time ( a sin in our achievement oriented society)... a glaring example of all that was wrong with me as a person... if I could only not be depressed, I could really be somebody... accomplish something... float easily down a lazy river with grace and joy. It has taken me sixty years to see this "curse" from my family gene pool as a gift.
The motionlessness that comes with my depressions forces me to stop... to listen... to dive under and see where I have been... pay attention to what has been going on in my life. I cannot keep on running, being busy, noisy, active and inattentive when depression comes calling. It is a psychic time out... a spiritual opportunity... a gift of grace. Like eddies of water, I circle slowly through my sadness until my way out is clear.
These times have also grown my ability to feel the sadness of others. Since I really do know what it feels like, I have a sense, an intuitive aha that recognizes a fellow sufferer. The kinship possible for those of us who live with depression is a saving grace. A little black humor... a little wine... sitting in front of a fire and giving voice to your hurts to a friend... one who wears the same kind of inner tube you do while floating down the river... helps bind me closely to my larger family... the family of God.
The Bible is full of people who lived with depression creatively ( look at David writing the Psalms full of "Woe is me’s)... tenderly and faithfully waiting for the Light to come... waiting for the gift of self knowledge... the gift of knowing and feeling God’s sustaining presence in all of life. How can I keep from singing? Even when I sing in the strange land of depression, there is joy and hope and peace and contentment. Thanks be to God for this most amazing gift, this river that has taught me so much and given me so much. "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." Isaiah 43:19
Monday, March 5, 2007
confessions of a readaholic....
Cloverly, my grandparent’s home in Virginia, had a lawyer’s bookcase in the upstairs hall. Its glass doors folded down to protect the precious books on the shelves below. They were mostly novels, I think. My childhood memory is not clear on what was there but I do remember reading some of the old potboiler romance novels from the early 1900's. My grandmother had grown up in a home that had one room devoted to books... a room full of shelves... a home library. I have heard stories about the leather bound books that filled those shelves... how Aunt Dada had to sell them in order to help support herself after Grandpa Max died. I never got to see the room filled with books but the sight of that room, with its empty shelves, awed me. If I could slip back in time, I would love to see what my great-grandparents had on their bookshelves.
My parent’s home always had books and magazines everywhere. When they built their home, it was important to have some built-in bookshelves to hold our collection of books... daddy’s treasured college books on trees and genetics... my collection of "The Bobbsey Twins" and Louisa May Alcott’s works... Reader’s Digest Condensed Books...cookbooks... Bibles...old novels from the turn of the century... books on animal husbandry... picture/history books... fairy tale books. The piano top and coffee table had magazines and newspapers stacked high... Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, The Farmer’s Almanac, Progressive Farmer (with Ada the Ayrshire in cartoons), the Mennonite’s magazine and the Baptist magazine "Home Life", the Jacksonville Times Union, the Valdosta Daily Times, the Wall Street Journal. We could sit in the same room for hours... reading... saying very little to one another... and be content.
I am reading a book named "Contentment". It is a small book... bright orange corrugated cover with a picture of a mother and child (or a father and child) on the front cover... a found treasure at a discount bookstore. I am trying really hard to read it slowly... not rush through it drunk on the quotes and words and ideas that are contained in its pages. When I can make myself take time... time to savor... time to absorb... time to hear... time to let the words soak into my soul... the experience of reading becomes soul-full.
I have read for pleasure and entertainment since I was five. My ADD brain loved the stimulation of reading many different books at once... reading stories and rushing to the conclusion to find out who done it... the pure joy of seeing the world created by the author’s words in my mind’s eye. This kind of reading informs, entertains, amuses, diverts, gives pleasure. Reading for the soul’s sake is a different kind of process.
Like any good bookcase, my soul needs books from many different disciplines and points of view. It is not enough to read only what I agree with and understand. For my soul’s sake, reading should include something that challenges, irritates, pushes, expands as well as comfort, confirm, quiet and inspire. So I don’t read just one version of the Bible... I read as many as I can find. I don’t read one kind of theology... I read many . Just as reading only murder mysteries can give you a skewed vision of the world (how could there be so many ways to creatively kill?), reading only what pleases you can confirm your point of view as the "right" one. None of us has the corner on the market for truth, justice and the American Way... none of us has the complete and final version of God’s words... none of us are God. So, I keep looking for God in strange places... books... magazines... Bibles...finding an endless resurrection of God’s presence in this world in the many different words we use to try to describe the indescribable... the Love and Light that surrounds us all our days on this earth and waits for us in the time to come beyond.
My parent’s home always had books and magazines everywhere. When they built their home, it was important to have some built-in bookshelves to hold our collection of books... daddy’s treasured college books on trees and genetics... my collection of "The Bobbsey Twins" and Louisa May Alcott’s works... Reader’s Digest Condensed Books...cookbooks... Bibles...old novels from the turn of the century... books on animal husbandry... picture/history books... fairy tale books. The piano top and coffee table had magazines and newspapers stacked high... Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, The Farmer’s Almanac, Progressive Farmer (with Ada the Ayrshire in cartoons), the Mennonite’s magazine and the Baptist magazine "Home Life", the Jacksonville Times Union, the Valdosta Daily Times, the Wall Street Journal. We could sit in the same room for hours... reading... saying very little to one another... and be content.
I am reading a book named "Contentment". It is a small book... bright orange corrugated cover with a picture of a mother and child (or a father and child) on the front cover... a found treasure at a discount bookstore. I am trying really hard to read it slowly... not rush through it drunk on the quotes and words and ideas that are contained in its pages. When I can make myself take time... time to savor... time to absorb... time to hear... time to let the words soak into my soul... the experience of reading becomes soul-full.
I have read for pleasure and entertainment since I was five. My ADD brain loved the stimulation of reading many different books at once... reading stories and rushing to the conclusion to find out who done it... the pure joy of seeing the world created by the author’s words in my mind’s eye. This kind of reading informs, entertains, amuses, diverts, gives pleasure. Reading for the soul’s sake is a different kind of process.
Like any good bookcase, my soul needs books from many different disciplines and points of view. It is not enough to read only what I agree with and understand. For my soul’s sake, reading should include something that challenges, irritates, pushes, expands as well as comfort, confirm, quiet and inspire. So I don’t read just one version of the Bible... I read as many as I can find. I don’t read one kind of theology... I read many . Just as reading only murder mysteries can give you a skewed vision of the world (how could there be so many ways to creatively kill?), reading only what pleases you can confirm your point of view as the "right" one. None of us has the corner on the market for truth, justice and the American Way... none of us has the complete and final version of God’s words... none of us are God. So, I keep looking for God in strange places... books... magazines... Bibles...finding an endless resurrection of God’s presence in this world in the many different words we use to try to describe the indescribable... the Love and Light that surrounds us all our days on this earth and waits for us in the time to come beyond.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
the ground of all being... with apologies to Paul Tillich
Michael’s dad was the pastor of an active, growing Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama during the forties and fifties. He was a charismatic leader who helped the church build a new sanctuary by having a silver dollar drive. The church had frequent banquets, dinners, special revivals and meetings in addition to the regular three times a week services. His pastoral work load was heavy. At one point in his ministry, he became depressed and consulted a doctor. There weren’t any medicines for "the blues" then but his doctor was wise and offered another option. When he discovered H.O. played golf, he prescribed playing in his bare feet...that’s right... his bare feet... he told H.O. that would help and it did.
One of our recent guest preachers, a lively African American woman, kept me giggling as she slipped off her high heels and preached barefooted. At lunch she told us how she was afraid of slipping when she preached her first sermon and didn’t want to appear ridiculous. So, she took off her shoes and something special happened. There was a freedom for her preaching barefooted...a connection between herself and the surface on which she stood that she felt gave her greater freedom and spirit in her preaching.
Yesterday my friend Carolyn and I were sitting in my great room, sipping... no... guzzling wine and discussing the low places we have been this past month... how our spirits are weary and worn and sad. Suddenly, simultaneous hot flashes hit and we both rushed to strip off our shoes and socks to let our naked feet cool us off. She showed me a picture of her feet (she is a photographer) and we talked about our feet... the changes in them... the beauty in them. We had to laugh... ladies of a certain age, if they are lucky, can laugh about their bodies and the ridiculousness of it all.
The day before I had gone to put on my slippers as I got up in the morning. They were not in the usual place so I had to walk barefooted in the house. It was warm enough to stay barefooted. I could feel the slick smoothness of the wooden floors, the fuzzy warmth of the shag rug, the heat bubbling up from the heat registers, the difference between the linoleum in the mudroom and the wood in kitchen... it was wonderful... all those textures I never am aware of when I walk on them separated by slippers or shoes.
Later in the day it was warm enough for me to venture out barefooted into our yard. My feet were tender... ticklish... I could feel the warmth of the stones in our front walk... the damp coolness of the earth... the sharp edges of the gravel caused me to walk lightly and with careful consideration of where to place my feet... I know why that good doctor told H.O. to play golf barefooted.
When you are barefooted, you can feel the beat of the world’s heart... the warmth of creation... the sharpness of stones and prick of sandspurs... you are totally focused on your feet and your connection to the natural world around you. There is no filter or protection for your soul... straight from the earth to your spirit... something magical and mysterious happens. You become a child paying strict attention to the world around you... seeing it differently... feeling it differently... playful and free. And for a little while, your troubles are passed through you to the welcoming good earth beneath your feet... you are removed from your own little world and transformed into a creature of the larger creation... a child of God in a natural world peopled with other barefoot creatures you never noticed before... (with apologies to Paul Tillich) the ground of our being comes into sharper focus and we are able to let go of our hurts, pains, angers, disappointments and blues for the joy of oneness with all creation.
This Lenten season, I will go barefoot... walk the earth with naked feet... feel the joy, the pain and sorrow, celebrate the possibilities as I inventory and clean out my spiritual closet, maybe paint my toenails and wiggle my toes in the dirt... remember who I was, who I am and where I am going... walk the dirt road of life and give thanks for all the sacrifices others have made in order that I might have an abundant life.
One of our recent guest preachers, a lively African American woman, kept me giggling as she slipped off her high heels and preached barefooted. At lunch she told us how she was afraid of slipping when she preached her first sermon and didn’t want to appear ridiculous. So, she took off her shoes and something special happened. There was a freedom for her preaching barefooted...a connection between herself and the surface on which she stood that she felt gave her greater freedom and spirit in her preaching.
Yesterday my friend Carolyn and I were sitting in my great room, sipping... no... guzzling wine and discussing the low places we have been this past month... how our spirits are weary and worn and sad. Suddenly, simultaneous hot flashes hit and we both rushed to strip off our shoes and socks to let our naked feet cool us off. She showed me a picture of her feet (she is a photographer) and we talked about our feet... the changes in them... the beauty in them. We had to laugh... ladies of a certain age, if they are lucky, can laugh about their bodies and the ridiculousness of it all.
The day before I had gone to put on my slippers as I got up in the morning. They were not in the usual place so I had to walk barefooted in the house. It was warm enough to stay barefooted. I could feel the slick smoothness of the wooden floors, the fuzzy warmth of the shag rug, the heat bubbling up from the heat registers, the difference between the linoleum in the mudroom and the wood in kitchen... it was wonderful... all those textures I never am aware of when I walk on them separated by slippers or shoes.
Later in the day it was warm enough for me to venture out barefooted into our yard. My feet were tender... ticklish... I could feel the warmth of the stones in our front walk... the damp coolness of the earth... the sharp edges of the gravel caused me to walk lightly and with careful consideration of where to place my feet... I know why that good doctor told H.O. to play golf barefooted.
When you are barefooted, you can feel the beat of the world’s heart... the warmth of creation... the sharpness of stones and prick of sandspurs... you are totally focused on your feet and your connection to the natural world around you. There is no filter or protection for your soul... straight from the earth to your spirit... something magical and mysterious happens. You become a child paying strict attention to the world around you... seeing it differently... feeling it differently... playful and free. And for a little while, your troubles are passed through you to the welcoming good earth beneath your feet... you are removed from your own little world and transformed into a creature of the larger creation... a child of God in a natural world peopled with other barefoot creatures you never noticed before... (with apologies to Paul Tillich) the ground of our being comes into sharper focus and we are able to let go of our hurts, pains, angers, disappointments and blues for the joy of oneness with all creation.
This Lenten season, I will go barefoot... walk the earth with naked feet... feel the joy, the pain and sorrow, celebrate the possibilities as I inventory and clean out my spiritual closet, maybe paint my toenails and wiggle my toes in the dirt... remember who I was, who I am and where I am going... walk the dirt road of life and give thanks for all the sacrifices others have made in order that I might have an abundant life.
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