Gratitude List:
The Stones are prayers
1. rhodochrosite
2. rose quartz
3. labradorite
4. serpentine
5. tangerine quartz
May we walk in Beauty.
Gratitudes
May the Lost Ones Find Their Way Home
Gratitude List
1. Still, that new name for God keeps ringing in my ears, making me want to pronounce it, feel how it sounds through my own throat: Ja kon kudho. Remover of Thorns. I hear it in the voice of Mama Nyakyema of Bwiri village, tender, a murmur. I hear it in the voice of the twinkly-eyed man who used to stop me in the street whenever he saw me to make me practice my Swahili and to give me new Luo words. I hear him saying it carefully as he always did for me, so my English ears can hear it, make sense of it, and repeat it back. A little song in it, low on the kudho with a pause in the middle of the word. Soft j, almost a dy. And the dh almost a th, but not quite. Sounds that invite your spirit to sit down and rest a moment.
2. Hummingbird. I was talking with a customer about hummingbirds today. She said sometimes she goes out into her garden with the intention that she IS going to see a hummingbird. Invariably, one appears. Not fifteen minutes after she left, I was working at the table outside, and I heard a tiny whoosh in my ears. About two and a half feet away, a female hummer hovered for about ten seconds at the corner of the building. Long enough for me to say, “Well, hello! I was just talking about you!”
3. How speaking a new thing makes it real.
4. The web. When my heart aches for someone I love, I grab the strands, feel you there, and you, and you. Sense the presence of so many who hold the world together in so many ways. Keep the light shining so all the lost ones may find their way.
5. Learning to refuse the invitations to enter the cage, not with anger or fear, but simply to go on whistling by.
May all the lost ones find their way home.
World Conference
There is so much that I am grateful for today, and all the smaller pieces are made possible by the main gift. My parents bought a week-long pass to go to Mennonite World Conference, being held this week at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg (it will likely be another 40 years or so before it’s in this area again). Then they told us they wanted to keep the kids one day and give us their passes so we could experience a day of the conference. I’ll write the short-hand list of gratitudes, and then give fuller explanation below.
Gratitude List:
1. Beginning with Doubt
2. Heaven–Saints and Songs
3. “Nou Se Wozo”
4. Education that Transforms
5. Losing Cynicism
6. Being given a new name for God
1. The theme of today (the first full day of the conference) was Walking in Doubt and Conviction. The speakers in the morning shared about the power of doubt, how doubt is what forms the questions that compel us to seek answers, how doubt keeps us honest. The first speaker, Rebecca Osiro from Kenya, spoke about how poverty and oppression can cause people to doubt. The second, Tom Yoder Neufeld from North America, spoke about how wealth and privilege can cause people to doubt. They wove a balance between their words. The third speaker, a young woman from Ethiopia–with the perfect name Tigist Tesfaye Gelagle–spoke of an analogy she had heard about doubt and conviction being the two pedals of a bicycle: you need them both to make the bike go. Even outside of a religious context, I think these would be some very powerful ideas. Questions generate answers, producing forward movement. I have a rather intimate relationship to doubt as part of my own spiritual story, so this was a perfect beginning to the day.
2. My voice is hoarse from the delicious experience of singing with thousands of Mennonites and Anabaptists. Three of the all-time highlights of my life have been singing at Mennonite World Conference in France in 1894, singing at MWC in Winnipeg in 1990, and singing today at MWC in Harrisburg. The final song, spontaneously requested by the day’s moderator, was a reprise of yesterday’s processional: “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In.” Sublime moments.
Earlier in the evening, Dr. Carol Ann Weaver led us in a song, “First, the Gamelan Orchestra will play through it, then we’ll sing two verses, then the Orchestra again, then we’ll do two verses, and then. . .we’ll be in heaven.” That was pretty much how it happened.
3. Daryl Snider and Frances Crowhill Miller played “Nou Se Wozo.” (The link is only the end of the song, but a beautiful part of it, thanks to Larry Zook.) A song of resilience in the face of trauma and anguish. A gift. “Don’t forget: We are Wozo!” (Resilient reeds.)
4. We took in a workshop on Education that Transforms. This seems to be, as much as anything, the deep theme of Mennonite/Anabaptist education: transformation. Empowerment, Changing Perspectives, Heart full of Love. Learning from educators around the world!
5. The earnest and good-natured Pollyanna that you may see when you see me is not an illusion or a lie. I truly do look for the positive and seek to be joyful. Still, I am sort of like that one naughty relative at your family reunion who simply won’t make it through the reunion without a hidden flask. Well, maybe not at your Mennonite family reunion, or mine. Except for me. And it’s not filled with aged Scotch. It’s filled brimful with cynicism. I only take it out for occasional sips, but I feel like I need it as a sort of buffer, a protective coat between me and the real world.
During the years when I was losing my religion, I fought a really long and hard battle to break out of the cage. Not everyone goes through it with such intensity, but for me it was a serious struggle. I had dreams during that time of being incarcerated in a maximum security prison, of being beheaded by a mild and gentle Mennonite woman in a covering. When I walked back in the church’s back door, I did so on my own terms, always with an eye toward the doors and windows, to be sure that the escape routes aren’t blocked. And every once in a while, I take out my flask of cynicism and remind myself that I can still leave again any time I want. I have, however, encountered very few cages in the place where I have landed.
Still, it was a little disconcerting today, in the middle of a rather large group of gathered earnest people, to realize that I had completely misplaced my cynicism. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Today, I just loved being a Mennonite.
6. One of the ways that I have maintained my relationship to the church on my own terms is to collect names for God. There is no way that I am going to put the God-Bird back into its cage, so I keep trying to expand my knowledge and consciousnss of that Divine and Mysterious Presence. This morning, Rebecca Osiro repeatedly spoke of God as The Thorn Remover (Ja Kon Kudho), and the other speakers took up the use of the term. I like the concept of the Divine as a Remover of Thorns.
May we walk in Beauty!
Sublime and Cute
Tomorrow, we are going to Mennonite World Conference in Harrisburg. I was reluctant to sign up because the abstract idea of the crowds and the planning and the getting there and all of it made me a little anxious for some reason. But my parents are giving us a day on their passes. Feeling lucky to get a chance to go.
Gratitude List:
1. I think Somebody handed Michelangelo the brush this evening and said, “Go to town!” Those clouds. That sunset. Tonight I had a brief moment of really understanding magenta.
2. Magenta wants its own number. It looks so nice snuggling between tangerine and violet.
3. Hearing about the opening of the Mennonite World Conference in Harrisburg. The ones who told me had tears in their eyes as they described the procession of Conestoga people who came forward and told Story: the history of European and Native interactions, the loss of land, the Paxtang Boys. I wish I could have been there.
4. Getting my hair done. I am upping my appointments lately–four or five a year instead of two. I like to be pampered once in a while.
5. Watching a tiny hamster savor her first blueberry. Cuteness is sort of sublime sometimes. I think there’s a spiritual muscle that responds to cuteness, but we trivialize it because it so often gets a schmaltzy, saccharine over-sentimentalization. But cute draws us out of ourselves in a way similar to awe, I think.
May we walk in Beauty!
Summer Supper
Gratitude List:
1. Corn on the cob, zucchini fritters with sour cream, and thick slabs of Mr. Slabaugh and Lemon Boy tomatoes.
2. Spiritual Practices
3. The voices of the Mystics: Hafiz and Rumi, St. Julian and St. Hildegard”
4. How writing it down helps me to understand it better
5. The little air conditioner. Today, more than ever.
May we walk in Beauty!
Strangers No More
Gratitude List:
1. Conversation with new friends from The Netherlands.
2. The singing this morning, and the story of Menno Simons in the stagecoach.
3. Belongingness. So often I position myself on the fringe–the happy fringe, to be sure. Still, sometimes I step right into the middle of the muddle and proclaim myself a part of it all. And that feels appropriate and oddly satisfying.
4. That little air conditioner.
5. Stroopwaffeln.
May we walk in Beauty!
Reading Redwall
I have been second-guessing myself a little. I decided to read Redwall to the boys, without remembering how violent it can get. It’s pretty intense stuff for bedtime reading. I love the peaceful realm of Redwall and Mossflower, but the warring bits are intense, and there’s that whole holy defense bit that makes me nervous in its approximation of a just war philosophy. On the other hand, for small children who are trying to learn to face their fears and anxieties, a tiny mouse facing up to a bully of a rat might be a good metaphor. This afternoon, One Small Boy said, “Hey Mom. If a Badguy came into our house, this is what I would do to it.” And he ran forward with a series of karate-like moves. He might bowl a Badguy over with pure cuteness, I’m thinking. Still, I found it interesting that Badguy is “it,” like a monster or a phantom, or a floating anxiety. I think we’ll keep reading the book, remembering to reflect on the way Matthias cares for his friends, on the Abbot’s refusal to mistreat even his enemies, on the way the mice work together.
Gratitude List:
1. Cool breeze
2. Constructing meaning
3. Reading with the boys
4. Getting to be the scholar
5. Zinnias
May we walk in Beauty!
There Was an Old Woman. . .
Gratitude List:
1. A thoughtful, fun, and hard-working farm crew.
2. Ice cream at the Shoe House. We’ve lived within about five miles of it for 12 years, and today was the first time we stopped for ice cream.
3. Color
4. Carrots
5. Embracing change.
May we walk in Beauty!
Refining the Questions
I have been refining my questions today, and thinking about this process. I have been reading about education in the last few weeks–about educating the intellect and the spirit and the emotions. I realize that when I phrase questions like, “What do you feel? What do you sense? What do you think?” I understand the surface meaning, but there’s a boxy feel to it. I feel like those questions will trap my words, somehow. I want to ask myself those questions, but they need to have a more fluid grace, an ability to slide and flow into many boxes. These might work better. I’m still connecting a bit to some of St. Ignatius’ questions, but sliding sideways into my own.
How have you been met by Mystery today?
Walking into the room of myself.
Exploring names for God.
What awakens you?
A golden finch flying across my path and upward into blue.
What sits in your heart?
The satisfaction and anxiety of holding vigil for people I love. Being a watcher.
Hope.
Reverence.
Frustration at the work it took to complete an assignment today–that can build in me compassion for my students in the coming year.
What nudges you forward?
Plans, projects, art.
How will you step into tomorrow?
I will write my goals for the rest of the summer, and include play and art on the list.
May we walk in Beauty!
Burning Through
Sometimes a new thing catches me on fire, and I just have to let it burn through me, so I can see the trail it leaves, follow the glowing embers. This poem by Mary Oliver–“Gratitude“–has taken hold of me. First, I had to copy it, using her questions, and then I had to create my own, while still adding my own regular 5-point gratitude list at the end. Tonight, more of my own questions.
And I am lifting my nose to sniff the air–there’s an aroma there of something lodged in my memory. Here it is: I have been feeling compelled to call this emerging process an Examen. I have been looking it up, and I think that perhaps it isn’t so far from the Examen of St. Ignatius. His process, according to the Loyola Press website, is to:
1. Become aware of the presence of God. (I like to call God the Mystery, or Love, or the Source, or Mama.)
2. Review the day with gratitude. (That’s the part I have been working on for the past three or four years. It has been transformative in ways I could not have predicted.)
3. Pay attention to your emotions. (Sometimes I stop at the second step. This is a good reminder. Also, I think I would add, Check in with your energy, because that is part of my practice, too.)
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it. (For me, the noticing is prayer, the gratitude is prayer. Still, I get what this is about: take one thing deeper. Oh, I do like that.)
5. Look toward tomorrow. (Bring the past and the present and the future together in this moment. How does the past [the work of #2] inform the present [#1, #3, #4]? And how can the past-imbued present inform the future [#5]?)
How is the Mystery present to you?
In silence. In the space between my breaths. In the night sounds of crickets and peepers.
What visions brought your spirit awake?
Three crows flying above the fields into morning.
A white heron flying over the city in the afternoon heat.
The hard work of preparing an essay.
What words awakened you?
“Prophetic listening,” transformation, kairos, dialectical hermeneutics
What awakened your senses?
Rice and peas, garlic, squash, long thin green beans, broccoli, and fat slices of pink tomato with coarse salt.
What does your heart say?
There is anxiety here for friends who are suffering.
Contentment, which is sometimes better than wild joy.
I am tired.
Anticipation.
New ideas flitting through the rooms of my brain excite and exhaust me.
What goes deeper?
I am one spider on this humming web,
surveying the movement from strand to strand.
We all weave and spin together,
no longer simply waiting for the Morai
to measure and cut, but being ourselves the spiders,
tending the web, minding the movement.
Where does this go tomorrow?
Tomorrow is a clearing day–
get things accomplished.
May we walk in Beauty!
