Shards of Grace

Last weekend it snowed
shards of grace as if
the heavens shattered and
sprinkled powder of delight
wherever the eye could
see. Love lay down
feather-like in snow
drift and bank
of divine distraction.

This weekend it all
melted and left me in
the lurch – March mud
in January, and I am reminded
that beauty, like time, like weather
like life and death and the aging between
them is really not at my bidding,

But still, there is a wonder in mist,
in fog, and today I spot a startling
mass of moss on tree, my seeing softened
by light refracted in divers directions.

My wife tells me it has always been there
and I realized that just now I am there too.

Love Is Born Again

This eve is utterly unique
yet ordinary in time
as the holy invades
the cosmos, infusing the divine in
napping trees,
dormant grass, and
evergreens never letting
up on watching the crib
and lauding the One who
comes once and for all,
again.

The days are lengthening,
it seems, although I cannot yet
feel a surplus of sun in my
bones. But that doesn’t mean
hope is destitute – no, I know
that I will but blink and spring
will be upon us.

And so tonight I breathe in and out a hope –
holy in local dialects of grace and
whole in the wind’s good word that
love is born again, now and for always.

Saturday Night’s Alright for Canning

Last night my wife and I canned Roma tomatoes. I saw some on sale when I was buying groceries last week and texted her about a purchase but not having heard anything, I let it pass. When I came home and told her the price, she decided we really need to jump on this. I was away for a faculty retreat during the week, and she was deep in a work project, so the tomato adventure had to wait for the weekend.

On Saturday Gwenanne went to the grocery store where I had spotted the deal, but they were out of stock. She checked out the local farmers’ market, but they were a little over twice as expensive there, and not in the best of repair. She visited another branch of the store where I had seen them and brought home three half bushels. They needed to be done pronto, and so last night we canned 20 jars.

We use a recipe that my mom gave us on a recipe card written in cursive writing. It is always a bit of a gift to see her handwriting again – an aide de memoire of sorts, calling to mind Mom’s kitchen work – her joy and mine both. Every time I do some canning, it’s as if Mom is about, a warm and comfortable feeling.

Another thought that crossed my mind while canning was Martin Luther’s treatment of “Give us this day our daily bread.” He famously reminds us in the catechisms that praying for daily bread is to pray for the many hands that bring bread to table: sower, reaper, miller, cook, server, as well as the political and economical actors supporting food production, and the land itself. I wondered what brought these tomatoes to me. I thought of the worms aerating and generating soil. I thought of the sun, the rain, the gardeners who had started the plants, the workers tending them, the drivers delivering them, the store clerks making change etc.

Luther differently named something that Darren Thomas, Laurier Associate Vice President Indigenous Initiatives, reminded us of at our faculty retreat that postponed the Roma purchase: we are all related. A common indigenous teaching is that all of reality is family, and the tomato and its eater are kin. Luther doesn’t use that language, but looks at the tomato and recalls that God’s grace uses many means to tend us. Of course, the two teachings are not in competition, and work together very nicely, I think, and give us pause to be grateful for the many ways that our lives are enriched and flourishing. I also think that in the depths of winter I will be especially grateful for those worms, and others, who bring these lovely Romas to my table.

And I will also think on my mom as I do so.

Step by Step

Tomorrow we wing our way to Halifax, where our good friend Matthew Anderson will pick us up and transport us to Creignish, Nova Scotia, where we will begin the Camino Nova Scotia: The Gael’s Trail on Monday morning.

My wife and I are both very excited for this adventure! This will be our third pilgrimage, the first being in Norway along 360 km of St. Olaf’s Way, organized by Matthew. The second was in Southern Saskatchewan along what was called the Traders’ Road. We joined Matthew and others for the last 100 km or so, of a 350 km trek. The first pilgrimage scratched a bit of a cultural itch for me, given my father’s Norwegian ancestry. The second was an opportunity to return to our Western Canadian roots, and to think along with Matthew and the others about the ways in which settlers in Canada have violently dispossessed Indigenous people of their lands, and livelihood. This trek, too, will be exploratory.

My wife and I both love Eastern Canada, and so this opportunity to walk along the meeting point of Cape Breton and the Gulf of St. Lawrence has mightily intrigued us. We will walk some 80 kms over 5 days with one down day with 13 other walkers along with staff from Camino Nova Scotia. There will be moments of learning about this corner of Mi’kma’ki (the lands of the Mi’kmaq) who are the ancient carers of this land and about the early Gaelic settlers here, whose cultural practices and language exist still today.

In the course of a pilgrimage (if this will be like the other two), in addition to experiencing cultures and learning history, there is the strange and grounding experience of moving one foot at a time. We are so bound up in ways of being that are marked by a rush that brushes aside both where and when. A slow, deliberate, and long walk disorients us, or perhaps reorients us in that it “easts” us and turns us in the liturgical direction of resurrection, which literally means to rise again.

What is raised, again, in such a walk? Slow, deliberate, and intentional walks remind us that the land is our Mother, a point made by people indigenous to this land as well as ancient Christian saints such as Basil. We begin to think again about where in our life. “Where am I?” By grace, this question makes its trace in our soul and shapes us after the pilgrimage.

But such a walk also opens us to the mystery of time. “When” begins to mystify us again as we are drawn back into the present moment. One foot at a time becomes a way to pray into now. Each step made intentional allows us to get lost in the present moments so that finally and mysteriously time becomes translucent. Instead of living by the ruse that there isn’t enough time, we enter into the gift of the present moment.

God comes to us in each step, as where and when, satisfy us in strange and wondrous ways.

Walk around the Docks

This last Saturday I spend my day at the marina, in the august role of “Officer of the Day.” Our boat club requires 20 hours of volunteer service each summer, and being OOD is one way to fulfill this obligation.  Basically, you serve as ambassador should any transient boaters come in to stay overnight, or if reciprocal members from other clubs come for a time.  In addition to this, you are to walk the docks, looking for hazards and such, and answer questions people might have.  In my walk-about I generally end up helping people dock their boats, or help send some out on their adventures.

In my experience there are rarely visitors, but I spend a good bit of time chatting with this person and that.  It is a nice way to get to know people a bit more.  Folk often have a skewed idea of a “Yacht Club.”  In my experience, there are very few big expensive boats, but a lot of people sporting modest, 30 year plus sailboats 25 to 30 foot in length. 

On Saturday I chatted with a couple who down-sized in retirement, buying a smaller condo and a sailboat.  The also provide foster care, and currently attend to a six year old who has had brain cancer.  When the weather is right, they bring her aboard the stern of their backed in boat in her wheelchair, where she happily greets all walking by.  Another boat hosts a young man with down’s syndrome who greets me with measured enthusiasm.  Some folk here are chatty, some are taciturn, some are anxious to help and other are heavily pre-occupied.  In a way, the marina is the world.

I think that this OOD program outperforms its purported outcomes.  It allows us to get to know one another.  This is a gift of the first order. The practice of volunteering grants us the grace of encountering others to the end that we get to know our own selves.

Oddly enough, most of us would not serve as OOD aside from our need to volunteer 20 hours at the club.  Of course, some might say that these hours are not voluntary. But you can forgo the 20 hours and pay a bit more in your membership fees.  I am always amazed at how a small incentive to do what you should do results in a exponentially larger pay-back.  This is the economy of grace, the logic of service, one of the ways in which God works wonders in the world.

The sailing season is on the brink of winding down. I have dutifully finished by volunteer hours.  One might say that there is a carrot and a stick to my experience.  But more importantly, I note that both carrot and stick disappear when my experience illumines that other people aren’t hell (as per Sartre) so much as other people are health.

Including Green

When I was a child
I was told that
blood runs blue until
it spills in the air, where
it’s painted red. I’ve since
read that blood is not blue
but then when I view my veins,
I see green. Maybe my blood
Is tainted with envy or maybe
it’s enviro-blood, scouting out
ways to minimize my-its-our
carbon footprint, or maybe
it’s a sickly green, at sea in
seeing naught but ought, not yet
aware of freeing waves of grace
awash in every colour
including green.

In My Eye

A tongue of fire
rises from this candle
taller than two
others; brothers
flanking her. Their
tongues, their talk
lumine her. These three
enter me times two, then
become one in my mind’s eye.

I see my reflection in them:
flaming away I deplete each day
until I will be but one with You,
alight in Your eye – finally and fully
a human seen, as surely as
You have been a human being
aright in my eye.

In the Face of a Fireplace

Our fireplace is gas, a pane of glass
keeps me from reaching in and fiddling
with the fake flaming logs.

Piercing these logs are legs,
belonging to the coffee table,
between me and the fire.
The legs hold aloft another
sheet of glass, which slices me in half,
my reflection bifurcated
.
Each glass surface
reflects, refracts, and now
allows my eyes to see through –
if I sit just so.

God, too, is glass. Now I see
my face. Then I tilt my head and
I see grace, deeper than this surface,
which is, itself, sheer, evocative, apocalyptic.

Conversing with Trees

Here I sit, empty.
No poem comes to me.
Stirred, I go in search
of a verse to pluck.

But on what kind of tree does
a poem grow? Our garden
offers plenty of possibilities:
pine and oak,
beech and maple
spruce and hemlock.
Each one of these spirited trees is
ripe with grace and
rife with peace.

I settle, conversing with trees.
And even if no poem should arrive,
I’ll be succored by the sight of leaves aloft,
and trunks holding up the sky, my eye now
soaking in the chlorophyll filtered light,
inciting wonder, if not a poem.

A Sigh of Belief

You are ever
under siege, Your
mighty right hand
now wearied, and
Your left grasping
after a little rest –
but Sabbath seems
to escape You.

How will You renew
creation, Lord, when
You sit across from me
slumped in the chair
like a soldier about to
surrender?

And yet, Your eyes,
Your eyes still galvanize
in grace, and later when
I read Your latest missive
I am reminded that You
mind Yourself, and so us,
and I breathe a
sigh of
belief.