I Will Draw All to Myself

Yesterday I was in my office
upstairs when I was
caught unawares by
soap bubbles, rainbow themed,
floating by my window on the
wind. Our neighbour’s grandchildren
sported after these globes with
sticks, gleefully striking them
down with due diligence.

I hopped upon one for
a time and the Spirit carried
me up on it to get a bird’s eye view
of trees stretching out buds
of squirrels in serious play
of robins staking their claim.

From above I could see all of this
and more – so much more in these
two children reminding me that the
sermon I was labouring over was
playing out in the yard below.

In Like a Lion

I hate March. There, I’ve said it. I always find March to be a disappointing month. I am ready for spring, but March is the month that fails to deliver. I’ve always told my wife that when we retire, I really won’t be interested in travelling south for the winter, although I have conceded that I could warm to a trip to skirt the cold of a muddy and mucky March.

The month is named after Mars, the god of war in the Roman pantheon. It was the month to resume battles interrupted by winter. Interestingly, it was originally the first month in the Roman calendar – since it was the season when spring supposedly begins – a season of fresh starts – but I have never lived in a place where that was true. Growing up on the farm I recall regularly looking for cows that were calving out in some snowbank in the month of March.

March was also a month of religious festivals for the Romans. Of course, the overlap of religious festivals and war is not unknown in world history. Invoking the gods, or God, for your cause didn’t end with the end of the Roman empire, or the Holy Roman Empire, or any other empire for that matter. We still like to imagine that the divine is on our side when we are in conflict.

Interestingly, the etymology of the word conflict means to strike with, or possibly to strike thoroughly. I suppose we all want God to strike with us, so that our striking is thorough. Of course, in this time of Lent in the life of the church, we recall that God’s experience of striking is being struck – once when Jesus raised the ire of an officer of the court during his interchange with the High Priest in John 18, and then again by the Romans before his crucifixion in John’s, Mark’s, and Matthew’s gospel. It is interesting to note that Jesus is struck by representatives of the Jewish and Roman worlds, who were in their own conflict, albeit one that was grossly disproportionate in power. God in Christ, it seems is in the middle of the conflict as the wounded rather than the wounding one.

Well, there is conflict and there is conflict. Good conflict involves a different kind of striking, I think. Something that is striking might be revelatory: opening us up to see what we couldn’t before, and so we say “It just struck me that this is the case!” This isn’t the kind of striking that aims to crush people in the conflict. Conflict is inevitable, but how we enter in and exit conflict makes all the difference. Of course, it isn’t only God who is wounded in conflict. We are all struck. Liberation theologians famously remind us that the oppressors are also oppressed in their own way. We can be both lions and lambs, just like March, it seems.

In my part of the world, March came in like a lion with some 10 inches of snow. Despite my antipathy toward March, I have to admit, that I found my backyard breath-takingly beautiful. Soon the muck will return, and I will blink my eyes, and the month will have ended, at which point we will see if March plays the lamb card. I hope so.

People Look Easter

The earth is sacred in so many ways;
here lay our beloved and here
one day the earth will hold
me too, as it did You until
the cardinal sang and You sprang
from the grave where
yesterday underground
You preached to
roots and the fungi clinging to them symbiotically, and to
worm and the soil she so benevolently creates, and to
subterranean water streams and coal seams aching to stay put.
You preached to these and to my ancestors too
as I know You will do the day I make my way
into the earth from whence I came and
from which You shoot forth with
Yours in tow.

A Pinch of Tobacco

I stepped into a wood
yesterday under the tutelage
of a son of this land, who
gave me a pinch of tobacco to
lay at the base of a
sentry maple tree; and it
struck me that this
is grace… being given
what we need to give
so that giving itself is
gift.

At the end of the time of
teaching, my wife and I
walked deeper into the wood,
in this time of its wonder: with
trees walking from sleep;
blankets melting away; and
Jefferson salamanders
making their way to
places of procreation.
I felt hope birthed in me,
holy hope tasting of
maple.

Subtle Hope

My running life is now on hold for a week or so. Some sort of a tear, or perhaps gordian knot, in my right leg muscle has sidelined me, although I am able to walk without pain. So yesterday instead of going for my Saturday ritual run of 10 km, I opted to walk to the market in downtown Kitchener. I go to the market irregularly but am always glad for it. In the winter local businesses and farmers have a place to sell in a warm place and in the summer the market grows and spills out on a parking lot. I grabbed some goose pate, chicken rouladen, Oktoberfest sausages, and Icelandic cod along with about 10 lbs of beets for making beet pickles. I was delighted by my purchases and the journey to and from downtown.

I do have to say that the trip home was more enjoyable than the trip to the market, even though my backpack was a bit heavier on return. I walked to the market down Weber Street, which is the same route I use when I drive to work. It is a street that approximates a highway – four lanes wide with people generally travelling far faster than the posted 50 km/h limit. It is always interesting to walk where I generally drive. I was reminded again that a good number of the homes on this route are under duress, and the racing of cars was sometimes a bit much. For the trip home, by contrast, I walked back on King Street. It is a two-lane street with lots of lights that slow down traffic. It feels a bit more humane, and it was interesting again to see a number of apartments being built: developers clearly imagine that this part of town – once a bit rough, has more of a future.

The only downside of the walk home was the Ottawa Street stretch, where a number of businesses had not cleared walkways, reminding me again that the world is not friendly to those in wheelchairs, or with walking challenges. Sidewalks that were cleared were stained white with salt – a trace of winter’s slow recession, in this month of March that takes up a liminal place between winter and spring. Dirty snow sits aside whitened asphalt while the lengthening sun wrestles with still artic air. Some days winter wins; some days spring succeeds.

I made it home in time to have my goose pate on rye bread, with Akvavit and a nice cold pilsener alongside of it while my wife and I chatted online with our daughter imbibing her breakfast in Vancouver. Her world is well into spring, while we wind our way through this month named after the Roman god of war. While winter and spring wrestle, I nestle into anything that affords me a little comfort – especially in light of the hard and dark news from Ukraine this week. Hope seems to be in short supply but does lift its head here and there in little acts of kindness, in subtle seasonal signs in this month that reminds me that transitions are not always easy: whether they be the birth of spring or the death of winter or the death and birth of a people.

A Day in the Life of May

This May has been so very lovely, and I was delighted to spend yesterday in the garden with Gwenanne, my wife. The last two Fridays we have ended the week by making our way to a local greenhouse to agonize over plant choices before coming home to toast our purchases as the start to the weekend. With cooler nights now (hopefully) behind us, Gwenanne decided it was safe to put a few plants in the garden in the backyard.

Our yard has been something of a balm in this COVID Gilead. I have a bit of a ritual most days, making my way from our fifteen year old Autumn Blaze Maple now 30 feet plus tall, to our Blue Beech tree as wide as it is high, and then over to my little Bur Oak now about one foot tall, saying some encouraging words to each before pilgriming to the massive Norway Maple in our front yard. I usually touch each tree along the way and give thanks for their witness to the glory of creation. The other day there was a robin in our Blue Beech, and he sang to me. I was close enough that I could see his throat throb as he hymned me into a kind of trance.

But yesterday my hands moved from the tree to terra firma. We had added some soil to our expanded gardens about three weeks ago, and I had spaded together new and old earth before my wife raked it smooth. I put my hand to Mother Earth. She was warm to the touch and as my fingers slipped beneath this surface I could feel spring cool in the humus. As I made some space to settle our tomato plants, I was met with the delightful sight of worms. So many worms adding soil to soil. I thought for a moment of the robin and now the worm. Both such gifts to me, and the worm to the robin, but not so much the other way round! Life is complicated among us homo sapiens, and no less so with the predator and the prey, whom I both adore.

My last act for the day was to plant the first two sisters of my three sisters garden: corn, beans and squash seeds from the fruits of seeds first received at a workshop at Six Nations some years ago. As I did so, I thought about the rabbits that razed my beans last year, necessitating a replanting, and the racoon who enjoyed my corn that they made theirs. Creation is remarkable but competitive. I bought some netting last year to give me an edge. We’ll see.

The trees, of course, look on and smile. They take the long view. My neighbour across the way figures that the monstrous and majestic oak in his yard predates the arrival of settlers to this part of Turtle Island known to some as North America. I am not sure of this, but I know these trees give me more than oxygen to breathe, and the vegetables from our garden make for me more soup. They make me see that I am speck in God’s world, but they also remind me that a speck too can breathe Soli Deo Gloria.

Akin to Earth

Yesterday was the spring equinox. It was a glorious and gorgeous day and although a good bit of it was spent inside marking, at one point my wife came in to pull me out to see snow drops raising their holy hooded heads from the ground. I wandered over to the corner of the yard to see how my little bur oak tree is doing, and bending down I could see some buds starting to form on it. Walking back to the house, I notice our backyard maple tree crying sweet tears of joy at the turning of the earth towards the sun. Everything seemed to be waking up.

The day before, I was looking out of my office at this same yard as I was preparing for noon-day pause at “chapel.” It was online and this was the Friday in which we do “Settlers’ Work,” pondering how those who are not Indigenous can educate ourselves around the reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada, and the Calls for Justice from the national report on MMIWG. We always begin this time with a land acknowledgement, remembering that the land on which Laurier and Luther are located were deeded to the Haudenosaunee with the Haldimand Tract of 1784. This was also traditional territory of the Anishinabeg and Neutral Peoples. As I do this, I often think about a lesson I am learning from the land. On Friday I mentioned that we often talk as if mother earth is waking up in the spring, and suddenly it struck me like a ton of bricks that this same mother earth is falling asleep on the opposite side of the globe! She is waking up and falling asleep at the same time.

I am increasingly informed by the idea that this earth is our relative, our mother – as per Indigenous perspectives. And this invites us to imagine that in some ways we are like the earth, if she is our mother. Interestingly other worldviews share this perspective of our being imaged after the earth. The ancient Greeks considered the human to be a micro-cosmos. And the Hebraic name for the original, mythic male was Adam, derived from the word for dust, or dirt, and the name for female was Eve, derived from the word for life. Humans are living dirt. We are dust and to dust we shall return. We are akin to that from whence we came and to whither we go.

The earth wakes and sleeps at the same time. How about us? How might we experience this simultaneous arrival and departure; taking up and setting down; being born and dying? I suppose this is evident in every transition in life: from being a babe to being a child to being a teenager to being a young adult to being a not so young adult to being an elderly adult. Each stage is leaving behind and a coming to. There is both death and life in birth, life and death. This is the paradox of our existence. Paradox means contrary to opinion, or in opposition to how things appear: death is a being born just as surely as being born is a dying, since life itself is a journey of death and death is a journey of life. Of course we are taught to fear death by many forces. But our mother teaches us that dying is not the end of life but its transitioning into a new form, a point well illustrated in the lessons of Lent, a time of marking the dying in life as life in dying.

Musings on March

My relationship with March is
complicated. I want it to be
what it cannot: a younger May
stripped of any hint of January.
Instead, March is fiercely March.
It is a month with a mind of
its own and it brooks no challenge
to self-expression. Now its
ice winds cut across my skin even
while shadows shorten and trees
begin to drip sweet. March snow clings
to shadows tenaciously – white knuckling
the wheel of life.

The other day I ate my salad outside on an Adirondack chair,
bundled up like a swaddled babe, the sun was stroking my
face even while the wind scratched it. The snow chuckled,
nervously.

Eggs, Over and Out

On my way downstairs,
I grabbed an empty
egg carton –
ripe for recycle –
recalling that
my daughter started
spring plants in one filled
with twelve fistfuls of soil:
a dozen ova of expectation;
a dozen disciples of revivification;
a dozen loci of resurrection.

My egg carton remains empty.
But still, I find the vacated spaces generative.

How Pink…

How pink these May
worms were, today, all squirming
in two – one on top of
blacktop’s rained mirror and
the other below. I
looked down at these
exposed souls, wondering
how long till lunch – but
the birds were not to be
found. Maybe a
parking lot is too
pedestrian for the fowl
in my hood. Maybe this is a
May-get-out-of-jail-free Day
for worms. Maybe I stayed
Mr. Robin et al., following me at
a distance, ready to seize the day,
but soon to discover that
two worms on the lot are only
one in the beak.