Dad’s Grounding

For thousands of years, eclipses have been harbingers of chaos. Today, on the morning of the full moon, the lunar eclipse, and the American midterm election, I woke with a flash of dream: A card, white background, with enough of a green pattern that I thought of an Irish knot, and the words, in gold, “Dad’s Grounding.”

I didn’t realize the word “grounding” had so many meanings: a discipline for children, connecting to the ground for health benefits, the background for needlework, a foundation, instruction in basic concepts, finding a basis, becoming fully conscious after a psychedelic experience, a ship’s collision with the sea bottom, government action that keeps planes on the ground, connecting electrical systems to the ground, visualizing “roots” into the earth to absorb energy, techniques to bring the mind back to the moment.

But what of “Dad’s Grounding”? My Daddy’s grounding was with the soil and with the Presence of the Holy. That was the Irish Knot that held him firm and secure in the storms of life. Many a time I would hear his voice traveling across the field as he worked the farm, lifted up in songs like “Blessed Assurance,” “Trust and Obey,” and “Will Your Anchor Hold?”

Eclipses warn us to expect the unexpected. When we expect to be knocked off balance, we broaden our stance, feet apart, ready, whether we are in a subway train, a full city bus, a boat in a storm, when facing a fight, or even with toddlers and puppies underfoot. Regardless of the results of American elections, results that the whole world is awaiting, we can ground into the soil and into the Sacred. Dad’s Grounding will hold us. Anchor deep.

Repurposing

There are many things I should be doing, or could be doing, today – many items on my TO DO list. And yet I am drawn to things that need repaired, or fixed, or tidied. I wondered aloud if I am distracted by these things to avoid my lists, or if something about these distractions could be a call to metaphor, a call to spiritual work. With that question, my Inner Critic stopped pestering about the List. Indeed there was a metaphor coming, and so I began.

Months ago, Hubby reported that the zipper on the sleeping bag had broken. I’m not one to toss a perfectly good sleeping bag because the zipper is broken and the fabric torn. The other day, I carefully removed that zipper, and put the sleeping bag back on the table where it had perched for months. Now what?

Well, I could make a Crazy Quilt…. I have loads of fabric, because, after all, I’m not one to toss perfectly good scraps of fabric, or shirts with ink stains. Do I need a Crazy Quilt? No, not really, not any more than I need a broken sleeping bag. But a Crazy Quilt would be a good repurpose. How long would I let this sit, in plain sight, waiting? Should I tackle it and get it out of the way? Or should I tuck it into storage for that elusive Someday.

The thought of a possible metaphor was enticing. Curiosity won. List set aside, I mined my fabric collection, searching my heart for Spirit’s leading. What might this task be telling me? How many things in our lives are kept, tucked away unused, just in case? How many items are forgotten in store rooms and attics, for our children to eventually sort through, toss, and roll their eyes at? Case in point, some of the fabric I have tucked away had been in my mother’s collection, upholstery samples too good to toss.

I think of our churches: old hymnbooks and choir music, old banners never used, leftovers from congregations long gone, rooms unused except to store things, pews that sit empty, treasures kept and forgotten. Is it time to repurpose these things, now before we are old and feeble? Now before no one remembers why certain things were kept at all, like the ancient photos in my father’s photo chest? Can we make a “Crazy Quilt” out of our gathered materials and structures that could be useful to someone, somewhere?

I expect I will soon have a repurposed sleeping bag to give away. Someone out there is cold. Someone out there needs this, and I do not. I doubt it will be a piece of art, but it will be useable. Is it time to rethink and repurpose much about how we do church, in order to make something useful for our community or the world? Or will we just keep storing things.

Jesus told the story about a farmer who said, “I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, where I can store all my grain and other goods. Then I’ll say to myself, ‘You have stored up enough good things to last for years to come. Live it up! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.’”  But God said to him, “You fool! Tonight you will die. Then who will get what you have stored up?” (Luke 12:18-20, CEV).

The Bible, the Bee, and the Spider

I have been dreaming, after a long dream drought. I reopened the faucet of dreaming first by participating in an online dream workshop series with Robert Moss, and later with a new teacher, Ariella Daly. I’d worked with Robert many times, and am grateful for his new online offerings. In one of our guided dreaming sessions, he invited us to ask for a messenger to tell us about our mission in life. We may, he told us, find a reminder of a messenger who had already visited in the past. In that short drumming journey, I saw a bee emerge from the garden outside my window, as bees do in spring, rising from earthy solitude. It was indeed a reminder of a dream I’d had many years earlier.

Weavers and Weaving

In that dream, of January 12, 2000, I woke inside the dream to put the dog out. The rocking chair was moved, and I bumped into it when I went to turn on the light. The light would not come on. I realized it was dimmed, and moved up the dimmer switch. The light was one globe hanging, and covered by a swarm of bees, and bees flying nearby. A huge spider hung on a web. I didn’t know how I could get past all that to let the dog out. Then I said to myself, “I’m still asleep!” and went back to bed to ask my husband, still inside the dream, to wake me up. Then I woke up “for real”.

Later, when I found Ariella’s workshop series on Dreaming with the Bees, I knew I needed this. My intention was to work with the Bees Around the Light dream, but my first dream during our month as a dreaming hive was about the Spider. I WAS the Spider.

I live within a wealth of symbols. My work, my chosen public path, is ministry. My private spirituality, on the other hand, ranges far and wide, finding the God Essence in everything. And so, I was pondering how to carry all this, the Bible, the Bee and the Spider, in one perfect whole, when I realized that there are seasons and patterns to spirituality. The Bible will always be a thread through the Weave of magic and dream. And the Dream will always weave through my experience of the Christ.

The Weave, the beauty in the Weave, is the pattern. As an artist, my weaving is not the same pattern over and over as might happen in a factory. The Weave is intricate and beautiful, shaped by time and life. I have so many threads, so many colours, so many fiber types. No weaver can use all their threads at once. Sometimes a single colour cotton broadcloth is perfect, but that leaves out the other fibers, the other colours, and other textures. A fabric store with only one colour of cotton broadcloth is not inviting. Threads of Bee and Spider will always weave through my work, as will threads of the Bible. All of this is one. I am rich. I am full. I am safe.

“Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.” Ecclesiastes 9:7, KJV.

[NOTE: I weave words, metaphor, and symbol. My daughter, in the photo above, with her girls, wove the reproduction overshot coverlet you see there. It is on display at Kings Landing. For more information on overshot coverlets, please see Upper Canada Weaving.

When I am 64…

It is MY birthday and I am 64. I take after Daddy, so I am not yet grey. I walked almost 8 km yesterday. (We are celebrating in Alma and Fundy National Park.) I climbed back up the Laverty Falls trail without getting out of breath, while my hubby at 53 had to keep stopping for a rest. Short ones, mind you, because of the black flies. (Three years ago it was me needing the breathers.) So much for marrying a younger man. Even his mother admits I’m the younger one. 😂

Laverty Falls, Fundy National Park

I think of my Mom who only managed 62, living her last years with cancer, and last decades with arthritis. I am so fortunate. 

My goal is to be as healthy and fit as now, when I’m 85, with a few extras like chin-ups on the monkey bars (never ever did these) and splits on the living room floor again. Good to have goals. I go at it slow and steady and surprise myself.

After that, the goal is to continue being happy and well for a long long time. I want to keep dreaming God’s dream of joy for many many years.

Hidden Things

Easter Sunday when I was eight years old, must have been cold and snowy, because I remember I had to wear my boots to church. I remember that very clearly, as well as the mess of feelings Little Me was having that morning.

I am the oldest of six, but that Easter we were only four – three girls – age eight, six, and five – plus our four year old brother. We were excited about Easter eggs, or maybe a chocolate bunny, or a hollow chocolate hen, sitting on a hollow chocolate nest. We woke up early for the hunt.

Daddy came in from the barn, running late, like most Sundays. He smelled of hay, manure and milk. He rushed to wash, don a suit, and comb his fine unruly hair. It was almost church time, but I still had not found my Easter eggs! My little sisters and brother had theirs, but mine were nowhere to be found. Looking back, I don’t know how we knew whose eggs were whose, but I certainly did not have mine.

It was time to go. Daddy was ready. “Put on your boots,” he said.

“No! I want my candy! I can’t find my candy!”

“Put on your boots!”

“NO! I want my candy!”

“ALICE, put – on – your – boots!!!!”

He was getting angry. I was furious! No candy and I had to go to church! I stomped my little feet all the way to the corner where my boots waited, under the hooks piled high with coats. One foot in, and then…. What? Something was in there! Candy!

You would think that I would be overjoyed. Instead, I felt horrid. So sorry for disobeying my Daddy. So sorry for being angry when he was telling me where my candy was, all along. But at the same time, really mad at him for not just saying so. Mad at him for embarrassing me this way. Embarrassed, that I, the oldest, was acting like a baby, on top of the fact that all the little ones had found their candy first.

I was reminded of all this earlier this week. Usually I fall asleep easily, but that night, I was up late, sipping camomile tea, fussing into my journal about uncertainty. It’s a strange world right now. It has been over a year since we had church services. Two Easter mornings have come and gone without choruses of Alleluja. Finally, this Sunday, we are going to open our doors, AND our windows, wear our masks, and sit socially distanced, so we can at last worship together in person, instead of just online. We will NOT be singing.

The decision to open this Sunday was made weeks ago, and here we are, with increased cases of variants, a public exposure at the Post Office, which is just down the street from the church, and a mobile testing unit set up in the mall parking lot. Some of my people will be isolating as they wait for their test results. Others will be more nervous than before, about being at church. And so I was fussing. How many people would come to church now? Would we be safe, with all our safety measures? No one would know until too late.

That night, it wasn’t just Covid on my mind, but climate change, economic change, work change, school change. I don’t know – none of us know – whether tomorrow will be the same as today. I could feel everyone’s anxieties swirling around me, mixed with my own. How do we make a plan for anything, with Covid rules subject to change daily? If any of us have to go into isolation, is there enough food in the house? What about work? Will there be money? What if something breaks? How do we get it fixed? How do we replace things that break or wear out, with shortages in the stores, and the list of shortages growing? Can we learn to make do, to value old chipped dishes, for example, instead of tossing them at the first signs of wear, or the first dash of boredom? What are we losing in all this change? But what, also, are we gaining?

So many questions, so much fussing. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. I had my Bible open beside me to the Book of Sirach. Sirach is not part of the Protestant Bible, so I had never read it. At some point recently, I had heard a beautiful quote from Sirach, and got out my Catholic New Revised Standard Version Bible. That night, I began to read. Sirach 3:22 popped right off the page at me, and landed deep in my heart:
Reflect upon what you have been commanded, for what is hidden is not your concern (NRSV).

I had been fussing about what was hidden, all the things in our imagined future that we know nothing about. We guess and guess. We worry. We fuss. Well, at least I do. Yet here, Sirach is saying that those hidden things are not my concern. What I do need to think about, what I do need to reflect on, is what I have been commanded, what I already know that I am supposed to be doing. We are commanded to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves, for instance (Mark 12:30-31). Those two commands take in all the rest, Jesus said.

And don’t worry. Don’t worry, Jesus said, about your food or your clothes. Don’t worry, just seek the Sacred, the Holy, the Spirit (Matthew 6:25-32). That, just that, is enough to keep me occupied, Love and Seeking the Sacred. Can I keep my mind on those things? Can I reflect on what I have been commanded? Can I focus on that instead of those things that are hidden, which, Sirach says, are no concern of mine?

Sirach was written about 200 BC, yet here it was, a timely message. I fell asleep meditating on those words, and listening to the sound of the frogs. Frogs don’t have a worry in the world, even though they too are facing climate change and environmental troubles, even extinction. They are smarter than me. They do not fuss about the hidden things. They only lift their voices as they are meant to do, reflecting the commandment of their very Being, night after night, in joyful song.

One of our Frog friends

Tending the Flame 2

This morning, this poem by Allison Rennie, ©Feb 2021, arrived in my inbox. I loved the poem enough to ask her permission to share, which she graciously gave. Thank you, Allison.

Candles that won’t light are the bane of any worship leader, even when the worship is solitary, at home, for online services or private prayer. I’ve written about my necessary careful tending of the Peace candle. Then this morning, my fire would not start. I kept adding paper, kindling, but only achieved smouldering and smoke. Finally, sitting with the stove door open, I managed for it to catch. Only later did I realize the damper had been closed for the night. I’d forgotten to check.

Not enough air. Not enough breath. Not enough Spirit sometimes in our lives, to light the flame of hope or peace or love. Persistence, writes Allison. Staying with it. Let’s not give up on our world. Thanks, Allison!

A Different Sort of Love

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today’s sermon is about Love, not the usual kind of love that we celebrate on Valentine’s Day. Today you will hear about Elijah and Elisha, the strength of Elisha’s love for his mentor, and Elisha’s courageous determination not to look away from Elijah even at the moment of his death.

I was not at the side of either of my parents when they died. Daddy’s death was sudden, and I was away. Mom died more slowly, in hospital, and I had to be home. I had to be a mom, and I had to work. Self-employment does not give time off for hospital vigils. So I wasn’t there. I wish I was. I was there in spirit. I was there in dreams. But I was not at my mother’s side. In these Covid times, people around the world have not been there with their dying loved ones. My heart aches for them. My heart aches for those of YOU who have had to wait outside of hospitals in these last 11 months.

Elijah told Elisha that he would go on, to his death, alone, but Elisha refused.  He went every step of the way at Elijah’s side.  He did not take his eyes off his master, and witnessed the moment when his spirit left his body, like a burning chariot and fiery horses. He tore his clothes in his grief, but he did not turn away.

Our attention capacity is short. We are always blinking, looking away, getting distracted, in normal every day circumstances. In the tough times, keeping our gaze turned toward the pain is hard, almost impossible. At other times, we feel like we can’t pull our attention away at all, from the news of what is happening in the world around us. But being “glued to the screen” is itself a way of NOT seeing what is happening beside us. That pain beside us begs for our attention.

We are learning to be a 21st century church, I’ve said. We are learning to become something different than we have been. In fact, we are being forced to be different, against our wills. We don’t like change, not at all. As I say in today’s sermon, we prefer to look back at the past, than to look squarely into the changes that are coming.

Just like the “Sons of the Prophets” in Elijah’s time were facing a change of era, so are we. Do we watch from a distance like most of them? Or do we walk into it, courageously, like Elisha? I do hope that we get back into our churches for in-person services soon, but what is “soon”? And how long will it take for our services to be “normal”? Will they EVER be “normal”?

I’ve come to realize that we have three congregations in Prince William Pastoral Charge – Living Waters, the Kirk, AND our online congregation. The online folks, some of them never come to church. Some live elsewhere. Some would love to be with us in person, but health concerns or disabilities keep them away. These people tell me how grateful they are for the recorded services. No matter when we get back to seeing each other face to face, we must not abandon these people. This Covid Journey is making us rethink what church is, what church membership is.

For a long time, we have been saying that Church is not a building. The question becomes, can church be ONLY online? Can we do without buildings completely? No, we cannot do without buildings. We need to be able to gather in person. Real change happens in person. Real love happens in person. But the buildings do not have to be church buildings. The buildings may be our homes.That is where Church started, after all, in the homes of believers in communities everywhere, supported by ministers like Paul and Silas, who travelled and wrote letters.

We CANNOT be Church ONLY online, because online it is too easy to look away. I get an email, for example, about the children starving in Yemen. I can delete that, and forget it. I see post after post on Facebook or elsewhere, of people in pain, and I can scroll right past. Or click the “care” button to send a hug, or the “sad” button to express my concern, but this leaves that individual alone, while the Facebook post disappears into the depths of the feed, and my attention is caught by the next meme, or the next funny video.

Real change, real concern, does not happen online. We need to be face to face, loving, caring, helping, supporting.  We need to be face to face looking each other in the eye, not turning away from the pain. That is what Church is. No matter what happens with Covid, no matter what happens with our ability to sustain our buildings, we need to keep on loving, keep on being devoted to each other, just like Elisha was devoted to Elijah. 

I’m writing this early on Saturday morning. It’s not quite 6 am. I did not expect to write paragraphs; my sermon was already a longish one.  Thank you for reading all this. Thank you for not looking away.

Loose Ends, a Lenten Practice (1)

I like things to be in order. I like cupboard doors closed, books arranged so they are easy to find when needed, my grocery list arranged in the same order as the aisles in the store. I’m not obsessive about these things, but order, having things and activities in order, my order, keeps my stress level low.

At the same time, whenever life gets more haphazard, so does my space. I have said that the number of papers and assorted odds and ends on my kitchen table act as a useful gauge of my stress level. The same goes for the number of emails sitting in my inbox, or the number of open pages in my browser. The other day I counted 208 emails and 13 windows. Not bad, really, but this feels like having 221 things on my to do list. Two hundred and twenty-one loose ends.

Loose ends take up precious room in my mind. Loose ends gobble up time too, as I spin in thought, trying to decide what is most urgent to get done, or all the smaller steps that are linked to the bigger task.

Do I really want to fix the leaky faucet? Is it better to be annoyed by a leak? Or to brave a trip to the hardware store in Covid? (And with my history, leaky faucets tend to mean more than one visit to the hardware store.)

Box of Loose Ends

So here’s what I’ve decided to do: I am going to catch as many loose ends as I can catch, by listing them on slips of paper, dropping them into a pretty box, and then making a Lenten practice out of randomly drawing tasks to complete.

Do you want to come along for the journey?

Loose Ends, A Lenten Practice (2)

I have started gathering loose ends, writing them down on slips of paper, curling them into twists with scissors, and tucking them into my Loose Ends box. Some loose ends, like dust, are never finished. Some will eventually get done, like the leaky faucet I mentioned the other day. Other loose ends went officially to my “today” list. It’s amazing how much I accomplish once I commit. Since I committed to this Loose Ends practice, many things have shifted, just because of the decision to begin.

I whittled the contents of my inbox, from 208 emails down to 38. I deleted a few, but moved many into a new file named “Loose Ends”. What is left in my inbox are emails about upcoming zoom meetings, and current items for action. Just doing that made me feel more relaxed and spacious.

I also determined that some things do not need to be completed; not all books need to be read. Sometimes one chapter is enough. I can send unfinished books back to the library, or pack them up for the church yard sale. It is a relief to let them go.

I have an ongoing list where every book I’ve read and released in recent years is recorded. I started that practice 40 years ago, when most books I read were from the library. I know I haven’t caught all the titles, but it’s fun to compare what I read in 1981 to what I’m reading now.

It’s harder with books that I love, that belonged to my parents, or that were given to me from the bookshelves of people I respect and appreciate. Marie Kondo says to decide what books to keep based on how you feel when you touch them and look at them. Does the book give you pleasure just by its presence? Don’t decide by opening the book, she insists. Um, no. I’m not there yet.

Deciding what to keep, what to toss, what to pass on to others is now one of the curled up slips of paper in my Box of Loose Ends. But already three boxes of books are gone or ready to go. It’s like a breath of fresh air, like opening a window on the first springlike day. I’ve even dusted a bit, lol!

Box of Loose Ends