Looking by Listening

The sun in the sky!

Some years back at a silent auction for an organization I supported, I bid on and won a series of watercolor painting lessons.  And after those lessons, when the town's recreation department offered classes, I signed up.  I loved seeing how the water on the paper pulled the paint in surprising directions, how colors could be mixed, how the seemingly clear plain blue of a sky might also include yellow or red.  I dabbled a bit but then the paints and brushes got packed away and almost forgotten.  But the other day, as I was sorting out some things, I found them.  One of the five-year-old "grands" and I decided to paint.  It was a new thing for her and she was intent on learning.  We practiced painting plain water on the paper and dropping in paint, making pink out of red, making green out of blue and yellow.  We painted together on the same paper, working on a picture of the sky.  I had the yellow paint and asked her where to paint the sun.  She said, quite nonchalantly, "Listen to the paper."  And she went on painting her section.  

"Listen to the paper."  As in, perhaps, if you pay close attention, it will tell you what to do.  Don't just look:  listen.  

And I've been wondering if there might be more things to listen to, like the land, the trees, the old house we are about to renovate.  Is there a hidden wisdom in things, even inanimate things, that is waiting to be heard?  Is there some holy guidance all around us, waiting to show us what to do?  

In his poem Ash Wednesday, the poet T. S. Eliot wrote these words:  
       Where shall the word be found, where will the word 
       Resound?  Not here, there is not enough silence....

We live in a noisy world, with all kinds of distractions.  It takes silence to find the Word, to hear the Word.  It takes silence to listen to the paper.  And sometimes, it takes a five-year-old to open the ears of your eyes!

Pecans and Pears

The hurricane stripped the leaves from the pecan tree.  It was an instant fall – green leaves one day, bare branches the next.  
But now, three weeks later, the tree has sprouted new leaves.  And the Bradford pears are blooming all over the place.  It looks like spring, not October.

Stress to a tree can prompt out-of-season budding or flowering.  The trees are using a lot of energy to flower, trying to produce fruit and foliage after a traumatic event.  That is the botanical explanation.  But I think of it is a sign of healing. 

After trauma, when things have been stripped away, there is a stubborn energy that can emerge.  In the face of devastation, new life can appear, like spring leaves in October.  There is a resilience and a will to flourish built into nature, and that includes human nature, too.  

Those who just rebuilt from Matthew are physically and spiritually exhausted. Like the pecan tree, they have been stripped bare.  Can they continue to grow and flourish where they have put down roots all their lives? Some have already started, their efforts popping out like little green leaves.  For others, though, this has been one flood too many.  May they find healing and renewal wherever they are transplanted.

Situational Awareness

A practice called situational awareness is a key part of emergency operations.  In simple terms, it means being aware of what is going on that might affect what you are doing. I’m sure that the emergency management teams responding to Hurricane Florence have included this in their work.  When I was the “commander” of an emergency management team, we had at least two people assigned to situational awareness.  Their job was to take note of the wider environment – the weather forecast, traffic conditions, upcoming events, reports from state officials, and things like that.  This information helped others on the team solve problems and respond effectively in their assigned areas.  

When you are in a crisis mode, it is all too easy to develop tunnel vision.  You focus so intently on the problem in front of you that you miss the bigger picture. For example, if you fail to note that a road has been closed, you may not be able to get your supplies where they need to go.  Or if you are unaware that a road has reopened, you may waste energy and effort on an unnecessary detour.  (The book Five Days at Memorial details a chilling view of failure resulting from lack of situational awareness among other things post-Katrina.) 

As a somewhat trivial example, we were isolated for a time during the aftermath of Florence by flooded and washed out roads; we were like a little island.  I became so focused on feeding us with what I had in the house that I was not paying attention to when roads began opening with new detour routes to the grocery store. 

It is easy in a disaster to focus on what we need to do to survive and recover.  That is important and necessary.  Those who have lost everything are rightfully attending to their own problems.  But they, too, need situational awareness. They don’t have to do everything themselves.  There are organizations and agencies and individuals who can help.  

And, I think, in this time we could also use some spiritual situational awareness.  It is easy to focus on our own needs, our own problems, our own issues, or those of our nearest and dearest, and pray for those.  That is important and right.  But might we also widen our circle of concern to those we don’t know, praying for them, too? Might we reach out to strangers, here at home and around the world, with tangible support – money, cleanup supplies, hands-on help where possible?  

The flood waters here are slowly receding.  The full scope of the devastation is yet to be known. One early estimate is that over 5000 structures in our county are destroyed.  There will be years and years of recovery, and some will never recover. And a world away in Indonesia, a tsunami has wiped out a whole landscape.  Hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, are dead.  Spiritual situational awareness calls us to focus on events and conditions in our wider world, to care for those in need wherever they are. 

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor is the one in need.  The first two who passed by the wounded stranger were focused on their own situations, perhaps bound by the requirements of their religion to avoid contamination.  The third man, the Samaritan, focused on the other rather than himself.  He was aware of the wider situation.  And at his own expense, he reached out to help a stranger.  

Many have done that in these recent weeks.  At their own expense – of time, money, effort, convenience – they have reached out to help strangers.  May we all find a way to do that, to focus on others with the same intensity as we focus on ourselves.  And may God bless our feeble efforts to help a hurting world.  

First, the fire ants.....

When I left Yale, the emergency management team had a little going-away party for me and gave me a hurricane preparedness kit.  They wanted me to be ready for the new kind of emergencies I might face in the south. That self-charging weather radio with lights has certainly come in handy!  They put everything they could imagine in that kit, but they missed a few things.  For a true hurricane survival kit here, you need fire ant bait and bug spray.  

Fire ants abound down here. They are especially nasty pests, aptly named because their bites burn like fire and then blister up.  By continually disturbing their mounds, we generally keep them moved to the perimeter of the farm.  But when it rains and rains and rains, they move wherever there is higher ground.  They can form rafts and float through flood waters. 

And they are everywhere, in the water, in the yard, even indoors.  So even though I tried to be careful cleaning up the yard, my hands and ankles are blistered.  And even though I am an organic gardener, I went around Saturday putting out poison.  

First the first ants, now the mosquitos.  It is impossible to walk outside without getting bitten.  Bug spray is essential.  People trying to clean up will be faced with yet another challenge, not on the magnitude of the flooding but painful in its own way.  

It is hard to imagine the suffering: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Almost Full Moon

God bless the moon and God bless me.  God bless the ones I love.
And all in the shadow of this moon -- God bless all.

I am still here -- down on the farm

The national news coverage has shifted back to other storms (the political kind…) but the storm effects continue here.  We are, thankfully, high and dry, but many of our friends and near neighbors are flooded, and the waters continue to rise.  It is hard to fathom how much water came from the hurricane.  Never in 65 years has the creek on our farm flooded the road until now.  We are able to start cleaning up with power restored and a good supply of food, buckets, rakes, and chain saws.  Others have nothing left to clean and we grieve for them.  Two years ago, Hurricane Matthew forced many from their homes, and recovery was still happening even as Florence flooded them again. This is an area with a lot of poverty; many will have nowhere to go and no money to rebuild.  It will be years, not weeks or months, before things even approach normal.  And for some, normal is gone forever.

Of Dahlias and Dogs

I've never grown dahlias until this year.  Friends would share blossoms with me, and I enjoyed them, but growing them myself seemed like too much trouble.  They are fussy flowers, needing to be planted just so when the soil is the right temperature, coddled along, staked, and tied.  And then at the end, the tubers need to be dug up, divided with an eye in each piece, sorted, stored in the right kind of material at the right temperature all winter, in order to be planted again.  I have been much more a daffodil person -- plant it and forget it!  But last summer, my dahlia-growing friend took me to a dahlia farm.  It was amazing!  I was caught up in the moment and ordered a few tubers for myself.  They arrived in the February or March, I dutifully planted them when the weather was warm, and now they are blooming!  They are beautiful, incredible in their variation.  One of my favorites (so far) is called "Wowie," and it is the perfect name!

Some years ago, I reflected on the Westminster DogShow.  The dahlias are like that, too.  They are the same genus, but the diversity is stunning. Like human beings -- all the same, all different, all beautiful in their own way.

Pictures from last summer's visit to the dahlia farm:

The Widow and the Unjust Judge

The scripture in church where I worshipped today was Luke 18:1-8, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Luke introduces the parable with the explanation that it was "about their need to pray always and not to lose heart."  In the story, the widow petitioned the judge who at first refused to hear her case.  She persisted, though, and finally he relented.  The usual interpretation is that we are the widow, and we are to persist in prayer as she did in pleading her case.  But where this is troubling for me is that it turns God into an unjust judge -- one who refuses to hear us, and only grants us relief because we are getting on his nerves. 

I have come to a different understanding of the parable, one born out in my own spiritual experience.  What if God is the widow, and I am the unjust judge?  What if God comes to me over and over again, pleading God's case, and I refuse to listen?  I am the judge, weighing God's request perhaps but without what the scripture calls "the fear of the Lord," which is, of course, the beginning of wisdom.  Instead, I judge for myself, by myself, lacking wisdom, and I turn away from the God's pleading.  But, in a full measure of grace, God refuses to give up, and eventually I am worn down, finally agreeing to do it God's way, which is ever and always the only true way. 

It has often been my experience that an offer or opportunity or idea or invitation comes in multiple ways or is repeated over and over.  When that happens, I realize that the widow is at my door and the best thing to do is open up and say yes.  

Because God is infinitely faithful and will never give up.