Solitude’s Gift of Grace
April 21, 2023 By 8 Comments

Solitude’s Gift of Grace

Last week I made an impromptu visit to a state park. My sister and her husband are avid birdwatchers, and while I’m not, they suggested we could enjoy dinners and evenings together after having filled the day with what feeds our souls.

The simple change of scenery lifted my spirits. While the lodge that sat on the edge of Maumee Bay and Lake Erie had no long beach to walk, there was a large body of water. Constant wind off the lake lifted and swayed the graceful branches of weeping willows just beginning to bloom. And though the boardwalk and marshy land around it had changed drastically since my last visit decades ago, it provided a place very different than my suburban neighborhood to walk and observe nature.

I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d fill my time, so I brought Mary Oliver’s collection of poetry, Thirst, colored pencils and watercolors, a sketch pad and journals, and pastries from my favorite bakery. Even though I live alone, the solitude and quiet offered by this space felt different, more intentional.

In the mornings I sat outside on the small patio sipping coffee and eating a palmier. I read the first half of Mary Oliver’s poems aloud, imagining the wind carrying the words to the dancing willow trees, the Canada Goose on the pond, and skimming them across the water. The words, like Tibetan prayer flags, releasing grace as the wind blew them along.

An arthritic knee kept my walks on the short side, but I took lots of them. White tail deer and I startled one another along the marshy patch where they were wading and nibbling tender sprouts. A muskrat, finding the spring greens irresistible too, pushed aside watery plants, leaving dark trails behind. A black snake slithered from rock into water, smoothly curving its body this way and that and disappeared into leafy growth on the opposite side. Turtles sunned themselves on a log. Ducks hung around in little cove, and birds flitted from branch to branch.

I ended up with some sketches—the bench beneath the willows, my mug of coffee and a palmier resting on a napkin, a small feast I required myself to draw before eating it, and buds of the willow and a tree I’d need leaves to identify—none great art, but I did pay more attention to how the palmier dough was looped into its butterfly shape and how leaves and buds appear in the spring. The process was a mindfulness exercise reminding me of a favorite book, The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation by Frederic Franck.

bench under three willows by lake
pen sketch palmier and mug
sketch of willow and other bud

I read all of Thirst, pondering some lines: “My work is loving the world / …  which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished….” (from “Messenger”); “And they call again, ‘It’s simple’ they say, / ‘and you too have come / into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled / with light and to shine.’” (from “When I Am Among the Trees”)

I ate a delicious walleye dinner and some creamy Easter chocolate from home. My sister, her husband, and I watched the new episode of Ted Lasso and shared walks and conversation in the evenings.

All in all, a lovely time. I didn’t accomplish anything particular. But that was the point. What I needed. To be still with myself and with God, wasting time together with no goal in mind other than being who I am.

Too often these days, I am overwhelmed with sadness and anger and a sense of not being enough. I think many of us struggle with this. It’s easy when we live in a world where so much is broken. Where suffering and injustice surround us, and we feel powerless to change it. Where communication and connection are fraught by deep ideological divisions, both political and religious. And then there is Covid, still hanging around.

When I returned home, I listened to this season’s last podcast of On Being’s with Krista Tippett and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, titled “To Be A Healer.” His words resonated, as if he had known just why I needed that short time away.

Dr. Murthy said he believed our greatest source of strength comes from our ability to give and receive love. He talked about the importance of having a sense of self-worth, of trusting who we are and what we hold inside. Our mental health, he suggests, is the fuel we need to function at our best. We need a “full tank” to be present to ourselves, to one another, to our communities, and to the world.

Sometimes I’m running on fumes.

He suggested four things to help people improve their overall sense of wellbeing and social connection that combat the stress of loneliness and disconnect with ourselves and others. Listen to the podcast to hear them all. The last surprised me: Solitude. It shouldn’t have. Isn’t that what intentional quiet time, quiet prayer, or meditation is? His explanation: “The solitude is important because it’s in moments of solitude, when we allow the noise around us to settle, that we can truly reflect, that we can find moments in our life to be grateful for.”

For me, it’s also a time to be still and open to the Grace always given. A time, as Mary Oliver’s trees suggested, to be filled with light and to shine.

What are your times? Where are your places?

Sources

Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

Messenger by Mary Oliver

The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation  by Frederic Franck

Vivek Murthy: To Be A Healer   Interview On Being with Krista Tippett

Photos: Mary van Balen

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What the Trees Had to Say on Thanksgiving
November 29, 2022 By 6 Comments

What the Trees Had to Say on Thanksgiving

Recently I stood witness as the old maple tree in my front yard was taken down. Losing a tree is always sad, but, in a neighborhood – not a forest – it is sometimes necessary. Rot had set in, sending the largest branch crashing to the ground barely missing a neighbor’s truck and sprawling across the lawn to the building next door. With winter snow, ice, and wind ahead, the tree was too dangerous to leave standing.

Still, knowing that didn’t make the event easier to watch.

A team of five men arrived early in the morning. What took decades to grow took only an hour to reduce to a stump. I thought it should have taken longer – out of respect. Some ritual. Some acknowledgement of the gift it has been. It’s not our way.

The men were efficient. One wielding a chainsaw from his perch in the cherry-picker’s bucket, cut away small branches and larger limbs, deftly guiding them to avoid cables and wires as they fell to the ground. Once one hit the yard, another man picked it up and fed it to the shredder parked along the curb. Woodchips and dust blew in the air like snow.

Standing in my neighbor’s driveway, I felt the ground shudder when larger limbs fell, and sadness welled in my heart for an old friend’s demise. Observing it over the years, I learned much. Did you know that some tree buds contain leaves, some flowers, and some protect both through winters until spring warmth coaxes them open? The tree led me to books and the internet where I learned that in winter, maples store sap in their branches, not roots as I had thought.  (Read my column, Greening Nature and Spirits.)

Close up of maple tree buds opening with emergent leaves and flowers.

Its branches provided shelter for birds and squirrels. Once I spied a tiny hummingbird nest. In every season the maple provided interesting lines and colors outside the living room window. In summer the leaves bestowed welcome shade.

Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, has proven that trees communicate with each other, linked in part by tiny fungal mycelium. They “talk” and cooperate. Forests, her studies reveal, are wired for wisdom and care. (See Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. You can listen to her interview with Krista Tippett, Forests Are Wired for Wisdom on an OnBeing podcast.)

I looked at the tree, now mostly trunk, and saw it isolated, not in a forest community that shares nutrients, nurture, and protection, but on my suburban street. Trees stand in most of the yards, but they are carefully spaced and part of landscaped patches of grass and sometimes gardens. Most of the lawns are doused with chemicals to keep “pests” and unwanted vegetation under control – all of which, if allowed to live and grow, would create a more healthful environment.

I wondered if the tree might have been stronger if its roots had been part of a rich, woodland network and felt embarrassed that for years I took it for granted, unaware of the challenges solitary trees encounter when planted by well-meaning humans whose preferences for carpet-like lawns and manicured yards do great harm to the life that exits under our feet, out of sight.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is trunk-sections-showing-rot-1024x929.jpg

The chainsaw growled, and with every falling branch and every cut into the trunk, I wondered if the maple next door, clearly near the same age as the one being taken down, was aware of what was happening to its neighbor. Had it been sharing carbon and nutrients with it over the years? What of the other trees growing along the street. What were they “hearing”? Were they grieving? Had they known this old maple was diseased?

Now, when I see the short stump left in the yard, I think, “people and trees have a lot in common.” Not just the chemicals used to communicate, one through an underground network of roots and living organisms, the other through the brain’s neural network. Not just some bits of DNA that we share. But our shared need for others. Trees and people do better in community. We seek it out. Sometimes it’s found in families. Or groups of friends. Or in churches or other organizations.

Mother trees described in Simard’s book gather energy with their huge crown of leaves and send it through their roots into the network where it’s shared with seedlings struggling to grow beneath the canopy’s shade until they, too have energy to contribute to the network. Young human beings need the care and nurture of their elders. Wrapped in an environment of love and acceptance where they can grow and thrive, the young mature, and eventually contribute to the larger community themselves.

Life doesn’t always work out that way. Like solitary trees, some people feel very much alone. Human environments can be harmful, even toxic. Unlike trees that function as they are made to do, human beings, for all kinds of reasons, can be decidedly dysfunctional. Still, we are made for love and belonging, and we flourish when immersed in it. Pandemic isolation made that painfully clear.

On this past Thanksgiving day, my daughters, partners, and I were able to be together, a rare gift. I thought of mom and dad, their love, and the family they created. My daughters and I have grown in the grace of that love and have added our own to it, expanding its reach further, to others in our lives and into the world.

As we gathered around the table, I sat for a minute in silence, reaching into my heart for a before-meal blessing. The familiar words, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,” wouldn’t do. I was mindful of the sacrifice of plants and animals and well as the work of human hands that put food on our shared table. The loss of the tree heightened my appreciation for all creation, for the mystery and intelligence of life that we humans do not recognize. Most of all, it deepened my awareness of the interconnectedness of all things and our need for one another. I felt gratitude for the precious community of my family.

Concern stirred for our human companions, many suffering from violence and poverty, traveling on this planet that teems with life of every sort and groans under the weight of abuse and short-sighted policies. All life deserves reverence and love. Glimpses of the universe, time, and space we see through the James Webb Space Telescope images reveal how little we know, how much is mystery.

NASA Webb image Stephan's Quintet shows an Interacting Galaxy Group
Stephan’s Quintet Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

I don’t remember what words I spoke before we started passing food around. Something about gratitude and longing for nourishing community for all. They were few and simple, not important themselves. It’s love, moving from the heart to the world, that counts.

May we embrace Creation as a whole, / and become attuned to all the world; / May we be blessing to the universe, and / see divinity in the within and / the without of all things.

from Psalm106 in Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness by Nan C. Merrill
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Open-Hearted Presence
January 27, 2022 By 10 Comments

Open-Hearted Presence

And I always say, if there’s one thing you want to do as an adult to become a better listener, take a preschooler — someone who hasn’t gone to school and been taught how to listen by focusing attention, which is actually controlled impairment, but a preschooler who’s still taking in the whole world — hoist them onto your shoulders, and go for a night walk. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about becoming a better listener.

And if you have the good fortune of going for a walk up a nature trail with a child, the younger they are, the more pointless it seems to go any further, because the miracles are right here. Let’s just sit down, don’t worry about the exercise or the goals … Gordon Hempton*

Being the mother of three, now adult children as well as being an educator, listening to Hempton’s description of encountering the world with very young children elicited many wonderful memories of similar experiences. Days after hearing the podcast, I participated in a small Zoom book club meeting with friends who have been exploring topics of contemplative prayer and mysticism. During the conversation about what being a contemplative means, how one might “pray always,” and how to nurture the desire for God above all else, some offered images of hermits and cloistered nuns. Of Buddhists who can sit for hours at a time in meditation. Some expressed the impossibility of letting go “all things earthly” or emptying themselves completely.

These images made me restless. Not that there was no truth in them, but that they seemed to suggest contemplative prayer involved compete withdrawal from the world. The contemplative souls I have known, read, or studied did not fit those descriptions. Gordon Hempton’s description of a young child experiencing the world did.

Just as a child is schooled in listening by “focusing attention,” many of us have been “schooled” in praying by adopting prescribed practices, following rituals, or learning particular prayers. In elementary school, teachers told me that prayers came in three main varieties: petitionary prayers (help), intercessory prayers (help someone else or some larger cause), and prayers of praise (adoring God for being God). Of course, the church has a rich tradition of contemplative prayer, but other than the true but rather nebulous (to a nine-year-old anyway ) definition offered by the old Baltimore Catechism—prayer is lifting the mind and heart to God—what I remember being taught is the list.

Why didn’t I hear “God’s your friend who cares about you. Talk to God about anything you want.” Thich Naht Hanh wrote that the heart of Buddhist teaching is “I am here for you.” That’s the kind of God I experienced as a child. It’s where I was then. And by some grace, that’s where I’ve stayed. Of course, one’s prayer deepens and matures as one grows, but the basic truth remains: Prayer is relationship with God who cares. It is connection with the Holy One. With Love manifest in others and in all creation.

Being taught to narrowly focus attention, whether in experiencing nature or in prayer, is important at some point, but not at the expense of the wide, open-hearted approach to both. That’s what I loved about Hempton’s description of the young child in nature. Complete openness. Forgetting self and letting it all in. Drowning in the glory of it all.

The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh in You Are Here

Hempton’s observation that once on a walk, a very young child needn’t take another step “… because the miracles are right here” is another way of expressing the truth of the ever-presence of the Sacred in our lives. Grace is in the moment. Not tomorrow. Not even 15 minutes ago. Now.

And while I often imagine that God is more easily met on a slow walk along the ocean’s coast than in my apartment or neighborhood, the truth is that God is met not somewhere else, but HERE, wherever “here” is at the moment.  

Mystics and contemplatives of all ages and faiths know this. As Thornton Wilder reminds his readers, poets and saints recognize the beauty and mystery of every ordinary moment. I made a vow to myself in high school English class, the first time I read Our Town, that one way or another, I would be a saint or a poet. I would not let the glory of the moment slip by.

Decades later, I confess to not living up to that promise every day. But I do remember it, honor it as best I can, and when I fall short, remember that besides being a sacrament of encounter, life is also a journey. Step at a time.

May we learn from the youngest among us and not make it more complicated than it is!

PHOTOS: Mary van Balen

SOURCE: Gordon Hempton in conversation with Krista Tippett on OnBeing podcast: Silence and the Presence of Everything.

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James Webb Space Telescope and “Holy Curiosity”
January 2, 2022 By 4 Comments

James Webb Space Telescope and “Holy Curiosity”

Early Christmas morning, I shut off the alarm and lay in bed, still tired after a late night. My cell phone dinged. Ahh, a daughter checking to see if I were watching NASA’s coverage of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch. Events like this are a family thing, shared virtually, often with a toast to celebrate success. I texted back, “Just getting up. Turning on the computer.” Too early for wine, tea was my drink of choice.

What a Christmas gift! After three decades of imagination, development, and global teamwork, the deep space telescope designed to give humanity a glimpse back in time to the beginnings of the universe was ready to launch. The European spaceport is in Kourou, French Guiana, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest near the equator. NASA TV provided stunning images: The Arian 5 rocket towering above the trees. A fiery liftoff. And a final a view of the James Webb, separated from the final stage of the rocket and moving past the earth toward deep space.

Humanity’s Last Glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope
 Credit: Arianespace, ESA, NASA, CSA, CNES

Watching broadcasts of space missions is always emotional for me. In 2017, twenty years after beginning its journey of discovery of around Saturn and its moons, the spacecraft Cassini sent its final images as it dove into the planet’s atmosphere. I stopped preparing dinner and gave full attention to my laptop perched on the microwave, streaming coverage. When the last image disappeared and Cassini burned up like a meteor, I cried.

Watching the JWST launch was no different. The scope and complexity of the mission. The passion to explore the universe. The cooperation of thousands of people and space agencies around the globe. The perseverance to work through setbacks. The vulnerability of broadcasting the event despite possible failure. These things stir the soul.

Imagine, a telescope so big that it was folded like intricate origami to fit into the faring that protected it as it punctured a hole in the atmosphere. Imagine, a giant mirror over 21 feet across and a multi-layered sunshield unfolding like butterflies emerging from their chrysalises.

NASA: Animation by Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

Imagine. Someone did. Lots of people did. Their curiosity, skill, and determination led to the launch of the telescope that won’t stop until it reaches a spot along the sun-earth axis over a million miles away.

Images of the launch and NASA’s informative videos have stayed with me, feeding my sense of wonder. During the past week it drew me to poetry, books, and podcasts that explore in different ways the secrets of the universe, our place in it, and the mystery of faith.

After the launch, I pulled out an old coffee table book, The Home Planet, a collection of magnificent photos and reflections of space explorers who have orbited the Earth. Many wrote of a heightened appreciation of the interconnectedness of all things on earth and the overwhelming beauty of our planet after viewing it against the black emptiness of space. Looking through its pages, I marveled at the evolution of space exploration, culminating in JWST’s million-mile journey. Will its revelations move humanity closer to acknowledging the interdependence of all creation? Will it move those on earth to take better care of the planet? Will this encounter with the inconceivable immensity and complexity of the universe foster humility as well as expand knowledge?

Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, said after the launch, “The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers!”

I wondered, in my own life, how willing I am to admit that I don’t understand? Not only the workings of the universe, but closer to home, realities at work in everyday life. There is much I don’t know or can’t even imagine. For instance, the history and effects of systemic racism and oppression of the marginalized in this country. Am I delving deeper? Educating myself? How willing am I to listen to the truth spoken by those kept on the edges of society? Do I have the humility to hear, to listen with the ear of the heart? To be transformed by it?

Poetry was my next reading stop. Mary Oliver’s “Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?” speaks of looking long and deep:

There are things you can’t reach. But

you can reach out to them, and all day long…

… I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking, I mean not just standing around, but standing around

     as though with your arms open…

I imagined the arms of the JWST open wide, gathering energy of the sun. The giant golden eye of a mirror, looking out, slowly gathering in light from billions of years ago. And I thought of my standing with open arms and open heart, ready to receive the Grace of Divine Presence. It’s often not visible or obvious to me, but God is no less present for my inability to perceive. The important thing is to develop a practice of openness “all day long,” never being done with looking.

When it arrives at its destination almost a month after launch, JWST will be carefully positioned in the second Lagrange point that allows it to orbit the sun while remaining in the shadow of the earth. In this place, JWTS’s sunshield will protect it from heat and light from the sun, earth, moon, and even from itself! This is critical for the collection of faint infrared light, a process easily disrupted by other sources of light or heat.

I often think of a comment made by Michael McGregor, author of Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax. When asked if Lax would want others to emulate his life, McGregor was quick to respond. No. What was important to Lax was that people find a place where grace flows for them and put themselves there often.

Grace flows in different places for everyone. Even in different places at different times in a single individual’s life. Putting oneself there is important. The “place” could be simply silence or meditation. Time in the woods, along a beach, taking long walks, or gazing at the night sky. It could be working at a food pantry or homeless shelter, or having conversation with a good friend. Journaling. Painting. We need to spend time in places that shield us from too much “interference” of all types—even from ourselves. To be free of things that hinder the reception of Love, constantly shared, drenching creation.

Sometimes finding that place is not going somewhere. It’s just a matter of turning the heart.

In a conversation with Krista Tippett, Jeff Chu shared some wisdom from the new book he worked on with Rachel Held Evans and which he finished after her death in 2019. Wholehearted Faith was published last month.  Speaking about the need for more love, tenderness, and fierce advocacy for justice, he said, “… And so many of us just need a little reminder from time to time that love is there. Love is there if you pay attention. Love is there if you turn your hearts just a little bit.”

Standing under the night sky allows me to “turn my heart,” to open to Love.

In his comments after the launch, Bill Nelson recalled the words of Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows his handiwork.”

Indeed, God’s splendor is on display in the stars and galaxies and mysterious beauty of the cosmos. The incarnation celebrated during the Christmas season, this embodied Presence, has inspirited creation from the moment the universe began and continues in every person, creature, and bit of matter here or millions of miles in space.

Just as we cannot imagine how the discoveries of the JWST will affect humanity’s science, spirits, or way of living, we cannot imagine the transforming power of the ongoing incarnation.

The human drive to explore the galaxies, using every bit of human knowledge, skill, and talents is fueled by curiosity and wonder.

Searching our hearts and all that is around us. Paying attention. Looking for the Sacred in our midst. This passion is driven by the longing for meaning, for God, and by the desire to know that we are part of a story far bigger than ourselves. One we can never fully comprehend.

As expressed in Wholehearted Faith, “… many of us have found a renewed sense of possibility when we’ve realized how much of God’s beauty remains to be explored — and that the life of faith is also a life of holy curiosity.”

Thank you NASA and its global partners for an extraordinary Christmas gift, one that reminds us to wonder, to search, and to expect the unexpected. Not only in our universe, but also in our experience of God-with-us.

SOURCES AND RESOURCES

Books

The Home Planet: Conceived and edited by Kevin W. Kelley for the Association of Space Explorers

“Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?” in Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu

Online

OnBeing with Krista Tippet 12/23/21 Jeff Chu: A Life of Holy Curiosity

NASA JWST Sites – Follow links for more information, images, and videos of the JWST

James Webb Space Telescope Homepage

NASA’s Webb Blog where you can keep up with new information

JWST launch:  Official NASA Broadcast on YouTube

James Webb Space Telescope: Goddard Space Flight Center

Where is Webb

About Webb Orbit

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“Green” Wisdom from Hildegard
September 17, 2021 By 12 Comments

“Green” Wisdom from Hildegard

Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision, dictating to her scribe and sketching on wax tablet. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Waking in the early morning hours and unable to return to sleep, I toasted whole wheat bread and brewed chamomile tea: comfort food. I read a little, but eventually focused on the lovely, golden liquid in a favorite mug. I cradled the cup in my hands, the heat relieving aching joints in my fingers. Every sip warming my body.

I thought of Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval mystic, who counted among her long list of creative accomplishments authoring a book, Physica, that outlined the healing properties of natural elements, including plants.

While drinking my tea, I imagined Hildegard in her monastery’s garden harvesting herbs and making an infusion to ease someone’s pain. “Did she drink chamomile tea?” I wondered. Likely. If not, something similar.

Hildegard has been on my mind. For the past couple of weeks, thanks to a small book club, I’ve been immersed in her music and writings, reading both some of her original work and books written about her. She was a medieval Benedictine nun and mystic, canonized a saint and named a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church in 2012 (one of only four women recognized with that title). The list of her accomplishments would be amazing for a modern woman but is staggering considering the times in which she lived: visionary, prophet, poet, theologian, author, artist, composer, dramatist, preacher, healer, and an inexhaustible correspondent.

Her feast day is September 17 on both the Roman and Anglican calendars. To celebrate, I listened to a recording of clear voices singing songs she composed over 800 years ago and baked Hildegard’s “cookies of joy,” filling the kitchen with the aromas of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. Hildegard provides a recipe of sorts and writes in Physica that these cookies, made with spelt flour, the spices above, and water, should be eaten often to lift the spirit and soothe the mind.

My kind of saint. She also liked beer and had recipes using wine infused with herbs to treat various maladies.

Eat them often. It will calm all bitterness of the heart and mind, open your heart and impaired senses, and make your mind cheerful. It purifies your senses and diminishes all harmful humors in you. It gives good liquid to your blood and makes you strong.

Hildegard of Bingen in Physica

But food isn’t what’s drawing me to her. It’s her experience of God in all things and all things in God. She had many names for God including Wisdom, Sapientia, the Word, the Holy Spirit. God’s life, viriditas, greenness flowing through everything that is. Like all mystics, she saw the wholeness of creation.

In The Windows of Faith: Prayers of Holy Hildegard, editor Walburga Storch, O.S.B. writes that for Hildegard, “The Spirit is the ‘life of life.’ For Hildegard life has a comprehensive meaning. Concretely and first of all it is creation. ‘Through you the clouds waft and the breezes blow, stones drip and brooks burst forth from their springs, making green things sprout from the earth.’ All creation in every one of its processes has to do with the life-giving Spirit of God. Wherever we encounter life we can experience the Spirit’s power and we are moved by God. ‘Life of the life of all created things, … you give life to every form” (17).

I have pulled Hildegard books off my office shelves to read her insights into the connectedness of all things – with one another and with God. Human beings are co-creators with God, she writes, and have responsibility to reverence and take care of the earth. Modern-day scientists reveal concrete evidence of nature’s interdependence. For example, Suzanne Simard, professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, has shown through her research that trees communicate with each other and that the forest is not a collection of plants but rather a whole, a single organism. This is much like the wisdom and science of Aboriginal peoples-and mystics. (Her book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was released earlier this year. You can listen to her interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being.”)

Whidbey Island
Photo: Mary van Balen
Whidbey Island
Photo: Mary van Balen

Not only scientists, but also poets, religious and world leaders, and concerned citizens are pleading for responsible care for creation.  But, in addition to people speaking out and working for meaningful responses to the climate crisis, there are others working to slow down or stop efforts to address climate change and unsustainable lifestyles. Some have ties to the fossil fuel industries (mining companies, lobbyists, corporations, politicians, etc.) and stand to profit personally from continued extraction and use of destructive energy sources.

On Hildegard’s feast, I am spending time with her music and writings. Pondering what I can do to live more responsibly. I’ll share dinner and my Hildegard cookies with friends and celebrate the Love that gives life and connects us all.

Scivias 1.6: The Choirs of Angels. From Rupertsberg manuscript, fol. 38r.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Quotes from Hildegard’s work that speak to the gift of creation, the challenges, and the opportunities of our times:

“All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun.”

“Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.” 

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.

“Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.” 

“Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

“Praise of Wisdom

O power of Wisdom / you drew your circles, / encompassed the universe / on the one road / that leads to life. // You have three powers / like three wings: / The one carries you to the heights; / the second lifts itself from the earth; / but the third beats everywhere. // O Wisdom, to you all praise is due!”

Links to Hildegard’s Cookie recipes:

St. Hildegard Cookies

Saint Hildegard’s Cookies of Joy

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Hope in Quiet Places
July 29, 2021 By 8 Comments

Hope in Quiet Places

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. John 6: 1-1-2

Before the hungry crowd followed Jesus up the mountain, he’d been busy walking with his disciples back and forth from Jerusalem to Judea to Galilee. Teaching. Surprising a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. He preached the kingdom of God, but stories of healings and other signs often took center stage.

People are attracted to the spectacular. The crowds wanted to see Jesus and if they were lucky, maybe something wondrous. Despite the long walk and needing to eat, they were excited. Who knew what this man might do or say?

Even today, people often look for hope outside themselves. They look for it in miracles, in charismatic leaders. They listen for what someone can do for them personally or for the community. They want someone with power to fix the big things. But hope is elusive.

Today natural and human-made realities threaten the well-being not only of individuals, groups, cities, and nations, but of the planet itself. Information – false as well as true – travels at lightning speed around the globe while genuine connection between people, parties, or factions, becomes more and more difficult.

Watching testimony given by four Capitol police about their harrowing experiences during the January 6 insurrection is illustrative. With emotion and passion, these men shared the horror that unfolded as they were trying to protect those within the Capitol. While they were addressing the select committee, six Republican House members gathered in front of the Department of Justice. One, Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ), referred to the insurgents as mistreated political prisoners. “These are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals.”

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

While cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant are soaring, many people still question the reality of the virus and its threat, refusing to be vaccinated or to wear masks. Attempts by governments, businesses, or schools to require one or both of those preventative measures are assailed as “overreaching.” “Individual rights” is the battle cry.

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

The world continues to warm. Fires, floods, and violent storms wreak havoc and intensify in number, strength, and destructiveness. Systemic racism and violence against people of color continue. Yet some rail against teaching children the truth of this country’s history that would facilitate acknowledgement of the past and strengthen the resolve to move forward together.

Laws marginalizing LGBTQ people are proposed and passed. Refugees are turned away. The list goes on. The nation and the world are at a tipping point. Who wouldn’t want a miracle worker to fix it all?

Almost everything and everyone changing the world now is what we’ve forever referred to as “under the radar.” The radar is broken.

Krista Tippett in Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

But Jesus wasn’t about quick fixes then, or now. His life and wonders pointed toward something else. They were signs, not solutions.

When events pleased the crowd, they wanted to make him king. When his message was about loving your enemy, serving others, living with humility and compassion, the crowds thinned. Eventually, the power brokers set him up and murdered him, and crowds shouted their approval.

Hope isn’t found in flash or miracles. So, where is it?

In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Krista Tippet devotes the final chapter to hope. She writes about the healing power of seemingly insignificant acts done by people who will never make the headlines. Small acts come together in ways not visible.

In Jesus’s day nameless women and men carried his message and made it the most transformational message in history not only by what they said or wrote but by how they lived. Early followers pooled their goods and gave it away, making sure their neighbors had what they needed. Ordinary people doing good things made a difference. The world is slowly transformed the same way today.

Look for hope in quiet places.

When I do, I find it. There’s a small group not far from me reimagining church, gathering people together to share stories, to grow and cook healthy food, to worship around a table. They come to know and care about one another and hope to transform their struggling community.

Every day, a retired teacher takes food, clothing, and children’s books when he can get them, to those in need but without the means to get to a food pantry.  

Electronic neighborhood “bulletin boards” connect people with things they no longer want with people who can use them. The free exchange keeps “stuff” out of landfills and people from shopping for new, breaking the consumeristic cycle.

It’s not that we can’t find hope in bigger movements begun by people of privilege or money or power. It can happen. It must happen. In some arenas, like government, leaders must step up. But hope rises mostly in quiet places, a response to struggle and need.

It’s tempting to look to others for solutions. But we must also look within and around and together. Hope is in connections. It’s a choice. An orientation. A practice. It grows when we notice the good not just the bad and don’t slip into an easy cynicism that recognizes only failures and saps energy and the will to do something.

This week someone sent me her video of ants moving a dead wasp across a sidewalk and up a steep step, impressed by their strength. I watched and agreed. Ants can lift and carry 50 times their own weight – the smaller the ant, the more it can carry. (A physicist friend called this the “square-cube law” in case you want to look it up.)

While watching, I suddenly realized the obvious: no one ant was moving that wasp. A swarm was. They were working together to do what none of them, no matter how strong, could do alone.

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: , , , , ,
Faith and Science: What do they have to say to each other?
January 18, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Faith and Science: What do they have to say to each other?

Global Cluster M15 from Hubble. Image Credit: ESA, Hubble, NASA

Global Cluster M15 from Hubble. Image Credit: ESA, Hubble, NASA

When she was about five, my daughter couldn’t sleep. When I checked in on her before turning in myself, I found her thoughtfully gazing at the glow-in-the-dark moon that looked back at her from the ceiling above her bed.

I asked what was on her mind she confided her conundrum: faith and science. Some people said people lived with dinosaurs and that the earth was not that old and that God created it in seven days. Science told her differently.

“I love God, but I love science, too. I don’t know which one to choose.”

Not “Good Night Moon” conversation. I assured her that she didn’t have to choose between them. That the Bible isn’t a science book. That it tells stories to help us understand that somehow, God started creation. That faith and science both search for truth and that they will both lead to God.

She slept, and I wondered what she might ask tomorrow.

Faith and Science. What do they have to say to each other? This question has been around for centuries. Are we better listeners now? I found this article, Conversations on the Intersections between Faith and Science, by Trent Gilliss on Bill Moyers.com. It is a selection of audio interviews from Krista Tippett’s NPR show, On Being. This collection provides links to her interviews with a variety of guests including two Jesuit astronomers from the Vatical Observatory and  Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies who are both theoretical physicists discussing Einstein’s God. Bookmark this because the audio are fifty some minutes long, and you will want to return to listen to each of them. Unless, of course, you have a day to give to listening and pondering these questions and your own experiences of how faith and science can inform each other. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

 

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,