Interiority

"For what have I come....?"

All of creation, it seems, has been obedient to its destiny, “each mortal thing does one thing and the same . . . myself it speaks and spells, crying, ‘What I do is me, for that I came’” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’). Wouldn’t it be our last and greatest humiliation, if we one day realized that all other creatures have obeyed their destiny with a kind of humility and with trustful surrender? All except us. Center for Action and Contemplation, Daily Reflection January 8, 2012

A Mountain

I have always loved watching the Waltons. My Mother said that it was just like her family when she was growing up so I watched it trying to get a glimpse of what life must have been like for her as a girl. Later I have watched it and found such parallels with my personal understanding of ecology. In the episode, The Chicken Thief, Ben writes a poem and gets it published. Here is the poem.

A Winter Mountain

by Benjamin Walton

Our mountain in winter is something to see.

At times it is just like a person to me.

A giant in white all covered with snow.

It changes each day as the heavy winds blow.

And when I am alone and I go for a walk

It’s almost as if that old mountain can talk

It seems to say. “Welcome my winter friend;

I was here in the beginning, I’ll be here at the end.”

In the time when the TV show was written mountains would be there in the end. But in all our wisdom we have found a way to change reality. Mountains are now torn apart, blasted into dust for cheap energy in a mining operation called mountain top mining. More than 450 mountains have been destroyed in Appalachia as a result of this method. Once leveled a mountain cannot really be reclaimed. A lot of the dirt and rock is dumped in the streams which run down through the hollers in Appalachia.

I grew up at the foot of Mill Mountain in Roanoke. It is now a park with a neon star on top; not what you would call a mountain of magnificence. Never the less, Mill Mountain was my playground and it felt like a protector. Last week my granddaughter was visiting and we would go into the back yard and look up at the top watching the star come on. "I just love it here," she said. We both consider our Mill Mountain our friend. I want it to always be here for her.

From the Mouths of Babes

My 6 year old granddaughter has been telling us that we aren't to eat meat during lent and not eat much at all on Ash Wednesday. She learned this in school. We are to give up something and also do something good. She said that she had given up candy and would be taking care of the earth. Her Dad said, "Was that what you were doing when I yelled at you not to touch the trash along side the road?" "Yes, I was taking care of the earth." Of course, I beamed with pride; she has gotten the message.

We are doing Lent 4.5 at our parish this Lent. The program is a series of bulletin inserts each week on a topic that challenges us to care for creation by the way we live, what we eat, drive, and consume. www.earthandspiritcenter.org/lent45/ There is also an in-depth program that may be offered and a blog. It's one of the best organized and clearly read series I have ever seen. There is also a non denominational series.

The message has gotten through to one six year old!

It's Raining!

You may have snow in your neck of the woods; we have rain today. My pasture is ever sooooo happy. It's perfect. I got out early to plant some strawberries and to put some herbs and flower seeds in the window boxes on the deck. They said that it would rain starting at 10:00 and at 9:45 this morning down it came just as I finished my planting. We think we are so smart to know the time the rain will start, the day is predicted a week ahead. Rather than a news channel I am finding myself turning on the weather channel for news; there's as much news about our climate and weather as there is about the political climate. Has it always been this way? I remember my mother after she retired watching the weather carefully. She could tell you what was happening where ever her daughters or relatives were living. Perhaps it just my age that I seem more interested in the weather. Or perhaps it is that I am becoming more "grounded", more in tune with the earth itself.

In a recent on-line retreat I was asked to select a word for this coming year. After some prayer and contemplation it did come and the word is "grounding". What this means for me in the coming months will unfold as time passes. I see "grounding" as part of the connection we have to all creation. It's that knowing we have that we were created from the earth and carry the same elements as the ground that now nourishes us. God gave to the first man the name of Adam which is taken from the word adamah meaning"soil".

The "grounding" has first come alive as of yesterday when we planted grass in one of our pastures. This meant that first the entire acre and half was plowed; followed by raking it smooth. Next the seed went down and then another raking. Driving the fifteen year old Kabota is a meditation in itself with the drone of its engine drowning out all other sounds. The air was cool and the smell of the earth wafting upward was delightful. A ten foot piece of chain link fencing had been secured to the back of the tractor weighted with some fence posts and adjusted for depth by adding concrete blocks. Smoothing out our lives often requires some heavily weighted tow. As we struggle with the load we learn and eventually things smooth themselves out. "Avoid sharp turns," I was told. I consider what it is like to avoid sharp turns in life. The past few weeks are seen my life take several sharp turns and it throws me off track so the plans don't get done and all thoughts insistently jump into the past and the future.

Since the pasture is rectangular I started on one edge following the fence line down one side, cutting up the middle, and coming down by the first cut then going up the far side of the middle track. This process took awhile to get right; if one is not focused, the track is easily taken on the wrong side of the first track or we ended up by the far fence. I finished the first raking. Since putting down the seed required even more skill it was handed off to a more accomplished tractor handler. This made the second raking a snap. All I had to do was follow the tire tracks made when there was no rake involved.

Doesn't it always seem easier to follow a track in life when someone else has gone before? However, that someone else may be off tract or we see an easier track and decided to change the path. Knowing when it it our decision and not just following another is necessary for a successful journey.

Now the pasture is planted and we are praying for rain.

The WEB

Who's My Neighbor?

We heard that in last week's Gospel reading. A scholar asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus said to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). The scholar having heard the story asks, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "The one who treated him with mercy."

This seems to be especially meaningful this week. I've written about the Front Porch Fridays where the neighbors gather every Friday night in the summer. It has become evident that one of our neighbors was not who she proclaimed to be and is now serving time in jail. Shock resonated through our group and we spend an extra ordinate about of time decompressing on my front porch. How do we respond?

It has been so apparent about how much our actions effect those around us. We suffer because of the things others do. We are not little islands that have no impact on the world but every move makes a difference to someone or something else. It's the Interconnectedness of life. It's the Web in which we weave our lives.