OLD BOOKS

I have spent several years giving away books. When I retired as a professor, I had so little room for books at home I gave away 75% of my books. As I have lived in the smaller space of my home office, I have, on several occasions given away more books. This has not been easy.

It is painful because books are more than paper and print. Words are like friends who impact and sometimes change our lives. They are the ideas of people who have taken hours and days, months and years organizing thought about life and death. They are stories of the heart and insights of the soul. They are filled with words that, woven like threads of grace, become woven into the story and soul of the reader.

So, when I give away books, I give away my visible connection with the souls who have poured themselves out self-giving sacrifice for me. They gave the time and the spirit that life had given them and used their life to inform, entertain, inspire and enrich my life. Having them on shelves around my office reminds me of the gifts that others give freely to each other.

And, being wrapped in the wall paper of books also reminds me that I am not alone in my struggle to live well. To be human is to live life. To live life is to try to make sense of what happens in life. To be religious humans is to be interested in what life means. My books were attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to name the mystery, to appreciate the complexity, to clarify the confusing. 

So, I am reducing number of books around me. And as I do, I sit in awe of the incredible human capacity to live, to seek, to share and to joy in the love of that life.

SHADOWS

Shadows lengthen. Night comes earlier and morning later. We sat in the sun this afternoon, soaking up the last of the warmth. Temperatures begin to drop tonight and stay south of 50 for at least the next 10 days.

We rolled up the garden hoses, de-leaved the gutters, emptied the potted plants on the deck. The winter hiking clothes are neatly stashed in the trunk of my car so, come what may, I will be out in the healing creation.

Outside is getting tucked in as we prepare for the darker, colder season of the year. The question is now before us, “How do we prepare our insides for this time?”

Along with wood brought from the woodpile to the staging area closer to the door, it is time to start making plans for warming our home with healing connections. It is time to make plans for friends to come and eat and drink with us. It is time to plan a couple of parties for family land friends. It is time to clean out the closet again and give more unworn clothes for those who have no warm clothes and too many of them who have no warm shelter.

And it is time to slow and settle into the darker days and let them speak to us. New seeds can germinate in space where there isn’t too much light. Hints of hope can sprout in the mystery of broken suffering. Insights can flicker into candle light, maybe even brighter light to clarify future’s path.

Winter is waiting. May it be a blessing.

HIJACKED

I hate it when something I love gets hijacked and taken hostage for political reasons.

I love language and in this (and every) political season, it seems language loses it’s complex and interesting meaning and gets simplified for political gain. I want to rescue a phrase that I think has been hijacked. The phrase is “traditional family values.”

Now I come from a family that might be categorized as traditional (although I always thought everyone else’s families were more normal).  Mother, father and five children. We lived in a small town and played little league and the piano. We went to church, sometimes 2 or 3 times on Sunday and again on Wednesday.

And these are the traditional family values I learned: kindness; love; sharing; generosity; forgiveness; welcoming strangers; keeping promises; conserving resources; recycling clothes, paper and anything else that could be used till it unraveled; telling the truth; doing justice; showing mercy; being humble; making commitments; loving in sickness and health; caring for orphans and widows; equal opportunity; open mindedness.

And I know people who are in families that some in the political world would not call traditional (although statistics show that there are more of these kinds of families now than the kind I grew up in). These are families with a single parent; with two fathers; with two mothers; no parents; children raised in extended families with aunts and uncles; grandparents raising grandchildren; one biological parent and one step-parent; adopted parents and children, etc. And the values I learned are being taught in these families. These social groupings are the laboratories where we learn how to live with others and how to create complex and caring societies.

So, I want the phrase back. In my family, the values I learned create a compassionate and merciful society for all. They help form a generous place of grace and equality.  I want these values in the society for my children and grandchildren—and for your children and grandchildren (whoever you are and however you structure your family.)

SHAG CARPET

As I hiked through the forest today, I was overcome with a sense of peace. The hillside rolled out in front of me and the brown, gold, yellow and red leaves covered it like a shag carpet. At first I wondered if my sense of contentment was nostalgia, remembering that shag carpet that covered our family room years ago.  But as I pondered, I realized it was more than that. 

I realize that hiking in the fall brings me a sense of peace because of the changing seasons. Spring brings the wispy green, summer the heavy canopy of shade. But fall is a season of endings. The leaves have done their summer work and are now letting go their tenacious hold on the fingers of the tree. They are singing their colors as they shower the earth. There they lie, pelted with rain, decaying with death, soon to be swallowed in the earth.

But what gives me a sense of peace is that they do not disappear. They simply morph into the stuff of which life is made. They take their nourishment and mingle it with others to empower the future of life.

Life is lived one leaf at a time. We speak words, we act. We love, we hate, we nurture and we undermine. We share and we grasp, we give and we hold on. All of these moments in our lives do not last. They finally fall into the” ground of being” and they nurture what is becoming. They empower what can be. They are not gone. They are transformed into energy for a new future.

So, I don’t think it is shag carpet that makes me smile as I shuffle through the dry leaves. I think it is the peace that comes with the hope that our lives continue to bless the future, long after we have acted or spoken.

GLORY DAY

Some days my hike finds me lulled to a meditative zone by the gentle arms of mother nature. Clothed in multi-textured, subtly-shaded green gown, her warm breath calms my rattled mind. She holds me in her sanctuary of summer.

But, lately, she has been rehearsing for a new role.  She has been trying on shades of red and gold. She has been drying the leaves for their autumn concert on what is called the “peak” week-end.

Today mother nature began her peak week-end by dancing  a joyful symphony of color.  Reds, golds, mauves, yellows, rusty greens, ragged browns. High in the trees the leaves clap their hands as pre-winter winds whisper through their arms and fingers. The leaves glided and pirouette into the still stream. The leaves lingered this year as the rainy summer has secured them in place long enough to intensify in their shifting colors.

I walk the trails and my boots provide the cadence. The drying leaves under my feet sound like the brush on the symbol or the snare drum. This season mother nature is not in the  business of being a cradle for me to mull my thoughts so I can write them in a blog. Today she is shouting, “LOOK AT ME—LISTEN TO ME—MY SOUL IS JOY AND I AM DRESS TO PARTY.”

I sat on a bench beside the trail looking and listening. A man in shorts and a ball cap with a gray pony tail sticking out the back of his head strolled by and said to me, “It’s hard not to smile today, isn’t it?”

Yup! A smile is about all that seems adequate—and a whispered “Thank you” to mother nature’s autumn concert of joy.