It rained heavily all of yesterday and all last night and I know that this morning there will be a large pool of water on our road where one of the drain covers gets clogged with leaves. There is nothing quite like the pleasure of clearing that blockage and watching the water drain quickly away. So what does that say about me or about the Dutch and their skill in managing water challenges? I have no idea.
Quite a number of years ago when we were still living in Walnut Grove and our property was being developed and churned up by excavators and we had a particularly heavy rainfall, I went out with my shovel and made little channels and ditches to release all the pooling water. One of the guys on the construction site came along and asked if I was Dutch. I said I was and he said he could tell by my efforts to control and move the water around. I have always loved doing that and can remember even as a child playing along the curbs releasing and pooling water behind little dams and floating little boats or sticks down the streams. Maybe every child loves that.
It rained heavily all of yesterday and all last night and I know that this morning there will be a large pool of water on our road where one of the drain covers gets clogged with leaves. There is nothing quite like the pleasure of clearing that blockage and watching the water drain quickly away. So what does that say about me or about the Dutch and their skill in managing water challenges? I have no idea.
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When we first started having children we briefly talked about sharing the time we could spend with them at home. Not sure what happened to that conversation and it wasn’t long before increased experience leads to increased salaries and before long having me work full time rather than sharing the load became a practical reality needed to pay the mortgage. But I do feel like I got cheated out of something when I think of the boys early growing up years. I did later have the privilege of having the boys at school with me during their high school years and loved that, especially the drives to school and back all piled into one of our many Nissan pickups. The Dutch have a rather nice answer to this dilemma. It’s called Papadag, Daddyday. An average work week in the Netherlands is 36 hours per week and on top of that as many as 25% of Dutch fathers work part time, ostensibly to spend more time with children. This interesting little article on Papadag will give you some appreciation for the practice. The idea being that fathers spend one day per week with their children. There are work places that make this part of the contract in order to attract applicants. I rather like that. It’s not unlike the Biblical command that prevented husbands from being conscripted into the army in the first year of their marriage. Life on a more human scale. The last few years have allowed me to spend some extended times with grandsons and for that I am grateful. Pakedag!! I believe it was Leonardo daVinci who suggested that every student must surpass her teacher. Well there is no doubt about that when I read the poems of Lisa Martin. She has surpassed this teacher. I am so proud that she was a student and a brilliant one at that. Her latest book of poems Believing is not the same as Being Saved requires some stamina for Martin takes us on a spiritual journey of desert-mother proportions. The poems take us on a pilgrimage through so many of life’s dark valleys, and confront us with questions few like to pose for themselves in an effort to find meaning in the middle of death, loss and brokenness. Such courage to speak the pain of living. Thank you Lisa Heart One year past the day you left my heart, a hurt mammal curled to protect its organs, but also, this-- instrument of discernment, more finely-tuned than before, old piano touched for the first time in years. Fall- board lifted, keys depressed hammering all the right notes and though, after this, maybe no one will sit down and play again for years-- even so. Yesterday afternoon Mary Hynes interviewed David Cain on her CBC program Tapestry about his Blog Raptitude and in particular one blog that captured a great deal of attention. On the blog Go Deeper, Not Wider Cain advocates for a year of “no new hobbies, equipment, games, or books.” Instead go deeper and wider with what you already have. It is so easy to get caught up in the wave of new when our life could be far richer if we were to concentrate on what we already have or what we are already doing. “I keep imagining a tradition I’d like to invent. After you’re established in your career, and you have some neat stuff in your house, you take a whole year in which you don’t start anything new or acquire any new possessions you don’t need. No new hobbies, equipment, games, or books are allowed during this year. Instead, you have to find the value in what you already own or what you’ve already started. You improve skills rather than learning new ones. You consume media you’ve already stockpiled instead of acquiring more. You read your unread books, or even reread your favorites. You pick up the guitar again and get better at it, instead of taking up the harmonica. You finish the Gordon Ramsey Masterclass you started in April, despite your fascination with the new Annie Leibovitz one, even though it’s on sale. The guiding philosophy is “Go deeper, not wider.” Drill down for value and enrichment instead of fanning out. You turn to the wealth of options already in your house, literally and figuratively. We could call it a “Depth Year” or a “Year of Deepening” or something.” I think that is great advice and though we are already a few weeks into a new year, it’s an easy resolution to begin now. I feel pretty lucky(in the Eugene Peterson use of the word lucky) to be part of a church congregation that loves to sing and does sing. I’ve been in churches that don’t and in their place a band stands in and does it for them. How convenient! Actually, what a loss. I don’t read music very well so I am at a disadvantage but I love being part of a large group singing. It’s important and to lose it is to lose something very important. Hymn writer Keith Getty recently published an article in The Gospel Coalition Why Congregational Singing Matters Today More Than Ever . Well worth reading. It brings to mind my childhood experiences of singing in church, particularly standing beside my dad, though my mom also had a lovely voice. If the song was right, he would pull out all the stops (that means something if you know what an organ is), it was wholehearted singing. I remember little children in the benches in front of us turning around and looking to see where that was coming from. I have that experience now and again.
I think that for me it’s about imagination. In congregational singing we get to experience just a taste now but imagine a time when it will be an uncountable throng singing together. When we sing a song like By the Sea of Crystal, it sends shivers down my spine. By the sea of crystal, saints in glory stand, Myriads in number, drawn from every land, Robed in white apparel, washed in Jesus’ blood, They now reign in heaven with the Lamb of God. Out of tribulation, death and Satan’s hand, They have been translated at the Lord’s command. In their hands they’re holding palms of victory; Hark! the jubilant chorus shouts triumphantly: “Unto God Almighty, sitting on the throne, And the Lamb, victorious, be the praise alone, God has wrought salvation, He did wondrous things, Who shall not extol Thee, holy King of Kings?” I should have known that it was written by William Kuipers, a Frisian immigrant, Calvin College graduate and pastor who even served the Dennis Avenue Christian Reformed Church for a time. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day and Ruth Haley Barton wrote a wonderful piece called Transformed Nonconformist about King. I love the bold call to this radical way of living. “This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” I was also encouraged that the presidents of my denomination's college and seminary wrote a letter to the White House in response to President Trump's racist and crude remarks. Here is part of what they wrote: “While 600 of us may claim citizenship in another country, we are all prime citizens of the Kingdom of God and share in a brotherhood and sisterhood that transcends all borders. It is for this reason, this love for our brothers and sisters, that we are deeply troubled and offended by the disparaging comments attributed to the President of the United States in recent days about people who come from Africa, Haiti, and Latin America. These comments sow fear and hatred in our country, and they are wrong. More than 150 members of our community come from these countries, and they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. This response is in no way political. It is in every way biblical. As members of the Calvin community, it is our Christian duty and responsibility to separate ourselves from racist and hateful remarks and sentiments. The world cannot be confused about what we believe. As Christians, we are called to support and promote the well-being of every member of our community and our society regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin. We protect and defend the inviolable dignity of all people.” We are living in a time that is calling forth something from us that can no longer be held back for the sake of being Nice. Enough of that! Below is an excerpt from Wendell Berry’s “Sabbath VI” from his book Leavings that expresses something of why it can be painful to look at old photographs of our younger selves, our younger children and what seems a more simple uncomplicated time in our lives. We have a longing to return to that place. …I would like to know my wife again, both of us young again, and I remembering always how I loved her when she was old. I would like to know my children again, all my family, all my dear ones, to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully than before, to study them lingeringly as one studies old verses, committing them to heart forever…. I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked? A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know by it how far I have fallen short. I have not paid enough attention, I have not been grateful enough. And yet this pain would be the measure of my love. In eternity’s once and now, pain would place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love. It is difficult to own the fact that while we are in the middle of our lives we do not pay enough attention to all the beauty of it nor are we grateful enough for the gift that it is. Just over a year ago today Christianity Today published an article by Joseph Hartropp called Would Dietrich Bonhoeffer Have Resisted Donald Trump. That’s a pretty interesting question and Hartropp does a good job of looking beyond just this particular moment in history to ask some bigger questions that Bonhoeffer was confronted with. When Conservative evangelical writer Eric Mataxas who had written biographically about Bonhoeffer suggested that evangelicals ought to vote for Trump. The International Bonhoeffer Society wisely responded by writing, “We speak noting that Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself taught the profound relatedness of all human persons and, indeed, of peoples and nations. We therefore feel called to raise our voices in support of justice and peace, and in resistance to every form of unjust discrimination and aggressive nationalism,…The United States has undergone an unusually contentious, bitter, and ugly election that has brought us to an equally contentious, bitter, and ugly beginning of the presidency of Donald J Trump….we are gravely concerned by the rise in hateful rhetoric and violence, the deep divisions and distrust in our country, and the weakening in respectful public discourse" "This election has made the most vulnerable members of our society, including people of colour, members of the LGBTQ communities, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, the poor, and the marginally employed and the unemployed, feel even more vulnerable and disempowered." "His [Bonhoeffer’s] entire theological and political journey was shaped by his conviction that the church is only truly church when it lives for all God's children in the world, and that Christians fulfill their faith as Christians only when we live for others." "From the human point of view there are countless possibilities of understanding and interpreting the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus knows only one possibility: simply go and obey. Do not interpret or apply, but do it and obey. That is the only way Jesus' word is really heard. But again, doing something is not to be understood as an ideal possibility; instead, we are simply to begin acting." It might feel like a low point of history when we consider the current world global situation but maybe it is simpler than we want to make it. We too get caught up in the rhetoric and fail simply to act. ver the last two weeks I have been thinking of some of the things I need to get done over the next month or so. I plan to be in Sierra Leone in February and wanted to get the tree pruning done before I go and so yesterday I hauled out my long pruning ladder and started on one of the pear trees. As I got started I immediately began thinking of this Swallowfield blog that I started almost three years ago, the first one being about pruning. Here is some of what I wrote. "But this season of pruning is different for me. My own life has been pruned back in a storm that saw me losing my life’s calling as a teacher and principal after 37 years working in the orchard of the school community I love deeply. In the past eight weeks since I’ve been home, I’ve been picking up the branches and debris and bringing it to the fire pile and trying to figure out what is left of the tree for bearing fruit into a new season of my life. When a tree is storm-damaged, you have hard decisions to make. The scars need to be dressed so they can heal properly. Sometimes more cutting needs to be done and just maybe something else can be grafted on. Part of healing the wounds has been the surprise gift of being able to look after my two grandsons over an extended seven week stay after Christmas. Part of the balm has been Swallowfield itself. Joan Chittister says, “In community we work out our connectedness to God, to one another, and to ourselves. It is in community where we find out who we really are. It is life with another that shows my impatience and life with another that demonstrates my possessiveness and life with another that gives notice to my nagging devotion to the self. Life with someone else, in other words, doesn’t show me nearly as much about his or her shortcomings as it does about my own…. In human relationships, I learn that theory is no substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of God; it is another thing to practice it.” And so begins a new season. As always, even with good pruning, I need to trust the harvest to another. And that’s a good thing. But pruning trees is a slowly learned art and it helps when you have great mentors or a great community to help teach you the art. Around that same time I received these words from my friend L. who knows far more about disappointments than I. She said, “I truly believe we are shaped more by disappointments than blessings. They cut us to the core… Yet the challenge is to remain vulnerable to life, to others, to God....with no guarantees how it will all turn out.” The three years that have passed have been such a gift to me and I believe I have been shaped deeply by them, so much so that I would not trade any part of the experience. |
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