Valentines in Winter

The temperature, with wind chill, was zero. The northern wind was buffeting the house. I sat in the living room looking out onto the frozen snowpack. Prairie grass and evergreens were creaking in sharp temperatures and frigid blast. My feet were cold already. I was trying to think of some other thing I needed to do before I went out and fed the horses, goats, and chickens. Excuses flaked away to nothing.
Layered and bundled, I went outside. I looked something like the Michelin tire man. The snow crunched beneath my boots. The goats yammered, the rooster crowed. As soon as I opened the door to the hen house, all the chickens and Rosie the duck ran outside, the rooster in hot pursuit of a hen. BAM! This is his daily routine. Chicken sex has absolutely no romance associated with it.
The mud and horse manure were frozen clods, like walking on a street of rocks. I worried that I would topple over and break something. The young gelding was frisky and wanted to play "Who's the Boss?" That is his favorite game which he plays hourly. The barn cat curled around my feet, just one more thing to trip over. I managed to get the grain in the horse tubs and everybody lined up in their proper pecking order.
I hobbled back to the house, took off my barn boots, coat, sweatshirt, sweater, scarf, gloves, and hat. Back in the bedroom I quietly prepared to take a shower. Mimi's head rose above the quilt. "Did you feed already?" she asked. "I would have helped you."
And she would have. "It was nothing," I said. "Go back to sleep."

In a Fog

During the past week we have been blanketed with deep fog. Some days the visibility on our country road was only fifty feet. Approaching the blacktop I stopped the car and rolled down the windows so I could hear approaching vehicles. I certainly would not have been able to see them.
Fog has an interesting impact on our lives. Because of the fact that you cannot see very far you are more cautious and anxious. Any reasonable person knows that another vehicle or animal could explode from the deep mist and cause a potentially deadly accident. There were scenes this week when the gray haze rendered a quiet and mysterious presence. One morning we had freezing fog like the one pictured on our fence post. There were times when the dankness cast a mood of despair and people openly wondered if we would ever see the sun again. Someone at the doctor's office today said that with this many days of running fog we would have severe storms in ninety days. I will let you know if that happens.
Fog is a powerful metaphor for fear, terror, ignorance, and superstition. It works the same way in nearly every case. In fear our horizons are so narrowed we cannot discern reality, like the fact that the sun will return. In terror we may experience the brilliance of heroism or the darkness of unending hopelessness. ignorance shields our eyes from possibility. Superstition veils real options for change and maturation. We only fantasy the malevolent and grotesque.
Well guess what? The sun came out this afternoon and the wind is picking up. Nature displays a new set of images to reflect on.
Today the church celebrates Vincent of Saragossa, deacon and martyr from Spain. The church's prayer reads (from Robert Benson's, Venite): "Your deacon Vincent of Saragossa was upheld by your grace and was not terrified by threats nor overcome by torments; Strengthen us that we too may endure all adversity with invincible and steadfast love." Something to keep in mind when the fog rolls in.

With Our Heads Bowed

We enter the season of Christmas, that jubilant holiday of expectation and promise. Some might even call it a season of triumph with the glorious news that God has entered into humankind with the flesh of an infant.
The magi seem to fit right in with the incessant advertisements on television, radio, and the Internet, provoking us to purchase more things. I sure it is also the patriotic thing to do.
You might expect this meditation to reflect the images of freshly cut Douglas firs, lights, and garlands. But I wonder if the Kansas sunflower is not a more appropriate image to the news that God is with us. You see, as a sunflower's head fills with seed it gets heavier. The seeds swell with the fullness of their being and the weight is so great that the sunflower bows its head to the earth. Its seeming humility is a result of its swollen fruit.
I think that is how we approach the nativity creche. There is nothing new to report from Bethlehem this year. In fact, it is old news, at least 2,000 years old. Hopefully by now our hearts and heads are filled with the good news of God that every person is welcome to the table of life. Every person is made in the image of God and thus have some capacity to do justice, be merciful to others, and walk humbly with their God. Our hearts should be so filled with the love of God that we can only bow our heads.
When we approach the nativity cradle we should find it empty because the Prince of Peace should be in our hearts. We lower our heads in profound respect to the one who taught us to be men and women of extraordinary compassion.
Merry Christmas to you all.

Facing the Storm

Do you know that American Bison and cattle have different responses to storms? Cattle will turn their backs to the storm and then travel with it. Bison will face the storm and walk against it. The result is that cattle will be in a storm for a longer period of time and suffer greater casualties. Bison walk through the storm and come out of the other side in shorter time with fewer injuries and deaths.
The same is true in water-craft safety. One of the first things that a sailor or boater learns is to turn the bow of the boat into the storm.
Many years ago, me cousin, David, and I were in a small rowboat on a lake a Canada. I was in the stern steering our little 15 horsepower motor. David was in the bow. The lake had a system of locks that would take you from one level of the lake to another. As we approached one of these locks a speedboat roared out onto the lake. It had two 100 horsepower motors, passing us on our port side about 30 feet away. I had just enough time to turn our little boat into the huge waves the speedboat had churned up. Before I knew it David was sitting next to me. Had I failed to turn the bow into the waves we would have been swamped.
I have learned that this is the only way we can live our lives and survive. We have to face the storms and turbulent waters. We have to enter what at first appears to be a threat to us. Perhaps we are facing difficulties in our marriage, or a potentially deadly disease, or an issue with one of our children. If we turn away from it we will be carried away with it and bring greater harm to ourselves and our loved ones. It is like a wound that if left uncleaned and sterilized could fester and cause deep infection or even gangrene.
The sooner we turn into the turbulence the sooner we can get out of it with less damage than we thought we could avoid. So, if you see clouds on the horizon of your life, get ready. If need be, find someone who will help you turn into the gale and get out of the other side as safely as possible.
Like the psalmist declared, "Even though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evils for you are with me."

Silence

For some time now I have noticed that words cannot fully relieve me of the reality that I am fundamentally alone. This is a difficult confession for a word smith who too often dawdles in the illusion that everything can be named or explained. My career as a preacher and writer is one tall paper tower that reaches up into the heavens. And yet, all that seems to echo down from that pulp is babble.
Words cannot save us. For example, have you ever had the experience of trying to explain to someone a failed marriage? You can talk with them for hours in sublime confidence. They will ask many questions, turning every galling stone, challenging your glosses, and affirming your intentions. But when it is all said and done they still do not understand. You can never fully reveal the pain of betrayal and the sheering agony of defeated dreams. You are still alone.
People frequently ask how long it takes to write a sermon. The tired response is ten to fifteen hours. But the real answer is a lifetime. And I still do not understand the writing of it. I used to believe that it was a matter of reading, researching, outlining, illustrating, and writing with the appropriate rules of grammar. All of those are necessary but they do not account for the hours of fulminating and pacing. Some call it the creative process. Is that what wakes me up at night and insists I take dictation till three in the morning? Is this the sermonic muse that throws open the shower curtain, pushes my wife out of bed, calls the ball game in the fourth inning, and stops my car on the Interstate? I have no words for this experience. I simply obey its commands, having learned long ago that I have less tolerance for its insistent whining for expression, even if the words never experience print.
There are many experiences that words cannot articulate. The more I try to explain some things to people the more we both wander from the truth. History becomes fiction, no matter how factually I am able to recount events. People hear what they want to and my voice has its own filters. I have also noticed that the questions some people bring the story can never answer. The news, the stories, the lore, the poems, the songs, and the metaphors often hide the shadows of distortion.
Some things are best left unsaid when silence is closer to the truth and solitude is the best audience.
I am reminded of Abbot Agatho who kept a stone in his mouth for three years to discipline himself to silence.

The Voice of God

In the Morning Prayer these words are offered: "We will know Your power and presence this day, if we will but listen for Your Voice."
For most of us that assumes a spoken word. We rather imagine that God will speak to us in American Standard English, offering direction, counsel, rebuke, advice, and hope. Or we expect that when the Bible is read, a prayer rendered, a hymn sung, and a sermon offered we would hear the voice of God. That is all well and good and God speaks to us in such a fashion.
But I do not think the voice of the Sacred is limited to the common vernacular. I do not know why we are constantly trying to put restraints on the Holy. Dare I say it, a muzzle? I experience the voice of the Divine in many fluid and various ways.
Just the other day I was feeding the animals in the morning. I could not hear a human sound or voice. There was not a whisper of automobiles, trains, trucks, tractors, or airplanes. All I could hear was the sound of the wind blowing through the cottonwood and mulberry trees. Horses were chomping in their feed. Rosie the duck was splashing in her wading pool. I dare say, such is the voice of God.
Of course, I hear the Sacred in the choral music of our church; in the organ peeling the wedding march, and in the passionate songs of love and protest. The metered words of poets touch a hallowed tone. I think especially of Mary Oliver and R.S. Thomas. I take great comfort in the giggling of little children, a mother's cooing over her baby, and the gentle talk of older women sewing blankets for impoverished children in Nicaragua.
The problem is not that the voice of God is sparing or muted. The problem is that we do not listen for it. We are paying too much attention to the arguments in our own head, the drone of political commentary, and the nonsense that race across airwaves and cable cords.
If we would but listen!
Today I am thinking of St. Frideswide, abbess of a medieval priory in Oxford, England. The staff she carries indicates the shepherding role of her nuns, with an ox at her feet. She is the patron saint of Oxford University.

The Aroma of God

Today I mowed the lawn. I have always loved the smell of freshly cut grass, and have never met anyone who did not, despite allergies. The other night on my way home from Wichita I drove with the windows down. I made a mental inventory of the smells that delighted me.
The first was the odor of oil being pumped out of the ground just north of Park City. Northbound on K15 I smelled the freshly plowed earth with its deep hardy redolence; newly cut hay and alfalfa; and skunk, of course. When I buy feed for the horses, goats, and chickens I do not always get it into the barn the same afternoon. After a day or so the whole car is saturated with the sweet smell of feed. Around "Soggy Bottom" there are lots of other smells from all the animals, their barns, and manure. An old friend of mine, Ray Haynes" always said his dairy barn smelled like money to him.
I also love the smell of ink in a new book; the blend of coffee, bacon, and homemade biscuits; fresh rain; new babies; and night blooming jasmine that bloomed outside my window when I was a boy.
Olfactory senses must have memory. There are times when I suddenly smell my grandfather's pipe, even though no one is smoking around me. I also smell the cane syrup my grandmother served with her pancakes on Saturday morning. Sometimes these are combined and I am flooded with wonderful memories and comfort.
I dare say, these are the aromas of God, like the scent of a woman. It is a scent that is unique to each and all of her parts - natural and artificial. Combined they offer the bouquet of Mother Earth, the very manifestation of the Sacred One. What is God like? Go outside and take a deep breath. I close with this bit of Celtic blessing from G.R.D. McLean's Celtic Spiritual Verse.
O God, bless my homestead,
Bless thou all in there.
O God, bless my kindred
Bless thou my life share.