One thing I know....

This morning dawned bright and sunny, a welcome relief from the seemingly endless rain that is defining this late spring and early summer season in SE Michigan. I do love cloudy, rainy days and take them as an invitation to read, reflect, and do interior work both within me and within my home or the church. However I have a vested interest right now in balancing this rain with sun and warmth: walking to yoga and nurturing my baby vegetable garden.

Walking to yoga is one of my CREDO II "Rule of Life" practices. Five times a week, sometimes more, I rise early and walk to an early morning yoga class. Sometimes the first class is at 7am but on Saturday it is 8am and on Monday, my day off, I usually take the 9:30 class. The walk is only fifteen minutes each way, not far. It is a lovely walk through quiet tree-lined neighborhoods.

Walking is an intentional decision.

 I could ride my bike or drive the car. I do love to ride my bike and on hot summer mornings it is one of my favorite things to do - enjoy some fresh air and vigorous exercise before it is too hot to move. Driving my car the distance of a fifteen minute walk just seems wasteful, so I avoid the car and walk as often as possible.

Walking is meditative for me, peaceful and reflective. Walking accentuates my yoga practice. One day while walking over the bridge that crosses the river I saw a blue heron sitting deep in the woods along the shore of the river. I was close enough that I could see the markings on its beak. It felt secure enough tucked in the woods off the street that I posed no threat. I watched it for a long while. Other birds fly around and past me, hop on the grass and pull up worms and grass seed for breakfast.

Walking invites me to pay attention.

My dog Roxie is over fifteen years old. I use to take her for long walks. Oh, she was in heaven on those walks. But now she has lost most of her ability to stand, walk, and support herself. Her hind legs splay out to the side, curl under themselves, or collapse. Once in awhile she has full use of them and will walk around the house. She still enjoys looking out the window and raising a woof at the dogs that walk by. Mostly, though, she lays under the kitchen table and sleeps.

Last night, after dinner, Dan and I walked out to our vegetable garden. We wanted to see how it was doing and inspect any damage from the heavy rain the night before. I decided to take Roxie and Ruby with us.

This photo of Roxie, on the left,  and Ruby was taken in 2008.

First I had to help Roxie down the stairs and then as she slowly made her way across the lawn to Dan I went back into the house and got Ruby. I let Ruby run off-lead. She is old enough and obedient enough to stay with us. She ran circles around us, delighting in the ability to run, one of her favorite activities. With Roxie's compromised walking gait it took us a while to get to the garden, which is on the other side of the five acres of property. Roxie stumbled and stopped, walked, and dragged her legs, got her footing and managed. Ruby ran and ran. The garden, when we got to it, appeared to be fine. A few leaves on the cucumbers were looking white so I plucked them off. Mostly it all seems to be thriving, although growing slowly. At least it is growing.

After awhile, the sun low in the sky, the air crisp and clear after the rain, the dogs in a kind of doggy heaven from time outdoors, we made our way back home. Memories of many dog walks, years and years with these two dogs, the delight they have been in our lives, flooded me with love and joy. They are both old now, near or past the typical life span of their breeds. I know each day is a gift and a blessing. I remind myself of that when Roxie has bouts of incontinence and is befuddled. And, when she stands and pants and pants and won't lay down.  Despite pain and anti-inflammatory meds I know she must be uncomfortable from arthritis in her back hips and the degenerative disease that is taking away her ability to know what her back end is doing.

I remind myself that one day I too will be old and have a hard time walking.

So yes, I have a vested interest in balancing the rain with some warmer sunny weather.

 It feels good to go for a walk and keep myself in the best shape I can. It's good for the vegetables and the dogs and the humans to get some sun and fresh air.

I hope to be walking for a long while, and I hope maintaining a yoga practice will keep me strong and flexible for years to come.

One thing I do know. Life is unpredictable, who knows what the future holds. So I'll do my best to enjoy each day as it comes along, walking when ever and where ever I can.

Oh Dear, I've Been Thinking...

I've been thinking.

That may sound like an odd phrase. One is always thinking. At the end of yoga class we are invited to lay quietly in "relaxation" and then to sit quietly in "meditation." All the while as I am relaxing or meditating my brain is racing with thoughts, random tidbits of life dribble through. I have meditated long enough that I do not follow these thoughts, they filter through like the background noise of television in another room. Then there is intentional thinking. Like when one is trying to formulate a response to some situation. Or, when one is writing a paper on an important topic. As a priest with a Masters in Social Work and as a person whose life experience has encouraged a lot of professional psychological therapy sessions I am always thinking about what I say and how I behave. I like to think I am a Reflective Practitioner.

image from here

All these years of work through therapy and seminary and the graduate school of social work never lead me to the phrase "Critical Thinking." I first came upon it while helping my son do research for a "Critical Thinking Skills" paper for his psychology 101 class. There is an entire school of thought built from principles that formulate Critical Thinking. Go ahead, Google it, you'll see. (Or maybe you already know this? Certainly if you went to college in the 90's and later you probably had to write a critical thinking paper...but that did not filter into my dance major curriculum of the 1970's).

Here's the thing. I have no idea how to effective maneuver through those experiences where I encounter some kind of injustice or critique and I want to speak out against it. My efforts to formulate a sound response are always muddled. I realize that I am someone who processes data slowly and need to go away and think about it for a time before I can respond. But that need is so unhelpful when one is sitting in a workshop and the facilitator has just said something that I find either injustice or hypocritical. For example I recently attended a workshop with a well known clergy-person. This person laid out an entire "method" of leadership based on finding the positive and the strengths in every situation. And then proceeded to give examples using women in real life and in scripture that always showed the women to be incompetent and the man (either this person or Jesus) to be the person who prevailed in a positive light by pushing the woman to a new level of behavior. One of my colleagues spoke and suggested that, for example, the woman at the well and the Syrophenician woman were both tenacious fighters for their rights, that they showed inherent strengths. But this person refused to see that. I am grateful my colleague spoke up and articulated what I could not - could not because I was angry and in my anger unable to formulate a response.

If I could effectively develop critical thinking skills I might be able to formulate a response to situations like this.

 "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (Google it, you'll find the online source). 

A Critical thinker:

1. Raises vital questions and problems, formulating them clearly and precisely
2. Gathers and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards
3. thinks open-mindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as need be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences
4. Communicates effectively with others while figuring out solutions to complex problems

  My experience at the workshop: I was unable to listen to the speaker for a good long while because I was angry at the injustice in how women were consisted presented as examples of weakness and men as the ones who rescued them. I was also angry at the complete failure of the speaker, who should have known better, to have insight into his own hypocrisy. This experience has caused me to ponder how I might manage such experiences in the future. Eventually I just got over my anger, but I never said anything. (For the most part I really liked and appreciated what the speaker had to say). I am tired of being a wallflower saying nothing for fear of being  inarticulate. Often when I do speak I find that I am unable to find the words and formulate my feelings into a rational thought. I want to hone my thinking skills, my ability to think through with some sense of self-differentiation - not let my emotions rule the thought process, but serve as a guide through the injustice.

This is a little like meditation or laying in relaxation pose. Critical Thinking, it seems to me, is the ability to set aside my reactive emotions and just sit quietly as if looking at them from a distance. Then, from this "distance" I can examine what I am reacting too, how it makes me feel, and what a just response would be.

I'm fifty-six years old. I really think I should have honed this skill years ago. Sigh. Oh well. Here I go.

Reflective Practitioner in the Garden of Life

Time flies.

I swear it was just March, with only a hint of spring in the air. In a blink of an eye - it's June. Where in the world did April and May go? We did have the most beautiful spring, days and days of glorious sun warming the earth, enabling the blooming trees and flowers to linger longer than usual. Unlike last year, when we had unseasonable warm temps in March and then a frost that took all the fruit. he harsh, unseasonably late frost and heavy rains didn't hit until the blooms were gone and the leaves had unfurled. All we lost were a few fledgling vegetables in the garden - all of our cucumbers, beans, zucchini, and basil, and many of our marigolds succumbed to the frost.

The day before the rains and frost hit, (and oblivious to the weather forecast) I was determined to get my planting done before the little plants toppled over in their temporary plastic containers. So I set forth with gloves and shovel to get them in the ground. Five long hours and a major backache. A day of determined planting in the rain, knees bit by chiggers, stand as a reminder that hard work and effort are not enough when it comes to gardening.

Gardening is probably 90% luck. Good or bad, it's mostly luck.

The luck of weather conditions in my case. Hopefully I can find more beans and cucumbers and basil. Someone gave me some zucchini, so I have that at least. And my broccoli, brussel sprouts and lettuce look great!

So here I am, with an unusually quiet afternoon. Home alone, a rare occurrence these days, just me and the dogs and my sweaty glass of iced tea. The dark chocolate was consumed in one quick bite, okay, three bites, one for each piece. Consumed before they melted in the humidity, if left to linger long.

Time flies by so fast that my eight days at CREDO II feel like a blur, like a fading dream, almost like it never happened. The thick moist air these days is reminiscent of the days in Mississippi. There the heavy air was balanced by cool nights and the sounds of birds lulling me to sleep. Here the air is fraught with threat - severe storms, high wind, rain, further potential to ruin my baby garden before the plants take hold and grow.

CREDO II was an amazing experience. I do feel as if that time lingers with me, and like any delightful dream, I yearn to put myself back in that place and time. Well, no not exactly. I don't really want to still be in Mississippi, away from my husband, dogs, son, and work. But, I do want to hold onto the feeling of peace and serenity that I experienced there.

Unlike my CREDO I notebook, which I never opened again afterward and have subsequently lost, I have at my side my CREDO II notebook. It is filled with notes and lists,quotes and meditations. I pull out the final pages and read them again. My CREDO Rule of Life - and the practices I will implement to live my rule of life. These pages remind me of the goals I set, of the hope I had, from CREDO. They are not lofty goals. They are just goals to help me live life more fully. Goals to help me weather the storms and come out stronger. Weather the storms and stay rooted in the earth. My goals are a reminder to  myself to practice: 1. Being, 2. Appreciate the use of Technology as a Spiritual Discipline, 3. Do Justice, and 4. embrace Gratitude. Along with each goal I have some thoughts on what these mean to me and how I will practice them.

Being - remember how to relax my body so I don't live in a perpetually defensive state. Walking, yoga, mediation, massage, are all practices that support this goal. Be attentive and mindful and aware of myself and the world around me. I don't want feel like I am racing so fast I miss life or I am so exhausted that every moment feels like slogging through thick mud.

Technology - I read a wonderful reflection by Renee Miller on technology as a spiritual discipline. At last someone who understands my commitment to Facebook and blogging. I have never fully understood people who give up blogging or Facebook as if they are distractions from life. For me they are one more way I engage and maintain a sense of well-being.

Justice - one of the exercises we did at CREDO was a tool to help us recognize our "core values." At the top of my list I ended up with Justice. I know God, my faith, my life, and all that I do, through the lens of justice. This is another way of saying: Love God, love self, love others. So, practice justice.

Gratitude - remember that all that I am and all that I have is a gift from God. Practice gratitude, give thanks.

In the month since I left that CREDO II experience I have worked, daily, at my goals and my practices.In many ways these goals are not new, I think they have been part of my life's work for a long time. The difference now is that I have written them down, named them as goals, defined ways I will live into these goals through daily practices. They are like seeds that have taken root in me and now I must water them, remove the weediness that would stymie growth, and tend to them as they grow strong and produce fruit.

Friday Five: Transformations

 

 

Sculpture is called "Expansion" by Paige Bradley. 

You can read more about it and its creation here.

  MaryBeth, over at RevGals offers this beautiful image and Friday Five:

 

For today's Friday Five, share five occasions or events in your life that have been turning points...when you have felt like a new thing was being born. You can refer to the birth of children, career, your kitchen garden, or whatever moves you.  

 

1.  Top on my list is the call I received to come to this church in Dearborn. No doubt this has been a call of birth and new life. I am blessed to be in a creative, energetic, progressive parish where I most fully able to be authentic as a priest and as a person. I love that in addition to all of the ways in which I love being here vocationally, I can also walk most anyplace I need to go and I can garden too. It's a holistic place for me, new life in many ways.

2. CREDO II - my recent experience at CREDO II afforded me an opportunity to rest in truly deep ways: long walks, daily yoga, centering prayer, daily meditation, beautiful environment, great conversations with colleagues, and great learning opportunities. The purpose of this CREDO II experience was to guide us through reflections on how we, as priests fifty-five and older, are living our lives in healthy ways. I knew going into this experience that I was holding tremendous, residual tension in my body. My body remained on high alert, in defensive mode. This became evident to me when I realized that was able to relax my mind in prayer and meditation but my hands and shoulders were clenched and my perpetual headaches were the result of clenching my teeth. This experience afforded me the opportunity to fully relax so my muscles could relearn what it feels like to rest in a relaxed state. Muscle memory is a powerful thing. I've come back from CREDO II and implemented some changes in my life. These include walking to yoga four to six times a week. Walking is one of the ways I remember to relax and appreciate life, walking is meditative. And yoga, well. Yoga is the primary way I engage my body, mind, and spirit. It's just what works for me. This practice is helping me maintain a more relaxed body and a less defensive state of being.

 

3. My marriage to Dan. Not just the wedding day...but the many years we have been together. I have much separation in my life which began when my family moved away from our home town when I was nine. Managing to have one long term steady relationship has been healing. We have a good marriage, not perfect, (we could spend more time together, go on vacations as a couple, things like that). No doubt being married to this loving, completely supportive, generous man has been transformational in life.

 

4. and 5.  Our children: each of our two children have enhanced my life. They are both creative, brilliant, ambitious, loving human beings. I am amazed at these now adult human beings. Being their mother inspired in me the desire to be and become the best version of myself for their sake, so I could be a good enough mother for them. Given my childhood that was no simple task, took a good deal of hard internal work and the good grace to have an excellent therapist. Over the years I have engaged in therapy now and then, always with good results. So, children and therapy have been transformational blessings in my life.

Baptized we are like seeds in God's garden

 A reflection on the readings for Trinity Sunday with a Baptism....

Over the last couple of weeks I have spent every spare moment gardening. I planted my vegetable garden. I worked with other parishioners to plant the ground cover in our new pet memorial garden. We also planted flowers in the planters around the labyrinth. I weeded the front and side yards of the Rectory. I pulled out dozens of maple tree saplings that popped up like popcorn.  I pulled up clover and a lot of grass growing into the landscaped beds. 

Despite the fact that the last two nights of frost may have killed off my newly planted basil, zucchini and cucumbers, overall I think plants are incredible hardy – most of the new planting survived!  Plants are seemingly careless in their abundance, prolific in their wild abandoned state, plants of all kinds grow anywhere there is a little soil, water, and sun. 

 

This time of year, all over the deck in the backyard of the rectory, are maple seeds. When I was a child we called these whirly-birds. So many seeds, scattered about the yard, in window sills, tracked in the house on shoes, and all over the roof. I have even seen squirrels eating these maple seed whirly-birds.

  

Despite their prolific nature the future of a seed is unknown –a seed might take root and grow into one of those saplings I pulled up, or become a beautiful flower, plant, or tree – or it might die for lack of nutrients or be eaten by a bird or squirrel. 

In some ways, baptism is like the maple trees in my yard, producing many seeds, some of which end up scattered about, wind blown, and abandoned as people lose track of their faith. But many seeds take root and bear life—some even become new trees that shade our homes and streets. Trees bring great beauty to our world and afford us comfort from the sun, comfort from the strife and challenges of life. So to with baptism – baptism plants in us the wild seeds of God’s love and grace. God’s love, planted in us in a particular way at baptism, affords us the potential to grow into the fullness of what God desires for us. God’s grace can bring out our most beautiful nature and through knowing the depth of God’s love in our lives, we become a people of love, scattering love far and wide.

You see the point of baptism is life. God desires that we live rich, full, healthy, satisfying lives. Scripture gives us Jesus’ baptism at the beginning of his story, his ministry here on earth. Baptism launches Jesus into becoming who he is as God’s beloved and revealing to us that Jesus is the fullest expression of God’s love on earth. God’s love in Jesus is radical – God’s love is for everyone, equally, all the time. 

This is the story of our baptism as well – we are, were, baptized into God’s love in Jesus. After baptism, our entire life becomes the overflow of those baptismal waters, which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and pouring forth of God’s love. Baptism is how we plant our lives to the life of Jesus and baptism is how we sprout seeds of new life, of God’s love, in others. 

Sometimes I think of God as a gardener taking pride in her garden. And, like any passionate gardener all God can think about and talk about is her garden. I know people like that. The first thing they want to show any visitor to their house is the garden—what plant was about to sprout, what she or he is going to plant in a new bed. I hope all of you will wander out behind the church and see our vegetable garden and walk the labyrinth or sit in one of the benches and appreciate the beauty. Take it in with deep appreciation, and offer prayers for the saints who have gone before, whose memorial gifts have enabled us to have this beauty place of prayer. 

You can only begin to understand people like this, avid gardeners, once you let them show you their garden. People like this don’t make sense without their plants and seeds and greenhouse and their struggle against the weeds. 

This time of year causes me to think that God is like a master gardener—not an amateur gardener like me who for a season spends a few hours planting flowers, putting vegetables in the ground and weeding.  Unlike me, God’s life is dedicated year round, day in and day out to gardening. The gardener and the garden are intimately involved in one another. God in us and we in God. You can’t have one without the other. The garden displays the nurturing love and care of the gardener, the gardener devotes her time and energy to tending to her garden.

That’s the good news. God is a gardener who is always sowing new life into the world, into our lives. On this Trinity Sunday we are reminded that God is a God of relationship. For Christians we know God as a being in relationship with God’s self, with creation, with us. God is a being who expresses God’s self as God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God the creator, Jesus who redeems the creation with love, and the Holy Spirit who enables the love to live on through the ages, love acting in and through us.

When we are baptized our lives take root in the life of Jesus and in his baptism. The baptism of Jesus is like a seed that takes root in our baptism enabling us to grow in faith, grow as Christians, to sprout seeds and spread God’s love and live our lives loving others as God loves. Through baptism we become the gardener of our lives.

Today we have come to baptize M and I. We have come here like gardeners, to root their lives in the rich soil of God’s love. We have come to anoint them with the waters of life and thus plant in them the seeds of the Holy Spirit. May the fruit of this day flower in them all the days of their lives.

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