OUR BACKYARD CHURCH

"Neighbor's Garden", oil,
by Diane Mannion

 Delycia and I will be worshipping today in our beautiful backyard church. The door is our back door, which opens into a sanctuary of blessed sights and sounds. There are no stained-glass windows, but the sunlight on the leaves and limbs of the trees lends a consecrated look to our special place of worship. The floor is just the good grass of springtime, and the pews are the lawn chairs that let us relax while we worship. Of course, we can also worship by wandering through Delycia’s hallowed flower gardens, or simply by standing still and listening to the choirs of birds and feeling the flow of the always ceremonious breezes. We worship no god who stays up in the sky, no deity who decrees that some will suffer in hell. In our flowery backyard church, we choose to honor the sacredness that’s all good and in everything – in shaking leaves, in tulips turning in a puff of wind, even in the old stones that set the gardens apart. Our minister is sometimes a squirrel, sometimes -- like today -- simply a blue sky.
  

SIXTY DAWNS

    

"Just After Dawn", oil,
by Pam Holnback

 It would be wonderful to awaken one morning to a world that’s totally new – completely full of freshness, loaded with bloom and novelty, big with brand new blessings – but what’s even more wonderful is to realize that this unblemished new world is, in fact, with me every moment. I actually can’t escape newness. Strange as it sounds, oldness is really nowhere because newness is always everywhere. All I’m ever presented with is the pristine and spotless present moment, a moment never before known by me or by anyone. It may sometimes seem similar to my past moments – and this is what can make oldness seem so real – but, truth is, each moment is a groundbreaking, cutting edge creation, coming to me the way dawn does each morning. In each minute I have sixty seconds, sixty dawns, sixty new sensations, sixty chances to celebrate something novel and new-fangled. 

LIKING WITHOUT KNOWING

 “It was not absolutely necessary to know her in order to like her.”

     -- Charlotte Bronte, in “Shirley”

     We often say that we need to “get to know” someone in order to really like them, but reading Charlotte Bronte’s sentence (below) this morning started me thinking in a different direction. Isn’t it possible to see a smiling face and instantly like the person? We certainly wouldn’t love the person immediately, but we can surely like the look of friendliness, and therefore sincerely like the person, if only in a kind of superficial and casual way. Similarly, I can see people who look lighthearted and uplifted, and I can quickly like them without wondering if I should first get to know them. After all, I like sunsets without knowing anything scientific about them, and I like the look of morning light on flowers, despite knowing next to nothing about the nature of light or flowers. I guess I’m talking about a sort of instantaneous liking, like suddenly seeing sheets of stars across the sky and simply feeling lucky to be seeing them, and liking both the feeling and the stars.

DANCING AT SOUTH STATION

"Swan Lake Rehearsal", oil,
by Robin Cheers

     After seeing a wonderful performance by The Boston Ballet this afternoon, I saw another dance presentation outside South Station. As Delycia and I sat outside on a bench in a soft but steady breeze waiting for our train, I saw a piece of paper tumbling across the sidewalk with what seemed like simple gracefulness, and some limbs above us were smoothly swaying and bending. Delycia had some shopping bags, and they shook in the breeze in seemingly stylish ways, and soon I noticed a woman walking in a lively style, working with the breeze with straightforward smoothness and ease, moving her arms with a sort of everyday finesse. And just before we boarded the train, a guy walked past us in a slow saunter, arms swinging and head tossing in the breeze in fine fashion. He was definitely a dancer – less practiced and seasoned, perhaps, than the ballet dancers earlier in the afternoon, but somehow just as pleasing.

HUNTING GOODNESS

"Out of the Draw", acrylic,
by George Lockwood

      Some friends of mine are occasional bow hunters, and I guess I’m a sort of hunter, too. My friends hunt mostly deer, whereas I hunt, in my sporadic and somewhat casual way, mostly goodness. My friends probably stalk their prey in a silent and serious way, and I sometimes do the same – quietly watching for signs of goodness, sneaking up on it, hoping to see it clearly in all its ordinariness and splendor. I know there’s a significant overpopulation of deer, making them easy to spot during hunting season, but surely goodness teems and overflows far more than deer, enabling me, if I’m sincerely stalking it, to catch sight of it everywhere. This world of ours is a goodness hunter’s paradise. There’s goodness in every face I see, every smile, every glance between friends, every hand offering help. There’s goodness, somehow or other, in every house, every car, every store, down every street. I sometimes set out on a lighthearted and lucky hunt, knowing I’ll see success within a few minutes, maybe just across the street where birds are bringing sticks to a new nest. That’s goodness, and it’s given to all of us to hunt and be happy with, no bows or arrows needed.     

SEEING THE LIGHT

"Puddles", oil on board
by Don Gray

    I’ve often heard people say they “see the light”, meaning the sense of something has become clear to them, and I was thinking, this morning, that a sometimes secret light shines in even the most commonplace parts of our lives. For instance, I can sometimes “see the light” in even the cloudiest and wettest days, meaning their appropriateness, their flawlessness, suddenly becomes clear to me. I can even sometimes see the sort of everyday special light in puddles on the pavement, a light that makes them seem strangely fascinating in a puddley sort of way. This afternoon I saw the light in some sentences in a novel I was re-reading, sentences that seemed shadowy on the first reading but that lit up like lamps the second time around. Also, Delycia and I live in a simple house on an everyday kind of street, but there’s a good and great light all through our lives that I’m sometimes lucky to see.     

AN ODD FACT

“The wiser you are, the more worries you have; the more you know, the more it hurts.”

     -- Ecclesiastes 1:18, Good News Translation

     It’s an odd fact that more knowledge often leads to more uncertainty. Sometimes, the more we know, the more we stumble and fall short, as if all the thousands of facts we’ve learned are lying upon us like heavy loads. Knowledge is a necessity, of course, but it can also be a burden that bends us down and drives us around in silly circles. I’m a fairly well-educated guy, but there are times when I wish I had an empty mind rather than one filled with countless facts flying witlessly here and there. There are times when stillness is what I need inside instead of limitless pieces of information parading and shouting. Quietness of mind can open helpful doors for me, whereas knowing thousands of facts can sometimes shut thousands of doors.   

CAPTURING THE PRESENT

  Since the word “accept” derives from the Latin word for “capture”,  I’ve sometimes thought that I should actually try to capture the present moment instead of simply accepting it. Centuries ago, when you said you wanted to accept something, you might have meant that you wanted to literally capture it – to seize it, snatch it, grab it up, and take it away with you. I wonder if I could live that way, sort of like a cat sitting beside the hole of a mouse – in this case, the present moment – ready to pounce and take the moment prisoner. And it would have to be any moment, not just one that makes me happy. A cat captures any mouse, and perhaps I could set my sight on capturing any and every present moment. Perhaps I could sit beside the hole of the present and prepare to apprehend, arrest, and take prisoner any moment that makes its appearance, be it emaciated or majestic, sinister or inspiring. I could be an alert but also good-natured cat – a soft, sweet-hearted feline who simply wants to savor and digest every single moment. I could quietly and efficiently  capture each moment and consume it with a catlike kind of delight.

DEATH AND A BALL GAME

"Pena at the Plate", oil,
by V....Vaughan

    After attending a memorial service yesterday for a dear friend, it seemed fitting that Delycia and I attended a Pawtucket Red Sox baseball game today. First of all, my friend was a faithful Boston Red Sox fan, and I felt his presence beside us as we braved the chilly weather to cheer on the Triple A Sox. Also, the stands were full of families, full of moms and dads and daughters and sons of all ages, all seeming to feel the youthful spirit of a Sunday afternoon ball game. There was newness and freshness all around us, from the healthful faces of toddlers to the sparkling eyes of grandparents glad to be with their families. There was an abundance of life at the game, a rising up of its brightness and sparkle, a spilling over of its spirit – and it made me think of my friend. His physical presence is gone from us, but somehow that seems to have allowed the spirit of his kindness and courage to be bigger and braver than ever. It’s as if death has done us the favor of releasing more life than ever. I felt it at the baseball stadium today, as if my friend’s full life was overflowing around me, along with the lives of the families finding joyfulness at a Sunday afternoon game.   

GOOD CONFUSION

"Mist on the Lawn of Olana"
watercolor, by Gretchen Kelly

 I’ve come to see, as my 70-some years have passed, that confusion can be good for me – that I can get more gifts from it than problems. Perhaps that shouldn’t be  surprising, since the word “confuse” derives from the Latin word for “mingle together”, and aren’t all things in this world mingled together, in some way or other, and isn’t mingling usually a constructive activity? By growing in a confused way, all mingled together, grass blades sometimes make fine-looking lawns, and the stars in the sky show the beautiful confusion of togetherness and endlessness. Cars on roads mingle in a seemingly confused manner, and yet the ostensible chaos of the traffic – what we might call the resourceful confusion of it – usually produces a steady and smooth movement of vehicles. My days, too, so often seem composed of apparently haphazard things and thoughts, and yet from that confusion has come, and still comes, the blessings given by this good life. It’s a similar confusion, I guess, to that of oceans that bring beauty out of swirling waves and organisms, or of fields of wildflowers that show splendor in the midst of seeming disarray. It’s a lucky kind of confusion, and I’m lucky to usually be feeling it.