Harbor

“He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea. Then they were glad because of the calm, and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.”
—Psalm 107:29-30

There is something about a storm that wants to shout—the loudness of the crashing waves, of thunder, cracks of lightning, and the whipping wind thrashing everyday objects into projectiles. And maybe because of this loudness or maybe because of the panic of being unsafe, you can hardly hear yourself think to know what to do, to know the way ahead. And then…

“He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea.” And then all is quiet again and silent. And you can hear your thoughts and hear the whisper and then you know it will somehow be okay.

“Then they were glad because of the calm.” They were glad for the quiet, glad for predictability and safety, glad for the little everyday things like a cup of tea or a hot bath or sitting quietly on the couch talking to one who loves you. They were glad because of these things, glad because they realized they could be taken from you and because they had them back again.

“And he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.” And the end of all the chaos of the storm is being brought to the place you were supposed to be all along. What I would give in the midst of the storm for one glimpse of that harbor I am bound for, that we are all of us bound for, far away on the other side of all this wind and rain.

Today

“Do not worry about tomorrow … each day has enough trouble of its own.”
—Matthew 6:34

“Today in your hearing this scripture is fulfilled.”
—Luke 4:21

There is something about working among the poor that puts the words above into a vivid context. People are missing some of the most basic necessities—food, shelter, safety. And these needs are urgent. I have talked to people who need bread today—not tomorrow, not in a little while. Right now. Today. So we open up the freezer at my place of work and send them away with a loaf.

In some ways, it is a luxury to have the space to worry about what might happen tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that. You have confidence that enough of the basic necessities will be met today to allow you to reflect on other needs down the road—a sense of purpose, meaningful relationships, being valued in community, healing and wholeness for the soul and the body. Yet having the luxury to think about tomorrow does not make it any easier to survive today.

These other needs are just a different kind of bread for which our souls may be starving. The call here is to be present in today, whatever we are missing. In these words from Luke, Jesus speaks in this kind of immediacy with his announcement of hope: “Today in your hearing this scripture is fulfilled.” Not tomorrow, not in some distant far-off future, but today. Right now.

It is easy to mark off the ways I am fortunate (I have a freezer full of bread). It is harder to admit the ways I fall short of the hope in these words. I worry about tomorrow. I fail to fulfill the promise of this “today” for those who are in dire need of bread of all kinds. And yet I hope that the one who announced these words of promise will keep announcing them to the places in my heart where things are missing, keep announcing them through all who extend a hand to those in need, keep announcing them to all of us who sometimes find it hard to be here, in this moment, today.

Frazils and Ice Fog

Two new weather concepts I have learned about this winter: frazils and ice fog. Frazils are the first stage in a river freezing over. Ice crystals called frazils begin to join together. At the “pancake” stage, seen in the picture above, the frazils begin to form round clusters. And eventually these little frazils wind up forming a solid sheet of ice across the river.

Ice fog comes when tiny crystals of ice have frozen in mid-air. This is common when temperatures are below -30 C, mostly in arctic regions; apparently Edmonton is close enough to an arctic region (it’s certainly cold enough) because we have it here from time to time.

The strong current of a river becomes immobile in a frozen sheet; the free and invisible air hangs heavy in a fog. It all begins slowly, on a much smaller scale. Frazils become frozen rivers; drops of mist become ice fog. The world is rolling, changing, pulsing along and somehow in the smallest molecules of water at the most unexpected times, things become solid.

This season of epiphany, I am thinking about the small beginnings of things—small beginnings that make big things or invisible things stop and be known by us. Like words become flesh, like one small star that pierced the Bethlehem sky: started small, made something solid, and meant that night would never be the same again.

What's Lost

The other night I had a dream that I went into a small thrift shop. After a quick scan of the nearly empty shelves, I turned to leave but was stopped by the quiet voice of an old lady behind the counter. “Don’t you want to take a look through those boxes?” To humor her, I started flipping through a box of old baby clothes when all of a sudden something caught my eye.

On one of the outfits, I recognized a small embroidered patch that was on the baby sleepers I had when my own kids were little. In the dream I held it up to rub on my face and was filled with longing and deep sorrow. The old lady was watching me closely and she said, “It’s like the lost coin. Or the lost son.” I turned my head slowly to look at her face and just before I could see it, the dream ended.

When do we get back that sense of newness and hope that comes with the wistful nostalgia of remembered childhood? As Wordsworth says, “There hath pass’d away a glory from the earth” and we are often left with a kind of permanent low-grade depression at the way things turn out. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at this; after all, Christ himself said “in this world you WILL have trouble.” But expecting suffering makes it no less easy to bear. Nor does some far-off sense that “one day” the story turns out for good.

So what do we have in the meantime? The hope that in the least likely place, we might be surprised by something lost but still loved; that there is some part of us able to be new again with a child’s unfettered hopes; that in the faces we are often too busy to see we might find gentleness and hear words of grace that will keep us going for one more go through the boxes.

Extravagance

There is a large plot of land in a city-owned utility corridor that one of my neighbors has taken as a garden. As we walked by there this summer, it was lovely to see his well-tended rows of veggies and produce grow. There was one section that had a whole plot of flowers. I kept waiting for the time when he would dig them up, section them off into pots or hanging baskets, because why else would you plant so many flowers in a spot virtually no one would ever see? But he never did.

There is something lovely and extravagant about that—planting flowers in abundance just for your own joy when you’re working in the garden. Planting them for unknown neighbors who wander by with their dogs. Planting them not for economic profit but just because they grow and they are beautiful.

If you looked at the front of my neighbor’s house, you would not see much at all, but in that secret place out back he has tons of flowers blooming. With this hidden beauty, he feeds those of us who know.

I am looking for that kind of evidence of grace—purposeless, extravagant, beautiful, hidden out back behind the house—because I know there has to be proof of this “exceedingly more than all we ask or imagine” everywhere around me and I’m just lining up my pots and planters too guarded to try it for myself.

We are here today ...

Today is the first day of school. I dropped off my son to the care of his new teacher and found it hard to just walk away and leave him sitting at his little desk. “This is Jon,” I said to his teacher, who responded with a friendly “Hi, Jon” and turned his attention to something else. I almost blurted out “he likes rockets” because I wanted the teacher realize something about him, something that makes him special, not just another name in a room full of kids.

It was no easier bringing my daughter to her first day of junior high, as I was filled with questions: Why do the kids look so BIG all of a sudden? Didn’t I just bring her home from the hospital? But even though she was nervous, she walked in to her classroom, greeted her teacher in French, found a friend, sat down, and said an unequivocal “bye, mom.” Her confident demonstration of strength under stress was also enough to make me want to cry.

Beginning routines again in September is a way of orienting us again to the order that was placed in the world at the moment of creation. Elementary school classrooms tell us in a hundred different ways “we are here.” Students sit each morning before a bulletin board decked out in bright complementary colors with the basics: today’s month, day, months of the year, numbers, seasons; and also some added information like the letter of the day, special person of the week, who has a birthday, who is absent, and in case you really are keeping track, how many days you’ve been in school so far.

I like the call to remember the rhythms of things—the things that happen every day again no matter what else is uncertain: the date and seasons change, the sun goes up and down again, the months fold over one on top of the other, there are special people who surround us, and patterns in the details of our lives if we pay attention to such things.

We are here today. And no matter what else we may not know, that much is certain. We are here today and there is a world of comfort in the daily-ness of our routines. Routines that speak to an order greater than the smallness of our stories. We are here today, and someone knows where we were yesterday and where we will be tomorrow. We are known, and we are here. That’s a good place to start this fall and a good reason to give thanks.

Gentleness

“I hear this most gentle whisper from one I never guessed would speak to me.”
—Psalm 81:5, The Message

There are a thousand ways the world does violence to us every single day—from the harshness of unkind words to the subtle reminders of time passing and decay. We are dying. And whenever we stop long enough to notice that in any of its forms, the grief brings a sort of violence to our hearts.

Over and against the reality of that violence, there is the gentleness of God. Sometimes that gentleness comes as sweet relief, as the remedy of breathing space in a world that constricts us. Other times it is almost unwelcome; to hold that gentleness means we are unable to give ourselves over to defensive anger protecting us against a life that is hard. God is here; we cannot give in to despair.

Thomas á Kempis, medieval mystic and author of The Imitation of Christ, had this to say:

Banish discouragement from your heart as best you can, and if trouble comes, never let it depress or hinder you for long.... The violence of your feelings will soon subside, and grace return to heal your inner pain.

Whatever violence we feel, there is one who stands ready to help and comfort, one who speaks with gentle whispers where we do not expect to hear anything at all. Receiving that gentleness can itself cause pain when it comes as such sharp contrast to the suffering within us, but it is perhaps one of the best and most hopeful signs of our humanity that we remain willing to feel it.