Sondra Willobee

     Last Christmas, our six-year-old grandson, Emmett, stayed overnight at our house. He brought along his Toniebox, a music listening device for kids. This is how it works: Emmett places a plastic action figure from the Tonie collection on top of a cube-shaped speaker and the device then plays songs associated with that action figure. Like "Let It Go" sung by Elsa from Frozen. Or Peso's healing song from The Octonauts. Some Tonie figures allow you to download custom content onto a generic piece – a monster, superhero, fairy, or pirate.

     When we were cleaning up after Emmett had gone home, we found a pirate Tonie tangled in the sheets. I put the pirate figure in front of our Little People creche and took a photo. Then I sent it to our daughter and asked her to show the photo to Emmett so he would know that his lost Tonie had been found.

     Maybe you are feeling a little lost yourself this Christmas season. Maybe you're unsettled by political news, or missing someone you love. Maybe you feel out of place in your family or a friendship circle in which you used to feel safe. Maybe you've always felt like an outsider, looking in.

     At one of the churches where I was a pastor, we decorated the sanctuary for the Christmas season on the last Sunday of November. Children helped. They put red bows on the pews, hung ornaments on the tree, and placed the Holy Family inside the miniature stable on the altar. One child arranged the shepherds, sheep, donkey and cow in a precise circle outside the stable. Another child, a six-year-old literalist, insisted that the baby Jesus should not appear on the bed of straw until Christmas Eve. Following this logic, her older brother picked up the three wise men and moved them to the top of the organ, halfway across the sanctuary.    

     "What are you doing?" the six-year-old asked.

     "They come from the East," he said. "And they don't arrive until Epiphany. January Sixth." Even if he was a Sunday School show-off, his point was well-taken.

     The wise men were from really far outside the circle.

     Not only had they arrived late to the party, they weren't even Jews.

     According to Jewish law at the time of Jesus, righteous Jews were supposed to keep themselves completely separate from Gentiles. No touching, no socializing, no shared utensils. The laws had been established for good reasons: to protect their distinct identity as the Chosen People and to honor the holiness of God.

     But according to the gospel of Matthew, some dignitaries from the east, non-Jews, had seen an unusual star in the sky, consulted their astrological charts, and determined that the star heralded the birth of a great new king. They headed west to pay him homage.

     But nobody would have expected them to be there.

     Pastor Debbie Blue points out just how jarring their presence would have been to the family gathered inside. "They are popularly and familiarly known as the wise men or three kings," Blue says, "but they are more properly Magi: magic. They follow the stars. They conjure. They are really more Merlin than Arthur. Yet year after year they stand there at almost every manger scene all stiff and innocent and respectable as if they fit in, as if they've always been there, as if they're supposed to be there, as if they're not flaming pagans intruding on the birth scene of a little Jewish family."

     Blue puts it in modern idiom: "It would be like finding a big plastic Homer Simpson leaning over the baby Jesus on the Cathedral lawn."

     Anyone can be there.

     For the gospel writer Matthew, who tells the story of the Magi's visit, the presence of these wise men at the manger demonstrates that Jesus is for everyone, not just for his own people, the Jews. Perhaps Matthew was remembering words spoken by the Jewish prophet, Isaiah, "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6) The story of the Magi suggests that God's love moves in ever-widening circles, like when a stone is dropped into a pond, rippling out in wider and wider circles until it touches the whole earth.

     Legend has it that animals of all kinds gathered at midnight around the stable, made peaceable by the coming of Christ. Maybe a sparrowhawk flew over the wadi and perched on the roof. Or a lion stalked the perimeter, then eased its head down on massive paws. A black beetle skittered alongside the wall.

     All can come.

     May you find your place at the creche this Christmas. Everyone is welcome.

    Come.

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12

Playlist: "We Three Kings" by John H. Hopkins, Jr., 1857.

     I sing alto in a modest, sixteen-voice choir at our church. We prepare an anthem and help lead worship three Sundays a month. But every autumn we also rehearse a major work for a community concert in December. This year it's Sunrise Mass by composer Ola Gjeilo.

     We will be joined at the concert by other vocalists – a high school ensemble, another church choir, and various itinerant vocalists whom directors have summoned to fill out the parts.

     We could use the help.

     Although our choir has six (!) altos, we need more sopranos, tenors, and basses. Sopranos provide the soaring high notes, tenors the lovely harmonies, and basses the strong foundation for choral music. My husband, Ed, and another man are the only two basses in our choir.
     And, truth be told, most of our voices are aging. I've lost the top of my range, my sight-reading has slowed, and I can't sustain long notes like I used to.

     Rehearsals have been a hard slog.    

     While Sunrise Mass promises to be sublime, Gjeilo (pronounced Yay-lo) asks a lot of his musicians. The opening movement, "The Spheres," has eight vocal parts, layering the voices in long, sustained notes with little support from the orchestra. That's right choral sports fans – the first thing the audience will hear is our voices, almost a cappella.

     In the second movement, "Sunrise," the string section plays its own sweet part while we vocalists struggle to find our entrances and maintain our own rhythm.
     The third movement, "The City," goes on for twenty-two pages, a full eleven minutes of accidentals and strange time changes while the string players saw their way through hundreds of fast-moving sixteenth-notes, bars and bars and bars of arpeggios. The orchestral score looks like someone dipped a paintbrush in black ink and flung it at the page.

     And, did I mention that the text is in Latin?

     But here's some good news: Our church choir participated in a community concert featuring this same piece eight years ago and the woman I sit next to in the alto row learned it then. You can see me leaning toward her during rehearsals to hear our part.
     Also, I had some random good luck – I was given a vocal score used by an alto the last time around. Her penciled notations remain on the pages of the score. She reminds me "In 3" when there is a time change over a page turn. "Stagger breath" lets me know someone else will hold the note while I breathe. "Same note" informs me that though they look different, A-flat and G-sharp are the same sound. She provides pronunciation aids for the unfamiliar Latin words.

     She helps keep me from stumbling as I move through the piece.

     Whoever you are, I thank you.

     This unknown alto is one of a whole host of kindly people whose instructions have shown others the way. Like canoe voyagers who notched blazes on trees to mark the portage from river to lake. Or hikers who piled cairns to show later travelers which trail to take down from the rocky outcrop on top of the mountain.  
     Or, those blessed folks who make YouTube videos telling you how to change the headlamp in your Subaru (harder than it looks) or how to tape and paint a drywall seam. Most of these YouTube gurus are not professionals – they're not in it to promote a product, they just get a kick out of showing you how it's done.

     God bless them.

     As we rehearse Gjeilo's mass, I am helped, too, by the conductor who marks the rhythm with his hands, by the rehearsal accompanist who pounds out our parts, and by the music itself, which, when we listen closely enough, will tell us how to sing it.

     I am surrounded by helpers.

     On the first day of November, the Christian church celebrated All Saints' Day, a day on which we remember not only famous saints like St. Peter and St. Paul and Mother Theresa, but also ordinary folk who have gone before us in faith.   

     It might seem odd to describe ordinary people as "saints," but that's exactly what the apostle Paul does in his Letter to the Ephesians. "To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus," he writes. We usually think of saints as spiritual superstars, but the way Paul uses the word, saints are regular people who, by their faithfulness, help others on their way.      

     In his memoir, The Sacred Journey, novelist Frederick Buechner says that on All Saints' Day, we should remember friends and family members and mentors, "all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives…, by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own."

     On the night before the election, I was lying awake in my bed, legs tense and shoulders scrunched, full of dread about the future. Unable to quiet my mind any other way, I began to pray, over and over again, "Lord, have mercy on us." Then I began naming saints I have known and asked them to stand close by and help us through this.

     I named my mom, Mary Inwood Smith, my friend Barbara Lewis-Lakin, my mentor Juanita Ferguson, and one of my bishops, Judith Craig. As I breathed, and named a name with each breath, it seemed as if I could sense their presence around the room, just beyond a filmy veil, watching, sending their love. As I breathed and prayed, I felt a jolt of something like electricity flow through my body. Though it was still a long time before I fell asleep, my shoulders relaxed into the pillow, and my legs unclenched under the sheets.

     Who are your saints? Who would you name?

     This is my prayer in these dark days of November: May you be given help when you need it. May you be blessed by the presence of faithful ones, living and dead, who stand beside you and show you the way. May you know that you are not alone.

Scripture: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witness, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." – Hebrews 12:1-2

Playlist: "For All the Saints," William W. How, 1864, to the tune of SINE NOMINE by Ralph Vaughn Williams, 1906.

     I love rivers.
     Knowing this, a friend gave me a canoe paddle inscribed with a Bible verse about a river: "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God" (Revelation 22:1)
     A crystal river!

     But even the prettiest river can flip your boat. Once my husband and I went hiking beside the Gunnison River in western Colorado. Narrow canyon walls squeezed the river, creating unpredictable currents deep below the surface. Sometimes, the water boiled up as a whirlpool. Sometimes, it erupted in violent standing waves.
     Ed said maybe we could put a canoe on the river.

     I said, "No way." The conflicting currents made me uneasy.

     I feel the same way about our election season. Tempers are boiling up. Violent opinions are being expressed in attack ads and on social media. I've had to snooze Facebook friends – Christians – on both sides of the political spectrum who think derision is an acceptable form of debate.
     Even if we are careful with our speech, we may still harbor hostile thoughts about friends or relatives. "How can you believe that?" we may wonder. "Who are you?"

     Perhaps we could benefit from hearing the next verse in Revelation: "On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, . . . and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" (Revelation 22:2).

     We need healing in our nation.
     For John of Patmos, who wrote the Book of Revelation, the tree of life represents God's vision for the world – peace and plenty for all people. The imagery harks back to the tree in the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve ate. Eating from this tree banished them from Paradise.
     But eating this fruit, John says, brings an entirely different outcome. People experience healing. Paradise is restored. Eating from this tree grants salvation and eternal life.

     How might John's river and tree of life help us deal with each other in a heated election season?  

     I find a clue in the last phrase of the first sentence of Revelation 22, which says that the river flows "through the middle of the street of the city" (v. 2a).
     When we put Jesus in the middle of our lives, asking for God's grace to flow through our hearts and our streets, healing can begin – healing of relationships, communities, and nations.  

     A Christian psychologist and marriage counselor suggests how we might open ourselves to healing. In his book, Never Fight Again…Guaranteed, David Hawkins says that many people have an "adversarial" relationship with their mates. "I don't like what you're saying or doing, so I set out to prove you wrong. I may cloak my words in something nice, but make no mistake, I'm out to win. And where there is a winner, there must be a loser."

     Have you ever experienced a win-lose dynamic in an important relationship?

     "When we're in a conflict state," Hawkins explains, "we slip easily into a right-versus-wrong or good-versus-bad mentality. We shift into extreme thinking that distorts what we're saying to each other. In a few short moments our helpmates become our adversaries, our lovers become our rivals. We're no longer interested in seeking the highest good for our mates, but in winning."
     I think Hawkins' description of marital conflict also applies to the political arena. Hawkins calls for a change in our way of thinking and our patterns of behavior. "Once we uncover our hurtful patterns of fighting," he says, "we can replace these patterns and tactics with healing actions. We cultivate an open heart, accepting that things won't always [go our way]."

     We give up the desire to win at all costs because this desire breaks the bonds of love that hold us together.

     Change of heart is not easy, though. The stakes feel high. Our differences go deep. In the heat of passionate conversations, I've messed up many times. Ask my family, who've had to call me out. They have reminded me of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
     The Golden Rule could be applied in an election season as: No name-calling. No finger-pointing. No demonizing those with whom we disagree.
     A better approach might be to cultivate curiosity: Can you help me understand why you feel that way? Where did you get that information? What experiences led you to that conclusion?

     How we engage each other in the political sphere is spiritual work. If Christians, who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, cannot model civility and love in the public arena, how will anyone else desire the salvation that is in Jesus Christ?
     This work is so hard that sometimes I'm tempted to avoid political activity altogether. I just want to go out to the woods and stay there until it's over.

     Yet we must take the risk to do our part to bring the world closer to God's vision of peace and plenty for all. I think about early Methodists who worked to abolish slavery. I think about Nelson Mandela, who persevered in prison twenty-seven years to bring down apartheid in South Africa.
     Sometimes we must speak out or take action even when we expect to be met with anger.

     So, I do my small part. I put up yard signs and pray that God will guide and bless the people who see them. I fill out my ballot, asking God to guide and bless me. This fall I'm serving as a poll worker, hoping to help keep elections accessible and fair.

     What do you feel called to do?

     What we do may not be as important as how we do it.
     In 2015, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama met for a week of conversation in Dharamsala, India. Both of these Nobel Peace Prize recipients had suffered much at the hands of enemies. Yet they were not consumed with anger. On the contrary, says Douglas Abrams, who described their meeting, these two men were full of joy. And, during their week together, they spoke over and over of the need to have compassion and understanding for persons who have hurt us or with whom we disagree.
     "We need unbiased love toward entire humanity irrespective of what their attitude is toward us," the Dalai Lama said. "Your enemies are still human brothers and sisters, so they also deserve our love, our respect, our affection. That is unbiased love. You might have to resist your enemies' actions, but you can love them as brothers and sisters." 

      Resist with love? Impossible.

     But what is impossible for us is possible for God.
     Resist actions. Love people. 

     This election season and beyond, when I have conversations with friends or relatives, I will say in my mind, "You are my beloved sibling in Christ, no matter who wins the race." If someone misunderstands or attacks me, I will say in my mind, "You are my beloved fellow citizen, even when we disagree."
     May the river of God's mercy flow through the middle of our hearts and streets. May we eat of the fruit that makes for peace.  

Scripture: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." – Galatians 5:22-23a (NRSV)

Playlist: "The Gift of Love," Hal Hopson, 1972.

     Every other Friday, my husband and I drive to Grand Rapids to watch our three-year-old granddaughter while her parents are at work. Riley has reached a delightful and exasperating age. Having acquired the smarts and persistence to advocate for her desires, she does just that.

     Continually.

     Riley wants two sweet treats for snack. No jacket when we go to the park. She delays nap time by various means for half an hour – and then doesn't sleep anyway.  

     "This is why young people have children," I muttered to Ed during our last drive home. "I'm too old for this."

     Ed tells me we should enjoy it while we can. Because our days of driving across the state to watch Riley are numbered. Twenty-one, to be exact. She'll enroll in Young Fives next fall.

     On the same drive home, we discussed other changes in our lives wrought by the passage of time: Hearing aids. Hiring a contractor to replace some facia boards on the second-story dormer instead of doing it ourselves. And, we've decided to fly rather than drive all the way to Washington and Oregon next summer when we hope to visit our 49th and 50th states.

     While we talked, I kept swatting away a fearful thought – that our plans might not come to fruition. One day one of us will die, and the other will be left alone.

     Morbid, but true.

     A colleague recently posted on her Facebook page a quote by a 35-year-old Ukrainian-born actress and self-described mystic, Delfina Alden, a quote that was picked up by the blog, Mindful Christianity: "The problem is, you think you have time," Alden said. "On average, we get 80 summers…if we're lucky. Don't put off the trip. Stop waiting for life to begin. Stay up late with friends. Get up early to watch the sunrise. Catch every sunset. Book the trip. Go on that hike. Go to the beach. Spend time with those you love. Tell them how you feel." (@heydelfina)

     That's deep wisdom from someone who's only thirty-five.

     I remember an evening once when we talked with friends late into the night, sitting by the fireplace in a cabin beside the Mohican River in Ohio. We looked at our phones and said, "Wait? What?  How did it get to be 11 o'clock?" The next morning we woke to the blue light of falling snowflakes. We marveled at Virginia bluebells poking up through the snow.
     But hey, Delfina, there's a problem. When you get to be "a certain age," you have to rest up between adventures. After watching Riley, who spends the whole day testing our mettle, we're pooped. If we had also stayed up late the night before talking with friends, we would have been too tired to drive. Could have crashed the car.

     We can't do every sunrise and every sunset.

     We're not thirty-five.
     If anything, however, getting older sharpens our awareness of what has always been true: Our time on earth is limited. The people we love will leave us – or we will leave them. We don't have control over most things that affect us.

     80 summers. 21 Fridays.

     Ed and Delfina are right. All we can do is choose to receive each moment as a gift. We can choose to trust in God rather than live in fear of what may come.  

     Jesus once said, "Why are you anxious about tomorrow? Today's trouble is enough for today." Another time he said, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows."

     Two weeks ago, while we walked along the Lakelands Trail, bright sunshine backlit the petals of wild sunflowers and made the full heads of the goldenrod glow. "Would you call this late summer or autumn?" I asked Ed.

     Then I wondered if I were in the late summer or the autumn of my life. Could be the winter. Hard to know. It depends when I die.

     80 summers. 21 Fridays.

     Then I noticed how the wetlands were bursting with foliage and color, lush and expansive, yellows and purples and tinges of scarlet. Some of the cattail were starting to release their downy seeds.
     I stood in the middle of the path and spread my arms wide.
     When fear constricts our vision, God invites us to open our eyes.
     In the summer of 2023, Ed and I paddled our canoes out to Lake Michigan from the Platte River as the sun was setting. To the east over the land a clear blue sky trailed edges of pink. To the west over the water the horizon was molten gold. Ed snapped a picture of my canoe silhouetted against all that wondrous light.

     God's love is the vast water on which we paddle. Limitless. We can trust the water to hold us up. Whatever comes.

     May you know today that you are not forgotten by God. May you savor each moment, sunrise or sunset. May you move without fear toward the horizons of your life.

Scripture: Matthew 7:25-34, Luke 12:6-7

Playlist: "His Eye Is On the Sparrow," Ethel Waters, 2014.

     Yesterday we woke to a hard frost that sparkled in the sun, making patterns on the patio railing and furring the grass.
     This has been the sunniest November I can remember.  

     Except for a few gloomy days around the time change, we've had a peek at the sun nearly every day this month. I know, because I keep track on my calendar whether or not the sun shines.  

     I need the sun.

     While walking on the Lakelands Trail west of Pinckney last week, I stopped on the bridge over Honey Creek and swiveled my head toward the south like a flower, letting the late afternoon rays bathe my face.

     While hiking on the nature trail at Hudson Mills Metropark, I stopped mid-step and spread my arms wide like the branches of a white oak tree, letting the light soak into my limbs.

     As my family and friends  know, November is my least favorite month. "Dark" was the meditation that began this series of blogs in 2021.

     But this November has been different.

     Because of the extra sunlight, I've noticed the blue sky between the branches of the trees. As poet and priest Arnold Kenseth said, "Now are the trees windows, / And the eyes see distances."

     I've noticed how the Norway maples hold their golden leaves longer than the other maples.
     I've even appreciated the muted colors of November's palette, the grays and beiges and browns, spiced with an occasional dash of scarlet. Or the bleached beauty of field corn rattling in the wind.

     I am grateful for simple daily things like the smell of Ed's coffee in the kitchen in the morning or the colors in a bowl of chicken chili – red tomato, green pepper, yellow corn.  

     And I am grateful for special things, like the prospect of seeing our family over the holidays when grandchildren will careen through the house.

     I am grateful that a long spell of difficult work is nearly over, and that I came through a bleak period of internal pain. It's been a hard autumn for me, which is why I haven't written a blog in several months.

     But, now, to my surprise, in November, I skip while walking and sing while praying. I am grateful for that, too. Because it doesn't happen all the time.

     And if I kiss my husband on the back of his neck rather than glower over my breakfast cereal, that is a gift, too.

     I know the dark will come again, and soon.

     But today I feel myself blessed beyond measure.
     So, as the scripture enjoins, I bring the sacrifice of praise.

     I say in the words of an old prayer, "For all thy blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give thee thanks."

     Happy Thanksgiving, dear ones. May you, too, come through whatever hard season you are in. May you be surprised by a thankful joy.

Scripture: "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name." – Hebrews 13:15 (NIV)

Playlist: "We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise," Kirk Dearman, 1984.

My offering for August is a guest blog on the site of my friend, Maureen Dunphy, a Michigan writer who also loves the outdoors. Her most recent book, Divining, celebrates trees.

If you want to read my guest blog, follow this link:
https://maureendunphy.com/touching-the-white-oak-by-guest-blogger-sondra-willobee/

As always, I'm grateful for your thoughts. May you enjoy these lovely, end-of-summer days.

     My husband, Ed, does most of our grocery shopping. I feel guilty about not sharing the load, so occasionally I offer to go along. "I could do the dry goods, you could do the meat," I tell him.
     Turns out, he doesn't like to go grocery shopping with me. He says I take too long.
     It's true—I do dally. I peruse the offerings on the seasonal shelves or consider the items that hang invitingly next to the pink confetti frosting in the baking aisle. 
     I especially enjoy the chromatic array in the produce section. The glossy purple eggplant. The scarlet radishes. The red, green, and yellow peppers stacked together in a bag like the colors in a traffic light. "Stop," they whisper, "look at me."   
     So I do.

     Now, I know that these are calculated strategies by the marketing department. They dangle impulse purchases like low-hanging fruit. They arrange the eggplant to please the eye.      

     I know I'm being manipulated.

     But the kid in me? She just wants to look and look.

     My husband, though, is the son of a factory worker at Pontiac Motors. Ed himself did time in the hot, dirty, and dangerous foundry during one summer of his college years. That was enough, he said, to send him back to school.
     Of course he just wants to go to the store, get the job done, and go home. Condensation is forming on the waxed carton of milk. The ice cream is melting.
     "Keep the line moving," my husband says.

     A lot of us in the Detroit area have a punch clock embedded in our minds.
     Don't get me wrong. I prize efficiency, too. I worked at a factory in Walled Lake for one summer, operating the injection-mold machines that spat out the plastic toys sold at Kmart.

     I was raised by the son of a farmer who had a similar attitude about work. You do your chores as fast as you can because there is always something else that needs to be done. The next row to hoe. The next crop to harvest. Before rain ruins the hay or turns the fields to mud.
     My mother, also raised on a Michigan farm, had no patience with woolgathering, either. She needed all of us kids to pick beans in the garden and hull the strawberries she bought by the case. I remember September afternoons when we pulled glass jars of canned tomatoes out of the steaming kettle with the big metal tongs.

     I can still hear her voice: "Get your nose out of that book and come help me."   

     I get it.
     Life is hard work. The Protestant work ethic is bred into my bones.

     I know that if I want spotless mirrors, I have to get out the Windex and wipe. If I don't want dust bunnies, I have to wrestle the flexible hose of the Dyson into position, thrust it under the bed and suck up the stuff.

     "Days of toil, and hours of ease," the old hymn says.
     And were it not for Ed's speed, it would take two days instead of one afternoon to clean our house.

     But, still.
     Sometimes the kid in me wants to come out and play. To be released from the relentless ticking of the clock. Just to be.

     When I was in seminary, I learned that ancient Greek philosophers had two words for time. Chronos was the word for the ordinary, chronological, sequential time under which we labor.
     Clock-time.
     The Greek word, Kairos, meant something else, the crucial or right or opportune moment. In the New Testament, Kairos means "the appointed time in the purpose of God." When God acts in human history to fulfill God's purposes.

     God-time.

     Kairos is the word for those mysterious moments when the transcendent breaks into our humdrum existence. When time stands still.
     That's why I go to the river.
     When I am canoeing, the flow of the water soothes my mind and releases something in my soul. The chatter of "monkey mind" inside my brain ceases.
    I can listen. I can see.
    The push of the paddle becomes a prayer.
     When I get off the river, I feel less burdened. More playful. More whole.

     Kairos happens for me sometimes when I am writing, too.

     So, if you see me tapping on my keyboard at the library or loitering in the aisles at Meijer, you'll know what's going on.
     And, if you see me on the river, for God's sake, don't tell me what time it is or how many miles we have yet to go.
     I don't want to know.

     I want to stay in the moment when the world stands still, when there is nothing but the rasp of the cattails and the trill of the blackbirds in the marsh. Nothing but the press of the current against my paddle.  

     I want to be open to what God is doing around me.

     May you be given such moments when God breaks in.

Scripture: "The time (Kairos) is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand." – Mark 1:15 (NRSV).
Playlist: "Down to the River to Pray," Alison Krauss, O Brother, Where Art Thou? 2000.

     Two years ago today my friend Barbara Lewis-Lakin died. This morning a colleague who also loved Barb emailed me a poem by Maya Angelou about grief.
     Beginning with the line, "When great trees fall," Angelou traces the progress of our bereavement when "great souls" die. Angelou describes how the very air around us changes when we remember things undone. She tells how our souls, dependent upon the nurture of these loved ones, "now shrink, wizened."

     That word—"wizened"—is exactly how I felt when Barb died.

     "Wizened" means to "dry up, wither, shrivel." As in a sustained drought.

     Angelou predicts that "after a period peace blooms / slowly and always / irregularly."[1]

     I read Angelou's poem this morning while looking at a blurry photo of Barb taken during the summer of 1985 at a restaurant in Melvindale, part of a region that Detroiters call "Downriver."
     Barb and I were both young pastors. We may have agreed to meet for brunch after she conducted worship at her church in Melvindale. Her son, Peter, a toddler, stood on the bench seat beside her, eyeing the knob that flipped the selections on the juke box.

     My daughter, Laura, just weeks old, slept in a bucket-style car seat on the floor. My husband, Ed, was watching Peter, perhaps to catch him if he tumbled.
     The table, awaiting our order, was spread with coffee mugs and condiments. Maybe a waitress took the picture for us.
     Barb was, as the scripture says, already "acquainted with grief." [2] Her first husband, David Byers, had died seventeen months before.

     She smiled for the camera with a sweet, steady weariness.

     Maybe it was a trick of the light shining from the window behind her head, but even then Barb seemed suffused with the radiance that Maya Angelou describes in her poem.

     Throughout her life, as a pastor, counselor, and friend, Barb showed us how to meet grief with grace and courage. And how to make space for joy.
     Though my heart still aches—I wish we could meet again for brunch and I could show Barb the photo, and laugh about my ridiculous sandals, and about the way she often sat with her foot tucked under her skirt—I am feeling more at peace.

     I was blessed to know Barbara Byers Lewis-Lakin. She was a great soul.

     If you are downriver of grief of any kind, may comfort come to you.

     May your senses revive over time.

     May you be surrounded by the radiance of those who have gone before us.

     Oh, how they shine.

Scripture: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." – John 1:5 (NRSV)

Playlist: Philipp Nicolai, "O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright," 1599; translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1863.

[1] Maya Angelou, "Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens and Mayfield,"

https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/-/media/files/wexnermedical/patient-care/patient-and-visitor-guide/patient-support-services/spiritual-and-pastoral-care/poems/ailey-baldwin-floyd-killens-and-mayfield-by-maya-angelou.pdf?rev=3f8d42a410d741adbecddff6b3bdc363&hash=FD194A4A54AC2DAC71DF6927EAFE4F91
[2] Isaiah 53:3.

     There is an illness you can get from the feces of beaver—giardiasis—also known as "beaver fever," a parasitic infection of the digestive system that can cause diarrhea, stomach cramps, and dehydration.
     Once, when Ed and I were canoeing in the Sylvania Wilderness Area of the Upper Peninsula—a beaver haven—we took an afternoon swim in High Lake. How clear the water was, and—I hoped—how clean! I worried that this beautiful, turquoise-tinted lake might actually be contaminated. I feared a parasite would infest and sicken this, my only body.

     On a different canoe trip in Lake Superior Provincial Park, we surprised a beaver that surfaced right beside the bow of our canoe. The look on his face! Pure horror.
     The beaver and I stared at each other for a long moment, then he turned, slapped his tail loudly on the water, and was gone. Perhaps the beaver was outraged that I, a human, had entered his lake. Perhaps the beaver feared I would harm him or this water, his only home.

     Which, of course, is what we humans have done on so many rivers and lakes. We've left death in our wake.

     Last summer, it was another toxic release into Norton Creek, a tributary of the Huron River in Southeast Michigan—not PFAS[i] as in 2018—but hexavalent chromium, a chemical used in auto plating. The spill was caused by an employee of Tribar Manufacturing in Wixom, who repeatedly overrode the system designed to keep untreated effluent from entering the river. Fortunately for the city of Ann Arbor, which gets its drinking water from the Huron River, the hexavalent chromium was contained at the Wixom Wastewater Treatment Plant.

     But what about all of the aquatic plants and animals in Norton Creek?

     In many other places, a large-scale disaster was not averted. Valdez. The Gulf oil spill. This past February, after a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, black smoke hung for days over the town. Crews released vinyl chloride into a trench and burned it off so that train cars did not explode. Now, residents and clean-up workers complain of health problems, and something foul bubbles up from the sediment of Leslie Run Creek. 

     It's enough to make you curse. Or weep.

     Yet life goes on.

     Resurgent in Southeast Michigan, beavers are felling trees along the stretches of the Huron River and its tributaries where my husband and I hike and canoe. Streamside tree trunks are girdled with teeth marks. Once-tall trees lie prostrate on the ground. Beavers are now working on a multi-trunk tree Ed and I saw while canoeing below the town of Dexter. Five feet in diameter, this particular tree will take the beavers while. But it's coming down.

     Though I usually appreciate wildlife, I'm not pleased.

     So much of the landscape where I live has already been lost to human enterprise—houses, businesses, strip malls, ball fields—I feel fiercely protective of the green spaces that remain. Riparian trees shield the river, cooling the water for certain fish species, and stabilizing the banks.
     "Damn beavers," I say. "Leave these trees alone."
     Which, of course, the beavers won't do. Their incisors will grow into their own flesh if not kept worn down. They must gnaw or die.
     We could say the same thing about humans, I guess, about our endless expansions, migrations, and incursions into territories not originally our own. We have a long history of development. "Generations have trod, have trod, have trod," the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in 1918: "And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell."[ii]
     How much more, one hundred years later, he would have mourned.
     What is a sustainable pace of growth? What is an acceptable loss of wild places? Are the waters fouled forever?
     Many scientists fear we have already passed the point of no return.

     Still, a young arborist calmed a friend of mine who was upset about trees in her yard downed by DTE and recent storms. "Trees grow back," the arborist said to my friend.

     Yes. But not this particular white oak I have stood under, pressing my palm against its furrowed bark.
     And not in my lifetime.
     May my children see it, then. And their children.

     Perhaps we humans could agree to exert only the scale of damage inflicted by beavers. Take no more than we need to feed ourselves and our small, furry families. Bite off no more than we can chew.
     Sometimes, I simply despair at the vast devastation humans have wrought. I, alone, cannot fix this mess.

     Together, however, we can insist that those who harm the earth be held accountable. We can apply the same skills, ingenuity, and intelligence that we've used for unbridled development to make wise and sustainable choices from here on out. We have the tools to repair some of the damage we've done.
     Several months after the PFAS spill on the Huron River, my paddling club met with Dan Brown, a watershed planner for the Huron River Watershed Council. Brown urged watershed users to contact state officials regularly about water quality issues. "I call my representative every Friday," he said. "Be polite, persistent, and persuasive."
     According to Brown, because of widespread public concern, the state of Michigan was the first state in the nation to do a high level of monitoring for PFAS chemicals. "We provided a new model for cooperation," he said, "approaching the PFAS issue as a whole watershed, exploring how we could deal with partnerships of communities."[iii]

     May the cleansing of the rivers and the re-foresting of their banks come about through the uneasy, outraged, yet hopeful alliance of all who dwell therein. 
     May we protect the earth, this, our only body.
     May we heal the waters that we share with all creatures, our first and only home.

Scripture: "Darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." – Genesis 1:2 (NKJV)
Playlist: "Blue Boat Home," Peter Mayer, Earth Town Square, 2002.

[i] "PFAS" is the acronym given to a family of more than 3,000 toxic, synthetic, "forever" chemicals used to fight fires and to manufacture many household products. Toxins accumulate not only in fish, but also in river foam. After the 2018 Tribar spill of PFAS into the Huron River, river users were told to avoid contact with the foam, as well as to keep children and pets away from it. A "Do Not Eat the Fish" advisory is still in effect.  
[ii] Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Edited by Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1973), page 80.
[iii] Daniel Brown, presentation at a meeting of the Great Lakes Paddlers, March 12, 2019.

This time of year, three years ago, my husband and I were walking in the woods, scared out of our wits. We weren't afraid of wild animals—bear and cougar and wolf are long gone from these parts. We were afraid of a virus that was picking people off like a hidden sniper perched on a rooftop, sighting random victims with a cold eye.

     Though the elderly, service workers, and people in poor health were especially vulnerable, healthy people, too, had died of COVID-19. Died. Morgues in Italy had closed because there were too many bodies. Our niece, a nurse on a COVID-19 floor, described what was happening in hospitals here in the U.S.: "I'll never forget the nights we heard dozens of emergency intubation calls," she said. "Gearing up to hold iPads in dying patients' rooms and trying not to cry while their families prayed and sang and wept with them." 

     The governor of our state had told everyone to "shelter in place," hoping to slow the spread of the virus. Ed and I went the only place we could—to the parks and hiking trails around our home.

     At Pinckney Recreation Area, we hiked alongside Pickerel Lake and stopped on a wooden footbridge over a channel that connects two sections of the lake. Tall oaks with tattered leaves and needle-less tamarack trees bordered the lake. When other hikers passed behind us on the bridge, they flattened themselves against the railing, giving us wide berth. Whenever we encountered others on the trail, we did the same.

     Ed and I stood on the bridge a long time, looking at the water, trying to calm our anxious hearts.

     When we finally crossed the bridge and stepped back on the dirt trail, I stopped short. There it was: a mottled purplish horn breaking through the dark earth. Unmistakable.

     Skunk cabbage.

     A member of the Arum family, skunk cabbage protects its round, lemon-yellow spadix with a pulpy, purplish-brown sheath. In larger flowers, the sheath curves over the spadix like a finger pointed toward the ground.

     The plant would manifest its distinct odor in a month or so. One guidebook described it this way: "The broad leaves, which appear after the flowers, are at first coiled, later become very large and have a foetid odor when crushed."[i] Foetid. Now there's a word.

     Skunk cabbage might be classified as a flower, but it didn't look like a flower to me. Not white or pink or delicate or pleasantly-scented. The round yellow spadix with its knobby little flowers poking out of the sheath looked like the head of a tiny alien emerging from a spaceship.

     It heartened me, however, to see the strange plant emerging from dead leaves. A sign of life in an otherwise gray landscape.

     I quickened my step, and smiled at other hikers under my mask.

     Just this past week I had another experience of being heartened by signs of life in a seemingly bleak landscape. Since the mass shooting at MSU in February, I've despaired at our nation's inability to stem gun violence.

     Last Wednesday, however, I participated in an Advocacy Day in our state capital organized by the Michigan Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Three hundred people gathered in Lansing, going in small groups to the offices of their senators and representatives to ask them to support common-sense gun legislation.[ii] They told stories of how they'd been affected by gun violence. They rallied, wrote letters, sang hymns, and prayed.

     I got to meet my representative, Jennifer Conlin, and thank her for what she's already done. A former New York Times journalist, Conlin ran for office last year because of the Oxford school shooting.[iii]

     It was good to be there last Wednesday with others who are concerned about gun violence. The House Judiciary Committee was considering safe storage bills that very morning. After the event, organizers told us that "Our support had an impact at a critical hour. Later in the day, the House of Representatives passed all the safe storage bills with bipartisan backing."[iv]

     I don't kid myself—the process of political change is fraught with opportunities for grandstanding, self-righteousness, name-calling, and inflammatory rhetoric. Divisions run deep on this issue, polarizing people in the same families, communities, and churches. Political change isn't any prettier than the strange-looking skunk cabbage that rises in the spring.

     And I know we've a long way to go before children are safe in their schools. But, bit by bit, concerned citizens can make a difference. Polls show that a majority of people in Michigan, even in red districts, support common-sense gun legislation.

      So, here is my plea: do what you can to end gun violence, whoever and wherever you are. I think it's particularly important for Republican legislators to hear from gun owners who support reasonable gun controls. Partisan divides on this issue are not doing our children any good.

     We found ways to come through COVID together. We can do this.

     Don't lose hope. God is always at work for good in the world. If you look closely, you can see signs of life everywhere. In an overheated gymnasium at a downtown church last week, a bunch of motley United Methodists, many of them gray-haired ladies in sneakers, sat around tables and planned what they would say if given the chance. And in the damp black earth along creeks and hiking trails, mottled purple horns are poking out of the ground. 

     That's how spring comes in Michigan. It isn't pretty, but it comes.

Scripture: "For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come." – Song of Solomon, 2:11-12 (NRSV)

Playlist: "Step by Step," John McCutcheon, Step by Step: Hammer Dulcimer Duets, Trios, and Quartets, 1986.

[i] Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny, A Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-central North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1968), page 368.
[ii] Universal background checks, safe storage laws, and extreme risk protection orders.
[iii] https://www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/opinion-oxford-inspired-me-seek-office-msu-must-inspire-gun-reform
[iv] For more information about the Advocacy Day, see https://michiganumc.org/um-advocacy-day-impacts-state-capitol/