May your well-being be like the waves of the sea.

After hiking at Pinery Provincial Park and along the Lake Huron shoreline, I have been thinking about waves.  Gentle waves, powerful waves, little waves, big waves, huge waves, laughing waves, waves of tears, how my own breathe comes in waves, and how life is like that too.  Struggles and pain come in waves of two or three or four events in a row.  “Why does everything happen all at once?",  people so often say to me, reaching for the kleenex and crying out with the writer of the biblical psalm:

“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” (Psalm 42)

As a child I spend summer vacations at various family cottages south of Kincardine, Ontario. Waves!!!  My mother was the lake, her lullaby the sound of waves at night.  Then I would wake up to listen for the morning mood of the lake.  If the waves were sounding powerful, roaring, and strong – yiiippeeee!  It’s an inner tube day!  Breakfast – fast!  Run down the beach trying to beat my sister and brothers – beatcha to the boathouse! I get dibs on the biggest inner tube!    We would all ride the waves till the sun set and our backs were burned.

Waves, of course, can be frightening.  Like that trip across the St. Lawrence River in our boat, “Amigo”, when every wave was a terror.  We should never have left the Gananoque shore that day. What human arrogance made us think we could manage the waves?  When we arrived on Grindstone Island, New York, where I served a summer congregation, I could have kissed the shoreline rocks. Waves can kill.  Boats get tossed and turned and are never found.  People die in waves.  Waves can wash away lives and cities.  “Never turn your back on the ocean”, said an indigenous man interviewed after the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia.

There are waves I experience within myself.  Waves of love.  Anxiety comes in waves. Waves of hate. Waves of sorrow. Waves of insecurity. Waves of joy. Waves of gentle acceptance on this beautiful evening in May when I need to take a little walk along the shore of my day and listen to all the waves within the rhythms of my life.   I walk, and imagine all the vast shores in our world tonight.  I hear waves pounding and thrashing, spraying up, washing rocks.  Waves tickling the toes of lovers as they walk along the shore of a new relationship.  Waves washing over pairs of old, aching feet. Lovers who have walked like that together for decades, and decades, and decades.  Waves calming the one who walks alone, reminding them - us -that we are not alone.    Waves that take us to out of control places, up, and up, and wondering if we will make it down, and over.  Dogs barking at waves.  Surfers hunched and waiting, paddling, then up, and sailing in to shore.   I imagine so many quiet places, where only the seals and the penguins and the polar bears listen to the waves. 

I hear now beyond my small doubting world, the sounds and the sights of the ebb and flow of water, of things, of experiences, of the awesome-not-understanding- anything about the one who “appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar” (Jeremiah 31:35).  

Listen with me, and may your well-being be like the waves of the sea. (Isaiah 48:18)

Home sweet smelling home!

Buster and I were out walking this afternoon. The air was full of spring sounds and smells.  Birds, wet soil, tulips, grass coming to life.  Buster of course makes frequent stops to sniff around.  Today, however, he made a particularly striking show of sniffing as we approached home.  He stopped on my neighbours front yard suddenly, nose up twitching, his little white head turning in every direction.  When I tried to pull on the leash,  he was insistent that we linger, paws digging into the grass, rear end threatening to park down right there on the ground. I got the message.

Let Buster sniff.  What is the point of a walk in the spring if a dog can’t stop and sniff? This seemed more important to Buster than most sniffs and as I watched his eyes darting up and around with a new kind of urgency and twitching of ears. I began to wonder if he was smelling smells and hearing sounds that reminded him of home. 

Buster is a rescue dog.  It’s a long story, and I’ve been wanting to share it with you.  Suffice it to say, for today’s musings, that Buster came to us by a mysterious series of events that included the potential for divorce.  Divorce was averted by two days of off and on crying (poor sweet little puppy all alone needs a home) that even I didn't understand but which served the purpose of proving to my husband just how much I needed to rescue a dog who had been found running loose in a southwestern Ontario city and who subsequently spent two months in a shelter behind bars and who was now on death row.  

Enter Buster to our home, with the clear understanding (even though my husband came up with the name), that this was my project.  Wiping away the tears, I happily agreed.  I would walk, feed, water, pick up after, whatever.  This was to be my foster dog. 

So anyway, with that all behind us my husband is now equally smitten. I knew he would come around. Of course, with both of us smitten, eventually came the inevitable decision to adopt Buster.  But what has been bothering me, is that I don't know his story. I don't know about his prior life.  Where did he live before?  Is someone missing him?  Or did someone just let him loose?    Did he run away?  Was he stolen? Who loved Buster before he came to us and why weren't they searching for him?

From time to time, Buster reacts in ways that indicates he remembers a former life, a place he lived, and the people he knew.  Of course he remembers!  Once when out walking, he saw a man and a woman ahead of us and he lunged to get to them.  Did he think they were former owners, or people he knew?  The first time he heard me play the piano, he came racing in from another room, and with great excitement and abandon leaped up to sit beside me on the piano bench as if to say," I know that sound"!.  I was stunned.  I was certain he had recognized the sound of the piano.  Had he done that before?  Whenever I play the piano, he comes running to listen. Sometimes he curls up beside me, other times begs to sit up on the bench, ears twitching to each note.  On occasion, he dances.  I'm not kidding.  When he really enjoys a piece of music, he'll jump up, and twist around in circles.  I swear he's dancing.   But my heart aches because I sense he is remembering a place he once knew as "home".

Or - is it just that I too have those memories and I'm not always sure what to do with the way I feel when I smell shortbread baking the way my stepmother's shortbread smelled in December?  What am I do with the way I feel when I hear a freighter calling in the night and once again I am a little girl at home in Grandpa's house near the Detroit River? And how lilac perfume makes me think Nanny is in the room again.  Perhaps she is. 

Sniffing, and searching, Buster would not budge as he seemed to be trying to figure something out.  It looked as if he were sensing, or thinking in whatever way dogs think, "I've smelled these smells before.  This smell, this spring air, reminds me of home". 

I thought of Mole in "The Wind in the Willows", happily on his adventure with Rat, until, 

"suddenly the call reached him, and took him like an electric shock.  It was one of those mysterious fairy calls from out of the darkness that suddenly reached Mole, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while as yet he could not clearly remember what it was.  He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the current that had so strongly moved him.  A moment and he had caught it again; and with this time came the recollection in fullest flood.  Home!"

I love the narration of Mole's grief, as he remembers the home he had left without much thought, only soon to discover his longing for his "shabby, dingy little place" in the world.  Torn between moving forward with his new friend and the desire to go back and have just one more look, Mole sobs uncontrollably until Rat like all good friends, understands and agrees to help Mole find his home again.  It was the smell that led Mole to remember and long for something he had lost.  Buster's sniffing - was it a similar remembrance?  If only I could help Buster find that place he left, if it was a good place.  But then, maybe it wasn't, and for sure, he has landed in a good home where he can dance again.

But every now and then, Buster seems to remember another place and other people. New adventures are unfolding, with lots of new people to love, and many comfy new places to curl up in.

I'm certain that Buster smells and hears the sounds of another home.

Embedded in our senses we carry the memory of a home we once knew,  a story that perhaps we are not quite able to articulate any more.  The memory is alive. The smells and the sounds echo in our hearts and when they do, like Mole and Buster, we know the call to be irresistible.  

Where is that place, your wonderfully smelly place that is home?  Is it under a tree, beside a river?  In a rocking chair,  in someones arms?  Is it the smell of shortbread baking, or the sound of a piano? Your grandmother's perfume? Chili sauce steaming in the oven in October?

Many times in my life, and too often now that I look back over the years,  I have left a home I loved in order to strike out on some new adventure.  I'd like to think maybe that is Buster's story.  Once day the fairy call to roam just became too compelling and off he went, leaving his collar behind.  Now here he is in his new home, though memories of his former life still urge him to come back.

Perhaps you also have left a home you loved.  Sometimes we were too young to even remember the change, but still, you carry in your senses the way that place smelled, felt, sounded.  Those "mysterious fairy calls from out of the darkness" come to remind us that home is always beckoning.  Backward, forward, inward, and always around us. Home!

Robin Contest!

Every year we have a contest in our family to see who notices a robin first.  It was my idea to create a fun way of welcoming spring, when our daughters were young.   I would choose the day and announce, "ok everyone, robin contest begins today!"  I actually don't think my husband or daughters pay that much attention to my little game, but they humour me!   The sighting of the first robin is a huge thing for me - like the dove coming back to the ark with the olive branch in his beak.  Oh thank God/dess, there is hope of dry land ahead, hope the waters will abate, hope of something growing somewhere that has leaves, maybe even fruit to eat.  I begin my search for those red breasts in earnest at the beginning of March.  There is usually a struggle that goes along with it, a longing, a frustration, a sure knowing that the robin will return, but not knowing when.  That Canadian I've-had-it-with-winter feeling.

Usually I hear her singing before I can see her.  I look up, around, this way and that and for days we play our game.  I feel competitive about it, annoyed when someone else in the family announces the first sighting.   Her music keeps me searching until one morning - there she is, fat bellied and digging for worms in the back yard, oblivious to the joy her presence has given me.     It's over, winter.  Put away the boots, the heavy coats, tidy up the front closet.  Go out and start planning the new life, think about what to put in the garden.  It's time to buy seeds.

But -(have you noticed that there is a "but" in every experience?) - this year, I missed all that drama.  I didn't even have time to tell my family that the robin contest was beginning.  There was no longing, no frustration, no hearing the music before seeing the singer.  It happened a few nights ago while I was chatting in the driveway with my neighbour.  I wasn't even searching, and there she was, perched quietly on the branch across the driveway.  

Some things in life arrive with great drama, perhaps following a long arduous search, and there are other things that quietly slip in beside us without our knowing that we needed this so so much,  until  in a little moment on an ordinary evening, we look up and see the gift.

                          Tree stumps and fallen branches everywhere I go, everywhere I look.

I am noticing these images in my walks these days, and wonder what it means to me, at this time in my life. I am particularly struck by the clear cut, tidy, intentional severances of tree trunks and branches, much more than I am by those  felled in messy ways by wind, or rot, or the weight of a squirrel jumping across. It's the trees that have felt the chain saw buzzing through their limbs with a powerful , clear cut intent that catch my eye.

A few days ago as I was sitting in my living room with my morning coffee, city trucks came zooming down my street with obvious purpose.  They knew exactly where they were headed and why.  I imagined that  clipped to the dash there was a form, a printed direction in sans serif font size 10, with our street name typed.  Had someone been here recently eyeing up the treeline?  Had a neighbour called in their concern about the pressing need to trim trees?  Out came the equipment.  Not even a moment really, to ponder the beauty of my neighbours birch tree with her shaggy hairdo and unkempt appearance. Things needed to be tidied up. It didn't take long.  Branches fell and were tossed in the back of the truck.  And the birch looked oh so nice.

I realize that the maple on my front lawn was next.    She has a lovely rounded upper body of bare branches in winter. She dresses up proudly in a gown of thick, droopy leaves in the summer.  I keep a close eye on her from my morning coffee perch in the living room in winter, and from the front porch in the summer.  She comforts me on summer nights when windows are kept open and I can hear her body swaying in the dark.   But I too, had thought, well, it might be time to trim her up a bit as long as a little trimming would not change the delight of her round figure.   The men did their job well and with no thought of her round beauty or noticing the way she invites you into her branches, how she makes you want to climb up and swing from branch to branch like a monkey, or maybe just sit dangling your legs from the strength of her lower limbs. I love her for all of this.

Done. Cleaned up, well severed, according to instructions.  The street is tidy and, well, the wisdom of this city tells us we should be proud to live here in such an orderly neighbourhood where wildness must not interfere with need to keep things trim and tidy.  But somewhere deep inside, we all know better, don't we?

"Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness"

I reluctantly admit that I often get annoyed with prayers that begin with an expression of gratitude, and my reaction includes annoyance at my own feeble attempts at prayer.  I too often enter prayer in this way!   In my experience of Christian spirituality in our time, we place such a high value on thanksgiving that we believe it is the first expression we "should" voice in spoken prayer.   I fear however, that we do so at the expense of being able to prayerfully express how we are truly feeling.  I fear also, that the priority we give to expressions of gratitude might be contributing to all the ways we split ourselves up into this and that, into what we eventually, to our emotional peril,  judge is acceptable and what is not acceptable within us.

This past week someone confided in me that he was feeling down.   In the midst of the ensuing conversation we agreed that winter months can be difficult. He then made a common remark, 

“But I have so much to be thankful for”.  I agreed.  Yet something inside of me wrestled with our mutual bow to thankfulness. 

Often I hear people say these words, as they struggle with sadness or as they cope with an enduring depression.  It is as if we have separated gratitude from sadness and have arrived at some vague yet powerfully guilt inducing conclusion that the two are mutually exclusive.   If I am feeling down or living with depression, I too begin to worry  that I must not be a thankful person, or that I "should" be focusing on more positive aspects of life.  This often serves to only deepen the depression, as we inwardly criticize ourselves up for not feeling “upbeat”.  We live in a culture that works very hard to reward us when we are in a “good mood” or “upbeat” and outwardly expressing a “positive attitude”.  

Certainly I found this in my experience as a United Church minister.  As Christians, we place a high value on gratitude.   We often do so at the expense of a range of other perceptions and experiences.  Have we come to believe that if we are sad we must not be a thankful person?

This was  a challenging aspect of my own experience of depression as a young mother.  I would try to shake myself out of my dark moods by thinking, “but I have two healthy , beautiful children.  I have financial security. I have a loving marriage relationship”,  and so on.  All of this was true.  Yet I was living with a very debilitating post partum depression.   Of course I was thankful for my husband, my family, and friends.  I was very grateful to have some measure of financial security, a secure home, food on the table.  I loved and cared for my babies with all of my broken heart and soul.  I was filled with gratitude, and I was living with depression.

I now look back on that time in my life with a much fuller understanding and acceptance of myself.  No wonder I was struggling!  No sleep! A spouse who was travelling frequently in his work.  We had moved to a new city. I had not yet found a circle of friends.  I missed having a job. The identity shift required to leave a career and stay home with children was overwhelming for me.  On top of all that, the birth of my daughters triggered a watershed of grief related to the death of my own mother at a young age.    I struggled with feelings of guilt because my life seemed in all the exterior aspects, to be going so well, and that I "should" be thankful. 

So much to be thankful for, yes.  Also very sad, confused, scared, and overwhelmed.  All of these feelings were parts of my life at that time.  Living with sorrow, regret, anger, anxiety, depression, or any range of difficult feelings doesn't mean that we are not also able to feel gratitude.   I can hold all of these feelings and indeed, be experiencing many other things as well, all at the same time, and for many different reasons. 

Please allow room in your life for the full range of human experience and emotion.  If you are struggling with a long lasting depression, or some other emotional strain such as the "the winter blues", this does not mean you are ungrateful for the many good things in your life and relationships!

One of my favourite prayers is one written by Leonard Cohen and sung powerfully by Joni Mitchell in the song, "Sire of Sorrow".  It is a prayer of lament that begins with these words:

"Let me speak.  Let me spit out my bitterness".

As a worship leader, I often wanted to open the prayers in this way or to have the choir sing this song as their anthem.   I never risked being that honest with my parishioners unfortunately.  It might have been the healthiest and most empowering spiritual leadership I offered.

Let's be free to be honest about how we feel, in our relationship with the Holy Mystery and with one another and perhaps then we can help one another work to integrate all of our feelings, thoughts and experiences into a healthy sense of self.

I’m coming out of my cocoon, shedding skin.   I’ve never blogged before!  This is a first step for me, and I take it with a bit of timidity to be honest.  I do enjoy face to face conversation.  I like to know who will be reading my words, or much better, hearing them.  I look forward to a live response – a smile, a tear, a puzzled frown, a hand reaching out in compassion or to the face looking back in shock!  In my former “preaching life”, I certainly faced many of those responses to my words, and more!  But here I am writing for the first time, in a blog that anyone in the world can read. 

I will never know if my words landed in a place that brought a tear, a smile, or a need to touch.   I am, however,  encouraged by all those out there who have blogged before me.   Writers fill the pages of a book or internet with their trembling vulnerability.  I admire that so much.   I hope I will write like that sometimes at least- just put myself out here on this page, and offer a gift in the telling and the reading of my simple stories.  The gift is unwrapped in our somehow feeling a little less alone as we do connect in this way.  Somewhere a writer has been able to risk enough to say something that makes me want to reach out and touch you, and say “me too”.   I guess if I have any hope for my new blogging life, it’s just that.  I hope you’ll laugh, or cry, and sometimes say, “me too”, agree or disagree, and that through our writing and reading and responding, we can all feel a little less alone.  There, I did it.  I’m out here on a limb, but the tree is strong that holds me.  There’s no going back into the cocoon now!  I wonder, what are you experiencing that might be similar?  Is there a new creativity emerging?  Come on out on this strong limb.  The tree will hold us as we learn to live outside that cocoon now.