portals of mystery as the seasons go round and round...

Four years ago during an on-line retreat course with Abbey of the Arts I took this photo quickly on my way to Sunday morning worship...

One of the spiritual directors for this retreat noted that, "this mysterious photo looks to be a prophetic portal beckoning you into the next albeit unknown phase of your journey." She was right - personally and professionally. 

It is in this yard that I have worked to reclaim my experience of tender unity with the earth. Beside and beyond this portal, I watched and learned something about the rhythms of nature - and the unique gifts and limitations of this plot. I practiced the spirituality of the seasons and listened to God's first word in creation. I discovered what can and what won't grow here - and what likes to eat what does grow! I learned to love winter. And the smell of mud. To carry massive, dead limbs from our trees out to the wetlands to become compost as the cycle of life goes on. To stay alert for the presence of snakes and ticks - and sometimes skunks, ground hogs, deer, and coyotes, too. To use power tools from time to time -image, an egg-head intellectual like me repairing the deck under the tutelage of one wiser in that realm - but true. To plant flowers and herbs and cherish the short growing cycle that rules this part of creation.

The more I cherished the spirituality of the seasons, the more I trusted that God's way carries each day. My anxieties and stress never made any thing better. So, following the rhythm of the day, I have attempted to practice following the light: there is time enough for physical and intellectual work as well as a whole lot of laughter, cooking and talking. Four years after I took this photograph, I am certain that my portal called me to trust God enough to leave pastoral ministry for a new chapter grounded in rest, tenderness, joy and what I call a ministry of presence. What's more, I am certain that without spending time in the seasons and learning the wisdom of this place and land, I would not have dared step out in faith.

Once again old Matthew Fox is on to something when he writes that for many men - and for our culture as a whole in the West - when we stopped honoring the Divine Masculine in Nature we killed masculine creativity and courage. When we lost touch with the enormity creation, forsaking awe for the the bottom line and a culture of control, something essential died within and among us. "From the seventeenth to twentieth centuries (we) shut down Father Sky, the ancient archetype of the Sacred Masculine, teaching that the cosmos is an insensate machine. This left the male heart bereft and potentially more violent, for men had no place to invest their sky-sized hearts and souls." He continues:

D. H. Lawrence sensed this when he wrote: “What a catastrophe, what a maiming of life when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars….” What happens when cosmology is replaced by psychology? When cosmic connections are displaced by shopping malls? The heart shrivels. Men’s souls shrink. The Sacred Masculine dissipates. And untold violence goes through their heads. 

Yesterday, we took down a beautiful willow tree that had come to its natural end. No power tools were available, so I sawed and sawed and sawed. My muscles hurt. My back ached. And we finally took it down - and trimmed the branches to use in the terrace we'll make on our garden hill later this week. I have taken to heart the words of Parker Palmer who speaks of the wisdom of this season carefully:


Spring begins slowly and 

tentatively, it grows with a tenacity that never fails to touch me. The smallest and most tender shoots insist on having their way, coming up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again. The crocuses and snowdrops do not bloom for long. But their mere appearance, however brief, is always a harbinger of hope, and from those small beginnings, hope grows at a geometric rate. The days get longer, the winds get warmer, and the world grows green again. In my own life, as my winters segue into spring, I not only find it hard to cope with mud but hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

Today the sun was bright and the wind vigorous. I started to lay out the foundation of our terraced garden. Tomorrow it will rain, so I will bake bread and clean the house. And practice music for the upcoming gigs. And return thanks for that portal which lured me beyond the known into the mystery of faith. Our old portal finally collapsed two years ago. I wept as I finally tore it down and broke up the wood - but rejoiced, too for the gifts it has shared. To everything there is a season - the seasons go round and round-and there's something lost and something gained in living every day.

credits:

Matthew Fox: (http://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2019/06/03/father-sky/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daily+Meditations+with+Matthew+Fox%3A+June+3%2C+2019&utm_campaign=Daily+Meditations+June+3%2C+2019)

Parker Palmer: https://fetzer.org/blog/enter-spring-parker-palmer-muses-season