reflections on relinquishing and renewal: part one

NOTE: In keeping with the spirituality of this season, I’ve been drawn to craft a multiple-part reflection on relinquishing. Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to articulate some of the reasons why St. Paul’s call to kenosis has become a touchstone. In Philippians 2, the apostle borrows a baptismal hymn from the early church: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

 Part One:

When we moved from Tucson to Pittsfield – a dramatic journey that included emotional peaks and valleys as well as geographic ones – we not only slowly wandered through deserts, prairies, mountains, and farmland before crossing the Atlantic for an extended romp through London, but we also returned to the land of our respective births. In ways that continue to be revealed, we began a sojourn of relinquishment: travelling backwards through lands once vanquished and violated by so-called pioneers and settlers, our return to New England has been an expedition of reversal. To say that this was not clear at the outset would be an understatement. Yes, I felt a warm sense of security when we first hit the rolling hills of the Berkshires. Clearly, the terrain around Webster and Lake Chaubunagungamaug had long been a family homeland. At least four generations regularly made the lake our vacation destination. A variety of church retreats and numerous honeymoons also took place here. And experiencing all four seasons was ecstatic.

But it wasn’t until I returned to gardening that the magnitude and meaning of this move was clarified. You see, while I experienced blessing after blessing while doing urban ministry in Michigan and Ohio, and genuinely loved the Sonoran Desert with its big sky, wild flora, and almost prehistoric fauna (okay, I am not a fan of rattlesnakes!). I could never get the hang of gardening in those places. In Saginaw and Cleveland, there wasn’t adequate space. And in Arizona, without perpetual drip irrigation, plants placed outdoors in the morning withered and died by sunset. I was able to amass an unruly collection of houseplants for a few years, but nothing grounded me like the feel of cool, dark soil in my hands as I carefully nestled seedlings into fertile earth. I had not realized how much I missed intimacy with Mother Earth. Nor did I know how much she wanted to teach me about owning, grieving, relinquishing, and then revisioning my heritage as a Scots-Irish settler. The Native American wisdom-keeper, Robin Wall Kimmerer, put it like this:

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” (Braiding Sweetgrass)

 It began with the seasons. New England blessed us the first year back with a smorgasbord of colors. The trees in the wetlands behind our home burst into vibrant yellows, reds, oranges, and browns, while sumac turned a deep crimson, and sunflowers and goldenrod waved to us in the wind. The aroma of burning wood wafted our way as daylight gave up to midnight in the afternoon. At first, it was disorienting to enter a store at 3:30 pm only to exit into a shroud of darkness. But those late October and early November days helped me reconnect with the numinous mystery of thin places in time and space – small wonder that All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints' and Souls' Days became ensconced in these months.

Add to that our first local Halloween parade, with costumes and floats right out of “Northern Exposure,” and it was clear that we were no longer in Kansas anymore, Toto. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t carp or whine about winter – it rarely even hints at freezing in the desert – so we soon gathered protective thermal underwear, snowshoes, and eventually hand-me-down cross-country skis. I discovered the varying shades of grey and brown of winter to be soothing after a decade of 300+ days of sunshine in the Sonoran Desert. The barren trees and frozen rivers offered a calming call to join nature’s inward journey, which led me to Parker Palmer’s “spirituality of the seasons”.

 Autumn is a season of sacred beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring — and she scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life. But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of a metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I fixate on surface appearances — on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. (For more, please go to:  https://fetzer.org/news/the-paradox-of-fall-a-sacred-meditation/)

 Palmer put me back in touch with Thomas Merton, whom I had read in the 1970s but lost touch with as my ministry matured. “There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness,” Merton contends. A sacramental way of seeing wherein “the visible world of nature conceals a great truth in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They hold together in the paradox of the 'hidden wholeness.” A Zen koan says: When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear. And my Buddha was Mother Nature, who was starting to sound a lot like the Grateful Dead in “Ripple. (Additional parts to follow as autumn unfolds.)