The Beauty of the Painted Toe

I love having a pedicure.  My only regret is that I came to such pleasure so late in life, having only had my first professional pedicure within the last ten years or so.  And I don’t go that often – maybe once or twice a year.

Mine is the oldest foot in the photo

On the surface of things, it’s pure silliness – having someone paint your toe nails some outrageous color seldom, if ever, seen in nature.  That’s actually part of the draw for me – there are far too few ways to be silly when you’re in your 50's – trust me on this.

But whenever I slide into the welcoming chair and place my feet, one at a time, into the warmth of the waiting water, my whole being immediately relaxes into the experience.  And I am always reminded of Jesus’ very simple lesson of hospitality: if you really want to welcome another into your life, wash their feet. . . get down on your knees and embrace and caress the part of them seldom seen . . .

And as Peter attests, as hard as it is to be the one doing the serving-welcoming, it’s not easy being served either, for we, both the server and the served, are reminded in a most intimate way of the mutuality of vulnerability.

I seriously doubt if Jesus was about to give Peter a choice between pink shock and cocoa motion (yes, real nail polish colors), but the gift given and received was even more beautiful, more sensual, more intimate – the giving and receiving of time spent caring for and being cared for by another.

Holy Week Weeds*

From NW Farms & Food blog

Sara Miles writes of the busyness of Holy Week, the chaos, the time demands larger than time, as presently constituted, can allow.  She speaks of the feeling of being overwhelmed, describing the feeling as being in the "Holy Week weeds".    
To whelm is to flow or heap up abundantly.  Google Dictionary

Advent and Christmas leave me feeling overwhelmed, swamped, in danger of disappearing into the demands, real and felt, of the season.

But Holy Week, blessed Holy Week, is a different matter entirely.

In Holy Week, I feel whelmed . . .

I feel the flow, the abundance heaping all round . . .

And it is marvelous . . .

Why it should be so, this difference, I do not know, I cannot say . . .

But down here in the weeds, in the tenacious tenacity of things, I live and love and have my being . . .

Down here in the weeds of Holy Week, the usual course of things is changed . . .

Worship happens at the odd times . . . the off-the-schedule times . . . the times when friends gathered for one last dinner together . . . when a man walked, crawled and crept to his death . . . when the sun broke the horizon and the light transformed into The Light . . . when naked men gathered around a friend thought lost for a feast of fish on the fire . . . when children surely laughed and hunted lost or hidden things . . . when praise and song were the order of the day . . .

Holy Week – the one week of the year when God’s schedule, the Divine time frame, becomes my own . . .

Sara Miles is right – Holy Week is a weedy place, filled as it is with the demands of the busy schedule, but oh, what whelming weeds they are . . .


______________________
*Title inspired by a comment in Sara Miles’ essay The Edge of the World in Daniel Clendenin’s Journey with Jesus

Caledonia

I have seen fields filled with ferns, the sight of which prompted me to offer up grateful praise to God, for the beauty of this earth.

I have seen heather in the highlands . . . bluebells on the island . . . rape, a yellow flower, filling fields as far as the eye could see . . . fuchsia as large as dinner plates . . .

Seals sunning on the rocks of Loch Cosuitt . . .

awakening to the screaming song of the sea gulls and mistaking them for a child in trouble . . .

rhododendron so profuse they’re considered an invasion . . .

Standing on an outcrop of land at the ruin of Fast Castle and feeling the wind off the North Sea on my face

More double rainbows than are seemly for any one woman to have stood under . . .

the sunrise as an act of God’s love. . .

 the absence of things . . . things like lightening bugs and crickets.

Whenever I think of Scotland, I think of spring. . . and new life . . . and beauty . . . and friends.

Sermon Cliff Note: "Now there were some Greeks . . ."

Now there were some Greeks . . .

You know – the not-from-here folks. . . 

maybe they heard about Lazarus

dead-raised

or maybe

they saw the donkey parade

However they heard, new in town,

they went to seek out the newest thing – 

the wonder-working parable speaker

In those days, everybody wanted to see Jesus

Someone wants to see him

and Jesus talks about. . .

seeds falling to the ground

and glorified things 

and serving 

and following . . . 

him

Son-of-Man-Jesus was about to die –

and he was speaking in riddles

and we were scratching our heads . . .

Taking pity on us, he gave us the parable about the seeds –

as if that helped!

Sure, I get it – seeds ‘die’ for the plant to live

and produce even more seeds –

But what does that have to do with a couple of Greeks

dropping by for a visit?!?  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it!

We didn’t then, but we do now . . . 

Jesus’ dying brought more followers

somehow, in his dying,

We and he became more than we had ever been

And the usual blah, blah, blah . . . 

Serve me, follow me . . . 

Follow me, serve me . . . 

Serve and follow me =’s honor from God

Okay, already, we get it!

But did we?

Do we?

Probably not . . .

When Jesus died . . . 

When he died, it all changed . . . 

Without him, I would have just gone home . . . 

and every now and then, 

when someone from the old days

showed up, I’d have remembered

We’d have laughed and cried

and then gone back to our lives

But with what happened after, 

there was no going back

not for any of us . . . 

It hurts to admit how impatient He made me back in the day . . .

But it’s true . . . 

I just kept wanting him

Just once . . . 

To get – to – the – point

But he never did

how could he?

He was the point!

Loving, maddening, parable-telling, weird . . . Him!

And he knew it would be hard . . . 

It troubled him – what he, what we, would have to go through . . . 

But he showed us how to do it . . .

Not complaining . . . 

Not trying to get out of it . . .not then, anyway –

No – he took a deep breath, said “This is why I came”

and threw himself upon FatherGod . . .

And God heard him –

I have and I will . . . 

That’s what God’s voice said that day . . . 

I have heard you . . .

I will live up to myself in You, Son!

Now, said God . . .

Now you will know . . . 

Now is judging time . . . 

Now is Satan-kicking-out time . . . 

Now is Jesus lifting up time . . . 

Now is earth-reconciling to Me time . . . 

No wonder people thought the Voice of Heaven

was thunder . . . 

That kind of message

rolls 

and echoes

around the world

and down the corridors of time . . . 

making human tuning forks

of us all . . . 

Still we did not understand . . . 

How?

Who?

The questions were endless . . . 

Who are you to say these things?

How can Messiah ever die?

Why do you say these things?

He was pleading with us – 

Believe . . . please believe . . . 

Believe and become . . . 

There was darkness in the land . . . 

He wasn’t wrong about that . . . 

how he yearned for us

to step out of that darkness

and into his light . . . 

What happened to the Greeks?

I think they were the point . . . 

or their question was – 

Sir, we want to see Jesus.

In answer, Jesus 

offered up himself

Now the circle is complete -- 

for once,

somebody actually got the question right . . . 

Dancing into Morning

With morning

comes the lightness

the diffuse

creeping dawn

gently announcing a new day

Happy knees will still bend

arms still raise

I bound from the bed

and dance into its embrace

for a moment

and then I surrender

back to gravity

falling into the warmth

that cocooned me

in the night

Bed

Where Bald Eagles Fly

Yesterday late afternoon I sat in the car with Laura in my driveway, chatting away about this and that.  We had just come from serving communion to a lovely woman in our congregation who is now very sick.

In mid-sentence, Laura exclaimed, Is that an eagle?

Where?


Over there, she pointed.

And there she was.

In this land of a trillion birds we call home, there was a lone bald eagle, brown-bodied with the telltale white tail feathers and white head, languorously flying up and down the path below made by Crab Run just before it empties into Bullpasture River.

For a few moments that stretched into eternity, Laura and I sat transfixed, trying to spot her among the trees behind which she sought her prey.

Finally she flew past the church and beyond our sightline.

Still we sat in quiet, each marveling at the great good gift we had just received.

Even when our silence was broken, she left her stamp as we spoke of eagles and other birds we had seen before, along with the usual tales of the rapscallion squirrels and racoons who would destroy the many bird feeders put out to lure our flying friends into our orbit, if only for a while.

To anthropomorphize just a bit, squirrels and racoons are the humans of the natural world in these parts, taking what isn’t intended for them, hogging more than their share, and destroying what doesn’t satisfy them in fits of pique, as when they find the bird larders empty, apparently forgetting that they themselves had eaten the last lot of seeds placed for another.

Above it all, at a remove from such mundanities, flies the lone eagle, looking for what only she can see, seeking the prey peculiarly suited to her, so ungainly in posture when land-bound but so amazing when in flight, balancing nature in such purposeful glory.

Spring

The fog sits gently upon the land

birds sing their morning

cars and trucks scurry by

fast to greet the day

Green jumps

onto the page of this day

Bidden or unbidden

spring is here