Learning

I do bonsai. It is a discipline of relationships. The trees I work with become a form of art, art that is never done. The trees need intensive care, care that is not the same from tree to tree. A maple and a spruce need different kinds of attention, water, sun, fertilizer, soil composition, pruning. To treat one like another is to abuse it and to ultimately invite its death.



I read a lot about trees to get to know what they need and so how to relate well with them. Just recently, I discovered I was prejudiced. I found out I was operating on a set of assumptions that had more to do with my ignorance than with the tree. Running into one’s own ignorance is a constant normality when we open ourselves to truth.



It’s easy to slide down that slippery slope. Consistency makes so much sense, even when we pride ourselves in being self aware. But perhaps that is the widest gate toward arrogance. We are so proud of ‘knowing.’ But what do we know? Our knowledge is a structure that makes sense to us. We’ve built it with that sense as a blue print. The universe has little respect for our plans and schemes. Our only hope is to constantly reach beyond our normality, our assumptions, our perspectives. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes sad, often frightening. Once in a while, too rarely we learn. We see clearly our limitations in time to do something about them. Each of those is a victory, a new hope.



Red maples need direct sunlight and a lot of water, every day, sometimes twice a day. So I moved the red maple and started watering it more. I hope it didn’t suffer too much. I hope its happy now, tree happy. I’ll prune it next spring.

Shell Shock

The weather reports were unanimous. A tropical storm was on its way, they named it. Bad weather is no big deal. This close to the shore, we’re used to it. The word ‘tropical’ raised hackles. Conversations about the weather were very different. Awkward silences punctuated any comment mentioning temperature, humidity, wind, or rain fall. When we heard the name, there were no cracks, ‘Dumb name.’ ‘I had a girlfriend named that.’ None of it. It scared us.



Last fall we were mauled by a beast named Sandy. It tore our normality to shreds. The ocean ate our beaches, our neighborhoods, our landmarks. It beat the crap out of our world. A named storm brought all of that back. It’s called post traumatic stress syndrome. You don’t have to be crawling around on the floor mewing like a kitten to experience your now being overwhelmed by the horror of a past that broke through the structures of sense in which you live. That specific then becomes a present power, though the war or the storm or the horror of then is long gone. It can be triggered by a phrase, a sound, a smell, or a weather report.



An older member of my church here came to me the week after 9-11, obviously upset and anxious. He was afraid to go to sleep. Nightmares owned his sleep. During World War II, he’d been a Navy officer who was in charge of a unit that cleaned out below decks of ships that had been torpedoed and made it back to port. His unit preceded the engineers and mechanics. They power washed and steam cleaned the soot, blood, and hair off the walls and out of the machines. He told me that the wind had been blowing our way from Manhattan since the attack. Two thousand people getting burned and pulverized made human smog. The smell took him back to the horror of those engine rooms. His courage and sense of duty had gotten him through the war. But the ugliness had come with him. Now that smell took him back there.



There is nothing cowardly about struggling with such demons. No one should have to live through such ugliness. All of us have limits. We may maintain our faith in God, our sense of self, and loyalty to family or flag, we may function like heroes, but the ugliness of the then that we wrestled with is now imbedded deep within us. They used to call this shell shock. But this isn’t just about artillery strikes or suicide bombs. Mothers and firemen and rescue workers get this condition. None of us are stuck with the torture of living with such ugliness. We can work through it. But we have to admit our pain, trust another, and go back to the event that washed over us like a storm surge and share. That’s hard. But it’s the only way to freedom.



Her name was Andrea, the tropical storm. It dumped a few inches of rain on us. A few of my conversations with people were a little longer than normal. Some of them went back to Sandy. I go fishing sometimes. Sometimes I catch stuff. We’ve been working on setting up our church house to make room for work crews to stay while they’re working on the wreckage. It makes a great segway. Beware of sneaky ministers going fishing. And beware of sitting on your horrors. Such eggs hatch dragons that will eat your soul.

Grand Slam

The Yankee’s first baseman Mark Teixeira is a great fielder and a monster with a bat. Just before the season began, he was injured. He finally got back from rehab, and everybody, including Teixeira himself said he didn’t expect much as far as hitting for a while. Last night in the third inning with the bases loaded, he hit a home run. Grand Slam! It doesn’t get much better than that.



Grand slams are combinations of so many small circumstances. Three people have to get on base. And then the ball, thrown at ninety miles an hour, has to get slammed three or four hundred feet, inbounds. That’s just this side of a miracle.



There are so many times when we load ourselves with expectations, ‘We always did it that way before,’ or ‘We never did it that way before,’ or any combination of should’s and ought’s that demand that we be something or not be something else. The terrible burden of these unseen demands is that we give away the present to some other tense, some other place. It’s almost impossible to be effective on any level when we’re not living in the here and now with all its limitations and possibilities.



Humility is more than not blowing your own horn. Humility is a deep sense of honesty. It rests in strength, not in its denial. If you meet a humble person, you meet a capable person, because they’re living in the now, able to make something of what presents itself. It is a sign that there is wisdom there.



So, Teixeira’s a wise guy. He also hit another home run tonight; only two guys were on base this time. I’d say he’s catching up just fine.

Shake Rattle and Roll

Our choir director is a miracle worker. Our introit this week was an arrangement of a piece written in the 1500’s. Our anthem was a spiritual that included clapping. The ancient one wasn’t a huge stretch. But for white bread Presbyterians to actually ‘git down’, clapping, swaying, and singing like they meant it, with hearts tuned to joy rather than anxiety of getting the right note, now that’s rough. The miracle part of it is, WE PULLED IT OFF! The congregation almost fell off their pews.



Religion is strange bird. It lifts its hands toward a multi dimensional reality whose purposes transcend our understanding while it intersects with us in very specific and overt ways. Such intersections are fearsome. They demonstrate our limitation and show us glory, glory too much to categorize or express systematically. And yet we try. Thus, religion.



It’s hard to find ways of recalling and expressing bits and pieces of the glory. Song allows us to shake loose some of the clods of mortality and limitation. It lifts us and joins us in ways concepts and words can’t. But even music can become locked and limited by our refusal to open to the glory. It has little to do with genre. The soaring glory of Bach opens ways toward the ‘Other’ as effectively as the enthusiasm and rhythms of spirituals, but only if we let it. Few are willing to be touched by Bach. We’ve become jaded in our now.



But that can happen with any key. It is sad. The issue is to be willing, to be open. The issue is to sing, ‘Hallelujah’ with heart, mind, and soul. Yup, she’s a miracle worker. “All praises be to the Lord our God, He is wonderful.” Amen.