Iris & Mindfulness

 

It’s Saturday morning. I drink my second cup of coffee, chew walnuts and let chocolate chips dissolve on my tongue – a treat for my mindfulness practice. I'm not very good at this mindfulness thing. I've been practicing forever but it usually only lasts a few seconds. Still I try. 

Sip the coffee. Chew a small piece of nut. Notice the dry papery bit. Savor the taste. Pop a chocolate chip in my mouth and chew. Oops! Missed that time!

I try again, focusing my attention on sensations. Take the chocolate between the teeth. Notice its shape. Now on the tongue, notice the sweetness, the … experience of chocolate that I can't describe. Savor its liquid goodness as it slowly dissolves. Sip the cooling coffee. 

My relaxed gaze wanders the print on the living room wall as I practice. I've loved Vincent van Gogh's work since I first noticed to it. (Not an artistic type, that was probably college.) I love his vibrant use of color. 

The longer my eyes roam over the print, the more I see. Irises toward the background that I'd never noticed become visible. Is that one on the right really white and blue? I ponder those orange flowers. My mind says “calendula” but my calendula never had that many leaves.

Some people suggest that van Gogh was colorblind. I don't say anything when I hear it but I have my doubts. His perfection in capturing the irises is amazing. The delicate softness of the petals, the strappy green leaves. Yes, they're full of grays, greens, blues and yellows, but to my mind, it’s as if he captures the essence of what's there, breaking down the colors to their essential elements.

I look at the soil beneath the leaves and wonder, “Was this the color of the dirt there? Or was it some good gardener’s mulch?”

What does this painting tell me about Vincent? Every creative endeavor contains some of its creator. Is this too a self-portrait? Vincent’s was not a happy life. What would he want us to see?

In Disney's Aladdin, the young protagonist sings, “If only they'd look closer. Would they see a poor boy? ... They'd find out there's so much more to me.”

There's more to any of us than meets the eye. We can know someone intimately, spend decades with them, and still only scratch the surface of who they are. If we fail to go deeply, we can get lulled into believing we know all there is to know. How often do I assume I know what this one is thinking or that one will say? How often I'm surprised when I finally include them in the conversation. (“Wow, they listened better than I’d hoped.” Or “I never would have thought of it that way.”)

Thank you, Vincent. This is a good lesson for me to remember.

I pick up a chocolate chip and munch. Oh well, mindfulness is a practice not an immediate experience, right?

Hiatus?

Yes, it's been a while (months!) since I posted anything. I could make the excuse that working 50 hours a week and composing weekly sermons has depleted my creativity. (It has.) But beyond that, I was finding that the only topic that interested me was one I've already written about and I couldn't revisit it without fresh insights. So I waited, silent. Waited for something else to come to me. Waited, as I read through my list of blog seeds and found nothing that inspired me. Some of you waited too.

In early September, I thought, “Maybe this blog has run its course. Maybe I need to put together one more “Goodbye” entry and end it all.” But that didn’t happen. Again, it could have been the busyness. Or it could have been something else. In the weeks that followed the thought, I pondered that maybe Spirit God knew something I didn’t and I practiced compassion on myself as I continued to wait.

Thursday, I returned from Palestine where I’d joined a group on a Living Stones Pilgrimage (more on that another time). One evening midway through our time there, “First World Problems” popped into my head. I don’t remember in reference to what, but this’s how blog ideas have come to me in the past – as a possible title, a theme or a sentence to be fleshed out. And in that moment, I realized that I’m not finished here.

I have work to do.

I’ll come back to my favorite topic another time. (I already have an entry written and waiting.) I’ll probably write about those first world problems, too. But I expect I’ll also be writing about walls and reservations and apartheid. I may write about Wi’am. Or Tent of Nations. And refugee camps and settlements.

And, in season, gardening, of course...

Goodness!

Some people object to the phrase, “God is good,” and for good reasons. Others say, “God is good,” whenever something good comes their way, and this works for them.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I remember when Bishop Linda Lee led the Wisconsin Conference and how she would regularly (and often) pull us back to task.

Bishop: “God is good.”
Church: “All the time.”
Bishop: “All the time,”
Church: “God is good.” 

But is God good?

Yes, God is good – in the same sense that life is good and that burping when your stomach is distended is good. Neither example have any inherent goodness about them. Releasing GI pressure brings ease. As long as we don’t do it in an unacceptable space or moment – like during the community prayer at church or during the heart-wrenching death scene at the theatre – all is good. Life is good, as good as we choose to believe it to be with all the death, disease and injustice that abounds.

Yes, God is good. The Source of All that Is leads us to live as fully as we’re able, with a compassion- and justice-focused mindset. The One that is Beyond All Else empowers us to live abundantly, to trust that even with all the bad stuff that life throws at us living is still a gift, something worth doing as well as we can.

So God is good.

But is God really good?

No, not if you mean “good” as we might measure it on our own good/bad scale. We humans are each somewhere on that continuum, some of us more good, some more bad, while others are smack-dab in the middle.

The challenge to God’s goodness comes when we accept that God doesn’t fit on this continuum. God is neither good nor bad – not by any human definition. God is quite other. Not simply larger (tho’ that may be); instead God is different beyond our comprehension. To use an imperfect analogy, we can’t really compare apples, mallard ducks and rose crystal. They each have their merits. Each has its value. But equating one with the other? ... that’s tough.

Then is God good?

When my children were young, I tried to remind them often that they were perfect just as they were. They were exactly as a five- (or seven- or ten-) year-old ought to be. This idea also helped when I might otherwise have been frustrated by students at school. “They’re perfect examples of 7th graders. They’re acting just like 12- and 13-year olds should act.” 

Expecting that nine-year-old to act like a nine-year old and not like a little man is about perspective. It's helpful – for both of us. Not expecting God to act like a finite human being is also about perspective, and is similarly helpful. I honestly believe that God (however you define them) leads us – rocks, blowfish, and humans, all of us – toward a best way, if we will only accept guidance. The blowfish and rocks are better at following but with practice we can get pretty good too.

Tending & Keeping

I close my eyes and I see weeds. I've spent a couple hours at "The Garden" weeding.

When I moved to Wausau, I made the conscious decision not to plant a garden. I told myself, “With this new job I won’t have the time. And think about resale. You don’t want to have to dig up all your beds and plant grass when the time comes, do you?” (No, I don’t.)

The place I bought has a very small front yard which – it turns out – had no grass but lots of purple coneflower and perennial cornflower (mostly self-seeded) and a pear tree. The first time I saw the house was in early spring so I didn’t know the flowers were there. On closing day, I added some hosta, bleeding heart and such to fill the space.

In full disclosure, I’ve also been cleaning up a pair of nooks on either side of the back entry this spring and filling them with all sorts of other green and flowering plants. But I haven’t dug up any yard. And I won’t.

These spaces could probably keep my down time full as I water and weed (plus mow the backyard) but in February I made a marvelous discovery. I’d heard about the various sites of interest in Wausau since before arriving in July. Not surprisingly, the one with Gardens in its name caught my attention.

Monk Botanical Gardens is a private garden space that’s open to the public year round, dawn to dusk. One cold winter day after being indoors entirely too long, I drove there just to look– it’s only a mile from my house – and the rest is history. I go at least twice a week. I feel a sense of peace sitting in the meditation garden after a long week or having received bad news. Walking around the pond or through the Wildflower Woods, I look eagerly for what's changed since the last time. Are there swifts in the chimney the birders donated?

Now, in June, I still feel that peace. I still find beauty but even more than that I notice the scents and the unique warmth and living presence one feels when one is connected with nature.

A friend suggested I ought to sign up to volunteer  which I did. Now I don’t take as many meandering walks instead I kneel (or sit) and weed. I like weeding – it’s so satisfying. And even with the dozens of volunteers that help there, I can always find work to do.

Someone asked me Saturday how I came to gardening. I don't know. It's been a growing thing (no pun intended). My dad gardened and I helped. I started growing parsley, sage and thyme next to their back door when I was about 15. My mother said recently that I always prefered working outside to doing indoor chores. I hadn't realized.

For me, tending and keeping is about looking after all the ones who are smaller or weaker or who have little or no voice. It's also about doing what I can to ensure that when I leave, my tiny piece of planet earth is no worse than I found it, and maybe a little better.

What does it mean for you?

There’s a season for everything
    and a time for every matter under the heavens... Ecclesiastes 3

A time for weeding at the gardens, a time for tending my own lawn, and a time for indoor chores (ugh).