And So the Young Are Taught

There was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day,

or a certain part of the day,

or for many years,

or stretching cycles of years.

 

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning-glories,

and white and red clover,

and the song of the phoebe-bird

(Walt Whitman)

I spent last week with children and grandchildren, breathing in blue sky and birch trees and moss and hemlock. We paddled around a quiet lake, naming the little coves and landings: “Boulder Bay,” “Forest Fort.” We hiked some trails along running water, freed a fish caught in a rocky kettle.

I’ve been thinking about Whitman’s notion that what we look on and respond to as children becomes inextricably part of us. Maybe even part of our children, and their children. Recent study of the brain seems to support this: childhood trauma can cause lasting emotional, cognitive, relational harm. Exposure to violence, even in very young children, can yield symptoms of  post traumatic stress disorder, including hyper-vigilance, anxiety, inability to focus, aggression, anti-social behavior. 

There’s a generational aspect to brain development and mental health: we’re shaped by those before us, and we pass on what we’ve been given.

Yet there’s some choice in this, some ability to redirect, rebuild, re-channel.

If what we do as children builds connections in our brains, strengthens some regions, by-passes others, then surely it matter where our children turn their attention, and the time we spend helping them to see beauty, health, kindness and joy can shape the adults they’ll become.

I grew up with a grandmother who paid attention to nature.  Squirrel antics, bird calls, unfamiliar wildflowers, strange cloud formations: she treated the small occasions of nature like personal treasures. I can remember going to visit when she was in her seventies and eighties. She’d have things to show, discoveries to share: a new groundcover blooming behind her metal shed. An unusually shaped tomato, warm off the vine.

Those gifts of attention stay with me and shape the way I view the world. I remember the afternoon, back in the sixties, when she pulled her Chevy convertible to the side of the road to stop and see where the mockingbird was: she hadn’t heard one since her childhood in Oklahoma. And there it was, on a telephone line, singing its unmistakable song. I still think of her whenever I see, or hear, a mockingbird.

I’ve done my best to share that attention with our kids. They accuse me of dragging the family to “squirrel  museums,” and laugh that I signed them up for “nature tots.” I confess to both accusations. Now there’s another generation to pay attention to, and with. We prowl through Black Rock Preserve, searching for fossils, or poke sticks in the Black Rock pond, looking for fish. I’m regularly presented with unexpected gifts: a painting of a backyard bird, a well-preserved snake skin, a fragment of an abandoned nest. We investigate the contents of our decades old “nature bowl,” sharing stories of some of the more intriguing specimens.

My grandmother also taught me to pay attention to need: to look beyond myself and see the pain of others. There was nothing easy about her life, and yet I don’t remember hearing her complain. Instead, I remember her calling attention to the generosity of others, and insisting on kindness toward those in need around us. Skippy, an odd boy years older than us, mentally challenged in ways we didn’t understand, was always welcome in our yard. And if he invited us to his house, a block away, to see his monkey, or swim in his pool, a glance from Grandma would quiet our objections.

A multitude of pets helped me learn to pay attention. So did younger cousins. Children who have nothing to care for, no smaller living things to attend to, can miss the joy of empathy. Learning to make a cat purr, taking time to tame a parakeet, facing my own fear of the dark to go out at night to reassure an anxious duck, entertaining cousins while the grownups talked on and on: those were skills of attention I’m thankful to have learned.

And so I look for ways to pass those skills on to others. The parakeet and duck are incidental, but the ability to see what pleases another creature, and then provide it, seems essential.  The ability to see what’s needed in a situation, then finding a way to offer it, doesn’t come naturally. It comes through the trial and error of caring for a smaller sibling, friend, or cousin, the afternoons spent cutting and pasting to make a card or gift or other offering for someone sick, or sad, or lonely. It comes from helping to plan and prepare for a party or celebration, thinking about what might please the guests, then feeling good when everyone has fun.

Attention to words was another gift I was given. God’s word, primarily. My grandmother kept her Bible open on the kitchen table, wrote notes in the margins. “Read this!” she’d say with quiet excitement. “Then look at this! What do you think it means?” Surface interpretation wasn’t what she was after. She saw such riches in the words I found myself memorizing passages, puzzling over them myself, carrying them through life like a treasure. Holding the health of certain passages against deep hurts and turning my attention toward a story far beyond me.

My husband grew up with a tradition of bed-time questions, and I learned a similar practice of reflection at a camp where I worked: What did you learn today? What was a thing of beauty? What are you thankful for? Quiet conversations at bedtime can prompt attention throughout the day. There are always new things to be learned, new beauty to celebrate, gifts to be thankful for, if we take time to pay attention.

It’s easy to focus our attention on the burdens of the day, or to allow our thoughts to be clouded by the loudest voices around us. Easy to turn our thoughts to difficulty and pain and what we wish and what we never had.

Yet, when my attention slides in harmful patterns, I hear my grandmother’s voice:

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

I am thankful that I was taught to think on, attend to, celebrate the beauty and grace of the world around me, the things of good report, words of health and goodness.

I’m thankful to spend time with the next generation, and the next, shaped, and continuing to be shaped by choices of attention in the generations before us.

We are people of open water and small boats, birch trees and birds, quiet conversations around blazing fires. Attentive to each others’ needs. Thankful for God’s kindness.

   I tremble with gratitude

   for my children and their children

   who take pleasure in one another.

   At our dinners together, the dead

   enter and pass among us

   in living love and in memory.

   And so the young are taught. 

                       (Wendell Berry)

[This is a revision of a post from 2011, Paying Attention, Next Generation. I'm reworking some earlier posts this summer, as travel and time outside limit my time for blogging.]

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

God's Economy: Generational Investment

  Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
  (Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Wendell Berry)

It’s planting season here in Pennsylvania, and I’ve been planting in my yard and in Exton Park, a nearby habitat where I sometimes lead bird walks or help with the Weed Warrior group I helped form. 

In the park, I've been working with friends to plant ferns, wildflowers, native shrubs and trees.

In my own yard, I’ve been moving oak seedling and dogwoods, checking on pawpaw seedlings from several years ago, trying to envision our little grove of trees decades from now, when the new seedlings shoot past the aging stand of locusts.

While I work in the park, I listen to the birds around me: Baltimore orioles whistling to their mates, a vociferous brown thrasher singing from the top of a tree.

At home, house wrens follow me, their bubbling song both complaint and celebration. After starting a nest in every bird house in the yard, the pair have settled in a house hanging from a sagging branch, just above a stick pile left for their enjoyment along the rotting fence.

A pair of northern flickers have been working for days excavating a hole in a half-dead locust tree. There are plenty of holes to choose from, but it seems each year they make a new one. This year I saw their little dance of agreement the day they decided on the perfect spot, and I’ve watched as they’ve taken turns drilling deeper and deeper into their new home. For a day or two all I could see were tail feathers shaking and occasional wood chips flying out. Now the hole is done, and the wild mating calls announce their intent: soon there will be eggs to guard, and then baby birds crying plaintively for food.

This time of year it seems as if all creation is intent on forming the next generation. On Wednesday, carrying my buckets for water for new plantings in Exton Park, I paused to see what a dad and his small children were watching so intently in the little creek flowing from pond to wetland. A large brown snake was coiled among the grasses, and while we watched, another came swimming toward it and the two intertwined, then slithered out of view.

On Thursday, our birding group stopped to see what was causing a ripple in a wetland pond, then watched in fascination as two large snapping turtles came into view and began roiling the water in a strange, muddy water ballet.

In my yard, chipping sparrows carry wisps to a hidden spot in a misshapen spruce, while chickadees and house finch hurry to claim the bird houses abandoned by the wrens.

Generational investment, for most creatures, is innate, instinctive, almost automatic. Procreation is triggered by length of day, change of temperature, availability of certain foods. Parenting is determined by sex and species: turtle moms lay their eggs, then swim away. The babies are on their own. Northern water snakes (those brown snakes I saw in the creek) give birth to live young, 8 to 30 at a time. The babies swim off as soon as they’re born and the mother is done for another year.

For birds it varies by species: baby geese and ducks are ready to follow their parents just hours after they’re born. Baby raptors may stay in the nest for weeks, then need some intensive coaching before they’re able to feed themselves. I’ve watched osprey parents diving for fish while their young circle behind them, crying for food, then seen the parents coaxing the next generation to take the plunge themselves.  I first saw the lesson take place near Sanibel Island, Florida, then again on the Northeast River, in coastal Maryland, and again on Marsh Creek Lake, not far from my home. Same begging young, same coaxing parents, same breathless wait as the first brave fledgling plunges downward for the first self-caught fish.

There are occasional exceptions to the deeply embedded parenting process. Brown-headed cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, so occasional wrens, warblers or other small birds may find themselves parenting a baby bird that eats more than usual and doesn’t move on at exactly the right pace. Maternal mammals sometimes adopt and care for young from other species.  

But even those exceptions demonstrate the deeply embedded pattern of care each species is hard-wired to give.

Except humans.

As I garden, listen to birds, watch baby bunnies appearing, I find myself thinking about generational investment from a human point of view.

Children? Yes, no, later?

Parenting? Hands-on, hands-off, free-range, helicopter, tiger?

Our options for choice go far past the obvious.

We’re the only species that can decide to plant trees. Or not.

Pave over fields. Or not.

Drain aquifers, strip mountain tops, spray our food with neurotoxins.

We can choose to live in the moment, pocket the profit, forget the future.

We can choose to invest in our own offspring: their immediate happiness, their immediate safety, their immediate future, with no regard for the children of others.

We can choose to invest in a broader way: in the lives of generations that follow us, known and unknown, near and far. In sustainable practices, just policies, accessible education, enduring beauty.

Or not.

Today is Mother’s Day.

It’s the day we share those expensive Hallmark Cards we remembered to buy and celebrate the mothers still with us.

It’s the day we grieve the mothers we’ve lost, or never knew, the children we never see, or never had, or lost too soon.

And it’s the day we give thanks for our children, those who came in the usual way, or in other ways: adoption, marriage, extended family, friendship.

Turtles do fine never meeting their mothers.

Birds enjoy two parents for a month or two, then they’re on their own.

But the truth is that for humans, one parent isn’t enough. Or two. Or three.

Some years ago, Search Institute assembled a list of "building blocks of healthy development—known as Developmental Assets—that help young children grow up healthy, caring, and responsible." I often referred to Asset #3 in our youth ministry training sessions: 

"Other Adult Relationships | Young person receives support from three or more nonparent adults." 

What Search Institute's research found was that even a young person with strong support from two loving parents needs input and support from three or more additional adults: caring teachers, youth leaders, relatives, family friends.

Our own kids have talked about how important their extended family has been in shaping their faith, careers, mental health, social skills.

But some kids don’t have strong, caring extended families.

And some kids live in places where the embedded social structures undermine the best efforts of every caring adult.

Scripture talks much about generations: the need to teach our children and their children, but “children” widely interpreted: the next generation. Those who come behind us.   

Read through the letters of the early church and it becomes clear that for Paul and John, those who followed were in many ways their children, sometimes referred to as “beloved children,” even more as “little children.”

Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 2: “we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.” And in Galations 4: “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” Amazing images from a fast-moving man like Paul. 

I’m thankful for the mothers and fathers in my life. My own parents were a dim absence, gone before I was two. My paternal grandmother took the place of both, teaching me to read, to cook and sew, to climb trees and grow tomatoes.

But there were many others: a strings teacher who invested far more than the job required in helping me love and understand music. A camp director who gave me a first glimpse of grace and generosity and steady hard work toward a distant goal. Uncles who taught me to dance, to drive, to survive conversations with scary adults I didn’t know. Teachers who taught me to write, to think, to weigh ideas carefully and follow them out to their logical conclusions. Compassionate, gracious in-laws who continue to teach me about love and family, about how to continue learning, serving, changing.

At a recent retreat, our speaker Paula Rinehart spoke of her own uneasy relationship with her mother, and the way God gave her many mothers, women whose photos she framed and set on a table by her bed to remind her of how well she’s been parented.

I am thankful today for my own many mothers. And many fathers.

For those I will never know or name whose investments of time and love have kept this part of the world lovely, who made my education possible, who imagined a way of life that has made my own life possible.

A Greek proverb says “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

Trees grow faster than we think.

So do children.

Our best investments carry no guarantees.

Yet, even as I write this, my youngest daughter appears with a cup of coffee, a small vase full of flowers, a promise of cinnamon buns heading to the oven.

Beyond my window, birdsong fills the air.

This is the fourth in a series on God’s Economy. Ealier posts: 

Fruit that Will Last, April 19, 2015

Gods’ Economy: Subtract or Multiply? April 26, 2015

God’s Economy: Inescapable Network of Mutuality May 3, 2015

Other Mother's Day posts:

#OneMom, October 23, 2011

Resurrection Women: Happy Mother's Day, May 12, 2012

Like a Motherless Child, May 12, 2013

Paying Attention: Next Generation

     There was a child went forth every day,

     And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, 

     that object  he became,

     And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day… 

     or for many years 

     or stretching cycles of years.

     The early lilacs became part of this child,

     And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover, 

     and the song of the phoebe-bird,

     And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, 

     and the cow's calf, 

     and the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side… 

     and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there… 

     and the beautiful curious liquid… and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads… 

     all became part of him.   (Walt Whitman ) 

I’m realizing that for me, any discipline I think of shapes itself in my mind in terms of those who demonstrated it for me, and those I want to share it with. There’s a generational aspect to this: we’re shaped by those before us, and we’re called to pass on what’s of value to the generations following us.

I’m deeply thankful for my grandmother’s example of attention to nature. Squirrel antics, bird calls, unfamiliar wildflowers, strange cloud formations: she treated the small occasions of nature like personal treasures. I can remember going to visit when she was in her seventies and eighties. She’d have things to show, treasures to share: a new groundcover she discovered, creeping its way under her shed. Or a baby maple tree, discovered growing along the road, potted and ready for a trip to a friend’s back yard.

Warm ripe tomatoes, eaten off the vine. A glass of iced tea under the lilacs to celebrate their fullest bloom. Those gifts of attention stay with me, and shape the way I view the world. I remember the afternoon, back in the sixties, when she pulled her Chevy convertible to the side of the road, to stop and see where the mockingbird was: she hadn’t heard one since her childhood in Oklahoma. And there it was, on a telephone line, singing its unmistakable song. I still think of her whenever I see, or hear, a mockingbird.

I’ve done my best to share that attention with our kids. They accuse me of dragging the family to “squirrel  museums,” and laugh that I signed them up for “nature tots.” I confess to both accusations. Now there’s another generation to pay attention to, and with. We prowl through Black Rock Preserve, searching for fossils, or poke sticks in the Black Rock pond, looking for fish. We visit the butterflies in the Springton Manor butterfly house, borrow nets to search for sulphurs and skippers, then head off to the fields to greet the goats and sheep.

Apple picking at the nearest orchard has been part of our family tradition since our children were small: wealth on a tree, followed by cider, cider doughnuts, and a baby pumpkin or two. Our own scraggly tomato vines prompt conversation about seeds, time, things we can control and things we can’t, the pleasure of a ripe tomato, the waste of picking one that’s not. A new Saturn peach tree surprised us last summer with a small harvest of perfect little peaches, ,and little Ellie surprised us by devouring her first peach in three quick bites.

My grandmother also taught me to attend to need: to look beyond myself and see the pain of others. There was nothing easy about her life, and yet I don’t remember hearing her complain. Instead, I remember her calling attention to, and insisting on kindness toward, those in need around us. Skippy – a boy older than us, but challenged in ways we didn’t understand – was always welcome in our yard. And if he invited us to his house, a block away, to see his monkey, or swim in his pool, a glance from Grandma would quiet our objections.

A multitude of pets helped me learn to pay attention. So did younger cousins. Children who have nothing to care for, no smaller living things to attend to, can miss the joy of empathy. Learning to make a cat purr, taking time to tame a parakeet, facing my own fear of the dark to go out at night to reassure an anxious duck, entertaining cousins while the grownups talked on and on: those were skills of attention I’m thankful to have learned.

And so I look for ways to pass those skills on to others. The parakeet and duck are incidental, but the ability to see what pleases another creature, and then provide it, seems essential.  The ability to see what’s needed in a situation, then finding a way to offer it, doesn’t come naturally. It comes through the trial and error of caring for a smaller sibling, friend, or cousin, the afternoons spent cutting and pasting to make a card or gift or other offering for someone sick, or sad, or lonely. It comes from helping to plan and prepare for a party or celebration, thinking about what might please the guests, then feeling good when everyone has fun.

Books are another way to learn to pay attention. Owl Moon was a favorite: a gentle book about looking for owls on a cold winter night. Miss Rumphius was another: about learning to see beauty, then finding a way to share it. The Alphie books, by Shirley Hughes, prompted conversation about what it means to be a friend, and how good it is to offer a hand, or a toy, or a kind word, just when it’s needed.

My husband grew up with a tradition of bed-time questions, and I learned a similar practice of reflection at a camp where I worked: What did you learn today? What was a thing of beauty? What are you thankful for? Quiet conversations at bedtime can prompt attention throughout the day. There are always new things to be learned, new beauty to celebrate, gifts to be thankful for, if we take time to pay attention.

Just a few minutes ago, the little girl next door rang the bell, selling Girl Scout cookies. She reminded me of my years as a Girl Scout leader, and set me thinking about how much I’ve relied on programmatic involvement as an avenue for engagement with the next generations. My grandmother was never a Girl Scout leader, camp counselor, youth leader. Yet, even in her eighties, she had young friends: the girls down the street she met on her walks, the children, and grandchildren, of people she’d led to Christ. In paying attention to nature, and to others, she was also attentive to openings God gave her, to share that attention, and to befriend those much younger.

It’s easy to focus our attention on those closest to us: our children, their children. Yet, I’m fairly sure their attention is enlarged by our own larger attention.  As I include them in reaching out beyond them, they reach beyond my own reach, until we have widening ripples, moving outward, with a deepening understanding of God’s love and grace, for us and the whole world around us.

   I tremble with gratitude 

   for my children and their children

   who take pleasure in one another.

   At our dinners together, the dead

   enter and pass among us

   in living love and in memory.

   And so the young are taught.  
                       (Wendell Berry)

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Generational Sabbath

Sixteen years ago the Kuniholm family gathered for a two-day Thanksgiving celebration, a combined family reunion/ lock-in at a church where one family member was pastor.  That initial event turned into a long run of bi-annual Thanksgiving gatherings, with wheel-chair races, impromptu plays, endless rounds of hide-and-seek, and plenty of amusing stories I’m not at liberty to share.

When job changes made the church gathering space unavailable, the tradition faltered, but the discovery of an affordable and available retreat center opened new possibilities. This year, from Thanksgiving until the Saturday after, twenty-five Kuniholms gathered at the Welcoming Place, a simple, beautifully-executed, environmentally-friendly Mennonite center.

Dan Allender, in Sabbath, says “To practice eternity on the Sabbath, we must give way to curiousity, coziness, and care.” It’s hard to explore those in a fast-paced holiday dinner, with half the crowd worrying about gravy, half wondering which team is winning, one eye on the weather, kids shy around relatives they haven’t seen in months - or years. Spread the time a little, though, and much deeper connections become possible.

When we started our Thanksgiving gatherings, we had one set of grandparents, four siblings and their spouses, and seven grandchildren. We’ve added five more grandchildren ,and one grandchild has married, adding another member of the “cousin” generation  and two small great-grandchildren, just two years behind the youngest of the cousins

Pie is a strong family tradition – and we had twelve: pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No one counted the pots of coffee, but there were many. Hide and seek for the small ones gave way to impromptu charades, then a silly sliding game across the radiant concrete floor. Fast-paced Dutch Blitz, contentious Settlers of Catan, Set, ping-pong and carpet pool kept older cousins and parents occupied, along with excursions to the Lancaster market and to an area rec center.

There is something about multigenerational play that helps create a sense of belonging, that lowers barriers between generations and creates shared laughter and memories. After dinner one night, one of our teens suggested a game he’d learned in his youth group, and soon we were laughing and sending crazy signs around the room.

More memorable than the games, though, were the conversations. It was exciting to hear our oldest family members sharing new experiences in contemplative prayer, encouraging to hear the stories of God’s financial provision through the past two difficult years, exciting to hear new directions God has taken some of us, to share our own sense of what God is asking, and to hear that affirmed in the responses of others.

What a luxury to have time for questions beyond the obvious. We had time to ask “What books have been shaping you and your thinking?” “What’s next on your reading list?” Time to ask “What do you want to accomplish in the year ahead?” A surprise question prompted good conversation: “If you had to try a new job – for a year – and it didn’t matter if you were good at it, or prepared, what would you like to try?”

Much has been written about how today’s adolescents are segregated and cut off from older generations, and the damage done as they try to navigate life without the example of an extended community of elders. Chap Clark’s Hurt explores this in depth, observing “We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together,” to the great harm of our children.

But the harm extends beyond children. All of us need to be reminded of our value in God’s larger family, and all of us need to see, in the lives of those we come to know well, the continuing work of maturity.  We are not alone in this walk of faith; as the generations are woven together, God’s care, purpose, and provision become clearer.

Our family gathering was one form of generational Sabbath, and treasured more deeply because we weren’t sure those gatherings would continue. I’ve also experienced that kind of Sabbath on some of our youth retreats. Youth ministry, at its best, can provide that same expansive opportunity to see God at work across generations. Our spring retreats often offered a similar sense of play, care, gratitude, excitement. Our legendary Golden Fleece games allowed adults and teens to face each other in play, while ample free time allowed more casual groupings of older and younger adults, college students, older and younger teens. In large and small groups, as we shared our stories, we could see the ongoing work of God in different personalities, different stages of life. And as we shared repeated retreats together, we could look back at moments when we had seen God move powerfully, and look ahead to what he would continue to do.

In an odd way, our mission trips to Kensington, an inner city neighborhood in Philly, have provided generational Sabbath as well. I was most conscious of this this past summer, knowing the trip would be my last. I went into it feeling physically tired and spiritually drained. I had just started reading Sabbath, and was wrestling with some of Allender’s ideas: division surrenders to shalom, destitution surrenders to abundance, despair surrenders to joy.  I began to pray that God would allow me to experience the trip as Sabbbath, not sure what that would look like.

What I saw and experienced surprised me. For the team, the week, despite the work and challenging circumstances, provided a kind of multigenerational fellowship rarely experienced. Team members from their sixties (the vicar of our partner church) down to early teens played games together (Apples to Apples - endlessly), told stories, worshipped together late into the evening. We shared uncertainties, prayed about challenges, told stories of our own walk with Christ, discussed what we were reading and thinking.

Each evening, from five to seven, the team went into the neighborhood to create a Sabbath space for children, teens, parents, grandparents. The fenced church yard became a place of shalom, safety, fun, for everyone who gathered. As we shared, from our different ages and our own unique experiences, our view of God’s goodness at work in us, and in the world, as we shared our knowledge of what God is doing, now, and our hope of what he will do, tomorrow, next week, on into the future, we were all enriched, strengthened, encouraged, fed.

“Sabbath calls us to act against division and destitution – defying it through the celebration of peace and abundance. We are invited to write the script for our character each week, to act on the stage of Sabbath a new play of redemption. We are to pretend, to play as if the new heavens and earth have dawned and all despair and death have been swallowed into the glory of the resurrection. For Christians the Sabbath is the day we play in the light of untrammeled freshness.” Allender

During our trip, instead of using my daily “rest and reflection” time for rest, planning, weary prayer, I found myself reflecting joyfully on God’s goodness, and writing poetry for the first time in years. The challenges hadn’t changed – my perspective had. Which is what Sabbath is about: taking time to shift perspective. Taking time to see from God’s point of view, rather than my own. Taking time to sit with others, older, younger, further along in the journey, just starting.  Taking time to listen for the cries of justice, the whispers of blessing. Asking God to make us more fully alive in fellowship with each other.

A few Kensington Sabbath poems:

Justice is this ache,

This lingering limp – this –

Silence, echoing.

God breathes, a breeze stirs

Cool air from the river, sweet

Whisper of blessing.

I will pray . . .

I will

For hope beyond this corner bar,

For joy that lifts

Beyond the salsa beat

And rains

Like kindness

Down on flat tar roofs,

For peace, a peace beyond mere calm,

A peace that sings

That blooms

That shimmers off the streets

And shines

Like sun

On sun-starved skin.

I’ll pray.

But if I pray, good God,

But if I stay

Alive enough

To care

To hope

To wait

Then meet me here

Right here

Beneath the broken light

Here, on this narrow strip

Of rubbled pavement

Meet

And teach

My tired

Feet

To

Dance