Midwinter Wisdom

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. 

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, 

      or brazier,

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

In the dark time of the year.

Between melting and freezing

The soul’s sap quivers.

    (Four Quartets: Little Gidding I, T. S. Eliot)

We often have a day or two of “midwinter spring” -  welcome days of warmth that melt the tops of frozen lakes and remind us that winter won’t last forever. This year, though, it’s been more like a midwinter summer. Our temperature reached 63 °C yesterday – a record high in a week that saw over a thousand new record highs.

I took my binoculars and new spotting scope to Marsh Creek Lake, not far from our home, and headed off on the dirt track on the far side of the lake. The path runs through thickets and brambles, skirting the foundations of old buildings abandoned when the lake was flooded back in the seventies. Dirt bikers plowed through muddy ruts, a young family scrambled happily over a massive downed sycamore, and a lomg line of gulls marked the half-way point in the perfect blue of the lake.

Normally most of the lake is frozen by this point in the year, but kayaks danced along in the bright little waves and a flat-bottomed fishing boat moved along so close to shore I could see the fishing line slice the water.

Kingfisher Pair, Suzanne Britton 

Pausing to watch a pair of belted kingfishers following each other along the lake edge, I found myself wondering: is this a good thing? This beautiful warm weather, this early pairing of solitary kingfishers? What if a day that seems like a reprieve is really a harbinger of harm?

I thought of a blog post I read just days ago: Scot McKnight, responding to a recent debate in The Spectator on global warming, asked “what would it take to change your mind?”  

“Put on the table one of your most cherished theological ideas — say creationism, the historicity of Jonah surviving in a big fish, Calvinism or Arminianism, penal substitution, the gospel as social justice, progressive ideas on the gay/lesbian debates… just put your major idea on the table and ask yourself one question:

What would it take to change your mind?”

McKnight’s book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, documents his own change of mind on the topic of women in church leadership, but his question has far-reaching importance in this contentious political season.  How do we know what’s true? What kind of evidence are we looking for? Whose voices do we listen to? What are we willing to question?

The Pharisees were sure of a long list of things, which made it impossible for most of them to hear what Jesus had to say. They started from a position of theological certainty and spent their energy looking for ways to discredit their opposition, rather than taking time to listen to see what truth they could learn from a very new perspective.

Can You See the Writing on the Wall?
Mary Padgelik

Ah, but isn’t it dangerous to listen to voices you’re not sure of, to consider ideas that don’t fit the currently accepted grid?

Standing still in the late afternoon sunlight, I listened to the wild cry of a red-tailed hawk soaring overhead, and the secretive scuffle of the white-throated sparrows, hiding in low bushes along the trail. There are voices easy to hear, like the raucous chorus of crows, or the constant chatter of the chickadees. And there are voices we prefer to hear: the mockingbird song. The sweet chirps of the pretty red house finch.

What happens when we shut out too quickly voices that are new, or difficult, or threatening? What happens when we refuse to hear those whose message doesn’t fit our own?

In Soul of a Citizen, Paul Loeb talks of an “ethic of listening,” learning to act from an awareness “that our knowledge and perception will always be partial, and that we learn best from dialogue with others.” Loeb notes the need “to cultivate a bit of humility. To hear the souls of others requires silencing the clamor of our own obsessions about how the world should be.” (238)

Humility is one of those words we don’t spend much time with. We like to be people who know the answers, who have firm opinions, who are quick to make those opinions known.  We like to know which voices are approved, who is on “our side,” and who is not. Discussions move quickly from ideas offered to ad hominem attack. Once we’ve labeled someone a communist, fascist, racist, heretic, we can stop pretending to listen and go back to celebrating our own strong opinions.

I grew up in a household where argument was plentiful, in a church tradition where the stronger your opinion, the more you were admired. I realized early on that the motivation in most arguments had little to do with the point being offered. What I heard loud and strong in most discussions I witnessed was power, pride, and a deep disregard for the people most affected. 

Reading on my own, I came across James 3: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” I had seen enough to know that opinions held in pride cause harm, that real wisdom is gentle, and shows up in action more than bombastic argument.

The Fruit of the Spirit: Peace, Mary Padgelik

In my early twenties, I memorized James 3:17 and 18: 

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” 

In this warm, strange, midwinter summer, marveling at the beauty of red hawks in flight, dodging mountain bikers who call “on your right!” as they pass me in the muck, I find myself repeating that ancient passage. I pray for humility, wisdom, peace. Not for myself only, but for all of us, fellow travelers on a tired planet, concerned citizens in a divided country. I pray for a wisdom humble enough to consider a change of mind, wide enough to hear all the voices crying to be heard, and for harvests of righteousness abundant enough to meet the needs of all.

Join the conversation: What would it take to change your mind? How do you know when you're holding an opinion from wrong motives, or pride?Where do you hope to see deeper dialogue in the year ahead? 

An Altogether Different Language

remains of Murbach Abbey,
near Le Rimlishof, Buhl 

There was a church in Umbria, Little Portion,
Already old eight hundred years ago.
It was abandoned and in disrepair
But it was called St. Mary of the Angels
For it was known to be the haunt of angels,
Often at night the country people
Could hear them singing there.

What was it like, to listen to the angels,
To hear those mountain-fresh, those simple voices
Poured out on the bare stones of Little Portion
In hymns of joy?
No one has told us.
Perhaps it needs another language
That we have still to learn,
An altogether different language.

      (Anne Porter, An Altogether Different Language, 2006) 

On Pentecost morning, I found myself at breakfast at Le Rimlishof, a retreat and meeting center owned by the French Scripture Union counterpart, Ligue pour la Lecture de la Bible.

There were five of us around the table – from five different countries: Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Argentina, Germany, and the US. The conversation turned easily to Pentecost, to language, and to the challenges of Bible translation when the history and use of a word can alter its meaning, when many in the world speak a language that has no written history, when putting a word into writing can be a political act with layers of meaning no one can foresee.

Le Rimlishof main lodge

Listening to my international friends talking, it occurred to me that Christians from the United States are at a sharp disadvantage in our understanding of language and of scripture, even as we enjoy a luxury few in the world have: we are surrounded by people who speak our language, and we are taught a written tradition centuries deep, with no need to wrestle with translation of complex ideas. As a result, we are not confronted, as so many others are, by the difficulties of nuance, the intricacies of connotation and denotation. We have no need to live across linguistic divides, as do the German Swiss working alongside the French Swiss, the Tamil Sri Lankans living beside the Sinhalese. In our simple understanding of language, we’ve come to believe that translation is a straightforward transaction: each word has a meaning that can be exchanged for an equal word with identical meaning, with no loss of understanding, no muddying of intent.

For those who speak multiple languages, that belief is amusing, child-like, even dangerous.

View of Buhl from Le Rimlishof

We spent four days at Le Rimlishof. While the Scripture Union staffers spent their days in meetings, looking for ways to work across cultural and language divides in engaging people around the world in reading the Bible, I wandered the beautiful village of Buhl, taking photos of the neat kitchen gardens, enjoying unfamiliar birdsong, sampling pain de chocolate from the two small bakeries in the village center.

Rejoining the group for meals, I’d ask for clarification and correction from the German and French Swiss representatives. What is “swartzwurzel”? Black root, poor man’s asparagus, winter asparagus. A perennial root-crop. Peel it, boil it, and use it as you would asparagus.

What is “col”? I saw numerous arrows pointing toward “Col de Shrangen,” “Col de Bannstein,” “Col de Peternit.”  

That one was not so easy. It’s the same root as collar: something to do with the neck. But as a place? It’s the low part between two mountains. My translators struggled to find the right word.

“A pass?” I asked. “A mountain pass?” Ah, yes. A pass.

But then, there was a moment of consideration by my translators, as they considered other meanings of the word, turned slightly red, and said “well, it also is used in other ways.”

Inappropriate, somewhat rude ways, apparently. They were warning me to be careful in the use of the simple word “col,” but hoped to leave it at that.

“So the signs are pointing toward passes between mountains, but better not to use the word.”

They nodded and smiled. Disaster averted.

Later that morning I found myself sharing my binoculars and camera with a small troupe of children. Le Rimlishof hosts school children for environmental exploration during the week, then church groups for retreats on weekends. While we were there, a large group of French school children spent time running up and down the side of the mountain, then an energetic German church arrived for campfires, cookouts, and lots of intergenerational play.

A smaller group of children and adults stay on through all the program changes: a handful of refugee families, some from Kosovo, the others, I think, from Somalia. Maki, Makfirete and Jojo were interested in my binoculars, so I showed them how to use them then took their picture and shared it with them on my digital camera. That led to more photos, some energetic jumping from rocks, and numerous attempts to communicate. When I tried to speak French to them, Makfirete, a sturdy girl of seven or eight, said “No English!” When I tried to say I was speaking French, she shrugged and said again “No English!”

We did manage to count to ten together – badly, since Jojo and Maki are still at the age when seven can easily follow five, and my pronunciation of “quatre” and “cinque” left Makfirete shaking her head. While we were counting, laughing, and documenting their amazing jumps, a German couple came up the drive in search of a nearby address. They didn’t speak English, the children couldn’t understand their question in German, and their mothers, when coaxed from the nearby kitchen, made clear that they spoke neither French, English, or German.

What a wonder it must have been, on that Pentecost day two thousand years ago, for the disciples to speak and find that those around them understood. And to know that the meaning was intact – to know that the Spirit, in guiding the language, was speaking straight to the hearts of the listeners.

An Adventures in Mission team a young friend took part in had a similar experience in Peru. A team of young adults was trained to do street ministry – drama, worship, and an offer to pray for anyone in need of prayer. One of the young men of the group found himself praying in tongues in a way that seemed unfamiliar. When he finished, a man in the crowd told him he’d been speaking in that man’s language – a tribal language, one of over three-hundred languages in a country divided by mountains, deep valleys, and vast areas of jungle. The good news of Jesus took on new life, not just for the man who heard it in his language, but for all the listeners: God is near. He knows our language.

God knows our language, but do we know his?    

Colmar

After lunch on Pentecost Sunday, my husband and I traveled on from Le Rimlishof to Colmar, a historic town that has been the anchor of the Alsace region for centuries. According to Wikipedia, Colmar “was the location where Charles the Fat held a diet in 884.” It was an imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, participant in the Protestant Reformation, occupied by Sweden during the Thirty Years' War, conquered by France under Louis XIV in 1673, annexed by the German Empire in 1871 as a result of the Franco-Prussian War. After World War I Colmar was returned to France, was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1945, and has been French since 1945.

Wandering the narrow historic district of Colmar, we came to the Place de la Cathédrale, and headed toward the entrance of St. Martin’s, the Gothic church built in the thirteenth century over the remains of two earlier churches. We were stopped at the door by a man asking for something: “petite pence”? Our attempts to understand him, or to have him understand us, went nowhere, until we said “Etats Unis.”

“Ah!” He motioned us toward another man, sitting on the ground, who looked up at us and then spat on the ground. Meaning broke through – they were beggars, asking for change. We shook our heads and pushed through the door to find a service in progress inside the grand gothic space.

L'église Saint-Martin de Colmar

Solennité de la Pentecôte - Solemnity of Pentecost. A service of music, prayer, and eucharist totally familiar, with a reading from Acts 2, another from 1 Corinthians 12, and the repetition, together, of “Notre Père, qui êtes aux cieux, Que votre nom soit sanctifié.”

Toward the end of the service, we sang a familiar song, a song written in Latin about the time the church was built by Francis of Assisi, and set to music in Germany in the seventeenth century:

    All creatures of our God and King
    Lift up your voice and with us sing,
    Alleluia! Alleluia!
    Thou burning sun with golden beam,
   Thou silver moon with softer gleam!
   O praise Him! O praise Him!
   Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!“

“Alleluia,” in French, is the same as in English. In fact, it seems one of the few words that holds true across almost every language, with slight changes in spelling and pronunciation, but no change in meaning.

Amazing to think there will be a day when all languages join in song, when all creation celebrates together, when the differences of speech and culture become part of the beauty, rather than points of frustration, or dangerous division:

   It's the song of the redeemed rising from the African plain.
   It's the song of the forgiven drowning out the Amazon rain,
   the song of Asian believers filled with God's holy fire.
   It's every tribe, every tongue, every nation, a love song born of a grateful choir.
   It's all God's children singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah, He reigns. He reigns."

   Let it rise above the four winds, caught up in the heavenly sound.
   Let praises echo from the towers of cathedrals to the faithful gathered underground.
   Of all the songs sung from the dawn of creation, some were meant to persist.
   Of all the bells rung from a thousand steeples, none rings truer than this.
   All God's children singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah, He reigns. He reigns, He reigns."
   All God's children singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah, He reigns. He reigns, He reigns."

               (He Reigns,  Peter Furler and Steve Taylor, c 2003 Ariose Music)

 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