The Wednesday After Easter: A Fifty Year Memory

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968)

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. -MLK

LBJ had just announced that he would not run again. Stunning. But as I said in Saturday's memory post, it was but the beginning of a series of events that would stun and forever alter the American political landscape. In reality it had begun at the end of January of 1968 when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong began the Tet Offensive. Suddenly American military might was being seriously challenged. Johnson's decision was based in that as much as on Eugene McCarthy's show of popularity and the entrance of Bobby Kennedy into the race two weeks earlier.

But no one was prepared for what was to come beginning on that Thursday evening 50 years ago today. I had been studying and took a break to go to the college radio station. I walked in and noticed that the UPI Teletype was printing something. I don't remember if there were any bells going off or if our machine even had the bells for important news. Like November 22, 1963, the news didn't seem real.



Martin Luther King was dead. Shot on his motel room balcony in Memphis, TN.


King, as much as any other American of his time was the heir of Thoreau's civil disobedience. He had written in his autobiography:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.
-Link

This, no doubt, may be the greatest impact of Thoreau's writings on the life and character of the United States. Which is why I have added this one last "different drummer" post to the Lenten series. It is an appropriate closing to the Lenten journey and the hope promise of resurrection included in it and Easter. The nonviolence at the heart of the Civil Rights movement was planted in Thoreau's one night stay in jail for refusing to pay a tax. The challenge to our country's greatest sin- slavery and racism- is, I believe, Thoreau's ongoing gift to us.

As I remember Martin today, I remember the hopelessness and helplessness of April 4, 1968. This can't be happening. We are a better nation than that. The riots that followed were frightening. When an icon of nonviolence like King or Gandhi is the victim of violence, it is easy to lose hope or belief in the power of the nonviolent movement. For me- and for others I am sure- it only further solidified my personal direction as a pacifist. Pacifism is not some "pie-in-the-sky" idealism, Martin Luther King, Jr. showed. It has real-world consequences. It can be victorious as many of King's actions were. It can also be dangerous.

King was aware of that. In his last speech the evening before he famously told the audience:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Thank you, Dr. King. Without your witness, work, and sacrifice, we would be a much poorer and sadder nation. May we all continue to work toward those dreams.

Easter Sunday

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. 
-Henry David Thoreau


As I have said earlier in this series Thoreau was not a religious man. But he did have wisdom and insight into the human condition and the broad spiritual needs of humanity. At the heart of what he wrote was the need to live a life that has meaning. Meaning comes from action. It is not just what we believe that makes us who we are, it is what we do.

It is Easter. The Lenten journey has ended. The time of self-reflection and seeking new guidance and insight has brought us to this day. We entered the darkness on Good Friday and then the darkness was forever broken on this Easter morning. The holiest and most joyous of days in the Christian year.

The story is told in the book we Christians call Holy Scripture. Even the greatest and holiest of books must eventually be set down, having read its words. Then we must move on, as Thoreau says, to “commence living on its hint.”

• I have read the story.
• I have heard it countless times.
• It still resonates with hope and light, brighter each year.
• It still reminds me that God’s grace is greater than the powers of the world that seek to silence it.
• It still calls followers to live in a way differently than the world’s ways of living.
• It is called love.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. 

There is more day to dawn. 

The sun is but a morning star.

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

As the sun rises over the world on this Easter Sunday, may we be awake. The day is ahead of us. It is a day of grace and love.

The Lord is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed.

Thanks be to God!

Sing hallelujah, praise the Lord!
Sing with a cheerful voice;
exalt our God with one accord,
and in His Name rejoice.
Ne’er cease to sing, O ransomed host,
praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
until in realms of endless light
your praises shall unite.

There we to all eternity
shall join th'angelic lays
and sing in perfect harmony
to God our Savior’s praise;
He has redeemed us by His blood,
and made us kings and priests to God;
for us, for us, the Lamb was slain!
Praise ye the Lord! Amen.

Good Friday:

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
-Henry David Thoreau




In that time when we understand ourselves, we also begin to know what we need and who we truly are.  Perhaps in our journey it is when we humbly accept ourselves that we can turn to a power greater than ourselves to lead and guide us.

As I stand at the Cross on another Good Friday, I learn of the heights and depths of God's love.

It is a time of darkness. The Lenten journey must bring us to face and accept this darkness. Without Good Friday there is no Easter.

But, as a pastor said on Thursday evening, because Jesus has gone there it is now a "luminous darkness. And in that, we will meet God."

Maundy Thursday- What Do You See?

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. -Henry David Thoreau



Thoreau wrote this line in his journal on an August night in 1851. He was criticizing those who looked at things but didn’t see what was really there. It was just a passing observation that he didn’t take to any other conclusions that I could find.

But when I saw it a couple months ago when preparing this series, it was one of the more powerful new insights. Many of Thoreau’s quotes have been around and used often. This one seemed perfect for the Thursday of Holy Week.

• What do you see on this holiest of nights, surpassing even the wonder of Christmas Eve?
• What is there to see that enlightens the soul and let’s us be participants in grace?

There is a table, set for Passover. Bitter herbs and a shank-bone; a roasted hard-boiled egg and a spiced mixture of nuts, honey, fruit, and wine. In the center three pieces of matzah covered on a plate and a cup of wine. It is like almost any other Passover meal then or in the 2000 years since. It is a ritual with depth and history and wonder. The participants recline and enjoy leisure, something their enslaved ancestors were not able to do. They laugh and enjoy the interactions.

But this table is set in a hidden place, an upper room in one of the city’s neighborhoods. At this point there are only thirteen people there, obviously a close knit group. They laugh and joke and ask deep questions. They no doubt have finished the ritual readings and glasses of wine. We can watch the obvious leader take one of the pieces of matzah and breaks it. One piece he dips into the spiced mixture and hands it to one of the others. Then he takes another piece and breaks it as well, says some words and looks at his friends. They seem to be confused. They apparently don’t understand. After they have eaten he takes a cup of wine and again seems to be saying more than the standard blessing. Again the group, now minus the one who shared the earlier matzah, looks at each other in disbelief.

If we did not know what we were looking at, we would not see what this all means. If we were not the heirs of two millennia of reenactments and remembrances of that one Passover meal, we would miss the wonder and hope of that event.

What will I see tonight? A ritual that I participate in because it’s what I do on this Thursday? Another uncertain theological event that we can argue about until, well, until the Kingdom of God is completely revealed?

• Will I see the bread and do as I always do? Will I see the cup and wonder why?

• Will I hear the words spoken at that other meal and experience in a renewed way what it means to have a body broken and blood shed for the proclamation of God’s grace?

• Will I finally know that in some mysterious way I am proclaiming the grace of God in Jesus’ broken body and the forgiveness of sin in blood shed?

Bread and cup- or more?

Ritual- or life renewed?

Words- or grace, the free gift of God?

It all depends on what I am open to see?

The Sixth Sunday of Lent-A Peasant Procession

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
-Henry David Thoreau


When we speak of Henry David Thoreau we jump back and forth between two different images. One is the naturalist and semi-hermit on the banks of Walden Pond for a little over two years. His writings began a great line of writers and seekers of peace and direction in the wildness that Thoreau knew was the salvation of humanity.

But there is also the tax resister, the anti-slavery and anti-war protestor. As the author of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau also began a second line of thought, one that influenced Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, and nameless protestors in the streets of many cities. Today we return to the protestor, to the Thoreau who wrote that the law must be disobeyed if it requires you to do injustice to another. We make this turn to the activist on the day we tell again the story of another activist 2000 years ago.

Today is the beginning of Holy Week. Today we sing of palms and crowds as cheers of “Hosanna!” ring through the air. It is the greatest week in the Christian year. It will end in death- and life! It was the week of Passover those many years ago in Judea. A time to celebrate the possibility of liberation from slavery and oppression under the boots of foreigners. As such it was a tense time for many.

In their book, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Last Days in Jerusalem, the New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan argue that two processions entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, and that Jesus’ was not the only Triumphal Entry.

Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30…. In the centuries since, Christians have celebrated this day as Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week…. One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers…On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.

In a very real sense Borg and Crossan are reminding us of the struggle that has existed for millennia when the nation may be acting with injustice and asking its citizens to also do so. While we have often hidden the political side of Holy Week behind the spiritual struggle, we have thus done violence to the whole picture of this important week. Jesus was not executed simply because a small minority of religious leaders wanted him dead. He was executed because his leadership was a threat to the established political and governmental order. He was executed because his understanding of God and faith was not a “nation” based understanding, it was not an expression of “nationalism” as we would define that today. It stood in stark contrast to that.

Jesus spoke passionately and often about caring for the least and the lost. The image of the sheep and goats at the last judgement equated righteous actions with visiting those in sick or in prison, helping the poor, the widow, and the orphan, or giving food to the hungry. Those who do not do these things cannot call themselves “righteous.” The intertwining of the religious leaders and the governmental leaders in Jesus day was anything but righteous. He entered the Temple and challenged those who were mixing the two. He engaged in an act of civil disobedience that set the stage for many.

Thoreau was not an anarchist, even though some would like to call him that. He did not want to do away with government. He said it clearly:

I ask for, not at once no government, 
but at once a better government.

It is hard, of course, and ultimately absurd to compare the Roman government of Jesus’ day with the American government of today. We would all agree with Thoreau that we want better government, caring government, although some may want far less government than others. It is a tough time.

What is a person of faith to do? We hear the cries from both sides to this day. The issue is as raw and painful on this Palm Sunday as it was on the first. Sides have been taken; some see the government as a way of enforcing a particular religious view. It is a time of power for them. Some see government leadership, even immoral and criminal leadership as a way to get the political agenda enacted. Bring down the hard hammer of law to make sure that the ways of a particular faith are enacted and followed. They decry these actions in other faiths and then call for them to be enacted in their own faith.

It is Palm Sunday. As it has often been since the first, there are two choices we are called to decide between, especially in our modern American dilemma. Are we to succumb to the power of the gun and the loudest, wealthiest voices? Are we to bow before a government that criminalizes ethnic groups and nationalities simply because they are who they are? Are we to seek ways to enforce a particular righteousness because it is what we think is the way?

Or do we stand up, as many did yesterday, and say “Enough!”?

Hear the two processions marching this week.

One is an imperial procession pointing fingers, rattling war sabers, making a joke of truth.

The other is a peasant procession calling for change and grace, hope and compassion, safety and life.

Not much has changed in 2000 years, except perhaps today we are more able to make our voices heard.

• What can I do this Holy Week to speak for hope and life?
• How can I witness to the power of grace standing against the power of hate?
• Where is the call of God leading me to take a stand?

May I spend time this week looking within to find what may be next for me, as I follow Jesus toward the Last Supper, Calvary, and finally life breaking forth.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sixth Week of Lent: The Star Thrower

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh.Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons,the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

-Loren Eiseley

Stories are the lifeblood of the spirit. I have a handful of such stories that have formed, informed, and built my life over the past 45 years. The wondrous preacher Fred Craddock, the amazing Tony Campolo, pastoral care guru Howard Clinebell all contributed. Only Loren Eiseley contributed a unique and enduring story in the midst of some of the most scientifically enriching writings of his day.

Loren Eiseley was called a spiritual wanderer and naturalist in the title of a 1986 essay by Joan Rosen in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan. Rosen wrote:

Nature is Loren Eiseley's teacher. In the creatures of the natural world, in the stars, in the flora and fauna, he witnesses the miracles and wonders of the ages…. [When Eiseley] describes Thoreau as "a spiritual wanderer through the deserts of the modern world” in "Thoreau's Vision of the Natural World" in the essay collection The Star Thrower he is describing himself.

Trained as an anthropologist he had a poet’s feel for words and an amazing eye for the unique and wondrous things of the world. Some quotes from Eiseley that shape his ideas and his incredible spirituality:

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water

he wrote about the very beginnings of life on our planet, coming out of the primal seas. But there was a growing of life that at some point produced the human race and then:

For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds.

That loneliness, sadly, can turn to hubris. The result as we are seeing can be dangerous. Eiseley, who died over 40 years ago saw it coming:

When man becomes greater than nature, nature, which gave us birth, will respond.

Humanity is on an incredible pilgrimage within nature, as Thoreau and Leopold, Dillard and Olson have seen. It is not easy and never ends. Eiseley was one of the tour guides for me.

The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.

Of all the descendants of Thoreau, Loren Eiseley stands alone in my estimation. Some of his anthropology and science have been changed in these 40 years. We have broader and deeper understandings of the world and how we have come to be where we are. But his foundation is as unshaken as it was when I first read him well over 45 years ago. He calls us to pay attention equally to both the little and big things. He calls us to be aware- mindful in our 21st Century language- of what we do and how we live. He calls us to see within us the spirit of one greater than ourselves.

His greatest story, told and retold countless times over these years, often without attribution, has become almost a trite motivational trope. I found a number of “quotes” that were supposedly from Eiseley, but are paraphrases, retellings of retellings of the original. It is powerful, mind-boggling, and more than just a nice motivational story. It is the story of our calling as humans with nature and each other. Here is a very short version of "The Star Thrower." What a perfect way to prepare for Easter in a week and a half:

In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.

"It's still alive," I ventured.

"Yes," he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sunk in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.

..."There are not many who come this far," I said, groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. "Do you collect?"

"Only like this," he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore. "And only for the living." He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water. "The stars," he said, "throw well. One can help them."

I had seen the star thrower cross that rift and he had reasserted the human right to define his own frontier. He had moved to the utmost edge of natural being. I had been unbelieving, hardened by the indifference of maturity. I arose with a solitary mission, to find the star thrower beneath his rainbow. I found him on a projecting point of land in the sweet rain-swept morning. Silently, I sought and picked up a still-living star, spinning it far out into the wave. I spoke once briefly. “I understand,” I said, “call me another thrower.” Only then I allowed myself to think. He is not alone any longer. After us there will be others. We were part of the rainbow – like the drawing of a circle in men’s minds, the circle of perfection.

I picked and flung another star. I could feel the movement in my body. It was like a sowing – the sowing of life on an infinitely gigantic scale. I looked back over my shoulder, and small and dark against the receding rainbow, the star thrower stooped and flung one more. I never looked back again. The task we assumed was too immense for gazing. I flung and flung again while all about us roared the insatiable waters of death, the burning sun, for it was men as well as starfish that we sought to save, a thrower who loved not man, but life. -Link

The Loren Eiseley Society.

The FIfth Sunday of Lent: Living Morality

Aim above morality. 
Be not simply good, 
be good for something. 
-Henry David Thoreau



I must admit that I wasn’t sure where this week’s post was going to lead. Morality is a BIG topic and one that can bring much controversy as we have seen very clearly in the last year or so in politics. As usual with something like this I started with a dictionary definition. Merriam-Webster said:

Definition of morality for English Language Learners. : beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. : the degree to which something is right and good : the moral goodness or badness of something.

Again, a lot of ways to go with that. What is it we believe about “right behavior?” Where do we get those beliefs? How do they change over a lifetime? How do we determine the rightness or wrongness, the goodness or badness of something? It seems to me that some of what we say we believe about these is very cultural and even situational dependent. It even varies depending on the person doing the action. When person X does something it is wrong; when person Y does the same thing maybe it isn’t. Is morality situational? Is moral decision making based on variables that can change?

Phew! My head hurts thinking about that. It can be a deep intellectual, philosophical, and theological exercise that brings more questions than answers. So what was it that Thoreau was thinking about? He does give me an answer in the rest of the quote. Morality is not just about being a good person. There may be lots of good people in the world who are good because they just are and never do anything with it. Their “morality” may be nothing more than just not having an opinion or in a position to do anything. Thoreau says that morality is being good for something. What is it you stand for and how do you live it.

I am writing this post early on Sunday evening instead of the day or two before. As we were traveling on Friday afternoon my wife stepped off a curb coming out of a restaurant and fell, causing pain, abrasions, and, we found out later, a torn ligament. That threw off all my writing schedule until now. The next two paragraphs are from an email I sent to the general manager of the motel we were to stay at for Friday night, just one night. I think the morality of this is obvious and captures what Thoreau was talking about.

My wife and I had the pleasure of staying at [your motel] on Friday and Saturday evenings last week (March 16 and 17). Before we arrived, my wife had an accident when we were leaving a restaurant and was in great pain. We knew that we would not be able to continue the trip the next morning as originally planned. When we checked in on Friday we were told that there would be no rooms available for Saturday night due to a tournament. But [the desk person] did say that she would put us on a waiting list. I checked in before leaving for supper with some friends but she said there was nothing available. I called a couple hours later and she was excited- she had a room for us for Saturday night!!! When I got back from supper we took the necessary steps to reserve the room! Friday was an extremely busy afternoon and evening and she had hardly anytime to catch her breath, but she pleasantly and efficiently took care of my needs. Her personality and honest caring for our needs was amazing.

Saturday my wife and I spent most of the day at the hospital making sure there was nothing serious in her injuries. Fortunately there was not. After the day there, when I checked in for the second night the same desk person was again working and helped me through a couple things, including setting up my Wyndham rewards account and helping get a reservation for Sunday night up the road.

That desk person was a little bit of Jesus to my wife and me. Her willingness to pay attention to us in the midst of an incredibly busy evening (there were never less than 3 people in line when I was there on Friday afternoon and evening). She took care of me- and all the other customers- with no sign of frustration or short-fuse or being tired. She smiled; she helped; she did what she had to do and gave all of us a little bit of herself.

It would be easy to say, “Of course she did. That was her job.” But what I saw and received was over and above the basics of her job. She could have done her job just as efficiently without the extra TLC she gave us and the cam attentiveness she gave others. That is morality. That is right behavior. That is goodness in action.

I have a hunch that this IS what Jesus meant. It seems to have struck enough resonant chords:

• Don’t preach me a sermon; live one for me.
• Preach the Gospel; if necessary use words.
• If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar. For if a person does not love his brother, whom he has seen, then he cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)
• Faith without works is dead. (James 2:26)

Our morality is in what we do and in the end how we treat others. We have enough hatred in our country and world; we have enough division and preaching with fingers pointing in all kinds of directions. It is time to kneel down with Jesus next to the woman caught in adultery. He looked at the men about to stone her and made on simple statement: Anyone without sin can throw the first stone. No one dared. We should not either. That is morality at its highest as we support others simply because they need it.

• Who has acted with morality and care to me this week?
• Lord, I give thanks for these people who have helped make my life a better this week.
• When have I not acted with the care and compassion?
• Lord, forgive me and help me make amends.
• What can I do better in the week ahead to preach the Gospel without words?
• Lord, direct me inward to find your Spirit filling me.
• Where is God directing me to be a witness of faith alive?
• Here I am, Lord. Show me your direction.

Such actions are not a burden. Morality is not a chore that we do out of fear or from having no other way to act. When we begin to live with the power of morality in action, we may find joy and others being helped. Perhaps even ourselves.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fifth Week of Lent: Needing Wilderness

Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity,

an antidote to the high pressure of modern life,

a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium.

— Sigurd F. Olson

There were many benefits from my first trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness 25 years ago. Far from the least of them was to experience the world that Sig Olson had so beautifully chronicled in his books. He stands in the rich tradition of Aldo Leopold and Annie Dillard who I talked about two weeks ago. Dillard was in the eastern forests, Leopold in the plains of Wisconsin. Olson was in what I consider one of the incredible spiritual places set aside for wilderness.

Sigurd Olson (April 4, 1899 – January 13, 1982) was an American author, environmentalist, and advocate for the protection of wilderness. … In June 1921, Olson took his first canoe trip where he fell in love with the canoe country wilderness of northern Minnesota that would become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (with his help)…. He spent most of his life in the Ely area, working as a canoe guide during the summer months, teaching, and writing about the natural history, ecology, and outdoor life in and around the Boundary Waters.
-Link

Other benefits from my first trip (and others that followed for several years) included:

• A new and expanded experience of nature
• Hard work to get there was a reminder of our advantages
• Dependence and survival on community

I love being in the “natural world”. Growing up in what they now call the “Pennsylvania Wilds” there was a sense of “wilderness” that I took for granted until I didn’t live there anymore. Since then I have looked for it and found ways to be connected with it. I always knew there was much that was essential about a “wilderness attitude” or an openness to the natural beauty of the world and what it had to offer.

Sig Olson was able to express that essential need in much of his writing.

There is a hard core of wilderness need in everyone, a core that makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity. There is no hiding it....Unless we can preserve places where the endless spiritual needs of man can be fulfilled and nourished, we will destroy our culture and ourselves.”
— Sigurd F. Olson

• “A hard core of wilderness need…”

Most of us don’t know we have that need. It may be one of the great losses of humanity’s growth into civilization. Not that civilization is a bad thing. It has allowed many great things to get done. But in our disconnect from the world of nature we have lost a sense of being a part of that world. Most of us can’t see the amazingly filled night sky with its countless stars. In many places it is impossible to even see something as iconic in the Northern Hemisphere as the Big Dipper. A 20-something young person watching the Gulf coast sunset last week turned to me with a huge grin and a sense of awe. “I have never seen such a spectacular sunset.”I hope he discovered the need for that wilderness in that moment.

I have been blessed by countless sunsets in more places than I can remember, even over the parking lot in back of our apartment or from the top of the Empire State Building in New York City. But there is something different about a sunset over an ocean or lake, the Gulf of Mexico or a flowing river. There is a power as the sun sets behind a rolling hill, a distant prairie horizon, or a rugged Rocky Mountain peak. It is at one and the same time inspiring, humbling, and downright exciting.

In my language and life I would call that spiritual. As Sig said in the quote above, our need for wilderness

• “…makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity…”

Again, I have had amazing spiritual experiences in urban settings, including sunsets, although they more often include some interaction with other people. An experience in nature has its own unique energy. I notice as I keep writing that I tend to be talking in generalities and could even be running in circles around some central theme that is next to impossible to describe. Leopold and Dillard had that problem. Olson does to, as did Loren Eiseley who I will talk about next week. It is because there is something beyond words, deeper than insight, and broader than the horizons in all this. Poets sometimes will give us a lead. A couplet by Robert Frost may do so for what I am trying to say:

We dance round in a ring and suppose
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows..

The mystery of life can perhaps best be felt or encountered in the wilderness as we listen.

I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard.  Everyone has a listening point somewhere.  It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.”
— Sigurd F. Olson

"Thin places" is a theme that I have personally explored and experienced. They are Sig Olson’s listening points.

The Celtic Christians believed that there were mystical spaces, called “thin places,” where the veil between the holy and the human is traversed. A place in which the physical and spiritual worlds are knit together, and if we are so attuned, we can transcend the ordinary for a glimpse of the infinite. -Link

• Lent is a time for us to discover our own thin places, our listening points.
• Lent is a time to explore the spiritual calling or callings within us.
• Lent is a time to contemplate the universe from the aspect of God’s love as the underpinning of it all.
• Lent is a time, a season, of renewal of our inward journeys so that we may have a stronger foundation for the other seasons we have in front of us.
• Lent is a time to develop the habit of listening in thin places in every aspect of our lives.

To resign ourselves to that influence may be the most important act of surrender we will make.

Live in each season as it passes;

breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit,

and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Fourth Sunday of Lent: Let Justice Roll

Justice is sweet and musical;
but injustice is harsh and discordant.
-Henry David Thoreau



Justice.

A powerful word. An even more powerful ideal. Yet we so often mess it up. Whenever I am teaching ethics I have to stop and explain that from an ethics standpoint justice is not what we normally think it is. Legally, it is usually seen as giving someone what they deserve.

• “We want justice to be done against that criminal.” 
• (Justice is the appropriate penalty for having done something wrong.)
• “Justice was served!” 
• (They got what was coming to them.)

In ethics, however, justice is all about equity and equality.

• Justice is about appropriate use of resources so people are not left out. 
• Justice is making sure that people get what they need, not what they deserve.

A Google search gave me this definition:

• Just behavior or treatment.
• synonyms: fairness, justness, fair play, fair-mindedness, equity, even-handedness, impartiality, objectivity, neutrality, honesty, righteousness
• The administration of the law or authority in maintaining this.

Hence Thoreau’s quote above is a great way to start thinking about justice- it is sweet and musical!

I love the thoughts that come with that phrase. When justice is done it is more than just good. It is sweet. I has a sense of rightness and purpose to it. Justice helps people look at a situation and not let preconceived notions or ideology get in the way. Justice helps people recognize the needs of neighbors as much as our own needs. Justice, in God’s universe, is giving people what they need! Using the musical metaphor, there is harmony to justice, the justice that helps people get what they need brings us together.

One of my favorite quotes on justice is from the prophet Amos, chapter 5, verses 23-24:

Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (NIV)

Institutionalized oppression was the rule instead of the exception. God didn't like that.

• Prayers and sacrifices do not make up for bad deeds.
• "Practice of religious acts is no insurance against the judgment of God"
• Behaving justly is much more important than ritual.
• By oppressing the poor and failing to practice justice the Israelites were behaving unrighteously.
• Social justice was to be enacted as a core of God's message in Amos' prophetic teachings. (Link)

Yet we humans are not good at this kind of justice. The prophets remind the people regularly. Jesus tells the parable of the workers waiting in the village square waiting to be hired for a day’s work. Some are hired at the crack of dawn, others at noon, and a few more are hired with but a few hours left. At the end of the day they all got paid the same. It was the amount promised to the first worker and the last. In the parable the ones who worked all day get upset.

“We worked all day out there and these loafers came along at the end of the day. They shouldn’t get the same. At the least they should get less.”

“This is what I promised,” said the owner. “Do you begrudge me my generosity?”

You better believe we do!

It was just, no one was wronged. Everyone got what they were promised. Generosity. Justice. Grace!

God is telling the people through Amos that even their best and most sacred music (music, again!) is useless if there is not justice in the land. Jesus is telling his listeners that a promise is a promise. Words must lead to appropriate responses. Heavy-duty stuff. Again, a common theme it seems this Lenten season: Words aren’t what it’s all about. It is in our actions that we show what we are made of, that we show what we believe.

God is the different drummer, the one giving the rhythm to a more just and loving world. God is telling us to be "just" as God is "just."

Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven!

BUT, I don’t want God to be just to those who aren’t as good as I am. I don’t want the sinner over there to get the same grace as I get. It’s all about me! What I want. God being “just” or giving “justice” is different.

Thanks be to God!

• Do I truly believe in God’s justice, God’s justness, God’s generosity, and finally and eternally, God’s grace?
• Do I truly believe that God wants true justice to flow like an everlasting river?
• Do I truly believe that my actions are more important than my prayers and my “humble” words and worship?

• This Lent, may I be open to hearing the words of justice from a loving God.
• This Lent, may I seek ways to be a channel of God’s justice.
• This Lent, may the words of my mouth and the meditations from my heart lead to true worship in standing with those who need God’s justice.
• This Lent, may I discover the wonders of grace lived and acted out in God’s Name.

That may be the most beautiful thing I can share!

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,

we must carry it with us or we find it not.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

4th Week of Lent: Living Your Beliefs=Happiness

In a gentle way, 
you can shake the world.
-Gandhi




Thoreau did not just have an impact in the United States. Among his widest impacts in the wider world was through Mohandas Gandhi, the non-violent protestor fighting in India for freedom from the British. He read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights advocate in South Africa.

He first read Civil Disobedience "while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the Transvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its 'incisive logic [...] unanswerable' and referring to Thoreau as 'one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced'."
-Link

Talk about shaking the world! It is also changing the future.

The future depends on what we do in the present.
-Gandhi

We don’t often give much thought to what influence we can have on the future. Maybe that is the life of “quiet desperation” Thoreau mentioned in his writings. What is the sense of what we do? We live until we die and then we are gone. Very few of us will have the level of influence that a Thoreau or a Gandhi had on the “future.” Perhaps, though, we need to remember that we are still in our own spheres of influence quite significant. Our words and actions go together because they are what we have right here and now to share. Gandhi recognized this in Thoreau. Here is what he said about Thoreau in For Passive Resisters in 1907:

Thoreau was … a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. … He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.
-Link

Words are made real in actions. They speak louder than words. Even though Thoreau’s act of civil disobedience was quite small, even appearing trivial in comparison to what Gandhi was going through, the fact that he was willing to take the action in and of itself gave power to the words. They caught Gandhi’s attention as “sanctified” words, words containing the “holy.” Therefore Gandhi paid attention and the world was changed. I doubt that Thoreau would have ever thought his words would have such power more than 80 years later on the other side of the world.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Gandhi

In many ways that is what Lent is about. For me it is a kind of time to take inventory of how my life and my faith, my words and my actions, work together. Each year I discover new things about myself since I am not the same person I was last year let alone 50+ years ago when I became a Christian. The world is also far different. Perhaps it needs the same words but with different actions. Perhaps I need to understand God’s call to me today and not what it was when I started this journey.

So my questions for this week in Lent lead me to thinking about the melding of thoughts, words, and deeds

• Who has had this kind of impact on my beliefs?
• What  have I learned from them?
• This Lent, how can I more deeply be a living action of what God wants me to do with my words?
• This Lent, where are my actions not showing the truth of my beliefs and therefore undermining my words?
• This Lent, how can I confess and be transformed from them and be guided into a more holistic life?
• This Lent, how can I be open to the life-giving surrender to the power of God in Jesus to bring me healing?

To be in constant conflict with ones beliefs and actions is a sure way to lose ones sense of self and direction. If I am not open to living out the beliefs of my conscience, and my Creator, it will steal any sense of peace and hope I might be able to find. To be honest and live a life of integrity to what I believe is essential to mental and physical health. Perhaps Thoreau was right in saying that such would lead to death itself instead of the life promised by God.

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?

Through this wound a man's real manhood 

and immortality flow out,

and he bleeds to an everlasting death.

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Third Sunday of Lent: The Truth of Friendship

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

It is an intelligence above language.

-Henry David Thoreau

A number of years ago I was involved in the development of a Christian renewal movement within our denomination. One of the directions of the movement was “evangelism” which at that time (mid-1970s) was not quite as loaded a word as it has become. In any case it was a gentler version that we talked about in that movement. It was based on “friendship” with the mantra being

• Make a friend,
• Be a friend,
• Introduce your friend to Christ.

Not a bad idea in and of itself. It was always based on the idea that when something is important to you, or touches you deeply, you are almost always ready and willing to share it with your friends. We often talked about how when we see a good movie or read a good book, we are excited to share it with friends. Our natural conclusion was we should be ready to do that with our faith.

There were those, however, who saw it from a slightly different angle. They saw it as a technique to win souls. I am over exaggerating a bit, but it became for some, “Let me find some non-Christians, befriend them, and then when they are ready I’ll talk about Jesus.” (As I said, an over-exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

The problem with that was often in the reasoning and not in the ideal. Becoming friends with people had turned into a technique to get someone to believe. In its most raw form it lacked the true heart of both friendship and evangelism. It lacked caring and compassion and was simply the often seen “numbers” game of “How many have you saved today?” It was “Who can I make friends with?” not “Who needs a friend?”

A big difference!

I always liked the “Make…Be…Introduce” approach to evangelism. I still do. I liked it because it was how I became a Christian.

A close friend and his family befriended me when I needed it. They reached out to a lonely teenager whose mother had been sick and died. They were already friends before my mom got sick, but they saw a greater need than just being a friend. They became a second family with many hours spent with them. They eventually invited me to church with them. Of course they did- it was an important, an essential part of their life. Why wouldn’t they want to share it with me? They weren’t out to “win souls”; they were out to help me be introduced to their friend Jesus.

It took a number of months for me to say okay to their invitation. When I did, I kept going back. They knew I needed something and were sure that Jesus would be right for me.

They were right! The rest is my own history. From my baptism at age 15 through college and then seminary, years of being a pastor and a counselor until now, just two months shy of 55 years later, their friendship at that important point in my life made all the difference! They were kind to the hopes I didn’t know I had and to the dreams yet undreamt!

Friends . . . They are kind to each other's hopes. 

They cherish each other's dreams.

-Thoreau

I have had many friends over these 55 years. They have all known about my faith in its various stages and understandings. Some were members of my church; many were not. Some were Christian; some were not. My faith always informed my relationships. Again, not because I wanted to win them to Christ, something I cannot do, but because my faith is who I am. I can no more separate my faith from my personality and personhood than I can change the color of my eyes or the genes of my European ancestors.

I reflect on all that today with the quotes from Thoreau for this Sunday of Lent. It is tempting to use the friendship thoughts to think about my friendship with Jesus or God. (What a friend we have in Jesus / All our sins and griefs to bear…) That is naturally the foundation. Instead, what I have been led to this week is to think about the friends I have had- and the friend I am being. Jesus’ friendship toward me is the model of what friendship means.

• It means openness to the friend and their needs. 
• It means supporting their hopes and dreams for them.
• It means sharing my hopes and dreams with them. 
• It means caring and compassion, not asking for anything in return. 
• It means grace.

All trite cliches I know, but cliches become time-worn because they are true and get repeated.

• Lent reminds me of the spiritual path of friendship as Jesus himself lived it.
• Lent reminds me of the treasure of friendship that I have been given by and with my friends.
• Lent reminds me of the gifts of friendship that I have to offer to my friends.

[S]urely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me,

and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship,

no less than the ruins of temples.

-Thoreau

• This Lent, how am I living out my friendship to others?
• This Lent, how can Jesus teach me more about being a friend?
• This Lent, how can I grow in my closeness to God through Jesus?
• This Lent, how can all these be consecrated by the Holy Spirit working in me?

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, 

not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; 

it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one 

when you discover that someone else believes in you 

and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Third Week of Lent: The Wilderness Path of Light

We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

-Aldo Leopold

Most people would agree that Thoreau was the original American nature writer. His reflection on his two years on Walden Pond is classic and the root from which many others have grown. One of the greatest of these was Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold (1887 – 1948) was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), which has sold more than two million copies…. Leopold was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation…. He emphasized biodiversity and ecology and was a founder of the science of wildlife management. -Link

What does Leopold as an heir of Thoreau have to teach us this Lenten season? How can we discover new insights into our spiritual lives in this world from him? I for one believe that wilderness and nature is always an excellent starting point for any spiritual journey. It is not coincidence that we use Jesus’ wilderness temptations as the starting point for Lent or that the Desert Fathers and Mothers went into a wilderness to find their own souls closer to God. The presence and possibility of nature in all its hope and danger is a place to learn about the limits of our human condition.

Leopold began the Foreword to A Sand County Almanac:

THERE are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. (P. vii)

Leopold was in the forefront of a movement that saw great danger in what we humans were (and are) doing to the natural world. He understood that his view can only begin to be discussed once we have enough food to eat, that is, we are beyond basic survival mode. But unfettered progress was not necessarily a good thing either.

The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not. … (P. vii)

I am currently reading a truly interesting history of the two sides of the debate of the future of humanity. In The Wizard and the Prophet, Charles Mann tells the story of the “two sides of a century-long dispute between what Mann calls “wizards,” who believe that science will allow humans to continue prospering, and “prophets,” who predict disaster unless we accept that our planet's resources are limited.” (Kirkus Review)  Leopold was part of the side Mann calls the “prophets.” They see the earth’s resources as limited, needing to be protected or we will misuse, abuse, and eventually eliminate them to our own and the world’s detriment.

These two sides have not been reconciled and remain clearly opponents in the debate. Leopold concludes his Foreword with these words:

[O]ur bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to tum off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings. (P. ix)

Many of us raised in the environmentalism of the 60s will easily fall on the Aldo Leopold side of the debate. Such a view is based on an understanding of ultimately limited resources, maintaining stewardship of what we have, the absolute interrelatedness of humans and nature, and finally, the dangers of a consumer-driven society where more and bigger is always better (even as we gladly participate in it.)

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.
- Annie Dillard

Many of us also know the advantages of “nature.” Books like A Sand County Almanac and Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) have opened many of us to the amazing world around us. They have shown us both the “otherness” of nature and our connectedness, even dependence on it. It is a place that, as others have said, one must go prepared, or not at all. I am one of those who believes that the “spiritual” is the best way to be prepared for what it has to teach us and what I need to learn.

I don’t mean just wilderness, either. It can be the town park, the woods off the side of the road, the Bald Eagle’s nest along the river on the edge of the city. It can be a bike trail, a neighborhood street, or the nearest state park. If we go there with an openness to what’s there, what’s new, and what’s old, we will never be disappointed. Sometimes we look up at the canopy or the sky; at other times we get down and explore the square foot of earth beneath our feet. They are both filled with wonder and beyond.

They are filled with God and the words of God. They are icons- images that open to the indescribable. They are sacraments- outward and visible signs and means of God’s grace.

The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
-Annie Dillard

I pray that we not lose sight of this value of the natural world. I pray that as we go through our days, the possibility of finding God in all places will deepen our spiritual health through the world around us. The inward journey of Lent can prepare us for that. It is why we return here every year. We walk our inner labyrinths in order to circle and then touch the holy center of who we are.

There are many lessons to be learned, explored, and acted upon in these writings of Leopold and Dillard, heirs of Thoreau. We in the faith community know some of them, in our own imperfect human ways. We preach stewardship but often forget about the stewardship of the world around us. We sing of our “awesome wonder” at all the works God’s hands have made, yet pay little thought to how we can help protect and enhance that. We know of the value of community but overlook the greater community of the interconnectedness of the world.

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you can rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
-Annie Dillard

This week of Lent, may I walk into the Light, put myself into the path of it’s cleansing and healing beam. Then sail into the presence of the Creator! Let us do it together.

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

-Aldo Leopold

Second Sunday of Lent: What Drumbeat? What Path?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau


Okay, I better address something this week. Why in the world am I using someone like Thoreau for leading me deeper into the world of Lent? Thoreau was not supportive of Christianity. In fact his “diary” entry for Sunday in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack is more about western religions' faults and hypocrisies. On top of that he is often seen as self-centered, narcissistic, pompous, and hypocritical. An article in New Yorker magazine in 2015 by award-winning author Kathryn Schulz severely criticizes Thoreau.

The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world. From that inward fixation flowed a social and political vision that is deeply unsettling. -Link

She goes on to analyze and question how in the world such a person could be so honored and even deified by so many?

I am not here to defend Thoreau. To some extent I agree with Schulz’s general review of him. He was a very strange man in so many ways. In spite of the popularity- and importance- of his ideal of civil disobedience, or his ideal of Walden pond, his arguments as presented do not always hold water, especially in the 21st Century. He was an excellent naturalist and the founding father of so much of what has since been written, but again it may not be all it seems. In many ways he was writing a metaphor, not a strict natural history. But again, we are dealing with the pre-Civil War 19th Century! The world of New England in 1845, which Thoreau presented as the seeming pinnacle of civilization, looks nothing like our world. It is, for me, the principles and directions of his thought that impress me.

As we remember that we are not dealing with a contemporary of ours, so too we should understand that he was not a “wise elder.” Thoreau never made it to being an elder; he died at age 45 of tuberculosis. He was 28 when he moved to Walden, 30 when he left, and 31 when he delivered the lecture that would become Civil Disobedience. In other words he was still a young rebel. He never left that behind.

Which is why I am so impressed by him and why the quote at the top of this post is his legacy for me. He was always marching to a different drummer. I believe that we as Christians should never forget that thought. We should find ways to move our own lives with an attitude of following our own music- or more fittingly for this series- the music of the soul and spirit as we Jesus-followers experience and discover it through Jesus Christ; him crucified and resurrected. Jesus told us that we should learn the ways of the world because he was sending us out

like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (NRSV)

Part of that, Thoreau would remind us, is to listen for the beat of that different drummer! That is what Lent reminds us. Here is the call of this season for us-

dig deeply, look inside to find the drumbeat of our lives. 

More to the point may be that we are hearing the heartbeat of God when we do so. That heartbeat can be restless. That can make it a heartbeat that animates us, gives us direction and meaning and life. It keeps us moving.

A friend on Facebook posted a challenge to his fellow Baby Boomers last week. He asked what happened to the idealism and hope, the fresh ideas and directions, the radical and revolutionary understandings that propelled so many of us in the 60s and early 70s? Instead we have become “elders” (read: old), often more interested in the status quo than the possibilities of growth and peace, grace and spirit. “Have we lost our soul?” was my personal response. Have we become afraid of our own shadows, or even ashamed of some of the naive and innocent ideals of our youth? As a result have we turned away from asking the hard questions for fear of offending ourselves or others? Have we turned off the drumbeat and simply given up on making the world a better place?

But the word naive comes from deeper roots than that.

1650s, "natural, simple, artless," from French naïve, fem. of naïf, from Old French naif "naive, natural, genuine; just born; foolish, innocent; unspoiled, unworked" (13c.), from Latin nativus "not artificial," also "native, rustic," literally "born, innate, natural" -Link

Maybe we weren’t as “foolish” as some think we were. Maybe we were listening to what is more innate, a more natural way of living. Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond was a similar move. No, he did not leave the world behind and live like a hermit. Far from it. Instead he used that time to dig into his own soul and the spirit of the world around him, to hear the different drummer’s beat for him.

That’s what I am doing this Lent. I am using my faith and my experiences to bring that beat into clearer focus. I am using the wrestling with Thoreau to help me fine-tune my ear for the music and the ways to bring what I still believe as important from my “naive” years into this time and place.

• Where am I turning to hear the beat of God’s drummer?
• How can I pay closer attention to what the Spirit is calling me to do?
• What is the path in front of me that I may need to follow?
• What of my past is valuable to translate into this new century and the next decade of my life?
• How can I leave a trail that others may follow and find their own place in the work of God?

Do not go where the path may lead,

go instead where there is no path

and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

2nd Week of Lent: Getting Beyond the Idols

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
― Martin Buber



My Wednesday Lenten posts this year will be reflecting on quotes from people who were influenced in one way or another by Henry David Thoreau. A good one to start with is Martin Buber. His attachment to Thoreau is not based on Thoreau’s famous naturalist writings but on his political activism.

Martin Buber (1878–1965) was a prolific author, scholar, literary translator, and political activist whose writings—mostly in German and Hebrew—ranged from Jewish mysticism to social philosophy, biblical studies, religious phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, education, politics, and art.

He is most famous for his philosophy of relationships based in the short but extremely influential book, I and Thou. In it he differentiates between I - It relationships which are subject-object interactions and I -Thou or dialogue-based interactions. (Note: A reminder that “thou” in the original English usage is NOT the formal pronoun, but the informal version of close and intimate relationships. It is the equivalent of “du” in German and “tu” in Spanish.)

So without getting too complicated or philosophically technical, Buber sees the main difference between “I-It” and “I-Thou” as the first is an experience by one of another. It is in observation and analysis that this occurs. It can be said that it is also a non-interaction in the sense that there is no back and forth. I watch the sunset; I watch the heron on the beach; I watch the people walking by me.

On the other hand, “I-Thou” is interactive; we meet each other and dialogue or we seek to deepen our understanding of the other. Buber says this dialogue relationship is what happens in love. We live IN love; we don’t watch it. (Again, oversimplified, but that’s my understanding of the gist of it.)

Thoreau, when he went to live by Walden Pond really went into what he was expecting to be an “I-It” relationship. It was a self-serving, selfish motive on some levels when it began. How could it be anything else? He didn’t know the pond or its inhabitants either present or past, human or animal or plant. It didn’t take him long.

He dug into the ground and found history with old foundations and burial grounds of previous villages. He went out and discovered his fellow residents. He began to enter into a dialogue with them and discover what they had in common and what he had to learn from their teaching.

Every major naturalist writer since him has had the same experience. To repeat Sunday’s Thoreau quote, they discovered heaven is under their feet as much as it is about their heads. When we discover heaven it might be safe to say we begin to discover and interact in love. When Thoreau did that, he also saw connections he needed to make in other areas; we are all inter-connected whether we like it or not. That led him to his political views and the essay, Civil Disobedience. It was in that writing that Buber connected first with Thoreau.

Martin Buber wrote, of Civil Disobedience:

I read it with the strong feeling that here was something that concerned me directly.... It was the concrete, the personal element, the "here and now" of this work that won me over. … He addressed his reader within the very sphere of this situation common to both of them in such a way that the reader not only discovered why Thoreau acted as he did at that time but also that the reader—assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate– would have to act in just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his existence as a human person. The question here is … of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man's duty as man....
— "Man's Duty as Man" (1962)
-Link

Because Thoreau has entered into an “I-Thou,” personal and intimate relationship with his world and the events of the world, he makes it clear in his essay that any thinking and honest individual would have to do the same when challenged by circumstances. In Thoreau’s case it was the annexation of Mexican territory by the United States and the ensuing Mexican-American War. He was also a strong Abolitionist who saw no way that owning slaves was a moral thing. How could it be when we are all interrelated? How can we turn relationships with other humans into “I-It”, non-dialogic interactions?

Why then was I drawn to Buber’s statement above? We live in a time when there are many false images of God (or gods) being thrown around. There is the angry, punishing God; there are the things we worship as having importance beyond themselves; there is the image of a God that hates the same people as I hate and believes the same things I believe.

The atheist on the other side has nothing to start from. There is nothing of that kind of value as a “God”. The attic is shuttered, but unlike the false images, an attic’s shutters can be opened more easily than a closed mind. Somewhat in the way that Thoreau discovered the ability to be in a personal relationship with the world and others, the atheist has more possibility of discovering an “I-Thou” relationship with “God” because he or she has no preconception about what or who God is.

That is far more technical than my mind wants to grasp. But that is what Lent is about. I don’t understand this relationship with God in and through Jesus. Intellectually I understand it less today than I did in 1964 when I  became a Christian. But I know it better today. I also know that it is just as intimately connected with the world around me than ever before. I continually discover new ways to move from “I-It” to “I-Thou.”

This past week we have seen another school shooting. I will write about that sometime else, perhaps. But what I see happening among the student survivors of the Parkland shooting is a movement into an “I-Thou” based civil disobedience. They have discovered the Golden Calf of guns in the public square and realized that they are not as important as the idol. A relationship to an idol is not a dialogue. It is "I-It" and never built in love. It is often a demand. We say "I will worship you (the idol) and you will protect me and make me powerful."

In our mind the idol responds with a beckoning smile.

The students in Parkland have seen the lie in that. They have lost 17 fellow students and teachers. They were not protected by the idol; the idol was used to kill them.

The power of the interconnections, the relationships, become clear. Students around the country I am sure sat in their classrooms every morning since then wondering if it could happen to them. They saw and lived the relationship between themselves and Parkland. They are tired of it. They see the evil in it on some emotionally deep level and say, “Enough!”

• What can I learn this Lenten season from paying attention to my relationships? 
• How can I drop the “observer” role and enter into dialogue with the world around me? 
• What does love compel me to do for those with whom I am in an “I-Thou” relationship? 
• Finally, how can I stop being an observer of God, or worse, one who turns God into a false-image idol, and give myself over to the love I can live within?

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

First Sunday of Lent: Breaking Through the Ice

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

-Henry David Thoreau

Lent. How many of these have I been through now? I became a Christian at age fifteen so that means my first Lent was spring of 1964. Of course as a Baptist we didn’t talk much about the church year like that, but I must have known something. That was a much different religious environment than we have today.

As I grew into a broader and more “liturgical” model of the faith I learned that Lent was about sacrifice and even suffering. After all, that is what Jesus did. That comes from an attitude that we have to tame the things of the body so the things of the spirit can grow. This is an outgrowth of what amounts to a more Greek than Hebrew understanding that says:

Heaven=good
Earth=bad

Spiritual=good
Material=bad

Thoreau would probably not agree with that, at least in the ways we often mean it. I picked the quote at the top of the post for this First Sunday of Lent to bring into light the idea that heaven is more than a place we go after this life and the earth is as much a part of our heaven as heaven itself, whatever that may be. This quote comes from Chapter 16 of Walden, titled “The Pond in Winter.” The chapter begins:

I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether. [Emphasis added.]

Nature itself is the answered question; the glorious creation, “this great work” extends to the limits of the universe. Even in the midst of the coldest time of the year, Thoreau decided that much was going on that is the Creation itself. He continues:

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. … Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half… it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more.

The pond is not just some geographic occurrence. Thoreau senses that there is life there. Even at great depths. Many thought it bottomless but he will show more than that. Later in this chapter he will tell of his method of measuring its depth through an understanding of other measurements.  He will look at the water of Walden Pond as being part of all the waters of all the earth. He will understand that in some way more mysterious than magical, all creation is connected. The pond is now like a field.

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.

Thoreau, in chapter 16, has rediscovered the spiritual under the material. He may have been fooled for awhile by the coldness and seeming lifelessness of winter. In this morning’s awakening he has the answer. Has he cut through his winter state, as the Cliff Notes suggest? Is he now about to open up to find new insight and new spiritual direction? It would seem that way. He has, in the metaphor of looking into the window under his feet, discovered himself and his own soul, alive and well. Heaven is not just some far off place, it is accessible here.

It does take work to get there, though. He had to cut through the soft snow covering and then the thicker, solid layer. Then he can drink from the source. It does not come either naturally or even easily. Our lives, our souls, are like the water beneath Walden Pond. Covered with soft and hard layers. These are the layers we have allowed to accumulate over our spirits. These are what we have felt the need to build in order to protect something we are afraid is too fragile- or perhaps too dangerous- for us to easily touch it. Perhaps there is more to this than that as well. Or perhaps we make too much of it.

Why is is that it takes us so long to become spiritual. I don’t mean religious. We easily and willingly follow rituals, especially ones of our own making. Even those who abhor ritual will do the same things over and over in a kind of religious fervor. Those rituals can and do keep us grounded; but they can also keep us frozen in place. It is when we dig through and discover the window into who we are and what Creation is that we can move beyond ritual into the spiritual.

Don’t get me wrong. I love liturgy and ritual. That is why, even all these years after having left the ministry of preaching I am compelled every Advent and Lent to write about them, to seek new answers and new questions to explore. In that I am part of a long history, my own of 54 years as a Jesus follower and the journey of other followers of Jesus for nearly two millennia.

It has a different meaning today. It was at one point all about some sacrifice on my part. It  meant giving up something, some symbolic action that showed I was serious about being a Christian. We didn’t put it that way, of course, but that was part of what we were doing. Now I write. I pray and ponder some very simple and even simplistic prayers. In the complexity of all that is happening in the world, I need to come back down to earth. I need to look around and find God in the details of every day living and my soul under the mid-winter layer of snow and ice. That snow and ice is not always of my own making. The world pushes and prods, undermines and challenges what I understand as the things that we as Christians are to stand up for. It can get mighty cold and frightening.

These are difficult times we live in. But then again, what times aren’t difficult if one is serious about finding the ways of God as one understands God? What times are not difficult when we are constantly searching for ways to be faithful to the Creator and the Creation? What times are not difficult when we are being pulled away from the task of being more fully in touch with eternity? Which is why we need a Lenten Journey every year.

Adopt the pace of nature:

her secret is patience.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

1st Week of Lent: A Different Drummer

Today, Thoreau's words are quoted with feeling by liberals, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, and conservatives alike.

— Ken Kifer

Before Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley, and Sig Olson-
~~ there was Thoreau.
Before Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.-
~~ there was Thoreau.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a writer, philosopher, naturalist, abolitionist, and political activist. Part of the “Transcendentalist Movement”, he is best known for Walden and Civil Disobedience.

My interest in Thoreau began in the 60s, of course, when he was one of the mentors and heroes of both the anti-war and new environmental movements. It was recently reignited by a conversation last year with an early twenty-something who was clearly conservative and a Trump supporter. He said to me one day, “I have just found a great book that I really like. It’s kind of old though.” My first thought was naturally Thoreau. Who else but him would be an “old” writer that captures the imagination. I was right. This young man then went on to quote the opening of Civil Disobedience where Thoreau famously wrote that “that government is best which governs least.”

I didn’t try to dissuade him from his liking Thoreau, instead hoping that getting into reading it would perhaps move him a little away from his right-wing views. I have no idea how Thoreau himself would have looked at our 21st Century American government nor how he would respond to it. As an anti-Mexican War and anti-slavery activist (the reasons he wrote Civil Disobedience) I am hopeful he would not be on the Tea-Party side as this young man expected. From his willingness to go to jail if only for one night on a refusal to pay taxes to support a war, I would guess he would not be happy with some of the current budget and tax proposals.

Underneath and supporting his political style, Thoreau was part of the transcendentalist movement of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual. It focuses primarily on personal freedom. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the   Romantics but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science…. Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles not based on, or falsifiable by, physical experience, but rather those that derive from the inner spiritual or mental essence of the human.
-Link

For Thoreau this was based on an almost intuitive interest and understanding of spirituality.

one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them."
-Link

Among other things this spirituality took him to Walden Pond for a two-year period when he took the notes and started writing his famous book named after that pond. These are not separate areas of interest, each in its own compartment. The philosophy and spirituality of Thoreau are intertwined. His political stance fits into his view of the world which fits into his environmental understandings.

As I thought about this year’s Lenten season I felt I wanted to take a look at things from a little different angle. For the last year and a half, since Advent 2016, I have been looking at politics and faith and resistance. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was my guide last year and I grew immensely in my thoughts. Advent of 2017 was tying the themes of Advent to resistance to injustice, racism, and hatred. It is important to me- and part of my unshakable faith- that our faith as individuals must inform and expand our political and social views.

Thoreau is a perfect person to help with this.

I have chosen a number of Thoreau quotes to use for Sundays in Lent through Easter. I will use them as starting points for some reflections and interpretations. They will start this Sunday, Feb 18. I am not sure what I am going to do on Wednesdays in Lent. Today, Ash Wednesday, is obviously this introduction. I will see as we progress what happens, perhaps quotes from those who Thoreau influenced. [I have moved The  Tuning Slide posts on this blog to Thursday for the next seven weeks. They will still be posted on Wednesday on the Tuning Slide blog.]

For today, let me end with a quote from his mentor and friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is perhaps Thoreau’s greatest achievement:

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.