Sometimes I am simply stunned by what seems impossible. A newborn baby’s eyelashes, for instance. Or the color of the freshly bloomed irises in the spring. The way a heron lifts its thin legs and heavy body by the force of wings into the air. The sheer stillness of the rabbit in my backyard who can appear a statue while I have to fidget every second. There are seemingly impossible things happening around us all the time and sometimes I have the presence of mind…and heart…to be awake to them.

Last week I was walking near one of city lakes when I rounded a corner and came face to face with what seemed impossible. A whole area of the lake danced with the floating beauty of white water lilies. Stunned. I know I am not the only one who has grappled with their impossibility. Artists have tried to freeze their image in time, watching how the light played hour by hour on their frilly form floating above shimmering water. Poets have shaped words around their wonder.

“Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.”…writes poet Mary Oliver. Yes, unbelievable. From what roots do these circles of magic arise? The way they float with such little effort is a lesson for us all. Their short lived presence is a reminder of how fragile all life really is. Their ability to emerge from what had only been frozen form but weeks before offers imagination for what could also emerge from us.

Of course, there are other things that stun with what seems impossible. The way one human can deny the humanity of another. Because of skin color. Or how they name the Holy. Or who they love. Or the language they speak. The way groups of people can come together to create a false sense of ‘other’ and make laws that define those as less than. That some could find any reason to take a child from the arms of a loving parent and separate them, placing those small, vulnerable ones in frightening situations, knowingly, with intent.

“Impossible..not able to occur, exist or be done…very difficult to deal with…very unreasonable”. I guess the word has many meanings. Today I want to remember the beauty of impossible that lies in the presence of the waterlilies. In hope, I pray for what seems the impossible presence of beauty and kindness and wisdom to become visible and real in our world. Especially for what feels so very difficult to deal with and incredibly unreasonable

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.”

“Every name is real. That is the nature of names.”
~Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

Names. How did you come by yours? I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t have some story about their name…who chose it…whether they like it or not…what they’d rather be called instead. Names hold power and history and help us mark our spot in the unfolding of our lives and our world. And while I do not remember the feeling of making the letters of my own name for those first tries, I have watched many a child, my own included, do the painstaking movement of each letter that would eventually be the triumph of their name scrawled in black and white for the purpose of saying, “I was here.”

This past weekend I walked through the Museum of Art in Chicago and was once again gobsmacked by the beauty and creativity of the painters. Particularly the Impressionists. I am not sure why these paintings, this style grabs my heart so, but they do. The colors, the brush strokes, the evocative landscapes that draw you in as you feel your pulse slow and rest in an image that speaks of what is both real and hoped for…a beauty that transcends time. I stood and soaked it all in and allowed the gift of the artist to provide a balm of both inspiration and healing.

As I was gazing upon the paintings I began to notice the signatures of the artist often placed in a lower corner of the canvas. I became mesmerized by looking at the names realizing that it really was the name that made the painting real for me. I wondered about the signature…how did the artist choose to be finished? Was the signature an afterthought or was there genuine pride and satisfaction with what they had created? Seeing the name written in a corresponding color became very powerful declaring the artist’s presence.

We sign our name many times every day. Sometimes we do this with great care…when we want to be truly known as we send off a card to someone we love. Other times we scribble an illegible series of marks that would be difficult to decipher as having anything to do with who we are. I wonder sometimes at the many times I swipe a credit card and use my finger to sign my name…How could anyone ever trace this signature back to me?!

What we give our name to is important. I think the artists knew this when they signed their paintings and said to the world, “ This is mine. I made this. I dreamed this. I offer this now to you…in my name.”

As I observe our world right now people are giving their names to acts and decisions that are having grave consequences for the most vulnerable among us. I wonder if, in a few weeks or or months or years, they will be proud that their name is on the canvas they have painted. I wonder if those who gave them their name would stand by them in what they have created. What we sign in our name has lasting legacy.

Names are important. We are wise to think and act carefully as we add our signature in the world. It will likely be remembered for years to come.

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up
~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

They begin to arrive sometime in early May. The mail carrier delivers the envelope with the photo of a young, fresh face gazing toward a camera held by a professional or a doting parent. There is always a smile. Sometimes the card also carries an image of this same face, recognizable but so much younger, a treasured memory of the child that has now become a young adult, now being launched into the world. These invitations to graduation parties find their way to refrigerator doors and other areas where they can accompany the receiver in daily acts, their presence a reminder of the passing of years, the making of moments.

Their faces and the promise of their lives are reminders of the thresholds that shape our lives. We mark them. We celebrate them. Sometimes we mourn what has been. We are filled with expectation for what is yet to be, unknown, to be discovered. If we are willing, we are aware that the threshold is a place of movement from what has been toward what will be. Thresholds are powerful and always present.

I was reminded of this last week for many reasons. Not only have I been gazing upon the faces of high school graduates I have known since they were born but I also crossed my own threshold into the world of retirement. And one of my younger colleagues is about to make a leap into a new life, a new world of being as he moves to California. In talking with him we shared some conversation about the strangeness and yet the excitement of this movement. I used the word ‘threshold’ to describe it.

Threshold is not a word that comes up much in every day language. But saying it aloud, I realize it has stuck with me. I have noticed how I have been saying the word in my head with regularity and noticing the many thresholds, doorways, that get crossed in any given day. And I have also noticed how ‘threshold’ is both actual, literal, and a marvelous metaphor. Which, of course, is what John O’Donohue the wise, prophetic poet was referring to…inviting the reader to consider to fullest range of this word.

“…it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.”

The graduates whose thresholds are before them in numerous ways are embarking on frontiers that will take them to places they never imagined, meeting people that will challenge and surprise. This always happens when our hearts are being passionately engaged and we are awake. And this threshold gift is offered to each of us, no matter our life stage, when we are willing to open our hearts to the what next, to the expansive nature of the Universe, to see the world with Sacred Eyes.

My prayer is that each of us, graduate or otherwise, find amazing ways for our hearts to be passionately engaged and woken up. It seems to me the future or our world depends upon it.

“The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation-to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to every day life.”
~ Foreword by Huston Smith in The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau

Pilgrim. Pilgrimage. These are two words, two concepts I did not anticipate would be such a significant part of my life, my identity. And yet, like many of life’s twists and turns these seemingly ancient words have come to define for me the outflowing of my life experience. Over the last years, I have been blessed to lead and accompany four different groups of people who chose to name and claim the travels they took to Scotland, Ireland and Italy as pilgrimage. It changes the shape of travel to do this. The packing, the planning and the little challenges and surprises of airports, hotels, all the sites experienced become cloaked in the Sacred More when seen through the lens of pilgrimage. This has been my learning.

My words have been absent from these pages for some time. I have found the current political, social and religious climate to be so strident, so terse that I have been fearful of being drawn into it. But over the last weeks I have found an urging from many to take up this place once again. Perhaps my pilgrim’s life and lens needed a bit of dormancy. And, truth is, I also now find myself at a very significant place that is nudging…maybe even pushing…me to open the palms of my hands and the beating of my heart to remembering the pilgrim life in its fullness once again.

After more than three decades of ministry in a faith community, I am embarking on the pilgrimage route of retirement. Like most paths that welcome the feet of a pilgrim, this one has some planned itinerary and many dangling details. Like the beginning of any day or week or year, there are expectations that will be fulfilled and those that will never materialize. Like any plan…at least in my experience…Spirit will show up and bring surprises and challenges beyond what had been imagined. I will once again learn the lesson that control is a fleeting illusion.

And yet what has been clear from the day I set out on this path, by declaring the ending date and drawing that line in the sand, what has accompanied me has been blessing. The blessing of words of kindness, gentleness and good will. The blessing of stories remembered and those held dear. The blessing of laughter and tears, of letting go and holding on. The blessing of prayers and hugs and knowing looks. Receiving all these has become another part of the path and has created the soil in which I will have the courage to step out.

Thinking about these experiences as I have over the last months, I have wondered if these are blessings we are all offered on any given, ordinary day but most often miss in our desire to plan and execute our to-do lists. As each day is a stepping out, how might we be more awake and aware to the blessings that accompany us for the journey of 24 hours…7 days…52 weeks. I have to believe they are there if we have eyes to see. Thinking about this I was reminded of hearing the poet David White say that ‘pilgrim’ is the one true name every human shares. “ But your loss brought you here to walk under one name and one name only…..pilgrim they called you. Pilgrim.” he writes. Where is your pilgrim path calling you?

While I may be moving on from the daily work of ministry at Hennepin Church, I plan to keep the practice of writing about the pilgrim path that will continue to unfold before me, one I hope connects with your own in some way. I hope you will join me when it suits you.

And so now the next journey begins…all of it bathed in blessing.