“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
~John 3:8

Many times in these pages I have commented on how a particular phrase, image or metaphor has been chosen by a group of people to be used in a worship service or a season and how that same theme starts to show up in my every day life in amazing ways. Call it chance, coincidence or serendipity. Whatever it is, it never fails to bring both wonder and humor to my life.

A few weeks ago I shared the image used for a gathering of United Methodists at our annual days of meetings, worship and celebrations. The dandelion, the humble often misunderstood flower, had been lifted to the place of honor as one example of how the Spirit moves in people’s lives and the life of faith communities. I was touched by so many people’s communications with me about what the dandelion meant to them. Who knew this tenacious, colorful, happy, frivolous, often detested weed could connect with so many people? I was gifted with stories of dandelions being given to mothers, pictures of grandmother’s holding bouquets of the lovely, little blossoms and even a jar of powder made with dandelions that makes a yummy, coffee-like drink. I was amazed at the blessings this little flower brought into my life.

So, why should I have been surprised to have found a Dandelion Farm? The Spirit works in often quirky ways! I was walking along a country road getting my daily exercise. I am sure I had passed the dirt road a number of times but had probably been intent on some thought and had kept my eyes straight ahead not noticing the lovely, white barn and silo visible at the end of the path. That particular day I must have been more in the present moment and upon seeing it, decided to explore to see what was further down the lane. There was no house that I could see, only the barn and silo painted a brilliant white against the Irish green of the trees and grass that surrounded it. It was a scene of pastoral calm that caused me to take a deeper breath, to feel a bit of the stored up tension leave my shoulders.

After drinking in the beauty and as I turned to leave, I noticed a sign on the tidy, white fence:Experimental Dandelion Farm Do Not Disturb Weeds. I looked around to see if there was some kind of Candid Camera thing going on. Was someone playing a joke on me? I read the sign over again. Was this someone’s idea of No Trespassing humor? Well, it worked on me. I laughed and breathed in the presence of the trickster Spirit.

The rest of my walk was given over to the idea of experimental dandelions and those who might give space for them, lovingly nurture them, even protect them with cautionary signs. I was reminded of all the ‘weeds’ I have known……those often ‘misplaced people’ who have been recognized for the beautiful, unique people they are, those people who have bloomed and grown in the most unlikely of places. I also thought of those folks who have been unable to do so, whose growth has been thwarted by the over zealous gardener, teacher, boss, parent, those who nipped too quickly an opportunity to blossom, to plant deep roots.

Each of us is basically an experiment, aren’t we? We come into the world with a certain combination of DNA, life situations, family, friends, economic means. We are nurtured or neglected, we rise above or conform, we seek to create a path that in great hope allows us to make meaning of our lives. Sometimes we are planted in just the right spot. Other times we find ourselves in the most unlikely of places trying to make sense of it all. Most lives contain a combination of both. If we are lucky, or blessed, we are given the chance throughout our lives to continue to experiment and try new things, new ways of being, until the right combination of soil, sun, and water allows us to flower. Those of us who walk this path with a lens of faith might see the Spirit at work in it all, might see the little wisps of feathery, white dandelion seeds blowing through the ordinary, often mundane, moments of our days. It would be good not to disturb this but to celebrate it for what gifts it might bring.

Perhaps the sign was only a joke meant to make people in the know laugh. All I know is that its message was something that went deeper for me and helped me once again see this simple flower with eyes of wonder and to feel again the Spirit who dances through it all.

It is often difficult to see growth. We can monitor change sometimes but actual growth is often elusive in any visible way. Growth is something we most recognize in retrospect. After the fact we can see how we, or someone we are close to, has matured, evolved, grown into a wiser or more fulfilled being. But the actual growth is often invisible while it is happening. It is as if the hard work, the stretching and pulling, the pushing and bending,happens in some hidden way that can only be seen and noticed after it has happened. Perhaps this is just how growing works.

Over the last week I have been driving on country roads back and forth to our church’s retreat center. Koinonia, as it is named, sits on Lake Sylvia about an hour’s drive west of the Twin Cities. The drive there takes me through field after field of, you guessed it, corn. And what I have been so aware of is how the corn is growing. First it was only about two inches of green, waving arms visible only if you really were looking with all your might. But within just a few days these green, outstretched appendages are visible as the tall beings they will become. Field after field now looks like corn!

This windshield time and the sheer expanse of these fields has me thinking of all the ways we can despair at the lack of growth. In ourselves. In others. In our institutions. In our nations. The patience for growth is so often in short supply. We want to see whatever growth we hope for immediately. Right now. If it is learning something new, we want it to happen in the next moment. If it is change in a system that is cumbersome or no longer useful, we want the growing to follow our own time table, some schedule we have configured most often for our own comfort. But growth rarely happens this way.

This past Sunday the worshiping community I am privileged to be a part of celebrated 20 years of worshiping together. It is a community that sings, prays, laughs, cries and hopes to express the way they see God show up in their lives. It was the Sunday called Pentecost where we hear the scripture of how the Holy Spirit came upon the early church and the people were able to hear one another speak in different languages but yet all were understood. The story is one of seemingly immediate growth. And perhaps it happened that way or perhaps it can happen that way. The immediate cause and effect of Spirit and understanding, Spirit and growth, Spirit and blooming.

But as I listened to the stories people told of how they came searching or broken and found wisdom or healing, this did not happen in the flash of brilliant moment. It took the metered exercise of showing up, of giving in to being cared for, nurtured, of engaging in building relationships that mattered, of seeing the Face of God in the person next to them. This growth first required vulnerability, one of the first steps in growth. The seed first has to go into the soil and open itself to sun, rain, wind and all the elements for growth to happen.

Growth takes time. It is not always visible or certainly not fast enough for our impatient temperaments. Growth has its own way of moving in and offering its wisdom. On Sunday we had the joy, the sheer joy, of seeing two of the young ones who had blessed the circle of worshipers in our beginning life as a community. We had not seen them in some time. What did we notice? How they had grown! What had once been two, sweet little girls who liked to sing and dance and twirl during worship were now tall, beautiful young women, poised and ready to tell us about their amazing, unfolding lives. This growth did not happen over night. It has taken the patience of years in order to become.And that is as it should be.

In a few weeks I will head back out along the fields lined with corn. If the weather is kind and the sun and rain do their work, these fields will be ripe with the gifts of tasseled stalks. Corn. All from tiny seeds nurtured with time and patience and a good bit of luck and faith. It won’t happen over night but if it works as we have come to expect, it will be ‘knee high by the Fourth of July’.

And to that is just as it should be.

“A squirrel flies in,” said Dr. Meescham. “This I did not expect at all. It is what I love about life, that things happen which I do not expect. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, we left the window open for this very reason, even in the winter. We did it because we believed something wonderful might make its way to us through the open window. Did wonderful things find us? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses:The Illuminated Adventures

We have finally settled into a reasonable weather pattern and since Minnesotans love to talk about the weather, I will. These days represent the short, glorious period between the frigid cold and the time when air conditioning keeps us trapped in a suspended animation of heat. These are the days when windows can be open. All day. All night. The current of spring air turning toward summer is upon us. Heavenly.

This last week the windows in our house have been opened with abandon while we are home. And no time is that more wonderful than at night. While we may be inside doing normal, evening chores and entertainments…..reading, watching television, doing laundry, cleaning up dishes after supper…..the sounds, smells and experiences of the darkness waft into the walls of our house. We can hear the children playing, laughing, a ball bouncing, a Big Wheel gallumping over concrete. The planes landing at the airport, people home after a vacation or business trip. Or those taking off, adventure throbbing through veins of the travelers on board, all these sounds become part of our nightly activity. Cars go quietly or too fast down the street. Someone as far away as the next block is trying to get their lawn mowed before it is too dark to see the lines of before-and-after green. The ordinary lives that surround us, those that have been silenced by snow and cold and windows locked tight against it all, have once again become a part of ours.

This experience is only heightened during the hours when sleep is the work to be done. Just as I am dozing off, a dog begins an anxious bark. Does it sense a stranger or is that a joyous greeting to a master who has stayed away too long? A June bug flies against the screen sounding much bigger and weightier than is actually true. The light or heat or smell of humans attracts it in ways that may well lead to its demise. As sleep takes over, the cool breeze of the wee hours blows gently, pulling up childhood memories of summer nights of freedom, no school, no responsibilities.

Some time around 3:00 in the morning, the people who deliver the morning newspaper begin their way down our street. I can hear their muffler, loud and rusty, and the music they have chosen to be the soundtrack for their work. 70’s rock, loud, the bass beating out its driving rhythm. I wonder about them. Who they are? What makes up their lives? I hear conversation between two people and the sudden ‘thud’ of the news of the world hitting our front steps. With that finality, they make their way on down the street, stopping and starting, pausing, much like many of the stories we will read a few hours later.

These days at 4:30 a.m. the sounds of the night are given over to the music of those with wings. Sleeping or not, I am aware of their music, sweet songs that seem to coax the Sun up, up over the horizon. These tiny beings sing out and wait for their song to be answered someplace on the block over or in a tree down the street. Soon their songs either rock me back to sleep or urge me to get on with the day. Whichever it is, I am given to offering a prayer for the sheer joy of traveling the planet’s rotation with these singers, these harbingers of morning.

Windows. There are times when closing them is the act of keeping out the danger of cold, ice, snow, and frigid weather. Closing them also draws us into a safety net that is both real and imagined. Opening those same windows allows the Breath of Morning, newness, a cool, fresh breeze to be the balm of the night. Opening windows invites us into seeing the world with different eyes. The eyes of imagination, of our other senses, of the promise of a new day.

What windows are closed in your life these days? How might opening a window be the invitation to some new experience of Spirit that longs to lift you toward something just outside your imagination? This Sunday marks the celebration of Pentecost in the Christian household. We will read once again how the Holy Spirit came upon the people and nothing was ever the same again.

Flames danced. People spoke. Windows opened. A new day had arrived.

Dandelions. The last few days I have been surrounded by dandelions. This does not mean that our evolving green lawn is dotted with the sweet, yellow flowers. Instead, it means that the dandelion has been the central metaphorical image for the annual gathering of United Methodists that has once again descended on the city of St. Cloud. Yes, the dandelion. There have been songs about dandelions. Liturgical words about dandelions. Sermons that use the image of dandelions. And art everywhere that has lifted the lowly weed to new heights.

Why the dandelion, you may ask? Well, we have been focusing on new ways to be church, new ways to tell the stories of the movement of the Holy in the world. Someone at some place along the line in the planning for this conference began to use words like bold, fearless, wild, unfettered, unleashed, tenacious to describe their hopes for the community of faith. For some reason the image of the dandelion came to the planner’s minds. And what an image it became for our gathering!

When something……or someone…..has been labeled annoying and misplaced, it can be difficult to change our minds about them. When something….or someone has been called wild or bold we can develop a certain negative set of feelings. When something…..or someone is fearless and unleashed we can tend to put them in categories that cause us to shy away, to keep our distance. We can want to take all the tools possible and use any poison chemical we can to rid ourselves of these beings that mess with our tidy, controlled lives.

So,you can see how the dandelion fits perfectly for an image of the way the Spirit often comes unbidden and planets itself in the midst of things that may have become staid, have become unable to grow in new ways. Enter the spirit of the dandelion into any well manicured, immaculately maintained lawn and there is bound to be opportunity to see things, to do things in new ways. This is the image that challenged, excited and confounded us. How does it ring with you?

Of course this metaphor need not stop with a new imagining of how church might be influenced by the simple dandelion presence. Most of us have places in our own lives where a touch of wild, bold unleashing might be welcomed, needed. Many of us have at least parts of our career or work that could use a little touch of fearlessness or tenacity. Perhaps a little dandelion action could make all the difference.

I have a sense that those who have given many an hour to digging the powerful, long roots of dandelions out of a yard are wincing right now. I get that. And yet I must admit that after the long winter we have endured, when one of the first bursts of color I saw in a yard I passed by was the brilliant yellow of a dandelion, nothing looked more beautiful. It is all a matter of perspective. While we may not welcome them reproducing like crazy to cover our entire lawn, it might do us well to honor their bold desire to bring their happy color to an often dull world.

Whether or not this image will carry into the more than 300 United Methodist churches around Minnesota bringing not only a renewed sense of spirit but a gentler fondness for this simple weed remains to be seen. I, for one, doubt I’ll ever see the yellow flower in the same way. Now, for me, the dandelion has taken on divine status and my heart has been strangely warmed by them. While I may still pull them from my yard lest they make yellow what we hope to remain green, I will do so with a sense of honor for their spirit and way of being in the world. I am thankful for the way another lens can make such a difference.

And that lesson is one that seems to need to be learned time and time again.

*****Extra special gratitude to Mickey Olson whose art opened to us the lowly dandelion.

In Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple there is a line that has been jumping around in my head these last days. One of her characters says that she think it makes God angry if we walk past the color purple in a field and we don’t take the time to notice. Those who know this novel well know that this statement is made in a more colorful way but you get the point. I have been holding that statement and our church’s upcoming, summer theme ‘The Earth Delights’ in some kind of balance. Like Lady Justice I am standing with the scales of awe and daily living in my outstretched hands.

The truth is we have come through a difficult winter, a long winter that out shade its welcome. Photos from Duluth yesterday showed folks sunbathing on the beach while ice chunks floated in the waters of Lake Superior not feet away from their sun screen lathered bodies. Wow!

And yet it is the sheer beauty of crabapple trees and emerging lilac bushes that has had my head spinning. Walking along my usual paths, the brilliant hot pinks and lily whites of these flowering trees takes your breath away. Not wanting to stir up any divine anger and because the sight and smell of these trees fills me with such love, I have not only noticed them but adored their exquisite beauty. Though the lilacs are only in their summer infancy, I have stopped over and over to breathe in their signature scent. Ahhhhh…….there is nothing quite like it.

For some reason this past week, I began to wonder if there really are folks who have not noticed these flowering trees offering themselves for our appreciation. I tried to imagine what manner of to-do list might create such a state of moving through the world. I know there are folks with much on their plate, those with jobs and careers that push and pull at their hours, minutes, seconds in ways that require more stamina than I have ever had. I breathe a moment of calm upon them. And I also wonder at how much easier any task, any problem, any dilemma might be if one’s eyes could only bask in the beauty of fluttering pink petals or delicate white blossoms.

Yesterday as I left church, I noticed how the wind had begun to blow the petals off the crabapples planted near our parking lot. Little mounds of white dotted the curbs much like the snow that had lived there for months. A wind picked up and sent a few of the petals dancing across the surface of the pavement looking like little fairy wings spreading magic wherever they touched. The pavement, cracked and scarred from winter wear, had become a river of white. Petals had found a temporary home in the asphalt combining the gifts of Earth with the creation of human hands. Something in the sight pulled at my heart. These two unlike things existing together and creating an unusual kind of beauty.

A line from a Leonard Cohen song came to me: “There is a crack in everything…..that’s how the light gets in.” In this crack of pavement, brought on by the deep cold and contracting ground of winter, the gifts of spring had found a home. This is the offering of every spring, isn’t it? In the cracks and crevices of the places that lie frozen and unmoving there is always a push toward new life. This message is both literal and metaphor. In the places within each of us that have hardened for any number of reasons, there is a crack that is allowing some light to get in…..to melt the ice, to warm our heart, to grow something that has never been before.

This season of crabapple blossoms and lilac scents is tragically short. It would be a shame to miss a moment of it. The wait for hot pink and lavender may again be a long one. For this reason I suggest stopping whatever seems so important and noticing the colors, the rich and brilliant colors that are waving their arms in our faces. That noticing may be the very crack that allows the light to get in and it could make all the difference in the world. To you. To the tree. To the Holy One.

The last few days has been spent in the company of preachers. This is not an unusual experience for me but this was an over-the-top gathering of those who preach called the Festival of Homiletics……church speak for preaching. When I would say to those not in on the lingo that I was attending this event, faces would take on that quizzical look of ‘whaaat?’ Each time I said it I was struck with the number of ways those of us who make our lives in the church have that inside-outside language we use that may just contribute to the many folks who no longer associate with faith communities. It is a complex and curious thing.

I am a shameless admirer of the work of Barbara Brown Taylor whose words I have often shared in this space and she was a presenter at this conference. I am always amazed at her easy-going, seemingly egoless way of articulating her own struggles with the church, faith, life and an understanding of how the Holy moves in the world. While I heard some good preaching, her illumination of both the sacred text of the Bible and the sacred text of life is what I will remember from these days.

One of the statements she made had to do with the speed at which we now live our lives. A speed we have come to see as normal, regular, just the way things are. She talked about the soon-to-be lost art of ‘slow reading’, that reading of a book or article that isn’t done for the scanning of the quick facts or top points the author is trying to convey but is mulled over, ruminated upon for the depth of what the author is saying. Her words made me think of the four, yes four, books I am reading simultaneously. I jump back and forth, back and forth between them like a grasshopper on summer grass. Surely I must be missing something, some miraculous gift of the author’s creativity in this process. How much more I might really get from the gift of the authors if I sat and gave my full attention to one book, one paragraph, one sentence, one word.

I was reminded of visiting the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. One part of the exhibition before we actually saw the tiny, beautifully illuminated pages of the scriptures, was the story painted on panels of how the monks traveled with the scriptures in their daily lives. As they moved from town to town, from monastery to monastery, they carried a book on a strap that was slung over their shoulder much like a backpack. It was called the Book of Mulling. It was their traveling text named not from the act of mulling but from the place Moling. But when I read this I imagined the monks walking along, ‘mulling’ over the scriptures. I imagined it as a kind of slow reading that served them well.

Speaking of slow reading allowed Barbara Brown Taylor to move on to the act of slow writing. She described slow writing as writing to discern. Those I know who keep a journal do this. I am a sporadic journal keeper at best but my intentions are always grand. Perhaps you can relate. But I do write to discern in many other ways in a variety of places and ways.

Which brings me back to preaching. Some of the best sermons I have ever heard have invited me into my own discernment and have filled me with more questions than answers. They are not so much a to-do list or facts and figures that have a particular clarity. These are the sermons that allow me to see the wrestling the preacher is doing with the text and gives me permission to do the same. Since I don’t consider myself a preacher but often find myself in a place where I am asked to do something similar, my biggest hope is that everyone present, including myself, will be open to new ah-ha’s, to walking through the back door of a text, to discovering something new, something surprising, something challenging.
It is what I imagine those slow reading monks were doing with their Book of Mulling. As they walked along taking a phrase or word, allowing the scenes of field and city to wash over them, they must have had the opportunity to see the ways in which real life and the words on the page wove together in some way. Perhaps they were even inspired to see the Sacred in the every day, to feel the words take on flesh and bone, to be visible in the faces they met, the landscape that unfolded before them.

Mulling. Slow reading. Slow writing. It might be a good day to do all this.

“Good work joins earth to heaven.”
~Lu Chi

Noticing is a full time job these days. Papers pile up on my desk. Emails need to be answered, phones calls returned, meetings attended. There is the usual work around the house…..laundry to be done, meals to be made, the cleaning of this and that. But noticing is the real work and the other jobs have, I am happy to say, suffered.

Our winter was incredibly long and it is still cooler outside than is normal. And so I find myself clinging to the work of Creation with ever greater tenacity. Noticing how the impetus of Earth is toward rebirth, to respond to every warming place by bringing forth life, color, beauty, a glimpse of hope. This has become the real work. I have made a pact with our garden that each morning I will walk about, like a pilgrim in search of salvation, to notice the changes. I will notice how, despite temperatures that require layers and sometimes gloves, the soil is being pushed aside by green shoots that must be born, must make their way into the promise of a May day. I will notice how the chipmunks run wildly when I begin my inspection, their bodies fat with the birdseed they nuzzled into in the garage, a welcome gift from careless humans to a tiny four-legged that survived a harsh and frigid winter.

Noticing has become a full time job and so yesterday I gave up, pushed myself away from all that seemed imperative and gave myself to the work. I was rewarded with a paycheck from the mysterious work of the Creator. I marveled at the tulips whose colors seem impossible, their patterns seemingly designed by a hand artful at both color and pattern,feathered with the daintiest of brushes. I stooped to look at how certain spring grasses rise from the Earth in perfect circles like mandalas formed by fairies for their own tiny world. I wondered at the ways in which the bleeding hearts in their more nubile form never gave a hint at the brilliant pink heart shapes that were to come. I spent time inspecting the tiny feathery buds of a volunteer chestnut tree that decided our yard was a good home. The buds have now opened into fans of chartreuse that waved in the cool, morning breeze. All this noticing in only a few minutes. My head was spinning!

As if that weren’t enough work for one day, my husband and I visited a rookery in the afternoon on our way to our church’s retreat center. We had visited there before without seeing many birds, only the tall, spindly trees rising from cold, autumn water, looking forlorn for want of residents. But yesterday, yesterday was a whole other story. Great blue herons swooped over the water spreading their prehistoric wings like the pterodactyl I always imagine as their ancestors. The swooping often took them to the top of a rookery tree so thin it would seem to break under their weight but didn’t as they stood atop the gray-brown pinnacle looking out over their kingdom. They shared air space and tree limb with cormorants, black as coal, and equally as impressive. Further noticing through squinted eyes and then the magic of binoculars showed nest upon nest of beaked heads……parents sitting, quietly warming their next generation. All around us in the bushes and smaller trees that blanketed the shore, warblers sang and chirped their migration song.

Sometimes our work can be exhausting. Other times it can be stressful. If we are lucky, or blessed, our work can be fulfilling and lift us to a place of illumination, a place only the mystics seem gifted to experience. This work of noticing often does just that. We are reminded of the great canvas upon which we have all been painted. A canvas that is ever evolving, changing and re-creating itself. In this life of art of which we are all a part….human, animal, insect, bird, plant, soil,air, water…..we all have a job to do. Mostly as humans our work is to notice. The Great Artist has seen to it by allowing us words and the ability to tell the story.

The poet Mary Oliver reminds us that our real work is to ” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” My job description, and yours if you so choose, simply reads ‘Noticer’. It is a job that is never finished, always rewarding and often illuminating.

And now…..back to work.

It had been my intention to write something in this space about Mother’s Day. I feel particularly blessed to have my mom in my life. We talk several times a week and we laugh a lot and cry sometimes, too. I am grateful for all she has passed on to me and how she has been a mentor in more ways than probably either of us realize.

I am also blessed to be a mother of two young men who ceaselessly bring me joy and fill me with wonder. Watching their lives unfold is one of my life’s great gifts. There are also young women who, though I did not give birth to them, feel like daughters to me. This generational landscape that makes up my daily life, that colors how I see the world and the hopes and dreams I have for it, is never far away.

But this year’s celebration of this day that pays homage to those that mother, whether literally or figuratively, seemed a bittersweet day. Unlike those that I call sons and daughters, there exists in the world a band of mothers whose daughters have been taken from them. The young Nigerian women kidnapped from their school would not leave me. Like people all around the world, I have been outraged, saddened, and unable to fathom how humans can do these kinds of things to one another. How can it make any sense at all to take young girls at the freshest time of their lives and hold them for some political or religious purpose? Of course, this is not a logical act and the question I ask is based on some belief that logic or humanity or compassion makes sense to every one in equal measure. We know this is not true.

When I was in college I lived next door to a family from Nigeria. Actually, there were many students on campus from Nigeria studying and preparing to make a better life for not only themselves but also for their country. This was my first experience of people whose lives had been so different than mine. I treasured the time with them and came to know them as friends, particularly the two children, Cheetah and Ansu. They liked hanging out at my apartment. We did crafts together and played games. I also showed them how to put sprout seeds in a mason jar, cover the end with a nylon stocking and grow sprouts for their sandwiches. They thought it was magic! I thought it was a cheap way to make a sandwich taste better. Daily they would show up at the window of my apartment, push their beautiful brown faces against the screen to check on their sprouts.

This past week I have thought of them. They would now be about the age to be parents of one of these young girls. In thinking this I was once again face to face with the deep connection we have as human beings. We are woven together with mostly the same hopes and dreams regardless of where we were born, the color of our skin, the house we live in, the language we speak, the God we worship. We want to be safe….and know that our children are. We want to have food and shelter….and provide it for those we love. We want to be loved…..and to love. We want to make meaning of our lives….and create a place where the next generation can do the same.

And so on this Mother’s Day, I was filled to overflowing with love and gratitude for my life and my sons who I helped bring into the world and who bless me every day. That overflowing stream was also filled with the faces of those young women that I name ‘heart-daughters’. The privilege with which I walk the Earth was not lost on me as it is not, I hope, lost on them.

But my heart was also breaking for those Nigerian mothers and fathers who did not get a phone call or a card, who know nothing of this day we celebrate so richly here. Instead, they live with a fear and despair I cannot imagine. The prophet Jeremiah’s words floated in my mind: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted.”

Rachel weeps. The Nigerian parents weep. We weep. The Holy weeps.

Yesterday I pulled a pad of paper out of my drawer on my way to a meeting. Though I have migrated to using technology for notes I may take in a meeting, every now and then a good old fashioned pad of paper and pen is what is required. This was one of those times. Walking down the hallway to the meeting, I looked down at a cryptic few lines I had jotted down at some earlier time: ” You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound.” After these sentences, I had simply written M.O.

I shook my head is disbelief or to jar a memory loose as to where these words came from and why I had written them down. At some point they must have grabbed me and I had quickly committed them to paper before moving onto the next thing. Typical. And M.O.? I am assuming this is Mary Oliver whose work always wakes me up to something. I had written this shorthand as if we are close personal friends! The thought made laugh and feel humble all at the same time.

Later in the day I came back to the now crumpled paper I had quickly torn off the pad in order to make way for the meeting notes. I stared at these words and allowed their truth to sink into me. How many times a day do I want to cry my mistakes aloud? Some days too many to count. Some days the mistakes I have made are tattooed invisibly on every available patch of precious skin. ” Look at how I’ve messed up!” “See the things I overlooked, have forgotten, have neglected!” “What can I possibly do about the people I have hurt and those I have ignored?”

Any of that sound familiar to you? Have you also wanted to cry aloud your mistakes to anyone who will listen? It seems to be a common thread that we humans want to beat ourselves up for all manner of things. Things we’ve done and those we’ve left undone. There is a great prayer in the Christian tradition, and probably other traditions as well, that speaks to this human condition.

But our mistakes are only a small part of who we are. We are also people filled with the great potential of goodness and kindness and mercy. We are people who are capable of amazing beauty and the creativity that has brought healing and hope to the small places and grand places. If we are to cry aloud anything that might transform the world, wouldn’t it be those things? As M.O. points out, ‘the world doesn’t need any more of the sound’ of our crying out our mistakes.

I am not, I hope, being Pollyanna here. It is just that mistakes are most often an opening for something more, something new, something waiting to be changed or transformed. Naming them, honoring them for their role in our ever-creative lives is important. But crying them aloud? I don’t think so.

So on this day, this gorgeous spring day, may we each be found crying aloud, not our mistakes, but all the joy and hope we can muster. For some of us it will take more effort than others. Blessings on each. Let’s choose to give to the world this day a sound that can be heard by all Creation. For our own good. For the good of those we love and those with whom we tangle. And for the healing of the world.

We humans spend a lot of our time waiting. We wait in lines and in traffic. We wait for special days to arrive and other days to end. We wait for certain years to come round, certain birthdays that mark moments of growth or transitions. That is until we aren’t so interested in marking birthdays any more……which I’ve never understood. Consider the alternative. With all the waiting that is a part of living, you’d think we’d get better at it. But it is the nature of waiting, perhaps, to be a nag.

Right now I am sitting in my office that overlooks an enormous oak tree. It doesn’t look too much different today than it has over the last several months. Bare. Barky. Gnarly. Limbs twisted this way and that in a way that fills me with love. But I am waiting for some action from this tree. I am watching for the greenness of buds to begin to emerge, creating the shade that plays havoc with the little solar powered wind chime that sits near my desk. A robin, plump as anything, sits on one of the branches. But no other life seems to be happening out there. No signs of the rebirth that is to come. I am left waiting.

Truth be told most Minnesotans are waiting these days. We are uncovering flower beds weighed down by months of snow and ice. And we are looking with hopeful eyes toward the ground that is invisibly ripe. We vaguely remember the plants that will soon….soon….make an appearance. But for now, our work is to watch for the incremental arrival of green in a variety of shades pushing its way to the stage that is our yard. Our eyes will work overtime, as mine are right this minute, scanning every available space for something, anything, blooming.

I have seen some daffodils showing their brilliant yellow faces toward the sun. It felt like a pure shot of adrenaline! I wanted to stop my car and get out, run around and shout loud hosannas just like we did Easter morning. But I didn’t. I just tucked the sight into that happy place where we store memories for recall…..for a time when we need them.

Do you think humans are the only ones who have this experience of waiting? I don’t think so. Anyone who has ever been greeted by a dog at the end of a day knows somehow they were anticipating someone’s arrival. They might not care who that someone is but their excitement says something.

Waiting can be, if we allow it, not an annoyance but a meditation. How long might it take a bud to appear? How much longer till it becomes a leaf? How long will I need to wait to see the color of tulips emerge from their winter home? How much longer until they unfold their sunburst to its fullness and then let loose their petals,dropping them to the ground below? Being present to this slow, mysterious process, a process we have no part in nor control over, can teach us much about living this precious life.

Keeping watch over the oak tree has reminded me that the two of us are in a relationship. I am witness to its living season to season and I suppose it does the same for me. Over the years I have seen its limbs bear bud and leaf and then slowly let these leaves fall to the ground below. I have followed the path of their falling knowing that their letting go signaled by own. Another season come and gone. Another one on which to wait. This oak and I have a ‘thing’ going on and I plan to stick with my part of the bargain.

The buds will soon be visible and leaves will make their way into the world. That is the work of the tree. I will wait and watch and give thanks that I have the privilege of watching and waiting into one more season, one more summer, filled with its beauty.

It is an agreement we have made with one another.