“Whatever you believe about yourself, whether it’s accurate or completely off base, is likely to become true. With that in mind, try this one on for size: You are at the beginning of a cycle of prosperity.”

This was my horoscope on a day last week. I read it over a few times allowing its message to sink in. A barrage of thoughts flowed over me. Did I believe these direct and curt words? At some level, I did. What could it mean by prosperity? Was it metaphor or literal? How had others with my birth sign read these words? Did they take them seriously or allow them to roll off with the nonchalance of a fortune cookie message?

Perhaps I let this particular horoscope get under my skin because just a few days earlier I had been sharing a process called “appreciative inquiry” with a group of people. I encountered this way of assessing a situation,decision making, group process, this past summer while at a conference with author Parker Palmer. The second principle of appreciative inquiry is: “What we focus on becomes our reality.” The fact that this horoscope came so close on the heels of this conversation seemed important to me.

This short statement may seem simplistic to some or untrue to others. But I remember when I first came in contact with it and it caused me to reflect on what had been some particularly difficult experiences that had lasted several months. I realized that my focus had, indeed, created a reality, a reality that was painful and could have, if I had switched the focus even a degree or two, created a completely different experience. I began to wonder how much my focus had helped deepen an already difficult, already frayed fabric. It was a humbling realization and I feel sorry for it.

Over the years I have known people who practice daily affirmations, positive words that guide their thoughts and actions. They do this in intentional ways, like a prayer. Thinking about these folks in the context of both my horoscope and appreciative inquiry, I came to see that these people are often the very ones who seem in possession of their path, grounded in a way that I admire. They are also some of the most gentle, kind and joyful people I know.

All this caused me to wonder: Were the messages they sent themselves, whether accurate or completely off base, such positive words that they were creating a reality that was beneficial to their own well being and also to those with whom they have contact? Like a pebble dropped in a pool of clear,cool water, did the ripples of their affirmation spread out into the world?

It seems a beautiful possibility, doesn’t it? And it seems drenched in prosperity to me.Maybe not the prosperity of financial wealth but the wealth of healthy, happy living. Suddenly my horoscope, those often-thought frivolous words guided by the stars, seemed a credo to give my heart to, an act that might just make me rich.

So today I am being careful. Care-full with what I am believing about myself, those I meet, even those that rub me the wrong way. This reality thing is fragile and I want to be kind to myself and to everyone I meet, at last as much as I possibly can. Something tells me it could make a world of difference.

“Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death. Faced with the inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? It scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring -and scatters them with amazing abandon.”
~Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

The last few weeks I have been aware of the embarrassment of riches of acorns. Outside my office window and all along the walking paths I frequent every day, there are strong, tall, oak trees that are making their way into their winter fashion statement. However, before they can let go their brilliant red-brown leaves, they have work to do. A work that makes a smorgasbord of delight for the hundreds of squirrels that also have their own work to do. Their work is to eat, to get plump,to make ready their bodies for the cold temperatures and lack that will be their winter life. I have marveled at how these two partners in Creation are in this seasonal cahoots.

Acorns are an amazing little seed. Their unique shape is sleek and that sweet hat that sits on what seems its head is a fascinating wonder. Both children and adults alike cannot resist the urge to bend and pick them up and put them in a pocket. The sound they make as they crunch underfoot in unlike any other. Both squirrel and human foot help the acorn do its work…..to spread the hope of new life for yet another go round the sun.

Many people I know dread autumn, hate seeing the summer green turn its kaleidoscope
of unimaginable colors. They hate to see autumn arrive because they know that winter is not far behind. Darkness becomes our companion in winter, and even in these still autumn days, the darkness is already seeping into the ways we shape our comings and goings. We need to be aware that darkness is descending earlier and light is arriving later as we plan whatever outdoor activities that have become our pattern. An after work or after dinner walk can now be completed in near total darkness. If the pattern is to rise early, as is mine, the walk outside is starting later and later each day if light is required.

All this can seem like decline. Decline of light. Of color. Of green. Of life. Unless, of course, we pay attention to the acorn and its parent, the oak tree. This oxygen producer with a trunk and limbs is busy ‘scattering with amazing abandon’ the promise of air and shade and foliage for the year that is still only dream to us. While we may be making plans for what next year or the next ten years may bring, the oak tree is literally giving of itself for a life that is yet to be. As acorns hit the ground, as they fall softly or with a thud, the oak tree is making an investment in our future and their own.

In theological circles, we might call this sacrifice. We might attach all kinds of heady language to what is happening and we would not be wrong to do so. What the oak tree is doing is what our ancestors did for us and what we human ones also do for our children, our grandchildren, the future of the world. We give of ourselves, we plant the seeds, we water them in hope, that new life will grow, a life that has a little bit of us tucked inside what will be born.
This is one of the lessons of the seasons of which we are blessed to be a part. It is not something to dread as much as open ourselves to, be aware of, so we do not miss the blessing of what it means to be a part of this amazing Creation. As the trees let go their leaves, as the earth gives up whatever it has grown, seeds for what is to come are falling, burrowing, resting into what is yet to be. The earth is doing this with abandon.

It gives me reason to pause and wonder how I might do the same. What about you?

Essential. Nonessential. I am not sure what it would feel like to have someone say to me that my work was ‘nonessential’. I am sure that there are many people, and it seems more every day, who would see the work I and my colleagues do as ‘nonessential’. The church and what it stands for is seen by many to be the work of the dreamers and delusional. After all, how can anyone in the 21st century believe all that stuff anyway? But I see what they might not: people fed, spirits nurtured, hope held out, dignity restored. Essential.

The last days have had me wanting to tell people how essential they are and how the work they do, no matter what it is, is important in the turning of the world. Of course, there are people who would tell you that there are nonessential jobs. Someone might say those who administer manicures and pedicures are not really essential in the grand scheme of things. Those would be people who had never sat in a chair, their tired, aching and crusty feet in a bowl of warm, spinning water, only to have their soles lifted out, rubbed, exfoliated and soothed. Every time I have this done I am certain I could negotiate world peace if all the players were seated in the massaging chairs that flanked mine. Who could not agree to a more peaceful union with others after this experience?

That is just one job that some might deem nonessential. You probably have your own ideas that you could lift up. But, really, who am I, who are you, who is anybody to say another’s work is not necessary? I would venture to say that, if we take the time and hear the stories, others could tell us about how any particular job that someone does has touched their life. To think otherwise is to play into the great lie that we are not all, all, connected to one another by invisible lines of connection designed by the Great Weaver of cosmic tapestry.

So, what can we take from this time when adults with whom we entrusted, by our vote, to care for our government, our way of living, and now they have so tragically failed us? It is a powerless feeling. But in the midst of it all, I am thankful for the reminder of how, nearly everything and certainly everyone is essential to someone. It is so pompous of me to think otherwise.

And so today, in an act of solidarity and quiet protest for their shenanigans, I am reflecting on all the ways I can remind myself and thank others for how essential they are in my life. Of course, I will start with my family and those I love more than life, my friends, my soul friends, my companions on this path. I will try as best I can to let them know that I could not travel without them.

After that I will make an effort to pay attention to all whose work brushes against my life this day. This work they do is how they spend their days which, of course, is how they spend their lives. It is the currency we each use for paying our way along life’s path. It is the least I can do to treat them with respect and thank them for what they do. The cashiers, the road workers, the teachers, the cleaners, the cooks, the grocery baggers,whomever it is, today I will remember how essential they are and will try to find some way to tell them so.

Why stop there? What about the Big Black Dog,the one who has come to know me so well that even when tears come at the end of a sappy TV show, comes to stand by me with compassion clinging to his fur? And the sumac bushes whose redness brings me hope? And the goldfinches who are losing their yellow and turning a winter brown? And also the geese who remind me everyday of their brilliance and ability to know when to let go, when to fly south?

It is all essential, isn’t it? Without it, we could not live.

“Hurry is an unpleasant thing in itself, but also very unpleasant for whoever is around it. Some people came into my room and rushed in and rushed out and even when they were there they were not there – they were in the moment ahead or the moment behind. Some people who came in just for a moment were all there, completely in that moment…..I do not think it is lack of time that keeps me from doing things, it is that I do not want enough to do them.”
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Bring Me a Unicorn

I have not read this book of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s though one of her books, A Gift From the Sea, is one I have re-read so many times it is marked and dog-eared nearly making it unreadable. But today I ran across this quote and it was so confronting that I have thought about it all day. I copied it down so I could carry it with me allowing its message to be like a large stone I pushed up a hill or carried around my neck.

My middle name could be ‘Hurry’ though I wish it weren’t so. It has lessened over the years but this way of ‘rushing in’ and ‘rushing out’ of a room, a conversation, an experience still has its way with me, mostly against my will. If truth be told one of the few regrets I have had as a parent is that, when my children were little, I hurried too much. Hurried myself. Hurried them. Hurried our life. I am eternally sorry for this and just pray that they do not remember it with too much of a heavy heart.

Most of the time, I believe, our hurrying is for noble reasons: We take on more than we ought. We want to give more of ourselves than is possible. We can’t decide between the best of whatever the world is offering up at the moment. Our sense of obligation overwhelms us and we fill our cup with all that need be done for others and for the hurts and needs of the world. And so we hurry. From this moment to the next. From this day to tomorrow. From this year, barreling into the future that is not yet ready for us.

There are people, of course, who do not hurry. I know some of them and I almost always feel safe and at home in their presence. They are the ones who look at you, really look at you and seem to know you fully. They are the ones who give you in the impression that they do not want to be anywhere else except where they are. This kind of presence to another person can only be described as blessing. When we are in such an unhurried moment we feel and deeply know the movement of the Sacred in the space that exists around and between and in what we name as time. The space of that place and that time seems to expand making room for the More.

In addition to unhurried people there are places that, by their very nature, refuse to allow us to hurry. The rhythms they offer up seem to actually cause our blood pressure to balance and slow, our hearts and minds to go to some place of original blessing. These places are often away from the freeways and city expectations of hurry. Many involve water….lakes, rivers, streams…..that seem to remind us of some primal need to stop, rest, stay put. Jesus knew this and was often calling his friends to a lakeshore or seaside to lure them into a unhurried time in which they could remember who and whose they were.

Nearly every day it can seem that the world is pushing in on us, urging us to hurry. But in these autumn days, whose lesson is letting go, perhaps we can slow down and look at the beauty around us. Notice the color that will so soon be gone. Look at the face of that child who will soon be grown. Savor this day that will never be again.

It will be a blessing. For us. And for the world.

“Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face
in the light of the moon and patterns of stars
in scarred mountain rifts and ancient groves
in mighty seas and creatures of the deep.
Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face
in the light of eyes we love
in the salt of tears we have tasted
in weathered countenance east and west
in the soft skin glow of the child everywhere.
Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face
there is your face
among us.”
~John Philip Newell

Whichever way we turn…..the Holy is there. These words of John Philip Newell found their way to me this morning. I have to admit to a sleepless night. Waking up as I did in the wee hours, I stared at the ceiling, my mind full of people I know and love who are wrestling with the things of life. Illness. Transitions. Loss. New birth. Job struggles. Dreams deferred. All this and more is spinning among those I know, is spinning I. The course of the world. This living is fragile business and, so often, our delusion that we are in control of any of it keeps us in a place where we are visited by the surprise that we are not. It seems a lesson we need to learn over and over again.

So, to read Newell’s words this morning was a welcome reminder and a blessing. Whichever way we turn……there is some manifestation of the movement of God. For many people spring is the season to see this presence more than any other. Buds pushing through rich earth. New life all around waiting to come into its fullness. Rains that wash all the residue of winter from an accumulated landscape of frozen-ness.

As we sit full bodied in this season of autumn, I am as equally aware of this Sacred presence in all that is changing around me, all that is letting go of that same new life that was birthed in spring. Watching leaves turn color, even though I can spout some junior high science understanding of how and why it happens, I always come face to face with this Creator. Embracing the receding light and preparing myself for the darkness that will hold the days, I know once again this One who breathes in both the showy light and the often fearful dark.

Yesterday, I waited for the news of one who was making its own place in time, reminding the mother birthing her and the father who waited and worked alongside, that each child that is born comes into the world in their own way, their own time, full of their unique gifts to offer. A community was breathing with them. Whichever way we turn…….there is the Holy.

Nestled in this waiting, I spent time with one of our dear ones who is struggling with an illness that snuck up and took hold. The speed of it took everyone by surprise. The fragility of life took up residence in all who have begun to stand watch. Prayers were begun and have continued and will be both whispered and shouted in the next days and hours. Physicians and nurses, those with specialized training were called in like an army headed to battle. Whichever way we turn……

In the light and darkness of changing seasons…..in the color brilliant and fading…..in the glow of new birth and its promise……in the tears and fears of illness and what it brings…..”Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face among us.”

May we remember and give thanks.

Who knew? September 24 is National Punctation Day. This information came to me by way of the calendar I refer to every morning as I am getting ready to begin my day. Clearly I have not noticed this before in years past. But today there it was. I went straight to the definer of truth-Google- to see what this actually meant. Could ‘punctuation’ mean something other than what I thought it did? Is it really a celebration of some ancient festival that I have known nothing about until now?

No. Today is meant to honor the period, comma, apostrophe, quotations, colon and semi-colons that float in and out of our sentences and paragraphs every day. These lowly marks of black on white page or blank screen help us express ourselves and say what we really mean. I hear people, mostly older people, lament with regularity how ‘younger people’ do not know the correct usage of these servants of grammar. Maybe. It may just be that those younger than a certain age have simply learned to use them differently as the many ways in which we use language has changed. It is probably a woe that has been expressed over and over throughout time.

The truth is I have always loved nearly everything that plays into the formation of writing, of literature, of communicating with the written word. And now for a confession. In the days when English classes included diagraming sentences, this exercise was one of my favorite activities. Drawing those lines and intersecting slashes, using colored pencils to define subject, predicate, verbs, adverbs, adjectives brought me a heady joy. Just writing about it now sends a kind of thrill through me. I know. Geek!

Punctuation is important and can make all the difference in the world if it is misplaced or used incorrectly. One of my favorite examples of this in the spiritual quest comes, not from a theologian, but a performer. Gracie Allen, best known for being married to George Burns, was a vaudeville comedienne and singer/dancer. At some point she is said to have made the statement, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”