The "Church" of Winter Wonder

On Sunday we "went to church" in the warmth and comfort of our family room, an experience which will likely change for us as a result of yesterday's announcement of some reopening in Ontario. We are blessed to live in an area where there only three active cases of COVID-19, so next Sunday we may be sitting in a pew, once again. 

We did venture out for a walk in the afternoon, this time at the Bleasdell Boulder trail north of Trenton, home to an enormous glacial erratic  Because of the low incidence of COVID we interpret "stay home" as "stay apart," which we do wherever we roam in the area. The small parking lot was packed with vehicles although we didn't actually encounter many humans on the trail. We may have "accidentally on purpose" come across our Trenton family with the two grandlads. They are well-trained, so extremely cautious about physical proximity. Just the same, they ran and explored in the woods and along a frozen creek. It was a tonic for us, a rambunctiously holy hour and a half. 

                                                                        Photo: Ruth Mundy

Despite some briskly cold days during the past two weeks we have noticed more people out in Conservation Areas and Provincial Parks and even on the Bay of Quinte than in any other Winter of the eight we've lived in Belleville. That has actually been the case since the coronavirus became a threat nearly a year ago, through all the seasons. It was next to impossible to book campsites last Summer and Fall and people have taken up paddling, birding, hiking, in record numbers across the province. 

We're hoping that we get more snow than the meagre amount which has fallen locally this Winter, and the opportunity to enjoy the season more fully. We are convinced that getting our there is good for body and soul, and there is a sense of reverence and wonder of God the Creator which is worshipful in the best way. 

The "Thin Places" of Prayer

                                      Sea of Galilee - Father James Martin 

Father James Martin is a Jesuit priest whose generous Christian orthodoxy has led him to an inclusive outlook on the LGBTQ2 community with the accompanying wrath of a segment of Roman Catholics. His social activism is balanced with a personal devotional life which includes prayer.

He has written a new book called Learning to Pray:A Guide for Everyone, suggesting that there is no one way to pray. Even though releasing a book in a pandemic is not ideal, he offers this wise perspective in a Crux magazine interview:

 These days many of us are involuntary monks. Our lives are physically circumscribed, as they might be in a monastery. There has been a natural moving inward. That points us to prayer. Also, in times of discord, people look for a sense of stability. That also points us to prayer.

Martin also speaks in the book about what he calls "thin places" where we may be more attuned to God while in prayer. The notion of the  "thin place" comes from Celtic spirituality, in the November pagan celebration of Samhain, then incorporated in the Christian All Hallow's Eve and All Saints Day. It is a time of the year when the membrane between this life and the next is at it's most permeable.

Father Martin has posted photos of his "thin places," including a couple of chapels and a panoramic view of the Sea of Galilee, in Israel. Many of us do feel that we have been ushered into the presence of God, the Creator, when we are in the natural world. What our senses give to us is a form of prayer, steeped in wonder, which may then be expressed in words, whether a hymn, or an exclamation, or a tumble of words of gratitude.

Perhaps we can all ask, as Father Martin did on Twitter, to identify our "thin places" of prayer. 

Will Farrell Storms Norway, Thanks be to God

 It seems that Saturday Night Live alumnus Will Farrell can't help but be funny, whether he's starring in film, or as the theme speaker for graduates at his alma mater. Even when he's serious he is hilarious. His latest gig is a commercial for General Motors in which he heads off with Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina on a quest to prove to Norway that America can trounce the Nordic nation when it comes to electric vehicles. A remarkable 54% of cars sold in Norway are electric because the government offers big breaks to buyers.  A week ago GM, one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world, surprised everybody by announcing  that the company will aim to sell only zero- emission cars and trucks by 2035. 

That isn't exactly tomorrow, and while I'm not planning on hurrying the the grave, I could be pushing up daisies by then. Still, this was a huge commitment and will likely put pressure on competitors to step up their game. China has stated that all vehicles in that country with nearly 20% of the world's population will be electric within 15 years, which is also significant. 

GM has a checkered past when it comes to EV's. Back in the mid-90's they developed a vehicle that drivers loved. For reasons no one really understood they not only stopped production but bought back all the cars they'd sold. A decade ago they began selling the Chevy Volt hybrid around the world but dropped in 2019 for the all-electric Bolt. 

As a Groundling, a Christian whose desire is to make the changes in lifestyle which will allow us all to "live with respect in Creation," as our United Church creed declares, I'm hopeful about the development of low-carbon vehicles. Ultimately this will be an economic decision by vehicle makers, with a lot of "green-washing" thrown in. Electric carmaker Tesla is now more valuable than several of the giants of the industry combined, and Elon Musk is supposedly the wealthiest person on the planet. 

I hope that I'm driving a low-carbon vehicle (electric? hydrogen?) before too long and well before the aforementioned daisies. Whenever I drive past the bank of chargers in town with a growing number of Teslas plugged in I am encouraged that it will happen. Oh yes, in the commercial Farrell actually ends up in Sweden. 

Blessings and Birds

Even the sparrow finds a home,

    and the swallow a nest for herself,
    where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
    my King and my God.
4 Happy [blessed}]are those who live in your house,
    ever singing your praise.

                                  Psalm 84: 3-4

 Early this morning I was reading Amy-Jill Levine's wise book called Sermon on the Mount. Levine is Jewish and offers that perspective on Jesus and his milieu as a New Testament professor at Vanderbilt University. I'm leading a study for Trenton United Church during Lent and as I prepare I'm feeling blessed. I was reading about the Beatitudes or blessings in Matthew 5, the verses which are the opening passage in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) 

I paused for a moment to ask myself how I feel blessed, enriched, even happy in what have often seemed like meagre, cursed times during this past pandemic year. I looked up to see the pair of cardinals on one of our feeders (8 feeders are visible from our family room windows) and I had my answer, or at least one of many examples of blessings. 

Northern Cardinal -- David Sibley

Even in the heart of Winter we have a dozen or so species of birds which show up, snow or shine, somehow persevering through all manner of weather. They simply receive what we serve up, everything from peanuts to sunflower seeds to suet. We love the cardinals and blue jays and a red-bellied woodpecker for their star quality. We could live without the "biker gang" starlings. We admire the plucky chickadees and nuthatches and downy woodpeckers. 

Later in the Sermon ,which isn't really a sermon, Jesus invites us to consider the example of the birds of the air when we are inclined to worry and fret. At the conclusion of the passage Jesus says “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."  Huh. It's almost as though he had an understanding of the human heart. 

The study group will be both Zoom and in-person, if allowed, or just Zoom, depending on what Premier Doug permits. Our first session will be February 24th at 9:30 AM. Our last study included three people from different locales in the province because of the blessing (mixed) of Zoom, so you're welcome to join us wherever you may be. Check out the Trenton United Church website. 

St. Francis and the Birds -- Taize Christian Community, France 

Water, Wetlands and Life

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Peace of Wild Things -- Wendell Berry

Since the groundhogs stole the show yesterday, as they always do on February 2nd,  we may have missed that it was also the UNESCO World Wetlands Day. Ruth and I are paddlers, both in kayaks and canoe, and I love the variety of living things in marshes and wetlands. Living in Belleville we are blessed to have ready access to wetlands, large and small,and we are rarely disappointed when it comes to spotting everything from turtles, to herons, to ospreys, beavers and otters. One day I was on the marsh boardwalk in a local conservation area when several deer splashed through the cattails. 

Wetlands are essential for biodiversity, essentially arks for creatures great and small, yet there are under threat, world-wide, because humans choose to drain them rather than letting them flourish. The Holland Marsh in Ontario in now rich agricultural land but it was once a huge wetland, visited by environmental saint, John Muir in the 19th century.  

Most of what became an industrial waterfront in Toronto was once wetlands and the city has suffered because wetlands are protection against flooding and natural filters of toxins They are essential to clean water.. There is an extensive wetland rehabilitation project underway in TO which got underway under a previous administration. 

So, what is the current provincial government doing? Undermining Conservation Authorities which steward wetlands and selling unique habitats to industrial developers. Members of the Greenbelt Council have resigned because of this thoughtless and destructive trajectory.

We can all be vigilant in our responses to what are foolish decisions by Premier Ford's anti-environmental government. He seems incapable of seeing the bigger picture, yet we can't allow the despair which sometimes grows within us to quench our hope. 

We can also enjoy the beauty of wetlands, whether during a walk along a shore or a paddle. Every dragonfly and red-winged blackbird we see can be regarded as a prayer for Creation. It will be a couple of months still before the chorus of frogs returns to the marshes, but in the meantime we'll "walk on water" and dream. 

Groundhog Day & Groundlings

 

                                                     Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and ?

I have a real fondness for February 2nd, because it is the birthday of our older daughter, Jocelyn. When she was young  I cut out and painted a wooden groundhog for her to put on the wall, because this is also Groundhog Day. Her birthday is always cause for celebration in our family, but Groundhog Day is a strange event, don't you think? 

Groundhog Day has its origins in the late 19th century, the brain-child of a newspaper editor and groundhog hunters in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.-- hence Punxsutawny Phil. Phil and Wiarton Willie in Ontario, and Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia, ceremonially emerge from their burrows today and cast their shadows as a prediction about the length of Winter. They are invariably wrong, but there is always media coverage of the reluctant rodents. I'm surprised PETA hasn't advocated for an end to these events.

There is a quasi-religious vibe to what has developed over time, with an almost liturgical quality to the events. Perhaps we can appreciate that the change of seasons has long been connected to religious events, a recognition that there is a spiritual quality to the lengthening of days and anticipation of what always seems like the rebirth of the Earth in Spring. We are approaching the beginning of Lent in the Christian year, a word which means lengthen. 

So Groundlings, why not get outside to say a prayer of thanks for the beauty of Creation and the shadow, or lack thereof, of a Groundhog? 

A Colored Man's Love Affair With Nature

                                                                                   Drew Lanham 

 I've written about Drew Lanham, the ornithologist whose memoir  The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature I found meaningful. In that book he talks about eventually moving away from what was often the harsh religion of his upbringing . Just the same, there is a deeply spiritual quality to his descriptions of the ways in which he sees and hears the natural world and birds in particular. 

In his book and elsewhere he has written about the realities of "birding while Black," knowing that there are dangers inherit in being a Black man roaming the countryside in ways which would rarely occur to someone who is White. He reflected on this when Christian Cooper, a Black man and a birder, was threatened by a White woman in New York City's Central Park last year. 

As we enter Black History month I will mention a wonderful interview with Lantham on NPR's, On Being just a few days ago.  https://onbeing.org/programs/drew-lanham-i-worship-every-bird-that-i-see/ In that exchange with Krista Tippet he reflected:

As much as I ran from my grandmother’s first Sunday God, I worship every bird that I see. And wildness is a wayward weed, but it’s also worthy of adoration and worship. So each time I see in those things that are flying or that are wild and free, I see a bit of me in that. And then that whole creation story my grandmother used to tell me about, I become a part of that, and I get to evolve through it. 

I commend the entire interview to you, in all it's poetic wisdom. While I'm still firmly Christian, my Groundling reverence for Creator and Creation resonates with Lanham's outlook.