Date with Deer

Mike's prize lettuces were being munched.  He actually saw a couple of deer crossing the road, heading toward his garden yesterday as he was driving to work.  Then, it was too late to swing by the feed store to get the deer repellent after he got off.  Would I...?  Well, I started living in the apartment upstairs in his house partly so I could help out, and I could indeed go get the deer repellent.  But for one more  morning the lettuces would be vulnerable.

Endangered Lettuces

Deer are pretty shy, I was thinking, so I offered to go sit by the lettuces at the appropriate hour of the gray light of dawn.  He had seen them crossing the road at 6:00, pretty early for me, but not unmanageable...
So I got up, put on warmish clothes, made coffee, got a flashlight just in case, gathered up my folding chair, and headed out in the earliest morning twilight.  "Probably they'll smell you and stay away," he had said.  I tried to think smelly thoughts as I sat in the quiet garden.

It was a wonderfully peaceful time. A rooster crowed in the distance.  The horses in the neighbors' pasture started waking up, making little horsey snuffling noises, birds flew quietly. Gradually the light increased, bringing colors to the streaks of clouds in the Eastern sky. Full light and more cars going by as people got going for the day.  I decided the deer were probably not coming  this morning, and went in for a little, then back out to walk around and take some pictures.  The sun is still not over the mountain, but I believe my date with deer is over.

Coming Dawn

Descansos

One feature I notice in my new surroundings in Montana is the little white crosses they use to mark the places on the highway where people have died.  It's helpful, in a way. One intersection where I turn from a speedy highway onto a country road is marked with three of them.  I take extra, extra care. In the photo they look like ghosts.

Some of the crosses have become little shrines.  They are decorated with flowers and ribbons, clearly kept fresh by people who visit regularly.  I have not had the experience of living in a place where I must drive by the site of a loved one's fatal accident every day.  This seems a very sweet response to the reality of having to revisit a sad loss on a regular basis. This photo is of a shrine to Betty, born 1954, died 2011. It has a bird house overlooking a wetland and a collection of dolls nearby, graduually fading in the weather.

The person who loved Betty comes and mows the place, keeps the bird

house painted, and brings fresh mementos.  There's a rose bush by the
little angel statue.

It reminds me of having read a long time ago in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves.  She suggested an exercise for women - and these days I would not confine the suggestion to women --in which we make time lines of our own lives, and mark the descansos, the moments of loss and change, with little shrines that reflect our feelings.  Life sends us events that we can't run away from.  Each day we drive by the spot, so to speak.  And trying to pretend it never happened is simply not effective.

There was the divorce.  Or the job loss.  Maybe a falling out with a relative.  A bad situation with someone at work that you handled clumsily.  They don't go away.  They are bits of the stalagmites we are, maybe a little sulfurous, but only a layer here and there in the developing story of who we are.  How are these memorialized in your being?  Do you mark an anniversary?  Do you create art from it?  Is there something you cook that brings it to mind and helps you heal?  If no one has placed a white cross by the side of your road for you to decorate, you can place it yourself, so it need not be white, and need not be a cross.

I invite us all to contemplate these moments of our own lives and to mark them in our own ways.  Let us be who we are, losses and all.  Our stalagmite selves need this affirmation.

The shrine for Angela is in the front yard of a gas station next to a Wendy's just off the corner of LaSalle and Reserve in Kalispell.  In our privatized world, the attendant at the gas station had no idea who she was, even though someone obviously comes and cares for this little monument regularly. May she rest in peace.

God's Ten Commandments

There is some mysterious force here in the Flathead that drives landowners to put up big signs, the size of a full sheet of plywood, signs that all feature the same basic graphic displaying "God's Ten Commandments" in the customary tablet-like form, with a ribbon at the bottom containing some other biblical wisdom.

I think these guys are giving religion a bad name.

Over and over I tell people in my congregations, "The bible is not God's little instruction book."  To get the good out of it, we need to read carefully, consider the context --both cultural and literary-- and reflect deeply in conversation with others not just on the one part at hand but on all the related pieces.  And here are these mini-billboards, sort of like big versions of election yard signs, asserting just the opposite, or so it seems.  Just follow these ten rules, and you'll be okay.

Then there's the tone.  "Thou Shalt Not..."  is hardly an invitation to a joyful life.  Yet I keep telling people that we are invited to live in love and joy and gratitude, and I am not alone among religious leaders in doing this.  The sign-makers convey a very different vision of a religious person's proper orientation to the gift of life.  "Watch your step, or else!"

Do we need to put up signs on our lawns, too, with messages about hope, love, gratitude, and joy?  I'm tempted to start a campaign, though there is so much else to do.  We all drive everywhere here in this valley, past fields of hay and wheat and potatoes, past cattle and horses, and at dawn or dusk maybe some deer or elk, everywhere watched over by a sweeping arc of majestic mountains.  Maybe we can trust people to look beyond the signs and see the handiwork of Nature, sense the astonishing interconnectedness of all that is, and fall into reveries of awe, joy, and thanksgiving.

But will they know that's what our church is about?

Reflections on Three Forks

It's a convenient place to stop for overnight camping, close to the Interstate, but not too close, primitive enough so it's not likely to be full.  If I had lived in Colorado longer, it would have been part of my regular route from there to Northwestern Montana.  But this time I was moving to Northwestern Montana, so it was a time for deeper reflection, knowing I might not be coming this way again.

This is the place where the Madison, Gallatin, and Jefferson rivers come together to form the Missouri.  The joined rivers then flow northward before turning south and east to cross the plains.  These rivers have their names because it was the end of following the river westward for the Corps of Discovery,  the Lewis and Clark expedition.  The three leaders after whom the rivers are named had made the expedition possible.  Still, coming to his place brought the beginning of the realization that the mountains would have to be crossed on foot or horseback, and how could they get horses?

Sacajawea, the young Indian woman who was with the Corps, was thrilled to arrive at the place where the Missouri is formed.  She recognized it as the land of her people, from whom she had been stolen and sold into slavery,  eventually ending up with the French guide who accompanied the Corps.  And indeed, her people and the horses were eventually found.  The mountains were eventually crossed, and the Clark Fork, which flows to the west, became their guiding stream.

This place where I was camped marked a spot where preconceived ideas were released -- the idea of a river connecting the two oceans had to be discarded for good.  (Had they really believed that? ).  It was a place where they might have decided to turn around and go home.  But they found a way to move forward, driven by a desire not to spend the winter in the surrounding mountains or back out on the prairie, as well as a determination to complete their mission.  It must have been hard to figure out which way "forward" was -- as the rivers grow smaller, following upstream becomes an uncertain business -- for sure each one rises in the mountains, with an unknown wilderness of mountain pass beyond, and an unknown beginning of a new stream to follow on the other side.  Would they find their way west beyond the mountains?  Could they find a guide who actually knew the ways of this craggy wilderness?

These days, I'm thinking we are at the three forks on a larger scale.  The way of extracting things from the earth and using them up, that seems to be like the mighty Missouri, growing smaller and smaller as we go upstream with it.  Now we come to a place where it is clear that there is no easy way through.  We have to find horses and a guide, and use our wits to find the way forward.  Which of these smaller streams, if any, should we follow?  Once we cross the mountains, it will presumably be a downhill road, though more challenges are to come, for sure.  Meanwhile, we camp, arguing, trying to find new information, trying to locate a different mode of travel and someone to help us find the way.

Fear of what will happen if we stay here should be driving us forward.  Determination to build a better life for everyone should be, too.  Can we take hope from the example of Lewis and Clark?  Maybe.

I pack up my tent, still wet with morning dew, and head for the pass.

Taking Photos with the Mind

Yesterday I drove from Denver to Buffalo, WY, a straight shot north on I-25.  After clearing the Colorado Urban sprawl, it was a wonderful visual experience.  I was wanting to get to Buffalo, and I had gotten a bit of a late start, so stopping was not on the agenda.  Still, I took photos with the mind.

Entering Wyoming on this route is a fun moment.  There's the sign welcoming you to Wyoming, then a view of a herd of bison grazing with a couple of oil well pumps in the background.  Sweet.  And every now and then some thoughtful agency has placed a silhouette figure atop a hill-- a bison, a steer, a triceratops.

This visit, the wonderful grasslands are all green.  They were green two years ago when I came, but toasty brown last summer at approximately this time.  The North Platte was full of water, as were the various lakes and ponds and sloughs along the way.  I love this countryside of rolling grassland, with now an then a break for interesting rocks -- outcrops in fantastic shapes, over there a formation that looks like a castle, and over here a crennelated wall.

At highway speed, you only get to glimpse the animals.  Lots of horses grazing in fields.  Lots of beef cattle, too.  And I was pretty sure I saw a group of antelope.  Yes, deer, too.  Geese and ducks, the geese lookeding as if they were already practicing to fly south.

And on the left, west of the highway, a row of hills, sometimes with mountains in the back.  As I came close to Buffalo, there was a quick peek at the Cloud Peaks.  Route 16 travels up into them, and Buffalo is a place for people who are going there to stop and reconnoiter.  But this time, I am taking the road more traveled by; the Interstate is my destiny.  I have said this before when I stopped here that I want to come back, to take time to explore this country and its mountains, but knowing how way leads on to way, I doubt that I shall ever come back.  Just a quick look as I continue on my way to the life I have chosen.

So I have these pictures of the mind, gathered at somewhere north of 75 miles per hour, of a place I will never really visit.   It is good to have done this much.

Real Democracy, Part 2

I was intrigued to hear in a radio interview with Steven Cook, an expert on politics and governance in Egypt, that he believes the army's goal is to rule without governing.  They are a large and complex institution that owns many businesses and employs many people.  They have created a system where it is hard to distinguish between public and private enterprise.  The "government" is a sort of facade.  It needs to do important things that the army wants, and otherwise to look like they are doing justice, providing education and health care, conducting foreign relations, all the messy, detailed work of day to day government.   But the army is not to be disturbed.  It reminds me once again of the "Student Government" effect, though in a much more sinister way.

That governments we know do not actually serve the will of the people is a given.  We have been inclined to blame the people for apathy -- for not getting out and expressing themselves with passion, persuasiveness, and persistence.  Or we blame redistricting, settling boundaries so that many of us are in districts that have a definite political coloration that is not likely to change any time soon.

But we were all trained back in school, back in student government days.  We know the principal is in charge, and everything the student government does is according to what he or she wants.  We may not be totally sure who the principal is in our big grownup world, but we act as if there is one.  In most of our workplaces there is one, the boss.  We are trained to wait to find out what the boss wants before expressing an opinion. So our work settings train us too.

I wrote earlier about the difficulty of bringing real democracy to the UUA, since we have such a long history of electing charismatic people to follow rather than providing the leadership of peers that true democracy requires.

Now I am looking at the news coming out of Egypt and thinking of the sorry state of democracy in our  country.  It's not the army, but all those corporate lobbyists seem to be ruling without governing.  In Egypt, the army has been entrenched so deeply for so long that the people turned to them when the experiment in democracy seemed to be foundering.  It's scary.  What about here?  I am cautiously optimistic.

Yes, My Heart Really Does Break

I really do love interim ministry.  It's like being on a cruise with a whole bunch of people and falling in love with them all.  As the ship pulls into port, we all hug and say goodbye.  I head up the road to my next assignment, and yes, I do it with a broken heart.  The excitement of the next adventure does draw me on, but the thought of never seeing these people, the ones with whom I worked so earnestly for two years, never seeing them again except maybe at General Assembly, that brings real pain.

Pain is not a totally bad thing.  I had to sympathize with a young facebook friend who posted that she was sad after the end of camp at Ferry Beach.  I really think the sadness is deeper when we have been having a deeply wonderful time.  Since things end, deep and wonderful things as well as shallow and boring things, those times of sadness, deep sadness, are an inevitable part of living a full and open life.  So how bad could that be (she said, reaching for a tissue...)?

It could be so bad that the person who has suffered the loss abandons all will to go on.  I have seen this in long-married couples when one partner dies.  I have seen others who after great loss find something within that wants to continue.  I'm thinking the sorrows on my mind just now -- of saying goodbye to a congregation or a minister or the special friends at camp --real as they are, these may also be rehearsal for the inevitable really big losses.  No, we don't get used to it.  A broken heart is a broken heart.  What we can draw into deep awareness is that after the heart breaks, something new can happen.  Something comes to sing deep in the core of our being, assuring us that there is some new dawn on the other side.

I'm coming to believe that for me, and I hope for most of us, love calls us on.   Faith calls us on.  Life calls us on.

Here's a link to Jason Shelton leading a congregation in "Life Calls us On"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XhJiWgbrP8