Reframing (including something about a rutabaga)
Quick programming notes…The next Pop Culture Pastors Hour conversation is today! 3PM, MaryAnn McKibben Dana and I will be in conversation with Marlon Weems about the Oscar-nominated film, Sinners! And we also are scheduled for our TWO Project Hail Mary conversations. The first - focusing on the book - is on Monday 3/16 at 3pm ET and the second - focusing on the film - is on Monday 3/30 at 3pm ET. Recordings will be on the PCPH site as well as in your podcast feed if you subscribe (and you should!)
Tuesday night to Wednesday was a rough sleeping night. There are a variety of reasons but one of them was that I made the mistake of doomscrolling and doomclicking late in the evening so there was plenty of anxieties for my brain to be kicking around rather than settling down to sleep. After sleep eventually came, I woke up late and my usual routine was set to be out of whack (which further frustrated me). When I eventually got out for Scout and my walk, I was lamenting the grey, drizzly morning and wrestling with the many things still fighting for space in my headspace. After some hefty rains on Tuesday, the lake was back to its flooded state, the water was brown and murky, branches and logs and trash had collected at the surface, and it really looked like how I was feeling.
In taking in the scene above, I was focused on the crud and the mess and the ugh of it all and not seeing the very thing that would jolt me out of it a little while later (its there in the above photo if you know what to look for). Scout was feeling it too (or more likely picking up on my unpleasant and grouchy vibes) and was just plodding along. Even seeing a group of geese right near the edge of the water didn’t get her into her normal get-the-cranky-birds state.
And then as we got to the other side of the lake, there it was.
I was still grumping along when I saw a flash of color in the brown-grey water. The initial flash I saw in my peripheral vision was bright red and then when I focused over there, it had shifted to bright white and then to this purple when I pulled out my camera and zoomed in. What was it? It was the blurry reflection of the electronic signboard for the Lutheran church that overlooks the lake. But dang - it was the only flash of bright color that whole morning. And it was a gift to me as It was a needed “snap out of it” moment that helped me to start reflecting on a needed reframing for my moment and my day.
I remembered the just-before-bed phone conversation we had with our son on Tuesday night when he had texted asking if we could talk for a few minutes (and probably anticipating that we were probably having those “oh dear, what is wrong” thoughts, he immediately followed up with “all good stuff.”). He shared for 30 minutes about a wonderful and encouraging political event he was a part of and what it was stirring for him in the year ahead. It was wonderful.
I remembered what I read shortly after that conversation in my daily Rilke book - a short paragraph that the editors entitled, “Not Prisoners” where he wrote:
If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn’t insecurity with all its dangers so much more human?
We are not prisoners of that room.1
It was a reminder that night and even more so on Wednesday morning that I didn’t need to keep walking back and forth in that narrow strip that had kept me awake overnight and there was far more to explore and be open to.
And then as the day went along (and I eventually got to my run late in the afternoon) and highlighted three lines from the novel I’m reading, I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
Hope is tougher than you think and at first I went ahead hand over hand, but you try doing this while being dragged fast through water forty degrees, the sea doing its best to peel you off.2
What a stunning visual of living into hope…
How are you feeling? Her instant reply, Probably doomed and perplexingly merry, was a concise report of our handmade lives.3
The contrast - probably doomed and perplexingly merry…its all in there
And then the silliness of this one...I’ve heard of potato guns (and have used one) but not rutabaga guns...
Who knows the physics of rutabaga velocity but it landed at least fifty yards out.4
Hope being exemplified by the slog of holding onto a rope...the contradictions of “probably doomed and perplexingly merry”... and the physics of rutabaga...pretty great.
And then this from the book of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible - when everyone else is bemoaning what was ahead and their fears that they wouldn’t be able to overcome the obstacles ahead, a single voice of a man named Caleb rises up...
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
Numbers 13:30
I’d love to say that Caleb’s comment changed everything in that story - it didn’t. His fellow compatriots seemed to ignore him and keep complaining that they wouldn’t be able to enter the Promised Land. But his voice spoke of a reframing, at least for him, and maybe for others. It didn’t change the reality of what was ahead but it did speak a vital truth that needed to be said.
So, the lake is still flooded and brown with muddy flood water, debris and trash float on the surface, I’m still tired as I am writing this and I’d love nothing more than to not have a meeting tonight and to simply stay home with my wife and with Scout. The things I doomscrolled and doomclicked through last night are still a reality. And tomorrow is also the three year anniversary of a dear friend’s death. Its all in there.
But its there alongside everything else. Debra Rienstra gives another good reminder about all of this:
It’s easy to survey the world’s decay and give in to hopelessness. How tempting to cede sovereignty to the law of entropy, to calculate the exponents on the crises we face right now, to surrender to the persistence of human wickedness and foolishness, to resign ourselves to a downward spiral. On some days that seems the most sensible, realistic posture. Yet God loves to work with scraps and remnants, the most unlikely materials possible. God loves to plant a seed when no one is looking.5
A single colorful reflection on a brown muddy lake, a conversation with a college-age son, 100+ year old wisdom, an ancient story of a man whose voice was unheard.
And there’s also always the ponderings about the physics of a rutabaga launched from a PVC pipe...And a dog who halfheartedly chased some geese…
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
From Letters to a Young Poet quoted in Barrows, Anita; Macy, Joanna. A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (p. 62). Kindle Edition.
Enger, Leif. I Cheerfully Refuse, Kindle Edition.
Ibid
Ibid
Rienstra, Debra. Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (p. 157). Kindle Edition.