An Emerging Beautiful and Winged Life

In the mid-19th century, Henry David Thoreau recounted a marvelous story that apparently was widely known in New England at the time. The story is recorded in Thoreau's reflections, Walden, written as he lived for two years, two months, and two days at Walden Pond.

The story is about old apple-tree wood. The tree had been cut and trimmed as a farmhouse table, and had been used for over 60 years, first in Connecticut, then in Massachusetts. One day, perhaps because of a hot urn or a coffee pot, strange gnawing sounds began to come from within the table and continued for a long while. Finally after a great many days of the gnawing gnawing gnawing, Thoreau describes a “strong and beautiful bug” that flew out of the table made of apple-tree wood . . . a winged creature that had been hidden within the table for decades.

And then Thoreau asks: What of the beautiful and winged life that dwells within each of us, “buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness” within us, hidden by our woodenness, waiting to be born, waiting to be freed to live and fly?

It is amazing to think that this well-hidden life within the tree was not disturbed when the tree was chopped down and trimmed for use as a table. It is amazing that the table could be used for years, for decades, without the inner life of the apple-tree wood being stirred alive.

Thoreau invites us to consider our own lives as tables, with "many concentric layers of woodenness" providing a tomb for the life that lives within us . . . the hardness, the shell, the crust that has only gotten more substantial through the years as we protect ourselves from the painful darts of the world. Within each of us, though, no matter how hard and weathered we are, is a "beautiful and winged life" waiting to be born.

While Thoreau didn't borrow the image from Jesus, he could have. Jesus used the image of a field that had within it a hidden treasure, a treasure so valuable it was worth giving everything to excavate the treasure. Of course, he wasn't merely referring to a field hidden away in some landscape on a map. Jesus was referring to the field of your life and mine, and to the immense and priceless nature of the treasure we each carry within us. The treasure of what it means to be fully YOU, fully ME, fully the people God created us to be, this is the interior treasure the parable points us to.

Jesus also counseled Nicodemus about being born anew or born from above. Some folks see this a being born a second time, a spiritual rebirth called being "born again." What if, however, this inner birthing is ongoing, happening not just once or twice, but over and over and over again. We are constantly and consistently being remade, re-created. In fact, Ignatius of Loyola believed that one of the defining marks of God's work in the world is that God is constantly creating, constantly remaking, constantly rebirthing, bringing to life the "beautiful and winged life" within us over and over again.

If you'll attend to your own life, I'm confident you can find evidence of your own interior "gnawing," the desire or longing that arises from deep within for your own hidden life to emerge.

And I would also guess that from time to time in your own experience, you have seen the emergence of a "beautiful and winged life" that you could hardly imagine was your own. (In fact, some of us, as soon as we see our own beautiful and winged life, subconsciously try to sabotage it . . . but that is material for another day.)

There is treasure beyond price within the field of you.

The life that God created you to live is being born from within you . . . you are constantly being reborn.

Or, if you please, there is within the concentric layers of your own woodenness, a beautiful and winged life waiting to emerge and soar.

A Living, Breathing Good News

The Gospel text for prayer today is from the extended version of Mark's Gospel, Mark 16:15 - 20. The passage begins with the risen Jesus saying to his disciples, "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to all creation."

Several things are significant in this one line. First, the context for the disciple's future, as they carry what Jesus has given them, is the world. It is not their own circle. To merely hang out together, sharing campfire stories of their time with Jesus, would not fulfill their creative purpose. Their lives were to be spent in the world, in ALL the world.

Jesus also charged them to proclaim, speak, tell, announce. This kind of telling happens with both life and lips. Our feet and our hands, our heart and our mind, our words and our silences . . . all tell the world good news.

Jesus claimed that the good news -- I'll get to the radical "good news" in a moment -- is for all creation. Nothing in the created world is left out. Jesus' intention was not merely for the human corner of creation, but for the entire created order . . . for the reconciliation of persons with persons, tribes with tribes . . . but also for the reconciliation of humans and the created world. In our world, the schism between humans and the natural world is just as deep -- or deeper -- than the many rifts among people and nations, and just as troubling.

Jesus phrase "good news" caught my attention this morning. The English phrase is drawn from a single Greek word from which we get "evangel" or "gospel." "Good news," is a helpful, if slightly colloquial, way of getting at the intent of the original idea.

Frequently through the years, I check in with myself on how I'm hearing this phrase, "good news." I know how the word has been captured by certain segments of the religious landscape and given a narrow, monochromatic definition. Some religious groups seem to have answers that are certain and cozy, and that assume one-size-fits-all. For these folks, "good news" means something very specific, with little room for how good news might be uniquely kneaded into a one-of-a-kind human experience of God and world.

My questions about "good news" tend to be less theoretical and more experiential, exploring my own lived-experience of good news.

What is the good news extended to me?
With what good news have I been entrusted by God?
What about my life is too good to be true . . . so good that I have resisted believing it?
What about another person or group is good news . . . and can I let myself believe that good news about them and for them?
How do I experience good news day by day?
What is the good news I am invited to proclaim (tell, speak, announce with lips and life) to all creation?

I explored this landscape for quite a while this morning. I won't share with you all the fruit of that exploration, but these statements seemed important to me. Perhaps as I explored "good news" for myself, these affirmations will be helpful in your own explorations.

** The primacy of love, this is good news, that love is stronger than hatred, that love lasts longer than death, and that love transcends anything else that would estrange or separate.

** The good news is that love heals, love reconciles, love makes whole.

** God is not the tyrrant many of us have thought God to be, not the capricious dictator of our worst nightmares. For many of us, this may be the "best news!"

** My own deepest truth is not shame, nor is it my badness, my failure, or my unworthiness. Rather, my deepest truth is planted somewhere in my "fearfully and wonderfully" made-ness. This is good news!

** The good news of my own identity, my deepest and most authentic self, is not dependent on job, relationship, or on any other contingency of life. Like Jesus, I am -- as you are, too -- a bearer of good news in the world.

Inner Freedom: Turning Sideways into the Light

I've done some reading about the Tuatha De Danann, an ancient tribe out of Irish mythology, whose lore has significantly shaped the Irish people. One part of the myth is especially appealing to me.

[Note: I realize that most often the words "myth" or "mythology" are used to suggest things we consider to be untrue, as in, "That's just a myth." In fact, a secondary dictionary definition says that mythology refers to something many people believe to be true, but in fact is not. Actually, however, myth and mythology speak to that which is perennially true about the human condition. Greek mythology, for example, is intended to speak to who we are as humans, why we are the way we are, and how we came to be as we are. The same might be said of other traditions of mythology. I confess that I've learned these things from my two English-teacher children, who have taught me more about the great mythological traditions that I ever picked up in high school or college English courses.]

My interest in the Tuatha De Danann mostly has revolved around their final battle with the Milesians, a more violent tribe seeking to acquire the land of the Tuatha De Danann. In earlier battles, the two tribes fought using magical powers, with neither tribe able to gain the upper hand. The way many Irish storytellers spin the final battle, the Milesians finally defeat the Tuatha De Danann on the field of combat and then consign them to the underworld, where they became fairies.

But there is another version of this final battle that catches my attention. According to this particular legend, the Tuatha De Danann were a colorful people, an artistic people, a generally peaceful people not given to combat. So in that last battle, as the Milesians gathered to fight and then charged the Tuatha De Danann, the Tuatha De Danann refused to fight. Rather, they "turned sideways into the light" and disappeared into the underworld.

I'm intrigued that there are different versions of the story, different interpretations of the myth. With a certain mind or outlook, you can argue that the Tuatha De Danann were defeated, that they lost on the field of battle and thus were punished with banishment to the underworld.

But with another mind, you can say they "turned sideways into the light" and disappeared. In other words, they declined to fight on the terms of those who opposed them. In a sense, they chose an imaginative option as a way of engaging their situation. They turned sideways into the light and engaged on their own terms, in a way that was consistent with who they were, congruent with their own interior makeup.

I'll confess that most often I don't feel that I have a choice but to engage on the field of battle laid out for me . . . to fight or to engage according to the norms of society, culture, workplace, or religious assumption . . . as if I were compelled toward a certain action or stance. When this happens within me, I may have the feeling of being trapped, of being in a corner with limited options. I might say something like, "I have no choice," or "I couldn't help it," or "I have to do this!" or "I'm supposed to do this or that." For any of our actions that have the sense of "supposed to" or "ought, must, should" about them, it is worth asking yourself, "Who said so?" Or, "Who created this expectation?"

I know how easy it is to get into a place that seems confining, with little option but to engage in constraining ways. In some respects, it is simply easier to fight the Milesians on their own terms.

I'll grant that there are realms where we truly have few options . . . IF we want to remain a part of that realm. The workplace, for example, is likely a place where someone else has established the rules of engagement. You may not have the option of "turning sideways into the light" and still remain a part of that particular body. Your employment may depend on engaging according to the norms of that particular place. Creativity or imaginative thinking may not be encouraged or accepted.

In most realms of life, though, there are in fact many, many possibilities -- "with God all things are possible" the angels continually announce throughout the biblical witness -- and the sense we have of being trapped, of being forced or compelled into one stance or another is more likely a matter of our own inner freedom . . . or lack thereof. We are simply not free enough inwardly to make the hard choice, or to take the creative stance, or to imagine a possibility that has yet to be seen.

This is the long, strenuous work of inner freedom . . . to discern our own interior, to know our own interior makeup . . . and thus to be free within our own depths to respond to God, self, others, and the world in a way that is life-giving, merciful, peace-making, and compassionate.

The Tuatha De Danann were almost sure to be defeated by the Milesians on the battlefield. Rather than engage in a traditional, acceptable way, they chose to engage in an imaginative way that was consistent with who they were, with their core ethos. While some Irish storytellers name this "defeat," I would argue that doing so is not defeat, but wisdom and creative imagination and the inner freedom to engage the world out of our truest and deepest center.

Velocity's Pull on the Spiritual Life

I have circled around the word velocity recently as a descriptor of my spiritual state. Velocity describes the reality of a life which gets ramped up slowly, subtly, without my noticing. As life's velocity increases, insidiously calling for more -- more time, energy, attention -- daily existence begins to feel out of sync, careening wildly from moment to moment. Velocity keeps its foot pressed to the gas pedal.

I remember a phone conversation with a mentor decades ago, the man who was most responsible for my vocational path, who influenced my choice of seminary, who was an early role model in so many ways. Separated by miles, I asked him over the phone how he was doing. I still remember his answer these decades later: "I'm lurching from crisis to crisis."

I knew then, as I know now, that "lurching from crisis to crisis" is no way to live life deeply, though I knew from experience exactly what he was suggesting. I've lurched from crisis to crisis aplenty in my own life -- often wearing the lurch as a badge of honor -- and I suspect you recognize lurching as a part of your own experience, too. Especially in the West, lurching is assumed to be the norm, not an aberration. In fact, if pressed, many of us would insist we don't have a choice, believing pedal to the metal is "just the way life is for me."

Like riding a super-train, I can live at such velocity that I observe the landscape through which I travel as a blur, as here-one-second, gone-the-next. I become a traveler speeding through the terrain as swiftly as possible.

That kind of velocity also means I lose touch with people. Connections get frayed. I don't have time for conversation. Actually, I don't have time or patience for anyone or anything not traveling at the same velocity at which I am traveling.

Family members don't respond to texts quickly enough to suit me.

Being put on hold by someone at the mega-corporation and listening to elevator music for an hour feels like an insult to my self-importance.

Deadlines I had not anticipated feel like an affront, a personal insult: "Don't they know how busy I am?"

Emails go unanswered for days.

Excessive velocity has all sorts of ripple effects on me.

About 20 years ago, I read Henri Nouwen's words: "Without silence and solitude it is impossible to live a spiritual life."

You can frame Nouwen's statement -- which has proven accurate, at least in my own experience -- in any number of ways.

**Without time to be still, life will be a blur.

**If you don't make space to ask, "Who am I?" and "What am I doing?", the oughts, musts, and shoulds will consume you.

**Without silence and solitude, life will be an endlessly repetitive cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis.

**If you don't pause to sit still regularly, you can never truly know the "you" who lives inside your skin.

**If some external thing, some external person, or some external norm determines your velocity, you will miss the one life that is hidden inside you.

** If your existence is all strategy, time-line, and accomplishment, you'll never connect with people in a life-giving way. People will be your accessories or they will get in your way.

I walked over an acre of land yesterday in about two hours. For several months I've been on the speeding train, so over dirt and rock I walked slowly. I had no agenda but to set foot on as much of the soil as possible. I wasn't trying to accomplish anything. I felt no compulsion to hurry. I merely wanted to walk, to notice, to listen. The late Gerald May called it "the power of slowing."

Several things stood out to me. I'll mention one.

The birds (Cardinals, Eastern Bluebirds, among others), the plant-life (60 foot oaks, irises, hostas, rose bushes, and pine trees coming up volunteer), the clouds, breeze, and drizzling rain . . . all did not care one bit about my velocity, about how busy I have been . . . not one care that my tax return needs to be tended to, that I have phone calls to make, appointments to keep, details about life that require some strategic maneuvering on my part.

Schedules and plans and "lurching from crisis to crisis" don't mean a thing to the created world . . . the created world which, after all, has a wisdom all its own. Only I, as the human in that setting, had felt the compulsion to travel faster than a human is made to travel.

Whether my velocity allows me to participate in this other, more inviting world or not, creation goes on singing, breezing, drizzling, foraging.

At question, at least for me: "In which world is my deepest, hidden self most invited to participate?"