Paying Attention to the Signs in Front of Us

 

While driving along Minnehaha Parkway, I was surprised by a red-tailed hawk as it flew from one side of the road to the other, low and right in front of my Jeep. I wish I had been able to follow his sky path on that cold day, but I was at least grateful for the brief moment of lift. 

According to Jamie Sams and David Carson, creators of Medicine Cards The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals, hawks are messengers, teaching us to be observant, to see the bigger picture, and how to discern and follow our personal vision. 

I first became aware of hawks when we lived at Sweetwater Farm. An albino red-tailed hawk was a frequent visitor--sometimes sitting in the willow tree or soaring over the pond where the Great Blue Heron came to rest in the morning. When I walked out the back door, I automatically scanned the horizon looking for its presence, and when I spotted it, I felt blessed. Blessed, but also reminded to pay attention, to remember "You are only as powerful as your capacity to perceive, receive, and use your abilities." 

During our Ohio years I was always on the look out for the familiar football shape of hawks as they sat on telephone poles or bare branches of winter trees. Once, during the two years when I made monthly six hour trips to my spiritual direction training in Pennsylvania, I felt accompanied by a succession of hawks, for every few miles I noticed another one. One after another. That was a challenging time in my life for a variety of reasons, and I was reassured by the guidance of hawks along the way. Their message to me seemed to be, "Stay the course." 

Here in St Paul I don't see hawks too often, and in fact, am more likely to see eagles, which is certainly a gift, but somehow they don't seem quite so personal. 

So what was the message of this particular hawk that crossed in front of my Jeep? 

I can't be sure, but I think this hawk was a reminder that companions on our journeys are always available, and sometimes they are right in front of us. So wake up! 

Here's something more. Hawk flew in front of me on Wednesday, but it was only days later that I gave it much thought. Part of my process in writing posts for this blog is to do a kind of examen of the days since my last post. What has impressed me or moved me, made me think deeper? What has touched me? What is still with me, even days later? 

Hawk. 

More than likely you, too, are gifted with signs, with messages, with nudges as you move through your days, but they only become wisdom or opportunities for spiritual growth when you take time for reflection.

Sit quietly, close your eyes lightly, not tightly, and rest in the passing of recent days. Who or what has been your hawk? What wants to be remembered? What lives in you still? What surprised you? What is the message and how will you respond? 

Pay attention. Stay awake.

An Invitation
What has flown in front of you lately? I would love to know. 

Some Recommendations from the Last Week

1.    Sunday Prayers, The Lord's Prayer--Nadia Bolz Weber's version. https://nadiabolzweber.substack.com

2.     Richard Rohr's summary of spiritual development https://cac.org/spiritual-development-2020-10-25/

3.      The Covid Cello Project playing Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings https://youtu.be/0ly61HpQ3mU

4.      "We Shall Overcome" sung by the Aeolian Choir at Oakwood University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBtmPiCgToI

Preparing to Hibernate

Colder temperatures have arrived, and snow is on the way. In the meantime, as my husband puts the gardens to bed, we are relishing the last bouquet. Beautiful, right?

This bouquet is not only a symbol of how gorgeous the garden has been all summer long, thanks to Bruce's efforts, but is also a reminder of the natural rhythm of the seasons. 

The golden glory days of fall are fading with more leaves on the ground than on the trees. The days of sitting in the sun reading a book during lunchtime have passed--at least without a blanket and fire pit or heater. Taking a walk requires a few more layers for comfort, and all the outside gatherings we've had this summer may move to ZOOM or on hoped-for mild days to the garage. 

It is time to prepare for hibernation.

If you have read this blog over time, you know that I am a winter person and welcome the inside time. Cave Time normally does not oppress me, but this year is different. 

This year we are not choosing to hibernate. This year for our own safety, we must hibernate. Living, as I do, in a cold weather climate where winter lingers for months, the opportunities to see friends and families on patios and in backyards will be greatly diminished. No matter how many layers we wear. 

Dreading these upcoming months will not help--or decrease the impending isolation. 

Instead, it is time to overcome confinement with coziness. Get out shawls and candles and a throw for your reading chair. Stock up on cocoa, and add a string of lights around inside windows. Dig out from the back of your closet, scarves and mittens. Have your fireplace cleaned if it needs it and arrange for wood to be delivered. Do you need a new robe or slippers? All these are recommendations for living the hygge lifestyle.

Hygge is a Danish term that is hard to define, but has to do with creating cosiness in one's life and enjoying the simple pleasures of life. 

This year, however, we may need more than hygge to get us through to spring. This year will require a bit more intention, a bit more thinking ahead and now is the time.

Do you need to upgrade your winter gear, in order to get outside more regularly? We have snowshoes we haven't used since living at Sweetwater Farm, but this year how about going to nearby state parks and trekking the trails? 

Do you need to gather supplies for crafts or art that you have enjoyed in the past, but haven't made time for recently? Or is there something new you might try?

What routines in your life have become boring or so routine that you don't even notice them? We eat our dinner on tv trays while watching the news. Well, maybe it is time to get back--after the election, that is--to having dinner at the dining room table. Maybe not every night, but at least some of the time. Set a pretty table, including lit candles. A grilled cheese sandwich tastes even better when served by candlelight on your best china! 

What about the upcoming holidays? We won't have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner at our house, for example, but we can gather on Zoom sometime that weekend and perhaps, each household can have the same game and we can play it together. And what about decorating the outside of the house more than usual as way to spread some Christmas cheer to the neighbors? I imagine sending more Christmas cards this year than I normally do as a way to connect with friends near and far. 

How will you make up for the events you normally attend during the holiday time? St Olaf has cancelled its annual Christmas Festival and oh, how we will miss that traditional start to Advent, but I know there will be many concerts online, and we can "attend." I bought a household ticket for the Guthrie Theater's online production of A Christmas Carol, and maybe instead of going out for dinner before heading to the theater, we will have a popcorn supper during the performance. 

This is a time when self-care is necessary, but also think about how you can care for others. Is there an issue, like homelessness or food insecurity or immigration or racial justice, that particularly concerns you? Now may be the time for you to educate yourself more completely. Read. Investigate. Contact relevant organizations and find out what you can do, how you can be involved in a way that maintains your safety. Many of us are spending less money right now. If that is true for you, donate more. 

What spiritual practices ground you? Or is this a time to create space in your life for a spiritual practice? Can you welcome a bit more quiet and solitude into your life? Here's a sampling of some of my favorite books about spiritual practices.

*    Desperately Seeking Spirituality, A Field Guide to Practice by Meredith Gould.

*    An Altar in the World, A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

*    The Sacred Year, Mapping the Soulscape of Spiritual Practice--How Contemplating Apples, Living in a Cave, and Befriending a Dying Woman Revived My Life by Michael Yankoski

*    A Sacred Primer, The Essential Guide to Quiet Time and Prayer by Elizabeth Harper Neeld

*    The Soul of a Pilgrim, Eight Practices for the Journey Within by Christine Valters Paintner

*    The Soul's Slow Ripening, 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred by Christine Valters Paintner

*    Fully Awake and Truly Alive, Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul by Jane E. Vennard

I suggest you start a Hibernation List for yourself. You know how hard it is to come up with something helpful when you are feeling blue or paralyzed or overwhelmed. That's when having a list can help. Your list can be your in-house spiritual director. 

And in the meantime, enjoy the last roses of summer.

An Invitation
What will you include on your Hibernation List? I would love to know. 

NOTE: Here's a Hygge Post I wrote a year ago

One more thing: 

So Many Needed Prayers

 

How do I begin? And once I begin, how do I come to an "Amen"?

The need for prayers is unending. Has it always been this way? Yes, of course, it has. The world and all its people have always needed the kind of holding, the kind of attention and awareness, the kind of connection and conversation that prayer creates. 

But today, right now, is what I carry with me into prayer time--the time set aside for prayer and then the almost unconscious time for prayer that I wear like a sweater on these cool days. 

At this very minute I hear a siren--first, quite faint, and then more distinct--and I whisper, "May all be well." My first intentional prayer of the day, but I know more will follow. 

When I am not too overwhelmed by worries and concerns--big ones and little ones--I try to enter prayer with gratitude. Oh, yes the usual ones of gratitude for the health and the well-being of my family, for our home and church and community and the love of good friends, but I also try to note particular joys and delights, the unwrapped presents I've received.

An email from a church friend sharing the delights in her life.

A drive in our little car along the river--color in the bluffs, eagles in the sky, sailboats on the river, friends and conversation and pie in an outdoor setting.

Pumpkins. More pumpkins. Pumpkins on the patio. Pumpkins in "Paris."

Applesauce for dinner.

Reading time on the patio, wrapped in a shawl.

Completion finally of the draft for a new chapter.

A leisurely walk in the neighborhood. "Look, the witches are holding hands," I hear two little girls exclaim, and I think, "Why don't we all hold hands?"

A new flannel shirt.

A good annual physical with a doctor new to me, and I am relieved to really like her.

Roses still blooming in the garden.

And then I turn to what is on my heart. Who am I holding? What transformation is needed around and within me? Where is there hurt, fear, a lack of hope and what words, what actions can I offer?

I know some of what I pray is on your lips as well--prayers for our country and for the upcoming election, prayers for the homeless, for the food insecure, prayers for all those who are oppressed, who need justice. 

A big list. A long list. An important list.

And then I turn to the specific on my heart: the friend undergoing chemotherapy for a serious cancer; our daughter-in-love's father awaiting a liver transplant, our granddaughter as she faces college applications, the two detained immigrants and the healthcare workers on the front lines who I write to weekly, friends who are grieving the loss of their only son, and many others. 

A big list. A long list. An important list.

And then I return to the joys, the delights, the list of gratitudes that grows when I pay attention: this quiet time, the comfort of the Girlfriend Chair, the sound of Bruce fixing his breakfast and opening the door to get the paper, the fresh air coming through a barely open skylight, the journal almost completed, but another one awaits. And the openness of the day. Yes, tasks to do, but on my own time, my own schedule. More delights to discover. 

Amen.

An Invitation
What brings you to prayer? What do you pray for? I would love to know.

Some Recommendations from Last Week

1.   Gloria Dei Lutheran Church This is actually on ongoing recommendation. Our Sunday online worship services are amazing--the sermons, the music, the creativity, the personal connection, and you are invited. Perhaps you are unchurched and feeling a need to experience worship again. Perhaps you are committed to a faith community and will remain so, but your church doesn't have the ability to produce a well-done online worship time. Or perhaps as a reader of my blog who is Jewish said to me, "It is clear how important your church is to you, and I am just curious about it." Come. 

2.    Podcast: The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber, specifically the September 22 episode with journalist Maria Hinojosa.

3.    An article in The Atlantic on the definition of reparations. :  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/reparations-definition-2020-candidates/590863/.

Starting the Day

                                                                                                    

I make the bed.

I climb the stairs to the garret and look out the window on the landing. 

I wrap myself in a shawl, and light a candle.

               We light a light in the name of God who creates life,
               in the name of the Savior who loves life,
               in the name of the Spirit who is the fire of life.
                                                    Philip Newell

I settle into my Girlfriend Chair and listen to the quiet. The only sound is the gentle tick-tock of the clock. A steady and reassuring tick, tock. Not tick, tick and maybe a tock. But again and again and again, tick, tock, tick, tock.

I read the day's devotion in Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore and am surprised at how often it is just what I need to read. 

                In the turning of the seasons, I find promise and hope.

I read a chapter or perhaps two in my current study books: A New Kind of Christianity, Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian D. McLaren and Active Hope, How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. 

                ...focus on finding and playing your part, offering
                your gift of Active Hope, your best contribution to
                the healing of our world.  

I take a deep breath and return to listening to the tick tock of the clock, tuning my heart to the quiet. 

I may write in my journal. How can I contribute to the healing of our world? What are the worries I bring into this day? Who needs my prayers? What are the possibilities for this day?

               Receive the day.

I close the journal and once more return to the quiet. I pray--sometimes in actual words and sometimes by letting the words go, easing across my tight forehead and lightening the heaviness. 

I linger, grateful I can do just that. 

I linger until I hear a bell inside my head--not an alarm, but a sweet, twinkly bell, like the chimes that hang outside in the garden. Now, Nancy, you have greeted the day and the day has greeted you. Move into your day.

                There is only one thing
                and that is God. 

An Invitation

How do you start your day? I would love to know. 

Some Recommendations from the Past Week

1.    I finished reading My Grandmother's Hands, Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resma Menakem. Perhaps I should instead say I finished reading this book for the first time, but I don't think it is a book you can really finish, for the book is really a kind of spiritual practice. I will keep this book in my pile by my Girlfriend Chair, instead of shelving it.

From chapter 21, "Whiteness Without Supremacy"

         Are you treating all human beings with genuine regard?

         Are you calling out evil and immorality when you 

         encounter it? Are you serving your fellow human beings?

         Are you acting out of the best parts of yourself? Are you

         you working with other white people to develop culture 

         and dismantle all forms of white-body supremacy? 268

2.     I revisited Writing as a Path to Awakening, A Year to Becoming An Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life by Albert Flynn DeSilver. One of the women in my writing group reminded me about this book. I intended to read the October chapter, and I will, but instead drifted back to August, "Devotion, Permission to Flow." 

        September has been a challenging writing month for me, after a summer of being productive. This chapter helped, and my current chapter has begun to flow again.