Helicopters

Helicopters.  The little seeds with wings that grow in clusters from my neighbor’s towering tree.  They don’t see the fence adjoining our properties, and around every Memorial Day we are buried in these little seed-bearing conveyances.  If we ignore them, hundred of them will sprout.  And, since the appearance of our patio several years ago, they make an awful mess just as they are.  So we are spending the better part of today capturing as many helicopters as we can contain.

But the helicopters had a different meaning in another season of our lives.  Mary had come to live with us for a couple of years—Mary Poppins, that is.  My son was a pre-schooler, I was going through the most difficult year of my life, and our very own Mary Poppins had come to live as our nanny.  An incredibly creative and competent soul, our nanny played with our son while I taught, fixed dinner multiple nights a week, and cared for all three of us in more ways than I could possibly name. 

One Memorial Day she and my son collected all the helicopters they could gather, put them in a large bag, took them to the top of a Wheaton College building and let them fly in the wind.  It was an act of glorious simplicity which long delighted the heart of a curious little boy, and, to be honest, the heart of his mother who had not the energy for that kind of creativity right then.

So today, in a moment when I am not particularly enthused about the prolific seed-bearing qualities of my neighbor’s helicopter tree, I find myself pondering this unlikely symbol of an extraordinary grace in a very different season.  It doesn’t make the work go away.  But it does help me taste gratitude again.  Responsive earth comes in unlikely forms, and a creative nanny holding good seed for a glorious purpose must surely be one of God's rich surprises.

Under Our Sun and Shield

This morning I sat out in my garden--well, to be accurate, I sat bundled up in my garden, with a crocheted shawl flung around my head, a tartan plaid enveloping my shoulders and a old fleecy blanket tucked around my knees. But I was IN my garden, hearing the birds, feeling the wind, enjoying the beauty of a long-yearned for spring in Illinois. 

Spring in a cold-weather climate is such a picture of simplicity.  "Let it be to me according to your word" is the quiet whisper of a creation that awakens when, and only when, the Master calls it into life.  In this matter of gardens, we can prune, rake and wait, but until the sun warms the earth and calls the little things into visible existence again, they stay hidden, waiting for the sound of their Master's voice. 

"We have nothing but we receive...As makers made in the image of the Maker, we are also initiators and creators. But never first.  The raw material of our physical and spiritual life comes at the will of a divine initiative that we have done nothing to capture.  We are simply favored by God." ("Songs of Assent," Simplicity, 31)

This morning I sat pondering the deep meaning of creaturely dependency from my rather lumpy devotional posture when I read these words: "For the Lord God is both sun and shield; he will give grace and glory." (Psalm 84:11)

Sun: calling forth into life all that is creaturely and dependent. Shield: protecting all that the sun is calling forth into life.

And my thoughts went to this week, when the church around the world will celebrate one of the "quiet holy days"--so underplayed for so many of our communities--yet a moment in the church year that changed every relationship between heaven and earth forever.  The Feast of the Ascension.  

This week we see our Lord Jesus triumphantly take his rightful place in heaven as the king of glory. The Second Adam is also our conquering elder brother. He has come home. The gifts of heaven have been opened to all who share in his inheritance.  The sun that faithfully awakens physical and spiritual life and the shield that firmly protects it all proceeds from the glory of our Lord Jesus as he takes his stand at the right hand of the Father and, with the Holy Spirit, joins to pour out grace without measure on dependent, waiting earth of all kinds.

May our hearts be found simple this week. Our ascended Lord is our sun and our shield, and he does give grace and glory--no good thing does he withhold from us. Pentecost is coming, and one good grace after another still renews his favored, if yearning, creation--whether the work is underground or finally breaking the surface.  Let it be to us according to his word.

A High Storm on a Familiar Lake

"If we would rise to life's worst storms, the formation will not begin in the gale, but in the small puddles that splash at our feet when no one is looking." ("Songs of Assent," Buoyancy, 167)

When I was in graduate school my husband and I spent a glorious season exploring the pristine "finger lakes" that fill the valleys amidst the rolling hills of upstate New York.  We spent many a Saturday navigating around those lakes--skinny enough to see clearly through to the other shore, long enough to need a full day to make our way around the largest of them. 

One afternoon we were driving up the east side of Seneca Lake as the sky grew black from beyond the western shore.  We pulled our car into one of the many state parks that line the lakeshore, and spent the next two hours in the storm.  We watched it creep over lake toward us--and then we were in it: rain, wind, lightning, thunder--a violent glory.  

Sometimes we are fortunate enough to see the storm coming over a skinny little lake toward us,  and sometime it just comes upon us.  Perhaps we were just out for a bit of a ride on the lake, and find ourselves surprised by the storm. We'd like to reach our car, but we feel about as equipped as sitting in an old canoe--we're not too far from shore, but too far to make it back in the midst of the intense elements. 

Maybe it's our health--we had thought we would be well--and, it would appear, we are going to have live with our infirmity instead.  Or perhaps it's our finances--we thought we could see our way--and then the lightning strikes over our heads and we find ourselves spinning, holding on as we seek to stay afloat for one more day.  Or perhaps we were working--planning the next project, doing the next thing--and the winds of layoffs have blown us to a place on the shore where there is nowhere to dock, and so we ride the storm's aftermath along familiar shoreline, but have no idea where we are going and how to get there. 

And in these moments, when wind and water weather our hulls--not even on high seas--but simply by a high storm on a familiar lake, we need a mariner's tune for these words: "Bless our God, you peoples; and make the voice of his praise to be heard; Who holds our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip." (Psalm 66:7-8)

I heard the dim echoes of a jaunty tune this morning from a woman whose canoe is pitching violently--but not as violently as this time last year.  At the end of the conversation she grabbed her paddle and got to work.  For that is the grace of a long, skinny, familiar lake.  When the storm is over--or even during its lulls--we can find a place to wade to shore, there is work to be done, and if the Spirit will grace us with yet another melody in our hearts, we will find the footing we need for the next couple of good, firm steps.