Two Roads, Two Prayers, and only One to follow

I have been doing quite a lot of reading lately.  I had recently picked up my copy of The Poetry of Robert Frost.  I have read this book many times but the last time was a long while ago.  I flipped the book open to the bookmark that I had left inside, and it was marking one of my favorite poems: The Road Not Taken.  I thought that’s cool, this will be fun to read again. 

Then that evening, my older sister Dory called to catch up on all that has been happening in our lives.  During the conversation, the topic of Lent came up, and she asked what devotional I was going to use this year.  Well, she was way ahead of me, (as First Born’s usually are).  At the time I did not even know when Ash Wednesday was going to arrive.  She said that her church had decided to read, My Life with the Saints, by James Martin, SJ.  She said that she had already read it once and that it was so good that she was going to read it again with her spiritual group. 

About a week later, a package arrived at my door and in it was a new copy of the book that she had mentioned to me.  Inside the front cover, she had placed a handwritten note, “Here is the new book for reading --  It is my favorite book.”  Let me say that sharing copies of books with one another is not something that we normally do.  We will suggest titles of good books and then leave it up to each other to follow up or not.  So, I knew that this was important to her, and I decided to take her advice.  

I began to read it right away and found the author’s way of telling a story to be very engaging, even when I was reading about a saint that I was already familiar with.  Each chapter talks about the life of a different saint and how they had impacted the author's life.  I couldn’t wait to get to the third chapter devoted to Thomas Merton because he has been my favorite spiritual writer.  In that chapter, the author shared that Thomas had struggled with some of the same things the author did – pride, ambition, selfishness.  "He struggled with the same questions I was wondering about:  What are we made for?  Who is God? What is the purpose of our lives.”  I certainly could relate to the author.  They were the same reasons I had been attracted to Thomas Merton all those years ago when I was struggling to discern my vocation. 

This morning I was finishing up that chapter, and the author ended by sharing one of Thomas Merton's prayers,  It too was one of my favorites but this time when I read it, it took on a whole new meaning, because the words of Robert Frost’s poem were still fresh in my memory banks. 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black,

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I would ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

from Mountain Interval

                                                            -- Robert Frost

                                                                        -- 1916

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  

I do not see the road ahead of me.  

I cannot know for certain where it will end.  

Nor do I really know myself, 

and the fact that I think I am following your will 

does not mean that I am actually doing so.  

But I believe that the desire to please you 

does in fact please you.  

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.   

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  

Therefore I will trust you always 
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

from Thoughts in Solitude

--- Thomas Merton

--- 1958

Merton’s faith in a loving and caring God, someone he trusted to lead, made all the difference in his life.  While Frost anticipated that he would manage a “sigh” down the road when faced with the fruits of his choice, Merton’s faith enabled him to say, “I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.”  What a marvelous difference God can make in someone’s life if God is allowed to lead.  Amen.

Stir Up Your Power and Come!

"Advent Moon Rise"

In a time long ago, there used to be a season in the church year called Advent, a word that finds its meaning in the Latin word for “coming.”  It set aside the first four weeks of the new church year to focus on waiting and anticipating the birth of Jesus Christ.

I had always loved that season, but since a Madison Avenue mentality has so completely insinuated itself into our celebration of Christmas – Advent has fallen on hard times.  It frankly never contributed much to the gross domestic product.  Ask anyone to sing an Advent carol and all you will hear is silence. 

Besides with all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals who has time to listen to the stories of ancient prophets who pined for a long-promised Messiah, but didn’t live to see that day.  If you press the point some may push back and say that we already know the rest of the story.  We already live on the other side of Good Friday and Easter.  So – who are we supposed to be waiting for anyway?

But there is still brokenness in this world, and there are twisted hearts that no amount of holiday cheer can fix.  There is a hunger in our souls that no Christmas party or holiday dinner can fill.  The Apostle Paul had it exactly right when he wrote to the Romans in the first century,

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

It is that kind of deep groaning that Advent is meant to assuage.  I like to think of Advent as a season of expectant yearning for the divine banquet that has no end, or the final Advent that is yet to come. 

And while we are waiting there are a lot of things that we could be doing.  Just look around at our world. There is brokenness everywhere.  Maybe while the family is together, the discussion might be centered on what the family could do to make our world better.  There’s time to perhaps open the Heifer International catalog and look for gift ideas.  There is time to set aside a Saturday to go outside and glean a field or two with the Society of St. Andrew and put food on someone’s table this Christmas.  There are lots of things that can be done to help heal this world.

But if nothing else, take some of this Advent time for yourself.  Sit quietly and take the time so that our hearts can hear what God is telling us.  You may want to use the following to open that dialogue:

Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.  By your merciful protection awaken us to the threatening dangers of our sins, and keep us blameless until the coming of your new day. Amen.
                                                                     Opening  Prayer, First Sunday of Advent       

"Breezewood", our Garden Beneath the Crest

I have recently discovered that my wife has created a beautiful tour of our Japanese garden on her blog.  The tour is not new, in fact she created it several years ago around the time that we opened it up for a public tour by other volunteers at the JC Raulston Arboretum.  I have been so involved in my own orbit that the visual tour's existence remained undiscovered until recently.  As a way to remedy this oversight I am posting the link to the tour below.

Since our garden has always been a "work in progress" and many things have been added in the intervening years I am confident that there will be an update later this year.  I will not miss that posting.  Here is the link, enjoy -----``

Ilene Holmes: Breezewood, our Garden Beneath the Crest

Let Streams of Living Justice ELW 710

I love Lutheran Hymnody.  It is as close to proclaiming the Word of God, without preaching a sermon that you can get.  This was our opening hymn at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church a couple of weeks ago.  Read the lyrics as you listen to the music.  Actually, it was so emotional for me that I had trouble singing them.  How can anyone not believe this and live accordingly and still call themselves – Christians?

Immigrants in the Eyes of God

For the last several days I have been reading a great little book by Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People.  When I was serving as pastor at Holy Trinity, I used this book many times to center myself and reconnect myself to the will and heart of God.  Today, I re-read one of my favorite prayers from that time.  It is one that has taken on a whole new, deeper meaning in the last several days.  Let me offer it to you this evening:

On Controlling Our Borders

Jesus – crucified and risen – draws us into his presence again,
the one who had nowhere to lay his head, 
no safe place, 
no secure home, 
no passport or visa, 
no certified citizenship. 

We gather around him in our safety, security, and well-being,
and fret about “illegal immigrants."
We fret because they are not like us 
and refuse our language.  
We worry that there are so many of them 
and their crossings do not stop.  
We are unsettled because it is our tax dollars that sustain them 
and provide services.  
We feel the hype about closing borders and heavy fines, 
because we imagine that our life is under threat. 

And yet, as you know very well, 
we, all of us – early or late – 
are immigrants from elsewhere; 
we are glad for cheap labor 
and seasonal workers 
who do tomatoes and apples and oranges 
to our savoring delight.  
And beyond that, 
even while we are beset by fears 
and aware of pragmatic costs, we know very well 
that you are the God who welcomes strangers, 
who loves aliens and protects sojourners.

As always, we feel the tension 
and the slippage between the deep truth of our faith 
and the easier settlements of our society.

We do not ask for an easy way out, 
but for courage and honesty and faithfulness.  
Give us ease in the presence of those unlike us; 
give us generosity amid demands of those in need, 
help us to honor those who trespass
as you forgive our trespasses.

You are the God of all forgiveness. 
By your gracious forgiveness transpose us 
into agents of your will, 
that our habits and inclinations may more closely
follow your majestic lead, 
that our lives may joyously conform 
to your vision of a new world.  

We pray in the name of your holy Son, Jesus.

And I say – Amen.  AMEN.

Sending Prayer

It has been nearly 24 hours and I find myself still strangely moved by the Sending Prayer and Blessing at the end of yesterday’s worship service at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, here in Raleigh.  Maybe it is the fact that it was Martin Luther King’s birthday, maybe it is part of the anxiety and foreboding that I feel about the next four years that our nation faces but I cannot put it down.

Let us imagine, with God, a circle of compassion,
      No one standing outside that circle.
We move ourselves closer to the margins
      So, that the margins themselves will be erased.
We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied.
      We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless 
      and the voiceless.

At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out.

     We stand with the persecuted 
     so that the persecution will stop.
We place ourselves next to the disposable.
     So that the day will come 
     when we stop throwing people away.
And may the grace of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Bless us in this work.

Thank you God, for giving me this New Year’s resolution reformation.  Let it shape my life, so that through me the lives of others will be transformed this year and all the years of my life.

Laboring in My Father’s Vineyard

Robert Mondavi Vineyard, Sabbatical 2010

The title might make you think that this is my latest devotional, and that is exactly what it started out to be; but then I got caught up in telling a story so the devotional will have to wait for another day.  If it is spiritual food you are looking for you will have to look elsewhere or come back for a later post.

I grew up in the wine district of western New York.   In every direction of our home you could not drive far before passing a commercial vineyard.  The only connection that we had to any of them, was one of my mother’s brothers who worked long hours and many years tending a large vineyard where the grapes were used to produce altar wines.  So, when my father decided to devote five acres of his land to a vineyard, no one batted an eye.  

The first winter after that decision was made, my father and I spent many weekends deep in a woods that belonged to one of his friends, cutting locust trees to be used for the posts to hold the wire that the grapes would grow on.  I remember that winter clearly.  The snows were heavy, which made even walking among the trees laborious.  While dad felled the trees I would clear the branches into piles away from the work site.  One of the first things, we did when we arrived was to build a fire where we would sit on stumps to rest and warm ourselves throughout the day.  There was something special about that winter, working next to dad.  I had him all to myself.  He was never a teacher in the formal sense of the word.  I never remember him telling me, “Son, this is how you use an ax.”  Or, “this is how you build a fire in the middle of winter to keep warm.”  He would just do these things and I would learn through observing him.  By the end of that winter I had taken over the task of starting the fire, but I was still too young to use the ax.  That would come years later for me.

I wish I knew how many trees we cut and trimmed that winter; but my father was undaunted.  Despite the fact that he knew that in the spring he would have to cut them into 8’ lengths, split them using a maul and wedges, and then haul them all back to our property – he kept cutting.  He somehow knew how many he needed.  When he had enough he hired a friend to haul them back to our farm.  Once they were on site, each required a hole to be dug in the rocky New York soil which was the main reason it was grape country.  Thankfully I was too young for the task of digging the holes; but without any hesitation my father began the arduous task of planting a post every ten feet in long parallel rows eight feet apart.  I don’t know how many rows we had, but the work was never ending.  Grapes are not like seasonal crops such as wheat or oats where you prepare the soil, plant the seeds and then sit back and let them mature until they are harvested.    Once a vine is planted, one is committing to tend that vine for the rest of its life if it is to be fruitful.  Actually the planting was the easiest part.  Once they were in the ground the ongoing task of weed control began.  In time each vine needed to be trained to grow on the wires.  They really took to that.  In no time, we had row after row of leafy vines growing everywhere.  Within a few years and every Fall thereafter, we had more than enough grapes for our own use and every hobby vintner for miles around. 

My father had been given a large wine press by an elderly woman who with her husband had raised their family of nine from the sale of bootlegged wine during the Prohibition.  This meant that dad had to dismantle the press hidden in the basement of her barn.  The vat was about six feet in diameter with an eight inch solid steel screw in the center that was buried in four feet of solid concrete.  To this screw a plate was threaded that would be screwed down against the grapes using a twelve foot pole.  To say the least it was a pretty impressive piece of equipment that was reconstructed in our wine shed.   Thus began my father’s annual homage to the god Bacchus.  Every fall and winter our house was filled with the smell of about three hundred gallons of wine fermenting in our basement.  My father’s wine was legendary in our small rural community.  Everybody loved receiving bottles of wine as gifts.  In fact I remember clearly every winter after the first heavy snow, my mother would wait patiently in the kitchen window for the county plow to come down the road.  As they passed the house she would raise a couple of bottles of wine and wave them to the two men in the cab.  They knew immediately what she was offering.  They would promptly raise the plow, back up to the beginning of our long driveway and plow it out with the county truck.  When they reached the garage, my mother would run outside with the bottles of wine and hand them up to the men through the window.  This ploy worked every time and was repeated as needed throughout the winter.  Wine became the way we bartered in the community.

Someone has said that it was madness that possessed my father to take on the task of planting a vineyard.  After reading this story, I too can see the reasons for the comment.  But having lived with him and possessing many of those same qualities that drove him to create a vineyard with his own hands, I understand that beyond the work there was a great feeling of satisfaction.  I can only imagine how he must have felt on those evenings when he would sit back in front of his fireplace and sip a glass of his wine.  For him it must have been priceless.