Northern Lights behind the Clouds

 Walking the dogs on this overcast New Year’s morning, it struck me that if it had been possible to see the aurora borealis here in Ohio last night that, as I had mused it would, the clouds had blocked the view. Behind the gray, behind the damp, however, curtains of red and green light may have been dancing just beyond the veil.  As if on cue, my eye was drawn upward and a hole appeared in the cloud cover giving a glimpse of beautiful blue.  

If we let the adumbration of the clouds command our perspective, we only get a portion of the picture. My thoughts flicker to 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”  Listening to the BEMA reboot yesterday, Marty gave an illustration provided by his teacher, Ray Vanderlaan.  I’ll paraphrase it here.  Imagine the room you are in right now - and you are outside, looking through a window into the room. All you can see of that room is what you see from the window. Imagine you’ve stood there for 20 years and everything you know about that room is what you see from that window.  Then one day, you move, you shift… and you find yourself looking at the room from the doorway on the other side.  It’s the same room, but, oh my gosh!  You had no idea there was a piano in there. It was obscured from your vision. You are now seeing things about that room that you never saw before. It’s the same room, but the angle has given you a different view.  Was your old view of the room wrong? No, it was just incomplete.  

Marty and Brent used this to describe the differences between Eastern and Western thought (and remember, the Bible was written to an Eastern culture with Eastern perspectives). This doesn’t mean you throw out all of your Western identity, but you need to be humble, you need to walk circumspectly.  But I digress…

Last night, the aurora borealis may very well have been visible in Ohio and I might have seen it if my view of the sky had not been concealed by clouds. My inability to see did not make the protons and electrons  hitting the earth’s magnetic field stop.  Whatever was happening in the thermosphere as the charged particles blew in on the solar wind didn’t “not” happen because I wasn’t able to behold it. 

It’s this mindset that I wish to cultivate in 2025 and onward. My limited perspective does not define the geometry of the universe. My view from a mountain top does not diminish the view of the valley dweller, both are incomplete in defining the world. A marvelous concept is that there are boundless angles from which to view this room and explore this life. A paradigm shift is nothing to fear, but instead opens up a world of adventure.

Some might call it optimism, I call it realism.  Up behind the cloudy Ohio skies is a spacious blue expanse.  The light may be dimmed, but the brightness still shines.  When my cares are heavy below, my thoughts can have security in what is above; I carry the knowledge of the Light and possibility within me.

Retrospect 2024

2024 breathes its last sigh tonight. Time to look over our shoulders and review what was. It’s also traditionally the time to use that review to contemplate and prepare for changes in the upcoming year.  

Each election year continues to highlight how divided we have become, but this year, there were two profound events that showed how united we could be.  Here in northeastern Ohio we had a total solar eclipse pass directly over us in April and months later experienced the beauteous aurora borealis. Schools handed out eclipse glasses and shut down for the day; libraries and cities handed out glasses and threw watch parties.  Our streets, parks and fields were filled with people reveling together in the event. People were smiling, laughing, and all looking expectantly in the same direction.  Up.  We peered through our eclipse glasses in awe and wonder.  October came around and in Ohio so many were going to the dark places to look up again. Collectively rejoicing in beauty. Perhaps it was harder to enjoy - to see it best you had to look through your camera’s lens -- but many of us were united in the endeavor of seeing radiant colors dancing on our horizon. 

Shared delight is powerful.  It could be healing if we would  let it. What if we were to seek out our commonalities, the things that gave us all joy or inspiration? What if we were to seek out the good in the skies and in each other? What if our perspective changed and instead of thinking of ourselves, we thought of experiencing beauty as a whole. Maybe we seek those dark places and hope for light to dance. Perhaps we can pool our individual lights and collaborate together, compile all of our lights, to make beauty happen - not just in the skies, but down here below. 

How - that is the essential question. How can we take the excitement and wonder of celestial happenings and direct them to the terrestrial - and in a way that unifies, does not tribalize? This year a terrible hurricane devastated parts of the southern US.  In that, there was a glimpse of the possibility of unified light doing something magnificent.  Thousands of volunteers from multiple organizations mobilized to bring aid to the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia.  They came from all over the country - from states like Idaho and Maine, California, Ohio and New York -  to clean out flooded homes, tarp roofs, build housing, and deliver supplies. Volunteers reached on on all levels to meet physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. The message was: you matter, you are not alone. 

Orson Welles once said something that I have serious problems with, “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”  While we have our own essential self, we are indeed part of the collective from the first breath we breathe. We are reliant on others to keep us alive, to guide us through the frailty of infanthood and onto maturity. Yes, sometimes that guidance sucks and isn’t all that it could or should be, but humans are communal beings. We need each other. We need togetherness. We need to help each other in our frailties and serve each other with our strengths. Screw Welles’ cynical slant - love and friendship are not an illusion; on the contrary, they are everything that is real and right about this existence. If we could stop being so obsessed in our self-service but instead turn our eyes, our hands, our hearts  outward, we could become a truly lovelier version of ourselves and in turn, collectively create a lovelier version of our world. I see a lovelier version where it's less about “mine” and more about “ours.” Where we take care of each other and throw off grasping, greedy patterns in exchange for lifting up our neighbor. 

In 2024, let’s truly love our neighbor as ourselves.  Let’s look up at the skies together in wonder and look down over the earth we share in charity, generosity, and true brotherhood.

Swimming in a sea of love...

 “Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us. Just the Biblical notion of absolute forgiveness, once experienced, should be enough to make us trust and seek and love God.”

― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“The advantage of those on the further journey is that they can still remember and respect the first language and task. They have transcended but also included all that went before. In fact, if you cannot include and integrate the wisdom of the first half of life, I doubt if you have moved to the second. Never throw out the baby with the bathwater. People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels.”

― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Quirks...

At some point or another
We get the urge to find ourselves
Probably because someone or some article tells us that we need to
Find our true self - but wait
You are your self
Every day you wake up with your self
Your true self
Your authentic self that makes mistakes
That has successes
That makes decisions, big and small
All day, every day
You are not a fake self
You are a real self
With all of your quirks
With all of your sins and saving graces
Every action
Every reaction
All part of the evolving process
Which is you
Truly you

A feeling like I could be someone...

 While I’m sure there are people that don’t like the song “Fast Car”  by Tracy Chapman (and recently covered by Luke Combs) or feel it is overplayed ---  but I really do.  Over the years, myriads of people have written to her about how they identified with it. I know that Pat and I certainly did - complete with all the challenges and mistakes that youth makes when it latches on to a not-very-well-planned dream. 

Anyway, lately I have sort of become fixated on the part where she is singing about driving with her partner, his arm around her and she sings, ““And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged/I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone.”  How many of us feel we are “someone” because of a relationship or the type of job we have, on our education or on our level of wealth.  And how many times do people who are missing one or more of these ingredients feel like they aren’t “someone” because of the missing elements?  And how many times does society, or part of society, make “others” out of them and make them feel like they aren’t someone??? That they don’t belong?

Every single person is Imago Dei - bearing the image of God, filled with creative abilities, absolutely and undeniably embodied with value and worth.  Here we are in this political season and I’m constantly seeing human beings reduced to inconsequence.  This week I have seen so many nasty memes about “not giving our hard earned money to lazy people who didn’t work for it” or “help veterans and not immigrants.”  It’s so easy to lump people into faceless masses, isn’t it? But they aren’t faceless - each and every category of people we hate on and want to deprive is made of of individuals who are Imago Dei. To assume that each person who receives public assistance is “lazy” and “on the take,” or that veterans want us to spit in the face of families trying to escape violence, oppression, persecution or poverty.  Most American veterans worth their salt FIGHT for human dignity and don’t ask to be held up as a hammer to crush the hurting parts of humanity.

I want my students to KNOW, absolutely know that they have value - even if they screw up, make terrible mistakes. I want them to know that regardless of what society tells them they are missing, than they are valuable and worthy of dignity and respect. They are SOMEONE already.  Sadly, I see people so battered down by life and lack, that initiative can be squeezed out of them - and this devaluing of humanity and lumping it into groups to hate makes me frustrated, angry, and…determined to try, try, try to shine light on this. (Those who claim Christ should feel shame for spreading these).

I’ve rapped with gangsters, I’ve sat and spoken to immigrants, legal and illegal, and heard stories that should make people wake up - but one of the most profound moments I had was in downtown Akron.  A raggedy old man was out with his sign, panhandling for help.  Pat had died a year before. I’d been through some major challenges and personal hells. Anyhow, I felt led to give him what I had (and no, I don’t give a damn how he spent it - that’s not my business after I give a gift).  He started to speak to me and ask me how I was -- really ask me, look in my eyes. Now, I’d been crying earlier and my eyes were still puffy. That man prayed for me with genuine concern and treated my hardships, which weren’t nearly as profound as his own, as if they were monumental.  He blessed me in a way that has impacted me eternally.  

If you are posting memes hating ANY group, I hope you get the opportunity to sit down, eye to eye, human being to human being, and look for the light of Imago Dei. Desmond Tutu said that “If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Whether you hate someone for rational or irrational reasons, you need to connect with them on a human level before any progress can be made -- and until then, remember, each is a someone.

Getting stopped by trains...

 My cheap thrill is getting stopped by trains. Eyes usually roll when I say that. What kind of weirdo am I, to like being delayed?  Am I one of those train-spotters - one of those birders of locomotives, trying to build my engine life list? No, not me. When I'm stopped by a train, I'm a child again. Overcome by the marvel of the machinery, its immensity, watching it fly before my eyes as I try to count the cars.  Is it fast or slow? Are there more cars than last time? How many engines?  There is nothing I can do about it. The bars came down and the train is coming down the tracks.  I have no control over it and that is an inexplicably wonderful release. I can abandon the need for efficiency and all of my time constraints. Again, the train is out of my control --- and isn't there a wild sort of freedom in that?  To know that there are things that are simply out of my hands with the small exception that I can decide how I deal with them.  Will I curse in impatience?  That's a resounding "no" for me. I will relish the moment of knowing that there are things that I don’t have a say so in. There is power in relinquishing power, in recognizing a poverty in actionable choices - the train and its schedule are beyond my sphere of influence. That's alright by me. I'm not going to be bothered and then, when those bars rise, I'm not going to rush. Wherever I'm going to, I'll say matter of factly, "Sorry I'm late. I was stopped by a train."

Say, look at that cool graffiti! 

Night Sweats... an answer to a question about inspiration

Today I was asked how I am inspired, what motivates my poetry.  I replied that it isn't so much motivation, it's more like sweat. You don't ask your body to perspire, it just does. You exert or become overheated, maybe you are slammed by stress and so your body cools you.  Poetry is the sweat of emotions and it has no choice but to flow and cool you when the feelings are too strong.

Night sweats

Turn down the heat

The words can’t sleep!

Bursting to the surface

A thousand glands of feelings

Triggered

Too much to control and so…

Thoughts connect to feeling

The dam is breached

Escaping my pores

Words flow

Break free

Pouring through my skin

Coursing down to my fingertips

Out, out --  onto the page

Organic they rush forth

Emotions spilling

Emanating from within

Tangled in language

Words for grief, for passion, for anger, for joy

Wet and salty they take their place

Syllables and sentences

I write release

I write and then… comes peace

I pull up the blanket

Sigh 

    and fall back asleep

2/17/24