Signposts

After a long, trying winter, today I finally got back into the woods today for a beautiful walk by the river.  I noticed that the mountain bikers had recently repainted the blazes on the trees.  I know the trail well, but there are places where bikes have made alternate paths, so it felt good to have strong, clear blazes to follow.  After all, it had been a while since I'd walked the trail.

And I was thinking about how we always need signposts in life, even when we're travelling down a road we've been down before.  I remember as a child, on the familiar trip to our summer home, I always looked for the same office building along Route 128 with the mirrors along its roof.  When I saw it, I knew we were headed to New Hampshire.  There were other landmarks along the 2 1/2 hour route, each one assuring me that we were getting closer to our destination.  This reminds me how each year during Lent, we hear the same weekly prayers and consider the same readings, and then during Holy Week, we participate in the same rituals each year.  The familiar words and liturgies are like signposts, like blazes, assuring us that we're on track and that we're moving closer to the promise of Easter.

Signposts also remind us that others have travelled this path before us.  The blazes on the trees in the woods tell me that I'm not the only one that cares about and travels on this woodland trail.  It is wonderful that someone took the time to make it possible for me to venture forth into the woods that first time with blazes to lead me.  If no one marked the trail, people who've never been there before would not be able to learn the way.  So, marking the trail is an important responsibility.  If those of us who love the trail don't create trailmarkers, no one but us will be able to enjoy it, and once we're gone, the path will no longer exist.

The same is true for church. Those of us who have a strong connection with church no longer need blazes to find our way here. We don't need signposts to find our way around the building and we don't need instructions in the bulletin about how to follow the liturgy. But if we care about church enough, we'll want it to be for others, not just ourselves. So we need to create clear blazes for those who are less familiar with the way. If we tend to our signposts, just like the mountain bikers tend the blazes in the woods, the path can become a favorite journey for others yet to come.

Today on the trail was one of those times I was strongly reminded that the most important people for the church are the people who haven't found their way there yet.  (Just like it's frequently repeated that the newcomer is the most important person in a 12 step meeting.)  We're not in the business of creating a club for insiders.  We're called to go out into the world and to put bright and clear blazes on the trees everywhere we go.  Or or maybe more accurately, we're called to be living, walking blazes ourselves - so that who we are and what we do can help show the way for people who haven't found the way yet. 

Following the Star

The three kings arrived in our creche at church this morning.  And I am looking forward to using those kings as my mentors in 2011.  Why?  A few reasons:

1. They noticed the world around them and noticed things they wouldn't have expected.

It's easy to just go through life assuming things are the way I think they are.  But if I can be like those wise kings, I will keep my eyes and my mind open to things I'm not expecting.  In their case, it was a star that did not conform to any of their charts or expectations.   I have no idea what surprises I'm in for this year, but I hope I'll welcome them with as much openness and curiosity as the kings had.

2. They were willing to go a long way to find what they were looking for.

Sometimes I can put things on a back burner when they might take a lot of effort or seem incovenient for me.  But if its something that really needs doing, I need to pack up my camel and get going.  When the kings knew something important was happening, they packed up and went across whole continents to reach their goal.

3. They followed.

The kings did not know where that unusual star would lead them.  They only knew that they were being led to something important.  Sometimes I don't move until I know where I'll end up.  This year, I'll try to start my day like those kings - asking for direction and then following.  I want to spend my days with eyes, ears, heart and mind open to follow God's call.

4. They were willing to change direction

Sometimes I can get a goal in mind and force my way forward toward it in the way that seems best to me.  But the kings didn't do that.  They listened, discerned and just followed the star where it led, even though it might not have made sense to their educated brains and even thought they had no idea where they'd end up.  And they were also open to the need to go home by a different way than they'd come.  They were not stubborn about the right way to do things and were willing to change course.

5. They were generous

The kings gave of their gifts and resources lavishly to Christ.  A little baby born to a poor couple in a stable.  God, I just want to at least remember to buy cereal for the food pantry every week.  And I want to be a really good sharer.

At our church we each get a gift from the three kings - a special word or phrase for the year.  My phrase was "being childlike."   I took this to mean having a beginner's mind.  And I wonder if that's the very thing I admire in these three kings so much - a very wise openness to the new and unexpected things God is always doing and a willingness to respond by following along with trust.  I pray I really take this special gift to heart in 2011.

Abundance

 I never shared the pictures of my late garden, taken at the end of September.  Here are the collards, carrots, beets and nasturtiums.  The cabbages were already gone.  The trellis in back was covered with cucumbers and winter squash earlier in the season.

Here are some of the red peppers ripening.  I've got to say, I don't think I've ever tasted a pepper before.  Fresh from the garden, these were as juicy and as sweet as apples.

This is one of the thousands of morning glory blooms that sprang from one seed, planted on the edge of the tomatoes.  I figured the morning glory would climb the tomato vines and they did!  It took until late fall for them to begin to bloom, and then they were amazingly vigorous. 

This picture does not do justice to the amount of amazing tomatoes we got - both round and plum.  The green ones I picked at the end of the season are still ripening into juicy, delicious fruit on the kitchen windowsill today.

Here are just a couple of the Asian yard long beans.  They really were a yard long, and they had a firm texture and a nutty taste.  Only two or three beans were enough for a meal!  In the background is the already cleared bed that held 48 corn plants that actually yielded great silver queen corn, but we had to fight the worms for it.

The garden was more abundant than I had dreamed it would be, but not in the ways I'd imagined.  I had more cucumbers than I knew what to do with from only two plants until they mysteriously all turned soft and yellow and died.  But they were great while they lasted.  My winter squash vines took off like a shot and grew hundreds of blossoms.  In the end only two of the blossoms developed into a squash - the rest just fell off.  I had more tomatoes than I expected and frankly, I didn't expect any corn at all - but I actually had some!  It felt like a real accomplishment.  The carrots were thick and straight and beautiful, and the beets were big and round, but the cilantro died and the melon never sprouted.  I didn't get the greens I'd hoped for.  The collards, grown from young plants produced well all summer, but the kale, spinach, chard and lettuce I planted from seed really didn't grow much at all.  That was disappointing, since my main reason for wanting a garden was for greens.  But the peppers and the fresh parsely and basil made up for it.  They were much better than I could ever have imagined.

Sometimes you can fall into thinking that abundance means having it all.  But my garden this year reminded me that true abundance - the God give kind - is not the same as getting everything you want.  True abundance is in the awareness that you've been given a blessing, and it often comes in unexpected ways, and what you don't get only makes you love what you do get all the more.  



Overconsumption

My neighbor and I went out to breakfast together recently, and she ordered a pancake special called "One is Enough," and this is what she got.  Wow!  That was the biggest pancake I had ever seen (the picture really doesn't do it justice - it is very thick as well as wide!)  She said it was delicious, but of course she couldn't finish it even half of it.  My first thought was that I had to bring the boys to this place because Carl, in particular, is a pancake fanatic.  But you know, who really needs that big a pancake?    

Christmas is coming and this weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year, and American consumerism is at its ugliest.  We are all like kids in a candy store (or Carl in a pancake shop) and we just want more and more cool stuff.  Why have a stack of two pancakes when you can have a gorgeous stack of 5 or 6?   Why have a regular cell phone when you can get a smart phone?  Why have a regular TV, when you can get an HD flat screen?  I heard that in certain places, people were camping out in front of stores on Tuesday in preparation for Black Friday.   They were camping out in front of some big box store right through Thanksgiving Day.  

My family has moved 5 times in the last 5 years.  We haven't been any place long enough to accumulate much, and each time we move, we get rid of LOTS of extraneous stuff.  Yet each time, I am still amazed and appalled by how much stuff we still drag around with us.  My parents didn't have this much stuff.  Their parents, who immigrated from Sweden, didn't lug along anywhere near that much stuff.  Old houses have tiny closets because that was all they needed.  And they didn't rent storage units, either. 

I was just listening to an economist on NPR, talking about our national debt and deficit.  She said that the problem is that Americans have increasingly become "overconsumers."  We have lived beyond our means for a very long time.  She said that unless we learn to consume less we will not be able to maintain a sustainable economy.  Overconsumers.  Hmmm.  I thought immediately of the size of that pancake.  (not to mention the amount of food I ate on Thursday!)

I have been considering the issue of our society's unsustainability in many areas lately.  The U.S. uses most of the world's resources.  We eat ourselves silly.  We build acres of 5000 square foot houses with 3 and 4 car garages.  We heat and air condition all those houses and fill all those cars with gas.  And, I am sorry to say, we also have a church on just about every street corner, each one with its own furnace to fill, roof to repair and staff to pay.  All you have to do is look at global warming, increasing obesity, the mortgage default and bankruptcy rates and the rate of decline and closure of churches to know that we are behaving in unsustainable ways and things have got to change.

We are in a transitional place in history in our country.  We know we need to change things but we don't yet know how.  We know the future needs to be different, but we're still clinging to familiar habits.  We know many of the things we do aren't good for us, but we keep doing them anyway, unsure of what a future without them would be like.  This reminds me a lot of the kinds of stories I hear in 12 step meetings. 

And I guess I'm thinking about unsustainability in the month of December in my own home.  And I am praying for the courage to change.  Am I going to spend more money than I have to get stuff to go under the tree that gets enjoyed for a day or a week and then gets stored in a closet?  Do I have to buy stuff this Christmas or can we find a different way to show God's love to each other?  All I know is what we've always done.  What would a different kind of Christmas be like? 

Well, I'm not going to solve our country's issues of unsustainability myself this season.  But I can take some little steps toward change.  I've decided I don't need to fill the stockings with fun little items that last a short time, but then fill the landfill with more plastic.  In fact, I'm thinking twice about buying anything made of plastic lately.  I'm thinking about giving my kids an experience for Christmas (like a family trip) instead of giving stuff.  I'm thinking about walking to the grocery store when I need a few things instead of jumping in the car.  It's only 1/2 mile away!  And I'm turning off lights all over the place.

And I'm praying.  Praying that God takes my life and my will and turns me toward sanity.  I want to become entirely ready to be made new and to welcome healing for my - and my society's - unsustainable ways.

Invention

The boys pedal power a sky ride

Last weekend my family and I went to the NYC "Maker Faire," which I'm having a hard time describing to people.  The closest I've gotten is that it's a fair of people who enjoy tinkering with the latest technology and who care about solving problems with innovation.  There were some people who shared some very serious and innovative models for green agriculture and energy.  There were other people shared some pretty quirky inventions like human powered carnival rides made entirely of recycled bikes.  There was some guy that spent 13 years building a life sized Mousetrap game (remember the plastic board game with the marble?) with scrap metal and bowling balls.  At the end, instead of a cage falling down on the mouse, a 10 ton safe that was suspended on a crane fell on a taxi cab.  And I also have to mention the two guys in lab coats who put on a Diet Coke and Mentos demonstation with 108 liter bottles of coke spewing soda into the air all at once.  

Two of the fantastical chariots created for the chariot race.

 There were also a whole bunch of computer geeks there.  These were people deeply engaged in "Hackerspace," who talked so matter of factly about robotics that I felt I'd stepped out of the world I know and found myself in another dimension.  They were speaking another language I had never heard (including words unfamiliar to me, like "hackerspace" and "arduino").  The thing that most amazed me were the people there demonstrating their 3D printers.  These things actually take a CAD image from your computer and create a three dimensional object, either solid or hollow - right in front of your eyes.  You can already buy a simple 3D printer, called a "Makerbot," for under $700.  Honestly, it made me feel I had actually walked into the future already.  Imagine what life will be like soon: "Oh, darn, the handle broke off of the toaster.  Wait, I'll just print a new one on my makerbot..."    I can't remember ever being around so many people who knew so much about something I'd never even knew existed before.  I was completely out of my own element, which, as a person who can usually feel at home just about anywhere, was a unique sensation.  Kind of scary.  Kind of exciting.  Certainly intriguing. 

Steve pointed out that many of the people there were probably MIT grads who hold down serious tech jobs by day, but who enjoy serious tinkering in their spare time.  Obviously many of them were brilliant.  And some of them were also, well, a bit odd.  I mean, how many people do you know that rig up a recycled bike to look like a golden trojan horse and ride it around for fun - or, for that matter, spend 13 years constructing a life sized Moustrap game?  But what was so wonderful about this event was that everyone there was full of unusual ideas - some recycled from the past to be expressed anew for today - some new ideas based on new technologies and understandings.  They were curious people, engaged people - inventive people!  These were not people who sit around for hours just passively watching  other people's ideas on TV.  These people were fully alive with invention - fully engaged with creation!  They were not consumers, but co-creators of the future.



Bo powers a kinetic sculpture made of old toys and recycled objects



The Maker Faire would not be everyone's cup of tea, I suppose.  I imagine my mother's reaction would be to look slightly uncomfortable and say something like, "Well, those people are just way out."  But I enjoyed being among them, even when I couldn't understand them, because it felt exciting to be on the edge of the new - on the edge of change - in the presence of people who are actively engaged with major paradigms right as they are shifting.  Most of us spend our time well back from that edge, watching it (or judging it) from a distance.  But I thought it was wonderful to be able to spend the day with a group of mad inventors not only willing to look out over the edge, but willing to participate in God's ongoing process of creation.

So since last weekend, I've added something new to my prayers:  God, take me out of my own element today and open my eyes and my heart and my mind to something new and unfamiliar.  Show me the wonder of your creation, and make me inventive enough to engage it with enthusiasm as your co-creator.  Amen. 

Bo co-pilots this inventor's RC plane made from recycled insulation