April-May Showers and Flowers
Joy & Sorrow, Thoughts & Prayers and Discovering the Good
Greetings my friends.
As corny as it may sound, you all have been on my mind. I wonder how you are weathering storms, and how you are stewarding the wide spaces of peace and plenty.
I know you care deeply about the world in front of and all around you. You see the beauty and radiance of all of life, what is tender, green, and growing. You also feel the sharpness and cruelty of what is so very sharp and cruel. And it weighs on you. This is real life.
I was told recently in a matter of a few sentence that an old friend of mine had 1. suffered a late-term miscarriage and 2. was close to a delivery date. My heart sank and leapt simultaneously. The devastation of death and the hope of life were true at the same time. I did not have to choose or cancel one over the other. I imagined my friend's grief and joy, and longed to sit with her in both. This too, is life.
Learning to hold joy and sorrow in balanced tension requires a fine tuning of our spiritual sensibilities. It takes the grit of endurance rooted in the wisdom that we do not endure in our own strength AND that our struggle ultimately is not against flesh or blood, but against spiritual forces in heavenly places, This life in the Spirit.
One thing I love about Jesus is that he never asks us to do what he hasn’t already done: The Man of Sorrows, for the joy set before him he endured the cross, making the way for us to follow, and as we do, we leave a trail of our discarded sorrows and cast off grave clothes.
This is eternal life.
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
- John Donne, Holy Sonnet X
Question: What is Spring? Growth in everything– Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, Grass and greenworld all together –Gerald Manly Hopkins, The May Magnificant
Discovering the Good
A little creek runs behind our house where leftover rain slips quietly through the oak and sweetgum leaf mold. The space between the creek and lawn is a matted and dense tangle of ivy that chokes out native forest plants, creeping up trees, blurring and erasing the bark and shape of limbs, turning them into misshapen lumps of green ivy. It advances up and penetrates the lawn, wiping out the grass. —Uprooting and Unreaping What Was Sown, Courtney Dunkerton
In April 2022, I wrote a short essay on my battle with English ivy choking the little bit of “forest” I stewarding. (Link here.) Well, that battle continues, but not without some sweet successes. The photo above shows a swath of the happiest spring treasures, mayapples, also known as American Mandrake, Devil’s Apple, Duck’s Foot, Hog Apple, Indian Apple, Indian Apple Root, American Mandrake, Raccoonberry, Umbrella Leaf, Wild Lemon! I am completely enamored by them and each year they are covering more ground as the ivy recedes!
Other discoveries include the lovely Cranefly orchid (see photo). Underneath all that ivy, sprang four separate patches of the North Carolina native orchid. There are ferns, carex and other native grasses forming thick mats on the banks of the creek, slowing the erosion. I’m slowly learning their names, and when I do, you know I’ll share it with you.
If you’d like to learn more about NC native orchids, click here.
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
– G.K. Chesterton Illustrated London News, July 16, 1910
What Manner of Kingdom?
Content warning:if you are sensitive to being held accountable, this sections is not for you.
Some of us are going through a particular type of relational pain connected with who are and who are not MAGA/Project 2025 loyalists within the evangelical churches. It is often said that most Americans are decent and reasonable, just living their life disinterested in political sides. What a lovely world that must be.
When I say relational pain, I mean the loss of trust and warmth between people who have history together. I am also thinking about the many who suffer at the hands of family, circles of faith, or the ones who hold power in the land. I’m thinking of he exiled, the shunned, and anyone who is held in suspicion when they care to show empathy to the “wrong” crowd.
Unfortunately, right now, there are many who exist in a dehydrated red and blue two-dimensional world, devoid of curiosity, and constantly aggrieved by the “undeserving others.” They retain long lists of imaginary or abstracted enemies, live poised to believe the worst about “them” and very best about “us,” and are at peace with berating, reviling, accusing and slandering entire groups of humans. These folks are consumed with political ideologies that degrade, imprison, and impoverish, who consider empathy a political strategy or a feminist plot to take over, and who spit bible verses like swords generally at women.
Such people are used to commenting on everything especially people’s motives and intentions. They are especially gifted at knowing what is or what isn’t “biblical.” Let me explain.
When Jesus explained to his disciples that he had to suffer and die in Jerusalem, Peter rebuked him for saying such crazy things, but Jesus clapped back calling him Satan, saying he was putting barriers to Jesus completing his mission.
“You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”1
It wasn’t just being unspiritual, it was rejecting wholesale the idea that the Messiah had to suffer. The disciples expected to keep riding the Jesus Wave to the happy end where they are all ruling over their enemies together. He did not understand that the Christ, the Messiah was the Suffering Savior. It wasn’t about ruling in power. It was about redeeming in death.
So when Jesus’ time had finally come, he set his face toward Jerusalem, sending runners ahead. A Samaritan village did not receive him (possibly due to religious and/or ethnic differences.) His disciples, James and John, were furious and blurted out: Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”
Again, Jesus:
“You do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human but to save them.”2
The Jesus who was about to go to the cross to cover the debt for all the sins of the world shows and tells his followers that the life of obedience is meekness and sacrifice. The way to the cross was suffering and non retaliation. The manner and marks of the Kingdom of God was service, suffering if need be and non retaliation. The Kingdom of God most certainly not a kingdom that requires swords, battle flags or colonizing.
Despite marching orders from the entrenched and aggrieved religious folks, who know not what spirit they are of, Jesus who tells us what his kingdom is like. Let’s sit at his feet, learn his vibe and wait on him for what is good as we speak and act for the good of humanity.
Dive deep, immerse yourself in the fresh bright clear spring of the Holy Spirit. Refresh yourself and receive that peace that passes all natural understanding.
Jesus…went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. —Matthew 5:1-12
Thoughts and Prayers
Consider:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. James 2:14-17
Go in peace; keep warm, etc is a performative wish cast upon the air. It is Thoughts & Prayers that doesn’t seek, work, or wait for the good. A faithful intercessor commits to seeing good happen as long as the need exists.
Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Hebrews 13:3
Our imagination is called on to put ourselves in the shoes of the suffering. What happens when we are mistreated? Do we pray? Yes! Do we seek action? Of course! What are thoughts and prayers to us? Kind gestures, for sure, but not a commitment to join us in the trenches.
There is a kind of prayer that moves mountains. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. I preach to myself—the more I love, the more invested I am in seeing oppression and suffering alleviated which requires much more than lip service.
He who Answers Prayer is knocking.
Matthew 16:21-23
