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Seeds

           “A sower went out to sow.”

           Simple, solitary maybe, quiet, unremarkable. And it doesn’t get much more exciting as Jesus continues, because it’s pretty predictable – some of the seeds fell on good ground, others on rocks, on a busy path, among weeds. Some of the seeds sprang up, some flourished, some withered away, some became food for birds - The End. The disciples thought, “this can’t be the whole story,” and asked Jesus why he didn’t just say what he meant, why talk in riddles?

           Jesus told them it was a metaphor. As happens in many cultures, seeds are symbols for words, ideas; the seeds are the message of the kingdom.

           Just as no man is an island, no word stands alone. So it is with this one – for anyone familiar with the word it will call up ideas of planting, harvesting, and growing; of baking and eating. Seeds also bring to mind more abstract concepts, like reproduction, creativity, vitality, and far-reaching consequences. In addition to these common associations, every individual speaker has unique experiences with seeds—for example, playing on a sunny June day with brother and sisters in a Nebraska farm wagon under a stream of freshly-harvested wheat that’s pouring out of the chute of a combine. Seeds.

           Among my other early experiences with seeds, though, is one that’s common to hundreds of schoolchildren: the bean. You fill a paper cup with dirt, push the dry bean down into the center with your finger, add water, and behold—a little green loop soon appears, then one end of the loop lifts out of the dirt, leaves unfold, more and more leaves and … I don’t remember mine ever surviving long enough to actually produce more bean seeds, but I have seen that happen in a garden.

          Our children did the same botanical exercise when they were in elementary school, and not too long ago when we visited our daughter there was a paper cup on the windowsill in her kitchen, with ‘Simon’ written on the side, and the familiar figure of a bean plant sprouting within. So the tradition continues, and no wonder, because no matter how old and familiar it is, there’s no less wonder associated with the idea that a dry shriveled thing, hidden and buried, can burst out of the ground and stretch and flourish.

          Ordinarily we aren’t awed by seeds; we scatter them to the wind, grind them up, eat them. We keep them in jars on a shelf in the shed and if we don’t get around to planting them this year, we’ll remember next year. Seeds are ordinary—that’s why Jack’s mother was so upset when he traded her cow for a few beans.

          A giant sequoia seed is tiny; you could easily hold a hundred cupped in your hand. A coconut seed is big—in fact, it’s a coconut. I’ve seen women carrying a just-sprouted coconut tree, still attached to the nut, on top of their heads on the way to market. Seeds are miraculous—you don’t know what amazing thing will come from them. That’s why Jack was willing to trade his mother’s cow for a few beans.

          The prophet Isaiah compares God’s word to rain, watering the earth, making it flourish so it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. Jesus may have been thinking of this passage when he told the parable of the sower, thinking those who listened would surely catch the connection, seeds being scattered, watered, springing up, living and increasing, nourishing people—and birds—and also, producing more seed.

          Because, there’s life in the kingdom message: quiet potential, ordinary and miraculous, capable of spreading throughout the world. As Isaiah says, God’s word will not return to him empty. In the end, there will be a crop.

          Whoever has ears, let them hear.

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Past, present, and future

        October is a transitional time, when the boundary between the seasons is diminished, when we experience both warmth and cold, sun and rain. It’s an appropriate time for All Saints’ Day, coming up this week, when Christians acknowledge that there are profound connections between the Church Triumphant – those who have died and are with the Lord, and the Church Militant – those of us who still struggle in this world, on earth. It’s also an appropriate time for Halloween, which is coming up this Wednesday. Many people who’ll be celebrating are likely not aware that the word ‘Halloween’ has Christian origins; it comes from ‘All Hallows’ Eve,’ the night preceding All Saints’ Day – also known as All Hallows’ Day. As with New Years’ Eve and Christmas Eve, All Hallows’ Eve is a time of anticipation and waiting. It’s a holiday when the borderline between life and death, heaven and earth, seems less defined.

        The various scripture readings this morning seem particularly in tune with the season, showing the timeless nature of God’s plans; how God, who deals with his people past, present, and future, nonetheless inhabits eternity and is himself outside the constraints of time.

        Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah (31:7-9), the Lord promised to save his people, the remnant of Israel, and to gather them from the ends of the earth; he said that people who had traditionally been excluded would be included – that among them would be the blind and the lame, that they would come with weeping, and pray as he brought them back.

        Then Psalm 126 says the Lord did indeed bring back the captives to Zion, and as they came their mouths were filled with laughter. Can you imagine that they might have felt a connection with those long-gone people to whom Jeremiah spoke God’s promise?  As they returned, they prayed for God to restore their fortunes in the land, that those who had gone out weeping would return with a harvest, and with songs of joy.

        Then in the gospel reading (Mark 10:46-52), there’s the blind man; Bartimaeus, son of Timeaeus, calling out to Jesus, son of David, to have mercy on him. He keeps calling out, though the people around try to stop him. Maybe he, too, is thinking about Jeremiah, who had said that the blind would be included with the rest, as they returned from the ends of the earth. And Jesus calls Bartimaeus, and heals him, and he follows Jesus along the road to Jerusalem – where, as it says earlier in the chapter, Jesus had told his disciples that he was going to lay down his life.

        And, as we heard from the letter to the Hebrews (7:23-28), the reason Jesus gave himself up was to pay for sin, once for all. And Hebrews goes on to say that Jesus is now exalted above the heavens, always living to intercede for his people, and – here we cycle back to Jeremiah’s prophecy – that he is able to save completely those who come to God through him.

        There’s a continuing narrative here: restoration, healing, a harvest for those who sow seeds and weep. It encourages us, to remember the stories of those who went before. In this life we still live on All Hallows’ Eve, waiting and anticipating; we’re not there yet, but we too look forward to a time of restoration and harvest with all the saints.

         We don’t understand all this; we see through a glass darkly, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But we trust that Jesus, the one who called us as he called Bartimaeus, and healed us as he healed him, is the one we follow, as Bartimaeus did, the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

read October 28, 2018 as the meditation at Valley Covenant Church

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Water

        I often thought while I was in Haiti that my everyday experience gave me a vivid appreciation of the imagery and stories of the Bible. It spoke in an immediate way, more even than a trip to Israel years later. In Israel we encountered in person the geography, those places with long-familiar names – the Jordan river, the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jericho. But Israel is a developed country now, with paved roads that cars and tour buses can glide along. Israel has clean restrooms, running water, electrical power, supermarkets, advanced medicine, schools.

        The Haiti we knew almost forty years ago was rural, dry, and poor. Haitians led donkeys with rope halters alongside the rough dirt roads; they bought food in crowded markets held at crossroads once a week. They left for market on foot, before dawn, carrying baskets on their heads, to buy from vendors squatted next to cloths spread out in front of them that displayed whatever they were selling, be it fruit or vegetables or plastic sandals or baskets handmade from banana leaves, or live chickens. If you got change back in the market, the bills were often grimy from handling, or even from having been buried for safekeeping. If you bought a quantity of oranges, grain, or flour, the vendor would measure it in a tall metal canister called a mamit. It was only considered to be full after the vendor would shake the container, strike it on the ground so the contents would settle, and then pile more on top until a cone formed and spilled over the edges, and the mamit could hold no more. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

        The rural Haitians lived in two-room houses with dirt floors, outer walls built of plaster on hand-hewed wood, and roofs thatched with palm leaves – houses where bugs lived in the ceilings and it would have been easily possible to make a hole in the roof and pass a person through.

        They had no source of electricity except batteries, which powered the radios where they obtained news from anywhere farther away than their local community. They used oil lamps for light at night. The entertainment of choice was to get together and tell stories. There’s even a name for this – to bay odians. News of anything unusual or new in a community spread by word of mouth; people knew when a baby came, a neighbor died, a stranger was in the neighborhood – or even when someone was approaching the community on one of the mountain paths. If there was an accident, people would materialize from the surrounding area with offers of help, with tools, with water. A clinic or a church service or a funeral or a wedding was an event. If someone were to sit down on a hillside and start to tell stories, it’s not inconceivable that a large crowd would gather to listen, coming on foot on the dirt paths, dressed just as they were when they heard what was happening, with or without food or water.

        They lived with animals; they listened for the cock’s crow. They regarded dogs as necessary nuisances, who warned of intruders and cleaned up the area surrounding the house by eating whatever was dropped there. They knew which trees produced which fruits, and when various crops were in season. They understood that a poor person’s savings account resided in relationships with their friends; if you could help a friend out today they’d be inclined to help you someday in the future.

        So when I read the New Testament in Haiti, the milieu where Jesus lived and taught seemed very similar to the place I was living. And it was in Haiti that I began to really see and understand the context of Jesus’ time, and what his stories meant. This happened on many different occasions, but the one I’m relating now involves water.

        Just as there was no electricity in the rural houses, there was also no piped-in water. When people needed water at home, they had to walk to whatever water source was nearby, fill a pot, and carry it back to the house. This work was mostly done by women, often young girls, carrying jugs or buckets on their heads as they negotiated the roadsides or the rocky path, often uphill, back to where the water was needed.

        On the day I’m remembering, we had held a vaccination clinic in a market town, down the mountain from our hospital. A friend from the United States, a nurse, was visiting, and she took part in the clinic. I went along to interpret for her, so she could listen to the health lessons that were given as part of the clinic, and so she could talk to the mothers and the children she vaccinated.

        The clinic was held in a little church – dirt floor, wooden benches, people crowded together in the heat, inside and out. It was an event in itself and would have drawn a crowd in any case, but this was also a market day – so hundreds of people came, and we worked through the day with very few breaks. By afternoon we were as hot and tired and dusty as the rest of the crowd. Finally, the last baby was vaccinated, the supplies put away, the waiting room empty. After we closed the doors on the clinic, we walked across the road to bay odians with the nurse who had organized the clinic and lived in that little market village; because, if you’re in another town and have a friend there, it’s only right to visit her at home.

        We walked up the dirt path to her little house, and she motioned us to chairs she had set outside on the concrete porch. In front of the chairs, on the concrete, there were two plastic basins, filled with water that had been sitting in the sun during the day. I realized she had gone to the river that morning to fetch that water, probably taking two trips to get enough. She had each of us sit, and take off our shoes, and put our feet into a basin. She handed us soap and in that warm water we washed the dust from our feet. Then she emptied the dirty water from the pans, had us put our feet back in, and poured more water over them to rinse them off. Finally she held out a warm dry towel and we dried our clean, comforted feet.

        I don’t think I have ever at any other time been so grateful for the simple gift of soap and water. It wasn’t only the water, but all the things it signified: it was the expectation that we would visit her at home, the trips to the river, the planning in advance to let the water warm in the sun, even the use of the towel that had undoubtedly been washed by hand in that same river and sun-dried. It was knowing that this was a message of appreciation for joining in her event, for our work, for having come to her home and having shown concern for the community’s well-being.

        Jesus noticed when a host neglected to wash his feet, and he himself washed the feet of his disciples as one of his last acts of love for them. When I lived in Haiti those stories came alive, and still, when I come across the stories of footwashing, the image that always comes to mind for me is that simple Haitian porch, the plastic basins, the sun-warmed water and towel, the kindness of a friend, a benediction.

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Thin Places

          Last October we were walking in the central region of France, along the Dordogne river. It’s a long-inhabited part of the country; this is where the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux were discovered. At the same time, it’s an undeveloped region—in the sense we moderns have of the word “development.” The industrial revolution passed it by; there are no big cities or major highways. The biggest industry of the region is Bonne Maman—the company that makes those jams and jellies you find in the grocery store, in glass jars with red-checkered lids.

           The countryside is wild, with boar hunts, limestone cliffs and chestnut forests, old stone roofs, and shepherd huts built of stone. Maybe it was the time of year, the clear bright autumn in the high fields; or maybe the quiet of the surroundings, the time with friends and the distance from everyday life and place; but I had the pervasive sense of walking on the very border between heaven and earth, where I could reach out and touch either if I wanted.

          The people who lived there long ago had that same sense, I think. Several times we came across dolmens – slabs of stone, evidently put in place by humans, leaning on each other at the edge of the road or in an open space in a field. Ancient Celts, and later, Celtic Christianity, had the notion of “thin places,” where heaven comes closer than usual to earth. It’s interesting that they used stones to mark these places.

           A stone doesn’t think, it doesn’t move on its own, and it has no capacity for feeling. Yet there are places in the Bible where it seems to say that they can hear, speak, and even give birth - maybe to remind us that we don’t understand everything, and that we will do well to keep a little bit of humility about our human capabilities.

           At the end of the book of Joshua, when the people of Israel promised to serve the Lord, the God of Israel, and to have nothing to do with foreign gods, Joshua pointed to a rock and said, “See! This stone … has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.” Why the stone? I’m guessing because stones last a long time—certainly longer than the Israelites’ promise of faithfulness.

           When the Pharisees tell Jesus to rebuke his disciples for praising him at his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus brings up the subject of rocks, saying that if the crowd were to keep quiet, “the stones would cry out.” How can we understand this except that he means exactly what he says?

          Even stranger is John the Baptist’s pronouncement to the people coming for baptism that they shouldn’t pride themselves that Abraham is their father. “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham,” he said. Here again, I think that he really meant it—God created the universe from nothing; why not raise up children using some patient, unchanging, listening stones?

           Will we recognize it when the rocks bear witness? Given the fact that we understand very little of the language of the animals around us, who use a communication system with sounds at least vaguely similar to our own, how can we possibly understand when the rocks start to talk? What is their language going to be like—earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides? Or just the quiet, solid, enduring testimony of the dolmens in the lonely fields on the cliffs above the Dordogne?

          Throughout scripture, as one might expect in sacred writings, we encounter thin places where people sense the proximity of heaven. Psalm 29 recognizes the power of God in a storm that thundered over the waters, breaking the cedars, flashing with lightning. Isaiah “saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne.” For Nicodemus it was quieter. He came to Jesus at night – a time when the borders between this world and the next seem somehow easier to see across, and perhaps go across. He sensed that Jesus was someone who was able to connect heaven and earth. Jesus understood that Nicodemus was looking for mystery, because he responded with mystery. He told Nicodemus he had to be born of the Spirit, to enter the kingdom of God.

          Nicodemus didn’t understand, and I’m not sure any of us really does either, but I think that Jesus was hinting to Nicodemus about something that would soon take place. Peter – whose name Jesus gave him, and whose name means ‘rock’ – later wrote to the church that we are all living stones.

          Could it be that as living stones, we ourselves are markers of the ‘thin places’ of Celtic Christianity, places where heaven and earth meet? Might we be a testimony to the present world—children of Abraham, raised up from stones, born of the Spirit? Are we meant to be points of contact with the eternal, places where others may encounter and remember God’s mercy?

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Belief

It is a great mistake to think that deep religious belief can’t be highly rational, or to think that non-belief can’t be largely a matter of feeling and experience rather than reason. - Tim Keller, in An Evangelical Pastor On Reaching The Religiously Unaffiliated https://pocket.co/sMXlXS

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Where were you?

There are some days that tend to make us remember where we were and what we were doing: when we heard that Kennedy had been shot, when we heard about the Challenger explosion, when the Twin Towers fell.

Remembering where we were ties us not only to the event but also to each other; we were part of this; we went through it together. These things may have made us feel small and helpless, but at the same time we felt like part of a family, a fellowship of experience.                                                           

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Who marked off its dimensions?

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set?

or who laid its cornerstone –

while the morning stars sang together, and all the angels shouted for joy.

            ~ ~ ~

Will the wild ox consent to serve you?

Will he stay by your manger at night?

           ~ ~ ~

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?

Does the rain have a father?

Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?

           ~ ~ ~

Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?

Will he keep begging you for mercy?

Will he speak to you with gentle words?

Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?

No one is fierce enough to rouse him – who then is able to stand against me?

Who has a claim against me that I must pay?

Everything under heaven belongs to me.

These questions come from a passage near the end of the book of Job. Job has endured and is enduring great suffering, for no apparent reason. His friends have accused him rather than supporting him, and he turns to God for answers. But God’s answers seem, to say the least, a bit off-topic; God reminds Job of an event Job certainly didn’t witness or even hear about at the time – an event that he was intimately connected with and yet had no part in. God speaks of the beginning of creation, before the world was built – laying the earth’s very foundation. This is a thing we have difficulty picturing, but God is recalling it with great vividness. He didn’t just throw it out, he thought about it, marked off its dimensions, stretched out a measuring line, laid its cornerstone. This is an architect speaking, not a hurried, faceless manufacturer. He has a plan.

He goes on to talk about the vast ocean, and about the moisture of the earth in its various forms – snow, rain, hail, and ice. Then he points out a wild variety of animals and the mysterious ways they live and thrive, most with no apparent connection or use to Job or even to humanity other than that we may marvel at their existence – we certainly cannot control them.

It seems that he’s basically replying to Job’s urgent questions by saying, “there’s a lot you don’t know, Job.” Apparently if we want to be completely secure, we just have to trust that God does know.

One verse might stand out to us because of the present advent season. “Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Will he stay by your manger at night?”

When Jesus entered our world as a baby, it was the beginning of a new creation. God was giving the world a new start. This event wasn’t just thrown together; it had been planned for millennia – the measuring line stretched out, the cornerstone ready to be laid. As at the first creation, the morning stars rejoiced and the angels sang together. The animals were included; there was a manger.

And this time, if God asked later, “where were you when I laid the new foundation of the earth?” there were a few who could say, “I remember that night! I remember the angels…I remember running to the manger…I remember the star…” and they became part of a fellowship of experience, of hope and joy.

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A dwelling place for God

Not long ago we visited La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It’s a church-in-progress, a UNESCO world heritage site designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. There are cranes all around, lifting materials to scaffolds where craftsmen are still working high above the city. The pillars of the oldest façade seem to have been poured rather than erected; eventually there will be eighteen pointed spires clustered on top, making the whole building look somewhat like a huge sandcastle.

Inside, hundreds of visitors are walking, talking, looking around and taking pictures. Also in evidence are the voices, thumping, hammering, and scraping that tell you this is a construction site. Still, my most immediate impression on going inside the church was of glorious light. Sun was streaming through the western windows, red, yellow and orange, coloring the very air. The soaring white tree-like pillars that support the ceiling took on the bright hues of the windows, so that on one side of the sanctuary they were blue and green, on the other red and yellow.

This place has been under construction for over a hundred years. Gaudí’s original plans have been destroyed by anti-clerical rebels, Gaudí himself has died, and other people are directing construction. Building materials and techniques have changed. A metro tunnel has been dug almost beneath the doorstep of the basilica. But despite changes and opposition, the work of building goes on. When Gaudí was challenged about the amount of time it would take to complete the church he planned, he replied simply, “my client is not in a hurry.”

Being there, I thought about Jesus saying that he will build his church. Like the construction going on at La Sagrada Familia, Jesus’ work on his church continues across the years. There’s opposition, noise, scaffolding, curious visitors, workmen’s voices. But there is also beauty and light, and a sense of something lasting and worthwhile taking place. And mysteriously but truly, we are part of that building.

When Jesus promised to build his church, he said that Peter was a rock that the church would be built upon. Exactly what he meant by that has been a source of discussion for centuries, but Peter himself wrote not long afterward that all of us as believers are living stones, being built into a spiritual temple. Peter, at least, seemed to understand that Jesus meant to build the church out of people. Paul, also, wrote that believers are being built together into a dwelling place for God. Is this metaphor? What does it say about me?

Jesus wasn’t too impressed by the religious buildings of his time, so I don’t want to put too much importance on any building; La Sagrada Familia, that light-filled place, full of amazed people, the noises of building echoing around, can give only an inkling of what it means to be a church. But for at least a moment, that space-and-time creation did for me what Gaudí hoped it would do, and helped me see an eternal reality of which it is only a representation.

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There’s evidence that a beaver dam in California has been around since the sixth century

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I have always been drawn to America's vagrant nature, so well portrayed and celebrated in its best works of fiction. I believe that many of those who, like my family and me, migrated to America from all over the world can feel at home in it because it allows us both to belong and to be outsiders. It somehow encourages our vagabond self--befitting a nation that started its life by deliberately choosing to become an orphan.

Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination (Viking, 2014) p. 28

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homemade Christmas card for 2015

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"The whole day was like an avenue leading to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry, 'Now I know why I have been happy!' ...and all the time, the avenue is yesterday, that long approach to beauty." from Smith, D. "I Capture the Castle" (1948)

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Anybody who thinks the gospel of Jesus is simple should go back and take a look at it. "Love your neighbor." "Be ye perfect." "Resist not evil." "I and the Father are one." "Follow me." The only thing that's simple about the gospel is the language.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

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Laura suggests, "It merits publication in a journal, and not simply here at Language Log!"

I truly appreciate the sentiment, but Language Log has become my main focus of academic research. I can spend a few hours, days, or weeks on a post like this one, put it out and reach tens of thousands of readers instantly, and receive immediate feedback from the most knowledgeable people on earth, wherever they may be located. For a normal journal article, I would probably spend three to six months or more to write it, wait three to six months or more for the review process to be completed, then wait six months to eighteen months or more for actual printing and publication. All together, it often takes years to write and publish a journal article.

I have had a long career in which I have published hundreds of articles and reviews in all the major journals of my field and have published dozens of books from the best presses. But I can tell you that nothing is as intellectually thrilling as to write a Language Log post and receive comments from some of the smartest, best informed people in the world.

Times have changed, and I'm ever so grateful that I lived long enough to experience this new mode of sharing information and ideas.

( this was Victor Mair's (the author of the post) response to one of the comments on the post)

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Early spring morning on the Willamette - color photo, not retouched

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Of the great tallgrass prairies that once ran from central Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from western Indiana to eastern Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas, only two to three percent remain, much of it in remnants the size of Vincent Bluff or smaller. Even at Vincent Bluff, the tallgrass is found primarily on an east-facing slope, the rest being a typical (yet distinctive) Loess Hills blend of mixed- and short-grass species usually found farther west, as well as woodlands. Tallgrass prairie is, as biologist Daryl Smith has written, “the most decimated ecosystem in continental North America.” Perhaps the world.

—from the introduction to The Tallgrass Prairie Reader by John Price (ed.) University of Iowa Press, 2014.

 (Vincent Bluff is an urban prairie state preserve in the center of Council Bluffs)

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The Hidden Signature

We live in a world that seems to be trying to say something. Atheists call it “the appearance of design;” David says in Psalm 19 that the heavens are telling the glory of God.

Several years ago a report in the science journal Nature described the work of a research team trying to synthesize artificial life forms in the lab. They were hoping to make a simple form of bacteria. In order to plan their work, they had been trying to identify the smallest number of genes necessary to sustain this organism’s life. They did this by eliminating genes one by one and seeing what effect each had on the bacteria’s ability to survive. They were surprised to find systems behind systems: knock out one, and there’s a backup taking its place. Previously superfluous, the backup becomes necessary when the first gene is removed. The team reported that previous guesses may underestimate the minimal genome by as much as half. We try to find the smallest components of life, and it turns out that these small pieces have parts; there’s intricacy in the most unlooked-for places.

Even at the smallest levels there’s an impulse of expression. There is capability for communication among organisms as simple as bacteria. Among the tiniest of forms of life, bacteria are unitary, independent. Yet they are sensitive to each other’s presence, and perform certain functions only when among a large enough population of their fellow bacteria to make a difference. The bacteria that light up in ocean waters don’t “turn their lights on” when there are only a few of them in the area; they wait until there are enough of them to be seen. Scientists call this quorum-sensing, a kind of roll-taking to find out how many of the committee are present. There’s something remarkably like decision-making going on here, a kind of rudimentary understanding.

Humans make connections and designs too, of course. A few years back, I worked off and on for a month or so to refinish a small four-drawer cherry chest. It’s one of three my father made a long time ago, for me and my two sisters, out of the wood from an old cherry tree that grew on the grounds of the farmhouse where we spent our early years. As I worked on it, I found small pencil marks on the backs of the drawers – roman numerals, I, II, III, IV.  This small thing, my father’s handwriting, the mark of the maker, touched me. I even held my breath for a moment. I looked at it closely; I ran my finger over the numbers as if they could somehow connect me with him who has been dead now for a quarter of a century. Curious, I looked inside the chest, and on the inner face of one side found corresponding numbers. Each drawer was crafted to fit its own slot. In all the years I’ve had the chest, using it and moving it from place to place, I’d never known about this. I can’t be sure, since the drawers were out of the chest when I found my father’s writing on them, but it’s likely I’ve mixed up the drawers over the years. I won’t do that again now.

Finding the writing inside the chest made me think of my brother. He has recently finished refurbishing a historic farmhouse; it has taken him more than twenty years, because at first, I think, he wanted to do all the work himself. After he and his family moved into it, I visited him there. At the time I hadn’t started working on the cherry chest, and didn’t know about my father’s pencil marks, but for some reason it occurred to me to ask my brother if he had put his name somewhere in the house – behind a molding, on the top of a window frame maybe. He smiled, pulled a photo album off a bookshelf, and handed it to me. It was full of pictures taken over the course of the renovation, and as I turned the pages I saw him getting older, his children growing up, and the house becoming new again. Towards the end of the album there was a picture of the dining room before the wainscoting was applied. On the drywall, in black marker, were dates and signatures – my brother, his wife, his children. I looked over at the wall from where I sat – now you’d have to remove the pine boards to see those signatures.

Then just recently we were talking by phone with our son in Tucson, and he told us about a talk he’d been to about the things astronomers are learning thanks to the probes like Voyager that continue to send back pictures as they journey on and on past the edge of the solar system through the depths of space. Among many astonishing pictures Voyager has sent back were some showing that the rings of Saturn are very complex. One of these, called the F-ring, even appears to be braided, if you can imagine that. This intricacy has been there for thousands of years; we’ve only recently been able to see it.

Why do artists conceal their signature? Maybe because they know that the work stands on its own; they pay us the compliment of assuming we have eyes, and trusting our perception. When we see something that is masterfully crafted, nobody needs to tell us that somebody made this thing. “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen,” Paul says in Romans, “being understood from what has been created.”

Jesus made a similar point when the disciples asked him why he spoke in parables: “though seeing, they do not see,” he said, “though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” He was quoting Ezekiel; “They have eyes,” he might have said.

So when God took on human flesh and came into this world so people could see, hear, and touch him, he chose to do so in character – unobtrusively: a child, born to a poor couple, in a small town, among a despised and subservient people, in a century with no mass communication.

“Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear,” Jesus said to those disciples who wondered why he didn’t speak more plainly. The artist is content to let his work speak for itself.

M. Barker December, 2006

[seashells]

too hasty

I agree with atheists on many things, often on almost everything – except their belief that God doesn’t exist.

           In today’s bustling marketplace of religious wares of every kind, I sometimes feel closer with my Christian faith to the skeptics or to the atheist or agnostic critics of religion. With certain kinds of atheists I share a sense of God’s absence from the world. However, I regard their interpretation of this feeling as too hasty, as an expression of impatience. I am also often oppressed by God’s silence and the sense of God’s remoteness. I realize that the ambivalent nature of the world and life’s many paradoxes can give rise to phrases such as “God is dead” to explain God’s hiddenness. But I can also find other possible interpretations of the same experience and another possible attitude to “the absent God.” I know of three (mutually and profoundly interconnected) forms of patience for confronting the absence of God. They are called faith, hope, and love.

                               – Tomáš Halík, Patience with God (Doubleday, 2009)