Another Publishing Triumph...2013

My thanks again to Chris and the Englewood Review of Books.

http://erb.kingdomnow.org/gary-holthaus-learning-native-wisdom-review/

What we have here is a failure to...imagine

Somehow I had a decent discussion with some of my 7th graders yesterday.  We had been covering the birth of Buddhism and discussing the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, when I brought up the concept of the purpose of morality.  For an example, we briefly turned to the Ten Commandments...specifically the command to refrain from stealing.  I asked students to imagine what the world would be like if they knew that nothing they had would ever be stolen.  I was surprised, though I shouldn't have been, by the limited vision they possessed.  The majority opinion was that the world would be boring.  Somehow, the idea that knowing your property would never be unjustly taken from you only conjures thoughts of boredom.  Mistakes and poor choices are the only way we can learn one student offered.  I shouldn't be too hard on them, I asked this question at the beginning of my teaching years and received nearly the same answer from high school students.
We are quite good (in a pedestrian way, quite often) of imagining evil, but we fail in envisioning what true goodness looks like.

Bad News/Good News

It's spring (in the northern hemisphere)--so that means about a billion different things.  One thing it means to me is garlic mustard is sprouting again; soon to stretch to adult heights.  So, on Thursday, 4 April, we trekked off to the Martin Hollow to survey that damned plant.  The bad news?  It's still around.  The good news is, thanks to two years of intensive pulling there is a heck of a lot less on our property this year.  In fact, we weren't very diligent, but we only pulled about a half pound or so of that stinking weed.  One of my areas of concern only had about 20 plants in it--that's good considering each adult can contain about 900-3,000 seeds depending on whom you consult. 
Now, we make forays on to the neighbor's land--the person is absentee, so you can grumble about trespassing all you want, but he or she is NOT stewarding the property, and if I don't do it, it'll only be back on my land soon enough.

public domain photo

This summer, we're going to try to make a serious dent in the spotted knapweed population.  Here's to just a bag or two filled with garlic mustard.  Check your yards--identify and destroy!

Ite Incendite

     Among the many topics my spiritual director and I discuss, we always return to prayer.  That should be obvious for anyone who knows anything about spiritual directors or anyone who practices a spiritual or religious life.  The discussion turned to speaking in tongues because I think I talk too much when I pray.  I can't shut that nous up, as the Eastern Orthodox sorta say.
     Having grown up Pentecostal, speaking in tongues was de rigueur for most of the services I attended--I think I was 15 or 16 years old when I first "spoke" this way myself.  For the next few years I used this gift without knowing much about it.  Mind you, I wasn't the guy yelling in tongues all the time (I don't think I've ever yelled in that language) nor was I the interpreter--I haven't been graced with that charism.  Part of the problem was it wasn't
 explained much in my circles--you just did it, if you had it.  If you didn't have it, well, you better keep praying for it.  Eventually, I barely engaged in that language, partly out of embarrassment--what the hell was all that babbling about anyway? It sounds ridiculous--and partly out of confusion--what the hell was that babbling all about anyway?  I'd employ my "thousand tongues to sing" now and again, but mostly I kept it in the back of my mind  It seemed more like a trick of the mind than anything else.
     So, now I'm Catholic (sorta, kinda Roman) and I've attended mass at a charismatic Catholic church a few times, which if you've never witnessed a priest all vestmented up speaking in tongues, you really oughta shoulda do it some time. Anyway, I quietly spoke that way during the musical worship time there and rarely here and there, but again, confusion, embarrassment keeps it at bay.
     Which brings me back to my conversation with my spiritual director--who is not only Jesuit, but is bifaculty ( I believe that's the term) with the Eastern Catholic liturgy, and the man has used that heavenly language.  In a word or two--he's wonderful.  I mentioned how, when speaking that language (which to me sounds Aramaic, but I'm probably projecting), that there's nothing going on in the head.  He encouraged me to see it as a tool, another arrow in the quiver, to move closer to the one who is the source of all goodness and nothing more.  Use tongues, use the Ignatian examen, use the Orthodox divine office, whatever "works" for me and will move me further up and further in.
     I still don't claim to understand it--who truly understands what baptism does--but I don't need all the questions answered.  It's a mystery, God said he provides this gift, it's my responsibility to be grateful and employ it.
     Imagine a conversation with a Jesuit priest about the Pentecostal experience as being the most informative and heartening conversation one could have on that topic.  Praise God!

Limits? Hell no!

While listening to the always excellent Mars Hill Audio in which Ken Meyers was introducing a historian talking about the unintended consequences of the Reformation, he briefly mentioned how we Westerners think that limits are ridiculous.  I think about my friends (and in many ways I detest dividing people up by their political beliefs--but here goes) who are more leftish and how many of them would see limits put on an unfettered corporate capitalism or on the unjust use of the Earth either through extraction that pollutes or destroys or over-harvesting some natural resource.  Rightly so, I think.  I think about my friends on the right who would say that there are natural limits to human nature, including sexual expression, and we should respect those limits.  I'd agree with them too.  The problem comes with ideological blinders, however.  None of us (or very few, anyway) seem to see the big picture that with limits comes freedom and human flourishing.  The idea that we should be able to do whatever we want or can with our bodies, our wallets, our planet seems to be...well, a birthright.
So, we accept limits, but only the ones we agree with.

Orchestral Maneuvers in the Hall

     Last weekend my family attended what was our third Young People's Family Concerts performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.Overall, we've greatly enjoyed our time.  It gives us a chance to dress up a bit and listen to something other than hyper-sexualized drivel.  They've played quite a bit of different pieces: the meat and potatoes of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart (my favorite was the piece from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto) as well as Copland, Stravinsky, Britten, and even Williams' Star Wars Suite (over which my son swooned).

     The conductor, Teddy Abrams, is light and clear in his explanations of setting up each piece and how the orchestra works--though I think he sells it a bit too much when he has told us three times now what a "great audience" we were.  I am a highly satisfied patron.
     It's funny the affection I feel for classical/orchestral music.  I didn't grow up in a household that listened to it.  I was subjected to either Oldies or whatever was popular during the 70s and 80s.  Most likely, my heart was taught to love classical by Bugs Bunny.  Those old cartoons (they were already old when I was a child) that either used snippets or produced full on parodies of the masterpieces somehow sneaked into my spirit and kept an ember burning somewhere inside.  From Kronos Quartet to Arvo Part (where's an umlaut when you need one?), Gorecki, and Taverner, I truly enjoy that abstract emotional push and pull of this music.  My default is usually contemporary rock/pop/alt-country/roots/whatever, but I find the effect of classical usually much more otherworldly. 
All I can say is: Thanks Warner Bros. (and all those fantastic composers and performers, too.)

Good News for the Land

autumn olive berries

    What does cutting down the invasive shrub autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) on a cold Saturday in January have to do with the Gospel?  Quite a bit, it turns out.
     My family has been trying to figure out a way to incorporate community service (a bland phrase, if ever there was one) into our monthly schedule.  So, for our first attempt I took my wife and children to Island Lake State Park in SE Michigan to help restore (in a very small way) an oak savanna.  An oak savanna (or as the old timers called it "oak barrens") was one of a few landscape types found in lower Michigan prior to European/American settlement.  Essentially, it's a prairie with some oaks scattered here and there.  The Indians maintained prairies by setting the land afire occasionally to keep them relatively treeless.  Thus providing habitat for the largest food source available--the American bison.  The Western way of farming (which has fed all of us) destroyed prairies and, of course, drove out the bison.  The last wild one, incidentally, was shot in 1865 near what is now Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
     Aside from agriculture, and logging as well, invasive, exotic plants have been slowly and steadily changing the landscape from what it should be (providing food and shelter to insects, reptiles and amphibians, birds and mammals) to a more or less desolate landscape.  To the ignorant eye, things might appear all right.  One probably catches glimpses of skittering insects, fluttering birds, and occasionally scampering mammals among budding trees, shrubs, and grass, but they're either non-native birds or the number of insects, birds, and mammals is lower than what a healthy slice of this biome should be.
     So what does this have to do with the Gospel?  A few things.  Jesus, in Matthew's account tells his followers about visiting prisoners and the sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, slaking the thirsty, and welcoming the stranger.  Human-to-human service is how this is put into practice.  Rightly so, for it is written straightforwardly.  But what if we cast our Gospel net a bit wider to include care and service of non-human creatures and the Earth itself?  What about doing all that we do "as unto the Lord"?  What if, when Paul writes to the church at Colossae (in what is now western Turkey) that Christ is supreme and was sent to "reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,"included the natural world?  What if by stewarding the land and all its inhabitants (don't forget about air and water) that we are proclaiming the Good News.  We would be creating outposts to greet the return of the King.
     Stewarding land isn't the whole Gospel, but neither is teaching Sunday School, protesting abortion, or cleaning up after the mentally ill.  The Good News, wholly embraced, includes trudging through snow and snipping the thin, shaggy-skinned twigs of invasive honeysuckle and cutting the thicker, thorny branches of autumn olive.
     My children learned that not only are we Jesus' hands and feet, but that we are his loppers, saws, and at times his herbicide.  We are called to be healers and restorers and it can begin in a state park.