How to celebrate a Doctrine?

Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday--the only holy day in the Christian year that celebrates a doctrine....

Other holy days celebrate events--Pentecost, Christmas, Good Friday--and most of them celebrate people, the holy men and holy women of our faith.

But a doctrine?

It is roughly akin to throwing a party for hydrogen or a right triangle or Newton's Third Law.

Actually, I could get more excited about The Feast of Calcium or the Holy Day of Geology than I do about Trinity Sunday.

I just googled "Doctrine of the Trinity" and got 1,320,000 hits. So if you are interested in the concept and doctrine, you might check out the internet.

(An aside: today in the class I'm leading at UConn, Waterbury in the Christian Gnostic Literature, someone asked a question about something or another that was even more obscure than the obscure, arcane things I know about Christian Gnostics. So, I told them to 'google' it. Then I reflected with the class about the time, not so long ago, when people pondered and wondered and reflected about things they didn't know. Now we just google them. I've lived too long. I long for the 'good ol' days' when you had to go to a library to find out about things you didn't know and look through the card catalog. There are no card catalogs anymore. At the library in Cheshire you use a computer to find books. I miss card catalogs...the physicality of them, the thumbing through cards...the surprises you could find there--books you didn't even know you wanted to read until you happened across them in the card catalog. You don't 'happen across' things in the library computer. In fact, you have to be pretty sure what you're looking for to have a chance in hell of finding it. Like I said, I've lived too long. This Brave New Technological World isn't what I was hoping would happen next.)

A 'doctrine' is one of those things the church tells us we need to 'believe' whether it makes sense or not.

Did you know the concept of the 'Trinity' was proposed by Tertullian in the beginning of the third century? Oh, I know Jesus says Father, Son and Holy Spirit in some of the Ascension stories, but the 'doctrine' was a long time coming. Three in One and One in Three as something Christians' had to believe was finally nailed down in the Nicene Creed in the third decade of the fourth century.

Another way to look at 'doctrines' is to think of them as stuff the church 'made up' to fill in the blanks and make the faith uniform. Lots of Christians in the 4th century didn't think much of the Trinity as a doctrine. That's why it is enshrined in the Creed--to get rid of that set of heretics....The Christian Gnostics, among others, didn't buy Trinitarian thought. But after Nicea, they were on the outside looking in. Christian Gnostics weren't big on 'uniformity'. They thought you could believe all manner of things and still be in the big tent called Christianity. Gnostics were the Episcopalians of the Early Church....or, probably more accurately, the Unitarians. I spent time at the workshop I led with a Unitarian minister. Episcopalians, I used to think, were Unitarians with fancy vestments and liturgy.

It's interesting to me that we're at Nicaea again. There is a document called The Anglican Covenant that each of the 39 independent churches that make up the Anglican Communion are supposed to 'sign on to...." The Anglican Covenant would transform the Anglican Church from a church that defines itself by the way we worship into a church that defines itself doctrinally.

I want no part of it.

There's a story about a new Archbishop of Scotland back in the Middle Ages, who was informed that there was a monastery up in the Hebrides that hadn't had a bishop visit for decades. So he got on a ship and sailed up to meet them.

The monks were delighted to see him, but when he tried to lead them in the Lord's Prayer, none of them seemed to know it.

So he asked them what the four gospels were....They got John and Mark but couldn't quite hone in on Luke and Matthew.

He decided to celebrate Mass with them and they had misplaced the Altar book. When they shared bread and wine, they told him, a bit embarrassed, they simply made up the words.

The Archbishop was horrified. He taught them the Lord's Prayer, gave them a new Missal and a new Bible and instructed them to study both and he'd be back in six months to see how they were doing.

The Archbishop's ship was about a mile off shore when the monks came running out, running on the water, to talk to him.

"That prayer you taught us," one of them said, "we've already got it all muddled. Can you teach it to us again?"

The Archbishop looked down from the deck at the dozen monks standing on 200 foot deep water.

"Go back," he said. "Forget everything I told you. Just keep doing what you've been doing...."

Would that the Early Church Fathers had said that to the Gnostic Christians.

Would that the leaders of the Anglican Communion would say that to all sorts and conditions of Anglicans today.

Would that we judged folks on their fruits and not on their adherence to doctrine.

That is devoutly to be wished....

Baptism

There were two baptisms this morning at Emmanuel Church, Killingworth. Two brothers (6 and 4) David and Joseph.

We rehearsed yesterday so I could talk with parents and godparents. Great family.

The little church had been closed for over a month to do repairs from damage the winter wrought on the building. It was a grand re-opening, baptisms and Pentecost to boot!

I once figured that I've done over 600 baptisms in my time as a priest. (Nearly 900 funerals as well as 300 weddings.) And every baptism reminds me of little Jason some 25 years ago. If I can cut and copy it, I'll include it here....

LITTLE SAINT JASON

When I was at St. Paul’s in New Haven, one of my neighbors stopped me on the street and asked, “Do you do baptisms?” She and her husband lived in a handsome brownstone on the park—they were a “Yale couple”, she was Vice-President of something and he was a professor of economics. They were the ultimate “yuppies”—a term that still meant something in the 80’s. She was tall, immaculately dressed for success and quite beautiful, blonde and willowy. But she wore her hair pulled back severely and horned rimmed glasses she may or may not have needed. (I met several women who worked in big jobs for Yale who wore clear glass in unflattering frames. One actually told me it was to tell people, “I may be pretty, but I’m smart….”) She was wearing a pale gray, pinstripe suit and a pink blouse buttoned to the neck with one of those floppy little ties that are bow-ties on estrogen. But her shoes, I remember noticing (she was beautiful, after all!) were extremely high heels with almost no visible means of keeping them on her feet. Really sexy, out of character shoes....She hadn’t given in to the corporate image ultimately…her shoes were fiercely feminine.

I allowed that I had been known to “do” baptisms from time to time and she invited me to come ‘around to our house tonight for a drink…5:30 suit you?'

I was fascinated. I knew Donna and her husband, Phil, from the park. Our daughter was about their son’s age—5 maybe—and they sometimes chased each other in the park while everyone around Wooster Square let their dogs off lead to run and poop. But I’d never been invited to their house before. I could hardly wait.

When we’d settled in with our drinks (scotch for Phil, a Manhattan for Donna and white wine for me) I was offered hors devours more exotic than either of them should have time to make before my arrival and we did Wooster Square small talk. Phil, even taller than Donna and nearly as good looking, was a New Haven clone of “Mr. Chips”—casually elegant and tweedy and yet a little awkward all at the same time. He obviously needed his glasses—in fact had two pair with those bands that hold them like long necklaces around your neck. One for distance and one for reading, I imagined, wondering if it were vanity or drama that prevented him from just getting bifocals—but then, I’m always hard on people who ‘come from money’. There house made no secret that one—perhaps both of them—came from money. Everything was understated but expensive from the rugs to the lamps to the properly worn leather couch and chairs to the antique table I sat my glass on and then picked up in horror and looked around for a coaster.

“Go ahead and set it there,” Donna said. “It was my grandmother’s so it’s really old.” The people who come from “real money” are casual about such things, those who got rich on their own are much less relaxed about glass rings on a table worth thousands. After some small talk about the weather (a pleasant September, better than last year) and the neighborhood (“did you know the Mason’s moved to Europe—Mark’s doing a post-doc in France”) we finally got down to business.

“We don’t come to church,” Phil began, showing his humility, “but we are Episcopalians….We were married in the Cathedral in Chicago. And both our parents are serious Episcopalians and they’re all coming out for Thanksgiving….”

Little Jason hadn’t been baptized (“our fault,” Donna said, “totally”—as if it could have been Jason’s fault or the fault of Sarah, their AKC standard poodle) and there was going to be hell to pay to Grand-pop and Grand-mom and Granny and Gramps come turkey day. Before they began to grovel, which they would have, I told them I’d be delighted to baptize Jason, which I was. And we started talking about dates and times, settling on the Sunday after Thanksgiving when the grandparents on both sides could be there. All I asked them to do was come to church a few times, just so they’d be familiar with the racially and socially diverse parish of St. Paul’s and to let me talk with them…and Jason…about baptism for a few hours soon.

They were overjoyed, called Jason down with his nanny, a 20 something au per from France who was teaching Jason French as well as looking after him and taking some classes from Yale on their dime. (I thought I had maybe underestimated the money they came from!) I knew Jason of course, and he knew me as “Mimi’s dad” and we talked briefly about coming to church and talking about baptism. Later mom and dad and Jason spent several hours with me. Phil, of course, and Donna to only a slightly lesser degree, knew the ins and outs of liturgy and church history and the rich myriad of symbols that made up baptism. Jason asked some of those classic kid questions: “will the water be cold or hot?” “Will I have to say anything?” “Will Jesus be there?”

I told them, at some point, that baptism, to my theology, was admission to communion and Jason should receive communion with them on his baptismal day. Donna was a bit horrified: “But he isn’t old enough to ‘understand’ it,” she said. I thought for a moment and replied, “If ‘understanding’ it is a prerequisite, then I shouldn’t receive it either….” It was a hard sell but Jason won the day: “I want to, Mommy,” he said to Donna and the deal was made.

True to their word, Donna, Phil and Jason became fixtures on the third row near the pulpit. From time to time Brigitte would come with them and all of them fit in just fine—a little better dressed than most, but open and friendly and involved. During that time I came, once more, face to face with my devotion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “the rich are not like you and me.” I’ve never quite felt comfortable around the moneyed of the world—certainly both a character flaw and a disadvantage for rapid advancement in the Episcopal Church! Donna and Phil were ‘just like me’—we had many of the same interests and opinions. And Jason was ‘just a kid’ dressed in clothes from Barney’s instead of Sears. I came to like them a lot, which prepared me to like their parents as well. Jason’s two grandfathers were cut from the same mold—successful, keen and most likely ruthless Mid-Western business men who never the less possessed the shy, inviting charm of people from the center of the country. The grandmothers were different—Donna’s mom was an older version of her: stylish, lovely, cultured. But Phil’s mother was like someone Garrison Keeler would make up and put in Lake Woebegone. She was a tad over-weight with a broad, smiling face, gray hair in a bun and simple clothing. She would have been very comfortable in an apron puttering around the house.

They were all delighted that Jason, as his paternal grandmother put it, “was finally getting dunked.” And on the day of the baptism they were all radiant and joyful. The baptism went fine—Jason answered loudly when I asked him if he desired to be baptized and stepped up on the little stool I’d dug out to lean his head over the font with perfect grace. But the real grace came when the family, led by Jason, came up to receive communion. Jason received the wafer and carefully, precisely dipped it half-way into the wine before consuming it. Then he said, “thank you” to the chalicist and started back to his seat between the lines of people waiting for the rail.

He stopped beside the first person he passed and said, politely, “I just got the Body of Christ.” That person nodded slightly but tried to remain solemn, just the way we should be on the way to the greatest party ever thrown! So, Jason was a little louder with the next person and louder still with the one after that. By then, the lack of response began to confuse and annoy him and he started pulling on pants legs and skirts: “I just got the Body of Christ!” he said to each person he passed. Donna’s father got to him first and picked him up, looking back embarrassingly at me. Jason was trying to get free from his grandfather’s embrace…there were lots more people to tell about what had just occurred.

I stopped the service right there, asking the organist to stop playing and pointing to Jason in the arms of his grandfather.

“Do you hear what he’s telling you?” I said, softly. “Can you begin to understand what waits for you up here? Jason understands and he’s telling you to run to this table because the mystery and wonder here is more than you imagine…more than you can imagine….”

For months after that, I was told, people going back from communion would lean over and whisper to their friends, “Guess what I just got?” And for a while the spirit of Jason’s understanding astonished us all.

(I had wondered if having Jason ‘dunked’ would be the end of the family’s church going. I wouldn’t have been upset if it had, since the sacrament was valid and real and ‘objective’. But they kept coming for a few months until Donna was offered a position in the President’s office at Northwestern and Phil was asked to teach at the University of Chicago. The jobs were so good they were leaving at the end of first semester. I was sad to see them go, but it gave me a little rush to know that someone had used Yale as a ‘stepping stone’ to what they really wanted!

I went down the day they moved and watched the movers carefully empty the house of beautiful, valuable things. Donna, so unlike her, was dressed in faded jeans and one of Phil’s J. Crew white shirts. Her hair was a mess and she had on neither makeup nor glasses. She hugged me and told me I could find Phil and Jason and the dog and the nanny over in the park. Before I went to say good-bye to them, she said, “did we tell you that Jason’s favorite game now is playing priest? He baptizes G. I. Joe daily and gives us communion ever so often. He wears one of Phil’s tee-shirts and puts one of his ties around his neck. It’s really very sweet.” She said it was ‘sweet’ but she looked worried.

“It’s just a phase,” I told her, “like me.”

“You’re in a ‘phase’?” asked, smiling.

“Yeal,” I said, “but mine came late and has stayed for a while.”

Then I went to find my friends and say goodbye.)

how to 'be' the church

I think the church spends too much time worrying about what to 'do'. Church is about 'being', not 'doing'.

I've written my Pentecost sermon--I haven't preached since Easter and am chomping at the bit. I love Pentecost and I love baptisms and I love 'beginnings' and Sunday will be all. The church in Killingworth has been closed for repairs from the Mother of all Winters and is reopening on the Feast of Pentecost when we celebrate the birth of the church. And there are baptisms. And the fire will fall and the wind will howl....

I quote Antoine de Saint-Exupdery in my sermon. A problem since I can no more pronounce that with my distinctively Celtic mouth than I can turn coal into diamonds. He's the guy who wrote "The Little Prince", one of my favorite books and a book so spiritual it sings.

Here's what he said: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders....Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea...."

I urge you to read that a couple of more times and ponder it a bit. It is ponderable in the extreme.

Building a ship, he is saying, has next to nothing to do about what you 'do'. Building a ship requires a people who 'be' yearning for the vast and endless sea. That distinction is enormous. A ship built because someone 'in charge' gave orders, would certainly sail. But a ship built because a people longed and yearned for the 'vast and endless sea'--ah, that's a ship on an adventure, a ship devoutly to be wished, a ship to sail to what is magical and mystical and as yet unknown.

That's the model for the church. Neo-gothic buildings like the one I served in for 21 years in Waterbury, have a part of the building called 'the nave'. And if you look at the vaulted ceiling, it looks like the hold of a great and wondrous ship. The earliest Christians were fishermen, after all, they knew about boats and there are multiple stories in the gospels we have about being in or on or around boats....

We have to give 'the church' (by that term, I mean 'the people who are the laos, the 'laity', the 'people of God') a vision of the vast and endless sea. Yearning and longing and being surprised by what shows up next creates people who know "Who They Be" and their 'being' will tell them what to 'Do' and how to construct the boat, the ship, the church. Being before Doing, always the right order.

The little cluster of four churches I serve now for a month as their Interim had a Cluster Celebration in Westbrook on Sunday with Bp. Curry and brass and confirmation and the sure and certain proof that the 'sum' is more than the total of the parts. This is all new to me but so exciting. I love each of the four distinct and quirky communities that make up the Cluster. Seeing them all together was like a breath of fresh air.

These are people who know how to BE. The battle is half-won and it hasn't even begun....

These are people who yearn for the vast and endless sea already. God bless them.

I just want to have a part in telling them the stories of the sea and make them yearn more and get out of the way while they 'create' the ship out of nothing that will take us there.

A story I heard somewhere, somehow, from someone:

"The people who lived by the sea built a great ship to take them to 'where they were meant to be'. They sat off, but being people of the land, folks kept falling off the ship and the ship would have to circle back and fish those overboard out of the sea.

And, amazing as it might seem, by endlessly circling and pulling people to safety, the ship arrived, unexpectedly and suddenly, at the place the people were 'meant to be'."

That's a parable of the Kingdom. That's a story of a people who yearn for the vast and endless sea. That is how to build a church as well as a ship. That is how to "BE" so that you can "DO".

"Being" before "Doing", I believe. That's the way to the Kingdom, to the place we're meant to be....

what is, seriously, really, no kidding, honestly...more rare...?

A day in June, and it is only June 2nd. I'll sign up for this for as long as it lasts....

I walked around our back yard just a while ago. It is a riot of life. Bern has been nurturing it and loving it for so very long now. Purple flowers and red flowers and pink flowers and white flowers and cantaloupe colored flowers and black pansies--black, I tell you! Amazing...black flowers. And greens of so many hues I could never describe them, even if I had the words, which I don't.

On the side of the house is an area that has been taken over by ferns...half a dozen or so different kinds, eternally in the shade of the hemlocks. I love ferns. Once, when I was in college, I was the "Nature Boy" at a summer camp, since I swim not well and don't do crafts. I would take kids into the forest and point out ferns and fauna and trees. I was relatively good at it, I imagine, having grown up in the woods and knowing most trees by leaf and some by bark. But I don't know flowers, except pansies, especially black ones.

It is 63 degrees on our back porch at 6 p.m. The wind is strong out of the north east. I have on a long sleeve shirt. The sky is Carolina Blue with a few fast moving clouds. I could live, quite joyfully, somewhere it was always like this.

What is, after all, so rare as a day in June?

We had little steaks for dinner the other night. Yesterday I took the left overs and cut them as thin as I could a put them on non-gluten bread with mayo and onions and tomatoes and some cheese and decided to 'toast' them, as we used to say in my family. We had 'toasted cheese sandwiches' which are 'grilled cheese sandwiches' by another name. I sat down at the table to eat my sandwich and it kept falling apart. I was so annoyed and perplexed and upset.

Then, at some point, I realized, "If the only thing wrong with my life is my steak and cheese sandwich keeps falling apart, how lucky and blessed am I?"

Out the window of my little office, the trees are waving madly at me. It is probably still in the low 60's and the sun is out and the wind is blowing and God is truly in his heaven and all is right with the world.

What an idiot I am to worry about whether the onions are sliding off the bread on a steak sandwich....

I love my life. I truly do. And in abundance.

How joyful, lucky and blessed I am.

And it IS June, after all.

What could be better?

Well, I guess 'what could be better?' is if almost everyone loved their life the way I do.

That would be stupendous. Truly. What a moment devoutly to be wished.

I think I understand, this late afternoon in June, what the Native Americans mean by 'a good day to die'.

I could die happy today.

How rare....

I need an ornathologist

Mama Robin is back on the nest. What's this mean? Can she be having another brood? Is that possible? Given all the work she and Papa Robin were doing, when did they find the time?

(Oh, well, I guess people do have two children within a year from time to time. You must just find the time....)


I'm getting ready for the Making A Difference Workshop at Wisdom House in Litchfield next week. I've helped lead dozens of these workshops and every next one is so much not like any of the other and so remarkable in and of itself. I love this stuff.

I just took a shower and put on a tee shirt I sleep in sometimes. It has the St. John's, Waterbury logo on the front left breast--an eagle designed by Judy McManis years ago.

On the back it says, DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS.

I wish to hell I'd made that up, but I think, if I remember correctly, it was made up by a guy named Brian Reagner who helped design the original Making a Difference Workshop and helped redesign it years later. I was in on that 'redesign' and love that I was.

Brian, according to legend, since I wasn't there to hear it when it came into existence, was pondering what people who take the workshop should come out of the experience 'being' (the workshop is about, of all things, 'ontology', "the study of being". And that was what he said, as I've been told....

DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS

And during an adult confirmation class a decade or so ago, one of the participants, Jim Morgan, as I remember it, asked: "What will we be when this class is over?"

And I said, quoting Brian without thinking because it is the best thing, the very best thing, to be:
DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS.....

God bless us all, not much better to 'be' than that.

I'm working on my class in June--8 one and 1/2 hour sessions on the Early Christian (so called) Gnostic writings.

I'll wear my tee shirt one day.

Reading the Gnostics will, if nothing else, make us into "Dangerous Mystics and Spiritual Rebels"....Those are the Christians I want to be around and hang out with and create a future with and ponder possibility with.

Those folks and our Robins....

Not bad company all the way around....

granddaughters and dreams....

I've quoted this from Denise Levertov, one of my favorite poets, before...but I'm too lazy to go find out where.

Ms. Levertov said, at a meeting of poets and theologians (what a novel and wondrous concept!!!)

"The Crisis of Faith is the Crisis of the Imagination. If we cannot 'imagine' walking on the waters, how are we to meet Jesus there?"

We drove back from Baltimore today in 5 hours--door to door with a stop in NJ for gas, bathrooms and a Popeye's shrimp Po-boy---fabulous sandwich! Fried popcorn shrimp, mayo, pickles, lettuce and honey-mustard sauce on a soft, extra large hot dog bun. Popeye's is about the most tasty of all fast food, I think. Still, we pulled off Toone Street at 4:30 and into our driveway at 9:30, 281 miles and didn't even slow up at the tolls for the GW Bridge or across the bridge to 9-A and then the Merritt. Amazing, I think.

Being with my granddaughters--Bern and I kept Mogan and Emma, the twins, while Baby Tegan stayed with Cathy's parents. Josh and Cathy on a weekend in New York, all alone, no kids, lunch with our daughter and Tim on Sat and with close friends on Sunday. They had a great time. We had a great time.

Except...Whenever I'm with my granddaughters I realize how bereft of 'imagination' my life is. One example: we set up their pool on the back deck and could hardly keep them out of the water. Morgan and Emma (they'll be 5 in Sept) and I were out there. I'll do a Virginia Woofian 'train of consciousness' description of about 10 minutes, which won't do the 10 minutes any justice at all.

Both girls in the pool.

'Pretend we're Mermaids', Emma.

'We're Mermaids in our Castle in our cave', Morgan.

'Pretend we're asleep in our beds...." E

'And the water is our covers...' M

'Pretend I'm asleep and you wake me up...' E

'Wake up Mermaid, it's time for dinner....' M

They both jump out of the pool and go to the table where Bern has put dozens of things that can hold and pour water. They start pouring water from the pool into two dozen thing....

'Pretend I'm the Mama and you're the baby...' E

'Mama, I'm hungry....' M

'I'm fixing you tea and soup....' E

'Pretend I'm the mommy and you're the daddy....' M

'I'm hungry....' E

'I'm cooking dinner right now...' M

'pretend i'm a mermaid and you're fixing me sea weed....' E

E jumps in pool. M brings seaweed.

'Pretend I can't speak," E, making elaborate signs toward her mouth and throat.

'What happened to your voice, mermaid?' M, 'Can you sing?'

E begins a haunting mermaid song, a siren song at least, luring sailors to their death.

'pretend i'm a sea turtle and you're a mermaid,' M, making a good imitation of a sea turtle in the pool.

'pretend I'm a human being," E, 'look, I have legs....'

'pretend the girl wants a sea turtle for a pet,' M, swimming over.

Ok, that's about 3 minutes of the 10 and I'm frazzled trying to follow it all. Back and forth they go, most sentences beginning, "Pretend that...." and no plot developing because the next "pretend that..." changes the reality all together.

They include me, "Gampy, pretend you're the Mermaid, grandpaw...."

I get involved in trying to convince them that a grandpaw would be a Mer-Man and they loose interest in me, trying to impose reason on imagination, trying to teach when they are playing, trying to talk 'sense' when they are talking 'dreams, dreams, dreams and more dreams...."

"pretend that......"

I'm going to try real hard this week to recapture the 'pretend that...' that drives me, really drives me, really makes me alive. Like pretending that I am happy always, pretending that I am brave and strong, pretending that I can make a difference in life, pretending that life is so magical that I am a goof-ball for not living with imagination and wonder every moment I am given.

"Pretend That" is being in the ultimate 'present' of life--not the past or future, just right here, right now.

That, all the mystics of my Christian faith, have taught 'is the answer' to life's persistent questions. "Just BE".

Imagine that! 'Pretend that you are living in the moment...each shifting ever changing moment...and that in each of those moments you are fully present, fully engaged, fully alive....

That wouldn't be bad, would it?

In fact that might just begin to teach us something about what Jesus meant by 'life and life in abundance.....'

"Pretend that you have life in abundance every moment, every moment of your life...."

"Pretend that....."

Just imagine....

my fau wilderness

Did I spell that right? I meant to imply that 'my wilderness' is false.

Our back porch and deck, on the West and South side of our house is 'my wilderness'. I counted 21 trees that impinge on the West and South side of our house. Most are evergreens--long needle and hemlock. But there are two Sugar Maples, a red maple and a 150 foot high horse chestnut tree I thought was dead and was worried about the cost of removing it, but the bitter winter brought her back to life and she is full of leaves and nuts. Most of the trees around us are 100+ feet tall. This afternoon there were at least two dozen birds in those trees, screaming and dashing about--four or more types: I saw cardinals, robins, chickadees and wild canaries, but I think there were some sparrows in there too and the omnipresent crow or so.

Our back yard has chipmunks in abundance and more squirrels than I want and the occasional ground hog beyond the back yard fence, eating the fermenting mulberries from our next door neighbors bush and getting wasted....A drunk ground hog is a thing to behold.

Plus we have the occasional rabbit and hummingbird, since lots of our flowers are red, and Bern once saw a coyote, or what she thought was one, across the back fence. Plus the insect critters--bumble bees and honey bees in the hundreds of rhododendron blossoms in full bloom. The bumble bees like our dog and he hates them. He is so hairy and curly that after a walk he is a echo-system and the bees are interested. He runs to the back door and wants to go in.

Besides bees, we have spiders. We read the kid's book to our kids about how Spiders are good, and then there is Charlotte, so we let them spin their nests wherever they wish and never disturb them. I kill ants and flies without guilt, but most creatures I leave alone.

So I have my wilderness.

But it could not prepare me for the wilderness of Higganum.

I was there today and walked the labyrinth in the woods behind the parish hall. It was lovingly and spiritually built. It is on a slight slope so you are sometimes walking uphill and sometimes down. plus their are rocks and tree roots on the paths that you must notice and avoid. (One of the things that you need to know about walking a labyrinth is that you need 'focus'. I usually suggest using the Jesus prayer and walking with your breath. But the rocks and roots in this labyrinth insist on 'focus'.....

I was planning for a time in the autumn when I'd offer a Saturday or Sunday workshop in walking the labyrinth and centering prayer--contemplative spirituality. I just need a date certain and we can start letting people know.

So, I'm walking the labyrinth and a huge hawk, wing span four feet or so, flies 8 or 12 or 16 inches over my head. I felt the wind from the hawk's wings on my face. He sat in the nearest tree and stared back at me over his shoulder. Talk about being focused!

I imagine he decided I was either too heavy to snatch away or I wouldn't taste that good. So he eventually flew away, again just over my head.

Have I made a friend or was that a warning?

I suspect the latter.

My back yard has no hawks, not wilderness at all....

(We're leaving tomorrow for Baltimore for a hit of grand-daughters and won't be back until Tuesday. I don't think I'll have time to blog since Josh and Cathy are leaving the twins with us for two days while they go to a wedding in NYC. Tegan, the 18 month old, will be with Cathy's parents, who live in Baltimore. We'll have the twins--4 and 3/4 years old.

Pray for us....)