carried along

“Sometimes there’s doubts
When the dogs they bark
And you’re not sure
What is in the dark.
I start to cry
but then the wind goes by
To carry us through.”

~ Sarah Masen, Carry Us Through

hidden life

“We can laugh and we can cry
And never see the strong hand of love hidden in the shadows
We can dance and we can sigh
And never see the strong hand of love hidden in the shadows.”

~ Mark Heard, Strong Hand of Love

new leaves

“Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!

Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship with out words”.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, My Cathedral


Brighter light and lengthened days witness the trees reclothed. Thankfully, this can be appreciated- even after a long work day; shirtsleeve weather and twilight- even after seven. From my apartment’s front stoop, the view upward is one of renewal. Fresh crops of leaves are waving from the maples along sidewalk paths- so very new, these greens and maroons have a tinge of the yellow of unripeness. Even the sunlight has this aspect, gleaming with the fresh paint of an almost-season. From this top step on the grey granite, the view is enough to cause me to stop writing about other subjects. This is a fine kind of interruption. It’s the light; beyond the brightness is its effect upon strata of diaphanous outgrowth which canopies and deflects air currents. Not long ago, these same trees were glazed with ice; before that, shedding their ruddy colors. Time is the difference, and observing these changes permits for an enjoyment of rebirth. To be sure, this isn’t a retread of last May- or the one before. The front stoop is still where it’s been, and my presence continues- but it is by observance and perception that a soul can tie timelines together and be able to recognize connections unseen.

Noticing transition, I am brought to ponder time and context. Occasionally, driving my errands presents glances of things past. Noticing a window of a former home, a storefront that once housed a favored venue, or a familiar corner of a campus, subtext of place is reawakened. These locations are unchanged, yet somehow foreign. Iconic yet inconsequential. The passage of time never ceases to amaze me, being the witness that can connect disparate occasions holding given places in common. Consider how context can change a subject or person. Once an institution or person held powerful sway- then suddenly their currency became worthless. Harsh streets become neutralized by the constant flow of traffic. A grade, an honor, or a title lose their volume as they lose their context. What once loomed largely becomes laughably diminutive. Thoughts and recollections attest to the lives and stories beneath surfaces. Our unique witness can thread places and times together, observations becoming solid phrases, individual transitions measures of interior evolution.


With a deep breath of chilled air beneath stately trees, my preference remains with the present rather than past. As much as we can look back at what we've enjoyed, we can be surely reminded of what we've survived. The here-and-now becomes a wonder, a cause for gratitude; the trees stand as enduring sentries. As folios of foliage, the leaves’ pagination ascends with time. These wafting, turning pages draw attention to their source. Tilting upward to light, they live and breathe with circulatory vessels of words drawn from trunks filled with troves collected by standing through torrents and beating sun alike. Components to an entirety as letters to a tome- minutes to an eternity. New leaves meet my outstretched hands.

Beneath what is visibly new and evidently resultant of trained branches, is the unseen journey. Around the core are rings which know the years. The rich, draping greens are hints to the eternal- but not to be overlooked: imagine if we did not have these visible signs! Journeying onward is possible when there is a clear drive from within. In other words, the way ahead is through a descent through the heart. Johannes Tauler once wrote about a thriving inner life as the route heavenwards. But the unseen is often misunderstood and underestimated. Where we meet the Divine, Tauler described, is considered an emptiness to the intellect, yet a fulfillment to the heart. In that still space, God guides the soul to the foundation of being- to the substance of what is. Still space needn’t be cause for unease, even if it takes time to realize this.

Nowadays, looking to the trees causes me to wonder at the passage of time. And instead of the connotation of fall- with its closures- the growing leaves carry notes of the life within. The books that are with me flutter with the gusts. Two have printed words, one is my notebook. Wooden pencils bounce off the granite steps and muffle onto the grass. With a thirst for continuity, growing leaves and pages turn- to reveal more, offering time to write more. As with an ability to know the unseen journey, it requires faith for me to trust that my efforts will amount to something. With the cycles of time, and limits of influence, there remains hope for redemption of the locust-eaten years. It is better to aspire than to regret what may have only appeared to be missed chances. And I must remember how the appearances of places and situations do change as the road broadens. Verdant drapery will shade and later cushion the paths ahead.

graphite alight

“You walk into the room with a pencil in your hand...”

~ Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man


A reprieve of stillness mercifully interrupted the day’s chaos. With notebook and pencil in hand, I sought the quiet sanctuary of an empty office. After having started writing, it became obvious to me that nothing cohesive was materializing. But I kept noting words- even if some of them were about feeling devoid of anything to say. I wanted some new thoughts, but that hour offered no written developments. So that’s exactly what I wrote. After returning home from work that night, those bedraggled words re-appeared as I opened my journal again. It seemed I’d been foraging for glowing embers using a pencil. It happens, ungratifying as that can be. The aspect for which I do express gratitude is for knowing to reach. Even a few scribbled sentences reveals forward motion.

Throughout this recent season of Advent and Epiphany, I’ve travelled to parishes throughout the region, providing music and creating contemplative spaces. Last Sunday night, during the long meditative silence, I glanced up from my sheet music to the front of the sanctuary. Lit only by scattered flickering candles, warm-toned icons met my gaze. These are the same icons that I’ve hefted across thousands of miles, beginning in Taizé, France. Occasionally, I am surprised by the austere mystery on the painted figures and faces. The Spirit invites. Such images are not sources, but brilliant reflections of light that confounds the dark. If darkness is prelude to light, then I must consider my failings and frustrations as prefatory to discovering.

Consider how a physical space appears transformed in our eyes, as our perceptions evolve. The same venue that witnessed anguished desperation can be the setting for elated recognition. Contrasting connotations can be noted anywhere: a café, a busy street, a schoolyard, a workplace, a room in a house. My apartment has been something of a stage for human drama. A downtown diner has been a repeating backdrop for scribing trepidations and for calligraphic catharses alike. Noting how a space is transfigured is to recognize changed realities perceived.

Amidst this reach for understanding is the unfathomable mystery of the origin of light. From there follows the wonder of how a spirit can be re-ignited. If to discover is epiphany, then to arrive is to be present: to alight. The act of alighting is to descend from one place and come to rest in another. Perhaps there is something to note, in my journey, about coming to terms with the Source of life without having seen the Eternal. In Tauler’s exhortation to endure in good cheer, we are to abound in good works for God’s sake. “And then,” he wrote, “shall you be made partakers of overflowing measure that runneth over on all sides.” This alighting touch of grace reaches the brimming human vessel, which “pours itself back again into its Divine source, from whence it has proceeded." In Tauler's description of this mystery, "all knowledge, love, perception are all swallowed up and lost in God, and become one with God." This grandeur challenges my own belief, in that it is more than I think I should ever expect. But perhaps that wouldn't be reaching as I ought. While trying to comprehend these things, why not keep working and keep the pencil moving on the page?

A good friend of mine is a historian of tool-makers and their utilitarian creations. His enthusiasm and expertise has breathed new life into our local Charitable Mechanics' Association- which dates back to Colonial times. Our friendship inspires in both directions. I am becoming attuned to the old ways of production, and he now uses antique typewriters. One day, as I spoke of the "tools of the spiritual life," he quipped, "you've said it all right there. Tools are spiritual." Indeed, we speak in two different senses of the word: implementation of a practice and the physical implements themselves. Surely, the actual tools of the writer (along with the builder and the mechanic) deserve their due. With these writing instruments at our ready, we experience the miraculous- and can create documentation.

As with light, our documenting tools help us liberate our thoughts, our stories, and our voyages. I have seen the worth of keeping the pencil moving- even while reaching and straining for description. And the tools do accommodate, no matter how cold; graphite cannot freeze. These exterior sub-zeroes teach us the value of continual movement. In time, the frozen granite steps will be bathed in spring rains and adorned with ivy.

sources

“The spirit of prayer is a pressing forth of the soul out of its earthly life,
it is a stretching with all its desire after the life of God, it is a leaving,
as far as it can, all its own spirit, to receive a spirit from above,
to be one life, one love, one spirit with Christ in God.”

~ William Law, The Spirit of Prayer, ch. 2


The season before me is clearly one of reaching forth, of embracing the road ahead. Creation surely attests to this, with trees offering fragrant outgrowth excelling their abundant leaves. Lengthened days invite us outdoors, and in varying measures- due to the daily employs that usually occupy our waking hours- we are able to respond. Northern New England is a part of the world in which one needn’t venture far to rediscover a sense of a human’s context in the sphere of natural forces through which we can know the grandeur of creation. Winter’s contemplative inner spaces demonstrate fruition as all that grows openly rises to summer skies. I have been thoroughly enjoying a week of rejuvenating exploration, departing from routines, and on to something different enough to travel with new thoughts. Looking away from obstructive trappings so often tempting us with convenience, and diverting the sublimity of simplicity, I found means to reflect in beholding the humbling vastness. In contemplation that searches creation, we become able to see far more than self; it is possible to further view what lives above and beyond us. We can gaze toward what is greater, there for our aspirations. Now, as I regather again to return home and to work, with some renewed perspective, my hope is to keep close to heart the vivid images that my eyes have seen



When a soul “reflects” deeply, a crossroad is encountered. Aware that solitude’s fulfillment is found in communion, its underside is the danger of self-absorption. Of course the search for self-comprehension is necessary for those who make the pursuit. The journeys might be shadowed by wariness of a loss of grounding and grasp of self- and with that it is crucial to reach even farther. We can navigate right through the fog of our hesitation. William Law observed how our reflection can be a pressing forth, an extension of our yearnings for the grace and peace of God. Indeed, we are surely called to become more than what we see reflected at the surface, and to become that grace and peace for others in unpredictable ways. Looking through my camera at a mirroring stream, noticing the scene’s natural collage, the intricacies of reflected images caused me to wonder about how self-reflection can become a reaching forth. Still waters make it possible to see more than our silhouettes. My attention was drawn to what was above and behind the familiar. The real intrigue of self-awareness is in finding how vital is to reach beyond oneself. We want to know more, and the difference is in where we direct our energies when we strive. Watching the sky’s intensities in the water’s surface, while also noticing what is beneath the bands of water depths, is a testament to the forces of creation, of our very composition.

Johannes Tauler once observed that we have an inherent tendency to turn to our natural places of origin. He wrote of how we are God’s creation, yet “how could man alone be so self-absorbed as to not rush back to his eternal source, his goal and his light?” To determinedly venture out, we must consciously journey within. With each individual, the travels will vary, but for me the woods and especially the ocean have been steadfast signs of both my source and horizon. Both, in their presences, move with seasons and strengths of light, reminding me of what endures after contrivances fade away. Closing his observations, Tauler urged his listeners to make every possible effort to “behold this true light so that you may be able to return to the source where it shines in all its brightness. Long for it, pray for it, do all you can, with all the strength you can summon.” And so, in returning to physical sources- mountains, woods, waters, shores, even star-filled night skies, and the connecting paths between them, I consider how we can transition from reflections of our own selves and our impressions of ourselves, to personal visions of God who calls us to transcend self. What convinces us of the greatness of the world beyond our own business? What causes our spirits to soar? When I am reminded of good things I can anticipate. When something I have worked at produces new prospects. Yes, we must retrieve our centers of inspiration, over and again- especially as we desire the sacred. In this growth process, we want to move in the direction of being unified in God, and away from isolating ourselves into some sort of self-justifying fabrication.



As I assemble these thoughts at Acadia National Park, away from tired routines and immersed in diverse sources of life, the sense of having been “brought” to this place has been evident to me. The islands comprise the spectrum of fascination between dramatic tides and steep mountains- in close proximity- threaded with curved roads and paths, and occasional green-and-clapboard villages. Throughout this week, those numerous, still, glassy ponds and lakes were of particular interest to me, being more accustomed to the turbulent ocean waters around Portland harbor. The still waters invite closer examination, and reflected skies have been assuring me not to forget to look up. I remember an occasion, about a dozen years ago, being in the throes of personal crisis, when I had no place else to go but the university chaplain’s office. The wise minister stopped her work, and walked me out onto a very brightly sunlit Columbia Point, overlooking Boston harbor. The sunshine was startlingly forceful for a day in March. The minister sat me down and asked me to look at the sky, adding “how long has it been since you’ve looked up?” I honestly didn’t know, and had no answer. In the process, I was both amazed at the boundless blue, and confused at my suddenly diverted despair. Of course, no recovery from deep grief is instant, but the beginning nudge to simply look up has been unforgettable to me. Grandeur such as that of a vast sky or the panoramic ocean is a relieving sight for me, setting my notions and my own obstructive self into sobering context. I have since passed along, with great care, the eloquently simple advice to try to see what splendor surrounds us. We can remind one another to look up and out, in our own ways, thus offering our own small touch of the magnificence entrusted to us. The journey back must also be as a vast sky. Rather than a “return to what was,” before I left, I want to view the road home in the same light as I considered the trip to get here to Mount Desert Island. Each day a new adventure. I must continue to listen for those life sources, and how these are instrumental in creation’s speaking to me.