Altars of Attention

 

Last week I read this poem by James Crews in the Plough Quarterly magazine.

Altars of Attention

Someone has stacked rock cairns

on top of stumps and stone walls

all along the washed-out road

I walk this morning. Each slab

is balanced by the other like one

right action holding space for the next.

But what is the message of these

small towers shored against

the mossy ruins of a country road?

Are they evidence of an effort

solid enough to withstand wind,

lashing rain and the shrapnel

of beer cans tossed from trucks?

I want to kneel and touch each one,

feel how the tip of one stone

fits into the divot of another,

but I don’t. Let them be altars

of attention that testify: someone

paused here and cared enough

to build these things for no reason

other than the pleasure of making them.

 

It was accompanied by a painting of stone cairn that reminded me of making similar stone towers with our kids on various rocky beaches: in Nova Scotia several summers ago, on the Oregon coast, up on Beaver Island. The title of the poem caught my imagination too – altars of attention. I hear in it a call to be present, to savor, to be open with my senses and my heart.

 

And then on Sunday, Jay and Peter and I went to hike around Sessions Lake in Ionia. It was a bit of a drive and so we listened to a chapter of Dave Barry’s book, Lessons from Lucy. (Lucy is his dog.) And the chapter we happened to listen to was about mindfulness – about being present with and attentive to the people you love, rather than stewing over the past or fretting about the future, or being distracted by your phone . . . He observed that for dogs, there is only the present and his dog delights in simply being with him, much like our dog Luna with Jay.

 

As we were hiking, maybe 2/3rds of the way around the lake, at just the point where I was beginning to be ready to be done and to be slightly anxious about the darkening sky, we came over a hill, and the trail led through a clearing in the trees that was full of stones of all shapes and colors; all over the ground and many of them stacked carefully into cairns. Honestly, it seemed magical. Such a vivid reminder to stay present, to be mindful, to cherish the moment. So we stopped and spent time making a cairn of our own 5 stones high, with just the right stones, balanced at just the right angles.

 All this week, I keep picturing that place in the woods, and thinking about the idea of stones as altars to attention, and also about stones in the Bible. Jesus, in Luke 19 telling the Pharisees that if his disciples didn’t praise him, the very stones would cry out. The story in Joshua 4, when the people have crossed through the Jordan into the promised land and God tells them to take 12 stones and set them up as a memorial to God parting the waters and bringing them through. (I have a vague memory of Jay and I borrowing stones from a friend of a friend’s yard and putting them on the platform at church long ago for a sermon on that story. . .)

 

Jacob in Genesis 28 with a stone for a pillow, dreaming of angels and naming the place Bethel, ‘for surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it.’ And the story in 1 Samuel 7, of God defeating the Philistines and Samuel setting up a stone and naming it Ebenezer, saying ‘Thus far the LORD has helped us.’ The hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing has a line based on that story: Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’ve come, and I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.

 

These stones in the Bible aren’t so much ‘altars to attention’ or calls to be present, but rather signs and reminders of God’s presence with us – in the past, in the present, and in whatever is to come.

 

It is so easy for me to be caught up in my head these days, fretting and afraid. But Jesus invites me to trust him in this moment, to be faithful in following him in this day, in this hour, in this minute. To leave the past and the future in his hands, and live confidently in the present knowing that ‘thus far, the LORD has helped us,’ and God will bring us safely home.

Sowing Seeds

When we bought our house 17 years ago, the city required the previous homeowners to repair the sidewalk before the sale could be completed. The city conveniently provided a contractor to do the work, and promptly charged the previous homeowners $600.

The concrete work was done marvelously. We’re still today enjoying those fresh sections of sidewalk. The lawn repair work, however, is another story. The contractor replaced the good topsoil that had been in the parkway between the sidewalk and the road with some sandy and rocky mess that it would be generous to call dirt. They then threw down a bit of grass seed and left.

The grass they planted barely came up, and what did come up was half weeds. And so began what is now lovingly referred to in our house as “Dad’s semiannual attempt to grow grass.”

Every spring and every fall since we bought the house in 2003, I’ve planted grass in the parkway between the sidewalk and the driveway. Some years I try amending the soil with some peat moss or Moo Poo compost. Others I add some straw as a mulch or some seed-starter fertilizer pellets. I’ve tried starting in early-September some years and mid-October other years. Sometimes in the spring as soon as the snow is gone and other times not until I’ve mowed the lawn a few times. And then I water—every day, 2-3 times a day, I stand out there with a hose and I water the new grass, willing it to grow.

Each year it’s the same story. It starts out strong. I can see a hint of green even before I see any actually blades of grass starting to grow. My heart is full of hope—maybe this is the year the grass actually grows. It seems to be doing well…and then July hits. And the full sun beats down on our yard. And perhaps we go on vacation or I lose motivation and forget to water for a day or two. And the new grass shrivels up in the heat because it isn’t established enough yet to withstand drought, and before I know it, there’s a bare patch in our front yard once again and the crabgrass moves in and takes over.

This past year I thought I finally had it. My 34^th attempt, if I’m counting correctly. The pandemic meant we were home more. I could give it more attention. The grass was even growing to the point where I actually mowed it once or twice…and then DTE came to replace our gas pipeline. And dug up our front yard. And threw down some crummy replacement dirt. And tossed some grass seed where the lawn used to be…and I was back to square 1.

This fall, as I’ve been out there with my hose in hand, trying to repair the damage DTE did when they replaced the gas pipeline, I’ve been thinking about how planting the grass in our front yard is a bit like justice work. As Christians, we strive to bring shalom to our world. To restore broken relationships, to fix the effects of sin as best we can, to bring a glimpse of what life in the Kingdom of God can and one day will be.

It can be hard and thankless work. And it can feel like we’re never making any progress. And sometimes when it feels like we’ve had a breakthrough, we turn around for a moment and suddenly things are worse than they’ve ever been before. Or there’s more resistance than we’d experienced before. Or we realize what we’ve been trying all this time is actually making things worse rather than better. Or some entirely new injustice comes along, and we don’t have time to catch our breaths but must redouble our efforts to stand alongside those who are oppressed and stand up for change.

It can be disheartening. We might be tempted to give up. To focus solely on our own lives and our own relationship with Jesus.

But we’re never called to finish the work that’s before us. We’re not expected to make the world a perfect place. That’s something God will do at the end of time when Jesus returns and makes all things new. Until that day, we’re called to not grow weary or lose heart. We’re called to scatter the seed of the gospel promiscuously. We’re called to love extravagantly.

Part of that is justice work. And at times it may feel like we’re out there doing the same things over and over again and never making much progress—especially this summer as protests continued for months in cities across the United States and racial issues we had hoped had been solved long, long ago arose again to remind us that much work remains to be done. But justice work is important work. Work that orients ourselves toward God’s kingdom, and work that shows the world how things might one day be.

Sometimes my children ask me why I bother. Why do I stand out there every spring and every fall, watering the ground, trying to get grass to grow? The answer is simple. In my mind I have a vision—a vision of lush, green grass and what one day might be. And I’ll keep trying to get there—no matter how difficult or frustrating it is along the way. 

The same is true of justice work and the vision of a world made new.

Unintended Consequences

 

There’s a patch of dead grass in our backyard. I wish I could say it was a result of the long, hot, dry spell we had this summer. Or perhaps that our dog fell back into her digging obsession that we thought she had left behind. But I brought this on myself.

We’ve had a nutsedge problem back there for a while. Nutsedge is a weed that looks a bit like grass, but grows taller and faster, is a little bit thicker, and is terribly hard to get rid of. I’ve been pulling it out by hand for the last several years, but I never seemed to make any progress. I’d think I’d gotten it all, only to come back two weeks later and discover more than I had before. It’s one of those weeds that if you don’t get all the roots, they come back stronger and mightier than before. And the roots can go a foot and a half down into the ground, so just pulling them out from the surface is hard to do.

They were in both our flowerbed and our lawn, and while I finally dug up the flowerbed, pulled out all the nutsedge and replanted the flowers, I couldn’t very easily do that on the lawn. Most lawn weedkillers don’t work very well with nutsedge, so I came up with what I thought was a great idea. A targeted approach.

I would use RoundUp—it kills everything (more or less). And while I’m hesitant to use it these days after its links to cancer, I was desperate (okay, okay…maybe desperate is a bit of a stretch). But I had a plan. I wouldn’t use it indiscriminately—after all, I wanted to save my lawn. I thought I’d take a targeted approach.

So I put on rubber gloves, I poured a small cup of RoundUp, and I sat in our backyard, painting RoundUp onto each nutsedge plant while carefully avoiding any good grass. When I was done, I cleaned up and waited to watch the nutsedge die. I was pretty sure it would work—I was just hoping it would get the roots and all so the nutsedge wouldn’t come back.

It wasn’t long before I began to see results. The next day, the nutsedge turned brown. It withered up and died. I was ecstatic…until I noticed that the grass was starting to turn brown as well. And the grass next to that grass. Soon I had a very noticeable death zone in our backyard—the targeted approach was a complete failure. To make it all worse, the only things that survived in the RoundUp death zone were two small nutsedge sprouts I still needed to dig out by hand.

What I thought was a targeted approach ended up withering everything in its path. Sometimes the same thing happens with the words I use. I say something carelessly, and suddenly I’ve caused hurt I hadn’t intended. Or sometimes, I’m not proud to admit, I actually want to cause hurt with my words—and I think I can control how much hurt I cause, only to discover what I thought would be a mild irritation to my targeted opponent actually lands more like a nuclear explosion. It’s especially true during this tense political climate where very few people are extending grace to one another or giving them the benefit of the doubt.

James 3:3-12 tells us that not one of us can tame the tongue. It is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” With one word it can cause destruction—like a small spark starting a devastating wildfire. We might think we can control it, but like the RoundUp in my backyard, it usually causes more pain than we ever intended.

James notes that it’s the same tongue that we use to praise our Lord that also hurts our neighbor. This should not be, James says—what we use to honor God should honor God even when we are not consciously, intentionally honoring God. The honor and praise we give God is empty if at the next moment, our tongue turns around and lashes out at our neighbor.

This has really been challenging me as we approach the election in November. There are so many times I’ve wanted to shout, “What are you thinking!?!” or “How can you possibly believe that?!?” Or “How can you be such a ……!?!” But how I treat my neighbor—even (or possibly especially) my neighbor that disagrees with me—is a direct reflection of how much God’s love has taken root in my life. These days it’s a daily challenge to die to self and love my neighbor as myself. Sometimes I’m fairly successful, but others I can almost see the circle of destruction spread as my words get out of hand.

I’ve planted some new grass in the backyard, and I’m happy to say it’s starting to grow back. I’m hopeful the destruction I’ve wrought is not permanent and all will heal in time. I’ve since read online that sugar actually works to control nutsedge. Maybe I’ll try that next time. Seems a bit fitting when it comes to my words, as well.

The Grandeur of God

The last few weeks I’ve been thinking about the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a priest and poet who lived in England and Ireland and wrote during the late 1800s.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And, for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights of the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

The first line of the poem ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God’ reminds me of the opening of Psalm 19 ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ These days, it feels like the trees are declaring God’s glory, charged with God’s grandeur in their bright and vivid colors.

 

The part about gathering ‘to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed’ reminds me of some of the ancient olive oil presses we saw in Israel last spring, and also of the lines from Isaiah 53 quoted in the Messiah, ‘he was bruised for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.’ God’s glory displayed in beauty and also in the suffering love of Jesus.

‘Reck’ is short for recognize, and the poet asks, ‘why do people not recognize God’s kingdom (rod)?’ And laments the way humanity has both harmed and disconnected from the created world.

 

The poem next shifts to celebrating the ways God’s love sustains the world. The line about ‘the dearest freshest deep down things’ – makes me think of the carrots Jay and Peter planted at church this summer that we’ve been harvesting these days, pulling and digging them out from the dirt.

 

But it’s actually the final image has been on my mind the most - of dawn and the Holy Spirit as a dove, brooding over the bent world. The promise of morning coming. The Spirit still hovering over the chaos, tenderly caring for our broken world.