DRAGONFLY SPIRIT

Dragonfly at the Door, Jamestown UMC, NC

I was volunteering with our Shepherd’s Team and working with our Security Guard, Glen, the first thing this morning as we were welcoming and helping folks arrive at our JUMC back entrance by the parking lot.  The two large doors with brass door handles have been decorated with large artificial wreaths.  As I opened one of the doors for a worshiper, I suddenly noticed something out of the ordinary clinging to the wreath on the opposite door.  Closer inspection revealed a motionless bright green dragonfly holding onto a couple stems! 

It appeared that the dragonfly had possibly spent the night in the shelter of the circle drive overhang and found a secure home on the door wreath.  A closer look indicated slight movements of the dragonfly’s head with the large compound eyes looking straight into my eyes.  Dragonflies have excellent vision and their panoramic perspectives are supported by far superior capabilities to see more colors and even ultraviolet light.  Although they have six legs, they cannot walk, but their two pairs of transparent wings give them great maneuverability.

It's been said that seeing a dragonfly could be a sign and message from your angels as they encourage us to transform and become something magnificent.  This remarkable insect that has been around for 300 million years reminds us that hope and infinite possibilities await us!  It lives most of its life as a nymph and only matures into a flying insect for just a limited time, but fulfills its destiny in the process. 

Coincidentally, I had just sent an email to our Sunday class that our first session of the new season would involve our input to a new Vision Team.  They’re inviting input about how we could make changes to proceed on a number of issues to share the Good News of God’s love for His creation!  Perhaps our dragonfly’s visit was perfectly timed for us.

In spite of many folks coming and going that morning and our pointing out its presence, our messenger stayed on the artificial stem for about thirty minutes.  It was then prompted to just move over to the center of the matching-colored wreath.  We observed our mystery visitor remaining there for another thirty minutes as we were called inside for assistance.  When we returned, the dragonfly had vanished.  

 "Dragonflies are known to have curiosity and a friendliness that offers a blueprint for being brave and exploring possibilities. If you open your heart to them, a visit from a dragonfly can offer not just enchantment but even inspiration to live your best life and take bold next steps."

THE GOLDEN GLOVE

The Golden Glove, Jamestown, NC

I recently got up the ambition to clear out all the stuff that had settled into the garage loft 25 years ago.  You gotta believe that if you haven’t needed it for 25 years it just might not be of use any more.  As I was cautiously removing stuff for a critical decision of keep, give away or trash, I came across my old Little League baseball mitt that was still encasing one of my practice balls.  Both the mitt and the baseball had unmistakable signs that they had been “rode hard and put away wet”!  The baseball had multiple scuffs and grass stains along with the original price inked in at $2.22.  The mitt’s leather which I religiously oiled to keep it supple was well worn and the inside was even more distressed.

Since my main priority was to pull a Marie Kondo and release as much stuff in my possession as possible, I started walking the mitt to the trash tote at the curb.  The trucks would be arriving soon to embrace the totes lined in the street and whisk it away to the local landfill for recycling.  I raised the lid and slowly thought about all the good times we had enjoyed in those innocent times of my heartland youth.

In the course of a lifetime, we’ve all had thousands upon thousands of experiences in our daily lives. The vast majority are uneventful and mundane. They pass without notice almost immediately.  As we age, they pass with even more immediacy.  However, there are those milestone events in our lives that will stay with us forever. Somehow, our memory cells keep these on a short leash and we can recall them at a moment’s notice. 

For some reason, one of the early milestone memories for me occurred when I was probably around the age of ten.  I got good enough to finally make the All-Star game one season as a right fielder. The wild card for that game, however, was that it was played under the lights at night. I didn’t have a lot of practice catching balls at night.  

Right fielders don’t get a lot of action in a ball game. I had been moving around the outfield looking for four leaf clovers. But then the game got interesting as the next batter singled to left field. The next batter up was a pretty big kid, so we all shifted and backed up. It only took a couple of pitches before he found a pitch he liked and he hit a long fly ball to right field! I quickly maneuvered over about a dozen steps to my right and backed up another few steps with my glove over my right shoulder in anticipation of a throw to the infield.

The ball sailed up into the night sky and suddenly I was blinded by the overhead flood lights! I totally lost sight of the baseball that was hurling towards me. I had about two seconds to react. I could duck to avoid getting a concussion or I could trust my instincts and stay put. So, without much time to debate my choices, I held my ground and no one was more surprised than me when the ball smacked into my baseball glove. I quickly noticed the runner at first base running to second knowing that the skinny kid in right field couldn’t possibly make that catch. So, I fired a strike into first base for a double play. The stands erupted (as much as our parents could muster) and I trotted into our dugout amid shouts of “nice play!”

There’s been a lot written and discussed about the dreams we human beings have in life. Many of those dreams of course get translated into prayers. And much has been written about unanswered dreams and prayers because the answer can be no, or maybe, but let’s wait and see what happens. In the movie Field of Dreams, the old country doctor gets another opportunity to turn back the clock and fulfill his earlier dream of spending his life as a professional baseball player instead of a health care professional. 

As a young man, my dad had been asked to try out for the St. Louis Cardinals farm club. The scout hit him scorching line drives and grounders for a couple of hours with none getting past him. He then offered my dad the chance to leave home and join the baseball club. But times were tough, and he passed on the dream, stayed at home and helped the family.

That major decision in my father’s life quite probably resulted in our family’s creation. And mine. It’s good to have goals and dreams in life, but when life throws you a curve ball, it just might not be strike three. It might be ball four and a pass to begin a new path around the bases that leads to a new home. Only later after his too early death did I begin to also understand the time and patience he spent with me to teach me the baseball skills he had acquired. I didn’t become a professional baseball player either, but I learned that we’ve got to work hard at something to be really good at it, sportsmanship, a love for athletics, how to be a team player, developing lasting friendships with teammates, the thrill of competition, how to be a good winner as well as a good loser, and the love of a father to impart his dream to his child after he had chosen another path so that the dream remains alive. 

 And like the movie, the best times involved the simple act of playing catch in the backyard. It’s a very human act of “I give to you and you give back” connectedness, many times discussing something about life and many times in serene silence, with just the sound of the rawhide ball hitting the leather glove. The final act of redemption in the movie unfortunately doesn’t happen all too often in real life. The prodigal son gets a second chance to say, “Hey dad, you wanna have a catch”? And his dad replies, “I’d like that”.

I looked down at the well-worn leather glove I was about to discard and noticed the faint wording on the label.  It read “Geo. A. Reach Co. Inc., Philadelphia, PA.”  Here I was standing in the middle of North Carolina holding my old worn baseball mitt from central Kansas that was made in the area where my son-in-law was born and raised near Valley Forge.  He and my daughter are now raising my grandson and I have a chance for a game of catch now that they are living in the area.  So, I walked back into the garage and placed my “golden glove” in a place of honor in my man cave.  Destiny called.

 

LETTING GO

Storm Winds, Western Colorado

 “We must let go of the life we planned, so that we can experience the life that is waiting for us.”

— Joseph Campbell.

We can’t change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust our sails to harness its power in order to reach our destiny.

2020 LOCKDOWN LABOR DAY WEEKEND

Cousins 2019, Emporia, KS

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” —Albert Einstein

People enter our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. 

It’s on us to determine if they’re a blessing or a lesson.

This family reunion photo last Labor Day weekend documented the first time most all of us cousins that had grown up together in central Kansas gathered together in many years.  Given the social gathering restrictions this year, it was fortuitous that we scheduled this reunion last year!  We all got together individually off and on, but Sunday afternoons at our grandparents’ home was one of the principle gatherings that united and defined us.  We didn’t always get along all of the time, but we always prayed grace together around the dinner table under lots of loving supervision.  Destiny and divine blessings, not merely coincidence, brought us cousins together for a lifetime.

And although we didn’t know it at the time, those were critical developmental years in a child’s life and my lingering memories over fifty years later are all good.  Our generation has followed our bliss out into this great country like so many others, but we hold onto those cherished memories, especially on this unique 2020 lockdown Labor Day weekend where folks are instructed NOT to gather together!  There’s no question that we humans keep those pleasant memories within our grasp while the unpleasant ones drift out of mind.  I’m certain that no one left the late-in-life gathering with nothing but new and resurrected pleasant memories that will now sustain us this year and into our own grandparenting years, even if it’s often on FaceTime!  

 

THE GOOSE SWEATER AND TIBETAN PRAYER FLAGS

It has been about thirty summers since my wife Karen and I boarded a gondola in Vail, Colorado with our young daughter.  We had crossed the continental divide the day before and stopped by a high-country meadow where we photographed her sitting on a fallen log amid colorful alpine flowers in a hand-crafted sweater with a goose neck extending down the sleeve.

This morning I, my daughter, son-in-law and grandson of almost two years boarded another gondola to the top of Vail Mountain in the Rockies.  My wife who succumbed to breast cancer exactly ten years ago had saved that goose sweater for a future grandchild and he was wearing it this morning.  We walked a looping trail in anticipation of duplicating the image taken those thirty years ago in Colorado at the top of the world.

The morning’s atmosphere was a perfect sunlit temperature in the low seventies with gentle cool breezes passing over the mountain.  As we completed our mission and strolled back to the hiking trail, small colorful flags strung between two pine trees caught my attention.  Further investigation revealed traditional Tibetan Prayer Flags gently waving in the breeze.

My son-in-law was aware of their significance, being placed where one desires to bring harmony to the surroundings.  Tibetans believe that as the flags are blown by the wind, prayers and mantras on them will spread goodwill and compassion into all pervading space.  Even the colors of the flags have symbolic meaning for this harmony and the earth’s elements such as blue for peace and sky, yellow for knowledge and earth, white for purification and air, green for prosperity and water, and red for compassion and fire.

As the wind blows through the flags and moves them, the vibration of the prayers and the spiritual intention permeates the area.  The wind slicing through pine needles and whistling around the mountain always moves my soul to the consciousness of a divine creator.  Perhaps the colorful flags waving for our attention in this special place today may have been acknowledging that the sweater was symbolic of our combined destinies and an indication that we were walking the right path.  And they were reminding us that we were not alone in this sacred place that reaches to the heavens.

TIME AND PIGS

Lipstick on a Pig, Internet Domain

There’s an old story about a man leisurely driving through the countryside on a fall afternoon and passing by an apple orchard. He notices an old farmer feeding his pigs by holding them up one at a time and letting them eat the apples hanging from the trees. So the man pulls off the dirt road, walks up to the farmer and quizzically asks, “Wouldn’t it save time if you simply shook the apples onto the ground and let the pigs eat them all at once”? And the farmer looks up even more quizzically and responds, “What’s time to a pig”?

We humans are the only creatures on the planet, and possibly the universe unless you watch the ancient aliens segments on the History Channel, that have a developed frontal lobe in our brain that can ponder the future. And of course, some have a more or less developed right brain that can reason about such things as time. A pig, for instance, wakes up every morning thinking he’s going to live forever—so far, so good! But we humans have been given the capacity to understand that our mortal time is limited and there are only so many turns of our life clocks, while no man knows the exact hour and minute it will stop. We’ve also been given the capacity to ponder life after life. When you think about it, why bother if there is none?

It’s a matter of being committed to life, not simply involved in it—like a breakfast of bacon and eggs. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed! Maybe it's time to pause and consider if we are really, really making good use of our time.

We may choose to ignore time and merrily soldier on with the pig’s mindset that life will go on forever. The pig can be excused. But we’ve all been given the priceless gift of life with the caveat that it comes with a limited amount of mortal time for a reason. And we’ve been given the free will to do with it as we please—to squander it and wake up one final morning wondering to ourselves “Is that all there is?”--or to wake up on the other side of the thin veil rejoicing in our legacy. We could argue the point forever, but that would be like wrestling with a pig. We’d get mud all over us and the pig would enjoy it. We can continue attempting to convince ourselves that our time doesn’t matter, but that would be like putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t change the eternal truth that it’s still a pig and our time does matter. Perhaps the answer lies in pausing time to ponder our destiny. Perhaps over a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Open Country, Flint Hills, KS
Weathered Door, Ohio

Follow your Bliss

“Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”--Joseph Campbell

Life is a great adventure and death is the last great adventure. In the meantime, we are in pursuit of the divine that is within all of us and the fulfillment that the adventure brings. Campbell notes that if you have embarked on a well-worn path, it is not your path. Seek out your own path in life that has been mapped out exclusively for you. When your life seems to be in rhythm with the heartbeat of the universe, you have found your path to divine destiny.

"People say what we're all seeking is the meaning of life...I think what we're seeking is the experience of being alive."-- Joseph Campbell

WALKING THE PATH

Mansion of Many Rooms, Biltmore,NC

Walking the Path to Eternal Truth and Life

As a Christian, one of the more troubling verses in the Bible for me over the years has been John 14:6 in which Jesus states that “No one comes to the Father except through me”. Context is always in play and Jesus proclaims this just hours before he dies on a horrific Roman cross. And I have witnessed many of those dubious media evangelists who work folks into a frenzy of hope and guilt as they “close the deal” by goading them up to center stage or their television set to recite the infamous magical incantation. But I’ve read that soon after morning's reality arrives, many of these folks will drift away from the path to salvation because they haven’t developed a personal commitment to sustain them. One thief on a cross next to Jesus did find immediate salvation, but that’s not exactly like talking to Jim Baker on the television for a couple of minutes.

So what’s to become of all the billions of human beings that were raised in other religions or were never exposed to this verse such as everyone born B.C.? I’ve always admired the spirituality of the Native American Indians who believed in a Great Spirit and were good stewards of the earth. I’ve often wondered what religion I might be practicing today if I hadn’t been born in America to Christian parents. For many of us, I believe religion is more a fateful matter of timing and geography than ultimate truth. If I had been born in India of Hindu parents, I’d likely be a practicing Hindu today.

And what about the fate of all those truly evil people who have caused so much human suffering in the world? Here’s where I believe the concept of free will enters the conversation. God knows our heart which is pertinent. He created this existence and He makes the rules regarding the saved and the damned. One of His main attributes we know about is His righteousness. A human who does the right thing can achieve a heavenly reward by God’s grace. An evil man who causes all manner of human suffering has earned eternal damnation. He is not condemned to be there, rather he chooses to be there. A loving God doesn’t choose to condemn anybody, but wants eternal life in his presence for all his creation.

Jesus used many visual images of the times to make his message clear to the people. A mansion of many rooms is certainly heaven for those living marginal nomadic and subsistence lives. He described it as a place with no need for a sun or moon, as God’s glory would bathe it in His eternal light. Jesus used the always rotting, burning city dump outside Jerusalem as a vile image for those condemned. The beginning of 2 Thessalonians describes their destiny as eternally separated from the love of God. This would also imply a place of eternal darkness. That sounds awfully dire to me.

Adam Hamilton offers another way to view the disturbing verse in John 14:6 in his book on Making Sense of the Bible. He offers a reading of “No one comes to my Father except through my saving work”. And if that’s the case, Hamilton asks “Why would we even want to tell our neighbors about Christ?” I love his response:

“I share Christ with others not because I believe all who don’t know him will be eternally tormented in hell. I share him with others because I believe that in Christ we see the clearest picture of who God is and what God longs for from humanity. I share Christ because I believe it is in knowing, loving, and serving him that we find the fullest and most authentic life possible. I share Christ with others because I believe God wants all people to know the good news of Jesus Christ. I share Christ because I believe he is the way, the truth, and the life.”

MASKED YOUNG WARRIOR

Lagoon Sunrise, Kiawah, SC
Osprey Nest, Kiawah, SC

I was returning from photographing the mystical moments of a colorful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. As I crossed the beach access bridge, two women walking to the beach noticed the Nikon strapped around my neck. As they passed, one of them asked if I was going to photograph the singing Osprey across the way. That hadn’t been my original intent, but then, I was on beach time. I could faintly hear an unfamiliar bird song in the distance but didn’t recognize it. The call sounded like a frenzied “cheereek” and became more urgent as I followed the call over to another backwater lagoon.

Fortunately I found a wooden access bridge over the lagoon and was able to position myself so that I could focus my telephoto lens high overhead to the top of a dead tree. The forked branches were embracing a variety of driftwood, sticks and seaweed coated with a green algae. The immature osprey may have seemed to be singing to the women, but as I watched the young raptor, three black crows approached the nest and landed in the overarching bare branches. These same crows may have possibly taken the lives of the young osprey’s nest mates before they could defend themselves.

But now this masked sea hawk of the low country skies had outgrown the ominous, threatening crows that hovered overhead. The young sea hawk was making his presence known and finally putting these scavengers on notice that the tables were turned at last. The osprey had inherited the keen gift of a precision hunter. He was now able to spot fish from up to 100 feet with his golden eyes and dive headlong to the water’s surface. Only he and his cousin the owl have an outer toe that is reversible, allowing ospreys to grasp prey with two toes in front and behind. This is particularly helpful when they grab slippery fish which they will turn headfirst to reduce wind resistance in flight.

The osprey is considered the king of birds in Buddhism. A king in Greek mythology became an osprey so that he could harass his daughter when she fell in love with the king of Crete. And medieval folks believed that the masked osprey could so mesmerize fish that they would turn belly up in surrender when the winged hunter approached. Shakespeare noted this observation in Coriolanus when he wrote; “I think he’ll be to Rome as the osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature”.

I intently watched the drama of the black crows and the immature osprey play out as the sun began its daily march across the heavens. But then, much to my surprise, the gallant young warrior suddenly took wing and sailed out of sight, leaving the crows to ponder the role reversal and their new destiny.