Common?

Dear one,

As I gaze out our windows, the sky is an even-grey; the grass is still vibrant green; and the finches, jays, woodpeckers, and cardinals flit about the feeders. The spruces, white pines, and arborvitae are swaying; the birches, maples, and oaks are stark and barren; and the thermometer might rise above freezing. This is “my world,” but in making this observation, I do not mean to suggest that mine is necessarily a world apart: sheltered, isolated, and removed from the “real world”—the world of viruses, shootings, political egos, stock-market psychology, and spies. (One can always question what is “real” and what isn’t.) Rather, as I think of “my world,” is it simply common?

Not too long ago, I came to a clearer understanding: after years of pondering—although my pondering could not have been deep—I began to recognize the nature of “the sign.” Because of our present season, you might well recall that the shepherds—who often lived far removed from pleasure, privilege, and even simple hygiene—were told:
“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).

For some time I had asked: How is that a sign? What profound image lies within those words? Swaddling cloth? A manger? Of course, for years the answer to these questions might have been wafting about me, like the scent of a “fir” candle; but I was oblivious, searching for something deep, whereas the answer and message was simple: the Child born that night, whom the angels heralded as “Savior,” “Messiah,” and “Lord” was born among very ordinary albeit impoverished folk. Oh, He came from a lineage of pedigree, but the signs all indicate that He would live among those of “low birth,” and by so doing, He would lift and restore the common and mundane to wonder and glory. Was His a common birth? In some regards, "yes" and "no."

For common, everyday people His birth was as it should have been: perhaps rustic but very human. The wonder of His birth is that shepherds received the birth announcement; that His first sights, sounds, and scents were those of an average Palestinian dwelling; and that He would soon be familiar with earth, wood, and stone.

Jesus’ birth, His Incarnation, affirms and thereby elevates the wonder of being human; it also elevates the worlds that surround us, including feeding sparrows and disgruntled squirrels.

Because of Him, ours is a wondrous, truly uncommon world.

Still gazing,
Stan

Lincoln's thanksgiving ...

Dear one,

Due to the persistence of Sarah Josepha Hale, on October 3, 1863 Abraham Lincoln invited his fellow-citizens “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise”. During a seventeen-year span as the editor of the very influential Godeys’ Lady’s Book, Sarah Hale implored presidents Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and finally Lincoln to establish a national day of thanksgiving. Lincoln heard her plea: the war’s outcome was uncertain and the need for prayer and fasting was great—even though Lee had retreated from Gettysburg on July 4th, and Grant had taken Vicksburg that same day.

According to the US Census Bureau, when Lincoln took office in 1861, our population was c. 31.4 million. At that same time, the population of New York City was c. 814,000; Boston was c. 177,840; Chicago was c. 112,000; and San Francisco was c. 57,000. Upon his assassination and at the war’s end, of that national population, nearly 2% had died in camp or on field of battle: 618,222 dead.[1] (Given today’s US population, that death toll would be 6-7million.) Or framed differently, on average nearly one family in ten knew the loss of a family member.

Given the rising death tolls on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, Lincoln called for a day of prayer, in order that his “fellow-citizens” might “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to [the Father’s] tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it … to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.” [2]

From my narrow little window “upon main street,” it seems clear: we live in a horribly and painfully divided land. Without question. Admittedly, our “cultural wars” have not reached the pitch and/or depths of our American Civil War; and yet fear, pain, and grief seem resident in most every neighborhood, village, town, city, and metropolis. This noted, I wonder: What would happen if 10% of us (30-35million Americans) would heed Lincoln’s call to set aside of day of prayer and fasting for our “national perverseness”? Likewise, what would happen if daily you and I gave thanks?

I also wonder: Will we heed Jesus’ humble invitation: “Ask and it will be given to you”?

Anticipating thanksgiving,
Stan

[1] In recent years historians have estimated the death toll to exceed 750,000. In WW2 291,557 US soldiers died in combat.

[2]Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865, The Library of America (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989), p.520.

Supernatural ...?

Dear one,

J.R.R. Tolkien was once asked: “You have written of Hobbits and Elves: When might you write of supernatural creatures?” In response, Tolkien replied: “I have. They are human beings.”

In truth, I have not been able to verify this question-and-answer exchange, but I do believe it is more than a figment of my imagination. Nonetheless, I did recover the following from an essay written in tribute to Charles Williams. Tolkien wrote:
“Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies [or other fantastic beings] it can hardly be applied … For it is man who is … supernatural …”[1]

Although Tolkien wrote as a man of his time, his observation transcends early-to-mid twentieth century thought. Steeped within an Enlightenment world—where “reason,” “autonomy,” “nature,” “tolerance,” “optimism,” and “progress” were the essential lenses through which life was to be viewed—he believed, as evident in his writings, that human life was much more and far grander than the clock-work mechanisms posited by twentieth century “materialists.” For Tolkien, it was not that we human beings do not share common traits with those of the “animal kingdom”; rather, our nature supersedes our communal, biological, chemical, and psychological makeup. We are not merely “natural.”

Not in spite of but because of recent events: covid19, presidential elections, and racial/ethnic injustices, Tolkien came to my mind. At moments, we can become so fixated upon the present—so myopic—that we fail to appreciate Tolkien’s perspective: we are supernatural beings, and so our concerns for one another should be equally supernatural.

Admittedly, as I’ve written previously, these present issues facing us are truly problematic, and we need to address them; but we dare not allow them to eclipse the psalmist’s view:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalms 8:3-5).

At times we hear or read the negation: “He/She is so heavenly minded but of no earthly good.” In my experience, those who have been most heavenly minded are indeed of greatest earthly good: they give freely and often, because they know that life and “human nature” are more than merely natural and will supersede any natural bounds.

Hopeful,
Stan

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ed. C.S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans’ Publishing Company, 1973), p.39.