Hope in a Hole in the Ground

It would seem to be a sad thing to have to bury one's hopes in a hole in the ground.  It would seem to be the final recourse when a person had to abandon a long-held hope, trying to put it out of sight.  Even Jesus tells his disciples not to behave like the servant who "went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money" (Matt. 25:18, NRSV).  Nevertheless, a hope of a kind is put in the ground and covered over trillions of time around this planet every year. That hope is encapsulated in a seed.

If ever there were a question about whether the earth were good, it would seem to be answered by that act.  As the early 20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke poignantly put it:

"In spite of all the farmer's work and worry,

he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly

transmuted into summer.  The earth bestows."

This connection between hope and the ground came to me when I encountered again a one-line quotation by someone much less known than Rilke. The quotation was by Lucy Larcom. Although few people know about her, a fair number of people may have encountered a statement of hers that is used by organizations such as the Arbor Day Foundation.  Larcom succinctly wrote:  "He who plants a tree / Plants a hope."  Of course, in this case, the "hope" is not completely buried, seedlings or young trees being the ways trees are usually planted.  Nevertheless, what dependence upon the earth and upon a tenuous life other than our own is embodied in that act of planting!  A number of U.S. cities are now more aware of how precarious the life of trees can be, because droughts over the past years have killed so many trees, both young and old.  And how even more dependent peoples' hopes must be in countries where water cannot be obtained through a garden hose or a transporting truck.

To be fair to Jesus, I should point out that when he guides his disciples not to put their "talents" in "a hole in the ground," he is using an agricultural metaphor to provoke insights about human behavior (as is often the case).   He is encouraging his followers not to remain holed up in their own houses, but instead to put their "talents" -- both money and abilities -- into circulation. His words could be paraphrased as, "Don't isolate. Interrelate!"

As I return my thoughts to those seeds being placed in the ground and covered over with soil, I now realize that the instructions we are giving them without words are very much the same.  We are in effect saying:  "Don't stay isolated in that sterile paper envelope where you've been. Instead, return to that world your family came from.  Get back in touch with the earth with all its nutrients and microbes.  Interrelate with the life-forms that are in the soil.  And soak up the rain that filters down, letting your life interrelate with the clouds and sun above.  Grow."

And upon that instructed seed, we humans place our sometimes frail hope.  It is a hope that has not been entirely disappointed billions and billions of times.

~~~

Have you ever gardened?  Have you ever thought about the wonder in those seeds?

(Rilke quote from "The Sonnets to Orpheus," XII, trans. Stephen Mitchell, in Ahead of all Parting, © 1995. p. 433)

(The quote by Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] is from "Plant a Tree,"

as quoted in A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations, ed. Barbara K. Rodes, © 1992.  130:8.)

(Both photos by Roger Culos, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses.)

Citing Robert Frost and Nature

I have lost count of how many times I've heard a particular line from a Robert Frost poem quoted, but quoted in a way that misrepresents it.  The line is:  "Good fences make good neighbors."  People who quote that line get the words right but usually take it out of context. Taken by itself, the line makes it sound as if Frost is saying it is good to construct some sort of wall between people.  However, in the poem, that line comes not from the lips of the speaker of the poem, but instead from the speaker's neighbor.  And the thoughts of the speaker -- quite opposite to the quoted line -- are:  "Something there is that doesn't love a wall...."  The judgment against the neighbor is reinforced by the speaker's saying that the wall-loving neighbor "moves in darkness."

As with many of Frost's poems, physical objects (in this case, the wall) are symbols for something larger, something about human psychology or interpersonal relationships.  Frost's favorite objects to employ in this way are those from Nature. Birch trees, stars, and tiny bugs all make appearances on Robert Frost's poetic stage.  Despite that symbolic role Nature often plays in Frost's poems, the features of Nature he uses are not just poetic devices.  Although the poet's main concern is humans, he is also interested in a right attitude toward Nature.  There is thus in the poems an actual connection between humans and Nature, not an artificial linking.  In Frost's poems, Nature, when viewed in the right way, is frequently able to be a real guide for human behavior.  Nature can be a true reference point.  It has lessons to teach.

For example, in the poem "Mending Wall" that the frequently quoted line comes from, the speaker cites Nature -- in the form of expanding, frozen ground -- as the cause of the wall's continually falling apart:

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,..."

The wall made of piled boulders, if it is to be maintained, requires mending every year not because it was poorly built but because it defied Nature.  The neighbor ("in darkness") seems to not be recognizing Nature's teaching that even the relatively solid earth will change.  Nature is not only a source of order but also a source of the undoing of order.

The contemporary Christian John Haught, from a theological perspective, raises a similar question.  Citing Biblical passages such as God saying, "See, I am making all things new," (Rev. 21:5, NRSV), Haught asks:  "Why should we think of God principally as a 'designer?'  Isn't God also the source of novelty?  And doesn't the introduction of novelty inevitably disrupt perfect design?"

The real trick is learning what features of Nature to cite when.  When, as guidance, do I cite the stable features of Nature, and when do I cite the changing ones?  I need to have knowledge not only of the non-human sphere of Nature but also of the human sphere -- understanding how we are both similar and dissimilar to the rest of the natural world.  Knowing how to interpret the world thus calls for growing in wisdom.

~~~

Is there any way you try to be guided by Nature?  Any way you are inspired by it?

(The Haught quote is from Responses to 101 Questions

 on God and Evolution by John F. Haught.  © 2001.  p. 87.)

(The entire Robert Frost poem can be read at this external link:  "Mending Wall.")

A Forgotten Lincoln Quote

In his day, Abraham Lincoln stood out in a crowd because he was unusually tall.  Today, however, Lincoln's birthday gets lost in the crowd of mid-February celebrations.  When the U.S. federal holidays were standardized, a generic "Presidents' Day" was created (partly because only northern states celebrated Lincoln, whereas more states celebrated George Washington). More recently, a growing number of churches, synagogues, and mosques celebrate Evolution Weekend in order to emphasize that the scientific theory of evolution can be compatible with religion.  That Evolution Weekend is placed near Charles Darwin's birthday.  Unfortunately, by sheer coincidence, Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day -- Feb. 12 -- and so Lincoln can also get eclipsed by Darwin.

I suggest we might let Lincoln back into the February conversation, by bringing him in through the back door, so to speak.  Most of our documentaries on Lincoln are about the Civil War, so we miss out on what goodness developed in that man without that national tragedy.  I would propose we begin our recovery of our picture of Lincoln's character with a virtually forgotten statement widely attributed to him:

 "I care not much for a man’s religion
whose dog and cat are not better for it."

That quotation could even be slipped into an Evolution Day sermon.  After all, Evolution Weekend events bring into one world-view religion and the evolutionary web of life.  So also does Lincoln's statement bring together thoughts of religion with thoughts of other forms of life. Specifically, those we encounter most frequently, our pets.  Moreover, because Lincoln is considered a secular figure, not a religious leader, the quotation attributed to him is easily ecumenical:  It could be used by Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other faith-tradition.  It could even be used by those who do not practice any organized religion, but who might think of an individual's "religion" as being that person's deepest values and way of living.

If it seems strange to our ears to hear the test of a person's religion being whether their "dog and cat are... better for it," one reason would be that over the past several centuries, most Christian theology in the West has become narrowed down to the human sphere.  This was not always the case.  The Hebrew Bible (which constitutes the Christian Old Testament) contains examples of how in Biblical times, religion included a number of directives for the considerate treatment of animals.  Although in the culture depicted in the Bible people did not have dogs or cats as pets, they did have domesticated animals.  And the heart of Biblical thought on how such animals should be treated was expressed by the following proverb (in which "righteous" means people who act rightly):

        "The righteous care about their livestock's needs."  (Prov. 12:10a)

Abraham Lincoln is for many people a symbol of strong moral character.  Few people, I dare say, when thinking of Lincoln think of how a person's religion could be revealed in how that person treats their pets.

~~~

What do you think about the Lincoln quote and the Biblical proverb?

(Proverbs 12:10a is given in the translation of the Common English Bible, © 2011.)
(Both illustrations are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired.)

(You can read about Evolution Weekend at this external link:  Evolution Weekend)

Dead Stones and Fossils of Life

There is probably no object within Nature that has not been used as a symbol sometime in human history.  Sometimes it is hard to understand what association provoked a particular object to become overlaid with certain meanings.  But not in the case of stones.  The obvious hardness of stone invites symbols and metaphors drawing upon that quality.  ("He had a heart of stone.")  So also does the association of timelessness prompted by rocks' not changing visibly during a single human life.  ("It is carved in stone.")

Given these associations with solidity, there is irony in that in the late 1700's, stones became associated with change -- immense change!  So much so that people felt that the stability of human existence was crumbling. In the late 1700's, the Scottish geologist James Hutton developed the principle that geological features of landscapes, even as immense and striking as they sometimes can be, had come about through slow geological changes over an immense amount of time. The shocking message of the stones was that, viewed from a wide perspective, they had been forever changing. Moreover, the message in some of those stones -- fossils -- was that there had been forms of life long before human history.

Today, a couple centuries later, most people have accepted that our human history is but a tiny piece of an immense cosmic timeline.  A timeline so incomprehensible that we have to use abstract numbers or metaphors (such as a 24-hour cosmic clock) to try to grasp it. Our human urge to connect with life encourages us to bring this matter of immense time down to a level we can relate to.  Down to a level we can hold and touch and feel.  That is what a small fossil can do!

I remember when, as a child, I first had a fossil explained to me.  I do not recall what type of tiny animal the fossil was an imprint of.  But I do remember how, as I held the hard stone and examined the small shape, I felt as if I were holding not an imprint but the skeleton of the animal itself.

John Muir
  (1838-1914)

For people of James Hutton's era and of the 1800's, an additional shock was the message in the fossils that entire species of life had gone extinct.  How could Providence allow such a thing? Other minds, however, were able to look at the matter of fossils and extinctions from a different perspective.  A more favorable perspective seems to have been more accessible for people who could see God's Spirit as being present through all the course of time, and as caring for all forms of life, not just human life.  For example, the American naturalist John Muir, looking at stone fossils as if they had a written message in them, put it this way:          "In looking through God's great stone books made of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created."

~~~

Do you remember when you learned about fossils?  Is there some fossil you particularly recall?

(The photograph of the fossils is by cobalt123 and is used under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.)

Paths, Not All Straight or Narrow

The front lawns in the suburb where I live display varying degrees of maintenance.  Some are impeccably trimmed; others are half-wild.  Although my lawn fits within the mid-range on that spectrum, it does have one distinctive feature, especially when the grass becomes dormant in the winter.  There is a diagonal path across it where the grass is kept matted down by the regular passage of neighborhood cats.  (Even though my wife and I are not sure how many cats use the path, it is clearly defined.)  That mark on our front lawn reveals to me that cats have joined a long tradition of animals and humans who have found it wise to follow a path that has been trod before, a path either secular or sacred.

Almost anywhere you look in the history of animals or people, you can come across the idea of following a path.  Just to take some examples from the U.S.:  James Fenimore Cooper's 1840 book The Pathfinder was inspired in part by stories about native Americans being skilled in finding their way in the wilderness.  American legend also contains the story of how in 1775 the hero Daniel Boone found an opening through the Appalachian Mountains, thus making possible the "Wilderness Road" for Europeans to move further west.  In fact, the trail he found was already there, having been used by Indians for generations.  And how did the Indians know about it?  By watching animals, particularly the buffalo.  They were the original pathfinders.

Turning to the other side of the globe, one of the most important scriptures of Buddhism, by its very name, indicates that honing one's life in a spiritually honorable fashion is like following a path.  A collection of elegant sayings of the Buddha is named The Dhammapada, which could be translated "The Path of Truth" or "The Path of the Teaching."  Furthermore, the idea that the followers of Buddhism are, in a sense, walking behind the Buddha is given beautiful artistic expression by the Buddha sometimes being represented symbolically by two footprints carved side by side on the ground in stone.

The religious symbol of a "path" or "way" is just as explicit, although in a somewhat mystical manner, in philosophical Taoism.  Particularly in Taoism's premier scripture, the Tao te ching.  In most English translations of that small classic, the word "Tao" is even translated as "way" because of the double meaning that English word can hold.  In one meaning, "the way" is the nature of the world, in the sense that we might speak of "the way things are."  In a second sense, "the way" is the way we ought to live our lives to best coordinate ourselves with the way the world truly is.

True, the cats that follow a path of tramped-down grass on my front lawn might feel they are just taking the smoothest route to the bowl of food my neighbor puts out.  But I know the cats are following a widespread and noble tradition by being led by fellow creatures who have traveled a path before them.

~~~

Is there a particular way that your life has followed a path of some people who went before you?

(The photo of Buddha footprints is by "Nemo's great uncle"

and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License.)