Month: March 2023

Categories
Self Reflections

To Ponder: what is its meaning?

When I was a young teenager, I looked up a lot of words in the dictionary. Sometimes what I was looking for was a defintion that explained how the word works or how I could put it to work in my life. Take ponder, for example. I only had a King James translation of the Bible in my teen years and many words I read were not part of my daily vocabulary. Proverbs 4:26 read “Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established.” Then, Proverbs 5:21 says, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.”

A modern translation uses the word “consider” in place of ponder in the fourth chapter of proverbs and “examines” for pondereth in the fifth chapter. But I actually like better the definition of ponder given by my pastor in a sermon many years ago. I noted it in my Bible. To ponder is “to weigh prayerfully; it is to give mental consideration with heart approval.” That helped. I find it a little more meaty or meaningful that simply “consider.”

Although we seldom use the word “ponder” these days, you may find the invitation to do so in thought questions at the end of Bible study guides. Rick Warren gave a “Point to Ponder” at the end of every chapter of The Purpose Driven Life.

So why am I writing about this? Maybe, because I’m doing a lot of it lately. But also, because I’m again reading the works of Henri Nouwen, an author whose writing causes me to exercise the process of pondering more than anyone else. Although I have about thirty of the books he wrote over his lifetime, I am just beginning to collect some of those in the Henri Nouwen Spirituality Series, a collection put together since his death. These books are on selected topics that were not the focus of a single one of his books but were addressed in many of his writings. These small volumes put together by others are made up laregly of excerpts from his writings.

Having been Joe Ann’s caregiver for a few years, I wanted to read A Spirituality of Caregiving. I got it this week and finished it this morning. In it I found so much to ponder. Perhaps I will write about some of it later.

What I most appreciate about Henri Nouwen’s approach to every aspect of life is that he was looking for the spirituality in living every part of life. It seems all too easy for me to mindlessly get on with the activities of daily living without mental consideration accompanied by heart approval of what is taking place. It is not about just doing what I am doing “as unto the Lord” but more importantly about what is He doing in me. I was reminded again that God is not loudly trying to get my attention. Becoming aware of the movement of the Spirit in my life requires silence and solitude.

What He is doing to transform me to His likeness is more important than what I am doing.

Categories
childhood memories

A Childhood Playground

Recently I joined a weekly creative writing group at the senior center in Holland and finished my second meeting this past Tuesday. This is a new experience for me and one that is already enriching my life. It is stretching me to write in new genres. There is value in the writing exercises, pleasure in hearing what others write and simple joy in doing something I love with others.

Each week we are given a word or two as prompts for our writing. Last week one of the words was “bullfrogs”. My immediate thoughts went to a favorite place of my childhood and I decided to share today what I wrote this week. It evoked a lot of childhood memories among those who were in the group on Tuesday. I hope it does the same for you.

Three-quarters of a century ago there was a magical place for me, a neighborhood formed by two streets, teeming with children, bounded on one side by an avenue and on the other by the entrance to a magical playground.

At the end of the upper street was we entered the special place where our adventures began. Walking down a slight slope and onto a winding sanding trail, we sometimes walked two abreast and at other times single file. If we paid attention we might see slithering garter snakes or scurrying field mice. At the right time of the year, there were buttercups and wild violets, and a variety of flowering weeds. Looking up and following the sounds, we spied birds we heard in the trees.

Although we were headed to a special place, we sometimes diverged from the path for a while to swing like Tarzan on wild grapevines that hung from climbable trees. Our destination was the end of the trail, the sights and sounds of the river with cattails and bullfrongs, and bloodsuckers that attached themselves to our legs and feet as we waded and splashed in the water of Black River. We had to examine each other to make sure the leeches were pulled off before going home.

My mother and the other mothers of my playmates were not always happy about our adventures. They worried about the poison ivy and poison sumac in the woods and what they considered human dangers in our playground. But we never saw the humans just the evidence they had spent time resting and eating in our shared space.

A block from the upper street were railroad tracks alongside a feedstore. Occasionally there were empty boxcars on those tracks and we played in them. I guess they were the mode of transportation for the hobos who had their camps in our playground. We didn’t mind sharing our space because they were never there when we were and what they left behind was sometimes of interest to us as we poked around in the remains of their campfires.

Although I have been carried back in memory to that neighborhood and playground, I can’t take you there to show it to you. It no longer exists. I the house I lived in on Columbia Avenue was between the Swift company ice cream factory and that of an old man with a wooden leg; we called his Peggy Mouw. Beyond his house lived his relative, Mrs. Mouw, who kept rabbits in a cage in her backyard. None of those places are there now. The houses on Fifth and Sixth streets are also gone. My neigborhood and playground were replaced by Windmill Island and Freedom Village.

I hope there are other magical places like those of my childhood where today’s children are building memories. I hope that one day when they reflect on memories of their childhood, they will not be of a playground in a video game but of places where living things are giving their imaginations space to run free./

Categories
Slovakia Memoir

Able and Willing

Sometime in 2004, Joe Ann and I were invited to visit a large psychiatric hospital in Slovakia that treated alcoholics, other drug addicts, and gamblers. After our first meeting with the the head of the hospital, we were invited to come another time for Joe Ann to share her story as a recovering alcoholic.

Of course, Joe Ann shared the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and their importance in her recovery process. After hearing Joe Ann’s story, the hospital administrator said this to us, “Under communism we were not permitted to have anything in our treatment program of a spiritual nature. Would you come here and bring the spiritual dimension to our patients?”

“Yes, we would be happy to do that. We will bring a proposal to you.” It was more than we could have asked for.

Introducing the Twelve Steps

Every treatment program in the U.S. knows the Twelve Steps of AA and about 95 percent of centers include them in some way as part of their treatement. We were being asked to bring the Twelve Steps to a place where they were totally unknown. Scouring our addiction library, we found an old book with a chapter that gave a model for introducing the Twelve Steps to a treatement center for the first time. We used that model to build our eight-week introduction which we ran in cycles. Since treatment was three months, most patients were able to take advantage of our weekly sessions during the course of their treatment.

Meditation on Step Two

Not long after we began the eight-week program, I wrote a workbook for those in our classes that summarized the teaching of each week, gave some additional material, and included daily meditations with space for them to write their thoughts. Most of the meditations were very short, just one or two paragraphs. However, when we introduced Step Two – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, I wrote a long meditation on the story we find in the Bible in Mark 9: 14-27.

The story is about a man who came to Jesus with his deaf and dumb son. The boy had seizures and when he had convulsions he foamed at the mouth and fell on the ground violently and became rigid. Sometimes when he was near water or fire and had a seizure, he fell into the water or fire and nearly died.

As this man came to Jesus, his son had a seizure. Earlier in the chapter we read that Jesus’ disciples had tried to help but they were unable to do so. You can imagine the helpless and hopeless feeling the man had. As he sees his son in a seizure there in front of Jesus, he pleads with Jesus and says, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Two questions

There are really two questions or doubts in that plea from the father. One had to do with the ability of Jesus to do anything. The other was about the willingness of Jesus to help. The man struggled with both of these. He had tried other things and they had not worked. He had gone to other people and they had not been able to help. Was Jesus able?

Then, even if Jesus could help, why would he want to help? Was he willing to help this man and his son? After all, there was nothing important about the man. He is asking Jesus for mercy. He had nothing to recommend him. There is no reason he deserves this. He is just a suffering human being and so is his son. He asks Jesus to have compassion – to enter into his suffering with him.

Then Jesus looks at the man and says to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” What incredible words for the father to hear. The Bible says that immediately the father of the boy cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

What he heard from Jesus was that Jesus was willing. What he also heard was that Jesus was not going to do something for the man without the man’s participation. He had to believe.

I went on from telling the Bible story to talking about the curious phrase in the second step, “came to believe”. The phrase implies a process. We don’t see the process before the story begins in Mark. We don’t know if the process in this man involved first hearing about Jesus and others being helped by him. Then, perhaps seeing others who were healed by Jesus, before he came to Jesus himself. But he came. Then he came to believe.

What about these questions and you and me?

I have seen Christians who are not confronting an illness and praying for healing, but instead they are struggling with these questions when it comes to serving the Lord is some way, accepting a challenge or taking a step of faith. They know God is able to do great things and that God uses people to carry his message and minister in many ways. Their question is not about God’s ability but about his willingness to use them.

When we have that question or doubt, I think it is because we are looking at our own inadequacies and forgetting that God is looking at how he gets glory from using us with our weaknesses.