The Christmas Sheep

I love our Christmas Crèche. It is composed of the requisite wise men, baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds and three very skinny sheep. Who knows if sheep were actually present at our Saviour's birth, most likely the shepherds abandoned their flock bawling on the hills in their haste to heed the angels' command (presumably an angelic visitation would wipe everything from one's mind!). But let’s say a few of the most faithful or frightened of the flock did tag along to the stable, there joining the other animals not represented in our particular crèche – the cattle lowing for instance. Isn’t it fitting that when the Creator chose to bodily inhabit his creation, his first creaturely breaths were taken not just amoungst his fellow home sapiens, but in the company of animals as well? Isn’t this a picture of God’s humility and a sign of hope rooted in God’s solidarity with all that He has made?

St. Francis is believed to have been the first to bring animals into the church, arranging them around a manger for the Christmas mass. “See,” he said, “your God has come amoung you not as a king among his subjects, but as a baby amoung his fellow creatures.”

Behold, Emmanuel -- God with us, all of us.

The Sacrament of Spruce

credit: Mr. Po

My farmmates slaughtered a cow recently. I didn’t want to be there. I liked Spruce, his tawny curls, bawling voice, and thick tongue that wrapped around blades of grass like an arm of an octopus. His death was an event I would happily forgo.

I went to church instead. I love church. I love the singing. I love our pastor Anne’s sermons. I love the prayers. It all draws me to the Real. Technically we’re “low church” Baptists – thus, no robes, no candles and just two sacraments, baptism and communion. In the seven years of the church’s existence we have only performed one baptism; but what we lack in water, we make up in wine (or, in our case, grape juice). Rooted in the image of the table -- where all are welcomed and nourished -- we celebrate God’s tangible demonstration of love every Sunday. I love the remembrance integral to this ceremony. I love the earthiness of the bread which is often homemade and sometimes still warm. I love the way the servers say everyone’s name as he or she receives the elements. “John, this is the body of Christ broken for you...Danielle, the blood of Christ, shed for you.” I like to go first so that I can sit and watch others receive, which is a communion too.

Given that I had chosen sacrament over slaughter I was surprised when my farmmate Karin described Spruce’s slaughter as “sacramental”. The officiating “priest” hardly seemed a candidate for such a label. A chain-smoking man in his early thirties, he consumed three cans of Old Milwaukee beer during the 30 minute early morning procedure. When Karin asked if he would be willing to slaughter their next cow in a couple year’s time, he answered, “If I’m still alive, which I doubt.” 

But there was evidence of sacrament in the channel hand-dug from the slaughter area to the field, which still shone bright with blood when I saw it hours later. And there had certainly been reverence as expressed by Karin and our fellow farmmate Angela’s prayers of thanksgiving for Spruce’s life. True, there was no, “Behold, the cow of God that takes away the sins of the world.” But there was an encounter with the “Real” and in turn, a turning – of hearts toward the Creator in gratitude and humility at the provision of nourishment that only comes through sacrifice.

Circus Day

credit: Salomon888

Juggling is not a prerequisite for a career in conservation, but one particular summer at the A Rocha environmental centre you might have thought it was. Strangely, out of 18 staff and interns, over half of us could juggle. I can’t recall how this fascinating bit of trivia revealed itself (Were we tossing rutabagas when we should have been raking?) but it inspired an end-of-summer Circus Day. Everyone who could juggle brought tennis balls, bean bags and spherical fruit. One guy brought his “diablo sticks” and a clever yo-yo thing that could be launched 30 ft. in the air. Another fellow set up a tension line in the orchard so we could try our legs at walking a tightrope.

During the frivolity I chatted with two guests staying at the centre – a couple who both held PhDs and who were both highly successful in their fields. Watching the skill with which our bunch swirled balls through the air, the husband's eyebrows arched as he commented on how good we were at wasting time – we must be if we could become so accomplished at activities so meaningless.

His comment lodged in the craw of my brain and has needled me over the years. With the wisdom of hindsight here is the reply I would now give. Could it be that being drawn to the work of conservation, which involves the studying, preserving and relishing of the “physical”, we A Rocha-ites are likewise drawn to our own physicality? Juggling, for us, just might be a way of being physically embodied. It takes hand-eye coordination, concentration, measured breathing, peripheral vision and an awareness of space. It requires an attention to the present moment. That’s the philosophical justification; probably we juggle because it's fun.

Yes, the world may be going to hell in a hand basket, but there’s still so much goodness to be enjoyed right now, right in our bodies. So why not juggle? Why not waste a bit of time doing something that won't compute?* Why not spend some time in our bodies, joyful as saints?


*(From Wendell Berry's Poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front:  "..everyday do something that won't compute.."

Embracing Disappointment

credit:  Richard and Jo

I received a bit of bad news recently. The weight of it hollowed out my chest like a Halloween pumpkin.

Ultimately, there’s no getting around a definitive “no." It boldly approaches, sits at your feet and stares up at you, unblinking, like a scrungy alley cat. Then, when you try to slink away, it follows you down the street and trips you as it figure-eights between your feet.

To cheer me up my sister told me a story often told in Buddhist circles. It goes like this: a man is chased by tigers to the edge of a cliff. He sees a rope and starts to climb down only to realize there are tigers down below as well. In his despair he looks up and notices a mouse gnawing on the rope. As hope drains from him, he looks to his left and notices a ledge no wider than his hand. On the ledge grows a strawberry plant with one perfectly ripe strawberry. He reaches, picks the strawberry and savours it.

I ruminated on this story as the scrungy cat of disappointment followed me around the house. And as I ruminated, I looked out the window and saw a baby bunny nibbling a clover flower. So I sat down and watched the bunny. I stayed present to the bunny. I told my sister about this little moment of “nowness” and my attempt at bunny-watching detachment and she said, “Well, the point is to also stay open and present to the pain.” Ah, now there’s the rub: I’m not sure how I’m supposed to stay present to the bunny and to the scrungy alley cat at the same moment!

Maybe (my sister would want to say) eating the strawberry isn’t so much about distraction as pausing to take a deep breath before looking back down at the certain doom that awaits. Maybe it’s about not forsaking the nourishment even if it seems inopportune and pointless. Maybe pausing to register the beauty of creation in the present moment gives one the courage to pause and also tenderly hold the emotion of disappointment in one’s heart in the present moment -- protect the kernel of it and place a lovingly painted “no trespassing” sign at its gate. Maybe savoring the gift of beauty emboldens one to pay attention to the not-so-beautiful – to pay attention to the flea-ridden cat: learn its name, the shade of its amber eyes, the variegation of it fur. Maybe when attended to, its company might not be so repulsive. Maybe its companionship might come with a message.

Eagle God

credit:  photomatt28

I sit on a bench overlooking Tricomali channel. Salt Spring looms long on my right, Saturna anchors the southern horizon.  Orcas Island, my childhood neverland, rests futher south still, the hump of its turtle-back a misty blue against a paler sky.  This is a view that invites quiet. And so I try -- I try to crouch beneath the cacophony of my thoughts that twirl from one imagining to another. But to no avail. The spirit is willing but the mind is strong, performing rapid-fire feats of gymnastic wonder.

Then, mid-cerebral-spin, I clutch the bench, cowering. A creature so huge it blots out the sun whooshes overhead and perches on the green tower of the Douglas fir under which I sit. With two gigantic flaps, it cups the air and lowers its weightless tonnage 20 ft directly above me. And I hunch beneath this great bird of prey feeling very small and very alive. I sit like this five, ten minutes, aware. And then, tragedy of tragedies, I forget. My attention shifts, my mind ventures from its still and safe hidey-hole and braves a quick scurry down a furrow of thought. And then another. Until I am back on the frenzied fringe of my mind, scampering headless, having lost the centre completely.

But, in my forgetfulness, another miracle: another swoop, this time down and over and so close the beat of the eagle’s wings sends a draft that dances on my face.  So close, the arc of each black talon is plain and stark as it curls inward for flight.

                    Oh Eagle God, you with the power to tear
                    my heart out,
                    snatch me from the frayed
                    fringe of my daydreams
                    and carry me, dangling limp,
                    to your aerie
                    and another land.

Sabbath Simplicity Part II

Credit:  Jeremy Tarling

As we train our gaze to a horizon beyond the consumer habits of our society, the Sabbath becomes a day of refashioning. The recalibration that occurs spills into the rest of the week as we shift away from a consumer-driven way of living toward a relational way of living. Indeed, as I’ve come to recognize the holiness of this one day and as I’ve gazed through this weekly window into the eternal by simply stopping and resting, I’ve begun to realize that God has left windows open throughout the week through which a Sabbath draft flows. Moments are found to realign, to practice that art of saying no, to resist the temptations of competition and consumerism.

As an offering in these Sabbath musings I present a poem written while reflecting on a metaphor common in Jewish lore, where the Sabbath is compared to a queen. Thus, just as one would roll out the red carpet for a royalty, so one honors this day as the Queen of days.

The Sabbath Queen

The days are drones and swirl
about my head, darting,
drumming in my ears.
Beneath them I squat,
swollen with the sting of their concerns
of commerce and competition.

I heave myself
from place to place,
but find nowhere to rest;
all is bustle and business,
when what I need is binding up
of wounds and worries.

But then I come to her—
regal in her unconcern
for the frenzied course I’ve taken.
She is midwife to my frustration,
birthing the stillborn cares,
which she sets aside, swaddled in a solitary
place I do not know.

In their stead she offers
nothing but a place to sit and rest.
And in that rest I am refashioned—
unswollen; the poison of the days transfused
with a nectar sweet and satisfying,
so that when I rise to bid her well,
I am well.

Sabbath Simplicity

credit:  Brooke McAllister

My family keeps the Sabbath. Not religiously—as in, we don’t always do religious things. But we are pretty religious about “keeping” it. Usually we go to church. Usually we eat simply—eggs and toast is normal fare for Sunday dinners. Usually we say “no” to invitations and engagements unless they involve family. If it’s winter we might go cross-country skiing; if it’s rainy we might read a book aloud as a family; if it’s sunny we might take a walk at the beach. Our only hard and fast rule is no shopping. The point is, we say “no” to certain things. We step out of our normal rhythms of work and commerce and step into a new way of being.

Essentially, the Sabbath is about time. It’s about trusting in a rhythm of time that depends not on clocks attuned to commerce, but on a larger clock attuned to the rhythms of nature and of God. Sabbath is rooted first in the Jewish notion of day, which in their calculation begins at sundown. Thus, we go to sleep as the day is just getting rolling. We wake when the day’s half over. In a society where productivity is the measure of worth, it would seem counter intuitive to begin one’s day by lying down and shutting one’s eyes. The beginning of day is for writing lists, making plans, springing from the starting blocks, not for putting on one’s pyjamas. But in the Jewish creation narrative, the day begins not with the rising of the sun, but with its setting—there was evening, there was morning, the first day. The day begins with rest and is followed by work, a work already begun by God, and into which humans join.

The Sabbath is also rooted in the Jewish understanding that this particular day is a different sort of day, not only in its parameters, but in its essence. The Jewish creation narrative, Abraham Heschel says, declares that the first thing in all of creation that is declared holy is the Sabbath—not a people or a place, but a day. Everything else in creation is declared good, but this day, the seventh day, is declared holy. The Sabbath, then, becomes a “palace in time,” into which we are invited. The invitation, writes Heschel, is to come away from the “tyranny of things of space” to “share what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation.”

A Whale's Last Song

credit:  Darryl Dyck, The Canadian Press

A juvenile humpback whale washed up onto the beach a couple kilometres from our house this morning. By the time my girls and I arrived a few hours later the beach was swarming with a crowd of the curious. Yellow police tape circled the 10-metre long whale, making it look like a crime scene, which I suppose it was -- the fishing net tangled at the whale’s fluke clearly indicated foul play. The Vancouver Aquarium folks were on hand as were the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It was a strange atmosphere of mourning and festivity. I heard one man say to his son, “Isn’t this exciting?” I think he meant being so close to a whale.

There are only about 2,000 humpbacks that travel up and down the B.C. coast. They don’t often come near shore. They do sing, however -- haunting songs. And they’re intelligent. I thought of a story related by a marine biologist about another species of whale -- Orcas. Each of the three Orca pods that live in the Northwest’s Puget Sound sing in their own distinct dialect. When one pod failed to return one particular spring the other two pods went out to sea, singing the third pod’s song in an attempt to woo it back to their common summer waters.

And I thought of my grandparents’ neighbours on Orcas Island who once ate a Robin that had smashed into their windshield. Not wanting its death to have been in vain they collected it off the road, brought it home and cooked it for lunch. I remembered how our financial advisor trapped, killed and made stew of a squirrel who had taken up residence in his garage. He encouraged his kids to eat the stew as a living case study of “waste not, want not” (you got to love such conservatism in a financial advisor).

But how could we redeem this whale’s death? We couldn’t eat it. We couldn’t use its blubber for oil. We could, however, lament. Before the crime scene tape went up some thoughtful souls placed flowers on its head. And just before we arrived three elders from the Semiamhoo First Nation beat drums and sang songs, honouring a rare and singing whale.

Poverty and Conservation -- Making the Connection

Students in Ghana planting trees with A Rocha's Climate Stewards project

If ecology is the study of connections, then the ecologists should be the first to rally against the injustices of environmental degradation and the subsequent human suffering that accompanies it. The reason why many don’t, as Peter Harris points out, is that we live in a time of complete disconnection. He writes, “products conceal their origins, academic disciplines operate in expert solitude, social relationships fragment.” But the poor do not have the luxury of disconnection from their environment. There are no presto logs to burn when their forests are decimated, no stashes of bottled water when the spring runs dry, no fertile fields around the bend when their crops sizzle during a prolonged drought. Stella Simiyu, a native Kenyan and a Senior Research Scientist in plant conservation at the National Museums of Kenya, writes this about the predicament of the poor.

If you look at Africa, the rural poor depend directly on the natural resource base. This is where their pharmacy, supermarket, power company and water company are. What would happen to you if these things were removed from your local neighbourhood? We must invest in environmental conservation because this is how we enhance the ability of the rural poor to have options and provide for them ways of getting out of the poverty trap.

It is only too easy to live in happy naivete when it comes to the social and environmental costs associated with our extravagant Western lifestyles. What we need are some clarion voices to draw those connections for us. Enter the words of Hosea.

Hear the word of the Lord…There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery…Because of this the land mourns…the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying. (Hosea 4:1–3)

Blessed Stillness

credit:  Brooke McAllister

I woke this morning with my “to do” list playing a loop track in my brain. It’s longer than usual and my insides felt tight as a result. But remembering the words of my gurus (Martin Luther: “I find I have so much to do that I must spend two hours a day in prayer;” and the equally sage Anne Lamott: “Keep moving or you die.”), I pushed myself outside for a quick walk before tackling the tasks of the day.

I strolled off our property and into the adjacent woods. The first thing that struck me, besides the tangle of green that has burst into being in the last few weeks, was birdsong -- so clear and bright and immediate it seemed each bird had an amplifier on his little scissor mouth. The woods were full of throaty exuberance. “Listen to me! I’m a bird!” each one seemed to be trumpeting.

Then it was off the woodland trail and down to the Little Campbell River to a bench my farmmates have dubbed “the Listening Bench” where I go to, well, listen. My practice is to sit quietly and practice the presence of God through contemplative prayer – be present to the Presence that finds me there. I hadn’t been sitting for more than three minutes when he came. In the river’s current, brown from the recent rains, a bigger brown – a square face, flat ears, sturdy body and wide flat tail, like a flipped rudder. A beaver. Four seconds and he was gone – carried swiftly downstream and out of view.

The whole incident -- the temptation to tackle “to do's”, the invitation to stillness, the blessings of the birds and beaver -- put in mind of a Mary Oliver poem:

It Was Early
(from Evidence)

It was early,
 which has always been my hour
  to begin looking
   at the world

and of course,
 even in the darkness,
  to begin
   listening into it,

especially
 under the pines
  where the owl lives
    and sometimes calls out

as I walk by,
 as he did
  on this morning.
   So many gifts!

What do they mean?
 In the marshes
  where the pink light
   was just arriving

the mink
 with his bristle tail
  was stalking
   the soft-eared mice,

and in the pines
 the cones were heavy,
  each one
   ordained to open.

Sometimes I need
 only to stand
  wherever I am
   to be blessed.

Little mink, let me watch you.
  Little mice, run and run.
   Dear pine cone, let me hold you
    as you open.

Dancing Deformed

Credit: Mikey O.

     I taught at an international college in Lithuania. My students were lovely. Most had been about twelve years old when the Baltic republics succeeded from the Soviet Union. And most had stood in the human chain which stretched hand from grasped hand from Vilnius in Lithuania, through Riga in Latvia and north to Tallinn in Estonia – 600 kilometres of solidarity and peaceful resistance. Thanks to the drama and suffering they had survived nearly every student was an old soul and a survivor.

     One of my favourite classes was Oral Communications – a.k.a., How to Give a Speech. I taught my students to make eye contact, to speak in a moderate but varied tone and to use simple, but efficacious hand gestures. As they gave their speeches I scribbled comments on a sheet of paper and graded them on the spot. I made helpful suggestions like, “Make sure to look at your whole audience and not just the cute girl in the corner,” and “Bring a glass of water with you next time for that tickle in your throat.” On one occasion, mid-way through the semester, I wrote, “Hey, Laura, where’s your other arm!?” I thought I was being so jocular, cleverly drawing this student’s attention to the fact that she had given her entire speech with one arm tucked firmly behind her back, leaving her free hand the sole responsibility of making all the gestures. I docked her a few points for this bizarre oversight.

     I passed out my comments and grades at the end of that day’s speeches and traipsed off to my suite in the student dormitory. But the image of Laura standing at the front of room, one arm doing all the gesturing, stayed with me, so much so that I started to piece together a “portrait” of Laura in that class. Long, thick blond hair always cascading over her shoulders. A winter coat always draped over those same shoulders like a shawl. A shy and demure spirit. And as this portrait formed in my mind a sense of mortification grew within me. I slithered down the hall and found my friend Natasha.

     “How many arms does Laura have?” I blurted as soon as I saw her.

     “Well, one.” She replied as if everybody knew this, as if this was the dumbest question she’d ever heard.

     I collapsed into the nearest chair. “One, only one!? Are you sure!?” I buried my face in my hands and groaned.

     Natasha hurried on. “Yeah, she was born with only one arm. She’s really self conscious about it.” She paused. “That’s why she always wears her jacket over her shoulders.”

     I thought I might throw up. I had never felt like such a jerk. Hey, where’s your other arm?! I had jeered like a snot-nosed schoolyard bully. Ten points off for the missing limb, you freak!

     So I wrote a very long, very grovely note to Laura, apologising profusely, explaining my ignorance of her one-armedness, awarding extra points for bravery and begging her forgiveness for my incredibly insensitive comment. I might even have included a small sketch of a sparrow. (“Look! I drew you a picture!”)

     I learned something important that day. We are all disfigured. Some people’s disfigurement is more obvious (whether in body because they are missing a limb or whether in character because they mock those who are missing a limb). But we are, each one, disfigured. And therefore we journey imperfectly with moments of sheer knee-buckling insecurity or, worse, moments of self-aggrandising narcissism. But, never mind; we hobble on toward the good goals of kindness, of justice, of creation care and godliness. We are a mixed bag. But the point is to keep showing up, keep dancing, keep grasping the hand nearest and giving the speech.

Living with Lentils

credit:  FelixLeupold

As a family and at A Rocha we try to eat real food from a bit lower on the food chain. It’s our meager stand of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the two-thirds world for whom a locally grown, mostly vegetarian diet is the norm. Most long-term guests take our food agenda in stride, or at least they try to. In the beginning lentils are novel, and they feel noble eating like the rest of the two-thirds world. But after a week or two this wears off and there is a clamoring for meat—big chunks of it. In this regard I’m reminded of one of our first A Rocha interns, Martin Lings. I was in charge of the food during the early days of our Environmental Centre, and while I’m not a terrible cook, I was run a bit off my feet and my culinary craftings suffered as a result. I recall one particular day when I had morphed leftover lentils into their third incarnation. This simple little act of efficiency caused Martin, normally the height of English civility, to positively lose it. The scene went something like this:

 Me: Sauntering to the table with a child on my hip and casserole dish in hand—the very picture of female domesticity. “Dinner’s served!”

     Martin: Staring hungrily from the table. “Smells good, what’s for tea (read: supper)?”

     Me: Coyly. “Oh, just a little lentil thing I refashioned.”

     Martin: Face falling, eyeing the casserole dish suspiciously. “Huh?”

     Me: Smiling a bit too brightly. No comment as I lift the casserole lid.

     Martin: Wailing. “Nooooooo, not Lentil Goo again!”

Indeed, it was Lentil Goo again! But in the years since, I have perfected Lentil Goo into Lentil Dahl, which, if I do say so myself, is rather tasty. For a couple of years it became a weekly standard at the A Rocha table and was almost always appreciated even by the more carnivorous in the crowd. I offer you now, a rough sketch of that dish in case you want to try it in your own kitchen:

credit: mode

Leah’s Dahl


1. Sauté two onions in plenty of olive oil    

2. Add spices, salt and sugar: 
    4 T. curry powder
    4 T. cumin
    3 T. coriander
    2 T. garam marsala
    1 t. cardamom
    2 T. salt
    2 heaping T. brown sugar

3. Add water (aprox. 10 cups) and red lentils (aprox. 5 cups) – add more water if needed as it cooks.

4. Bring to a boil and then turn down to simmer for one hour -- stir every once and a while.

5. Taste and spice as needed (sometimes I end up more than doubling the spices and salt because I’ve just “eyeballed” it to start with).

Serve on rice with plain yogurt and chutney.

Serves 8

Practicing Gratitude

credit:  Brooke McAllister

The hallmark of a truly “simple” life is gratitude. “Gratitude is the heart of faith,” writes Mary Jo Leddy, author of Radical Gratitude. In this vein, she relates a lovely prayer of gratitude the Jewish people pray every Passover as they celebrate the deliverance of the Hebrew people from Egypt. The prayer centres around the Hebrew word Dayenu, which in English means, It would have been enough.

– If you had only led us to the edge of the Red Sea but not taken us through the waters, it would have been enough.

– If you had only taken us through the Red Sea but not led us through the desert, it would have been enough.

– If you had only led us through the desert but not taken us to Sinai, it would have been enough. 

Leddy suggests using this template as a helpful spiritual exercise in reflecting on one’s own life. For example: If I had only been born but not had a twin sister, it would have been enough. If I had only had a twin sister but hadn’t visited Orcas Island, it would have been enough. If I had only seen the sun set off Otter’s Point, but hadn’t experienced a snowfall in the Rockies, it would have been enough.

When we are satisfied with our lives as being enough, we are able to resist the whispers of consumerism that tell us we don’t have enough or we are not enough. When our sense of satisfaction is rooted in an amazement at the givenness of every gift—from friends to home to our very own lives—then we are grounded in the firm grace of abundance.

Gratitude’s starting point is wonder. I love what the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel says about true spiritual living: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement.” He encouraged his students to take nothing for granted. “Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” The amazement comes as we realise everything we have and every gift we experience is pure grace. To be born would have been enough, but then I’m given a loving family. Wow! To be raised in a loving family would have been enough, but then I am surrounded by caring mentors. Amazing! We are invited not only to consider the big gifts, but the little gifts as well—the light slanting through the fir trees on a fall afternoon or the caress of a small child’s hand on our arm. It’s all grace. It’s all amazing. It all warrants our gratitude.

The Easter Pattern

I am an identical twin. Like many twins, my sister and I have lived strangely parallel lives. We both married men with odd names (Marrku and Bernd respectively). We both worked in campus ministry in the Pacific Northwest and in the former Soviet Union. And we both are now employed in vocational fields from which others occasionally recoil. My sister is a hospital chaplain. When she tells people what she does – that she sits with the dying -- a good percent of her conversation partners take a literal step backwards, as if she is a carrier of the condition of her clients, as if cancer were communicable. I work in the environmental field. Because I live in Canada where “the environment” is hip, few people are physically repulsed by my vocational admission, but I have had those who stare at me as if I have something green hanging out of my nose or who change the subject so abruptly that you can hear the tires of their mind screeching.

The offensiveness of our vocations lies in their affront to status quo. The environment is just so gritty and inconvenient. Spend too much time in it and you’ll likely get dirt on your pants and sweat on your brow. Death is so messy and just plain sad. It always comes at such a bad time.

But life is born out of the messiness off death. This is the pattern of creation. The log rots, nourishing the soil, and the sapling thrives. The salmon spawns, flopping exhausted on the river’s edge, and the eagle feasts. It’s the pattern of life -- a pattern played out in creation’s never ending integration of the shadows of life and death.

credit: mrjorgen

This integration is like a Japanese art form. The rot, the darkness, the suffering, and the life that brings a good death get folded in and over and around and become an integrated whole. It’s the pattern of Easter over and over, folded into a life that hangs like a delicate origami crane, weightless and wonderful for all the world to see.