FIVE FINGER EXERCISE: Counting our way to peace.

“Five fingers, skin and bone, talk to me like a telephone.   How do those fingertips say twice the words that come from your lips?”

– Leah Kaufman

One, two, three, four.  .  . five fingers!  We are five-fingered creatures, times two hands:  five plus five equals ten.  How neat is that?  The building blocks of math have their imprint on our bodies.  At an early age, we learn to flex, point and twiddle these appendages with great dexterity.   One of the most remarkable sensations I have ever experienced is to have a baby’s tiny set of five fingers wrap my one large index finger around in a tight, tenacious grip.   From there, what discovery and mischief young kids get into with their fingers.  They tap each one as they learn their numbers; they manipulate the Lego’s into shapes of ever-increasing perplexity, they run them lovingly through the soft fur of the bunny at show and tell.   Yes, they also learn to pry where they shouldn’t into cupboards of curiosity, swiping an illicit sample of frosting off the edge of the cake.   How joyously young fingers with whole palms splat through the mud and without hesitation smear that mud across the front of mom’s clean, white dress.  Our fingers learn quickly (and literally) to make their mark on our worlds – for good and for ill.

I marvel that God called us into being on a divine level partly by the use of our fingers.  The first building blocks of our memories find their way from our “digits” so to speak.   A young girl recites a list ticking it through her fingers as easily as an old man might do the same marshalling facts for a point he’s making.  I recall learning in my early piano days what were called “five finger” exercises learning to train my fingers to carefully walk, then run, then dance through the white keys of a C scale.   After years of practice I became astounded by the experience of fingers, which hold memories of melodic movement that even my mind had seemed to misplace.   This last summer, I sat in a piano studio seeking to recall phrases of composition I hadn’t played in years.   I tried but failed in frustration to recall even the sound of melodies I once knew by heart.   Then I resorted to simply letting my fingers play their way through the thicket of the keys; memories of sheer muscle and bone wandered through old passages.   Phrase by phrase, the physical dance in the fingers found the old path again, leading my brain to gradually recall what had seemed lost.   “And a little child (ten in fact) shall lead them.”   In such a miraculous way, my old music was converted to digital – literally!

Our lives are surrounded with various implements and technologies, which enable us to recall and remember whole libraries of data.  The irony is the more we rely on these implements to manage life’s information, the more needlessly complex becomes our ability to recall, let alone master any part of it.   Before iPhones and iPads, before computers and laptops, indeed, even before pad and pencil, human beings utilized the very near and natural set of counters custom-made to our bodies; we let our fingers do the walking, we let our hands pray us into remembrance. When the early Israelites were exhorted to remember and teach the next generation about “the laws of our God”, they were to do things like write them on their doorpost and “bind them as a sign on your hand.”   They were to use those things that were simple and near at hand in order to keep the word of the Lord at their fingertips.  So I discovered at the conclusion of Sabbatical a simple discipline of using my own, bodily calculator as a method for prayer to recall those things I needed to bring before God.

With 10 fingers I can easily recall the 10 commandments.  Minus a thumb I can recall the 9 fruits of the spirit or the 9 beatitudes – letting the final digit bring my hands, hence my whole life into an open expression of praise and amen.  As I came to prayer at the conclusion of Sabbatical, I contemplated the use of my fingers as reminder posts.  They became markers of the things I am to remember from the Word.  They also became a set of ten keys to unlock some of the most stubborn doors to my own heart.   Like many, I often find the sheer act of prayer becomes an exercise in gradual surrender – that when I draw near to God’s heart, the light of Christ has a way of revealing my own.   Christians through the centuries have found that the light of the spirit has a way of revealing and banishing the darkness inside, allowing us to be relieved of burdens we secretly carry.    That is why a most basic part of prayer is surrender; as the apostles say, we “cast our care on God, for God cares for us.”  It’s the act of naming and releasing our anxieties, our willful impulses and our clinging idolatries, that we might know the joy of finally abandoning them to the mercy of God.   I don’t know about you, but I often find prayer is simply the effort of letting those things go, in order that I might come to a place of receptiveness – to God and to my neighbor.

 The seeming myriads of troubles and anxieties that war within us can often boil down to a few basic things, such as our fear of the future, our lack of trust for God’s provision or our craving for vindication and to have our own way.   The particulars for each of us are endless, but the basic impulses can most likely be reduced (if you’ll pardon the pun) to a “handful.”  During the final phase of sabbatical, I sat down to identify what 10 of my most basic anxieties, fears or needs were in my life.  Once I could articulate those, I assigned them “a digit”.  The most pressing concerns naturally would get the prominent thumb and forefinger, quieter, yet more subtle ones would get the pinkies.    Once I had my list of 10, I walked through the prayer labyrinth at San Francisco seminary, taking each burden in turn and counting them off my fingers.   I would take enough time with each one that I might amply recognize and name the anxiety or need, and then release it – from my fingers into God’s.   In this way, I reached the center of the circle of prayer having completed a counting exercise that could have been done by any first grader.   I was grateful to discover how much lighter my heart became as I went through this simple, rote exercise, this countdown to surrender so to speak.

As I have been back, I have been sometimes consistent, sometimes not so much on this practice of prayer with the appendages.   When I neglect it, it seems my life appears complicated.   When I remember to pray through this countdown, I find the way is made clearer.   The peace of God, which passes all understanding – sometimes I’m able to put my finger on it!

WHEN THE QUALITY OF ECSTASY IS STRAINED: a reflection on the risks of joy.

More than 32 million people know who the double rainbow guy is.   I’ve sat gazing on that mildly beautiful video on YouTube of the clearly vivid rainbow arching against the rain-soaked sky in front of the hill (pictures rarely do justice to the reality).  But soon I forget about the rainbow as I suppress laughter listening to “Mr. Mountainbear” boil over in ecstatic, weeping rapture over the event.   30 seconds of  “woooo!   Yeaah!” would have been unremarkable; 5 to 6 sustained minutes of it, complete with orgasmic yowps and sobbing solicitations to the heavens over what it all means is a roadside accident and maybe we should call the ambulance.    The video really isn’t about the rainbow, is it?   It’s about the humor of overkill.   It’s got me thinking about our human capacity for ecstasy – and at what point does “beatitude” become “lighten up, dude!”

Mr. “Double Rainbow’s” vigorous response reminds me of a kid I met at a church retreat in high school.  We were sitting across from each other eating  dinner and I was telling a funny story.    When I got to the best part, he laughed on cue – unfortunately, he was drinking milk when I got to the punchline.  His guffaw exploded 2% Darigold all over my face and while he clearly enjoyed my joke, I had completely forgotten it in my dripping astonishment.   He seemed absolutely nonplussed that his reaction was in any way indecorous; in fact, he didn’t even apologize!   To this day I don’t even remember the funny story, but I vividly remember his unexpected, over-the-top reaction to it.   I think that’s what 32 million people get out of the “double rainbow” video – it’s a shared, knowing amusement at the bizarre lengths our human capacity for ecstasy may go – if we let it.   Really. . .snapshots of rainbows are a dime a dozen, funny stories – we all have a trunk full of them.   Where would they be without the human possibility of being overwhelmed, disarmed and enraptured?

That’s got me thinking about our amazing world  and that we are creatures made with the capacity to respond to its deepest secrets.   Take your pick:   a shooting star, an amazing baseball play, a fish jumping out of water, someone catching themselves from a fall.  We respond to the beautiful, the startling, the inexplicable – all the things that wake us up, turn us on and make us shout.  Sometimes we can surprise others or even ourselves with the intensity and investment of our reactions.  And with a little luck, we may get in touch with something of our common humanity.

Yet I fear just as often, we get in touch with our solitude.   Case in point:  I recall a friend in college telling me of a date he took out to dinner.   She ordered some kind of pudding for dessert.   He watched as she slowly took the first taste, her eyes closed up in attentive relish.   She dropped the spoon, leaned into his face and exclaimed,  “THIS. . .is ssssooooooo.  .  .GOOD !!!!”   So she fed him a bite, and after some ruminating he nodded his head and said, “yeah,  that’s pretty good.”   She was incredulous – crestfallen at the lameness of his response.   As hard as he tried to appreciate her insight into chocolate goodness, she sadly shook her head and muttered “No, you don’t understand. . . you just DON’T.  .  .understand!”   The greater the investment in rapture, the higher the risk of our being alone in paradise.

But oh, misery! – those times when someone making a scene of enthusiasm can just be plain annoying.   I recall the cheerleader like reporter for a “Regis and Kathi Lee” show who was riding a tour boat at Niagara falls.  There they were, within drowning distance of one of the North American wonders of the world –  a gaggle of water-soaked, rain-coated tourists staring blankly behind that gleeful woman  as she tried to lead them into doing the Macarena for the rest of America.    I could feel their polite, speechless annoyance that their tour had been so hijacked.

We can’t always share the enthusiasm and so we have to tolerate, even endure those of others.  On a good day, I can learn, even have fun watching someone wax ecstatic over something I may find mildly unremarkable.     I can envy the depth of their palate for appreciating something I’ve tended to brush passed in life.  Perhaps I’ve missed something.   Maybe their appreciation is an invitation to remove blinders I never knew I had.  If I can’t muster up the same vigor of relish (I think of. . .say, raising Dahlias or discerning the finer qualities of local brews of beer),  I can at least enjoy learning something from the obsession of others.   If the devotee has enough decorum to avoid being a bore, then it can be the joy of the amateur to give joy to the connoisseur.

We are made with deep, hidden pockets of delight and devotion. I admit, I may keep some queer, quaint and eccentric things in those pockets.   Yet I’m sure they’re not as strange as what’s in yours.   But I don’t meddle much in other people’s pockets – only my own.   Let’s turn them out together.  What treasures may lie hidden?

KEVIN BACON LIVES IN CASHMERE: A Reflection on “Small World” Occurrences.

Actually, Kevin Bacon doesn’t live here. . .as far as I know.  But what is it with the uncanny connections between agricultural Cashmere, suburban Mercer Island and the small-world connections of my life?

Perhaps some of you have played the little game “six degrees from Kevin Bacon?”  It’s a game for movie buffs.   Pick any actor or actress and name someone they co-starred with in a movie.   Then pick a different movie that co-star was in and identify another actor or actress that was with them.  Do this until you identify an actor who co-starred with Kevin Bacon.   The theory goes that ANY actor can be connected in this way to Kevin Bacon in six degrees of separation or less!   Kudos if you can connect the same actor in less movies to Kevin Bacon then the other person did. *

 (* Here’s an example – connect Audrey Hepburn with Kevin Bacon:    Audrey Hepburn was with Holly Hunter in “Always”; Holly Hunter was with William Hurt in “Broadcast News”; William Hurt was with Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild”;  Hal Holbrook was with Tom Cruise in “The Firm; Tom Cruise was with Kevin Bacon in “A Few Good Men!”   Ha!  I did it in Five!   Of course somebody will pipe up and say “I can do it in 4”  and name a different path.  That’s the point of the game.)

When we do this with the movies, it’s fun.  When we do this with life, it can become astonishing, even a little creepy.   Such encounters bring up the old questions about our place in the flow of history and God’s world.   Is this pinball or was it meant to be – Chance or the Dance?  I don’t claim I understand it, but I take from it both amazement and a kind of renewed appreciation that our lives weave an intricate, wonderous web.

Come December 1st, I will have served in this little Cashmere church for 14 years.   I grew up in the affluent, suburban culture of Mercer Island attending a AAA High School on the West Side of the State.  I came to this small town Americana of Cashmere in the orchards on the agricultural East Side.   They seem such different worlds.   And yet from my very first Sunday on  I have encountered amazing, unlooked-for connections with people newly met.  I stumbled on another one just this last month.   I have thought, “One or two – even three, that’s probably common.”   But I have averaged 1 a year for 14 years and they don’t seem to stop.  So I decided I needed to document these occurrences,  because the more I encounter, the more difficult I find it to recount all these amazing connections.  So here is my catalogue of small world occurrences.    I document them with some margin of error in the order I became aware of them.  See what you make of them.  .  .

1. The first time I ever came to the Wenatchee Valley was in 1984.  I was a camp counselor for camp SAMBICA in Issaquah and we had brought kids out to Camus Meadows.   We spent a whole day inner-tubing the Wenatchee river from the old Monitor bridge down to the park by the freeway.   Each time, my inner-tube passed right by the house of Mike Lancaster,  who later married Marilyn Whitehall,  who 13 years later would head the nominating committee that interviewed and hired me to pastor the church in Cashmere.
2. In 1988 I was considering going into the ministry and was  living in the Seattle area where I attended Bethany Presbyterian Church on Queen Anne Hill.  The interim pastor at the church was Rev. Ken Bjornstad.   Ken  had just been serving as pastor of Cashmere Presbyterian Church where I would be serving  ten years later.
3. A few years later, I served on staff at the INN college ministries at First Presbyterian in Bellingham.  There I  got to know Rev. Ray Smith who at the time was between calls and attending the church.   Ray would go on to serve as the next called pastor in Cashmere, following Ken Bjornastad, and preceding me when I was called to serve there in 1997.
4. After my first Sunday preaching at Cashmere,  a member named Sandy Roeter introduced herself.  Learning I was from Mercer Island, she asked if I knew the Olsens.   Sandy’s husband Steve Roeter has a brother who married Cathy Olsen, the daughter of Bob & Julia Olsen.  The Olsens were our next door neighbors on Mercer Island and their youngest son Garrett was my best friend growing up.
5. Greg Taylor is a member of Cashmere Presbyterian and served on the session when I was called to the church.   Greg is the CEO of Applets & Cotlets, Cashmere’s main employer.  Greg grew up on Mercer Island attending Mercer Island High school at the same time my older brother John attended.  Opening my brother’s 1966 yearbook I found  several pictures of Greg as a student leader (with thick glasses I might add)!
   

   MERCER ISLAND, WASHINGTON

6.  A.E. (Bud) Hellner and his wife Pat were also members of Cashmere church when I was called; Bud was also serving on the session.  Bud worked as a teacher and administrator at North Mercer Jr. High and met Pat when she was a teacher there.  Bud retired when I was attending the High School  though I never had him as a teacher.  His retirement paved the way for my brother Nile to become a teacher at the High School.    In the same 1966 yearbook belonging to brother John that has pictures of Greg Taylor there is a picture of Bud Hellner as administrator.
7. Eric Braun was a long-standing member of Cashmere church when I arrived.   In addition to serving as Cashmere’s mayor, Eric was
   

   "Senator George W. Clarke"

   elected to the State Senate and served as a Democrat from the Chelan County district.  Eric recalled to me vividly serving with a Republican Senator, whom another colleague always jokingly addressed as “his lawyer.”   That “lawyer” and Senator from the 41^st district of Mercer Island  was my Uncle,  George W. Clarke.

8. One day I visited church member Larry MacDonald who owned orchards in Cashmere.  He started telling me about relatives of his who used to live on Mercer Island.  Their last name was Low.   I knew a girl named Melanie Low with whom I attended school from 3^rd through 8^th grade before she moved away.   I asked if they had a daughter named “Melanie?”  Larry said “yes,” then pointed across the orchard in his back yard and said, “She’s living with her mom just on the other side of this orchard.”  After more than 25 years, I reconnected with my old school chum.   Melanie is now married to  the man who was Larry’s chief employee.
9. Dean and Diane Priebe were members of Cashmere church when I arrived.   I learned that they were married on the same day as Terri and I were – August 29^th – in the same year!   In fact their wedding occurred at the same time  just a few miles north of where our wedding was taking place in Seattle.   Digging  through a box, we found the Seattle Times announcement page of our wedding, and down in the opposite corner – there was the announcement and picture for Dean and Diane!
10. Ken and Suzy Jones were retired and living in Leavenworth when they became members of our church.   As I got acquainted with them, I learned that while living in Tacoma their son John had gone to Bellingham and the INN where they knew fellow “Tacomacites” Kevin Hunter, Mark & Dave Hillis and Mike Nelson.  Mark Hillis joined the same bible study as I did my freshman year at Western.  That bible study was led by Mike Nelson.   The leader of the INN at that time was Fred Prudeck.  Fred officiated at the wedding of their son John.
    

    CASHMERE, WASHINGTON

11. Bill and Phyllis Busse were also retired residents of Leavenworth who later joined our church where Bill became a Believer and full-fledged member for the first time.  Later, I was visited by John and Sue Peterson who told me they had been long time friends and travelling partners of Bill and Phyllis.   John and Sue’s son Dean is married to my sister Cindy.
12. Warren and Julie Moyles began attending our church a few years after I arrived.  We soon learned that Julie went to school as a girl with a friend named Jeanette Hollingsworth.   Jeanette was my wife Terri’s aunt on her mother’s side.
13. Terri and Ryan Bohnett were members of Cashmere church who had become our friends.  Their boys grew up with ours.  Eventually, they moved to Almira.   It wasn’t until years later that Terri mentioned that some of her ancestors came from Iowa.  I said my dad’s family came from Iowa and still had relatives with the family name of “Kinnick.”
    

    "Nile Kinnick from Iowa"

    Nile Kinnick, Jr. who was a member of that family, was the  Heisman Trophy winner in 1939, after which he was killed in WWII.  My brother Nile is named after him.  Terri then revealed that she is also related to the Kinnicks from Iowa on her mother’s side.   Terri Bohnett and I are distant relatives!

14. Recently, I discovered my High School friend Diane Larimer had died in 2003 (see earlier tribute).   Subsequently, I learned from her school friend Cynthia Flash that Diane had Grandparents who lived in Cashmere and owned an orchard.   Diane had spent many summers as a young girl here.  Just weeks after  that I talked to church members Lawrence and Sybil Peterson and discovered they knew “Nels” and “Anna” Larimer and told me much of their story from their days in Cashmere.

So what are we to make of all this?  It makes for great conversation to share these connections, but what does it mean?   A part of me wishes to avoid picking at it too deeply; the last thing I want is some wearisome college debate over fate and randomness.   As far as I’m concerned these encounters don’t win arguments either way.      I’m content to find in these not proofs, but rumours of glory.   They are  connections that give me pause to wonder at the web we weave.

There’s a corn maze near our town that’s part of Smallwoods Harvest, a colorful fruit stand on Highway 2 between here and Leavenworth.   The fun of any maze is in getting lost,  finding your bearings, then trying to crack the code of the path to get you through the exit on the other side.    With more than one person, it becomes a game of hide & seek as everyone seeks clues for the right way to follow. It’s an apt metaphor for life, really.

The Corn Maze at Smallwoods Harvest (and the designated "Monster")

I’ve done my share of stumbling through the blinds and passages and leaping out of corners to scare my kids.   But just outside the maze at Smallwoods is a raised platform – climb a few stairs and down below you is the whole twisting layout.   From this perspective, I watch kids navigate their way, and I can often see where they hit dead ends or will run into the designated monster if they take the right (or wrong) turn.   If someone gets really lost, I can shout down a few helpful hints.  I’m given an elevated glimpse of the chances, the journeys, the clues, and the way.

I like to think of these “Kevin Bacon” moments I keep having every year as a glimpse from the platform.  Each time, I find that I’ve brushed by someone familiar or have touched a place someone dear has touched before.  I receive them with gratitude as friendly clues – and the clues say, “I’m not lost and wandering”.   They say, “I’m being led by a hand of kindness.”   They say, “I’m not alone.”  For every one of my 14 years of ministry I’ve been making my way through  this wonderous, almost inconceivable maze of God’s world.   What amazing encounters I’ve had every year.   They’ve told me that I am, perhaps, only six degrees of separation from where it all began, and from where it all goes.  Only six degrees of separation (perhaps less!) from any one of you!

REFLECTIONS #1: Re-Inhabiting Holy Spaces

       (This tab of the blog is called “Drawing from the Well” as an image of continued reflection on the experience of the Sabbatical.  The 121 days have now all flowed under the bridge, down the channel and around the corner.   I’m cognizant that the experience of Sabbatical now becomes the event remembered, but it’s more than memory.   Like the Exodus or the Passion (though certainly not as great as those events) those days are now like a well of experience, lessons, memories, impressions which I now can draw from when life gets thirsty again – as it will, as it does.   It strikes me that Sabbatical is valuable for pastors (for anyone, really) not as a venture that produces products and answers.   Its value lies in being a permanent life reference – a solidified time passage that can point like a witness, a marker on the road – a tether from which to scale otherwise unreachable heights or depths.  In this last month of “getting acquainted with the usual” again, I’m finding those 121 days are already acting that way – sometimes carrying me on wings, sometimes waving those wings in my face as reminders.   The well is now dug and filled.  The reflections under this tab will draw up the water).  

REFLECTIONS #1:  Re-inhabiting Holy Spaces. 

One of my favorite moments in the Chronicles of Narnia occurs in “The Silver Chair” – underground, in the dark realm of the Green Lady far below the surface of Narnia where there is light, green and sky.  Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle have freed the lost Prince Rilian, but now they are caught in the enchantment of the Green Lady as she burns a kind of hypnotic incense and strums on a harp.   Her words chide them for believing in a place called Narnia.  She seeks to persuade them that there never was any place other than her dark world and all supposed “realities” like the sun, the sky, the wide, lovely lands of Narnia – all have been derived, or imagined from the ordinary things of her own world.   The music deepens, the incense smothers and they all seem taken in.   Then in a moment of great courage, Puddleglum the Marshwiggle stomps out the fire with his bare, muddy feet, burning them.  Turning to the witch, he defends his memories and experiences, his seemingly ephemeral knowledge of Narnia.   Regaining clarity, he asserts that he has known, he has tasted and walked the wonders of a real world far deeper, better and superior then the reductive cave of the underworld.   Puddleglum draws deep down into the memory of  his actual occupation of the vibrant world of  Narnia and thus saves himself and his companions from being “taken in” by the darkness choking them.

People may wonder what is “the value of time spent” on a Sabbatical.   What I am finding, almost stumbling unto, is the reality of time not spent, but gifted in Sabbatical and it’s power on the here and now.  When our normal, regular lives proceed as they must and we seek to live them faithfully, we can easily slip into the old “deer-in-the-headlights” mode.   As I have encountered some of those rather musty moments getting back into the swing of things,  I have recalled moments from the Sabbatical, moments that surprise me along the way.

  A friend of ours who has done some organizational help for us has often done a little exercise.   Before working on the overwhelming chaos that the stuff of our lives can create, she tells us to “find our happy place!”   Take a deep breath,  shove the stuff aside and “find that happy place.”   Yeah, it sounds a bit cheerleader hokey, but it actually is a valuable exercise to summon up from our memory a moment gifted us in the past; some episode of  contentment, of peace, of clarity – of God’s presence if you will.   We can’t always fly, jump, run or have Scotty beam ourselves to those physical places.   But we can allow those places once lived in us to be recalled back to us.   And in the midst of present harassments, that has an amazing ability to remind us of what is truly important.  I find that Pastoring often dwells in lively, even turbulent atmosphere of yearnings, demands and expectations.  I’m learning to recall certain moments from this Summer – moments I often didn’t plan or look for – and in finding them they can give me something needed in the midst of present challenges or confusions.

I draw on moments like a morning I had on the still water around Harmony Island.   Forcing myself out of the bunk early enough to climb (rather precariously) into a small, inflated kayak – I paddled around the point, searching for God, listening for what I could hear:   water lapping the shore, the creaking of old trees on an island, or the distant splashes of seals.    Finding the wider water on the other side of the island, my mind becomes placid enough now to listen.  I found myself not only watching but being watched as sleek, gleaming grey heads – two, now three, now four – of curious seals float a stones throw away.   Two of them had been splashing, churning, gamboling; suddenly they bobbed, disappeared and re-emerged in another spot, a different angle eyeing me curiously.   While I marvelled at this play – I head a “swoosh, swoosh” in the air and looking up watched the island’s sentinel bald eagle soar right over my head.  Aiming for the dead snag on the point he majestically lands and surveys the playing seals surrounding the strange man in the kayak.    I ventured out that morning looking for peace, looking for God.   I found it not in devotions and messages.   I found it in these kinds of surprises,  feeling a little more a part of the astonishing world around me,  a part of a page of a chapter of a volume in the grand play.   I felt presence.   And I myself, had become fully present.   Paddling slowly back to the boat, Terri snapped pictures.   I recognize something in the smile that I often don’t feel is there.

That’s the kind of space that is holy for us.   There were several moments like that during the Sabbatical.  I didn’t so much find them as they found me because of that gift of  time set aside.   I often wonder if Moses, in those heady times confronting the powers-that-be and pointing the way for that overwhelming multitude – did he reach back again and again to those still, mysterious moments when he stood hushed before the burning bush?   Did Elijah draw again from the still, small voice at the Mountain of God?   Did Martha, as well as Mary recall the stories at Jesus’ feet?  Did Paul remember being face down and blind in the hot road under the strong, unavoidable voice?   These spaces, these moments are firm sentinel rocks in the churning waves of our living.   They can feed us, inform us, guide us – if we allow them to be cultivated in our lives.