Wild Places, and the Heart of our Sacred Moments.
You can listen to this message by clicking the orange play button below.
My partner and I fell in love in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We fell in love quickly and hard. It felt magnetic. I know that can be a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, for us, it appears to be working out. We dated all four years of college. We sorted out, fairly early on, that we both longed to be parents, and by the time the fall of 2006 came along, we were already imagining names for our yet unborn children.
David James Duncan
In preparation for our semester in southern Oregon, we were required to read the novel “The Brothers K” by David James Duncan. It is a story about a family in Camas, a papa who worked at the paper mill, a devoted Seventh-day Adventist mama, and their three boys. One of those boys was named Kincaid. We fell in love with Kincaid. And soon that name just had this twinkle to it. We had one name in the hopper. Kade River, a nod to the fictional Kincaid, and the love of rivers we shared with David James Duncan.
David James Duncan is a special person in our life. I often return to his non-fiction writing as a source of inspiration. This week, as I sat with the task of writing a message to celebrate Earth Day, I knew David and I needed to commune.
David didn’t let me down. In his book “River Teeth” he describes the process one fallen tree has in the life of a river.
The gradual disintegration of a log in a streambed creates a vast transfusion of nutrients—a slow forest to river feast..downed trees are a part of a river’s filtration system: mud, leaf and carcass traps; Styrofoam, disposable-diaper and beer-can traps…tough as logs are, the grinding of sand, water and ice are relentless. Within a decade or two any drowned conifer but cedar turns punk, grows waterlogged and joins the rocks and crayfish as features of the river’s bottom.
Many of us have delicately balanced on such logs, either as a bridge, or a pier. So many of my childhood memories are anchored on such logs. And yet, under my feet a remarkable process is underway. A mystery and a miracle of decomposition that is resulting in a cycle of life-giving, even within death.
For those of us here in the Pacific Northwest, the size and age of some of these downed trees is sometimes hard to comprehend. And over decades the rings of these massive trees, altars of sorts, a history, are ground and swept away. There feels, to me, to be a sadness in this, but also an inevitability. A thing that was here, with stories of fires, disease, rapid and slow growth, washed away downstream.
Duncan shares in this “so it goes” attitude but reminds us of another reality, “river teeth.”
There is, in every log, a series of cross-grained, pitch-hardened masses where long-lost branches once joint the tree’s trunk. “Knots,” they’re called, in a piece of lumber. But in the bed of a river, after the parent log has broken down and vanished, these stubborn masses take on a very different appearance, and so perhaps deserve a different name. “River teeth” is what we called them as kids, because that’s what they look like. Like enormous fangs, often with a connected, cross-grained root.”
Last Sunday, we celebrated my son’s 10th birthday, and with it a decade since we first touched the Kade River we had imagined all those years ago. A decade feels like an appropriate time to feel all the feelings about the cruel passage of time. All the cliches about “it goes so fast” and “don’t blink” feel awfully true. I hate that it is true. We always spend some time on my son’s birthday looking at photos and videos of when he was a baby, a toddler, and into early childhood. This year, I was struck by how many times I said, “I forgot about that…” And then, there I was, on top of the decomposing tree in the river realizing that time is doing its thing…memories are becoming less clear, they feel as if they are slipping away downstream.
But, there are river teeth. Thank God for the river teeth. Those rigid, and stubborn memories that are so strong, or vibrant that they can put up a fight against the currents of time. This week, I went ahead and started kicking my feet around on the river bed to see what river teeth I can find.
I was struck by how many of my most solid memories are embedded with the people I love, in a place I love. Almost all of those places are away from our home. They are standing just at the edge of the surf, my feet slowly being swallowed by wet sand. They are reels in my brain of my own children silenced by the awe of a coastal redwood then a “Papa, look at that tree!” They are those tearful moments of watching my son’s sense of elation and surprise that he hooked a fish and could run his finger down its slimy side.
As we celebrate the earth that we call home this morning, I wonder what it would be like for you to probe the riverbed for your own river teeth? Like me, are you noticing that some of those unrelenting memories have, as their setting, wild and natural places?
Just over 50 days ago the Church recognized Ash Wednesday. Millions of Christians received the black smudge on their forehead. A priest looked into their eyes and said, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust, you shall return.” In that reminder is the same story of the downed log in the river. Our belonging to the earth, and the earth belonging in us, may serve as the foundation of our spirituality. Our reverence for the Divine exists within the fibers of a downed tree, and the water slowly washing it away. It exists in the miracle of spring.
And God is lovingly intertwined in the knots of the tree that resist the letting go of time. Each of us here, carry memories and moments that will live on past our own lives. We may find tremendous comfort in this, I know I do.
A message about Earth Day feels as if it should have a plea. I have done that in the past. But like so many other ills of our time, we can be overcome by the scale of things. Climate change is a big problem. I wonder if the way to get at it is through our hearts. Wild places are at the heart of those sacred memories that resist the erosion of time. There has to be a reason for that. It is not just that the Earth plays the role of a passive host in so many of our profound spiritual experiences, it is as real of a character in our memories as the flesh and blood people we love. Loving our people, loving the Earth, and loving God are all in the same. It is that love that spurs us towards preservation, of tending to that which gives us life and meaning.
Today’s message is shorter because I wanted to be sure to leave us plenty of time for open worship. You can use that time for whatever you feel is right, it is not my time, but yours with God. But, if you are looking for a suggestion to carry into it, perhaps you can spend some time on the downed tree in the river. In your mind's eye, in your heart, I wonder what that setting will stir up for you? What memories, what river teeth, are you finding there? Turn them over in your hands. What do you remember about those sacred moments? What do they feel like to you now? What do you see? What changed in your life afterward? How is the divine present in these moments?