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May 28, 2007
Memorial Day
Hello from Louisville, where fireflies are now flitting around in the evening grass, and Lora got to watch a baby raccoon poking and prodding along the edge of a stream in the park.
Emily (left) gives Kinsey a hug on Kinsey's graduation day. It’s been a strange and unique spring, as Kinsey finished up her senior year in high school. She got through the end-of-year band performances, including a nice set at the Jazz Factory downtown, was duly applauded at her various awards ceremonies for band and academics, and graduated last Saturday. Since she’s going to the University of Louisville in music education this fall, it’s not like she will be moving a long ways away, but it’s still a rite of passage that begins to bring this part of our life together as a family to a close. Kinsey will be moving on, growing into a freer, fuller life. We are conscious of how blessed we have been to see this part of our life to a happy conclusion, complete with tassels to be moved and photos to be framed and roses to be placed in water.
Six years ago I had valve-replacement heart surgery. I don’t normally think of myself as a heart patient, but at times like this I remember, and I am grateful for the chance to witness Kinsey’s graduation.
Five years ago we went to Vanuatu. I am grateful to have taken the chance to experience strange places, to live in the confusion of cultural uncertainty, and to learn that our planet is really just one small, round, blue neighborhood.
Two years ago we came to Louisville. I am grateful that the girls got the chance to study music and to have American friends. I’m also grateful for the chance to work in the church offices, so I can understand better some of the challenges and strains that the church has as it seeks to be faithful to its call, and for the chance to study, so that I can be a sharper tool when I’m needed again in the field.
It’s good sometimes to think about where you come from, sort of like a trip to the old family graveyard. Where you’ve been helps focus where you’re going. I guess that’s what Memorial Day is for.
We spent this morning at the Louisville Zoo with the girls and their boyfriends, and it was a thought-provoking walk for me. It was fun to hear lorikeets shriek again, just like in Vanuatu, and to see fruit bats hanging from limbs like little leather amulets. We looked at the pair of Mhorr gazelles, the single addax lying in the sun, twitching the flies away, and the little band of stripy bongo antelope in the speckled shade. We watched the Siberian tiger stare at us, and sniff with its intent, asthmatic grimace, and we marveled at the huge paws of the snow leopard as it paced along the fence. And over and over, on the little placards at each enclosure, we read about the sadness of the natural world. Mhorr gazelles? Extinct in the wild, and only 138 still in existence. Siberian tigers? A carefully controlled reproduction program among cooperating zoos, trying to avoid inbreeding. Rhinos? No real possibility of returning them to their native habitat, which has been destroyed.
We live in a time of incredible loss, when the abundance that God bestowed upon creation is being tossed away. I think it’s appropriate for Memorial Day to include far more than our immediate family. Let’s extend our understanding of family to include all of our brothers and sisters, those with horns and paws and wings as well as those with fingers. Let’s remember creation as it was created, and mourn for those parts that we have killed, and resolve to protect our family members that remain.
I think that humans are not the whole story, that creation’s not just about us. I believe that God created whales and tortoises and weird tube worms at ocean vents for God, not for us, and that the story should continue to include them. It should also have included passenger pigeons and dodos. We have attained an immense amount of power to disrupt and destroy creation, and we have sinned, and I don’t think that is God’s intention for us or for the rest of creation.
By the way, I don’t think that it’s an either/or choice, humans or nature, pick one or the other. I think that we are healthier in every way with intact wilderness, with a rich ecology around us, with the chance to experience creation as God made it.
Yesterday, at our Pentecost service, I blew our large shell from the South Pacific and talked about the voice of God, calling throughout our lives. And then for the benediction, I talked about the bravery of the Pacific islanders as they launched their canoes into the fringes of storms, which gave them the power to leave their old homes behind, to sail in unpredictable directions, and to discover new homes of peace and community.
We can do the same.
Let’s join the Psalmist in singing, “O God, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all, the earth is full of thy creatures…. May the glory of God endure forever, and may God rejoice in all God’s works” (Psalm 104: 24, 31).
And then, once we can see from that perspective, maybe we’ll be ready to graduate to a fuller, more abundant life.
Love and peace,
Bruce
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer
& Study, p. 259 |
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