Rachel E. Watson

The other day, I was minding my own business filling out paperwork in our backyard under a large maple tree. And nutshells rained down on me.

"It must have been a windy day," you might say. It was completely calm.

Not only that, but I was sitting under a maple. If you know your trees, you know maples do not produce nuts.

About 30 shells fell on my head, my shoulders and my lap, but none beyond the quilt rectangle on which I sat. I was suspicious.

So I looked up and saw a gleeful little squirrel perched far above me in the solid upper branches of the maple.

Here is where I sat when the squirrel started chucking nutshells at me

As soon as I looked at him, he looked straight into my eye and chucked another nutshell onto my head.

I couldn't help laughing, even though my shirt was dotted with sticky, half-chewed nut goo.

Later that day, I returned to the memory of the nut-chucking squirrel. Something shifted in my brain.

I've been tempted to view God like He's a squirrel in a maple tree, chucking problems my way.

First depression, then anxiety, then a mood disorder. Treatment. Meds. Avoidance of substances that interact with the meds.

Is any of that God's fault? If I really believe, like I so boldly and publicly declared a few weeks ago on this blog, that God is the Triune Creator of the Universe, why do I fall back on a belief that He is out to get me?

Doesn't it stand to reason He loves me, one of His children, created in His image?

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 John 3:1)

What if I start looking at those nuts being chucked my way as opportunities for growth? As a rain of  blessings?

What if each nutshell is an opportunity to help others who are suffering like I am?

[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Looking at the nutshells from that perspective totally brightened my mind that day, and I'm still feeling it.

What about you? How do you view the nutshells of life? What are the problems thrown your way? What are the resulting opportunities for you to bless others?

This quote is today's call to action: Go have yourself an adventure.

In my particular faith tradition, Sundays are for resting. I always thought that meant taking naps. Not even kidding. I now understand it's a broader concept. It's about resting from work and restoring the soul.

And where does the soul head when it wants restoration? Out into nature.

If you're looking for me the next several Sundays, I'll be out in the wild. Soaking up creation. Embracing play.

Go forth and do likewise!

A wedding party stopped 10 feet from my beach blanket and set up camp to pose for photographs.

The bride and groom seemed a sibling pair, with identical creamy brown skin, chestnut eyes and thick, chocolate-coffee hair.

She wore a flowing A-line mocha-colored silk dress, with a lace netting overlay that rose to a full lace bodice. The bodice cut away into a princess neckline beneath. It was capped by a translucent upper netting edged with white-cream flashing at her throat and across her shoulders.

The groom was tall, broad-shouldered, and sported his three-piece suit with casual aplomb, hands in pockets and shod toes digging into sand.

A flawless couple. My brain knows the "flawless" state has not fully existed since The Garden. But sometimes, I catch glimpses of moments that really could not be more beautiful. This was one such moment.

As the photographers lined up the six pairs of maids and men with the bride and groom front and center, they all gathered their poise and held it in one hand, preparing for The Jump.

The Jump is a years-old trend in wedding photos. It's where everyone lines up in landscape mode and the women hold tightly to errant skirts and bouquets in preparation for liftoff.

Then, the moment comes.

"One, two, three: JUMP!" The photographer yells over the surging Lake Michigan tide.

The party jumps, and the photographer snaps the shutter. One, two, three photographs.

Everyone in the party catches the air and grasps it for a split-second, suspended in time and buoyed by joy.

Then, gravity pulls hard. Instantly, the moment crashes downward.

Each moment is impermanent, breakable, fresh, dying, then dead. And each one holds the joy of a lifespan.

This is why we chase after experiences and document them in pictures: We can only ever live moment by moment, even when we travel forward or backward in worry and regret.

We need to experience all the moments. We need to feel and communicate the emotional responses they bring.

If we just let time pass, or if we actively stifle our feelings, we are robbing ourselves and ignoring the reason for which we were created.

What do you think that reason is? 

I'll leave you in this fragile moment to ponder your life's snapshots. The ones behind you, the ones happening now, and all the ones to come.

Carpe diem! Seize the day.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anais Nin

• C.S. Lewis (eventually) believed it, after years of questioning and doubting. 
• G.K. Chesterton was convinced.  
• George Washington wrestled and found a form of God he could accept. 
• J.E.B. Stuart was devout and articulate in his written prayers and letters. 
• Robert E. Lee had trouble understanding God because of death and destruction. But He loved Him anyway. 
• Maya Angelou's poetry and personal writings clearly show a heart turned toward God despite unspeakable levels of trauma. 
• Flannery O’Connor was a lifelong doubter who rolled around inside Catholicism and prayed eloquently, fervently and honestly, grasping the truth tightly with both hands. 
• Louisa May Alcott wanted to believe God but felt she couldn’t. Transcendentalism was too powerful an influence, and it appealed to her deeply. 
• L.M. Montgomery often tried to find and love God but was distracted by the abuse from her preacher husband. 
• A.N. Wilson rejected the idea of God for years as an agnostic but finally came around. 
• So did J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the words above, "Not all who wander are lost." 
• Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens built careers by destroying the evidence they saw in order to persuade others there is no possible way The Way could be true. 
• Folks like Ken Ham, John Piper and Albert Mohler have pieces of The Truth. But they have put up blinders to the rest, and, I believe, distort the parts they know.  
• Honest seekers like Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans and Scot McKnight have made it their public mission to unhook The Church Universal from its warped presentation of The Gospel. 
• Pope Francis has tied the Vatican to a chair until the bishops and cardinals will listen to his voice of sanity, reason and compassion. The voice that traveled from humble roots in Argentina to sit in the world's most powerful chair is spreading healing to the whole world by washing the feet of lowly travelers.
• Jesus Christ represents the purest form of love that ever walked the Earth. His stories, writings, actions, words, group of friends and followers -- they all prove clearly to me He was not just a witty guy, a good prophet or an articulate and kind teacher. He was all of those things. And He IS -- STILL -- the Son of God, and He walks the streets of the heavenly realms waiting for the day when we will all finally get what He was all about. His mission was one of compassion and life-change everywhere He went. His voice accepts instead of condemning. He erases fear by spreading love and truth. 

(Photo: Freeimages.com)

Proud, thick oaks, pungent pine, strong, young maples and the occasional dying birch kept close company in that wood, as unplanned and scattershot as any forest in the area, trees birthed by seed carried on the wind, soft grasses hiding the forest floor, ferns mingling with autumn olive bushes in the underbrush.

(Photo: Free images)

Snow. It binds us to itself with love-hate intensity. We romanticize it on greeting cards and fantasize about those first, magical flakes each winter ...

... but then we also complain when there's too much of it, when it clogs the roads and bridges and sidewalks, when it falls continuously, windswept from roofs and trees, packed against our cars and homes, multiplying toil and burying all that is living and prosperous.

Let's face it. It IS dangerous. It traps and blinds, it coats and freezes, steals loved ones away, relentless in its quest to cover the northern lands for a season or two.

I don't deny any of that. I don't deny that for me, it announces the dark season, the one that leaves me feeling trapped and blue, affected by the lack of sunlight, pulled into a melancholy not of my choosing.

But I can't ignore its beauty even as I curse its cruelty.

Here's a poem that celebrates that wondrous paradox.

"Snow-flakes"

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(Photo: Free images)

I came across this beautiful poem today that captures so eloquently how I feel about this transitional time, when autumn's colors quickly fade, the winds blow, and the earth is laid bare, waiting to be kissed by a blanket of snow.

My favorite line from the poem, perhaps, is "The gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag."

The other day, I imagined myself a painter as I beheld a cluster of trees on the horizon. I wondered how my brush could ever capture the twisted blackness of those limbs, layered in the foreground against a backdrop of more limbs, stretching ever backward through the forest, with hints of gray sky peeking through. The winds had all but ripped away the last of the curled yellow leaves.

I'm not a painter, so my brush may never craft that scene. But I'll forever celebrate the blank lined sheet with which a poet begins. The page is the canvas, the words are paint, and the poem is a finished scene.

In that spirit, may I present Madison Cawein:

"Under Arcturus"

By Madison Cawein (1865-1914)

I

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's-moon.

"These follow me," the Season says:
"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
With gypsy gold that weighs their backs."

II

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
As with a sun-tanned hand he parts
Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
And at his feet the red fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds
Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
Is startled; and the hillside sounds
Behind the fox's bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky
A fire-lit window through the firs,
He stoops to see the red fox die
Among the chestnut's broken burrs.

Then fanfaree and fanfaree,
His bugle sounds; the world below
Grows hushed to hear; and two or three
Soft stars dream through the afterglow.

III

Like some black host the shadows fall,
And blackness camps among the trees;
Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall,
Grows populous with mysteries.

Night comes with brows of ragged storm,
And limbs of writhen cloud and mist;
The rain-wind hangs upon his arm
Like some wild girl who cries unkissed.

By his gaunt hands the leaves are shed
In headlong troops and nightmare herds;
And, like a witch who calls the dead,
The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.

Then all is sudden silence and
Dark fear -- like his who cannot see,
Yet hears, lost in a haunted land,
Death rattling on a gallow's-tree.

IV

The days approach again; the days
Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag,
When in the haze by puddled ways
The gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag.

When rotting orchards reek with rain;
And woodlands crumble, leaf and log;
And in the drizzling yard again
The gourd is tagged with points of fog.

Now let me seat my soul among
The woods' dim dreams, and come in touch
With melancholy, sad of tongue
And sweet, who says so much, so much.

(Photo: Free images)

All week, I've been about to spin the best story for you out of the happenings of my life.

But now that the week is over, I've realized no one particular story I can share with you will do the trick.

This week was a collection of essentially "boring" moments, but somehow, they represent a picture of why I'm grateful to be alive. They depict the steady gait of life the way it is for most of us: mundane, familiar, routine, not glamorous.

And yet, I felt grateful ...

• When the sky and trees collided so far above me as I walked through the woods, and I really noticed that beauty. I felt so small, but so glad to be alive.
• When I was at a Halloween cocktail party/game night, and I looked over at my husband, so relaxed and happy to be among friends, so in his element, cracking jokes and talking about games and playing games. He makes me smile.
• When I saw my cats basking in the sunlight, not a care in the world. We could all take a lesson from that.
• When my Bible study group helped me realize a new truth about the definition of the word "abide." On the one hand, yes, it's about obedience, but there's a prerequisite to that: sticking with Jesus like two pieces of fast-bound duct tape and letting his power work in your heart and life. It's so freeing to know I don't have to be the strong one. I'm still learning that.
• When a friend from the gym noticed my absences over the past week and took a moment to encourage me to keep at my exercise routine.
• When a project I'd been obsessing over at work started to (finally) take shape, and I began to breathe again.
• When a leader spoke the words "Just say what you're comfortable saying," and I felt a weight lift off my heart and mind.
• When it snowed on Halloween, and as the flakes swirled about, co-workers started smiling or bemoaning the event, displaying the love-to-hate spectrum common among Michiganders when it snows. Then, someone walked in with a box of pumpkin cream-cheese cupcakes, and moods universally lifted.
• When my sister texted me to tell me she'd made too much food, and would I like her leftovers? I was all tied up that day so it didn't work out, but her generosity touched me just the same.

1. Faithfulness is boring.

A November challenge

In my book, this has been one of Michigan's loveliest autumns. The weather has been comfortably cool without being too cold, and the trees have been such brilliant hues of red ...

A maple near my office in Walker, Michigan. (Photo: Rachel E. Watson)

yellow ...

The tree in my front yard. (Photo: Rachel E. Watson)

and all the colors of the spectrum ...

Trees along M-46 between Lakeview and Edmore. (Photo: Becky Howard)

"For the Beauty of the Earth"

For the beauty of the earth, 

"How Great Thou Art"

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, How great thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the brook and feel a gentle breeze:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art, How great thou art!

I'm so thankful for Creator God, the finest artist, the best composer, The Word Who Became Flesh.

Read more posts in the Fine Art Friday series here.