Of hiking, prayer and the sacredness of both

 Sometimes, you pray on your knees in private, perhaps while standing during liturgy at church, or through a thought or whisper at your desk . . . maybe it's while spreading mud for bricks, raking the grass, or quickly, at a stop light in stalled traffic.

 Prayer, or perhaps what you might call thoughtfulness, meditation -- whatever connects you to the Divine -- centers you in realities beyond your five senses. 

 For me, that reality is the Triune God taught and worshiped for the past 2,000 years within and through the prayers, scriptures, teachings and traditions of Orthodox Christianity.

 And, personally, that is increasingly expressed not only within Sunday and occasional weekday Divine Liturgy services (precious as they are to me), or even daily moments in my "prayer corner" at home, where candles are lit, a thin stream of burning incense fills the air, and the icons of Christ, the Theotokos and several saints reflect the flickering flames.

 Heaven and earth also meet, and ask for your company, in nature, where sunlight dapples leaves of pine, oak and cedar and a breeze moves flower pedals in testimony to creation and creature. 

 The trees, grasslands and soft forest floor are icons, too, and birdsong the splashing of rushing streams are the eternal cathedral's hymns.

 And so, I went to church -- again -- along the trail systems of Murray's Wheeler Farm area, where the sights of flora and fauna, sounds and scents of the natural world, and the glow of sunlight on my neck, punctuated the slow movement of prayer rope knots slipping through my fingers.

 Miles passed under my feet. But Eternity was in the moments, with each heartbeat, and riding every breath.

 I sensed that this particular communion is how it was meant to be. . . when we take the blinders off, when we pay attention. 

 Saints and sinners. Author and former monk  Thomas Moore wrote that, "Walking inspires and promotes conversation that is grounded in the body, and so it gives the soul a place to live."

 Added Friedrich Nietzsche: "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking."

The late Fr. Alexander Schmemann put it this way:

"The natural dependence of man upon the world was intended to be transformed constantly
communication with God in whom is all life [but] when we see the world as an end
in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently loses all value . . .
only in God is found the meaning of everything, and the world is meaningful only
when it is a 'sacrament' of God's presence...."

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Memorial Day: My family, like many, has bled for ideals that both withstood history's judgment, and not

Third-class Petty Officer Felton Mims in Vietnam

Memorial Day.

Today, we honor those who have died in battle, and those who carry their wounds, physical, mental and spiritual, among us today.

Always, it seems, when we send our young to war, it's it for the best of reasons -- at least, they seem so, at the time the bullets fly and bombs are dropped.

But history judges our wars, unearths their motivations, and renders its verdicts.

On this Memorial Day, I am sharing parts of a blog I wrote several years ago about generations of my own family's wartime sacrifices:
                                       -------

From the American Revolution through the Civil War, World Wars I and II, to Vietnam and, I presume, even today, Mimses have served in uniform. 

Three Mimses are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., cousins, black and white, who died in combat on the ground and in the air.

Air Force Capt. George Mims, of Manning, S.C., was shot down over North Vietnam in December 1965, never to be heard from again, an MIA eventually declared dead in 1973. His body was never recovered.

Third-class Petty Officer Felton Mims, a Texan, drowned in Go Cong Province, while serving on a Navy river patrol boat in March 1969. (That's him in the photo above, getting a haircut from a crewmate).

Army PFC Kenneth Mims, from Alabama, died when stepped on a land mine as he and other members of the B Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101^st Airborne Division patrolled near Thua Thien in April 1971.

Four of my uncles served and survived, albeit with nightmares, the crucible that was World War II in the Pacific.

Two Mimses fought the British, another fought for them, in the American Revolution.

The Civil War killed relatives by the dozens, North and South, white and black. It directly affected my line of the family, with my great-grandfather, wounded as a Confederate private, was left crippled and dependent on morphine before he died, leaving my 7-year-old grandfather and his mother destitute.

His poverty and an austere upbringing by an older brother haunted him, and by extension my own father, who struggled with a distant, demanding relationship with his Dad.

To a far lesser extent, I experienced some of the same in my early years, before a mild heart attack left my dad more engaged -- just in time for my critical teen years. (note: My Dad died on Jan. 17,2019, at age 96).

The victims of war enrich the soil of American cemeteries, where the young dead gradually rejoin the earth from which the first humans sprang, appearing from the primordial mists of creation. The victims of war who live on color the lives of their ancestors -- for good, and for ill.

Still, on this day I am quietly, thoughtfully grateful to those who fought, and sometimes died for their principles and country. . . and those who survived the crucible to continue my family's journey through the life of the worlds to come.

---
P.S. (Thanks to my cousin, Marilyn -- comment below -- also learned of Seaman Robert Lang Mims, who died in the Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S.S. Arizona. Sobering to think his remains are entombed still below the Pacific's waves).

Nature's Communion: A sacramental trail walk with my fellow creatures

Early on a spring day, the trees full of leaves, their canopies of green dripping and bowed low along the Jordan River Trail after a pre-dawn rain, a light breeze kisses Cottonwood, Oak and Aspen with whispers of the divine.

"In Him we live and move and have our being . . . ." (Acts 17:28)

The dogs are quiet, too, uncommon slack in their leashes, as if also aware of something special in the air. And so, we commune, we three creatures of the Creator.


Surrounded, caressed, embraced, and filled with life. I have entered a moment where time and space blink, as if awaiting a reset.


We are, in this moment, sacramental. 

The limbs of trees sway. My thoughts fill with images from this past Sunday's Liturgy, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian Great Entrance. Our priests, deacons and altar boys moved through rows of bowed heads, the cross, the bread, and the wine both their guide and blessed burden.


Intercessory prayers were said for all, as the procession wound back toward the altar. Parishioners gently touched the priestly robes, in reverence and veneration not for the man, but by proxy of Christ the God-Man.


Along the river, we creatures, two- and four-legged, proceed slowly as a sea of green seemingly parts before us. Leaves, moved by a gust, brush my face.


Ours is no Great Entrance, but is it a communion? At least, for me, it is an "iconic" experience, this walking through a window on a distantly reflected paradise.


I remove the black woolen chotki from my wrist, and pray, thumb and finger moving the knots in silence.


Loved ones, departed, and living; both friends, and those who counted me a foe in years passed; my own, flawed, and stained soul, all receive entreaties for the mercy of heaven, here and in the life to come.


So, we walk, melting into grace.

The soul: Not obscure, not ethereal, but our life -- now, and beyond time

One of my favorite contemporary Orthodox Christian scholars is Fr. Stephen Freeman. I am amazed by his prodigious, profound, and loving thoughts and applications of faith. His observations apply well beyond the pale of Orthodoxy, too, IMHO.

Here's an excerpt from this Oak Ridge, Tennessee, priest's blog, "Glory to God for all Things." The blog in its entirety (and it's worth the read) is about the soul, what it is (and it is, generally speaking, NOT what most of us in the West tend to think it is), and how it reveals the eternal best of us, when tended as a spiritual garden.

This sub-section that follows below, however, especially speaks eloquently about the innocence and unconscious wisdom (?) of a child:

Among the more interesting experiences for a priest is the confession of children. The one thing I am certain to avoid is trying to teach children about sin when it is not part of their conscious existence. 

Convincing a child that there is an external parent (God) watching and judging their every thought and action is almost certain to create a certain distance from the soul itself. The question, “Am I ok?” is the language of shame, of broken communion, even communion with the soul. 

But, having done this now for 40 years, I can say that I see a gradual awakening in each child, an awareness of broken communion. The role of a confessor is not to widen that gap, but to help a child learn how it is bridged in Christ. 

I tell parents, “The only thing I want a child to know at first is the absolute certainty of God’s unchanging and unconditional love.” 

It is only in the context of such safety that, in time, an older adolescent can find the forgiveness and healing that they will inevitably need.

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Tribune layoffs, a year later: You never finish a book, if you keep trying to read the last chapter

Somewhere between May 14, 2018, and the one-year anniversary (this past Tuesday) of the mass layoffs that ended my 20-year career at The Salt Lake Tribune . . . I moved on.

I didn't realize it, in a concrete way, until Saturday. A former editor, and more than that, a friend, called to ask me to freelance articles for him on religious topics -- the beat I had when the layoffs a year ago forced me to take an earlier-than-expected retirement.

He also asked if I could fill in for a colleague on the same beat during her month-long vacation.

I was taken aback. Then, I felt somehow validated, that my decades of contributions actually still had value, that perhaps it all wasn't just a case of being deemed expendable along with so many others when the financial crap hit the bottom line fan, as it were.

Out of appreciation, and friendship for the good man offering, I almost said "yes." Then, deep down, a voice echoed: "No. Too late. There's no going back."

Oh sure, I could write again for the Tribune, see my byline once again on its pages. But what would it do to all the struggle, and the lessons and insights learned, over the past year?

And it took suffering, faith, and resolve to move on emotionally and spiritually through this sea change of career and purpose; to let grace and gratitude replace lingering bitterness, depression and pain with new purpose and perspective.

A lot of grace. A lot of hard work. A lot of receiving love, and then giving it back.

New opportunities to write and edit eventually came, chances to practice and stretch my skills -- and whatever gifts there may be -- in unexplored arenas where I did not feel the pressure to compromise what I held true.

On that latter bit, I'm not saying the Tribune ever forced me to write something I could not ethically or morally abide. But in the secular news setting, progressive world views, and alas, progressive (pretty much only) activism are on the rise generally; The Tribune, being comprised of human beings after all, has not been, and is not immune.

There are many still working there who continue to "fight the good fight," laboring to report and write fairly, and to assign stories across the spectrum. And, there are some who do not, so convinced of the rightness of their personal cause or cultural/political convictions that they blur the lines -- intentionally or subconsciously -- between reporting and opinion.

In this, the Tribune is hardly alone. Indeed, observing the industry over more than four decades of involvement in settings international, national and local, across a wide swath of beats, I'd say this is a universal and disheartening phenomenon.

So, back to the point. (There is one). I realized -- for reasons personal mostly, and professional to an extent, too -- I have moved on. Attempting to go back, for me, would be tugging at the thread of a new, personal tapestry crafted of too much pain and growth and eventually, joy.

I can't see how I could, now, revisit what was lost . . . Without dishonoring what was gained.

And so, with much affection and gratitude for the offer, I politely declined it.

You never finish a book, if you keep trying to read the previous chapter.

New Life and New Hope: How a failing rural church turned around, by 'pastoring' a community

My latest freelancing effort.

New Life and New Hope: How a failing rural church turned around, by 'pastoring' a community

https://shar.es/news.ag.org/news/new-life-and-new-hope

Son of a Preacher Man: Of hearts, AFib, electrical 'resets' and finishing...

Son of a Preacher Man: Of hearts, AFib, electrical 'resets' and finishing...: Update. Well, if you look at things with a positive perspective, they say you can learn from them. My aforementioned heart procedure wa...

A walk for clean water worldwide, and between a grandpa and grandson, a precious connection

Saturday in West Valley City I joined my wife, Barbara, son Rob, daughter-in-law Rachel and grandson Josh, along with about 150 people from Barbara's church in the Utah version of the "Global 6K for Water."

Our path, heralded with the suitably P.A.-boosted Evangelical Christian zeal, balloons and banners, took us down the banks of a canal, through a park and finished back at a local junior high school parking lot. A sunny, breezy mid-spring morning in the Rockies made it a pleasant, if a bit extended stroll.

There were a few serious racers in this: think running shorts, stretching, frequently-checking-stop-watch types. Then were the less-serious, but still dedicated runners of a certain age . . . those who sought to recapture a glimpse of faded athletic glory, clad in Spandex, bathed in sweat and visages grim, winding through the slower herd toward what they hoped would be a new personal middle-aged best time.

 My cardiologist, having newly discovered I had developed "AFib," allowed me to participate, but only if I took it easy and was "mindful of what your heart is telling you." It said nothing. Still, no shortness of breath, dizziness, etc., so I proceeded at a leisurely pace, chatting with my grandson Josh.

We talked about beginnings, as young men often do with excitement and anticipation, and we older men do, too, in offering so-called wisdom harvested from memory and experience . . . and desire of the gray-haired and silver-bearded to taste youth again, however vicariously.

Somewhere, along that six kilometers stroll, dreams and memories met. Maybe they eyed each other warily, perhaps tentatively high-fived. I don't know; but it was a pleasant interlude.

Josh in in college, trying to find his path and working toward personal independence. I remember that, working lousy jobs cleaning toilets, washing dishes, unloading and loading truck on the docks, digging a ditch or two, or adding another coat of paint to the exterior of a decrepit rural motel to make it through college classes.

You do those things, I told him, because you know it's a means to an end -- that the most basic and base of tasks become worth doing if they get you another step on your journey.

It was a good, long walk. Keeping grandpa company meant being passed by faster walkers, even a young woman pushing another in a wheelchair and a 5- or 6-year-old girl navigating with a stroller bearing her two baby dolls.

But that's OK. We talked about life, faith, morality both connected to directly, and indirectly, to belief; girls, and the treasure of having them as friends without caving to the social pressure to making everything sexual; the sadness of kids growing up without parents who give a damn . . . and how blessed he is to have a mom and dad who do.

We finished the "race," not breathing hard, but deep. Not dead last, but a long way from anywhere near first. And, again, that was OK.

There was a satisfaction to it all, generations connecting. Something learned, perhaps, by young and, er, older alike.

And along with hundreds of thousands of like-minded folks worldwide, we raised a lot of money to dig wells and build water systems in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East where the kids (pictured on the orange T-shirts we wore) typically have to walk an average of six kilometers to fetch water every day.

I thought of that, and winced a bit, when I got home, put ice in a glass and filled it with cold water from the kitchen tap.

(Oh, that AFib thing? I go in Tuesday to, hopefully, get that fixed. First, a down-the-throat tube to scan the heart, then a short, sharp shock to reset the ornery organ. So, if you think of me on May 7, about 1 p.m. Mountain, that would be nice; a prayer, too, if you are do inclined.)