Them dry bones and a little Merton

I find myself spending a lot of time loathing the Spring…despite my best efforts to the contrary. To be sure, I love the blooming flowers and the greening trees, but the pollen count does me in. My nasal cavity is basically in open rebellion during the entire month of April.

This makes the constant talk of “Breathing” I’ve been encountering lately nothing short of ironic. Sometimes it’s hard to let your spirit breathe when your body can’t. It didn’t help that I spent the whole weekend painting my bathroom and inhaling fumes. There’s only so much Claritin can do.

A couple of years ago, I took a class called “Eco-Justice and Faith” with one of my mentors at Belmont, Dr. Judy Skeen. Dr. Skeen has a unique way of teaching. She always brings together several resources that seem disconnected and finds a way to weave them together. It was in this class that I began my love affair with Thomas Merton’s writings about nature. Dr. Skeen introduced us to a collection of Merton’s nature writings called “When the Trees Say Nothing.” One of his writings on Spring helps me get through my allergic insurgence each year.

“Today was the prophetic day, the first of the real shining spring: not that there was not warm weather last week, not that there will not be cold weather again. But this was the day of the year when spring became truly credible. Freezing night, but cold bright morning, and a brave, bright shining of sun that is new, and an awakening in all the land, as if the earth were aware of its capacities!

I saw that the woodchuck had opened up his den and had come out, after three months or so of sleep, and at that early hour when it was still freezing. I thought he had gone crazy. But the day proved him right and me wrong.

The morning got more and more brilliant and I could feel the brilliancy of it getting into my own blood. Living so close to the cold, you feel the spring. And this I man’s mission! The earth cannot feel all this. We must. But living away from the earth and the trees we fail them. We are absent from the wedding feast.”

Merton encourages us to encounter nature, to be active members of Creationkind. My allergies aside, the call of Merton is to inhabit the fullness of our own creation: ourselves…and to exist in the fullness of all Creation.

This week’s lectionary readings centered on breath. From the dry bones in Ezekiel to the life breathed back into Lazarus. Reverend Sarah Shelton, at BCOC, offered a call to a more full life on Sunday that resonated with my soul. I share it with you today in the hopes that it may reinvigorate your dry bones as it did mine.

THUS SAYS THE LORD:

I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live! You who have given up hope. You who have given up dreaming. You who have settled for a comfortable routine life of work and bills and dirty laundry. You who believe your only option to live is with shame and guilt. You who think your best years are over and behind you. You who have buried your own personal joy when your loved one died. You who think that the Lord has forgotten all about your little life. It is to you that I say ARISE!

Arise! From the heat of discarded dreams and broken hearts. Arise! To discover that the Holy Spirit is breathing life back into you. Arise! To live with magnificent hope because the world that too often resembles the Valley of Dry Bones needs for us to believe that God is not done yet and that we have a vital part in redeeming resurrection. So breathe in the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. Live and walk in the Spirit. Amen.