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Sermons
Praying with a log - David Moser - July 10, 2011
David Moser Thursday, July 14, 2011
Praying with a Log
(David Moser) July 10, 2011 One of my earliest memories of meeting God happened to me when I was a boy exploring in the woods. The place I found then has remained special to me over the years; sacred. I have returned there many times over the years. It is a place where I experience seamless prayer. When I am there I join a whispering prayer. I join the prayer. I do not bring the prayer into being; the prayer is already there; my part is the simple joy of awareness. The scientist; turned philosopher, Michael Polanyi has written; ``Objectivism has totally falsified our conception of truth, by exalting what we can know and prove, while coving up with ambiguous utterances all that we know and cannot prove, even though the latter knowledge underlies, and must ultimately set its seal to, all that we can prove.'' (Polanyi. Personal Knowledge .Pp. 286) There is a truth I cannot prove, that no-one can prove. When I enter into Nature I feel the presence of such truth: Mystery, for want of a word to describe it - God. This truth beyond objectivism defies the confines of empiricism. It comes through engagement; a tacit knowing. We cannot prove what beauty is. And yet we know it when we see it. We cannot prove what justice is, and yet we know it when we experience it. Beauty and justice can only be apprehended by serving them. In the same manner; we cannot prove there is a God; but through prayer and worship we can begin to apprehend faith in God. This tacit knowing of truth began for me in the woods. God first caught my attention; I first began to apprehend faith on a hike in a woods when I was a child and I made the acquaintance of a fallen tree; an oak. I found this place forty years ago when I was eight years old. A huge oak tree, perhaps 300 years old, it had succumbed to the winds of a thunderstorm. The tree lay on the ground, its branches still graceful yet broken; it's roots exposed to light for the first time; and its massive trunk stretching across the forest floor offering a pleasant path across a boggy place. The tree's death opened for me a delightful adventure, a balance beam, and formerly inaccessible branches and roots to explore. In death the tree invited the prayerful play of an eight year old boy. The tree remained there untouched. It was never exploited for fire wood. Like a long whispering prayer, it was left to the processes of decay, return, and renewal. I would come back over the years to be with the tree in its long, long journey. For many years the tree's trunk served as a proud bridge across that boggy area in the woods. I traversed it often when I wondered the woods. I noticed other creatures found it useful for the same purpose. Raccoon and fox scat left on the trunk were signs others had passed that way. The tree became home to wood eating insects and grubs, its' hard fibers were eaten, and soften with decay. As the years passed the tree eventually became a mound of pulp. The path it created remained. The boggy place was itself changed by its woody flesh. Soil formed, plants joined it, and the bog became rich humus: the stuff of which bodies are made. Today, when I go back to this place in the woods there is little evidence that a great oak tree once died here. There is a dip in the ground where the trunk was pulled up, and a small pile of earth left behind by the torn up roots that have rotted away leaving the soil that once clung to them. That is the only faint evidence that remains to remind someone a tree once stood here. I stand there now and I am struck by the beauty of the unseen presence of the tree. I feel the tree yet beneath me and I am a little boy once again standing on its great trunk marveling at it, and then in the same moment I am an adult standing in a worn path on soil coursing with the life of this tree. I hear this old tree whispering to me in the leaves of the young tulip tree and the many other plants that line the path where it once lay. I listen deeply and I hear a voice speaking into the center of me; I hear it lovingly saying, ``You are not the center of everything.'' I am filled with peace by these words. This is the profoundest of truths welling up in the cosmos; welling up from God. From this truth, I am not the center of everything, I find freedom to live fully, release from pain and hurt, and hope to strive for an ethic that reaches beyond me; an ethic that can potentially change everything, an ethic of selfless love. ``You are not the center of everything. Give. Give as this tree has done. Give as Christ.'' I hear the whispering prayer of the tree rising up from beneath me, "you are not the center of everything," and I am at peace. By its death the oak tree created a path across a boggy place in the woods that has remained, and I marvel that the path's invitation to journey this way has remained even after the tree has disappeared from sight. My marveling is a conscious joining in the whispering prayer emanating from this place. I feel at peace in this place of death, decay, and new life. I am reluctant to leave. The peace I feel clings to me like seeds sticking to my pant legs waiting to drop from me and take root in unexpected places. The life of that invisible tree is in those seeds; so too is the peace I carry away with me. The peace I feel in this place is a promise; a promise that our bondage to decay is ending. I am happy to carry these seeds away with me, and to let them fall where they will. Each seed is a prayer. May they fall where they will. May they fall freely from me. May they take root and bring life in unexpected places. Return |
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