Two sermons yesterday on the wonders of creation, both with a text from Genesis 1, both a blessing. Our preacher knew it was Earth Day.
Saturday afternoon was a joy. I haven't spent that much time outside since last fall. Every square inch of our yard promises good things to come. It's still early, but the trees are looking like their prom night sometime this weekend. All nature sings.
And then last night I google "Blood Run" because it's my job to discover what's there (going on a bus tour soon). For years, I've heard things about some posted area along the Big Sioux River, not far from here, something about ancient peoples, but I don't know a blasted thing. Blood Run--I'm comfortably aboard my easy chair, laptop open, and the google search just won't quit.
Turns out that not all that far from right here--not far at all--there stood, once upon a time, a Native American city larger than any other Midwest metropolis. Maybe 15,000 Oneotas (o-knee-o'-tah) once lived there, on both sides of the river. The place was actually mapped by French traders in the early 1700s, but has been significantly destroyed by farmers and looters. The states of Iowa and South Dakota now own most of the land. Someday it could be a national landmark.
For years I've been wandering up and down the Big Sioux from Plymouth to Lyon Counties. For years, I've been right there, really, spittin' distance away. For years, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about Lakota culture; I know the major battles from 1862 to 1890. I love regional history. I've been to Wounded Knee several times--and the Little Big Horn.
But for just as many years--and more--I had absolutely no idea whatsoever that, once upon a time, not all that far from where I'm sitting right now, ancestors of the Ioway, Omaha, Osage, and Ponca created a trading center, a business hub, a city for Native America. Right here. A half hour away. The New York of the whole upper Midwest. For 400 years.
Two sermons yesterday on the beauty and wonder of creation. Sure. The fact is, there's so, so much about this world I just don't know. So incredibly much.
Mother Theresa’s take on the Christian life was probably colored by her experiences in Calcutta. Here's the way she plotted out the Christian story: Our redemption, she believed, begins in repulsion—what we see offends us, pushes us to look away.
But we really can’t or shouldn’t or won’t; we have to look misery in its starving face, and when we do, we move from repulsion to compassion—away from rejection and toward loving acceptance, toward grace.
But the final destination of the sanctified life she called “bewonderment,” one of those strange words few use but most everyone understands. It’s a word very much like reverence, a concept hard to come by in a culture where our supposed needs are never more than a price tag away. Bewonderment is awe--jaw-dropping, eye-popping, mouth-gaping awe. Bewonderment is the way you circle your lips when you say "wow." Bewonderment is reverence.
And it's something I’m learning, last night on a Blood Run google, and even this morning. Bewonderment is reason to be thankful.
Saturday afternoon was a joy. I haven't spent that much time outside since last fall. Every square inch of our yard promises good things to come. It's still early, but the trees are looking like their prom night sometime this weekend. All nature sings.
And then last night I google "Blood Run" because it's my job to discover what's there (going on a bus tour soon). For years, I've heard things about some posted area along the Big Sioux River, not far from here, something about ancient peoples, but I don't know a blasted thing. Blood Run--I'm comfortably aboard my easy chair, laptop open, and the google search just won't quit.
Turns out that not all that far from right here--not far at all--there stood, once upon a time, a Native American city larger than any other Midwest metropolis. Maybe 15,000 Oneotas (o-knee-o'-tah) once lived there, on both sides of the river. The place was actually mapped by French traders in the early 1700s, but has been significantly destroyed by farmers and looters. The states of Iowa and South Dakota now own most of the land. Someday it could be a national landmark.
For years I've been wandering up and down the Big Sioux from Plymouth to Lyon Counties. For years, I've been right there, really, spittin' distance away. For years, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about Lakota culture; I know the major battles from 1862 to 1890. I love regional history. I've been to Wounded Knee several times--and the Little Big Horn.
But for just as many years--and more--I had absolutely no idea whatsoever that, once upon a time, not all that far from where I'm sitting right now, ancestors of the Ioway, Omaha, Osage, and Ponca created a trading center, a business hub, a city for Native America. Right here. A half hour away. The New York of the whole upper Midwest. For 400 years.
Two sermons yesterday on the beauty and wonder of creation. Sure. The fact is, there's so, so much about this world I just don't know. So incredibly much.
Mother Theresa’s take on the Christian life was probably colored by her experiences in Calcutta. Here's the way she plotted out the Christian story: Our redemption, she believed, begins in repulsion—what we see offends us, pushes us to look away.
But we really can’t or shouldn’t or won’t; we have to look misery in its starving face, and when we do, we move from repulsion to compassion—away from rejection and toward loving acceptance, toward grace.
But the final destination of the sanctified life she called “bewonderment,” one of those strange words few use but most everyone understands. It’s a word very much like reverence, a concept hard to come by in a culture where our supposed needs are never more than a price tag away. Bewonderment is awe--jaw-dropping, eye-popping, mouth-gaping awe. Bewonderment is the way you circle your lips when you say "wow." Bewonderment is reverence.
And it's something I’m learning, last night on a Blood Run google, and even this morning. Bewonderment is reason to be thankful.
There's just so incredibly much that I don't know. Blood Run--I've got so much to learn. I got to get there. Soon.
2 comments:
Beautiful, Jim! Thanks. Wow, that's quite a revelation about Blood Run! Glad to know it now too.
Just wanted to thank you for the introduction to Manfred at the Calvin festival...amazing as I've read all of Ed Abbey and Jim Harrison, Stegner et al, but had never heard of him...it was an afternoon of bewonderment in that chapel with cherry blossoms outside...and I am grateful.
John
www.thedirtyshame.blogspot.com
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