Distracted by Birds

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

It was just a sparrow. A tiny little bird hopping up and down on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop that day. Why couldn’t I pull my eyes away from it? Why do I love the way it hops so much? (Truth be told, I get distracted by cute little hopping birds a lot now that I’m in my 40s.)

Later it was someone using sign language during a worship service. I couldn’t tear my attention away from that either — how beautiful to use your entire body to worship God.

It’s not lost on me that Jesus cares for us even more tenderly than He cares for these sparrows. Or that the whole point of life is to become living sacrifices, worshiping God with our bodies.

Sometimes I’ll be walking the neighborhood and find myself mesmerized by the broad-winged hawk that nests near our home. The way it soars, the way it rises on the wind, the way it doesn’t have to flap too hard to ride the skies. I can’t stop looking at it either. It’s not lost on me that God renews our strength like eagles — birds of prey like that hawk that soars above my house.

And then there’s the way robins run. They always make me smile.

It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always birds. Historically speaking, I’ve always been enthralled by the sight of the moon. I’ve even been known to lose my focus to a particularly striking moon while driving. And I’m delighted by young babies, those soft squishy little people. It’s hard to engage with an adult if a baby is in the room.

Several years ago it was fractals that beckoned me. I couldn’t stop studying them, thinking about them, talking about them, drawing and redrawing them. Fractals are shapes that repeat themselves on both the large scale and small scale.

In math they’re things like the Sierpinski triangle and the Mandelbroit set, Koch snowflakes and Pythagoras trees. In nature they’re things like clouds, trees, snowflakes, and shorelines that have the same repeating structure from far away and up close. (Fun fact: Humans didn’t begin exploring the mathematics of fractals until at least the late 1800s.)

Interestingly, we now know that the human mind is calmed by fractals. It’s part of why nature walks are so healing, so soothing. Our modern lives are so Euclidean, so basic, all these clean lines and corners.

But God’s good creation is fractal in nature — or even hyperbolic, another form of non-Euclidean geometry that shows up in undersea creatures like corals and sea slugs and that also used to captivate me (but whose math humans didn’t discover until the mid 1800s).

What am I really saying here, in obsessing over the math and science of nature? In the end the point isn’t the math and science — fascinating and fun as it is. The point is that beauty is out there. In the good world God made. So gaze upon it. Smile upon it. Let it calm your spirit and your heart and your breath.

God may have made your brain to delight in different things than me. If so, the question to ask is what things? And once you know what God made you to love, delight in it. Don’t ignore it or pass it by. Perhaps you will pause over the simple beauty of a sunset or the painted majesty of pink and grey clouds. Perhaps you will consider the birds and let them charm your heart, enrapture your soul.

Whatever loveliness draws you in, remember that God made you to be distracted by beauty. Let yourself be.

For more reflections on the walk of faith,
read The Hats We Wear.

A Liturgy for the One Who Knows Where They’re Going But Doesn’t Know the Way There

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment


God,
I long to follow close behind You,
but I often see dully as through a glass.
I cannot envision what I am meant to be in You,
though I catch glimpses from time to time.

Paul told us to imitate him as he imitated Christ,
and You have set examples among Your people
of what it means to be a living sacrifice,
of what it means to be beloved in Christ.

So make me like Mrs. C.,
who believes in the power of prayer
because it set her free and made her new,
who, like You, does not show favoritism
and believes healing from the Holy Spirit is for everyone,
who has a testimony to tell of Your great power
and won’t stop praying till it comes on earth.

And make me like Father T.,
whose deep knowledge of Your love for him over a lifetime
has settled in his breath and in his bones so deeply that
when he walks into a room, everything changes.
Shoulders relax, souls breathe easier, and
people start to grasp that maybe, just maybe, they really are
as loved as You say we are.

But most of all, God, make me like me,
the me I am meant to be,
the one you dreamed of when you knit me together in the dark.
May I become my true self in You
as You become ever more enfleshed in me.

If it takes a lifetime to become a living sacrifice, 
take my life and daily pour it out.
And if it takes a lifetime to become the beloved one,
take my heart and teach me your incomparable, transcendent love.

I am willing to wait.

(Scriptural inspiration: Psalm 63, Romans 12:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Ephesians 3:14-20; Philippians 2:17)

Liturgy for a Funeral

/ trotters41 / 1 Comment

by Jonathan

Last month, Elizabeth and I attended a beautiful service for my uncle, John. The following liturgy is adapted from the prayer at the end of the service.

Moments of deep pain and loss sometimes erase words, leaving us wanting to pray but not knowing how. So perhaps, for someone somewhere, these words could offer a guide or starting place for praying in the dark…

Gracious God, we are thankful that we got to witness a life.
A life created by you,
a life called by you,
a man loved by you and by many others.

Thank you for your mercy and thank you for your compassion.
Thank you that you call us home,
and you remind us of home,
and you woo us home.
And John is home.

You are a merciful God who knows that we are made of dust and you love us because you have made us.

There is no wrong that you cannot make right,
there is no sickness that you cannot heal,
there is no darkness that you cannot shed light on.

We long for the day we will see John again,
and we will see you face to face.

Sometimes it seemed like John saw dimly through a glass, and although sometimes we see very dimly through glass too, we long for the day when we will see you, we will see reality as it is, we will see so clearly and we will love so well and be loved so well.

Thank you for your everlasting arms.
Thank you for your compassionate heart.

Thank you that you do not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick.

We are your children and we cast ourselves on your care;
be merciful to us oh God.

Thank you for this time and thank you for the time we shared with a friend, brother, and uncle; a man loved by you.

Praise your name,
now until forever,
in Jesus’ name,
Amen

Thoughts on Life from the Halfway Point

/ trotters41 / Leave a comment

by Jonathan

To be fair, I’m probably closer to the end than the beginning. And if the CDC’s stats are correct, being 45 years old places me well beyond the halfway point for the average American male (it’s 76.5 years). I don’t feel old, and my goal is not to be too macabre, but if you’ll allow it, I’d just like to share some reflections from this side of things.

Perhaps they’ll remind you, or help you, or clarify some things. In whatever case, and for whatever they’re worth, here are some musings from the middle…

1. You will need the Psalms more than you know.

2. Seasons of doubt will come and may keep coming – this is normal and need not be terrifying.

3. Education is never wasted.

4. Beauty matters a lot.

5. Work hard and build something wonderful, then be prepared to realize that that was only the 1st Mountain (Brooks), the 1st Half (Rohr). There is so much more.

6. Read widely, both chronologically and geographically.

7. Be where your feet are.

8. Remember the orienting reality of eternity.

9. Realize that much additional suffering results from our unwillingness to accept the regular pain and suffering of normal life.

10. Seasons are not the same thing as ages.

11. Look for the people you want to be like and then spend more time with them.

12. Grow with your children.

13. Say yes to lots of things when you are young, but know that the better you get at anything, the more you will need to say no. If you don’t learn the goodness of a no, all the wisdom and expertise you gained from saying yes will be diluted.

14. Not everyone who speaks with confidence knows what they’re talking about.

15. Accept book recommendations and music recommendations from your children.

16. Don’t ever stop playing.

17. Read Chesterton.

18. Adore God.

19. Love people.

20. Walk boldly. All will be well.

“Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” ~ Wendell Berry

A Prayer for My Amygdala Today (a somatic practice)

/ Elizabeth Trotter / 2 Comments

Lord,
You know my amygdala—
my emotional danger detector, 
my fear sensor,
my fight-or-flight first responder—
is overactive.

Perhaps this happened naturally,
and I was just born with it.
Perhaps it happened over time
as difficult life experiences accumulated.
More likely it is
some mysterious blending of both.

But I believe You made me moldable, malleable, neuroplastic.
I believe I have the capacity to change through the power of the Spirit.
I believe I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind.
I have seen it happen so many times in my life.

So today
I pray the peace of Christ
over my amygdala.
[place fingers on temples/ears, approximately parallel to amygdala]

Father,
Wrap my limbic system
in the all-surpassing love of Christ.
[wrap fingers around thumbs to simulate God’s love wrapping around the emotional midbrain]

Holy Spirit,
Give me a new heart
and a new mind.
[open hands to God as a symbol of opening heart and mind to His power]

Amen.

//

With gratitude to Dr. Dan Siegel for his hand model of the brain and to the prayer minister at our church, who taught us the power of laying hands on places that need healing, whether in our own bodies or others’ (with permission of course).

Scriptural inspiration: Ezekiel 36:26; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 2:16; Ephesians 3:14-20; 2 Timothy 1:7