Cairn-Space

Poems, Prayers, and Mindful Amblings about the Places We Set Aside for Meaning, Prayer, and the Sacramental Life in the New Monasticism

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781608996834
  9781498257343
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621893806
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Cairns have decorated the landscapes of cultures throughout time. Piles of stone-one stone placed on top of another-are set in place all over the earth to recall battles, identify burial sites, mark trails, and spur hearts and minds to remember sacred, noble, and critical events. They are landmarks. They are sacramental presences in space and time. Our lives are littered with markers of meaning. They all reveal who we are, where we have been, and offer us a jumping off point for the future. In the true mystic tradition, everything straddles meaning and is potentially available to reveal the inner life, God Himself, and all that Is. My hope is that we will begin to look at the markers of meaning in our lives and notice how we store that meaning in our heart. My hope is that we will reconstruct our prayer life and the shape of our interior world, that we will recognize the impact things have on us and discriminate toward health. Our journey in this book will be more like an amble or a wandering. We will hop from pillar to post looking for meaning and attempting to infuse things with meaning. We will look at our practices and the practices of those from our shared human past. We will begin to notice that there is a hidden depth to how we live-one that reveals we live in layers or dimensions, not simple and flat lines.

Chapter One

Watering the gardens at the beginning and the end of the day has been an activity that has peppered my life from youth. It is relaxing. It also feeds me in ways other activities do not. It has been a cairn in my life since childhood. It has been a sacramental landscape for meeting God. It has taken me into my heart.

When I am about the task of watering gardens, I am reaching back into my life and doing something that is self-soothing and connective. It integrates the disparate pieces of my life. It is wholesome for me.

My life is a train of stories of watering gardens. I can remember watering gardens as far back as elementary school. In all of that practice, I have learned to be in God’s Presence as I water. The magnitude of repetition over the years has been a force capable of establishing union with God through this simple act.

Some years I take to watering much more regularly than other years. It has partly to do with the gardens I plant and the needs they have for water-flow. It is also connected to the fact that some years are naturally wetter than others and require less garden tending from me—“the waterer.” Sometimes I simply water because I need to: it is good therapy.

However often I water, I am reminded of the tending that needs to accompany all forms of life and growth. I am reminded how I am tended by the “Gardener of Souls.” Watering helps me conform to His image and likeness. Watering nourishes my heart-space. Watering is an activity that sacramentally transforms my life—when I am attentive to the process.

One particular season had called me to the task of watering more often than in years past. That year I learned to love the routine for its calming affect in a new way: the sound of water, the greenery, and the repetition of a simple task. It soothed me and gave me peace. I learned a lot from the regularity of the task that year. I learned from mindfully practicing the art of watering.

***

Stone Cairns

I have piled stones,

one on top of another,

for decades now.

Fingers

slipping over rough

granite -

my heart

is settled in

simple tasks.

I have piled

stones of habit

over the days

of my journey.

Praying is a stone.

Watering herbs

and gardens of flowers

is another stone.

Hymns and chants

and acts of

kindness are stones,

too.

My words

have become stones

I pile to settle

my heart.

Long ago,

across the pond,

in Scotland

and on the isles of

the Hebrides

they piled stones

to find the same

simple way on earth.

One pile marks

a grave. Another marks

a battle. Still another

marks a place

where prayers poured forth,

where words pierced

God and His

heart and

His universe.

There is a rhythm

to rock on rock,

a sound

that fills the

heart with the comfort

of familiar sound,

familiar passage.

I bake my bread

and brew my soups

because they are stones

of comfort for

this man’s heart.

I water my gardens

and read my books

because they help me pile

stone on stone.

Listening,

reflecting,

encountering,

wrestling

each stone

placed down firmly

on another stone.

These piles of stones

have something to

say about who I am

and where I have been.

These stones are my heart.

***

The thing that most presented itself to me that particular year of watering, was what I learned from the praying mantises. They taught me the art of slowing. They showed me an image of watchfulness and waiting, of discrimination and patience. While watering, I was able to silence enough of my inner chatter to focus on my surroundings as the water flowed, saturated the earth, and beaded on the leaves and flowers. I watched the mantises on the rise. I became intensely aware of reality.

The watering flushed praying mantises up and out of the cover of stalk and stem; onto walls, and branches, and posts. Had I not been paying attention, I would have missed them. I would have never seen what they had to teach.

They climbed up trying to avoid the water I was adding to the garden. As they climbed, they would often spot a bug and settle in for the kill. Patiently they would wait for the “perfect” moment before striking. In their rising, nourishment presented itself. They would stop and dine. They watched and waited—like the Wise Virgins of Jesus’ parable. They were watchful and alert.

I had the good pleasure to encounter their watching and waiting. Slowly focusing on the meal, almost hypnotizing it before the strike, they would become careful, and lose their place in time to a slowed attention. It was the “Power of the Slowing” that Gerald May wrote about in “The Wisdom of the Wilderness” (HarperCollins Books, NY, 2006). Their slowing to capture food made me pause, pay attention, and enter into the slowing myself. It taught me about what it takes to discriminate and discern the quality and nature of things in my life. Although all things can move us toward union with God, some things pose potential dangers and threats of entanglement that are just not worth risking. It requires watchfulness and alertness to become nourished—to grow.

Slowing helps us to focus and become aware. Nature has a tendency to help us enter the slowing, if we watch her examples in other sentient beings. Could my praying become the same? Could I still myself enough to become observant and watch what would arise from my heart as I watered it? Could I become still enough to see the many options for nourishment all around me: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, self-control, community, forgiveness?

For many years prior to this experience of the mantises rising, we had hatched mantis pods as a family. We would buy an egg casing from the local garden store and leave it out in the backyard in a covered aquarium. As the weeks wore on, we would almost forget it was there, until one day someone would notice hundreds of mantises on the walls of glass. It was hard to believe that so many mantises could be in one casing. They were a shifting mass of life and limb covering the aquarium walls. We would take off the lid and watch them scurry throughout the yard.

There was another time we had watched the mantises. Glinda and I had just begun dating. We hiked the woods and collected scraps of nature to weave into a wreath. We started with grapevine. We wrapped it into a circle. We tucked dried garlic-mustard fronds into the hoop. We tucked in some mullein leaves and sassafras roots. We also wove in a mantis pod. We had no idea what it was.

One night, when we returned to her room, the walls were covered in moving spots. At first we thought our eyes were deceiving us. We thought we saw shifting movement. As we stepped closer, we were assured that we did. Hundreds of young mantises covered the wall. This was an accidental hatching. The hatchings in the aquarium were not.

I am glad that we took the time to hatch them. They gave me pause in their hatching, and a renewed sense of stillness in watching them rise while watering the gardens. For years, we had more praying mantises in our gardens than anyone around. For years, I had a new way of seeing prayer.

Their presence has been a cycle of routine. I have seen their daily morphs and the slow changes that happen to them over time. I have seen how their colors change as summer lengthens and draws to a close. From green to brown they fade. Their numbers decrease throughout the browning, until they leave the yard altogether. Gone.

I could only notice this in the repetition of a daily routine. The routine of watering the garden daily brought me to the mantises everyday. Routine reveals so much about how life is going; how it is moving ahead and how it is standing still. The things we place into our lives on a routine basis have so much power to affect who we become; particularly when we pay close and steady attention to them—over time.

Stepping toward the hose at watering time almost felt as if I was entering a holy place; a place where I would uncover some immense glory. The air that surrounded me during the watering time was palpable. I could feel myself entering into sacred space as one hand reached for the hose and the other hand for the spigot knob. I was becoming an act that would transform all space and time. I became a holy event for a moment. That is the best I can ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven