Wondering Pilgrim

Teamwork

This has sat on display in our china cabinet for more than thirty years. It was presented me on behalf of a colleague with whom I had shared in a team ministry (with two others, I might add). We were the junior partners and collaborated on some innovative projects amongst four churches in Canberra in the early eighties.

It was never stated who drove who. Maybe they swapped from time. They are both headed in the same direction, so that may be a positive thing. Teamwork will sometimes depend on a driver and a more compliant traveller, but more often a negotiated agreement about direction and how to get there.

This is what this knick-knack seems to suggest to me – agreement of a direction and decision to head there by dogged determination and encouragement that may or may not be necessary!

I am the sole remaining member of that past four-member experimental team ministry. I am ever grateful for what my colleagues taught me.

Wordle Warriors

433 years worth of daily 5-letter words left!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com –
Yes I know this is Scrabble, but there are enough Wordle images out there!

There are quite a few out there now. It’s the new chess. Get the word right in as few moves as possible and share the good news (or not) on your favorite social media platform. The spinoffs are well under way. The original idea was for one puzzle a day. Such is our conditioning, however, that one is never enough, so a number of spinoffs are offering unlimited opportunities to get a whole range of five-letter words out there.

This creates a problem for the dedicated Wordle purist. How does one compare the result of the stoic and disciplined one daily Wordle in a plethora of chaos? One must simply and doggedly use the original site at https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/ and be blinkered to the rest.

Wordle Warriors rise to the cry!
Five letter words slipping us by.
Grit your teeth, stay with the plan –
Tease out those letters as best as you can.

Eschew the spinoffs, even for practice
Their many variations only distract us!
Four letter, six letter, random theme driven –
These abominations unforgiven!

Let’s stick with the method as long as we can
When we run out of words – then change the game plan
Could be a while as words are a plenty
433 years worth – give or take twenty!

158390* – freedictionary.com estimation of valid five-letter words at one per day = 433.95 years (not taking leap years into account).

Timeless Meditation: Viewing Vastness

The #Bloganuary prompts not only whetted one’s own appetite to hone some writing skills, but opened us up to a vast network of seasoned bloggers and their skills. Here is one who shares familiar contemplative thoughts to mine on “what do you feel when you look at the stars?”

wRighTing My Life

Worlds Away
Savoring outdoor time during my recent reprieve in the temperate Caribbean, I hoped the warmth would cradle me through another 72 icy winter days back home. Mother Nature’s wizardry transformed the oppressive grey I left behind into sparkling and vibrant blue, a welcome relief in this world that seemed worlds away.

Lounging on the balcony at night with vast stars washing over me, I felt an incredible sense of wonder. This feeling continued through daytime gazing on a tryst of blues from sea to sky, the all-embracing horizon suggesting I was worlds away. And in some aspects, I was.

The Andromeda galaxy at 2.6 million light-years from Earth is visible with the naked eye. With one light-year equaling nearly six trillion miles, I find this almost incomprehensible — that I could indeed be seeing a world trillions of miles away. Viewing the horizon at three to four-and-a-half miles —…

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#Bloganuary is over

Photo by Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels.com

#Bloganuary is over; the year has begun.
The muse has awoken, and feels he’s not done.
He looks for the prompt which just isn’t there.
The blank page awaits; he can only but stare.

He laments the prompts gone from his daily feed
He recalls their annoyance and his final concede
In spite of resistance they awakened deep thought
and set ways of thinking as they probably ought.

The carnival is over and we must say our goodbyes
Prose, verse or image? Or some sweet surprise?
The muse ponders what might be his next move;
Will the pilgrim still wonder – has he now found his groove?

Star-gazing

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: How do you feel when you look at the stars?

Feeling is not my “go to” language. But ask me how I “experience” looking at the night sky and I can speak, filtered by many years of wrestling with my theology and cosmology.

I experience total peace born of a sense of unity and an instinct that we are all born of the same stardust as those bright twinkling dots up there. We are in union with the One in whom it all has its source and which is apprehended in many great world faith traditions, epitomised in my own as the Christ, the One in whom all is dynamically complete. From early encounters with the writings of scientist-priest Teilhard de Chardin to the meditations on Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, such awareness is deeply engrained into every fibre of my being.

It is the antidote to the existential dissonance (anxiety) that might otherwise consume me. This is what happens when I look at the stars.

Tree!

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: Describe Yourself as a Tree

I think that I shall never see
A picture of me as a tree
A tree whose leafy boughs do sway
And drops its leaves along the way;

A tree that casts its honkey nuts
Safe trudging by it much disrupts

Harry Potter’s thrashing tree
Charlie Brown’s kite-eating mystery
It seems that trees are much too frisky
To dwell on them is therefore risky.

I think that I shall never see
A picture of me as a tree.

Apologies Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

World-changer!

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: How Are You Changing The World?

My old cartoon instincts are immediately kicking in, reminding me of my early days of fatherhood sharing the squawling, squirming infant-changing routine. Except no infant here, but a hard done by globe, polluted and sickly, lamenting the loss of dimly remembered pristine goodness.

The question for many is not how to change the world, but how to exploit it even more. I’m sure that if an audit of daily routine occurred with me, a conscientious objector, the scales would still come down heavy on me as an exploiter rather than a changer. My carbon footprint, though lighter than some, is heavier than many on this globe.

So how do I change this? By cultivating awareness. Nibbling the bit of the giant pizza that is nearest me. And maybe collecting cartoons and writing poetry.

Playlist

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: What is on your music playlist right now?

The warble of the koolbardi*
The chatter of the djitti-djitti*
The crash of waves at Mullaloo
The wind in the treetops too.

The sounds of silence when I walk in the bush
The crunch of boots as onwards I push.
This is the music that tickles my ears
No buds needed – will last many years!

* koolbardi (Noongar)= magpie
* djitti-djitti (Noongar)= willie wagtail

Solitude

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: Where do you go when you need solitude?

Where do I go for a bit of quiet?
Away from thoughts that start to riot?
A secluded spot, a garden shed?
Nah, there’s a spot deep inside my head!

Where does one go for a bit of peace?
Avoiding tensions that defy release?
A quiet room, some place apart?
Nah, there’s a niche deep inside my heart!

Where do I run to hide from the storm?
To avoid life’s stresses that are part of the norm?
A daily routine, stuck in a rut?
Nah, there’s a nook, deep within my gut!

DJR January 2022

Mirror, mirror on the wall

#Bloganuary Writing Prompt: What is your favorite part about yourself?

My resistance to questions such as this! I am finding myself quite reactive and rebellious – it’s like asking for a description of the color of one’s underwear or one’s most intimate thoughts. When one writes for such blogging exercises one is already putting one’s neck through the noose of vulnerability and transparency. Granted, one chooses what to write, but as a mentor once said, “you cannot not tell your story!”

Accordingly my neck hackles are standing to attention. Like a zebra stallion guarding its herd I stand on the edge watching for the movement of the tall pampas grass to reveal the location of its hidden predators. Nup, nope, nyet! I am tempted to say “That’s as much as I shall reveal today.” And maybe that’s my favorite self-trait.

But I have to dig deeper. I have sometimes described my work in spiritual direction as a “story whisperer.” In the Christian contemplative tradition, it takes time to develop the kind of relationship where questions such as the one that forms today’s prompt might help a pilgrim step over a threshold into unexplored territory in their inner landscape. Today’s prompt feels like a startling shout rather than a whispered invitation. And I’m well aware that’s a perception that will not be shared by others. Then again, perhaps today I’m just grumpy!