“Going Marveling”
I was on the receiving end of a welcome coincidence two weeks ago. Someone said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous,” so I was willing to receive the two gifts that came my way with gratitude for heaven-sent favors. As a song from Godspell phrases it, “All good gifts around us / Are sent from Heaven above / So thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord for all his love.”
Gift one was a text from our daughter Betsy with an attached photo. The photo was taken at our not quite four-year-old grandson’s preschool by his teacher. She noticed Emerson’s propensity for spending his recess time scouring the playground for leaves, branches, acorns, feathers, rocks, and other castoffs of nature. He deposits those treasures in his cubby next to his jacket, blanket, and stuffed animal du jour until the end of the day when he takes his daily find home with him to add to his burgeoning “nature museum” located on a couple shelves in the mudroom inside the back door. The observant teacher who spotted Emerson’s budding naturalist inclinations created a space just for him and his finds outside the door at school. The photo showed a welcome mat sized piece of astroturf on which Emerson had neatly placed his day’s prizes.
The same day I received the photo from the preschool teacher, I was rereading a book of stories compiled from Fred Craddock’s ministry of preaching and teaching. Mike Graves and Richard Ward sifted through hundreds of Fred’s sermons, lectures, keynotes, and class lectures and compiled the best of his yarns in a volume titled Craddock Stories. I’ve read it several times – comfort food for the soul – and was rereading it again the very day I received the photo. Just after I smiled at Emerson’s daily delights, I came across this Craddock tale:
I read something recently—I knew this, but I had forgotten about it—that years ago our ancestors used to go out walking, usually on a Sunday afternoon—sometimes alone, sometimes couples, sometimes the whole family—and they called it “going marveling.” Marveling. They would look for unusual rocks, unusual wildflowers, shells, four-leafed clovers, marvelous things. They would collect them, bring them back to the house, and show off the marvelous things they had found. Isn’t that a delightful thing, to go marveling?
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that expression before – “going marveling” – but it came to me as a gift, an apt description of my grandson’s appreciative eye for the delightful debris creation sprinkles in his south Chicago playground and back yard.
Emerson’s delight in what he observes contrasts with my all-too-often obliviousness. One of my favorite cartoons of the Christmas season shows a couple of shepherds standing out in a field, leaning on their staffs, their sheep grazing in the distance. Overhead, there’s a star-lit sky, with one particular star shining brightly above all. One shepherd says to the other, "Nothing exciting ever happens on this job."
How many people go through life leaning on their staffs, sighing that nothing exciting ever happens in their lives oblivious to the fact that right in front of us in the ordinariness of our days – wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a feed trough filled with leaves and straw – is The Marvelous. That’s me leaning on my staff unmindful of the fireworks above while Emerson dashes off to see what he can find in Bethlehem. Morning by morning new mercies he sees.
Fred Craddock ends his story about going marveling with a marveling venture of his own:
I left the house and went marveling. About a mile away I came upon a pavilion, and inside I saw a lot of people singing, praying, and reading scripture, and sharing their love for each other. They were vowing that they would—they promised to each other, and they promised to God—make every effort, God help them, to reproduce the life of Jesus in this place. And I marveled, how I marveled. And I said to myself, Look what I have found, right here, in this little building.
His description of the gathering of folk in the pavilion he happened upon in his marveling is an allusion to the early gatherings of Cherry Log Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the congregation he planted in his retirement years in the mountains of north Georgia. Fred’s stories are all glimpses of grace gleaned from his lifetime of forays amid church folks being the church, or trying to, anyway. They are unvarnished, earthy, real.
I woke up Sunday determined to go marveling myself. After receiving permission from Jennie to leave her unattended for a couple hours so as to go to church (That’s a laugh line, by the way – David as nurse), I made the twenty minute drive to Antioch Christian Church east of Lexington on the Bourbon County line.
I collected the following:
The sight of the horse farms along Paris Pike on a crisp, blue sky autumn morning. The definition of pastoral.
Worshipping under the leadership, praying, and preaching of the Rev. Jan Ehrmantraut, one of my valued, respected mentors who is serving as interim pastor.
The catch in the throat of the gray-whiskered volunteer fireman who, as he was lighting the Christ candle at the beginning of the service and explaining its meaning, got choked up momentarily. Reverence bathed in candlelight.
A warm greeting by a woman in the seven-voice choir who recognized me and scampered down out of the soprano section to remind me of a mutual friendship, the memory of which brought a smile to my face … and hers.
The blooper that wasn’t. A woman stepped forward from the congregation of twenty to read the Scripture about Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers. When she got to the heart of the story, she read, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He procrastinated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.” I confess I was distracted from some of Jan’s sermon because I was pondering the sermon I’d like to preach on procrastinating at Jesus’ feet. I’ll get around to it at some point…
I drove home past the horse farms with my pocket full. Look what I found, right there, in that little building.
Now if Jennie can just get some relief from this bout with sciatica. That will be marvelous.
