(In the world of mystery fiction, a reluctant sleuth is someone, usually not involved in law enforcement, drawn by circumtances into investigating a crime. They almost always have a personal stake in the outcome, and they usually feel overwhelmed, and ill-equipped.)
I started with the idea I’d continue sharing my Sunday “learning times” here, and use Substack to publish the pieces that aren’t so church oriented.
I have published a couple of my Sunday writings in a section of reluctant sleuth called Tiny Pulpit, and discovered that some readers from the mystery world like the sermon-y stuff.
I need to simplify, to focus energies and time on the two novels I have in the works.
To that end, I am considering phasing out this blog, and using reluctant sleuth to share only the “best” of the Sunday material.
Using the thumbs up or down boxes, you can click your opinion. Would you miss this blog?
The background sounds to life in our lakeside community in rural Essex County now include the rumbles of heavy equipment, the gnawing of tree grinders, chain saws whining, and frequent strident sirens.
It’s not official but a tornado, or something very near to one, touched down in our neighbourhood yesterday afternoon. On our morning walk to find hot tea and coffee (the power is off) we saw many trees broken off, halfway up, and a few flipped out of the ground, roots now exposed. (There’s something sad and rude about that, like seeing grandpa in his underwear.)
Neighbours have suffered significant damage. Big trees came down, and have punctured the roof of a house, garage and a vehicle on a property over our back fence.
A backyard trampoline was flipped, two houses down, and a square of metal tubing from the support frame ended its flight in our rhubarb patch.
Over the fence beyond our rock garden, the neighbours now have a yard full of the sheared off tops of some beautiful old trees.
We were in the basement when they came down. We heard an explosive thunk, and wondered if we still had a roof. (We do.)
The mated pair of cardinals who’d nested in those trees have been flitting around our backyard, as if doing their own assessment of the damage to the area. So have Mr. and Mrs. Mourning Dove. The bird families and some of our human neighbours are much worse off than us.
We had a steamy night without power (or AC) and will likely have a larger load for garbage pickup this week, after we deal with what’s mouldering in the fridge. But our nest is secure.
I’m writing this from a deliciously air conditioned coffee shop in the next town over, while my partner gets her hair cut. Did I mention that with the humidex, it’s about 36 degrees Celsius? In Fahrenheit that’s a sticky 95 degrees.
But I have an iced coffee and my power-bar is plugged in, to feed all my devices.
Fifteen years ago I began training to become a spiritual director. It’s a specialized ministry, that is about having sacred conversations with people, as they work on paying close attention to what God has to say to them. It’s rooted in the faith that God has hopes and dreams for us, and is involved in our lives, and cares what we do with them.
The spiritual director doesn’t speak for God, but listens carefully to the person’s stories, and reflects back what they hear, what they notice. Very often, if a person has a deep question, the spiritual director can help them see that along with the question, they have also been given, if not the exact answer, at least clues about where to search, what they need to do, to approach an answer.
To journey with a person to the territory of deep questions and answers, we need to be more courageous in talking about “real” things. The concerns, and joys, the worries and delights that are often below the surface of everyday conversation.
It is not always easy to go to those deep places with people.
The basic training for spiritual direction took about two years. Each learning year began and ended with a week long retreat. At the close of the first retreat a wise and experienced teacher showed us a leave-taking ritual. This was a way to say goodbye, as we were all about to load our cars, and head home. People had traveled from all over Ontario, and some from out of the province, to begin their training.
Our teacher said that many years ago, she’d volunteered to serve in a mission field. Before she went to Africa, she visited every person who was important to her, and told them what she would want them to hear, if that was the last time she saw them. She had every intention of returning, but also knew she was going to a place where there were no guarantees.
None of us can really know for sure what will happen tomorrow, or in the next five minutes. We don’t always dwell on that, and that’s okay. But it’s also good for us, spiritually, psychologically, and for the health of our relationships, to visit that deeper part of us, that knows that nothing in this life is for sure.
My wife and I attended a funeral on Friday for our friend, who was the minister at the local Unitarian Universalist church. His partner called us last Tuesday to tell us Rod had died in a car accident. Rod and I had plans to have dinner together the next day. He had something he wanted to talk about. I can only guess what that might have been.
The leave-taking ritual at the retreat went like this. We each had the opportunity to say, “I’m leaving here soon. If I never see you again, I’d like you to know…”
Each of us had to fill in the blank, for each person with whom we had that conversation. We’d spent quality time with each other, as we spoke out loud about the real, below the surface truths of our own lives. A week of deep listening was a good start to building trust, and friendship. I am still in touch with some of those I met, 15 years ago.
This morning’s parables are two versions of essentially the same story. A person discovers a treasure. It’s either something buried in a field, or a pearl that from under the sea. It’s interesting that the precious thing- comes either from deep in the ground or deep under water. Going deep, for what’s important.
The person in the parable just has to have it. They sell all they have to raise funds to purchase the treasure.
A good parable can raise more questions than it answers.
Is there actually a treasure that would be worth giving up everything else in your life?
How would the person in the story live, now that they are homeless and penniless?
It does not always work to draw a direct lesson from a parable, or to interpret the story literally.
People always try anyway, because if you can come up with a way to explain the story, it’s like successfully getting a saddle on a wild horse. It domesticates the story, and makes it safer, more digestible.
Preachers especially like to saddle a story with “the meaning”. It’s like we feel like we’re supposed to have all the answers.
Some story tamers would say the awesome treasure is faith, or salvation. What could be more valuable than your faith in God, and God’s promises to each of us?
A variation is to say humans are the treasure, for which Jesus trades everything, including his own life. (I am less taken with that reading.)
Those interpretations are interesting, but giving “the answer” can get in the way of encouraging people to think for themselves.
I’d rather each of us have our own chances to wrestle with the parable, go deep for ourselves. Sometimes a story can work like a mirror, that shows you something about yourself, and what’s on your heart.
This week this parable has me reflecting on what it means to say goodbye, if only for a time.
I start vacation after this service, and beyond that, I’ll be on sabbatical leave until December. I will be back to lead services for one Sunday each in October and November, but otherwise, I may not see many of you for quite a while.
For about two weeks of the sabbatical I will be in Israel for a study tour with other United Church people. We will spend time in Jerusalem, as well as in Bethlehem, Nazareth and the Galilee region. Our local hosts are involved in ecumenical peace work amongst Jews, Christians and Muslims. We will be learning about relations between Palestine and Israel.
It will be the farthest I’ve ever been from home, and I know this is one of many places in the world where the unexpected happens on a regular basis.
If we were saying goodbye, and I knew I might not ever see you again, I would want to tell you, the truest thing I know is held safely like a treasure in a few lines of scripture, which are my absolute favourite, in the whole Bible.
They are my pearl of great price for which I might trade everything.
If I had only these lines of scripture, they would be enough.
They’re from the first letter of John, in the fourth chapter. They remind me to be humble in my certainties and pronouncements about religion, and to place my trust in what religion is meant to point us towards.
“No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and God’s love becomes complete in us—perfect love!” Amen
My friend and I had plans to meet for supper tonight. Last evening, his partner called to tell us that they’d been in an auto accident. She was injured, but not seriously. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
We were going to meet at the rib place he’d taken us to in the spring, before the four of us competed as a team at a trivia fundraiser for a local community group. We placed third, and the gift certificate prizes are still under magnets on our fridge door.
I had the idea, from his partner chatting with mine, he had something he wanted to sound out with me. That happened sometimes. He was a pastor, and so am I, but I’ve got a couple of decades on him, and sometimes experience fills in when wisdom is sought.
I had the sense this time it wasn’t about work. I wish we could have got our fingers sticky with sauce tonight and drank some beer, and had that conversation. I look at his photo on the church website, and a small part of my brain, and a larger portion of my heart still expects he’ll tell me whatever it is needs talking about.
I grieve him, and the loss of that conversation, and others that could have been.
I led a graveside service this morning. I told myself to be all there, for the grieving widower and his family and friends, and I believe I was, mostly. But I turned down the invitation to go back to the daughter’s house for lunch, saying I had another family I needed to be with.
When I can’t accept an invitation, I often say I have another thing I need to do.
I don’t say it unless it’s true.
Today it was deeply, profoundly true, and the other family was my own. I needed to be home, with my wife. So I gave myself the rest of the day, to just be, and be home.
We talked some, and some more, about our friends. Compassion for her, and sadness for his death. And how it could happen to us, and how would the not-dead one go on, and who would they turn to, in that new and unwelcome alone-ness.
I lay on the day-bed in our three-season room this afternoon, with the breeze fluttering through the screen windows. I could still hear the birds, above the music from the bone-conduction headphones below my ears.
Two albums.
I so rarely just lay still and listen to albums.
Seven Psalms by Paul Simon, with some sweet harmony and lead vocals from Edie Brickell. This new one is a suite of songs, that seem to be the writer’s meditation on life, mortality, death, and the presence of God. I always thought he was a Gospel singer born into the body and life of a Jewish boy from Newark. These lines confirm it for me, especially when Edie sings them with Texas in her voice.
“Life is a meteor
Let your eyes roam
Heaven is beautiful
It’s almost like home
Children! get ready
It’s time to come home”
O Sun O Moon by Bruce Cockburn. There is no doubt in my heart, that Cockburn was writing about his hopes and dreams about life and death. Today, more than ever, I was grateful for his honesty, poetry, incredible musicality. He has been my favourite, since Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws.
There is so much on this album that reaches deep to the hurting and raw places in me.
Perhaps the most soothing and healing song for me this afternoon was the last one, which to my ear has a subtle New Orleans feel and flavour, including some gorgeous Dixieland clarinet. When You Arrive has a line about the city by the sea, and describes what might be Bruce revisiting his classic Festival of Friends vision of heaven, but this time it’s more like a Second Line.
“I said, the dead shall sing To the living and the semi-alive Bells will ring When you arrive (One more time now) The dead shall sing To the living and the semi-alive Bells will ring When you arrive When you arrive”
This is a screen shot of the Amazon listing for my mystery novel, which at the moment is “killing it” in the category of religious humour. That’s not a big category, but I am learning to take the little boosts as they come.
There are ups and downs on this ride, and it’s an educational tour.
I am now a self-taught indie publisher.
I am also learning, or stumbling my way into the world of marketing.
reluctant sleuth is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I sold one of my books the other day on the plane ride from Toronto to Thunder Bay. That was not the goal, but a heart-warming side effect of a great conversation with a seat mate on the small turbo-prop plane.
She also promised to tell her sister about “meeting the author”.
I like seeing the sales numbers slowly rise, but to be honest, the moments of interaction with people who are interested in the book, are actually more of a reward.
Did you remember the ending of Mary Poppins? The effects seem hoaky, compared with what is done in our time. Mary Poppins flies above the smoky clouds of London, as the credits roll on the screen.
Mary Poppins is a magical nanny who appeared in an upper middle class English household just when they needed her most. She came sailing on the wind, literally, floating through the air, upheld by her umbrella. Very mysterious, with a hint that amazing things will happen.
With messages of love and adventure and openness to new experience and new people, she nurtured Jane and Michael, the two Banks children. They were transformed from brattish hellions into loving, kind, and generous young people.
Much of this miracle happened because of the effect Mary Poppins had on their Mother and Father. She helped them look upon their children with love rather than mere tolerance, and re-discover the delight of actually spending time with them.
Along the way there was magic and singing and dancing, and humour. These were the spoonful of sugar needed for the audience to swallow the medicine, or the moral of the story. If parents don’t actively love their kids, they may lose them.
By the end, the Banks family gets along famously, having been saved by the message of love. Mary Poppins’ work is done, and it is time for her to leave. It is time for them to carry on, with all that she has taught them, and with the spirit of love that gave life to her teaching.
Where was she going? In the movie she was very much a Christ figure, one who brought a message of love, reconciliation, tolerance and openness to differences in people. So where does she go at the end? Up into the sky. Heavenward. A mysterious end to match the mysterious beginning.
That amazing departure works in the movie, as long as you don’t think too hard about it. It even kind of works in the stories about Elijah and Jesus, again, as long as you don’t think too hard.
In the case of the prophet Elijah, he was walking and talking with his protégé, Elisha, when “suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” No umbrella required.
Just before that happened, Elijah had asked Elisha what he could do for him. Elisha asked his teacher for a double portion of his spirit. Elisha wanted to know that somehow, Elijah would still be with him, helping him with the work of being a spiritual leader.
In the Gospel of Luke story about Jesus taking his leave, Jesus said he would send the disciples what his heavenly father had promised. They were to stay together until they were clothed with power from on high. That phrase “being clothed” is a clever, literary allusion to the story about Elijah and his follower Elisha, who picks up a cloak, also called a mantle, that belonged to Elijah.
In the reading from Acts the instructions are more detailed. Jesus told his followers to stay in Jerusalem until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Next week we will hear the story of Pentecost, which describes this promised moment, when the Spirit touched and energized Jesus’ followers, and a great crowd of others in Jerusalem.)
In both versions of the story about Jesus leaving, after he makes his promise, Jesus is described as being taken up into the sky. In Acts it says a cloud hid Jesus from the sight of his followers. Then the disciples suddenly saw two men dressed in white standing beside them. The strangers asked, “why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Good question.
There are many ancient stories of kings, heroes, prophets or holy men who are taken up into the realm of the gods, at the end of their earthly lives. It was a way of saying they were divinely blessed, and their message would live on.
In the ancient world, people imagined the earth, and the universe around it very differently than we do. They had what I sometimes call the “layer cake” view. Our world was the middle layer. Hell was the layer below, and heaven, the realm of the gods, was right above.
With this cosmology, this understanding of the architecture of the universe, it made perfect sense to talk about a hero descending into the depths of Hades, or ascending bodily into heaven.
When we talk about Heaven being up, and Hell being down, we are usually being poetic. Satellites orbit the earth, and rockets pierce the dome of the sky, and people have gone to the moon. It’s hard to imagine heaven as a physical place over our heads. It’s hard to read these stories as literally true.
So how do we think about this? Where did Elijah go? Where is Jesus? A downfall of thinking of heaven as a location is that literal-ness reduces reality to things we can see. It leaves out the possibility that there are things that are real, that we can’t see.
Irish poet and mystic John O’Donohue once said that rather than thinking of the human body as the vessel that carries around a little thing inside us we call a soul, maybe instead, our human bodies are surrounded by something like a force, or energy, that is bigger than our bodies. Maybe instead of our body carrying around the soul, our soul actually envelops our bodies.
In his lovely book “To Bless the Space Between Us”, O’Donohue quoted another mystic, a fourteenth century philosopher and theologian named Meister Eckhart.
“Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here.
We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being.
The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form.
You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near.”
This may be just another form of poetry, but it sits better with me than the idea of a chariot of fire carrying Elijah up into the sky.
Scientists now tell us that nothing can ever really be destroyed. Things change form, but the matter and the energy that make up our bodies continue to exist, in one state of being or another. Perhaps we don’t really go anywhere physically when we die.
The visible parts of us, our bodies, may change form, but the invisible parts of us, our souls, thoughts, feelings, still exist, held safely by God, in God’s universe, which is all around us.
Perhaps Elijah and Jesus never really left and these Bible stories about them mysteriously disappearing into the sky were the best poetry the people had in their time, to talk about how even when their bodies failed them, their souls, their spirits, carry on. Amen
This is a “cross-post” from my newsletter reluctant sleuth
reluctant sleuth is a Substack newsletter in which I write about mystery fiction, and my search for clues about the mystery of life. I think this particular post might also fit for this blog. If you want to check out what I do on reluctant sleuth, you can find it here:
I’m at Jericho House, near Wainfleet, Ontario, for a (mostly) silent 4 day retreat. This afternoon I went for a long walk in the conservation area next door. It surrounds a disused quarry. From the website of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority:
“Once covered by a shallow, warm sea 300-450 million years ago, what is now the Wainfleet Wetlands Conservation Area was the site of a clay and limestone quarry from the late 19th century until the 1960s. Fossils of the plants and animals that lived in the Paleozoic sea can be seen in the exposed limestone of the Onondaga Formation, in the quarry walls and on rock tableland…
I’ve loved fossils since my late teens, when a guide gave me a fossilized shark’s tooth during a tour of the Science Gallery at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. I still have it. I named it Genesis, and I’ve occasionally used it to take a bite out of religious claims the Earth was formed in 7 days, about 6000 years ago.
When I see fossils “in situ”, as I did in the quarry today, it touches a deep place in me. It’s moving to see signs of life that go back millions of years.
…the quarries and clay pits have naturalized and are home for fish, birds, waterfowl, turtles, snakes and plants. Unique alvar communities of rock-loving plants also thrive in the shallow soils…
It brings me joy to see vegetation rooted in the most unlikely places. Life persists. These remind me of the chicks and hens in my rock garden at home.
…contains the best exposed fossil and viewing area of geological formation and fossils (ancient marine lifeforms) in the Niagara Peninsula, highlighting species that lived 380- 450 million years ago in the shallow warm saltwater sea of the Michigan Basin that covered the site. Trilobites, crinoids, shellfish and corals can be seen.
This is what the floor of the quarry looked like this afternoon. I walked halfway around the rim until I found a gentle slope down to the quarry floor. It looks like beach in this photo, but it’s actually sedimentary stone, with a thin top coat of dried mud, algae, miraculous vegetation, and many, many rock fragments.
When I walk an actual beach, my eyes are almost always at my feet. I seek out interesting rocks. This requires slow, short steps and the willingness to bend at the waist and stare down, looking like I’m either catching my breath or losing my lunch.
It’s worth the risk of looking foolish. I brought some of what I found back to the retreat house, cleaned them, and laid them out on a paper labyrinth. Sadly, when I read the website for the Conservation Area, I learned we are not actually meant to remove the rocks. (I’ll take them back tomorrow, honest.)
For now, you can see some of the varieties named in italics above. (All except for the specimen outside the ring at 7 o’clock on the dial. It’s a porcelain shard. I just liked the colour. I’ll keep that one, since it’s not a rock.)
This day began with a teaching about the labyrinth, an ancient, archetypal symbol that’s fascinated people for centuries. Many retreat centres have one, as do some public spaces. A church I once served had one lined out in masking tape on blue plastic tarps joined so that when unfolded, they covered the floor of the sanctuary, after we moved the chairs out.
The world’s most famous labyrinth is on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral. (They also have to shift chairs to use it!)
There is nothing all that mysterious about walking a labyrinth. It’s walking. But it’s possible to walk with the intention it be a spiritual practice. Unlike a maze, a true labyrinth has only one entrance, and provides an unimpeded, if circuitous route to the centre, at which point you may pause, before retracing your steps on the only way out.
I’ve walked labyrinths in many places, and often found the experience helpful, and laden with meaning. Today I decided to walk around the quarry, down into it, back out and around it again, intending this would be my “labyrinthine” journey.
Labyrinth guides will often suggest taking a moment before you cross the threshold of the labyrinth, to quiet your insides, and open yourself to the experience of the walk.
Walk a natural pace, paying attention to what may be found in the present moment, something like the old sleuth searching out stones on a beach.
You might take time at the centre of the labyrinth, to notice and receive what arises internally- thoughts, images, feelings. (Maybe like looking closer at that cool stone you picked up.)
On the way back out, you may find you’re integrating whatever you discovered on the inward walk. There may be something useful or beautiful in the thoughts, images, or feelings that emerged. Unlike the fossils, which I have to take back, you can bring home what you find.
What did I find today? (I mean, other than the fossils.)
Yesterday I sat with a spiritual director and stumbled through an incomplete summary of my life, internal and external. She suggested I find a way to listen to my “inner child”, to attend to what they need. She went on to say this archetypal character might need some coaxing, and it might be best to invite them out to play, and see where it leads.
Do you remember how to play?
At this stage of life, I find it so much easier to be task oriented. So my “job” for today was to get outside, do a large-scale labyrinth-like walk, and get at the “work” of gaining deep insight.
At about the halfway mark, down on the flats of the quarry, near the water’s edge, I heard something. A vigorous splashing. I stopped walking, to look out at the water.
There was a strange, circular splashing wave. Every so often, a dark triangle broke the surface. I realized it must be a big fish, because the creature had no need to surface.
The tail-fin, I supposed it was, would point almost straight up, which led me to surmise the rest of the fish was engaged in directing its mouth to the bottom, to feed on what ever bottom-feeders feed on.
The circular wave would subside, and then the tail would cut a line in the water for a few yards, and the dance began anew. I was hypnotized.
My reverie was interrupted by a voice from above. Seriously.
A woman standing up top at the edge overlooking the quarry shouted down, “Any idea what that is?”
I said, “No, but it makes me very curious.”
And then I was.
Curious.
I began to see more around me.
That’s actually when I noticed many of the rocks I’d been walking over and around, bore fossils.
I’d somehow forgotten I like to hunt for rocks. I was in a quarry, just walking.
A fish, and a strange voice reminded me to take a look.
I have launched a Substack newsletter, which is a new (at least to me) form of web-based publishing. It’s called reluctant sleuth
I am using reluctant sleuth to serially publish my mystery novel, The Book of Answers, which was nominated for a Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence. It has been exciting to have people outside my circle of family and friends read it, and let me know what they think.
Two new chapters of my book go live each week, and there is an online archive where all the chapters are accessible.
I also write short posts every week related to my interests in mystery and thriller fiction, and the mysteries of life.
This week I wrote a bit of a memoir, that traces the beginning of my interest in these things. It’s a fun, and fond recollection of my favourite bookstore when I was a child. Click on the link below to read it:
Darrow Woods: Writer of Things 