Luis Rivera, Channel 13, Orlando
It is noon before I finish
my various chores, reading email and writing responses. But my body is crying
out for a walk after a week of illness and doctor’s visits. Already in my gym
shorts and tee-shirt, I don my knee brace, my sunglasses and my tennis shoes
and off we go.
It is already pretty warm
for a walk, 85°F according to the National Weather Service weather station at
the Orlando Executive Airport which sits just across on the north shore of Lake
Underhill and that we’re headed toward an unseasonably warm (about 10-12
degrees unseasonably) high of 87 before the day is through. Weather Underground
promises that the low for tomorrow night may actually dip down into the upper
50s. But summer seems invincible today, perhaps yet another harbinger of
climate change that will soon drastically alter the world in which we live.
The airport was created by
dredging the swampy shores of the lake and using the fill to create the runways
needed for the US war effort during WWII. The airport was the heart of the
Orlando Air Base which once sprawled a couple of miles in every direction, the
base lands now marked by shopping plazas, urban housing and parks like this one.
Today, a toll road bridge splits the lake into two halves, the southern half
ringed by a 1.6 mile walking and biking path.
This lake has long been my
place of escape from the maddening world around me. Cars rush by overhead on
the expressway bridge gushing gallons of carbon monoxide and soot, the
occasional boat or jet ski roars on the water leaving a trail of nasty fumes and
overhead the periodic jet enroute to either Orlando International or the nearby
executive airport rumbles through the sky. Yet there is a serenity on this lake
that defies all human efforts to desecrate this place of beauty.
I come to the lake to
experience myself as part of something larger than my very limited existence.
The lake never lets me down.
Down in the Hydrilla
As I begin crossing the pedestrian bridge attached to the side of
the expressway bridge structure, I stop to watch the sun glinting off the
rippled surface of the water. A very light
breeze blows from the south where cumulus clouds hug the horizon, the
rest of the sky an almost cobalt blue fall sky.
Below me, I notice that the
hydrilla have begun to take over the shallow lake bottom on the lake’s western
end. Hydrilla is often seen as invasive enemies by boaters due to the tendency
of the weed to quickly proliferate and entangle the propellers on boat engines.
A large hydrilla concentration indicates a high level of unnatural nutrients in
the lake. But today the long lacy shoots are quite beautiful as they wave in
the current just below the surface flowing from one of the many springs which
feed this magnificent lake.
My spirit leaps to the
hydrilla below, waving in the current, looking up at the glinting diamonds of
sunlight on the lake surface. This is what I sometimes visualize when I am
engaged in contemplative prayer, the coolness of spring fed water flowing past
me and the occasional distraction overhead of ideas and feelings floating by
only to be released as I return to sandy bottom.
Far too often I want to get
aboard those passing boats and floating objects. There are lots of interesting
ideas and feelings to engage there. But it is at the bottom, the place without
words or feelings, the place where spirit is present, that I return, over and
over.
I resume my walk, my torn meniscus
aching slightly in my ace support covered knee even as I give thanks that I am
feeling well enough to walk again after a week of illness.
Graceful Birds in Monet Settings
On the eastern end of the
lake, a black anhinga sits on one of rocks piled up along the expressway bridge
foundations to prevent erosion. Its blue
black wings are spread to absorb the sun, drying off from a recent dive into
the lake for its noontime meal. I don’t
want to think too long about that. The anhinga opens its beak to allow the
breeze to fill its gullet, its neck expanding and contracting like a blowfish as
it gulps down the fresh air. There is something incredibly beautiful about
these graceful birds and I always stop to look at them if even just for a
moment to appreciate that beauty.
Across the lake, the maples,
sycamores and even the cypress have taken on golden, brown tinges, the very
subtle signs of autumn here in Central Florida. The lake is so still on this
eastern end that the docks with their fishermen and the cypress which line the
southern bank are reflected in the still water, the slight breeze able to penetrate
the phalanx of apartment complexes lining Lake Underhill Drive creating an
almost impressionist image a la Monet.
What a beautiful day this
is, indeed.
The Anti-Francis
This day would provide me
with encounters of both thesis and antithesis of the spirit of St. Francis, one
of the two patron saints of the religious order to which I belong (Clare being
the other). My first encounter would be
with the antithesis of Francis in the parking lot at the park’s eastern end.
Noise spilled out of a black
Mercedes Limo Van, its motor running, diesel fumes pouring out of its rear. The
door of the van was open allowing me to observe that the air conditioner was
running even as the cool air was quickly escaping out the open van door. On the
wall inside the van behind the driver’s compartment, a large screen television blasted
commercial advertisements for consumer goods invoking the name of the veterans
whose day the US celebrated yesterday. “Veterans Day special on new vans this
week only….”
My heart was heavy as I
walked past the van to the end of the loop of the parking lot, my turn around
point. It was sad enough that this behavior serves to destroy the good creation
all around us. But what was even sadder was that the human occupant of the van
was completely unaware of what an incredible day he was missing. Television
programs are always available. Days like today are hardly a given.
I began the homeward journey
dispirited. My hands began to fill up with the plastic items I picked up along
the way - plastic bottles drained of their water out of the tap which was sold as
“purified,” straws and cup lids from soft drinks bought at the convenience
store across the street, a pointed plastic dental floss tool tossed into the
grass where children and animals play. These would all go home with me to the
recycling bin. I can’t pick up all the trash at the park (and no single person should
ever have to) but at least this handful of items would be returned to cycle of voracious
consumption without requiring more costly and dirty fossil fuels to replace
them.
http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/455090943-homeless-man-performs-with-a-guitar-at-the-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QeBX346UVhpyaXyWSMBsVp7iywUq4uWynTuOGQE%2BmtoZyPSAbNb%2BJiU6%2FpbnZCpQug%3D%3D
Perfect Joy and an Avian Audience
As I neared the middle of
the curve Lake Underhill Drive makes around the lake where the huge brick Four
Square Church advertises Sunday services in three different languages across
the street, I suddenly saw the counterpart of the anti-Francis. This modern day
Francis, like the original Francis of the late middle ages, was homeless. His
worldly goods were spread out on the blanket he sat upon next to the banged up
bicycle he used for transportation.
But amidst all these
reminders of his poverty, this Francis sat strumming a guitar and serenading
the ducks and herons along the lake shore. As with the Prince of Fools of
Assisi who used to preach to the birds, this man’s avian audience was
attentive, stopping their swimming and pecking for food long enough to listen
to his singing.
His song was absolutely beautiful
and his face was serene. Here on the shores of an urban lakeside park, this
homeless man had discovered perfect joy. And slowly the black Mercedes van - its waste of costly fossil fuels and its sooty
pollution, its occupant oblivious to anything other than immediate and superficial
gratification - all faded out of consciousness. For the moment, I was
enraptured by the perfect joy of a modern day Francis who had found a way to
let go of all of the possessions which perhaps once owned him, a man who incarnated
the spirit of the poverello of Assisi.
http://media.cleveland.com/plain_dealer_metro/photo/12051783-large.jpg
Our Mother Deserves
Better….
I was nearing home now. I was
beginning to drip with sweat but happy to stretch out the muscles of my legs
after a week of inactivity. With the joy of my encounter with the Francis of
Lake Underhill still warming my heart, I turned to spend a moment just gazing
at the beauty of the lake.
It was then that I noticed
the Styrofoam cups from the convenience stores and the plastic shopping bags from
the nearby grocery stores bobbing in the aquatic plants just offshore. As I
stop to pick up a plastic bottle top from the sidewalk, I saw several black
plastic bags of dog excrement, freely provided by the city to assist dog owners
in curbing their dogs, strung out all over the grass near the exercise station.
The trash can where the bags are required to be deposited were a mere 20 feet
away.
There are times that the
earth almost screams out in agony from the treatment that its human animals
inflict upon it. I have experienced that agony before. I felt it at our Lenten
retreat at the nuclear testing grounds on the Shoshone Reservation west of Las
Vegas where ancient people had been removed from their ancestral lands made uninhabitable
by radioactivity. I felt it at the Earthworks Urban Farm run by the Capuchin
Order in what is left of downtown Detroit, a place where the topsoil was so
contaminated that the top 5 feet had to be scraped up and moved out before
anything edible could be grown there. And on this day, in the bright sunshine
of a beautiful fall day on the shores of an urban lakefront park littered with
trash and excrement, I felt that agony again.
Our Mother deserves better
treatment than this. And we are better people than careless and selfish
behaviors like these would indicate. Francis himself reminds us of this in the
Canticle of the Sun,:
May you be praised through all your creatures, especially
through Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he
is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the
likeness.
Be praised through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and
storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.
Be praised through Sister Water; she is very useful, and
humble, and precious, and pure.
Be praised through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us
and rules us
And may you be praised through those who forgive for love
of you
Francis taught his
followers to be grateful for and respectful of the good creation which we have
been given in trust for all living beings. He taught us to be forgiving of the
failings of our brothers and sisters as we, too, need to be forgiven. And he
taught us to live in a manner by which our lives manifest praise of the good
creation we have been given to love and to learn from and the Creator which
lies within, beneath and beyond that Creation.
I am grateful to the
lake for these reflections this day. Even as my heart grieves for the harm done
to our earth this day, I am grateful for the joy I have encountered in this
little corner of the good creation. I offer my reflection from this encounter
that others may consider their own relationships with "this fragile Earth,
our island home." (BCP, 1979. Eucharistic Prayer C)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott
Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth
considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your G-d? (Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Here on the shores of an urban lakeside park, this
homeless man had discovered perfect joy. And slowly the black Mercedes van
- its waste of costly fossil fuels and
its sooty pollution, its occupant oblivious to anything other than immediate
and superficial gratification - all faded out of consciousness. For the moment,
I was enraptured by the perfect joy of a modern day Francis who had found a way
to let go of all of the possessions which perhaps once owned him, a man who
incarnated the spirit of the poverello of Assisi.”
You are welcome to read the remainder of my latest blog
entry at the link provided below. As always, thoughtful responses are welcomed
and published.
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