This past autumn brought a remarkable gift to our island, here in the Pacific Northwest; an October with almost no rainfall, October weather that not one old-time Island resident could recall. It meant pleasant daytime temperatures; dry leaves crackling under foot and cool clear evenings. Our deciduous trees do not have the vivid and oft-photographed-famous autumn colors of the sugar maples or oaks of the east coast. But we do have Big Leaf maples. Big Leaf maple is the actual name; and it fits, as a single leaf can span fourteen inches. Each leaf looks as if it has been manufactured for affect; enlarged for classroom demonstration or to accommodate middle-aged eyesight. In autumn color, they stay true to their northwest sensibility and offer, shall we say, an understated palate ranging from Dijon mustard to a weathered barn red.
Zachary created his own big leaf dance. With a maple leaf in each hand, each looking like a giant fan, he gallops, skips and hops in a circle, incanting. After a few minutes, he interrupts his dance to remind us that this is not a dance to be performed solitaire. He begins his instructions, "Okay everyone, this is the leaf dance, get your leaves ready. This is how you do it."  

For Zachary, leaf dances are a communal event, and he insists that his mother and father join him. I can tell you that this is not a dance for anyone squeamish about public opinion. Any onlooker would have wondered, snickered and in all likelihood called for a sobriety test. Which may be appropriate. I know now that leaf dancing can be intoxicating.
I've been asked--often--what I believe. Or for my "doctrinal statement." This is an occupational hazard for anyone who cavorts with fervent religious folk, those who find serenity in doctrinal purity. Catch phrases become de facto passwords into the fold of many religious organizations and communities.
Here's the odd part. I have never once been asked about what nourishes my soul.  

Or, to make a list of what moves me.  

Or for stories about what warms my blood, sends gooseflesh up my arms or makes me want to dance, laugh and cry all at the same time.  

I've been asked about what is appropriate, but not about what is important. 

I've been subjected to many a hell-fire sermon. They were standard fare at the First Baptist Church of Colon, Michigan, the church of my boyhood, where I sat upright, obedient, third pew left side. Every Sunday. No exceptions. Missing church carried an eternal penalty.  The subject matter of these sermons may have varied slightly, but the intent was always the same: to give us the good news, which was always some variation on the theme of spending eternity in hell. I never quite understood, even as a young boy, how that could be construed to be good news. But it sure made one wonder about the bad news. There is no doubt that these were sermons meant to fuel the fire of penance. Because a guilty audience is always a rapt one, eager for any opportunity to make amends. Preachers seemed--at least to me--to enjoy rubbing our faces in the notion that not one of us was as far along as we thought.
I remember a funeral for two teenagers who died in a tragic auto accident. They were my age. They were friends of mine. There is no getting around a tragedy like that--one of life's capricious moments. Our knee jerk need to make some sense of it all, is understandable. There were many eulogies that day. Most of them were disguised as sermons with some imperative to find a moral lesson. One eulogist talked about my friends "burning themselves out for God." Both ends of the candle and all that. These sermons were meant to comfort us, letting us know that these young people didn't die in vain. But to seal the deal, we (those in attendance) were all urged to swear off trivial pursuits in favor of commitments--and lives--that would make God proud.
The message was not lost on me, to be sure. Don't waste your life.
This is a seductive command to an impressionable kid. Because I knew in the core of my being that I had not done enough, that I had not been committed enough and that I did not have enough faith, that I had, in fact--at least doing the math in my head--been wasting my life.  

These eulogizers wanted me to believe that every moment of my life is to be weighed instead of celebrated.  

Each day is to be evaluated instead of embraced.  

Each choice to be judged instead of owned.  

Here's the deal: What I remember now, in retrospect, is that there were no eulogies about laughter, playing baseball, or summer camp weeks spent by the lake. There were no stories about music, or poetry, or unanswered questions, or moments of doubt or embarrassment.

And there were no eulogies about Big Leaf dancing.

There is no balance sheet for any of this. And it reminds me John Ruskin's reminder (back in 1853 mind you) "that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance." But useless is a tough sell in today's market. Try this: the next time you go into a bookstore, go the counter and ask for a book that has "seven strategies for a useless day." 

Henri Nouwen pushes the envelope when he talked about the fact that we must intentionally learn how to be "useless." This is an odd word to our North American sensibilities. Sitting still, we realize that life is not a beauty pageant, or a race, or a contest. For then and only then do we know that our identity is not dependent on what we do, or how we look, or what we've accomplished, or whom we know.
In his book, Lifesigns, Nouwen talks about the time spent at l'Arche, a home for mentally handicapped adults in France. He observes, "While the needs of the world clamor for our attention, hundreds of capable, intelligent men and women spend their time, often all of their time, feeding broken people, helping them walk, just being with them, and giving them the small comfort of a loving word, a gentle touch, or an encouraging smile. To anyone trying to succeed in our society, which is oriented toward efficiency and control, these people are wasting their time. What they do is highly inefficient, unsuccessful, and even useless."   

Now there's a concept. We literally find the love of God--the fullness of God--in these "useless" moments.

Note: It is Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I've spent the past few days working in Oklahoma and Texas.  This morning at St. Paul UMC (Hurst, Texas), we talked about giving thanks and celebrating miracles in the ordinary.  It brought to mind Zach's Big Leaf Dance.  This "Sabbath Moment" was written in 2004, and appeared in my book Sacred Necessities.  I wish you and those you love a blessed Thanksgiving.