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David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

David Walters: man of faith, husband, father, grandfather, poet, friend

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My heart is broken. I am devastated to learn today of the sudden death of my friend, David Walters. He and his wife, Debbie, were members of our church in Waterloo, Iowa, faithful and engaged members, careful and honest practitioners of their faith, both of them highly intelligent and introspective, unparalleled in their commitment not merely to mouth the values of the gospel, but to live them.

David WaltersDavid was a poet, sharing his poems with me during my tenure at the church and still as we have both lived in retirement half a country apart. His poems are sometimes hard to read, because they expose the world as it is in all its cruelty and hypocrisy and injustice, but never, never despairing, always holding up the bright light of hope, hope rooted in a compassionate and faithful God, for all to see.

I grieve for a world without David’s voice, his voice that will not let us look away from the hurt and need around us, his voice that prods our consciences and pricks our apathy, his voice that invites us to rest, to believe and to rest and to live, within the loving embrace of the Lord.

As a tribute to David, and as avenue to permit his voice to be heard still, I intend to publish here in my online journal in these days before Christmas some of the poems David has shared with me. I begin with a poem especially dear to me because it was written during a sojourn shared by David and Debbie and me and other dear friends from the First Congregational United Church of Christ to Scotland and the Isle of Iona. Here is his poem …

finding Iona

Soon, the moment will pass and Iona will be a memory.
But the pictures we colored in our minds each day,
Of Scotland’s undomesticated beauty and perfect symmetry,
Will long remain etched beyond what words can say.
Yet I believe that the heart of Iona is not in what we see.
It lies at the center of where we feel
The love of One who lived and died without asking a fee.
And now dances laughing with anyone who would be free.
The vision of Iona reminds us of what we forgot,
Of two people who walk side by side willing to accept the cost.
They are you and me, broken and lost,
Until by faith we joined hands and became one with Him
whom we sought.

david walters
May 2015,
Isle of Iona, Scotland

Photo Gallery Relaunch

Photo Gallery Relaunch

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Photo Gallery masthead

I invite you to check out my newly redesigned Photo Gallery. I have spent considerable hours over the last several weeks during this time of self-isolation doing a complete overhaul of my photo gallery website. You will find a new layout, new indexes, and over fifty new galleries.

So … would you like to tour Maine? Or Scotland? Or the Big Island, Hawaii? Would you like to see puffins or whales or loons or harbor seals up close and personal? Would you like to visit stunning mountain summits or isolated islands or beautiful wilderness lakes?  Would you like to take a hike or go for a sail or visit an historic European city?

Come visit. Stay a while. And enjoy the view!

You may always access the site at https://photos.believersjournal.org. My Photo Gallery is also linked from this blog and from my sermon library site. When you arrive at the site, you may access galleries by scrolling through the pages or by consulting one of the indexes (Subjects and Tags). Click on the chain link symbol on any image to access a full gallery of images. Click on any gallery thumbnail to open a lightbox slideshow.

Unexpected stillness

Unexpected stillness

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“May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives.”

I have been corresponding with Kirsten, our dear friend from Edinburgh, Scotland. My wife, Lynne, and I have plans to travel to Scotland for two weeks in July. We intend to revisit many of our favorite destinations — Stonehaven, Edinburgh, Glencoe, Oban, Loch Lomond, Skye, Iona — as well as introduce two Iowa friends to this magical land.

The trip has been in the works for over a year and I have already made all the reservations for flights, rental car, housing, a Skye boat trip, and even a birthday meal for Lynne at a favorite Stonehaven restaurant. But now, because of this global pandemic, our trip seems very much in doubt.

Kirsten ended her most recent email, responding to my inquiries about the state of life in Scotland under the current lockdown orders, with those words: “May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives.”

Oh, my …

Unexpected stillness. May God bless this unexpected stillness. Her words pierced me to my core and brought tears to my eyes. Such a simple description of our present state of being, but so lyrical, poignant, moving, and hopeful.

Unexpected stillness. This is a stillness, but stillness can be a gift. Unexpected stillness can be an unexpected gift. We are obliged to set aside most of our usual comings and goings, much of our usual busyness. We are constrained to be quiet, often alone or with just a few nearby, to be still. But in the stillness … we may hear other voices, we may hear other things, we may remember, we may discover, there may be space enough in us … for God to fill. In the stillness, we may be blessed.

May God bless this unexpected stillness in our lives …

Little Splat

Little Splat

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A poem I wrote today …

Little Splat

silent and still and slow,
    very slow
        is this what it is like to die?
silent and still and slow,
    very slow?

I am here for joy
    for the joy of emerald water
        pouring and twisting among grey boulders
        churning over drops and plunging into holes and piling up in frothy mounds
    for the joy of the dance
        pas de deux, me and the river
        lean, glissade, pirouette
    for the joy of comradeship
        eight days and eight of us, two thousand miles of road and sixty miles of stream
        paddling and paddling some more, talking paddling and dreaming paddling
    for the joy of the adventure
        Zoom Flume and First Island, Little Splat and Wonder Falls, Wonder Falls!
        launching boat and body over the lip of eighteen-foot Wonder Falls, exult!

and now,
silent and still and slow,
    very slow

not able to breathe, but able to see
    seeing only the subaqueous darkness
not able to move, but able to feel
    feeling canoe and me stuck, stuck between rocks, between foot pegs and saddle
able to think, but silent and still and slow,
    very slow
no panic, no terror, no dread, no self-pity, no despair, no regret
    only silence and stillness and slowness
and watching, watching myself, watching myself from outside myself
    and wondering, wondering, wondering
        is this what it is like to die?

I try again to move
    and I am out

there will be no dying today
    no second-guessing or rueing or wishing myself somewhere else
because I am here
    because I am here
because I am here for joy!

Timothy Ensworth

 

(In April 1991, I traveled to West Virginia with seven other members of the Maine Appalachian Mountain Club whitewater canoeing group. Along the way, we paddled the Indian and Hudson rivers in New York, and Stony Brook and Dark Shade and Shade Creeks in Pennsylvania. In West Virginia, we ran the Shavers Fork of the Cheat, the Middle Fork of the Tygart and Tygart Gorge, the Upper and Lower Big Sandy River, and the Cheat River. This poem comes from my descent of the Lower Big Sandy and a capsize at Little Splat.)

Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

Bagaduce Chorale Christmas Concert

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One of the joys of my newly retired life is singing with the Bagaduce Chorale, a seventy-voice regional chorale ensemble that meets weekly in Blue Hill for rehearsals and performs three concerts each year in December, April, and July. Below is a playlist of songs from our most recent concert, a Christmas Concert performed three times on the weekend before Christmas. This recording comes from our last performance at St. Savior’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor. I sing a solo in the third song, “Angelus Ad Virginem.”

Blue Hill

Blue Hill

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This is living in Blue Hill …

Friday: Singing Ola Gjeilo, Morten Lauridsen, Karl Jenkins, Moses Hogan and more with the Bagaduce Chorale in concert at the Blue Hill Congregational Church.

Saturday: Reprise of Friday’s concert.

Sunday: Breakfast and worship at Deer Isle/Sunset Congregational Church in the morning, and in the evening, attending a recital in Deer Isle by Jillian Gardner, a twenty-six-year-old internationally acclaimed organist.

Monday: Kayaking in Blue Hill Bay, seeing ten seals swimming and sunning.

Tuesday: Sailing with friends off Deer Isle. More seals. And in the evening, going to Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill (“the cradle of chamber music teaching in America”) to hear eight young artists, eight young world-class artists perform. First we heard Liyuan Xie, Camille Poirier, Lydia Grimes and Zoe Lin played Béla Bartók’s “String Quartet No. 3.” It absolutely blew me away, had me one the edge of my seat the whole time, had me in tears. And then, an exquisite “Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major” performed by Yu-Ming Ma, Ao Peng, Yifei Li, and Leon Bernsdorf.

Wow!