Connected While Apart
From the Bench

Monarch Waystation Bench 12.13.20

Dear Mayfield,
There are so many benches to sit on:  waiting room benches in a train station, piano benches, garden benches, worship benches at Quaker meeting, park benches, dining hall benches at summer camp, bus stop benches, picnic benches, benches on a ferry boat, benches at the nature center at Russell Woods, a legal bench in a courtroom, benches for exercise.  And I am sure you could add others to the list even at this time when we have to be careful not to sit too close on any bench.   Since this bench (one of three) was added to the Waystation in June 2019, I have taken numerous pictures of it, surrounded by a riot of prairie color in the growth of summer.  When I look at our Waystation benches, I think of the mound of plastic caps and pill bottles accumulating from week to week, from Mayfield homes and from others who joined us in this ambitious project.  I remember when Bill Nagy learned all those caps and pill bottles were being stored in Peggy’s garage he worried she would be completely overrun by small pieces of plastic.  I can picture our children along with adults carefully washing and sorting caps in the church kitchen.  I am grateful that what we learned from this project was passed along with extra plastic to other groups ready to bring recycled plastic benches to their communities.  Waiting after months and months of getting ready, we greeted Peggy and J.T. with joy as they returned from Indiana with the benches.  The benches would add a new layer of hospitality to the remarkable sacred outdoor space we had shaped into a beautiful, welcoming spiral for humans and many prairie creatures.

Recently I was struck by the off season beauty of this bench when the blooms were gone, the environs had simplified to varied shades of brown, the temperature had dropped, and frost marked every surface.  When I went outside to take a picture of the bench in late autumn, I began to hear a series of invitations it offered.  In this Advent/Christmas season shaped by invitations embedded in the faithful mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us, I decided to add the bench’s invitations to the others we’re hearing.  With the bench pictured above, there are these invitations:

  • The invitation to show up and be present in all seasons.
  • The invitation to pause, rest, be still.
  • The invitation to be visible as any of us stay in place for a few moments.
  • The invitation to be quiet and to listen.
  • The invitation to witness journey and remember our own journeying possibilities — behind, before, above, beside, and below the bench, seeds scatter near and far, and Monarchs and others carry on ancient patterns of migration.
  • The invitation to connect, to find our places in the web of life.
  • The invitation to co-create — a long thread of people donated, cleaned, and packed plastic before others made it into a bench.  We did it together.  Our primary call as people of faith is to co-create with the divine and with one another, to become a community of creation.
  • The invitation to inhabit our strength.  The bench’s strength in weight and support suggests the varied sorts of strength within each of us too.  The bench can weather well outside even on difficult and fiercely windy winter days.  We know our share of such days as well. They summon strength we didn’t even know was ours.
  • To invitation to sit at times by ourselves and at times in the company of others.

Early in the morning, the hum of growth and pollination was long past in the Monarch Waystation.  But the bench awaited with its own set of invitations we might receive.
Peace, Martha