“Suppose you are walking in a forest, talking with God, and you hear the tap, tap, tap of a woodpecker. You break off the trail and off your talk with God to look for the woodpecker—have you stopped praying? Not if by seeking the woodpecker you are ‘considering the ravens.’ If Jesus asks us to consider the ravens as a way of striving for the Kingdom, isn’t straining to see a woodpecker a kind of striving after the Kingdom?” —from Long Wandering Prayer
Go long, or go home.” That’s what my friends and I say about our favorite golf course. It’s cheap and beautiful, but you have to hit the ball a long way to get around strung-out doglegs cut into woods so thick I won’t go in for a ball without a bag of breadcrumbs and a chain saw.
“Go long, or go home” in my prayer life means “Pray long, or you might as well quit the ministry.” When the lion Busywork crouches in my study, roaring sticky notes, smelling like a deadline, licking up my time, I defy him to get between me and my time with Christ. I pray many hours every week, no matter what the circumstances in my church.
That’s why I golf so much.
My wife, Debbie, is a psychologist. She tells me that inconsistent positive reinforcement is the most powerful inducement to repeated behavior. Give a dog a treat every time he rings the bell and he will stop ringing the bell. Give the dog a treat unpredictably, and the dog will ring the bell until the Cubs win the World Series and keep on until they win again.
Inconsistent reinforcement keeps us coming back for more; in gambling we call it addiction, in golf we call it obsession. So I hit three great drives in a row; I can’t stay out of the trees for the rest of the day. A great putt on 18 and my friend says, “That’ll keep you coming back.” And it does.
When I want to pray and golf, I arrive at the course early enough to golf alone. My favorite course is an hour north of Cincinnati, nestled in a large, rural, wooded state park. It is uncrowded and lacks city noise.
Splicing golf into prayer is, I suppose, a form of operant conditioning. After all, I’m not praying whether I like it or not. In neutral circumstances, prayer can be a pure act of will. But I’m out to pray and golf. I’ll pray longer because of the great putt on 18 last time out.
Brag about that at a prayer conference! The putt? No, the fact that the putt gets me out to pray longer. Jesus and I talk while I take soil samples. The result is indisputable: when I golf as I pray over my sermon, I pray longer and I preach better. A lot better. The longer I pray, the less I worry about my motives.
But this story is about a woodpecker.
God’s wild kingdom
On a shivery February day I drove an hour north of Cincinnati to my favorite course. Between my doorstep and the clubhouse, the temperature dropped from 35 to 28 degrees, and the wind increased from 10 to 20 miles an hour. No golfing today.
In Montana I waded, fly-fished and prayed in zero-degree weather. One time I was wading in a remote area in 10-degree weather. The wind gust must have been at least 30 miles an hour, because it blew the water off the surface of the river onto my chest waders, freezing instantly.
The ice began encasing me, and it made me think that if I lost my footing and tumbled down the river, I would die of hypothermia, especially since my car’s heater didn’t work. Since our oldest of three was just starting college and who would pay for it and on and on, I waded back to the car. Walking the one hundred feet from the river to my car, the laces on my wading boots froze solid. I thawed them out with hot coffee from a Thermos. I didn’t fish long, so I went home and I didn’t pray long.
If I had more discipline, I would have prayed for a long time anyway. If I had good sense, I wouldn’t have gone fishing in the first place. I think discipline and good sense usually go together, and I think that most books on prayer are written by people with good discipline and good sense, which leaves the rest of us scrambling to be inventive, or at the least, very observant.
The golfing was shot, so I decide to take a hike. I park in the Maple Grove picnic lot, get out of my car, clap my hands and shake. I lift my arms full length to the sky, stretch my back, stomp my feet, and praise the Lord. If only my overt-worship friends could see me now. Of course, if they were here, they wouldn’t see it. (The alone part is important to my prayer life, too.)
The wind drives the cold through my cotton clothing like a linebacker playing red rover with the chess club. So I add a loose wool shirt. It doesn’t stop the wind either, but I’m hiking so I’ll be sweating soon. I slam the car door shut. Then I hear the woodpeckers.
Hueston Woods is an Ohio State Park of 3,600 acres developed for broad public use, including fishing and boating, horseback riding, camping, museums, a tough golf course, and even hunting. The Hueston family purchased the land as part of a much larger farm in the late 1700s but never logged this section of virgin forest. Subsequent owners left the land as it was until the state of Ohio purchased the land for a park in the 1930s. Thousands of acres of trees emerging and corrupting makes Hueston Woods a salubrious woodpeckeropolis—lots of hollow trees filled with carpenter ants.
I hear woodpeckers, all around, near and far, loud and soft, fast and slow, up and down the trunks of a hundred trees. These are probably downy and hairy woodpeckers. A downy is about the size of a sparrow, and a hairy is about the size of a small robin.
Then a woodpecker starts up, very loud, 150 yards away.
“A pileated,” I whisper to myself. I hadn’t seen one in many years, but I know the sound. The downys and hairys sound like carpenters hammering nails in a distant subdivision in the morning before the daytime growls and sirens of the city absorb little sounds. The pileated sounds like a jackhammer.
Leaving my car door open I walk down the parking lot surrounded by trees to the right and to the left, a pit restroom ahead, and the pileated woodpecker somewhere to the left of the toilet. About halfway to the outhouse the bird stops knocking, so I stand still, completely still, inside and out. It feels wonderful. The bird sounds again, so I start walking, more slowly and softly.
The end of the parking lot lies on the crest of a hill falling a hundred feet to the left into a swale. Looking where I believe I heard the sound, a large black bird leaps from a tree 50 yards away with an odd, undulating flight into thick trees on the other side of the swale, out of my sight. Pileated woodpeckers have a large red crest on the head, white stripes on the neck, and, of course a long, sharp beak. I walk down into the swale and search the bare trees against the lightening sky for its silhouette.
At some point I stop turning my head. Rather than scan the forest by turning my head this way and that, I stare forward and trust sideways to my peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is eerie stuff. They say that in the dark you can see more with your peripheral vision than you can looking straight on. I believe this.
Many times I have fished a stream too long and night fell too fast and I was stuck hiking back to the car on a dark trail, over and under logs, around sink holes, hoping to avoid a skunk. If you walk slowly but not cautiously, focusing on the center of the trail ahead, nearby objects suggest themselves. You walk forward avoiding danger and choosing safe footing based on hints. It’s a wonderful way to think about seeking God. It’s not certain, it’s not safe, but it can be joyous and absolutely arresting.
Standing in the swale, with my aural and ocular functions fixed on the flora searching for a crow-sized fauna, I feel the Spirit slip into my thinking through the side of my head. A palpable feeling of God’s peace and joy enters my soul and permeates my body.
I stand nearly motionless, for five to fifteen minutes, totally absorbed in the goodness of God. Eventually God returns me to my normal consciousness and the random rat-a-tat-tat of the hairy and downy woodpeckers. The pervasive peace of God’s thrilling presence flies away like the bird, but its disappearance does not disappoint me. I just want to know if the large black bird was a pileated woodpecker, even though I don’t know why it matters so much.
Growing in the wind
I reach my car and cross the park road to the Big Woods Trail. On the trail the sound of the woodpeckers ceases as the wind picks up and, as it were, blows away my sense of peace and joy.
As I walk through the leafless trees, I try refocusing on the peace of God, but it came and went. The Ping-Pong like repetition of the positive and negative consequences in pastoral work have their way with me. I am not in control of my prayer or my thinking.
I feel angry. I ask God over and over how much longer I have to be a pastor, only to receive that rotten silence that means the old “one-day contract” routine. God gets me through hard times by asking me to be a pastor for one more day. I agree. I agree to one more day, not two.
That’s fine. I’ve spent years in ministry on one-day contracts. Whatever else it is, it is a practical way of hearing the words of Jesus: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34).
To my surprise, the trail takes me into a hundred yards of tall, long-needled pines. The trunks measure about 12 inches in diameter. The branches are dead and broken off 20 feet up, about a third of the tree’s total height. They do not look intentionally planted, neither do they look native to this eco-niche. The trees crack and creak loudly as they bend in the strong wind.
Imagine a large man in a hundred-year-old maple rocker on a hundred-year-old oak floor, and multiply the sound by a hundred trees. In 45 years of walking in the coniferous forests of the West, I’ve never heard anything like it. These trees are not thriving. The wood must be compromised with long fractures. Yet, they are amazingly resilient against the wind. The cracks in the trunks have undoubtedly been caused by the wind, but, ironically, they also allow the trees to survive the wind.
Thus, ministry for me.
The ministry makes the cracks, the cracks make me resilient, but the cracks make the ministry: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4:7-10). That which makes me whine and groan allows Jesus Christ to shine through my life.
So on and on I walk through the beautiful hardwood forest, praising and groaning, interceding and daydreaming; wondering if the large black bird was a pileated woodpecker. Meanwhile, the hairys and downys are silent.
And THAT’s why I pastor
Around lunchtime the trail opens up to a beach and boat launch on the lake. It’s colder here, no hills or trees stop the wind, nor does my clothing. Ducks and geese float on open water surrounded by ice. Vultures hang together on the shore. I am north of my car. I walk south on the beach, toward the forest, hoping to catch a trail back to my car.
The trail winds south through hilly country and tall thick hardwoods, predominantly maple and beech. After about an hour’s walk, I find the trail meets the long edge of a narrow, rectangular parking lot. Next to the trail on the other side of the lot stands a wooden park service sign with information behind Plexiglass. As I close in, I see an article with a picture of a pileated woodpecker. The article describes its size, shape and color; its hind parts are black. The article says that pileated woodpeckers are common in the park. I knew at once that I had seen a pileated woodpecker. My joy as I walk north through the woods seems out of proportion with identifying the bird, since I am not a bird watcher.
I hike up and down a series of hogbacks, at the bottom of each is a bridge over a stream. My prayers coincide, roughly, with the four bridges.
On the trail before the first bridge, I praise God for the bird. I was so glad to confirm the bird. I thank God for life, and my life, and the life of those I love and serve. It got pretty gooey, I’m not ashamed to say.
On the trail before the second bridge, it occurs to me that this was the third pileated woodpecker I have seen in my life. On the trail before the third bridge, I remember the circumstances in which I saw the first two.
The first time I saw a pileated was in back of a small gray house we rented in Montana. In back of the house lay a hundred-acre lot, partly open and partly wooded with young ponderosa pine. In spring the lot was dirty with wild flowers; one of which was the American Pasqueflower. Pasqueflowers bloom low to the ground with large white and blue/purple flowers. The name pasque comes from the plant’s propensity to bloom during Holy Week.
On a spring day working in the backyard, I heard the loudest woodpecker I’d ever heard, and there clinging to the bark on a pine, I saw my first pileated woodpecker up close in full colors. The bird flew away and I followed it into the stand of trees, but for nothing. I ran to the house to look up the bird.
Remembering my second meeting with a pileated caused sadness. It was one of those “I remember where I was when the phone rang” moments. I was drywalling a room in our basement. The phone brought the news that a 20-year-old young man, a good friend, had committed suicide in Wyoming. I went over to the house to be with his parents. When his junior-high-age sister arrived home from school, we gave her the news, then she and I took a walk on the gravel road adjacent to the house. As we walked I saw a pileated woodpecker out of the corner of my eye in the pines.
Through the long and the short of this horrible event of inconsolable sadness, God’s unimpeachable presence healed and continues to do so.
On my walk to the fourth bridge, I feel God’s luscious love just as when I stood in the swale looking for a bird in the trees. This time, I look within instead of without and I see people instead of trees.
In the morning I thanked God for creation; now at the end of the day I thank him for the gospel. First I was grateful to be human; now, finally, I am grateful to be a pastor.
I only care about pastoral ministry as a servant of the gospel. As human work it stinks. On the level of positive and negative consequences, perseverance in this behavior cannot be explained or justified. As a tiny part of the mystery of God’s love in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at work in the world today, I find it irresistible.
Ways to go long
Here are a few practical suggestions on long prayer and ministry. Spending long times with Jesus is the goal and the necessity, not the purity of our motives or the discipline required. If golfing alone gives you time to pray, do it. See if Jesus criticizes you for enjoying yourself.
On the other hand, adding up things that feel good and things that hurt in pastoral ministry will never constitute a confirmation of a call. When things get tough, try the “one-day contract” routine. It works.
Finally, keep your eyes open! Opportunites for great prayer and overwhelming confirmation of call can happen anywhere at anytime, especially if we go long, instead of going home.
David Hansen is pastor of Kenwood Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and author of Long Wandering Prayer (InterVarsity Press).
Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
