injoy

Managing happiness

2012-01-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

A current MIT blog article, "Statisticians Reveal What Makes America Happy," startled me with its emphatic conclusion. One thing that policymakers ought to be able to agree on is that more work is urgently needed: the happiness of nations is surely too important to be left to the random forces of chance or to the flawed decision-making processes of politics.

I agree.

I just don't think chance or political process are the only two forces at work here.

The study, by researchers Guo and Hu, looked at 2 aspects of human life: Personal conditions (age, health, marital status, personal income....) and macroeconomic indicators. "The biggest personal factor in determining hapiness is health, followed by marraige. Having children reduces happiness. Children eat up spending money and this increases hardship.

GDP (gross national product) has little influence, but inflation has some. A 1 percent increase in inflation reduces national happiness levels by about 3.1 percent. Guo and Hu speculate that this is due to reduced buying power.

The article begs some questions:

What is "happiness?"

Is it lack of stress.... feeling empowered....or that your living your dream (or the dream someone else laid out for you)?

Is happiness measured by what I feel at any given moment or by the satisfactions and disatisfactions that build over time?

In Christian scriptures, greek words that we translate into English as "happy," have more layers of meaning than what we think of as happy. Makarios is "having a peaceful soul." Enlogimenos means"blessed" and eulogio is "to praise, celebrate, cause to be blessed."

In India yesterday, the Dalai Lama wrapped up the 12 day annual Kalachakra (meaning "time wheel". This celebration marks the Mahayana Buddhist New Year with renewal. In earlier published words on Compassion he spoke to the notion of happiness:
...individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.   Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.   Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home

I don't think that either the Dalai Lama or scripture's authors are talking about the kind of happiness that comes from sufficient descrectionary spending. What they're describing is happiness/blessing that is created by intentional choices that bring our inner life into healthy and productive alignment with life around us and with the creative life that sustains us.
The study's statisicians conclude that improving health is the best thing policy makers could do to increase public happiness. You and I are practical policy makers whose choices affect our own happiness and that of everyone our choices move out to touch. May there be happiness not only in, but as a result of your choices today!

summer time

2011-08-01T14:18:00.001-07:00

The Pastor's blog is going on "summer time" until late August. See you then!

Responding to Rapture

2011-05-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot of talk about rapture/end of the world/wrath & judgment going around. It’s because of a confluence of at least 4 human experiences. Here’s some thoughts on the origin, before we ask, “So what?” (skip to the last paragraph if you can’t wait……) Ancientinfo+biblicalprophecy+scientificrevolution+naturaldisasters=?

Or put another way:

*Mayan calendar

*Judeo-Christian scripture and traditions

*learning to measure & calculate

*recent earthquakes, floods, and other natural phenomenon

A sophisticated ancient Mayan civilization extended throughout what is now Central America. It is much admired for developing literacy and technology. Their calendar, which only goes as far as 2012, has drawn considerable speculation. Why end there? Did they know something we don’t know? Or perhaps, that’s just the point at which they stopped writing.

Biblical passages in the Jewish and Christian traditions talk about “last days” and the messiah’s return. The term “rapture” appears only once, and in a recent translation by Eugene Petersen: One day I went strolling through the orchard, looking for signs of spring, Looking for buds about to burst into flower, anticipating readiness, ripeness. Before I knew it my heart was raptured, carried away by lofty thoughts! (“The Message,” Song of Solomon 6:11). In the Bible, “Last Days,” refers to a turning point in human history, usually in terms of faithfulness to God, but accompanied by human social change. And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: (Genesis 49:1-3, King James Version) Or This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. . (Isaiah 2:1-2, New International Version) Prophetic writing adds an element of judgment. The change is happening because God was not pleased with things as they were. For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days. (Hosea 3:4-5, New International Version) And finally, with apocalyptic literature, like Daniel and Revelation comes drama & practically psychedelic imagery. Jump ahead a millennium and a half or so, to the Scientific Revolution, when more recent ancestors began measuring with great exactness: distance, time. We began to want to know precisely when, what and where to expect something to happen. Instead of a “ruler” being the length of the current kings foot, it was a standard 12 inches. (When’s the last time we used the president’s forearm to measure-which is what Noah’s cubit would be). Imprecise biblical images became anticipated events. A biblical “day” (period in which something happened) became 24 hours. A year became 365 days (with adjustments via lead year since our measurements still don’t quite fit reality). The precision applied to natural phenomenon was now brought to bear on biblical narratives and conversations written long before frame of reference came to be. Now, put all that in a situation where people are asking “what the heck is going on with the weather/ earthquakes/floods these days?” Mix in a generation that enjoys more than a little living-on-the edge excitement and we’re looking for front row seats at the anticipated event, the Rapture. For how the idea of rapture developed in visit: http://www.askthepriest.org/askthepriest/2005/08/the_rapture.html

SO WHAT? Here’s what I think matters: Our response.

Five Responses to Rapture: (I’m sure you can come up with more!)

a) The sooner the better.

b) What, another deadline! I don’t have time for this…

c) a little edgy, a little energized, I’ll play along for a while.

d) Better safe than sorry.

e) How dumb do you have to be to believe this stuff?

“The sooner the better” doesn’t see any possibility that God will redeem the world “as is.” Do-overs and escapes clauses offer a clean restart.

“I don’t have time for this” brushes off other’s people worry. And it ignores the huge impact that apocalyptic theories have on our foreign policy and own society.

“Play along” enjoys the imaginative suspense, like a horror movie, it suspends disbelief.

“Better safe than sorry” is an old philosophical strategy. If its not true, I have nothing to lose. If it is true, I better be on the safe side.

And “those dummies, ” like “I don’t have time for this” takes the easy way out. It’s easier to belittle than to engage what’s actually a logically intricate and brilliantly developed system of thought with a tremendous influence on American culture and foreign policy.

The passage rapture theory rests on is 1 Thessalonians 4:17 (King James Version): Then we, which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Paul wrote this letter to people who were worried about what would happen to those who died before Jesus’ expected return. Who they see them again? When, where? Paul’s answer is that those who have died will not return to life on earth, as they know it. Rather, all will be swept up in God’s life by Christ’s presence. It is about hope and trust in God. It is not a “proof” of a physical event much less a prediction as to when that will happen. It’s a descriptive phrase trying to convey the joyful reunion believers anticipate with those who have already died.

SO WHAT?????

Singer Bruce Cockburn asks, If this were the last day of the world, what would I do that was different? Would you change anything if you knew there was no tomorrow? If the answer is yes, why wouldn’t you make that change whether there’s a tomorrow or not? I guess as someone who lost a parent at a very young age, this has always seemed very real to me. Each day is an opportunity to live fully and faithfully.

Why wait to something wonderful?

Why wait to tell someone you love him or her?

Why wait to reconcile with someone, or with God?

Why wait to say thank you?

Why wait to make the world a better place?

miracles

2011-04-29T04:36:00.000-07:00

David Atkinson

This morning, wakened early by yesterday's indulgence in an iced coffee drink, I joined royal wedding viewers. It wasn't something I'd planned to do, but chagrin faded with the realization that television stations in the U.S.A., with those in Great Britain and around the world, were covering a worship service, and without commercial interruption.
What constitutes a miracle?
This was a convergence of human choices.
A couple's choice to marry.
A country's choice to maintance the symbols of monarchy.
Western culture's choice to go all out celebrating love, commitment and family. Media businesses' choices to give the people what they want, unobstructed viewing.
As a result of these cumulative choices, millions of people around the globle simultaneously "took part" in worship. We listened to prayer saturated, God-centered scripture, message, and music. The couple made their vows in sacred time and space. It was a stark contrast to the previous day's dominant wedding topics: what would people be drinking and when & what would "the dress" look like? Millions of people experienced "reverenance." For some it will remain a novelty. Others' souls will be permanently stirred. Some will busily adjust their own wedding staging. Others will take to heart words that grounded the new marriage in God's love and purpose.
A miracle is evidence of God's grace overcoming human convention and physical limitations. What we make of a day like this, generously shared, is evidence of how open we are to experiencing God in what we are given.

Hanami season: beauty & mourning

2011-04-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning US time, an American morning show reporter in Japan stood framed at dusk by cherry branches in full bloom. Deep in my memory something tried to call to him, "turn around, turn around." How could he speak in ordinary words while turning his back on such breathtaking beauty?

During Hanami season in Japan, people drop what they are doing and succumb in awe while nature mysteriously wraps the world in a delicate day-lit scherenschnitte blanket. White, pink, lavender, the blossoms exert a exquisitely irresistible pressure to pay attention. At night, moon, stars, and paper lanterns transform the sprays into earth's fireworks.

Later on Monday, NPR announced that Tokyo Governor Ishishihara had banned hanami parties this year. Ishihara made news a couple of weeks ago by invoking the ancient Buddhist concept of tembatsu, heavenly punishment, in this case the Governor said, for egoism. In prewar Japan, the judgement of heaven rested on the people's willingness to sacrifice individual needs and desires for community goals. (Interestingly different from Chinese culture's "mandate of heaven" which rests on the ruler's responsibility to attend to the welfare of the people.) He has retracted his statements, affirming compassion for those who had suffered the earthquake and tsunami's devastation.

Unlike ume (plum blossom) viewing parties, which tend to be more sedate, sakura (cherry) blossom parties unleash silliness and spring exhuberance. This year, walking under unlit lanterns hanging in the cherry boughs, people spoke of the poignant absense of light. Yozakura, evening viewing parties are more an observation than a celebration this year. And yet the beauty endures and comforts, connecting souls at a level deeper than words.

In a nation turned toward rebuilding, toward hope, the blossoms provide a wordless way to touch inexpressible loss and grief.

Dancing Trees

2011-04-02T15:24:00.000-07:00

Resting my eyes, I lay my head down on the work table for a minute.
My perspective changes entirely. Not just tipping, but drawn out the window where branches of the neighbors' trees are dancing. I've been so focused on the unwanted piles of snow that I haven't looked up today.
And there they are, waiting, in all their lyrical beauty. They dance whether I notice them or not. They'll still wave their lovely long arms when the sun goes down shortly. I have no affect on them, but to notice, and to celebrate the lifted heart, and to say, "thank you," God, "for showing me the dance.

Beyond

2011-04-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, I just realized that the last time I updated this blog was the last storm. What kind of theme is this? This snow, like last month's ice, is beautiful. But it come at time when my heart has turned toward spring. It doesn't fit my expectations.

Yesterday I was imaging recreating the United Methodist Church. (What do you do in your free time??) I find it easier to visual patterns, so I went into my pre-loaded graphics. Nothing fit. All the charts and templates, created for business models, follow existing patterns (Duh, my logical mind interjects). But we're reaching for something totally new. That's probably why there's more than a little hesitation about business models, even new ones, framing the way forward. I'm willing to fill in "dashboards" so that leaders can collect better congregational data, but I"m under no illusion that data is the portal to the future. (Even though one of my favorite authors, James Gleick, posits in his latest book that everything real is information).

Something is happening among faith-full people, some folks say "emerging," that doesn't fit existing models. Its just beyond, where we can almost touch it, but not quite. We can almost visualize it, but not yet.

Last Sunday in worship, several people shared things about our present reality that are beyond our little church's control. The earth's population is pushing 7 billion. Technology is offering choices to make our heads spin. We have access to more stuff, more knowledge, more experiences than ever. Shopping is coming to us, via social networking techniques, like groupon and open table, rather us going and searching out what we want. Inter-racial families are no longer unusual. We travel and bring back new customs and insights.

Phyllis Tickle says that about every 500 years culture experiences a sea change that forces faith communities floating on the sea to re-examine their boats. Alot of us get attached to the baggage while others start to scan for the horizon. We can't ignore what's going on outside the boat. (Tickle says that in the "tick-ups" to those sea-changes churches have an every five hundred year garage sale, emptying out our attics of what is not longer useful, and reclaiming things we'd tucked away and forgotten about.).

So no matter what size our own community is, population changes demand that we rethink how we use the earth's resources. And no matter what technology we prefer, what becomes normative in our culture will develop new communication patterns. (Did you know that in many work setting people text or use a social network to set appointments for phone calls? Unexpected calls are startling in some of these sites).

How will we share the gospel as more people get out of the habit of church-shopping? How can we take what God's given us to where people are instead of trying to attract them to where we are? How can we celebrate the diversity of cultures and customs enlivening our communities?

Because its not that what God's given us isn't needed any more. The gospel is not ours to tuck away in an attic hoping that someday someone will come along and dust it off. Some of the ways we've grown accustomed to offering it may become obsolete. But study after study (PEW trust, the National Study of Youth, Barna, ....) finds a growing hunger for spirituality, a way of saying that religious options aren't working for a god-hungry world. There's also a growing hunger to serve. To know that your life matters for something.

So welcome to the garage sale, as we share each other's best memories.
Welcome to the horizon watchers, as we live into God's ever growing kin-dom.

Mother Nature's Mardi Gras

2011-03-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Mother Nature gave us a perfect Mardi Gras landscape on Kents Hill. Every limb twisting toward the sparkling sunlight was hung with rainbow-tossing crystal beads in a glorious parade down the streets and over the hills. The light danced.

Revelers wandered foolishly about in shirt sleeves despite nose nipping temperatures. Even the rice-crispy sound (thanks for the phrase, neighbor, Babs!) of rattling trees added to the festive mood. Steam rising off melting tarmac added a sense of mystery.

Everything about the day seemed to cry, "shake it, Baby, shake it."

But today the air has been graying toward the evening's Ash Wednesday Service. It doesn't feel like penance for yesterday's celebration....more like a rebalancing of energy as the next storm approaches. Its tempting to push the metaphor too far, into a natural cycle of life. But there's nothing natural about Ash Wednesday, at least not these days.
In days gone by, Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, was the day when everyone scraped together the last bits of fat and feasted as best they could before the long final fast that awaited early crops and hunting. After the feast, as reality set in, people would go to church to be "shriven" of their sins, to confess and cleanse their souls. Today, I went to the store to stock up before rain sets in again. Instead of going to confession to cleanse my soul, I'll brush my teeth before I go to bed. Its quite a reversal of fortune from what my scandinavian ancestors knew.
Two of the practices lost in Protestantism's hey day are confession and fasting. If you don't have to, why put yourself through it? Party on!
So how do we get in touch with the reality of life's storms and our complicity in so many of them? Can we really just skip over the depris piling up around us, perhaps arranging it artfully or ignoring it altogether: hurt feelings that lead to lost partnerships, missed oportunities to be the hands and heart of Christ for a stranger, the gluttony of daily coffee intake, chocolate tea, out of season fruits and vegetables trucked miles and miles and miles while we bemoan the price of gas and ignore the toll on underpaid farmhands.
Will it really all go away if we just ignore it? Or might we accept the moments of clarity offered by a Lenten Fast, setting aside non-essentials while what is vital emerges: our fears, our addictions, our hubris, all the accrued debris in our souls that Jesus offeres to sweep out and replace with space for grace.

2011-02-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

Church lives in Christchurch

New Zealand

tumbled

shaken

reaching out tendriled

nerves

from ruined stones

touching our cut hearts

open

wondering.

Prayer, love, awe

flow back toward

resilient sister

brother

child

elder

shoveling, lifting, carrying

muscles

alive in the body.

Be well, beloved.

we pray

3 conversations

2011-02-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

This morning in worship we looked at John 4 as three conversations:
1. The Samaritan Woman's talk with Jesus.
2. Jesus' followers' talk with him.
3. The court official's talk with Jesus.

The first conversaton is happenstance. She's not looking for him and he doesn't seem to have been looking for her. But they both stop and talk when opportunity presents itself. He's physically thirsty. She's spiritually parched. He asks for her help. She asks for his. The obstacles that others would see to their conversation even taking place don"t seem to phase either of them.

We modern non-Jewish readers are actually the ones with an obstacle. What on earth is Jesus talking about? It seems like he's ignoring her very real problems, talking right past them. What on earth is this mysterious "living water?"

But "living water" was a core religious practice in Jesus' day and in the Holy Land.
Purifications, changes in status, preparation for Sabbath or holy day-these new beginnings were marked by immersion into the living waters of a mikveh.

When an archeologist unearths the remains of a particular kind of stone pool, they know they have found a Jewish home or gathering place. 3 steps down into a small pool, bor, sized to hold a constant 40 sa'ah, or about 200 gallons, of water coming through a small opening in a natural flow of rain or spring water. in the pool the living water would mix with water brought from any source available, saturating them standing water with rebirth.

The mikveh's constantly refreshed living water recollect Eden, paradise's waters, the source of all water in the world said to flow from 4 rivers into all the other rivers and streams in a perfect state of constant renewal. In a mikveh, the living waters flow into the womblike cavitiy of the bor. (Aryeh Kaplan “Waters of Eden: The Mystery of the Mikveh”)

John the Baptist prophetically enlarged the rebirthing place and brought it out into the open -to the Jordan river.

And Jesus completed the extension of this powerful, physical metaphor, "I am the living water." Immerse yourself in my life and you immerse yourself in God's life.

Do his words sound strange to us? Perhaps we've forgotten the daily renewal of living water, the ever at hand power of remembering our baptism, of being reborn, immersed in God's life.

Mayim is the Hebrew word for water. It has the same root as mah, or water. When a person is immersed in water, he or she is nullifying their ego, cut off from oxygen, it becomes possible to answer the question,"what am I," in a new way.

When the Samaritan woman meets Jesus, it becomes possible for her to become someone new as je guides her gently into the living waters of God's life.

The second conversation is not happenstance. Jesus' followers return from foraging for food, determined to feed him. If we could ask those followers,"what are you?" I wonder what they might answer at this stage in their journey. I wonder what we might answer as we busily work at serving Jesus.

It seems like their determination to do what they think they ought to do may be getting in the way of understanding what Jesus is talking about. We've seen that before, in his interactions with other teachers and leaders. Their certainty is like a wet suit, with goggles, getting between them and the living water he offers! They can't get very wet until they shed a few layers.

In the conversation, a court official frantically seeks Jesus out. "Save my son," he pleads. It is the cry of any parent whose child's life is at stake. He knows what is most important to him. What he needs is who he is at that moment. Jesus meets the need.

David E. Holwerda talks about John's Gospel as a "trajectory of faith." Reading John as a whole this winter, we noticed how Jesus returns again and again to the simplest of images: water, bread, word, life. We also noticed how again and again he starts by saying, "I tell you the truth!"

Could it really, truly be this simple? Hear the truth, walk this way, rely on God's sustenance (water, bread).

We train ourselves to crave fancier things: soda, cofee, fructose enhanced juice, when what our 70%water bodies really crave is.....water, fresh, clean water. We train ourselves to rely on expert opinions and institutional processes when what we really need is the fresh readily available living water of Christ, poured into our world, poured into our lives, in constant renewal of God's loving purpose.

Another perspective

2011-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Here's another thought provoker on perspective. Our generation (children of Baby Boomers) had our glance radically reoriented when we saw through the eyes of astronauts.

Maybe the religious leaders in John 9 are like astronauts who have been "away" from everyday life for so long they can't even ask the right questions any more!

Disciples: liars ,fools or open to possibilities?

2011-02-07T10:23:00.000-08:00

Sunday's courtroom drama message by Susan and George provoked lots of great observations and questions for me. (Thank you for the gift of sitting in the pews this week, friends!). So I thought I'd make this week's worship post a hop skip and jump through this chapter, touching on my thoughts as I listened. You add yours in the comment section!

I've long subtitled John 9 as "Adventures in Missing the Point." (read John chapter 9 to see if you agree)
George and Susan's version really reinforced that for me. (Check out www.injoy-karen.blogspot.com for another version of this). It seems like a collision of received truth, codified in tradition, vs. encountered truth, in flesh and blood. Its not that one is better than the other. The question seems to be (along the lines of our conversaitonal approach to this gospel), how do they communicate.

The once-blind man couldn't seem to care less what the religious authorities think. What matters to him is that he can see. He knows, with ever breathing vibrating cell in his body, that his life had been radically changed because he has been radically changed. Every time he repeats the story, he grows more confident in the telling.

Question 1: What good news has changed your life?
Question 2: Who have you told and how has telling it affected you?

The religous authorities aren't really interested in this man's experience at all. They're trying to figure out what Jesus is up to. And he's not there to ask. Of course, the man born blind couldn't see until after Jesus healed him.

Question 3: What prevented the leaders from "seeing?"
Question 4: What are they afraid of?

Once the man has witnessed, publically, to his experience, they call him a disciple.

Question 5: Are you a disciple?
Question 6: What's the point of the story as you read it, and what might you or I be missing?

When United Methodists receive new members, we're asked to affirm our discipleship will include your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness.

Question 7: How would you write the next chapter in this man's life? What form might his gifts and service take now that God's story has written healing into his life?

Question 8: What might the next chapter in your own life look like as you think about these four aspects of discipleship?

Well healed vs. well heeled

2011-02-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday George and Susan created a wonderful court scene for our Sunday Morning Message, an interpretation of John 9. It was a challenge to consider our own reactions to the man born blind and healed by Jesus' mix of spit, dirt, word, and love. This marvelous video by lemonjelly makes think about the constrast between staying in our orderly rows (ruts?) and allowing something new to invade our consicousness. (For bible study reflections on this passage, visit www.readfieldumc.blogspot.com)

Who is God? #1

2011-02-04T07:17:00.000-08:00

Alanis Morisette and Joan Osborne's song asks about a very human God, one way of understanding Christ's idendity. How does it challenge your own idea of who God is?

Tempest in the Temple

2011-01-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

NY Times 1-1-11, QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Whatever your vice is, we're your folks."

TENA ALONZO, director of research at Beatitudes nursing home in Phoenix, which gives Alzheimer's patients whatever they want.

This online/headline caught my eye last month. The Beatitudes name makes for serious irony. (coincidently the Beatitudes are this week's lectionary gospel passage Matthew 5: 1-2.) How many church leaders/pastors/employees wear themselves out trying to keep everybody happy instead of challenging each other to please God?

The current edition of Christian Century has a book review of G. Jeffrey MacDonald's "Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul." Right in line with last Sunday's message from John 2. In the review, Lillian Daniels writes, small mainline churches are not immune to the temptation to bend over backward to meet people's desires. We think if we provide it and they like it, they will come. Conservatives and liberals share the same consumer orientation and the same temptation to put people pleasing programs about disciplined faithfulness.

After some years of pastoring, I no longer find the labels "liberal and conservative" very useful. But that aside, MacDonald and Daniels have put their cooperative fingers right on the point. Every group I've ever worked with that was "high expectation" thrived. And I've watched every one that aimed for the lowest common denominator as it bottomed out.

Our denomination, the United Methodists, have spent quite a bit of energy developing hospitality in the past few years. I think there's real value in welcoming each visitor as we would welcome Christ.

But what if Christ came in swinging, as he did in John's account of his visit to the temple? What do we do with the angry people? Would we surround Jesus with "simmer downs" so he doesn't disrupt our careful cultivation of the right people and programs? Or would we have the presence of mind (soul?) to look at what sheep, cattle, coins, he was shoving toward the door?

MacDonald takes whacks at the prosperity gospel and "vacationaries," (those who do good to feel good). But I don't think the rest of us should let ourselves off the hook too quickly. Are we trying to give people what they think their hearts desire? Or are we offering the real soul food of a gospel that challenges our hearts, minds and souls to be renewed by the power of a living Lord and the presence of the Holy Spirit?

Jesus Parable

2011-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

No one has ever seen God.
It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart,
who has made him known.

I've been thinking about yesterday's responses in worship, about we're noticing in John. The one I'm focused on at the moment is Brian's observation that the parables are missing. Well, maybe not gone missing, becuase they were never there in John's account. But missing to our minds. The "synpotic gospels," Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that form the backbone of our usual lectionary based worship ignite our imagination with "ahah" inducing parables. But John is one conversation after another, held together with movement between Galilee and Jerusalem. And, to be truthful, Jesus' part in those conversations gets prgressively more lopsidedly long and strange.

Meanwhile his cousin John keeps saying, look at him, look at him. And Jesus keeps saying essentially, "when you see me you see God." (as Cindy noticed.)

What if instead of telling parables, Jesus IS the parable in John? What if Jesus is the strange Word of God sent to provoke our "ahahs?" Afterall, everything he does in this Gospel seems designed to get attention, while at the same time he insists that we turn that attention to God.

When the first would be followers approached Jesus, he asked, "what are you looking for?" (John 1: 35 NRSV) and when they ask where he's staying, he answers, "Come and See."
Jesus' encounter with Nathanael is basically a case of "I see you, can you see me?"

John calls Jesus, "light, "full of grace and truth,""Lamb of God,"
Jesus's signs, the surprising things he does, "reveal his glory" (John 2: 11).

Now here's the rub. If Jesus is the parable who reveals God to all who come and see, then what are we as we become the Body of Christ? Are we peculiar enough to be authentic God revealing parables ourselves? Or are we content being mass produced?

Hmmm....if I were a parable..........

Hurdles

2011-01-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

I've finally made time (well okay, the 2 feet of snow in Boston made time) to get into Warren Carter's book, John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. Its a most helpful companion to our current journey through the conversations in the Gospel According to John. I've heard Warren speak. He combines just the right amounts of erudite and down to earth insight.

In his discussion of the plot, Warren makes a nice outline of the four major elements previewed in this gospel's prologue. Here's my interpretation of what I'll call the "four hurdles."
Hurdle 1. Jesus' credibility, which rests on the claim that he is God's original agent. John 1: 1-5
Hurdle 2. A "behind the scenes" struggle (after their executions) between Jesus and John's respective followers. John 1: 6-8.
Hurdle 3. The choice readers face of whether to follow Jesus or turn away, particularly in light of how countercultural, even dangerous, Jesus' way can be. John 1: 9-16. (Verses 1: 10-13 have a nice plot summary)
Hurdle 4. How can Jesus be more important than Moses, hero of the exodus and bringer of the law?

You may have noticed that the first and last have to do with "who the heck does this guy think he is," and the middle two are "then what should we do about it?"

Luckily, the Gospel encourages us not to puzzle over it alone, like this poor guy. By creating a "revelatory biography" (Warren Carter's term) that is a series of action linked conversations, the author shows us that insight comes from holy conferencing (John Welsey's term) or just plain good conversation.

That's the approach we're taking in worship right now, and on the pastor and church blogs. We're also going to try a "virtual small group" and are eager to enlist participants and ideas about what platforms to try. So, let me know!

The Host with the Most

2011-01-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

The sermon I didn't preach last Sunday was titled, "The Host with the Most." ( I didn't preach it beacuse I rewrote to respond to Saturday's awful shooting in Arizona.)

Here's what I was thinking about John 1: 19-42 (the Message or check out John 1: 19-42 for the King James version-its interesting to put the two translations in conversation with each other).

This story starts the gospel right off with conflict. A crowd, seeded with questions by power seeking leaders, challenges John the Baptist (a different John from the one associated with creating this Gospel itself). "Who are you," they ask, and "what are you doing?" John replies that none of the names they try to pin on him are right. He is the one pointing to something, or someone, new. He doesn't really want to talk about himself at all. He's all about the greater one who is coming. But the authorities don't seem to hear (perhaps they're not very good listeners).

There's another sort of conflict in the background. We see it in the Gospel according to Matthew (Matthew 9:14 and chapter 11). John and his cousin, Jesus, were both emerging as public figures. Many think that Jesus followed and learned from John for awhile. What does a teacher do when a student starts to outshine them? Especially when the teacher's other followers start following the upstart cousin....

Whatever bumps and rubs there may have been in the actual ministry situation, by the time this version of the Gospel gets written down, there is no doubt where the light shines brightest. Its all about Jesus.
In fact, you can almost hear John say, "you idiots," as he tries and tries to say, "not me, him!"

Jesus is the host with the most and John the Baptist is his biggest cheer leader. I wonder how many of us would settle as garcefully into second fiddle. How did John manage that transition?

It must have helped that they had the same goal-the salvation of their people, re-union with God. There must also have been a healthy helping of reality. John knew his role. He probably knew that if he tried to be something he wasn't it would end badly. But if he went with the flow of gifts God poured into him, it was grace upon grace, not overcome even by his own "bad end" at King Herod's hand. (That's the guy who gave John's head on a platter to his dancing step daughter.) The story John was part of, Jesus's story, was so much bigger and brighter than anything jealous powers could try to snuff out. Its note the ratings light of a host that attracts the biggest following. That's resurrection light we see shining. The same resurrection light that meets us when Christ hosts the Lord's Supper or that glistens in drops of Baptism water tossed in the air over the head of the beloved.

Fifth day of Christmas present

2010-12-28T14:01:00.001-08:00

Preparing for your Soul Spa

Set aside one hour.

Receive it as your gift from God to start the New Year.

*Find a place where you are comfortable.

*find a candle ( a floating candle is especially effective).

*have a lighter or matches at hand.

*Have a pen or pencil at hand.

*Take the telephone off the hook.

*Have a drink of water.

*If it’s helpful, clear your mind by making a to-do list of things you need to remember LATER

and can set aside for now.

*Make yourself comfortable in a position where it is easy to breathe deeply.

*Turn your attention to the retreat guide.

The Christmas packages have been wrapped, shared, unwrapped, and admired. Now in the space between the end of one year and the begining of another, Come away with me…To set our spirits in conversation with God’s spirit:

As it is written,

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

Nor human heart conceived,

What God has prepared for those who love him,”

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words, not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. - 1 Corinthians 2: 9-13

Come away, and receive God’s gifts.

Beginning

*As you pray this opening prayer, hear God speaking to you through its words. Read through the prayer once.

I am, you anxious one.

Don’t you sense me ready to break

Into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can’t you see me standing before you

Cloaked in stillness?

Hasn’t my longing ripened in you

From the beginning

As fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.

When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

Your cities made by time.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, Love Poems to God.

--------------------------------------

*Take a deep breathe,relaxing and slowing your muscles as you receive the air.

*Take 2 more breathes, each a bit deeper and slower than the first. Become aware of the muscles in your shoulders and next, allowing them to relax with each breathe.

*Read Rilke’s prayer once more, slowly. Pause when a word or phrase catches your attention. Roll it around in your mind a bit. What awareness, insight, or question is God giving you in this word or phrase?

*When you are ready, move on to the next page.

Read the following words written to Timothy by his mentor, Paul. Fill in the first blank with your own name and the rest as God leads you in prayer.

To _________________, my beloved child: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God…when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in ______________ and _________ now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you….for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. -1 Timothy 1: 2-7

Breathe intentionally as you did before. With each breathe, lift a name, silently or aloud, and thank God for this person who has been a faith mentor to you. With one more breathe, lift your own name asking God to give you power, love, and the intentional will to make room for God’s gifts in your life.

Light the candle that you have prepared as a reminder of God’s promised presence.

When you are ready, pray this prayer by Francis Brienen:

God of all time,

Who makes all things new,

We bring before you the year now ending.

For life full and good,

For opportunities recognized and taken,

For love known and shared,

We thank you.

Where we have fallen short,

Forgive us.

When we worry over what is past, free us.

As we begin again

and take our first few steps into the future,

Where nothing is safe and certain,

Except you,

We ask for the courage of the wise men

Who simply went and followed a star.

We ask for their wisdom,

In choosing to pursue the deepest truth,

Not knowing where they would be led.

In the year to come, God of all time,

Be our help and company.

Hold our hands as we journey onwards

And may your dream of shalom,

Where all will be at peace,

Be our guiding star.

If there are things you need to leave behind as you enter a New Year, offer them to God now, asking for God’s help to release them. You may write them down and use the candle to burn them as a sign of release.

Read the following passage. Take your time. Re-read it if you’d like. Underline the words or phrases that catch your attention and return to them.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed….there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God, who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

-1 Corinthians 12: 1-11

Breathe intentionally as you did earlier. Let the rhythm of your breathing take on a deep natural rhythm. As you breathe in, ask God to lead you toward knowing your spiritual gifts. Listen to whatever comes, you may be affirmed in a gift that you expect or you may be surprised and challenged to consider a gift you were not aware of. They may or may not be gifts mentioned in the passage we read. As you breathe out, release any surprise, resistance, concerns, and offer to be open to God’s leading. Be aware of the candles flame as a sign of God’s dynamic presence.

As the conversation between your spirit and God’s Spirit finds its rhythm, Allow it be simplified in one phrase that can be lifted as you breathe in and out. This breathe prayer is a reminder of God’s gift to you that you may prayer anytime, any where.

Write this prayer, and any other words that will remind you of insights received in this retreat time, on your bookmark and plan to put it somewhere that you will regularly see it.

Ask God if there is someone you should share your insights with. Who might help you acknowledge and develop your gifts?

Finish your retreat by giving thanks to God for the time and arranging your next “meeting.” When and where will you make space dedicated to being fully present to God?

When you are ready to return to your everyday activities, Draw in a deep breathe inviting God’s Spirit to remain in your awareness before gently blowing the candle out and giving thanks to God once more.

For now we see in a mirror, dimply,

but then we will see face to face.

Now I know only in part;

then I will know fully,

even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope and love abide,

these three;

and the greatest of these is love.

-I Corinthians 13: 12-13

“Do what you honestly can,

rather than what you probably won’t.”

Larry Peacock.

Second Day of Christmas present

2010-12-27T09:01:00.000-08:00

"God's gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's varous expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful...."

from I Corinthians 12, Eugene Petersen's translation, "The Message"

Winter, and very cold,

and the night at

its deepest. The politicians,

as usual, double-tongued.

The town chaotic, teeming

with strangers.

And tonight, as often

in winter, in Bethlehem,

snow is falling.

I always love how each flake,

torn from the sky,

arrives separately,

without sound, almost

unnoticed in

a flurry of others. How

each one (on a clear

night) lies there glittering

on the swelling breast

of snow, crisp

and intact, as wholly itself

as every radiant star

in a sky sparkling

with galaxies.

How many new

babies tonight

in Judea, coming

like snowflakes?

But plucked,

dazzling, from the

eternal heavens,

into time,

tonight is born

The One.

-Luci Shaw, Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

The Kents Hill Vespers ceremony was beautiful this year, not just in the Torsey Sanctuary setting, but in the spirit. Not one student or staff member complained about the terrible rain storm that swept us in! I chose "snowflakes" as the focusing image this year, largely because of Jacqueline Briggs's marvelous children's book about the inventor, Snowflake Bentley, illustrated by gifted woodblock artist, Mary Azarian.

Like people, no two snowflakes are alike. Yet, like people, snowflakes group together, becoming more than any one can be alone. Fatih communities and schools are both sticky clusters of unique creatures. Like the snowflake's individual, fractally patterned arms, the gifts in each of us seek out others for mutual expression. The variety echoes the wonder of the Creator.

Turning with Thanksgiving toward New Birth

2010-11-24T07:39:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I love Thanksgiving, a reason I suspect others share, is that it is more about the people I share it with than anything else. Christmas has taken on an urgency that is hard to live up to-thebest presents, the perfect decorations, managing an insane celebration and work schedule. Out of curiosity, I googled "perfect holiday table." Notice what is missing from this typical image?

   But Thanksgiving, ah Thanksgiving, (if you can crop out the "Black Friday"-or now "Black Friday Week" clamor) is the day set aside to just be with each other, people, around a life-celebrating table. Thanksgiving is even free from religious competition about whose holiday it is or how it ought to be celebrated.
   Yesterday while strolling through the facebook neighborhood, one of my firends pointed toward a pre-Thanksgiving sharing by the editor of textweek.com. Textweek.com is a feast in itself, putting on the table resources for understanding bible passages: visual, musical, cinematic, popular and scholarly. Here's some bits from Janee's story. While many of us are dreaming of Christmas traditions, anticipating the creation of joyful memories, Janee's family, with an autistic son, walked the holiday as though it were a minefield. She writes:

Our family learned to slow down at Christmas a number of years ago when he was unable to tolerate *any* of the celebration. He could not handle the changing scenarios - the twinkling lights, the changes in grocery store displays, the changes in the sanctuary at church, presents appearing under the tree, the tree ITSELF, and the moved furniture. He would fall on the floor and scream, unable to move, afraid to open his eyes, almost constantly from Thanksgiving until well after Christmas when it was all over. We carried him through that time his head covered with his coat so we could get through the grocery store, or sat with him huddled in his room, carefully ordered EXACTLY the same since summer, with no Christmas trappings.
   Even gifts appearing under the tree, and even worse, being unwrapped, changing, moving, was a traumatic process for Phil
... We'd try to find him a present he'd enjoy, but he'd merely scream and cry in panic at the intrusion on his carefully ordered world, and the gifts would sit ignored until he outgrew them and we gave them to some little boy who could appreciate them.
He wanted nothing.
   [Then one year] right around Thanksgiving, we once more asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas. ... And our 10-year old son, for the first time in his life, answered the question. "PlayStation 2," he said. "I want PlayStation 2 Christmas." We just about fell over. His sister gave him a piece of paper. She wrote "Phil's Christmas List" at the top. He wrote, "PLAYSTATION TOW" under her heading. "At Sam's," he said. "Go to car."
   So, we drove to Sam's. He has never looked at anything there, never seemed to notice that Sam's has anything he might want. But he led us right to the PlayStation 2 sets, picked out the bundle he wanted and put it in the cart. "Open at Christmas," he said. He watched gleefully as we wrapped the package, and then he solemnly placed it under the tree. So, a PlayStation 2 game set sits there, wrapped, with his name on it, and he waits to open it. "December 25," he says. "Open PlayStation 2 December 25."
[A few days later, returning from] yet another Christmas rehearsal with our daughter, Phil found a Best Buy ad in the paper and turned immediately to the PlayStation games. He circled "Harry Potter" and "John Madden Football", handed the ad to Bob, and said, "I want Christmas." There were tears in my eyes. It's such a small thing, but such a truly amazing thing. It's one more bit of hope that he will be able to function in some semblance of society as an adult one day - that he might be able to live just a BIT more independently, and one day want the things he needs to survive enough to work for them.....
     This Advent season I am grateful for being able to appreciate what complexity and miracle is involved in such small "selfish" acts as wanting something for Christmas and expressing those wants to another person. I'm grateful that my son is able to enjoy some of the commercial cultural trappings of the holiday this year instead of running from them screaming. I'm grateful for the many ways Phil helps me stop and look again, even at my most "Christian" conclusions. And I'm especially grateful that my son helps me see Christ's humble birth, over and over again, even in the midst of nightmares and worries I could not have imagined 10 years ago, even in the midst of Advent. -Jenee Woodard
   Signs of hope come in such odd packages, don't they? As our Thanksgiving turns toward the celebration of new birth, may we become more aware of the everyday pleasures we take for granted, as well as how overwhelming the holiday season can be. What miracle will you witness that points toward the "reason for the season?" How might it change your life, for a day or forever? And how will you share that good news?

Thanksgiving Leaks

2010-11-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, on the way to choir, I kidded that our neighbors' lawn is leaking. Just a few days a go it was a blaze of golden glory that filled our front windows with light. Now the wind has blown crinkly dry leaves over to our side of the street. Every passing truck wooshes up a whirl of musky clutter.

The media is yammering about a couple of other leaks. Christmas is leaking, and not just into fall, but into summer. If Christmas spending really is what's going to save our economy, I guess the attention is due. But is doesn't seem like a particularly inspiring economic model. Of course the other leak makes it hard to pay attention to inspiration anyway. All kinds of stores will be open on Thnksgiving this year so that shopppers can get some extra hours in.

What is work? I don't mind the neighbors leaves. Raking them is good energy and they'll tuck in my garden. But if day after day, year after year, every extra minute had to go to dealing with the deluge of another's dead foliage, my energy for the work would wane.

Shopping can be a pleasurable survey of what another has to offer. Or it can become a deadly demand to keep an economic engine running, an endless chase to fill a wish list, something you have to do on your day off. Never mind that it can be done in the comfort of your own home, on-line with convenient pick up or free shipping. What does it keep you from doing? Does your recreation drain your resources or renew them?

Pick-up football, a walk with someone you rarely have enough time with, parchessi, picking the turkey bones for soup, bulding the tallest lego tower ever with a little person, Resting, Renewing, Re-creating.

Thanksgiving really is an investment. Please invest wisely. The next day each of us will be leaking, dollars and sense, or overflowing gratitude.

3 good things about Paul LaPage

2010-11-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, one New Year Resolution took root and made a real difference in my soul. For every negative thing I thought about someone, I would think of three good things. It didn't convert many of my opinions, but it improved the context of my opinions immeasurably.

I am frankly disapointed by today's news that Paul LaPage will be Maine's next govenor. So in the interest of refreshing that earlier practice, here are three good things about Paul LaPage, a creature who God created:

1. He will be Maine's first franco-american govenor. This is long overdue and a healing of community wounds. The Holocust and Human Rights Museum of Maine has sponsored a great series this fall about the impact of prejudice in Maine's franco-american and catholic communities. (If you ever get a chance to hear Prof. Alan Whitmore of USM speak-run right over!)

2. We will never have to wonder what he thinks about anything. He says what he means and he means what he says.

3. He was elected in a free and fair election, by the will of the people of Maine. His election re-invests members of the community who have felt disempowered. This broadens our body politic. No blows were exchanged, we have the resoures to meet the basic needs of all, and we each have the personal power and freedom to make a difference.

Now about the casino vote, that's not a person, so I have no good things to say......

Our heros

2010-10-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

This week on facebook I asked my friends who their heros are. Many are family members who have modeled what real strength is. I met one of my heros not too long after moving in 2000. I don't know his name. It was during a public forum sharing information and resources after a devastating episdode of pedophilia was revealed. (I met my friend Bud when we were both on the panel.) When the question and comment time came, a young man, in his early thirties, stood up and faced the theatre. None of us knew him. He had driven some ways to stand and give the parents, teachers, and community members there a message to share with the teens. He said, "I'm all right now." He had been one of this man's first victims. And after years of healing and with the help of loving family, he was all right. He had survived, and thrived, not by ignoring the pain, but by overcoming it. Life was good. It had been bad. But it didn't stay that way. It was the first time he'd spoken in public and was bravest thing I had ever seen anyone do. It made him even stronger
Many of us know someone who needs to hear that message. You can survive. You can thrive. There are many reasons. This video is the sharing of another brave soul. Please remember to pray with thanks for those who stand up in the face of the awful and witness to what is possible.

2010-10-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Americans love underdogs! Underdogs aren't willing to settle for the reality confronting them. Today in worship we read about one of Jesus' underdog stories, the persistant widow and the reluctant judge. Holy unhappiness!

Hero of the Day

2010-10-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've been watching for heroes, every day and extra-ordinary (wonder what the difference is, really). Who's yours today? Add them to the comments and maybe we'll name enough to have a hero of the day all the way through the sermon series that starts tomorrow.
The Kennebec Journal, our local newspaper, ran one of those thought-provoking juxstapositions of articles last Monday. Both articles were rare glimpses of hero making in progress.

Kim Jong Un was the first article's subject. His dad has named him to be the next leader of North Korea's dynastic government. In order to actually reach that status, though, he has to distinguish himself as a hero. A massive publicity campaign is marketing him amid firework spectacles, patriotic music, dancers, and military parades. "Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the parade included three never-before-shown types of missiles and launching devices." (AP article 10-11-10) Kim Jong Un even has a new, heroic nickname, "Young General." Every hero needs an evil adversary it seems, and his is the U.S. the "People's Army's enemy." By rallying the troups, military and popular behind him, North Korea's leader in the making, the newest four star general, begins chapter three of the family legend that is North Korea's governing myth. Soon we should be hearing divinity stories like those that legitimized his father and grandfather's power.

On the other side of the world, recorded in the KJ article directly below, 33 Chilean miners were arguing about who would be the last to rise to the surface after two months in their underground prison. It ended up being foreman Luis Arzua. The miners prepared for their big debut on the world stage quite differently than Mr. Kim seems to have. The 34th member of their captive community helped, "God has never left us down here." Some came to know God in new ways, others made commitments to hard changes in their lives, all contracted to equally share any profits from their story.

There is authenticity in acting heroically rather than trying to become a hero. It makes me think about how often Christianity turns into a hero making machine rather than a heroically inclined, even underground, community.

Longwood Garden wonders

2010-07-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

These amazing plants are called "water platters." They're featured in the waterlily ponds at Longwood Gardens. The colors and textures are gorgeous. They can grow up to 7 feet in diameter at a rate of 6 inches a day. Jeff and I had the good fortune of seeing the water gardeners at work on Monday. The third photo shows an underside.
I have a feeling that these are going to influence some woven scarf designs this fall!

An extra bright spot

2010-07-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

What a treat, I grabbed a ride into Sante Fe on Saturday and joined the crowd brwosing tent to tent at the International Folk Art festival on Museum Hill.
These two new friends were having a ball trying to catch streamers. It was tricky getting a photo-they were up and down the hill so quickly!

All of the venders were dressed in traditional costumes of their culture and assisted by translators. Many were demonstrating their techniques-very labor intensive with stunning results. The "stan" countries were particularly well represented.

I picked up a few Christmas presents (no photos of those-duh), and probably would have picked up a few more if the pay line wasn't so long. The venders give you tickets and pay for all at once. Indulged in a funky pair of earrings from Swaziland for myself-irrisistable at $6.
This lady is the creator of an extraordinary embroidered coat. It took 4 years to stitch and displays an entire mytholigical narrative. Stunning

Box Canyon

2010-07-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd add photos from a hike today. This is the way into Box Canyon, originally the "cattle storage" for bandits, now a peaceful spot populated by nesting birds. There are beautiful little waterfalls on the way in, a contrast to the more arid first half mile. (You'll see podcasts with these in the fall).Watching the water bugs flit around on the pool surfaces is good fun. National Geographic water issue has a page on the physics of how they do it-actually pushing the water up in front of them to create momentum that they can surf.

On the way are spectacular fallen trees, some fairly recent as the landscape changes with each rain. Some are "duck unders," and others are "walk across." I loved the way the carved rock and clay looked under this one.

Towering evergreens guard the entrance to the dead end of the canyon (after climbing over some formidable boulders).

Dozens of swallows swoop overhead. When you reach the center and look up, this is the rim overhead. It creates a wonderful acoustic space, great for chanting or singing. And below, yoga groupies ready to practice!

Commute (the other side)

2010-07-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

   Tomorrow took a few days to get to, (God's time) but here is a glimpse of "the other side of the street" I travel.
   One of the most interesting houses I pass several times a day is "Ghost House." It was built by two brothers who made a living by rustling cattle throughout Northern New Mexico. They drove the herds up Box Canyon (more later on hiking there) and were notoriously ruthless.
   Arthur and Pheobe Pack bought the property for a dude ranch in 1936. When Georgia O'Keefe first visited the ranch, before she made a home here, she stayed in Ghost house.
More on this house later, too.

   Just behind Ghost house is a trail that leads to the Mesa housing area and upper pavilion (where my Yoga class met last week.) There is a reasonably reliable cell phone signal at the top....... if I stand on a concrete block and don't turn around (no being distracted by views or sunset during a call!). The first few days this climb was literally breathtaking, but it didn't take long to adjust to the altitude.
   The next building of note is the new chapel (below). The front doors open entirely, folding back to reveal the landscape. The acoustics are like very bright, perfect. This week a choral class is using it to make beautiful music, can't wait for the weekend concert! Inside are a lovely series of tapestries using Navaho tapestry methods with contemporary designs. During the "Water and the Baptismal Life" week, we had a wading pool set in the middle.

The library is next. Its housed in "Cottonwood," which was built for the Johnson Woods family when they fell in love with the ranch during the Pack era. There is a great book collection inside: art, theology, biblical studies, science, literature, western history as well a general interest. Outside is this column displaying the region's geology. Last week a college class was in working on maps.
Next posts-hikes to Chimney Rock and Box Canyon (tomorrow?)

morning commute

2010-06-28T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a look at my morning walk.

The alfalfa field is being watered. Today we got a massive thunderstorm (with hail) out of the north, so they won't have to use valuable stored water for a while.

Signs about every 20 feet remind us that "burros bite." Today they were playing and challenging each other after the rain. They trot eagerly up to visitors hoping for a hand out. The touchable equine is "Jennie," a retired swayback mare who has free roam of the 24,000 acre ranch. Mostly she hangs around the alfalfa field.

This Japanese rock garden is tucked inconspicously off the path to the art building where this welcoming figure stands at the entrance to the courtyard. Tomorrow I'll post photos from the other side of "the street."

Renewal leave, day.....?

2010-06-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

One goal of renewal leave is to get on "God's time." I think I'm getting close. It really doesn't matter what day of the week it is. And it would be impossible to convey all the wonders I've already encountered over the past 2 1/2 weeks. So I'll start with something simple, Friday morning's hike before breakfast. To reach the trail, I met up with a new friend, Emily from Cleveland. The one and a half mile trek starts about 50 ft from my room.

(The goal)

At a 6,500 feet above sea level start, breathing was a very conscious (even audible) activity for the first 10 minutes then I hit my stride.
We watched the sun rise on the way.

(1/2 way there)

The view from the top, surreal. To the right is the house where Georgia O'Keefe lived and painted. To the left is the last haze from a forest fire on the other side of the Rio Chama. Around the corner is one of the most famous, and active paleontology digs in the world. Two weeks ago a ten year old found a new small dinosaur that hasn't been identified yet (part of a two week intergenerational dig that happens eaach summer.)

On the way down....

"Home" again in time for breakfast, french toast and fresh strawberries in the camp cafeteria. This hill on the way down is one of the two places we can climb to for cell phone service. (The other one is a little steeper and requires standing on a rock while facing east to keep the signal.....but it's a great view too!)

I shall lift up my eyes to the hills from where my help comes.....

It Might Get Loud

2010-04-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

In the movie, It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggeheim gathers three rock and rollers at different stages of their careers.

One is relatively new to fame, just a decade in.

One is at the height of his career.

One is a now mellowed legend.

The thing that connects them is a love affair with the electric guitar,

a love that's led them to master the instruments’ nuances

and pushed them in new, unexpected directions.

Each of them loves where the guitar leads them enough to give their life to it,

their time, energy, thoughts, even relationships,

in a transcendent, soul forming embrace.

None of them planned to go there.

Jack White, of White Stripes, remembers growing up in a Detroit neighborhood fascinated with hip-hop's mix music. He “never wanted to pay guitar, ever. What was the point?” No one played an actual instrument.

For U2’s guitar genius, called simply, the Edge, growing up in Dublin’s “economic toilet” of the 1970s, bombarded with the violence that tore day after day at Ireland and the United Kingdom meant “We just didn’t believe that any thing could change. There has to be more than this. This can’t be the only thing that’s on offer here.”

He and his band mates picked up instruments looking for a way to express

what was being pushed down,

bottled up inside them,

looking for an opening to something more.

We see a grainy black and white interview with then teenaged Jimmy Page, best known for his studio work and his years with the band, Led Zeppelin. He planned to go into biological research.

Have you ever found yourself drawn where you never thought you’d go?

Have you ever looked around and realized that you were doing something you said you never would? Have you ever known that longing for an opening to something more?

The movie shows these music masters reliving moments of discovery

White haired, wrinkled Jimmy Page remembering that one day, when his family “moved house” a guitar was there, left behind, “a weird intervention.”

Before our eyes he turns into an impish kid

ready to bust out in air guitar riffs,

listening to Link Wray’s “Bumble,”

re-experiencing the wonder of hearing a guitar “rumble” for the first time, the “profound attitude” of an artist and a sensual instrument.

Sheer joy bursts out in a belly laugh.

The more intellectual artist called “The Edge,”

painstakingly building a guitar with his brother,

out of scraps they scrounged. Learning to listen to the infinite array of sounds it could make.

What if we plugged this in…..

what if we dropped this note, used this slide, held it this way, moved it that way. Utter absorption in the symbiotic process of discovery and creation.

Learning to know, intimately know, something.

Jack White’s raw battle, like a coal miner traveling down to wrest raw materials from the bowels of the earth,

Perhaps finding himself walking out of the tomb's open mouth

was a moment of discovery for Jesus Christ.

Jesus did not have to come out of that tomb.

Jesus came out because he was utterly in love,

in love with and committed to his work

-to us.

These musical masters offer a fist full of teachings.

*Passion is the starting place, the spirit that starts our flight.

Jack White remembers cramming 2 drum sets into his 7’x7’ bedroom, in a house with 10 kids. No room for a bed. My favorite scene in the movie is when he remembers someone giving him a recording of Son House’s “Grinning in Your Face.” (Don’t you mind people grinnin’ in your face.” It is a song and a moment of soul baring depth of clarity

expressed by one gravelly voice with oddly clapping, off beat hands for an instrument.

“That was it for me,” White says.

*Discipline creates endurance, makes what we imagine real and carries the process further than we could ever have imagined. Just when you get really good at something, master it,

when it becomes second nature, that is the moment you need discipline most if you want to stay alive.

Jack White tosses off that it's “the disease you have to fight in any creative field, ease of use.”

*Risk taking authenticity. "It" will only happen if you take the chance and let it.

*Relationships: Jimmy Page, remembering Led Zeppelin, “We were so comfortable with each other that we could take it in any direction….it was musical heaven.”

Watching these three masters bring their lives together,

Trusting each other’s skill,

insight,

integrity,

trusting the music

and where it might take them as they improvise,

is a glimpse of why we Christ followers imagine God as three in one,

with a dynamism that can only happens when there's

more than one (what I say goes),

more than two (you and me against the world),

that happens with a community playing, inventing, riffing, embracing creation.

The great reformer, Martin Luther, said that each of us has an inner call, to be consciously cultivated. And each of us has an outward call, one’s work, one’s way of serving the community. “When people contribute to society according to their God-given talents, they become what Luther calls a “mask of God.” God works through them. (thanks for the thought, rockandtheology.com).

Masters are those whose tools become extensions of themselves,

of their bodies, minds, and souls.

What would happen if church,

the body of Christ, were willing to take its instruments apart,

to learn what they can really do,

and in the new intimate knowing,

put the pieces back together?

What would it be like to allow Christ to re-think church with us?

If Jesus is really master of the world, even of death,

If Jesus is really master of sin, reconciling, claiming it,

incorporating it into God’s holy creative process.

If Jesus is master of our lives,

Then we truly are the stuff of Christ’s active creation,

his body.

We are Christ’s creative process

multiplied across millions of partners able to know passion,

discipline,

risk taking authenticity,

to know the kinds of relationship that mirror God’s own inner partnership:

creator-sustainer, redeemer, renewer.

Maybe we are millions of strings

made to be played.

May God’s fingers,

the hands that drew Jesus from the tomb of death

play through your life,

and through ours

together,

this day.

Amen.

Holy Thursday

2010-04-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Royalty
By Luci Shaw (from Accompanied by Angels)

He was a plain man
and learned no latin.

Having left all gold behind
he dealt out peace
to all us wild ones
and the weather.

He ate fish, bread,
country wine and God's will.

Dust sandaled his feet.

He wore purple only once
and that was an irony.

In Our End is Our Beginning

2010-03-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday our community's scripture readings turned toward endings, a direction that the Tuesday and Tuesday Too groups have also been headed.

Coming to the end of Jonah's story, I couldn't help but notice that it looked more like a beginning. It's open, unresolved. How would you write the end of Jonah's journey with God (Jonah 4)? Has he reached the end of his resistence....or will he make another dash for it!?

We tend to like our stories to end happily. We live in a culture that, as Matthew Fox puts it, "tends to define happiness as absense of suffering." So, he continues, "we strive to invest our creative powers in building temples to security, whether they be the immortal marriage, the immortal job, the immortal corporation or the immortal skyscraper to house that corporation, or the immortal Nations with its invincible army and weaponry."

No wonder we put off encountering the suffering and death Holy Week's scripture heads us towards. There's a lack of security in the notion that the Messiah, much less God, could die.

(Jacob Stienhardt's "Jonah") Does happiness =absence of suffering?

What is the end of life, the goal we live for?

Fox goes on to share Pierre Boulez's definition of what life is about. "The goal of life is not happness (aka security); it is living." And living, both the gospel and Fox remind us, implies suffering. "In fact, the creative person--and that hopefully is all of us--takes on additional burdens of suffering by entering fully into living." (A Spirituality Called Compassion).

When the ancient Greek philosophers and early Church theologians talked about life's end, they meant end as "telos," the purpose God plants in our life, what organizations and gives structure to our life. It is our reason for being, what we are aimed at. If we are pursuing the avoidance of suffering, then defense is our structure. If we aim at the alleviation of pain, sin, death, then our purpose draws us through rather than around suffering.

So in Jesus' end he suffers.

It is in the end of that great suffering that he encounters God's greatest mercy-God's life.

God's very being is mercy. The mercy of God lies in God's readiness to share in sympathy the distress of another, a readiness which springs from God's inmost nature and stamps all with God's being and doing...And this, of course, is why we are able to face, acknowledge, accept and live through suffering, for we know that it can never be found ultimate, it can never constitute the bottom line. God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries. (Eugene Petersen, A Long Obeidience in the Same Direction).

The walk we imagine Jesus on this week is a walk toward God's ultimate end, toward the mercy full bottom line.

A prayer of Confession for the early days of Holy Week

Loving, Living, Gracious God,

we confess that we fear suffering,
not just for ourselves, but for those we love.
We point fingers at those we blame,
the ones over there,
the ones in here,
ourselves.

But you would push those pointing hands down,
asking us, as they go lower, lower,
what our deepest need really is.
Offering to show us,
while we're down there,
what our deepest gift is as well.

We confess that we are reluctant to let those gifts be loosed in your service.
What if they break? What if we misuse them?

Forgive us for underestimating ourselves,
our capacity for wrong,
and our capacity for right.

Unclench the fists we close.

Open our palms up
and up and up
to receive your gifts:
assurance
faith
peace.

How does God Know?

2010-03-22T07:37:00.000-07:00

   In worship we're 3/4 of the way through one of the all time great bible stories, Jonah. Yesterday's reading from chapter three sent a question rippling through coffee hour. How can God change God's mind? (Doesn't God know how its all going to turn out before it starts?) When God saw what they did, how they changed from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. (Jonah 3: 10, NRSV).
   What a wonderful and important question!!! In some ways it's a question more important than potential answers, a question older than Christianity. In fact, its a question that begs more questions. What assumptions lie underneath? The question seems to ask whether God is free to change or eternally unchanging. If God knows how it all turns out in the end, how can the path to the end change?
   Assumption #1
When we say"know" we assume we mean a firm grasp of creations facts and narrative arch. But the Hebrew word know is relational, as a mother knows an infant or a married couple knows each other, emotionally, phyically, intimately.
   Assumption #2

   When we say, "the end," we mean the period at the end of a cosmic sentence, the last chapter, a finale (grand or not). Early Christians, influenced by Aristotle, used "end" as telos, fulfillment of purpose.
   Assumption #3
   We tend to assume that God experiences time the same way we do. After all, Jesus Christ, our window to God, entered our time and space. We know God in our time, in our experience. And in modern western culture that means in our past, present, and future. Time forms a linear movement, one thing leads to another. So....if (using our assumed meanings) God knows the end of the story, its hard to see how God can change God's mind. The outcome iteself would change like the path of a ribbon waved in a new direction.

   What if God is unlimited by our linear time? What if this arc of past, present future is dancing in something fuller, of infinite dimension..... in God? Other cultures, and theories of physics, conceive of time as non-linear. Perhaps God holds (knows, creates) all that makes fullfillment of God's purposes possible. Perhaps when something happens in our lives, the linear idea that God might have known it was going to happen is less important than the eternal knowledge that God will help us make something awesome out of it, something that serves love.
   Perhaps when we read Jonah's story, we're confused because our assumptions are like the tail trying to wag the dog!

God's very being is mercy. The mercy of God lies in God's readiness to share in sympathy the distress of another, a readiness which springs from God's inmost nature and stamps all God's being and doing.... And this, of course, is why we are able to face, acknowledge, accept and live through suffering, for we know that it can never be ultimate, it can never constitute the bottom line. God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (www.inwardoutward.org 3-22-10)

half alive?

2010-01-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

The resurrection means trouble for us who are comforatble with being only half alive. That thought from Alan Jones has stopped me short for years. (Thanks to Weavings journal for providing the red light this time! http://www.upperroom.org/weavings/ )

It hits me right in my complacency.

Here's another one, I love the recklessness of faith, first you leap, and then you grow wings. (Wiliam Sloane Coffin). Couldn't the wings grow first? I mean, what kind of faith asks me to risk leaping before I can either see the ground or know I'll fly?

It seems like restless faith that asks me to trust other people to toss their gifts in the ring without knowing whether they'll follow through. If any one part of " fails to follow through.......what a mess.

Maybe we should all hold hands, count to three and jump together, ready......? The think system isn't going to work here. We have to really "do it."

Do what? Stop living half alive. Get troubled, resurrection faith style. Sprout wings.

If you've patient enough to let it load, this movie, "The Butterfly Circus" shows better than I can tell!

What Year is it (again?)

2010-01-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

I'm dong pretty well. I haven't written "2009" once yet this year. But last night Jeff brought me some papers I'd signed for our upcoming March UMVIM trip (United Methodist Volunteers in Mission). He said I'd written, "2007." I said, oh, it must be a 9. Nope, clearly wrote a european 7 (with the dash through the middle).

Hmmm, wonder what I was thinking.....

Then I got thinking about how lots of folks think that churches live in the past. Its an understandable notion. We read a book of material edited into its present collection alomst two thousand years ago. Around here, we usually worship in buildings built 100-200 years ago.

(Pop quiz-Do you know how old the Torsey Church will be by the fall of 2010?)

Then again, some folks think of Christian lives as oriented to a distant future, an end time, or life after death.

In the church, we find ourselves living in the "not quite there" time. We find inspiration and guidance from what God has done in the past. We find hope for what God has promised for the future.

But if I think of it as just a time line, I feel "all strung out," neither here nor there. But, if I remember its not so much that God is pushing and pulling us through human time, but enfolding us in God's own eternal time, then I find the place where I can both rest in God's mercy and be challenged by God's justice.

2009-12-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

12-13-09 “The Shepherd’s Way Home”

Imagine one listening in that crowd around John the Baptist.

His is one of the oldest professions in the world,

a shepherd.

Like Abel, Adam and Eve’s second born,

the first slaughtered,

by his firstborn farming brother.

His father trusts him,

that’s why he’s put in charge of the valuable flocks,

flocks that provide wool for homes and trade, clothing, milk, meat,

dung for fuel, hides for scrolls.

Little economic engines bleating all over the hills of Galilee.

Was he lured in by the urgency of John’s words,

the intensity of the crowd’s listening,

Had he ever been part of a group of people so transfixed in listening?

At first, perhaps the people appeared almost smug,

people in the know,

hearing what they expected.

“Children of Abraham,” calling out

“tell us a story, John, tell us what God will do for us.”

But the story John told came with a twist,

a love story, yes,

but barked back with a bite.

“Who do you think you are?

You think that because your ancestors followed the Good Shepherd

you can wander anywhere you want and call for room service?”

(My imaging works in Twenty first century vocabulary).

God doesn’t deliver on demand.

Why, If you disappeared,

God could raise a new flock right out of those rocks under your feet.” You tie your lives in knots

and yell at God for not untying them,

WHO –DO- YOU- THINK- YOU- ARE?”

John seemed to reach into their lives, to know their thoughts, their past,

to grab their every need in his fists.

His words reaching an impassioned edge,

straining against the limits of civil discourse,

but held in check by a rein of love.

“What then should we do?” murmured through the crowd,

“what should we do?”

John’s prophetic words tumbled over and through them,

Prophetic words, harvested from his people’s history,

The shepherd might have remembered that long age,

Moses,

who spent his exile as a shepherd,

used those skills to lead his people like a flock through the wilderness, traveling at the pace demanding by real sheep.

They couldn’t leave them behind.

they’d need them in a new home, in the new land.

He might have remembered

David,

The shepherd boy turned king

who forgot the needs of his flock

and had to be called back to accountability by God’s prophet, Nathan.

A shepherd’s responsibility is to protect the sheep,

not become a wolf among them.

David fell and fell hard

And yet, when he heard the word of the LORD,

What should I do LORD, what should I do,

remembered who he was, whose he was, and found his way home.

This shepherd, listening to John,

was taking quite a chance,

leaving his flock on their own while he followed the mesmerized crowd,

gripped by the hold John’s words had on his audience.

Those words carried an urgency

on which seemed to hang the balance of the world.

“What should we do? What then should we do?”

Looking at each other in confusion, looking at John for guidance,

This shepherd heard the people on all sides ask, “What should we do? “

John’s answer, “You know what to do. Take care of each other.

If one of you needs a coat and one of you has two coats, you know what to do. If one of you has food and others are hungry, you know what to do. Do everything in your power to take care of each other.

“Take care of each other as well as, or better than,

you steward your flocks, your business, your households.”

John’s eyes met each person in the crowd, one by one by one, each man, each woman. When he looked into the young shepherd’s eyes, it was as though his own brother was looking at him.

Did John say it out loud, or did his own mind supply the words,

When was the last time he talked, really talked to his brother,

in the way that lets each other know what your life is about,

what you really need?

And why had he hidden that extra loaf of bread last week

when the scroungey looking fellow ambled down the road,

looking hopefully his way?

The shepherd knew what it felt like to be hungry,

but he also knew he’d never starve. He was part of a family.

All he had to do, whether it was near or far, was go home.

He heard others begging John,

each voice more desperate for relief than the last.

He heard the tax collectors ask, “what should we do?”

Johns’ answer, “You know what you should do. Collect just what those folks really owe, their fair share, no more.”

He heard soldiers, soldiers (!) ask like little children, “What do we do? What should we do?”

John’s answer, “You know what to do. Don’t misuse your power on those you are to protect. Don’t coerce them.

Don’t extort money from them, for God’s sake!

Don’t accuse them of things you know they didn’t do,

just to make your job easier or entertaining.”

He watched the soldiers,

Roman soldiers,

Israeli Soldiers,

temple guards,

shake their heads as if coming out of a deep sleep,

look around at the everyday people all around them,

see the people’s faces as if for the first time.

Sheep go astray. They wander. They follow false trails.

When they realize they are lost, they call for their keeper.

When they hear his voice, then they know they are home.

“What should we do, what should we do?”

Should we follow you, John?

Their voices turned to expectation, to hope.

“No, not me, watch for the one who is coming after me.”

He seemed on the verge of adding, “idiots,”

but something, someone (?), who he stopped and listened to,

gentled him, like a sheep being coaxed into the fold.

Might this shepherd who we are imagining

have heard strange rumors when he was a child in Bethlehem,

the shepherds’ town, the little city of David.?

Strange rumors of shepherds, who’d seen angels,

and heard songs in the heavens, a cosmic symphony of praise.

Sheep go astray.

He was startled to remember his own flock, those in his own keeping.

What is a man?

So much of what we are is determined by the responsibilities we accept, the responsibilities put in our keeping.

We are given the power to lead and care for,

and we are given the power to choose who to follow,

who to be cared for by.

The Good Shepherd led him home to who he was, a keeper of flocks.

…led him home to who he was, kept in the heart of the Good Shepherd.

This is how we prepare, this is the Good News, John said,

and the shepherd heard that there is a way home.

With the multitudes that day, he went down to the river

and was baptized by John, turned around, washed clean, dunked down, and came up with a gasp of recognition. “God, you are my God,

I make my home in you,

I look for your redeemer’s coming to be my Shepherd”

And he went back to his flock, patting them and calling them, each of them, one by one, and went back into the hills. As he passed others in the human flock around him he saw others of the same household of God, going back to the work God gave them, but expecting that nothing would be the same.

---------------------------------------------------

New Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, “Sheep,” “Shepherd”

Anchor Bible Dictionary Volume 5, “Sheep, Shepherd,” Jack W. Vancil.

Two Parents Talk

2009-12-09T18:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, it is so wonderful to be able to speak again. So much has happened that needs to be be told.
Where to begin?
I'm Zechariah, of the house of Abi-jah. My name means, "Yahweh remembers."
I have worked hard to keep the commandments and ordinances of the LORD and am recognized as a priest in our small town, though I sometimes forget myself. I'm not needed at the temple in Jerusalem very often.
My fine wife, Elizabeth, and I have been blessed with a comfortable life and many friends.
I had become content in my life...
but not fulfilled.
One thing was missing.
ELizabeth and I had no children.
Noone to continue my family name.
We had wished for a child, perhaps even a son, for so long without success. I had given up.
Now we were old with no chance for a child.
It should have been enough to be contented without being fulfilled.

I'd given up, tried to be content with supporting my husband, Zechariah, and helping our friends and neighbors with their children. I love children and there are lots of them in our little hill country village. I would offer to help any way I could.

I was everybody's favorite "aunt,"

and later, surrogate grandmother.

There were always plenty of children around.

But it was hard to shake off the longing for my own.

Nothing quite filled that empty spot.

I knew it was no longer possible to have a child.

I was too old.

But hope is a hard thing to give up.

My husband didn't blame me. I didn't blame him.

We have both tried our very best to follow the LORD's ways.

Our people call us "righteous," "blameless," and see no reason why the LORD should punish us with this barrenness. The LORD's ways are indeed mysterious.

Oh, it is SO wonderful to be able to speak again!

All things are possible in the LORD.

Almost a year ago, when I made one of my bi-annual trips to the temple in Jerusalem, I was honored to tend the incense and give the blessing to the congregation. This is no small honor! There are many priests and everyone wants to serve. But I was chosen, by lot, as is the custom. When I entered the inner sanctuary to offer prayers and tend the incense, an angel appeared.

I was afraid.

You would have been too. When's the last time YOU met with an angel?

But the angel said, "fear not. our prayers have been answered. Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will call him, John."

That WAS my prayer, but I still said, "how can this be? We are too old to have a child."

The angel replied, "I am Gabriel, sent by the LORD with this good news. Because you doubt my words, and as proof of what I say, you will be unable to speak until what I have foretold has come to pass."

And that was that!

When I left the inner sanctuary, I was unable to give the blessing.

Everyone knew that something very unusual had happened.

When Zechariah went to Jerusalem for his regular service in the temple, I stayed behind. I'd been there before. I'd stopped seeking miracles, or offering sacrifices in hopes that the LORD might hear my need and send a child.

I didn't hear, or see, the messenger.

My husband did.

He came back from the temple utterly unable to speak.

Had he had a stroke?

He wrote down what had happened and I tried to make sense of it.

It seemed he'd lost his mind.

Perhaps the child I'd finally care for would be my old husband.

It wasn't until I felt the stirring in my belly that I began to understand what was going on.

"Fear not."

Easy for you to say.

I had no chance to ask the LORD's messenger the questions tumbling in my mind.

How is this possible?

Why now, after so many years?

What is this child to become?

Will I have the energy, even live long enough, to raise him?

Have I said how wonderful it is to be able to speak again?

It happened just as Gabriel said.

Shortly after I returned home from the temple, Elizabeth became pregnant.

Wonder of wonders! How we had longer for this.

But I could not speak my joy.

For the next nine months I went about my business silently.

Finally, the day arrived. Elizabeth gave birth to our son.

What a wonderful time!

For eight days and nights our family and many friends rejoiced with us at this blessing from God. One the eight day, when our son was to be circumcised, named and officially welcomed into our community, they all asked Elizabeth, "and will he be named Zechariah as is our custom?"

But she answered, "no."

So they brought me a writing tablet and asked me to confirm his name.

I wrote, "His name is John."

Immediately my speech was restored.

Now I could explain what had happened in the temple.

All our family and friends wondered at these events. What could it mean for our son's future?

People were worried when I withdrew for those five months.

I can't even say why I did.

I was in such a strange surreal place. Time stopped for me.

With Zechariah's silence, the world seemed hushed.

My people don't hide pregnancy. Some said I was afraid I'd lose the baby and wanted to keep it secret. But I wasn't afraid. Some said I didn't believe it was real. Others said I was afraid people would make fun of me, pregnant at my age. But I have a pretty good sense of humor.

It WAS ridiculous!

I think that maybe God wanted Mary to be the first woman I shared the experience with.

The Holy Spirit that filled the baby in my womb overflowed and filled me as well. My own unborn child swept me up in his recognition of who stood before me. Womb to womb, we met, swollen with the new thing God was doing, leaking tears of joy.

God's mercy is tender indeed.

When the baby was born those other young women, the ones I'd helped through childbirth, helped me. It was as though my own daughters were taking care of me as I finally gave birth. So topsey-turvey, the young leading the old! Their strong hands and gentle words of encouragement made it so much easier. All night long they rubbed my back, sang, and shared their wisdom.

So, what is the future for our son?

The name "John" means "God shows favor."

He certainly did for Elizabeth and me!

But I worry about being able to provide a proper upbringing for John. Elizabeth and I are old.

Will we have the energy and wisdom to raise him well? Gabriel said,

"...for he will be great before the LORD,

and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink,

and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit,

even from his mother's womb.

And he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the LORD their God,

and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Eli-jah,

to turn the hearts of the fathers to the chidren,

and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,

to make ready for the LORD, a people prepared."

With God's favor, it shall be so. YAHWEH remembers.

It was the eight day after the baby's birth.

He was healthy, he was vigorous,

and it was time for him to take his place in our community.

Everyone was beside themselves with joy.

I have never felt so loved.

We were bathed in our neighbor's good wishes as they came to perform the circumcision

and name the child.

We'll give him his father's name, Zachariah, they said.

From the corner of my eye I saw Zechariah gesturing, no, no.

Then one of the strangest things in this whole extraordinary experience happened.

I'd never known anything so clearly in my life, without knowing why I knew it!

I said loud and clear, his name is John."

I do't think anyone had ever heard me speak so forcefully before!

Zechariah leaned back and smiled.

I wonder about the future, his, but also all the other children.

Will this passion for justice, and independence to worship,

this urge to be a nation,

carry them closer to the LORD's ways

or sweep them up in the old human ways of manipulation and violence?

My ancestor, Aaron, was his brother Moses' right hand man. Now it seems my son will serve his cousin as they go about God's work. Me son will be remembered as part of his cousin's story, not as "the one" but as he who prepares the way.

I hope he will do it well.

How will I prepare him for this?

The messenger said that his mind must remain clear.

Luke 3: 1-6

Dialogue by Doug Riley (Zechariah) and Karen Munson (Elizabeth)

2009-11-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

You never quite know what's going to happen when you plant something. Several years ago I rescued two sad sprigs of Christmas cactus from the Christmas fair remnants. This morning it bloomed in bushy glory by the altar. Advent is about expecting, but now being sure what you'll get!

Above the pink blossoms hang brand new banners lovingly crafted by two talented quilters, Brenda Davenport and Gail Kromer, to make something of the too small centers I created in 2006.

This bright tree patch nods to our common ancestress, "Eve." What did God expect when planting that fateful fruit tree in the garden? All we know about Eve is that she took and shared what wasn't given to her, then went on to be a hardworking farmer's wife with at least three sons (but that's another story for another time). If the story was just about her and her husband, "Adam," there wouldn't be much else to tell.

Its the main character who makes the story worth remembering. Not ready to give up on the contrarians God had breathed into life, the Creator made sure the creatures had what they needed to survive and thrive. transplanted sprigs bearing human life out into the world.

Today, while we work, we watch and wait to see what God will do next. Jeremiah says, "When that time comes, I will make a fresh and true shoot sprout from the David-Tree. He will run this country honestly and fairly, He will set things right. (Jeremiah 33: 15, translated by Eugene Peterson in "The Message).

Jeremiah points to the truth borne out in Jesus the Christ, God doesn't just send us into the world, God goes with us. The new banners point us toward stories of women who experienced God's powerful presence in their lives: Mother Eve, Sister Miriam, Deborah the Judge, Esther the Queen, Sarah and Elizabeth-late in life mothers, Loyal Ruth, Mary of Nazareth, Martha and Mary who befriended Jesus, Generous Dorcas, Gifted Lydia.

Advent invites us to get ready for what God wants to do in our lives. How will Christ come to us? What sprigs wait to spring into surprising abundance?

Our thanks to Suzanne Schaffhausen and Judy Rehmel for the quilts blocks published in "Women of the Bible," Augsburg Press, 1991.

Birth Pangs

2009-11-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

We women sometimes think that we have the corner on birth pangs. I remember the last time I was at a "Jack & Jill" baby shower. The women ended up in one room. “Why I can tell you stories…” (often the one the new Mom wants least to hear!). The guys were in the next room trying to share fatherly wisdom but veering off course toward football scores and demands at work. Even these days when men are invited into the birth experience (appropriate considering their involvement before and after), most of the books and movies make a "girl thing."

The distinctively American music called “Blues” bear witness that, actually, many men "get it." Birth pangs creating life come in many forms.

If you’ve ever heard the real deal,

a raw voice growling and moaning out its misery,

offering it up,

emptying it out,

you’ve heard birth pangs coming from men and women breaking open under the pregnant weight of life.

I think the Psalms are Israel’s blues lyrics.

In the bible, Samuel's story starts out with the good news according to his mother, Hannah. Her birth pangs come long before the actual birth as she sinks under the weight barrenness meant in that time and place. Before Samuel there is emptiness, ridicule and despair. After Samuel's birth, Hannah herself comes to life as she offers back to God the son she struggled to bring into this world.
Before Samuel's birth, Hannah mourned privately to her husband and to Eli who caught caught her pouring out prayer so incoherently he thought she was drunk out of her mind. . Overhearing them feels like invasion of privacy.
But after Samuel's birth, she sings a song that is startlingly public, a song of righteousness turning her inner heartfelt blues into prophetically powerful witness. It's not just the boy who's birthed. Hannah's purpose, her voice, her very life stream from the opened womb as though it were an opened tomb.

"Birth pangs" is the image Jesus choose when he tries to prepare his followers for the scale of change in their future. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. (Mark 13) Biblical scholars remind us that when Mark was writing this gospel it was against a background of public crisis, either the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 C.E. or Caligula’s earlier demand that the Jews set up a statue of him in the Temple area in the years (35-41 CE depending on how you date the work).

Have you ever stopped to wonder what might be birthed out of a public crisis? What new life might be born?

Something precious will break open, maybe even beyond repair, in Mark’s case a sacred institution, the temple. Something new will emerge, in Mark's case siblings Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

Have you ever wondered what might be birthed out of the private crisis that invade our lives?

In his new Memoir, “Living and Loving Outloud,” Cornel West writes, “For Christians, serious faith begins when we experience the sweet shipwreck of the mind and the bittersweet cracking open of the heart…..to be human is to call for help. We saw birth as a catastrophe: you’re thrown in space and time to die. The flesh fails. Then the question becomes simple-how ya gonna cope?"

Birth and death are not so far apart, after all. Natives of our desert South west believed that death is waking up from life’s sleep.

The Christian faith and the modern Jewish movement are siblings birthed out of a nation's temple tragically breaking open. Out of that loss, living faith emerges and spreads out to renew and redeem.

Hannah's pregnancy also births her oracle of judgment against those who hoard and refuse to release the good things in our lives.

Jesus is re-birthed out of a tomb.

On mornings when we just don't know how we'll face another day, God promises that if we will emerge from under the covers stand up, and walk out, the Holy Spirit will breathe with us, set us on fire with passion for what is possible, and blow friends for the journey our way.

Birthing involves emptying, sending out. Marcia McFee shares a radical advent plan in her current worship newsletter: it "... comes from the folks at Metropolitan Community Church in Austin, TX. Their theme for Advent is “Simple Gifts” and they will begin Advent with all the usual sanctuary splendor of the Advent/Christmas season. But then each Sunday they will recess out parts of that abundance, poinsettias, greenery, gifts of clothing or toys for those who need them, decorations, goods for food banks, etc. until by Christmas Eve, the sanctuary is pretty much bare except for the light of Christ as evidenced by Advent wreath and Christ candle. In this way they celebrate the true spirit of giving and sharing of love and resources and will be left with the symbol of the most important and ever-present gift of all–the gift of God’s presence, Emmanuel. Terrific! (www.marciamcfee.com)

What if we thought of church more as pregnant with possibility to be birthed and less as problems to be contained?

2009-10-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

10-25-09 Seeing

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The Gospel According to Mark 10: 46-52

Tracy Kidder’s latest book, Strength in What Remains, tells the story of a Vermont doctor who is like and unlike his neighbors.[1] Deogratias is an immigrant who fled Burundi’s epic violence.

The new ground he stood on in the strange land of New York became holy, when a woman saw him, learned his name, and persisted in finding him a home. The ground he walked became sanctified when that home, the apartment of a retired professor and his artist wife, opened up and received him, when they saw him, listened to him, incorporated him into their lives.

Deo’s story makes me wonder whether he was the “blind man” trying to make his way in a city that could not see him, or whether the city itself was blind.

If everyone is blind, lack of sight is unlikely to be identified as a problem. Only when a new perspective enters the picture, an ability to see, does a new way forward come to light. The couple that “adopted” an adult, Deogratias, found their childless lives illuminated.

All of us have blind spots. None of us have God’s fullness of sight. All of us are capable of seeing more with God’s help and each other’s loving attention.

In his online blog, http://willimon.blogspot.com/ Willimon shares the recent story of one of the camps in the North Alabama United Methodist conference. It seems that during their spring annual conference this year, a man stood up and helped the blind see. Their beloved camp, Sumatanga, was bent to breaking under the wait of hard realities. Willimon shares: Lessons Learned in Saving Sumatanga

A frequent response to Bob’s speech at Conference was, “I had no idea Sumatanga was in so much trouble.” For too long the Trustees tried to struggle alone with Sumatanga’s problems. Transparency and facing hard realities are essential, especially in the church. Our people show that they are eager to respond when they know the truth.

Preserving the past is no substitute for adaptation to the future. We cannot save the old Sumatanga. Change or die. We can only see the present crisis as an invitation from a living God to serve the present age, to pray for creativity and fresh courage. …. Bob Murray spoke to us all in ordering us (in his speech to Annual Conference), “Get over it!”

People are the key. The arrival of Bob Murray, the innovations produced by Bart Styes, the new team they have assembled, the day that Mike Byrne became chair of the Board made everything possible. The best way to change an organization is to change the leadership. Furthermore, Sumatanga knows that their future is not in getting more money from the churches but in getting more Christians at the camp. As Bob says, Sumatanga is in the hospitality ministry. If Sumatanga keeps focused on servant ministry to people, its future is assured. It’s such a temptation for the church to forget that we serve.

Willimon called to memory the years God has used Sumatanga for “some extraordinary acts of vocation, revelation, and renewal.” And like Jesus restoring sight to blind Bartimaeus, he celebrated clarity of vision brought by new leadership.

Try this encounter with the story of once blind Bartimaeus.

Read Mark 10: 46-52. While you read, imagine yourself in the story and notice whose eyes you are seeing through: Jesus’? The crowds’? Bartimaeus? The disciples?

Become aware of what you experience from this perspective.

Read Mark 10: 46-52 again. Become aware of what God is opening up for you in this moment. What new insight or instruction is the Holy Spirit giving you?

Read Mark 10: 46-52 one more time. Ask yourself, “what do I have to thank God for in this experience?” What will I tell others?

[1] Tracy Kidder, “Strength in What Remains,: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness,” New York: Random House, 2009.

2009-10-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

10-11-09 Turnovers

Mark 10: 17-31

Only one thing stands between this young man and the kingdom of heaven. It's a simple, and devastating, question of what he loves most.

I've just finished working with an Lay Speaking class on another of these terrible texts, if anything maybe even worse, Luke 14: 25-35. There Jesus gives people in the crowd following him a reality check, choose me or them ("them" being family members).

Sometimes it comes down to just this stark a choice. When Luke's gospel was under construction, folks were having to choose their community, the one they'd grown up and been formed in, or this new Jesus movement that was re-forming everything they knew.

Some of us have had that same challenge throw in our faces. Choose who you will follow. ITs hard when the ones you love don't all go in the same direction.

Other places in the gospels, Jesus tells us that if we choose rightly, we may have it all. Friends, family, meaningful work, food, follow our faithful choices. But here he reminds us that he does not follow food, work, family, or friends. He is first and last.

What is your life built on?

What is able to serve as cornerstone?

Jesus has a lot of deeply ingrained upside down thinking to overturn, the sacred tables we set up in our temples. Do you remember that scene? He comes in to the temple and finds worship leaders putting money out front, the cart in front of the horse, and Jesus upends the whole situation, literally!

Texts like these are tempting to wave off:

Oh, the guy tossing the tables is off his rocker.

Or, he doesn’t really mean for that young man to sell off his assets, its obviously symbolic.

Not...so... fast!

We need to stick with the challenge, examine what we can’t bear to give up, whether its money, or all the food we want, or approval, or accomplishment…..

For s short time, many years ago, I knew and admired a man named, Mitch. He was a barrier breaking advocate for the homeless in Washington D. C. who helped set up a shelter in an abandoned building in the city. Year after year he poured his heart out for the people the rest of us tended to overlook. He fought for them with policy makers, he scrounged for food, for blankets, for medical care. He gave them everything until there wasn't anything left to give. One morning we opened the Washington Post and discovered that Mitch had committed suicide. He couldn't bear the burden that had displaced God at the center of his life. While I choose to believe that God regained the center when Christ met and reclaimed Mitch on the other side of that desperate decision, it remains a great loss in the lives of those who knew and loved him in this life.

Scripture calls it idolatry when anything, anything at all, takes God's place.

These days we do it to our children as a matter of course. We become insatiably greedy for their happiness and success, giving it our all. base decisions of how we'll spend our family time, money, energy trying to make them happy. We measure our success by theirs.

But we weigh down children’s lives when we try to make them our cornerstones. We put the burden of our lives, whether they're "worth it" on the next generation as though these still maturing little ones were able to be the foundation rather than the future. Is that really the way God intended us to love them?

And then we act like children ourselves, filling our goody bags with one pretty or yummy or entertaining thing after another.

Luke 12:15 …and he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

Jesus gears us up for faithful personal resistance, withstanding a system that will gobble us up, and offers us the choice of living in an alternative kin-dom.

Julie Clawson reminds us just how tough it is to turn these tables over.

So I’ve been having a few interesting conversations about my book Everyday Justice recently. I was being interviewed for a very conservative Christian talk radio show, and when I mentioned that a simple way to define biblical justice was “the practical outworking of loving God and loving others” I was told that I need to be careful about encouraging people to love their neighbor because that could lead to socialism.

In the sound-bite world of talk radio, there wasn’t a chance to challenge that assertion, so I changed tactics and tried to talk about the need for Christians to embrace the spiritual discipline of simplicity and not be overcome by consumerism. Once again I was contradicted by the host who told me that I shouldn’t suggest that people stop or lower their consumption because it is our duty to support the economy by buying stuff. At that point I realized that we were on totally different planets. I civilly made my way through the rest of the interview trying to speak a language he might understand, and then choose not to listen for the next hour as he proceeded to tear apart everything I said.

I’m fine with people disagreeing with me or not liking the book. I get that. But his mindset reminded me of the economic idolatry that has crept into our faith. More and more I find Christians who, instead of letting their faith influence their economics, interpret their faith through their preferred economic system.

So, what’s the antidote to greed? In the classic “Seven Deadly Sins” list, Generosity is greed’s opposite. At the heart of real generosity is mercy, a mercy that makes us hungry for God’s presence, love and care, in each person’s life and every corner of our world. When we can’t get enough of God’s goodness, we experience an insatiable desire for mercy, become hungry for justice. And even those efforts to make the world a better place become idolatrous if God is not the centering point, the one we need more than anything else.

Its a hard thing Jesus asks, from the "before" perspective. And yet after, after one chooses to be utterly centered on and by our loving, generous, merciful, and just God, somehow the rest falls into place.

Busy is As Busy Does

2009-10-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

9-27-09 Sloth: Busy is As Busy Does

We’re up to “sin of the week” #4 with Sloth. Do you have a favorite yet? (Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Sloth….)

It seems as though whenever “sloth” comes up, conversation turns to those much-maligned South and Central American tree-hangers whose incredibly efficient systems make them appear lazy.

If you can get past the critters, sloth talk tends to turn next to the worst possible thing you can accuse a protestant work ethic trained American of: laziness.

If the conversation is sensitive, it will acknowledge that there is a difference between laziness and depression, a treatable medical condition. But let’s leave those boxes behind and steer toward another, causal, alternative this morning.

I really appreciate the way sloth follows gluttony in this fall’s series. Because I am increasingly convinced that sloth is the direct result of being too full.

John Wesley knew this. In fact it’s likely that Wesley would have ranked sloth at the top of his hit sins list. "And when sloth and luxury are joined together, will they not provide an abundant offspring?" (See “The Late Work of God in North America.”)

You see, Wesley’s England was in a period of economic stratification: as industrialization told hold, a new class of mill and mine owners expanded the pool of wealth enjoyed by royals while urban slums developed to house working families who lost the “unfunded” benefits of a farm economy.

Wesley’s sermon addresses those who have plenty, who are “full.”

Proverbs 24: I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. (NIV)

Having too much “good” decreases room for “essential,” squeezes it out. The article I referred to a few weeks ago asked why disasters can feel strangely like paradise. In the wake of a disaster we become utterly focused on what is truly life giving.

You don’t hear people lamenting lost bread machines, you see people offering one another bread.

Those early Christian monk’s whose “8 bad thoughts” developed into the modern seven deadly sins considered sloth to be one of the worst, right up there with pride.

In her new book, “Acedia”, Kathleen Norris points out that sloth is not just a “personal problem.” It is a cumulative public problem. [It is] my suspicion that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plague us today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress. When we look at acedias’ root meaning-not caring-we can see it as a social problem and perceive that the sloth it engenders is anything but an insignificant physical laziness. It may even manifest as hyperactivity, but it is more like the activity of a hamster on a treadmill than the action what will enhance the common good.”

The Rev. Jorge Acevedo will receive the 2009 Distinguished Evangelist of the United Methodist Church award later this month from the Foundation for Evangelism. [Acevedo is] lead pastor at Grace Church, a multi-site United Methodist congregation in Cape Coral, Fla. (UM Portal 9-25-09):

When I came here in 1996, the church was averaging about 400 in attendance on Sundays, and had been in a five-year decline. My first Sunday here, they told me we had $29.16 in our checking account and owed $1.2 million on a building. The church was filled with wonderful people who had just kind of lost their way; they were good people who had just been lulled to sleep. Yet there were 30 people who had been on the Walk to Emmaus who were praying for renewal. They are the unsung heroes of this story: that group of people prayed that God would do a new thing in their church. [Church attendance has grown to more than 2,600 in weekly worship.]

God has given me a passion for reaching the un-churched, the once-churched and the over-churched.

The “over-churched” person is the second son in the prodigal son story, who never left home. The over-churched have lived a good life. … The intimacy of their relationship with Jesus is but a faint memory. There are a lot of over-churched people who are United Methodist in name, but not Christian by their own testimony.

Converting the convinced is really hard! They are convinced that everything is OK, and yet they don’t bear the fruit of a faithful follower of Christ. … The best way is for them to see these un-churched people who come into our church and see the vitality of a fresh new relationship with Jesus. It’s pretty contagious.

In other words, the over churched person is so full, stuffed with good things, that we need to intentionally make room for the fresh and new, but are unlikely to go looking for it..

(Acevedo continues) God has given the local church the primary responsibility of doling out the grace of God a broken and hurting world. But we’ve forgotten that.

We have also forgotten our historical tradition as Wesleyans. We were a movement begun among the working class; we’ve become a movement primarily among the white collar. We’ve forgotten our roots of personal piety and social holiness. We have part of our church that is passionately committed to saving souls and another part that’s passionately committed to meeting human need. The genius of the Wesleyan movement, to quote [Good to Great author] Jim Collins, was the “genius of the and, not the tyranny of the or.” Churches that God seems to be working in and through are those that seek to live out the Wesleyan vision of the spiritual life. Churches that forget that, die; churches that live into that, live.

(He remembers) One of my dearest friends, Jim, was a fifth-of-vodka-a-day drinker, two six packs of beer and a handful-of-Vicodin taker, a womanizer, who, when his wife came to see me and I told her to “Run, don’t walk, get in recovery.” Her husband got into treatment, came back to our church and got busy walking the walk as a disciple of Jesus. Today he and his wife, Kim, lead our marriage ministry. …. There are thousands of Jims out there with stories like that.

Our job is to set the table. God’s job is to serve the meal. What we try to do every day is set the table so God can come and serve the meal. And when He serves the meal, people don’t leave hungry. They leave transformed.

It takes courage for someone who needs recovery to say so out loud, to reach out for help, to witness to their healing.

In the traditional list of seven deadly sins and their counteracting virtues, courage is the antidote to sloth.

Courage grounded in her faith and supported by Christian fellowship is what helped Leymah Gbowee, one of the subjects in the film (Pray the Devil Back to Hell) and a Profile in Courage winner, stand up with other Christian and Muslim women of Liberia to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime.

Armed with white t-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state and Liberia’s first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, “they’ll be back.” (How Women of Faith Fought a Dictator with Nonviolence by Becky Garrison 09-23-2009, sojo.net)

The question underlying sloth is, “what does it matter,” “why bother?” If Gbowee, who we’d expect to be full of fear instead of faith, can find courage in the vacuum of power, how can we, whose lives are full with so much good, fail to realize how much it matters that we act courageously, with faith as our foundation? With God’ help, let us live as though it matters.

Can’t Get Enough

2009-10-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

9-20-09 Can’t Get Enough

Last weekend, ahead of the blight and dropping temperatures, I brought in a last beautiful basket of garden produce: 5 deep red lipstick peppers and a couple of green ones. A dozen and a half perfect plum tomatoes and a couple still green around the edges.

I ran down to the post office to grab the mail before it closed, came back and into the kitchen and did a double take. It was all gone-all but two semi ripe tomatoes sitting forlornly on the counter. I looked, scratched my head, questioned my reality, and came to the realization that our dog, Ben, is a glutton.

I didn’t see the evidence until several days later, a light pink stain scattered with a few seeds in the dining room corner.

Gluttony in the church house is not a new problem. There are references scattered all through the New Testament to the gluttony undercutting the infant Christian churches.

Each week, the day after Sabbath (which for Jewish communities is Saturday), Jesus followers would gather in homes large enough to hold them and share a love feast. They brought food (pot luck) and enjoyed that provided by the host, broke and blessed bread in Jesus’ name, passed the cup of forgiveness, and told each other what they had remembered, what they had learned, encouraged each other in the difficult journey of following the resurrected Jesus.

But some of them were wealthier than others, less driven by the clock and demands of bosses. Some of them got there first and dug right in to the fresh fragrant food. Others, who got done with work later and took longer to clean up from grubby work, got there later and got leftovers.

The first group was comfortable with the way things were. It didn’t really bother them. Oh, some might feel badly for those who didn’t get enough, but not enough to challenge their friends and families to wait. It fell to those who had most closely experienced Jesus to rebuke the “family,” to remind them that this was indeed a new community, a community of utter mutual caring and sharing.

Can we have too much of a good thing? When it blinds us to reality, to other’s need, to God’s presence and purpose, yes.

Yesterday in Boston’s Filene’s basement, I overheard a woman complaining to her friend that health care reform might drive her taxes up. With the next breathe she marveled at the good deal she was paying for, an Armani jacket at half price-just $2,500.

So many things can fill us up, give us indigestion, stretch our bellies and dull our abilities.

We can even ingest so many words that there isn’t room for thought. The Ping Pong battle played out in the news has our heads going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth instead of thinking with the mind of Christ about our actual life and the lives of those around us.

A few weeks ago Dr. Scott Morris spoke with New United Methodist District Superintendents and Conference Staff people at their training event.

[Morris is a family Practie Physician and a UM Elder, who founded]….. The Church Health Center provides quality, affordable health care for working, uninsured people and their families. It is the largest faith-based clinic of its type in the country, caring for 50,000 patients of record without relying on government funding.

He told them that People go to the doctor today for things they once would have taken to their pastor….Morris said so often in his practice, a patient came to him with a complaint about their back hurting or some other problem, but what was really wrong was they had a broken heart.

“You can’t MRI somebody’s spirit,” he said. … “We need to explore what it means to have a healing ministry in our congregations and in our lives,” he said. - UM News Service

Our youngest daughter is studying food. This means studying the role food plays in our lives. As Solomon Schimmel, author of the current standard study on gluttony writes, “we are a society inundated with food and drink.” Food plays a social role. It shapes our sharing.

What’s the first thing you think about when you find out someone’s coming to visit? We feed our guests. Food is usually the first way we reach out to neighbors in pain, in poverty.

The way we behave with food both reveals and reforms the way we relate to the other human beings on our planet. Food practices reveal status (where did YOU go out to eat?) The first human murder, Cain against Abel, was over the way God received their gifts of food differently.

Gluttony got listed as a deadly sin because it overfills us to bursting and illness, because it rivets our attention to what we can’t get enough of, whether we are over privileged or deprived, and because when we take more than we need, it means that someone else doesn’t get enough. There’s no good side to gluttony, no silver lining.

One of the most powerful images of God I’ve ever encountered describes God as ever renewing and overflowing.

When we become the body of Christ, we become that open fluid flow of God’s life.

(This Holy Mystery, p. 25) “all who are baptized into the body of Christ Jesus become servants and ministers within that body, which is the church. …the one Body, drawn together by the Spirit, is fully realized when all its many parts eat together in love and offer their lives in service at the Table of the Lord.

We can be too full to care, or full enough to share. What is it you can’t get enough of?

What Are YOU Going to Do About It?

2009-09-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

In the English language, "mad" can be either angry or insane.

On July 8, 1741, 38-year-old Jonathon Edwards stood in the pulpit of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts and preached what is now the best-known sermon in American History. Edwards was already well known as a preacher of aesthetic theology; he saw God’s love and purpose everywhere in the wonders of nature.

But the sermon he preached on this day, the sermon now included in American anthologies of literature, the sermon that has largely defined our popular impression of God, was called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

Edwards, preaching a revival sermon that helped spark the First Great Awakening, viscerally described a God who is angry, a God who holds us accountable not only for our devastating ignorance of the welfare of creation as of our brother and sister human beings, but also accountable for our willful ignorance of God’s self. His intent was to prompt his listeners to utterly abandon themselves to God’s loving care, erasing all fear.

But the phrase “Angry God,” burned and burrowed itself into our communal psyche until we began to flee this angry God instead of what made God angry.

God’s not alone in this. We have inherited our maker’s capacity for anger.

No matter how much philosophy may want to talk about how we should or shouldn’t get angry, scripture recognizes that we do. In the bible, people get mad.

When the people he’d led out of Egypt built a golden calf to worship as soon as his back was turned, Moses was mad enough to break the first stone tablets with God’s commandments. Can you picture Moses and God together on the mountain, shaking their heads at the denseness of “some people,” (all people?) and re-inscribing the law?

In the ancient, early days of Israel’s political formation, Young Jonathon got angry with his father Saul for treating his beloved friend David unfairly.

In his later years as king of Israel, David’s downfall seems to be that he can’t bring himself to get angry with his errant adult children as they begin to play havoc with each other’s lives and with the kingdom itself.

Jesus was angry with his community’s leaders when they stood by silently and let a man with a useless hand suffer instead of reaching out and helping him; when they were more worried about obeying the established “rules”. The man with the withered hand was more valuable to them as a chance to catch Jesus breaking a rule than he was as a potential productive member of society,

Jesus got mad enough at Peter to call him “satan” when Peter got after him for getting down to the heart of what was to come, the consequences f all this disturbing feeding, and healing, and teaching.

The wisdom book of Proverbs is full of advice about the virtues of patience and soft words, but the fact remains, people get mad.

“Inglorious Bastards,” one of the most critically acclaimed films playing, and a box office pleaser explores a devastating intersection of abusive institutional power and imagined angry response. It’s a “could-a, should-a, would-a” film.

WE don’t want to be angry, we know that anger, especially sustained anger, is unhealthy, one of the major stressors. WE don’t want others to be angry with us. But we now that the best way to “manage” anger induced stress is to resolve, not avoid, the anger. We carry unresolved anger, aware or unaware, forward in our lives. We know that the rate of sudden cardiac death increases when the population is collectively stressed, (CNN 2-24-09 citing Rachel Lampert). And we know that over 60% of the US poplulation reports being angry and irritable on a daily basis.

And a study published last spring by Rachel Lampert demonstrates a link between electrical signal disruptions induced by anger and arrhythmia in patients with existing heart conditions.

“Other studies have also shown that if you ask patients about what happened before a heart attack, they'll most frequently say they were angry, said Dr. Charles Raison, psychiatrist and director of the Mind/Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.” (CNN ibid)

And, as Jonathon Edwards embedded in our imaginations, the God who made us in God’s own image gets angry too. The worship book of the psalms lists the seven things that make God mad too. If anger really is wrong, what do we do with God’s wrath?

Proverbs 6: 16-19: There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.

God’s anger is a response to our sin. Its not God’s character. It’s not who God IS. God is love. In the beginning it is love. In the end it is love. That love is resolved that each and all experience God’s care and is angered when we prevent it.

Injustice causes God’s heart to skip a beat.

So what’s deadly about anger?

Was it wrong to be angry in the aftermath of 9-11?

Is it wrong for a parent to be angry when they can’t access the same basic health care that their neighbor or boss or teacher or pastor’s family has?

Is it wrong for one of my colleagues to grow irritated when in one public dinner after another he is asked for more coffee, peas, pasta because he is a big black man?

Is it wrong for another to become angry when each time he moves to a new parsonage, police cars follow him home until well-placed parishioners call and ask them to stop? He is from the Caribbean.

Shouldn’t my Korean friend be angry when the bouncer at a bar tells him to go find when that likes “Chinamen?”

The seven deadly sins were listed, with the best of intentions, by the church in its early decades as an institutional power, the only remaining effective institutional power, during the chaos of the disintegrating Roman empire. “calm down, keep your head, work together,” were life saving words in that time.

What the philosophers who created the western Vice/virtue lists recognized, and what our Buddhist friends call our attention to, is that passions can drive and misshape us; especially when they are driven by fear, greed, pride, insatiable appetites for more or a need to feel superior.

What scripture and Judeo Christian experience show us is that passions can also align us with the heart of a God who is resolved that each and every one of God’s creatures experience the blessings of divine love.

We underestimate God’s anger at our peril.

And glimpse the results of our actions- in backlashes from imbalance of power, Uprisings, downfalls. The furious power of nature disturbed by careless stewardship of our physical resources..

At the same time, we are constantly underestimating God’s love, a love that is as patient as a wise grandparent who won't let us go too far.

Instead of fearfully trying to tip the cosmic scales in our favor, shouldn’t we be trying to both please God and become our best selves by eliminating the causes of righteous anger so that real love can flourish? Anger can be a wake-up call, and instrument.

Anger can sever us from God and others or anger can move us back into God's embrace, toward God's purpose.

What Are You Going to Do About It?

2009-07-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Merciful, by Steve Parsons

Our Father, who is in heaven, holy is your name.

With one simple phrase, Jesus teaches us how to enter the embrace of One who is as close as a loving daddy and to honor the same One who is unimaginably more than we can name. Our need for intimacy co-exists with a sense of awe at the core of our being.

The One who feeds us, who tickles our toes and our nose with feathers and flowers, who provides guidance when we wander into dangerous territory....this same One creates all that is and yet makes a way for us, a tiny part of that vastness, to come into relationship with Holiness.

Scripture tells of only one irreconcilable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29).After all, how can I be forgiven if I won't turn and face the source of forgiveness. How can holiness soak into my life if I harden my shell against the Holy Spirit?

Try this prayer exercise:

Breathe an out the way you normally do for a minute, just notice how you breathe.

Now, breathe in deeply and slowly.

And let your breathe out.

Do you notice how more effort is used contracting your muscles to breathe in than while letting the breathe flow out?

Try taking a deep breathe and holding it.

Now when are you doing the most work? Notice your need to release the breathe you've taken. Its hard work not to! Our bodies health depends on being able to breath in well, just as we need the Holy Spirit to flow freely into our lies, and on being able to exhale well, just as we need to let the Holy Spirit flow through us and into the world.

Try taking a shallow breathe in and then breathe deeply out. We can only breathe out as well as we breathe in.

Try breathing with tense muscles instead of relaxed. Which is harder work? Which is more effective?

Richard Foster once wrote, “ Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love,” (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home.” )

This week, ask Christ to teach you how to pray as naturally as breathing to the One who loves you and who opens a world of possibility to you. You'll know that others all around the world and throughout time (that was, that is, that will be) as you pray, "Our Father, who is in heaven, Holy is your name....."