tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88584245436008381792024-03-18T21:08:24.093-07:00doxologicalmorning broke./
creeping angelically/
falling/
over the fields/
like the hoar frost?
i attempt to fix/
in my mind/
silences/
that seem to/
elude me/
the fields/
and singing how Great Thou Art/
my voice a choir/
my voice a choir/
my lone voice a choir/
my song will no longer/
fill my room/
or the space between the/
toppling atoms/
another atom/
and another/
and another
and I too am atom./***************************
All posts written by Jodie Boyer Hatlem
jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.comBlogger114125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-7780006009098282512022-12-25T16:32:00.011-08:002023-05-04T18:56:39.975-07:00Blessings for the 12 Days of Christmas
May you know the peace of Christmas <br>
Like the arc of a Swallow’s wing in flight<br>
Or the spaces between the falling snow<br><br>
May you know the noise of Christmas <br>
Clamoring <br>
Laughing<br>
Ridiculous like the fictive drummer boy <br>
Or the over-the-top toy from a wayward uncle<br>
The whoosh of wind outside a warm home<br>
Astonished bursts punctuating the night<br>
the shouts of shepherds<br><br>
May you know the silence of Christmas<br>
… of the word pleading<br>
Of answers that deflect wrath<br>
Like the pause between the last cry of birthing and the first cry of birth<br><br>
May you know the joy of Christmas<br>
sticky hands on cheeks<br>
The scratch of new skates<br>
A tail thudding on the floor<br>
an old miser born again<br><br>
May you know the love of Christmas<br>
Like a parent swaying in the night<br>
The sparrow resting in the eaves<br><br>
May you know the challenge of Christmas <br>
Demands we are told are light and easy<br>
Terrible creatures telling you not to fear<br><br>
May you know the extravagance of Christmas<br>
overstuffed turkey<br>
apples syrupy on the edges of the pies<br>
Green, blue, red, silver, gold papers<br>
Round yon mothers<br><br>
May you know the light of Christmas<br>
On the trees<br>
And corners<br>
Like unreplenished oil<br>
Eternal, fixed, and unfixed,<br>
Like a comet scarring the sky<br>
Light that darkness did not comprehend<br><br>
May you know the darkness of Christmas<br>
Deep, troubling <br>
Revealing of stars, casting off shadows. <br>
Intimate<br>
May you know the hope of Christmas<br>
Weary <br>
Wondering<br>
Curious<br>
Rushing down the stairs or<br>
Fighting the long defeat<br>
or unashamed like a Heron<br><br>
May you know the courage of Christmas <br>
Like a cardinal red against the snowjbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-68837465693731280622021-06-08T12:48:00.001-07:002021-06-08T12:53:06.505-07:00Remembering my baptism<p>Sunday we took a brief trip to Goderich and the Beach. The sun, the two-toned lake, and the cloudless sky were restorative. The water was early June temperature--it made my feet and legs ache. I have a bit of a ritual with Great Lakes and the Oceans--I always attempt to overcome my natural reluctance and jump into the water. (I mean at normal times of the year... I am not planning on joining the polar bear club anytime soon). I almost always find the cold is a bit more manageable than I originally assume it will be, invigorating really. </p><p>Sam was out there repeatedly dunking himself--crying out "one, two, three." I thought to myself: in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. </p><p>I was baptised around this time of year. I believe I was 13 or 14. It was a big deal. I was baptised with my best friend's younger brother and another friend's Mom. I remember being very scared and embarrassed in that teenage angsty sort of way, but I had been reading my Bible frequently and felt a sense of strong conviction reading about Jesus' baptism. </p><p>It was a simple thing, but it was one of the first times I remember choosing to be brave. These memories flooded over me as I jumped into Lake Ontario this week.... the sense of letting go, the sense of relief when the water wasn't as bracing as I feared, the reminder that I can overcome my fears, the sense of cleansing and refreshment.</p><p>We are told in Scripture that in baptism we recall that we have been buried and raised with Christ Jesus. Baptism is death and resurrection at the same time. I wasn't baptised a Mennonite or even baptised into church membership. Right now when so much that I loved and worked for the last 5 years, the last 10 years, the last 20 years is feeling stripped away... I remember my baptism. I remember that I can be brave because of God's promised presence. I remember that I can be brave because the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is present in my own life. I remember that I can be brave because I remained joined to Christ even if important human associations are stripped away. I have spent a lot of my early adulthood looking askance at my "just Jesus and me" faith of my childhood, but boy, sometimes you need it. I need to remember that Jesus is close, proximate, ever-present and as Paul says: "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus or Lord."</p><p><br /></p>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-4765157296764179272021-04-26T15:53:00.006-07:002021-04-27T09:02:03.205-07:00Wonderful Minari<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXOzxQFU2IOT2lANYFlFMZFqREQL2CGKSRxrO_rWIL1WvCw1cD0dmv2rdqNp1e2yxr7lFceNe-xsOY-BfNnptLieDkie7aeANNEOhrX7DpN8F1WuyhlzDM5sr1_4afoFWEQ5-Uhf0G4d0/s568/Screenshot+2021-04-27+11.51.19+AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="567" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXOzxQFU2IOT2lANYFlFMZFqREQL2CGKSRxrO_rWIL1WvCw1cD0dmv2rdqNp1e2yxr7lFceNe-xsOY-BfNnptLieDkie7aeANNEOhrX7DpN8F1WuyhlzDM5sr1_4afoFWEQ5-Uhf0G4d0/s320/Screenshot+2021-04-27+11.51.19+AM.png" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On Sunday I watched </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minar</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i with Doug and Johanna. This movie would have delighted my Mom. We only went to the movie theatre a few times when I was a kid in the mid-80s (the era of Farm Aid) and it seemed to me that I watched a lot of heartbreaking farm stories. <a href="https://moxydoxy.blogspot.com/2020/04/returning-to-bountiful-sermon-preached.html">(This is my favourite).</a></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-9f56ea4f-7fff-ed8d-1d0f-8f8d046b6ede"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minari follows a young Korean family that is trying to make a life for themselves on a 50 acre farm in Arkansas. Some aspects of the story are universal to the genre: the perils of drought and inclement weather, the untrustworthy nature of city people, tenacity, health concerns, the strain on marriages, and the isolation. Other aspects are more particular: the challenges of crossing-cultures and generations, the unique relationship between the Grandmother and the youngest child, and the unique friendship between the Father and his strange Pentecostal neighbour. Again, and again, the movie, eschews easy stereotypes allowing each character--even the ones that only flit on the stage briefly--their own complications.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I really loved the movie. There were bits that especially resonated with my own history: the Sunday School bus, the intrigue of going to a friend’s house where the rules are much more lax, and just the general look and feel of a rural community in the early 80s. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found myself wishing that it had won more awards. I love Frances McDormand, but Nomadland and the way its storytelling floated detached from material conditions--the loss of industrial jobs and the way that precarious employment atomizes people and destroys selves and communities--left me cold. (It isn’t surprising that the director has a Marvel movie lined up).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Those 80s farm movies my Mom loved were very much stories told in the shadow of Reagan. These movies fit well with stories about coal miners and mill works. Artists were trying to understand something that was being lost, perhaps the dignity of work....</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minari reminds us that work must connect us to place, to family, to weird communities and friends. Nomadland is also a story about resilience and work, but it makes resilience a characteristic of the individual, another way of saying rugged individualism. In this way it is the perfect parable of our neo-liberal moment. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minari reminds us that resilience requires roots, connection, and buttresses. We need one another to be resilient. We need other people to be more than passing shows on our road of life. We need other people to confuse us and complicate our lives. We need our roots to grow twisting together--wonderful like Minari! </span></p><div><span><br /></span></div><br /><br /></span>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-2476437027031985282020-12-18T01:24:00.012-08:002023-05-31T19:42:32.129-07:00An open love letter<p> Doug,</p><p>You wrote such a beautiful love letter. Thank you! I have been wanting to respond for quite some time. What has delayed me? Well, I do have a particular gift of knowing when I am out-matched-- "know when to fold em!" </p><p> I can't possibly write as beautiful of a love letter to you as you have written to me, but I will do my best to speak earnestly and straightforwardly. </p><p>I became a bit too obsessed with the Holocaust when I was an adolescent. In particular with the question: "What would I have done if I lived in Nazi Germany and a Jewish family asked for my help?" I read the Hiding Place several times. In that intense time of faith discovery the question: "am I brave?" loomed large. .. this became a kind of test question for me regarding the authenticity of my own faith... what would I do? </p><p>I worried/worry that I would not have been brave.</p><p>I do not have those doubts about you, my love.</p><p>In the last year I have failed to defend you as vocally as you would have liked, but in a critical moment that should have made a world of difference this is what I said: "I have no doubt what Doug would have done if he had lived during Nazism in Germany. He is the best person I know." </p><p>What more can one say than that? </p><p>You know that I also think that you are a royal pain in the ass. We have disagreed vehemently about tactics and strategy since last October, but I don't think you ever wanted to be married to a "YES woMAN." Sure....I know it is difficult to be married to one of those Muppet hecklers, but I also think you have the grace to realize that a bit of a heckler is precisely what you need! -- A bit of a ballast against your cocksured-ness. I know this year has winded you. </p><p>I also know that you are the more gentle of the two of us. </p><p>I know it feels like your capacity to sit so patiently at a bedside, or write such a thoughtful eulogy, or make the impossible possible for a heartbroken Mother, or help a newcomer family secure a home or a sense of calling has been forgotten, but I remember. </p><p>And also God....</p><p><br /></p><p>Nothing is lost to the heart of God,</p><p>nothing is lost for ever;</p><p>God's heart is love,</p><p>and that love will remain,</p><p>holding the world forever.</p><p>No impulse of love,</p><p>no office of care,</p><p>no moment of life in its fullness;</p><p>no beginning too late,</p><p>no ending too soon,</p><p>but is gathered and known in its goodness.</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope you know that you are loved... by me... and with an everlasting love that does not require computation or this-worldly accounting. We have both banked a lot on that being enough, more than enough, more than sufficient. We will see. We will continue to see.</p><p><br /></p><p>With Hesed, </p><p>Your Jo.</p><div><br /></div>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-40921363720088493882020-12-03T10:51:00.007-08:002022-09-28T19:17:18.084-07:00Though Christmas has been a show (12/29/2001)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCKUk1rAUR2JkrSn55pB2n7frkrNJ1O-qYYQi9MAjSfThY_HEj9a-ZOKNeCPd5sgKBERIaYd8rnEVtkmeBE6v-fqBISg4J2REuFGoWpDgjL4z06aX1TNhHpQxVsndLKcl6jC6EvW3PkA/s559/thee+candles.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="559" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCKUk1rAUR2JkrSn55pB2n7frkrNJ1O-qYYQi9MAjSfThY_HEj9a-ZOKNeCPd5sgKBERIaYd8rnEVtkmeBE6v-fqBISg4J2REuFGoWpDgjL4z06aX1TNhHpQxVsndLKcl6jC6EvW3PkA/s320/thee+candles.png" /></a></div><br />Christmas has been a show<p></p><p>Plotted in October. Texts, words edited, the songs </p><p>deliberated. </p><p>Fussing over "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."</p><p><br /></p><p>This year it will have to come--if it comes-- the way that disappointed me once ...</p><p>as a young adult.</p><p> no candlelight services. </p><p>or Oratorios.</p><p><br /></p><p>This world that I have built to inure me </p><p>from that farm falls away.</p><p><br /></p><p>I remember Christ singing "O Come Emmanuel" to me</p><p>in the disappointment of a tabletop tree and illness and a sense of unremitting loneliness. </p><p>But...</p><p>This story turned and glistened differently on another December Eve.</p><p>And so we have lived hope </p><p>and it changes the way we wait. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-42129894739392972682020-11-11T15:23:00.002-08:002020-11-11T16:01:56.961-08:00An Armistice --11/11/2020<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguC8qragXYwLNOjb7_eUR8jbDiHdT3SpcS6czQMOjXlexoXRGQyTvmP3NHhe5YUnu5H_WW8GQQSFJnw63ryJepieLhVLULdKjtZJYvfQd6sWZ8pslURGG-eE8kg6Uz6rd2PrfXuktXmkY/s729/Untitled+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="563" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguC8qragXYwLNOjb7_eUR8jbDiHdT3SpcS6czQMOjXlexoXRGQyTvmP3NHhe5YUnu5H_WW8GQQSFJnw63ryJepieLhVLULdKjtZJYvfQd6sWZ8pslURGG-eE8kg6Uz6rd2PrfXuktXmkY/s320/Untitled+2.png" /></a></div><br /> You danced on the beach on Armistice Day.<p></p><p>There were no kindly sellers of poppies.</p><p>we did not need to justify our lack of red to anyone.</p><p>Your bones and sinew are as fragile as any girls. </p><p>this is true of every little boy.</p><p>your curls, your pointed chin, the way you laugh as an alto.</p><p><br /></p><p>As a young girl, I wanted to be sturdy and strong </p><p>to save things.</p><p> I was not taught that the keeping of the world</p><p>depended on body's destruction. </p><p><br /></p><p>It was my soul that would be be required.</p><p>My soul and the too pointedness of my chin.</p><p><br /></p><p>We can be strong together, dear boy.</p><p>You and I.</p><p>You do not need to be cannon fodder. I do not need </p><p>to bury desire </p><p>God, Mother!</p><p>We can walk together. We can have the same heroines (heroes)!</p><p>We do not have to become scared in order to be brave.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-33316646309605616622020-11-04T11:18:00.013-08:002020-11-04T11:26:22.334-08:00A very present help<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6xaqFrILJQM-ik-4hyphenhyphenDQVueXmJLKtRiSWzk7f7BIAlcrM_C2BP8jerWaxX72QP5hTyqnR2lk5CURQVnJWIqX9Gw_W5dLhjyVG_a1hqlSzAIt_OE__YxlYHF_gsPO-1XfbHFAzavJS2c/s709/present+help.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="709" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6xaqFrILJQM-ik-4hyphenhyphenDQVueXmJLKtRiSWzk7f7BIAlcrM_C2BP8jerWaxX72QP5hTyqnR2lk5CURQVnJWIqX9Gw_W5dLhjyVG_a1hqlSzAIt_OE__YxlYHF_gsPO-1XfbHFAzavJS2c/s320/present+help.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p align="center" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">Do you remember when you could call into a radio station and request a song? When I was a kid I called into the local radio station when I was Sam’s age to request B.B. King’s standard <i>Stand by Me</i> for my Mom. </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stand by Me</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">originated in Gospel music and the 2</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">nd</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">verse of the song is drawn from our Scripture text for this morning Psalm 46.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>If the sky that we look upon </i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>should tumble and fall</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>or the mountains </i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>crumble to the sea</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>I won’t be afraid</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>No, I won’t shed a tear.</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>Just as long as you stand, stand by me</i>. </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">This line seemed to me to be a perfect expression of the kind of trust that a child has in a faithful and loving parent and the sense of security that the presence of a parent can bring despite circumstances.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The 46</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">th</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Psalm has been called the Song of Songs of faith. It is the inspiration for another song, Martin Luther’s magisterial hymn:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Mighty Fortress is our God. </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In this hymn Luther begins with the premise that one of the possible translations of “strength” in the verse: “God is our refuge and our strength” could be defense, or strong tower. To have faith in God means to trust that God is a bulwark never failing.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"> For me, Psalm 46 elicits an immediate physical response of comfort. As soon as I hear the first two verse:</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>God is our refuge and strength </i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>a very present help in trouble</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change </i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>though the mountains shake into the heart of the sea.</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">Something within me loosens; I reflexively lower my shoulders and release my breath. This is more than just my personal response.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">These words find us 3,000 years after they were originally written. Words that have been prayed through plagues, battlefields, prisons, sickness, death. Words that have uttered before in quarantine, in refugee camps, and in exile, recited while hiding in jungles or facing down crematoriums. These words have seen gallows, sinking ships, bread lines and locusts. These words are stronger than our response to them.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">The text promises that God is near-by, proximate, close at hand. It repeats one of the most frequent commands in the Bible: “Do not be afraid!” but</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">in the form of an affirmation. <i>Therefore we will not be afraid.</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">The text does not deny that there are things to be afraid of both in the physical world of nature and in the day-to-day world of people and politics. </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">The earth changes ...</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">The Psalmist tells us to put no trust in the earth</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">or the sod you stand upon. Even the stability of mountains can be shaken...</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">Everything can be rendered as chaotic and tumultuous as the sea.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">Politics and world affairs also threaten to displace, to bring desolation and violence. The text reminds us to not be surprised when we see great nations dissolving before our eyes.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">We are reminded that because of God’s great love we will not be overcome.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">In our translation the text concludes with an invitation: “Be still and know that I am God.” Mystics have pondered what it means to “be still and know that I am God.” I don’t have anything fresh or especially insightful to say about what this text might be saying to us in our own time and in our spaces and places, but I will try to say something here anyway.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">I take the command “to be still” to be an invitation into a very deep and particular form of listening and attention. A form of listening that accepts as fact that God has promised to be “ever-present in trouble.” This is difficult to remember sometimes. I have to catch myself all the time.. It is my first instinct to pray that God will be <b>with</b> people who are facing tough diagnoses or decisions or death.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I do this, I try to stop myself and to take a moment and be still in the knowledge that God is already present.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">God is more concerned, more vexed, and more filled with love and care than I am. When this happens, I try to shift my prayer to: “Let this person be made aware of your loving presence God.”</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">To be still and know that I am God can also be an invitation to deeper insight and reflection.My spiritual director sometimes invites me to imagine Jesus sitting with me in difficult situations. What words of encouragement or comfort might Jesus offer? Maybe Jesus is just their weeping... In tought conversations, I ask Jesus to sit with me and listen for what I cannot hear, to see what I cannot see…</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">To “be still and know” can be a call to allow God to mediate in our experiences with others </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span>Be still and know” can also be a call to be more attentive to how God is working in the world. This is why I think we come to worship each week…. not because God is only or even especially here, but it is a way of tuning our attention to the places and spaces where God might be at work. </span></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">T<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">here is another way of reading think verse of the Psalmist :to be still and know that I am God.” The Psalmist is saying that God has the capacity to say to the tumult of nations and the earth:Stop, desist: BE STILL! God can bring wars and warfare to an end and quell the tempestuous of nature.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">Be still and know that I am God. </span></i></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><i>I will be exalted among the nations.</i></span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Psalmist is making a claim that God is ultimately in control. There has been lots of ink spilled about what it means to say God is in control. Does God so throughly determines everything that happens that humans have no freedom? Does God have so little control over what is happening that He is stuck in the muck of human suffering right along side us?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The middle view in my mind is one that see God—in the words of the Psalmist-- as“ever present” Constantly at work…. Not controlling the acts of humans or nations, but working continually to bring goodness, grace, life, light and truth.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;">And the wonder and the mystery of this is that we can participate with God in the work of bringing life out of every kind of death.</span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This week is filled with lots of anxiety as we await the election. I pray that we can find the deep stillness, confidence, and hope that find in resting in God’s promise to be very present with us in trouble</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-11898661234390209952020-06-26T13:39:00.004-07:002022-09-28T19:17:30.732-07:00The Bend in the Road<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ihyphenhyphenXHi6bes-lIZV-piPa8BSstQfqvPP-FYsotQl32r7fPwSyIpXxgbmVSG4hspkYmHbVTEHaEpDcEIvLVkACMwYEoWb7qVcE0KUTiUM5cwgEsEZgAZ7nLoc2p3hlXuC5ojyvf8CqZY8/s657/Screen+Shot+2020-06-26+at+4.40.23+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="461" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ihyphenhyphenXHi6bes-lIZV-piPa8BSstQfqvPP-FYsotQl32r7fPwSyIpXxgbmVSG4hspkYmHbVTEHaEpDcEIvLVkACMwYEoWb7qVcE0KUTiUM5cwgEsEZgAZ7nLoc2p3hlXuC5ojyvf8CqZY8/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-06-26+at+4.40.23+PM.png" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I recently finished Anne of Green Gables with Sam. We cried together at the death of Matthew Cuthbert. Okay, I cried--copiously enough that my tears ran down Sam's cheeks as well. <div><br /></div><div>There is a chapter right after Matthew's death called "A Bend in the Road." Before Matthew's death Anne's future is clear and bright. She has just won the Avery scholarship and will be attending University. She seems well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer. But then a string of calamities. . . . </div><div><br /></div><div>Matthew's Death</div><div>The bank failure</div><div>Marilla's failing eyesight. </div><div><br /></div><div>It looks for certain that Green Gable will have to be sold and so Anne makes a decision.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anne went to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend--as duty ever is when met frankly.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Anne turns down the scholarship. She will teach school to help earn money for the family and she will stay with Marilla so that they can keep Green Gables. </div><div><br /></div><div>As a pre-teen, I understood this passage somewhat.... Being betwixt and between childhood and adulthood I was equally drawn between going out into the world and staying close to home and understood the loyalty and dedication that would lead Anne to choose the way she chose. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I always struggled with the later books in the Annes Series--after she gets married to Gilbert. It seems that the bright future that Anne dreamed of having was foreclosed upon. There is even a vignette in one of the later books where Anne fears that Gilbert doesn't love her any longer.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't think my mind has changed about those later books, but as an adult I now see the seeds of the later books being planted in this moment. There will be many good, happy and exciting things that happen in Anne's life, but she will never become a writer. In the last decade many details of L.M. Montgomery's life have surfaced--most shockingly that she chose to die and left a suicide note and that she and her husband were both seriously addicted to barbiturates. </div><div><br /></div><div>Knowing this now I can't help but see Montgomery trying to write herself into a more optimistic and hopeful outlook on the world through her beloved character of Anne. Montgomery might not have ultimately succeeded for herself, but she certainly helped countless other people. </div><div><br /></div><div>Today I find inspiration in the last paragraph of the book:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that the flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspirations and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And there was always the bend in the road.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>God knows I would like to be on another road, and yet I know God walks this road with me.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-15500206188403845592020-05-24T08:33:00.003-07:002020-05-24T08:34:27.564-07:00Time to Mourn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">1,000 names… 1,000 snippet obituaries. 1% of the dead and it is all only beginning.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">The front page of the NY Times this morning was a profound piece of public worship. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">In Madeline L’Engles time quintet the capacity to adequately name someone becomes shorthand for love. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">The final act of violence is forgetting. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Every single one of these deaths matter. If the 92 year old man in the LTC facility was stabbed by a robber or died from the blast of a terrorist bomb. We would remember. We would not shrug our collective shoulders and say “well, he was going to die soon anyways.” We would want justice done. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">How do we even begin to mourn?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">This morning lawnmowers buzz around my neighborhood. My sister had to ask the groundskeepers to stop mowing when my Dad lay dying in his hospice bed. My mind returns to both the pain and the holiness of those last moments. The healing that would never have come if we couldn’t have gathered at his bedside.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">How dow we begin to mourn our incapacity to mourn? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">The spiritual crises that yawns before us is more than just navigating our incapacity to worship together. The spiritual crises is how to we protect ourselves from becoming inured to our neighbor’s suffering as the astonishing becomes normal….. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">If I was in charge of a belfry then I think I would be ringing it daily for everyone that dies in my town. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Since I don’t--- I would challenge you to meditate and pray with the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/reader-center/coronavirus-new-york-times-front-page.html"> NY Times this morning</a>. </span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-28951004884883404582020-05-21T04:39:00.003-07:002020-05-21T12:56:40.962-07:00Ascension - Pentecost<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6YRSu1T6Twjcvm54objydnzmEwF_ppcjiLybNdtay9LppQmrcHndwf3aBqNMRHTc2JxF13RjimPnSJIz45TkBO9uPCvZhjA2o-mvWtMaN2AVUmJWSEmwMo-xhunqu4W8NJpl-WLww6oU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-05-21+at+7.38.20+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="420" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6YRSu1T6Twjcvm54objydnzmEwF_ppcjiLybNdtay9LppQmrcHndwf3aBqNMRHTc2JxF13RjimPnSJIz45TkBO9uPCvZhjA2o-mvWtMaN2AVUmJWSEmwMo-xhunqu4W8NJpl-WLww6oU/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-05-21+at+7.38.20+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">Jesus isn’t localized in one place. This seems to be the message of the ascension in nutshell. Jesus ascended to heaven so that he can be present everywhere. This feels like a good message for our current moment. You don’t have to go to any particular building to be near to Jesus. There are other ways to experience true communion. Nadia Bolz Weber recently expressed this when she writes:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;"><i>I do not know when we can gather together again in worship, Lord.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;"><i>So, for now I just ask that:</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>When I sing along in my kitchen to each song on Stevie Wonder’s </i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><u><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Songs-Key-Life-Stevie-Wonder/dp/B00004SZWD">Songs in The Key of Life</a> </u></i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>Album, that it be counted as praise. (Happy 70</i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><sup><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>th</i></span></span></sup></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i> Birthday, SW!)</i></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that when I read the news and my heart tightens in my chest, </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as a Kyrie.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that when my eyes brighten in a smile behind my mask as I thank the cashier </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as passing the peace.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that when I water my plants and wash my dishes and take a shower </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as remembering my baptism.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that when the tears come and my shoulders shake and my breathing falters, </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as prayer.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that when I stumble upon a </i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i><u><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/style/self-care/tabitha-brown-vegan-tiktok.html">Tabitha Brown</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Blackkout__/status/1250953598470586369?s=20">video</a> </u></i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>and hear her grace and love of you </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as a hearing a homily.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><i>And that as I sit at that table in my apartment, and eat one more homemade meal, slowly, joyfully, with nothing else demanding my time or attention, </i></span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">may it be counted as communion.</span></span></span></em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "spectral" , serif;"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Amen.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">That said: the ascension also seems to be about absence and hiddenness. If I were one of Jesus’ early followers I would not want to trade his earthy presence for the same type of ephemeral and spiritual presence that I experience now in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. My longing for my friend would be palpable: to touch, to hear, to walk with in companionable silence. Indeed, it feels like for as long as I can remember I have been seeking out intimacy with a living Lord. I can’t say that I haven’t found it, but I would say that I cannot hold on to this feeling. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">This is the longest that I have been away from church in my whole adult life. When I was in Jr High I had an extended time of not attending, but, if anything, I was even more God-haunted. It was a powerful time in my life because I gave up on a vision of faith that was killing me. I grew up attending church alone and absorbing by osmosis a holiness theology that left me feeling like I could lose my salvation at any moment. The fear was tearing me apart and I needed to get away from it for awhile. At summer camp and on the Christian radio station I started to find other ways to think about the nature of salvation and God grace. I am wondering this morning—if little by little, imperceptibly, I haven’t slunk back towards this hyper-Arminianism of my childhood. In any event, I am feeling the same burden—the same existential dread about every decision—maybe I am going to mess this up, maybe I am doing this wrong. Perhaps, it is time—once again—to re-assess some things. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">The church embodies Jesus, but complexly. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">I know it is tearing many of us up to be away from our communal assembling, but perhaps there can be spiritual benefit from this time spent away. The Church is Christ’s body on earth, but not in a simple way – this is a complicated piece of theological sociology. We are the hands that serve, but we can also be the hands that hurt. We can be the voice the comforts, but we can also be the voice that castigates. We can be the eyes that look on the world with compassion, but we can also be the eyes that look at the world with scorn. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">It was within Christ’s absent presence that the church arose on Pentecost. In that mystery. In the blank space left by the embodied Lord ascended and snatched up to heaven....It was into a space of tangible longing and lack that the Spirit moved into -- like a rush of wind, like a mighty fire. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 14pt;">May this also be true for us. </span></span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-78668146762805893122020-05-08T05:18:00.000-07:002020-05-08T06:21:50.772-07:00#Ahmaud Arbery: The complicity of Saul<span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Acts 7:58)</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">The lectionary text for this week recounts the stoning of Stephen. There is a quote attributed to Karl Barth which is mostly apocryphal—<a href="https://dguretzki.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/on-barth-the-bible-and-newspapers/">“Preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.</a>” This morning I sit with two tabs open the <i>Revised Common Lectionary </i>and <i>Twitter. </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> I read the following tweet referencing the brutal murder of </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-arrest.html" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Ahmaud Arbery:</a><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> “Black motherhood is praying everyday that my child does not be come a hashtag.” </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8f1CNujZEOdpPi6s8O18AdiUhq4rpx3-Gjr5ZkjcPkpRiFGXyJsBYnUo6CLlvl7KoXvb0VJvw7BQ7aQ-sWzaqNkjRC9aWRtFmeYWcWLNGWygr7ebL4ecUdMxcXBqHtfmZvwGYzBdXvc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-05-08+at+7.37.26+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="447" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8f1CNujZEOdpPi6s8O18AdiUhq4rpx3-Gjr5ZkjcPkpRiFGXyJsBYnUo6CLlvl7KoXvb0VJvw7BQ7aQ-sWzaqNkjRC9aWRtFmeYWcWLNGWygr7ebL4ecUdMxcXBqHtfmZvwGYzBdXvc/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-05-08+at+7.37.26+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">This never-ending loss of life that is symbolized by the sign of the hashtag is devastating.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">In Acts </span><span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Stephen’s martyrdom echoes the crucifixion of Jesus. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">Both the lynching tree and the vigilantes bullet stand in the shadow of the cross and replicate the mob violence of public stoning. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">This morning the figure of Saul sticks out to me—Saul complicit without throwing a stone . </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">We know that Saul is more than just complicit in his silence. He looks on with silent approval. He thinks the stoning is necessary to maintain the sanctity of law. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><i>What to say? </i>I do not want to be made complicit in my silence. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> I want people who I love to stop allowing murderers to lay coats down at their feet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I want them to stop saying “let’s wait and see.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I want people I love to stop defending these lynchings and stonings with defense of law and order.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">There aren’t two sides!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t want to hear about the difficulties of policing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t want to hear any more shitty arguments about the right to defend one’s domicile or to stand your ground. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t want to hear about the lawlessness or “violence” of peaceful protests.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t want to hear character assassinations of unarmed victims.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">And most of all I don’t want to be made into a Saul myself!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">Abraham Joshua Heschel summarize the prophets message: in our society not everyone is guilty, but everyone <i>is </i>responsible.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">I want these killers to stop laying their coats down at the feet of my white womanhood. </span></span><br />
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-22019666622192207502020-05-07T06:43:00.001-07:002020-05-07T06:43:17.049-07:00I believe nurses!<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #cccccc;">I believe Doctors and Nurses! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Those are the people who are saying that the covid-19 is a serious threat to public safety.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">….But let’s focus on nurses for a moment!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I have many, many, many Facebook friends who are nurses and to a person they are all saying the same thing: stay home and keep the social distancing protocols. You do not want to expose your family or yourself to get this disease.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">So, why aren’t we believing them!? Why are we believing Republican lawmakers? A president who is a habitual liar or random people on youtube making conspiracy videos?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Almost every nurse I have ever known personally has been an absolutely exemplary person. They are gentle but don’t try any bullcrap with them. They are smart and able to explain complex issues simply and clearly. They are astonishingly competent. They can crack jokes about the most difficult (and disgusting stuff) and yet never lose their compassion.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I believe Nurses!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I can’t think of a class of people that I trust more.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">(The only group of people that comes close is elementary school teachers and we have been belittling them for the last 20 years.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Seriously, before you hit send on your plandemic video, ask a nurse what they think about this disease?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Although they might be too busy protecting people and saving lives to return your message.</span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-50660077904548841622020-05-06T06:50:00.002-07:002020-05-06T06:54:16.710-07:00Image of God ...... or when people become "Strawmen"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We should always avoid making "Straw Men" arguments. We should work hard not to reduce our opponent's arguments to absurdities; I will go one step further-- whenever possible we should imagine the best version of our opponent's argument and contend with this version instead of what the person has actually said. That said: sometimes people make absurdly stupid arguments. For instance, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/496086-gop-ohio-state-lawmaker-refuses-to-wear-face-mask-because-faces-are-the?fbclid=IwAR0-HfmcMuOs-35s8mspK9F-VAFOV3jyH4s_ITAYwngeIiCJkTmnBRUlRsg#.XrHA210HABw.facebook">GOP Ohio state lawmaker Nino Vitale </a>has publicly insisted he won't where a face mask. The reason? He does not want to hide the image of God present in his own countenance. No one should deny that Vitale bears the mark of his Maker, but his comment displays a woeful lack of understanding about Christian teachings around the image of God. In the age of social media such absurdly stupid arguments can function as profound distractions. I am blogging about it aren't I and why? Well, in part because his comments provide an emotionally powerful verification for me. How stupid! All my opponents are kind of stupid. ... <br />
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I am trying my best to stop feeding off such vindication. If I was Vitale's teacher then I think I would start by saying: indeed the image of God can be a basis of thinking about our own inherent worth (although all theologians don't see it this way). For thinkers who focus on the image of God as an affirmation of the inherent worth of every human-beings it is natural to talk about this image in connection with human rights. Yet, it is important to remember that the focus of Christian teachings on the image of God is not individualized--every person is fully, truly, and wholly made in the image of God. The question you should be asking is does your right to "be seen" trump your neighbors right to be safe (particularly your weakest neighbors). </div>
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Yet, we all know what kind of response I would likely get if I posted this in the comment sections of his article. </div>
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A few years back I decided that I would try my best to not argue with people on Facebook. I boldly told Doug that the people on Twitter and in the comment sections of articles do not really exist. ( I meant by this that the mostly anonymous opinions that people screech out in the middle of the night probably don't represent that person's worldview.) </div>
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Yet, the comment section seemed to be a considerable voting bloc in the last election. </div>
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Is it wise to let all of these misguided opinions to remain unchecked? </div>
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I don't know. I do know that I am not that great of a debater. I realized a few years ago that I have a tendency to simplify arguments. I am a pontificator and preacher by nature and inclination. I believe firmly with Mr. Rogers that too much in our world is shallow and complex, but that the point of existence is to find truths that are simple and deep. </div>
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I am trying my best to keep saying over and over again the things that I find to be simple, but deep. I also will try my best to take every opportunity afforded me to say them. </div>
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If I had any response to Nino Vitale it would simply--your neighbor's life is as precious as your life! Where a mask. </div>
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If he refused to understand that basic point it wouldn't be because he is stupid.... </div>
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It would be because he doesn't want to understand.... and the solution for that is not more argument.... </div>
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it is conversion. </div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-29839953243366504812020-05-05T07:08:00.003-07:002020-05-05T07:10:20.729-07:00Nature <div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">The Robin is steadily flitting back and forth from its nest. Perhaps, there are babies? I saw my first gosling on Sunday speeding down the overflowing stream between two aggressive parents. Sam and I explore along Laurel Creek somewhat regularly, but on Sunday it was annoying/fun/hopeful to see the teen boy in the video game shirt rather in-adroitly playing in the creek (as if for the first time.) He may or may not have fallen in... Sam and I may or may not have laughed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">This world is delightful: “<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;">A polar vortex this weekend! We might get snow in May! This denizen of the great Northwoods has only experienced snow in May one other time and that was flakes dancing on the wind--there was no accumulation. Oh boy! What about all the people sleeping in tents? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">It is ALL a bit too much. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">This virus that ravages through some bodies ...laying absolute destruction ….and others it lilts through unnoticed. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">Wherever you turn your eyes the world can burn like a transmorgification. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">Nature is not enough. Nature is too much. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">I need the stories that begin with Jesus reading from a scroll announcing good news for the poor. I still need the theological poetry of Paul wherein he names that all creation is groaning awaiting a redemption that can only come when that scroll-reading Jesus becomes all-in-all: Behold a new heavens and a new earth! </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;">And yet, it is still all so beautiful or as Marilyn Robinson writes:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 12pt;"><i>And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.” </i></span></span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-7264211456892207872020-05-04T06:46:00.001-07:002020-05-04T06:55:27.279-07:00Out to sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I watched a video of an Extreme Surfer about five years ago. He caught waves on sandbars in the middle of the ocean and rode them for an exceptionally long-time. He was talking about what he does when he falls in to a wave. In short: nothing. No flailing or struggling. The only thing to do is to relax and let the wave drag him towards the shore. This image has returned to me when I have faced difficult times--my Dad's cancer diagnosis, our previous job search and move to Canada. <br />
Sometimes the situation is so overwhelming that there is nothing one can do but hold one's breath and wait to hit the shore. That takes faith.<br />
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The difficulty though...we aren't necessarily sure we are oriented towards the shore. When people say this time is unprecedented they are saying we might be heading out to sea in ways that we aren't quite able to imagine.<br />
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When I feel "out to sea" I try to control things. I crave decisive action, and yet I have found that at these times decisive action might not necessarily be particularly helpful (too often it is just flailing against the waves and taking in water). <br />
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Another image that comes to my mind is the bank run scene in "It's a Wonderful Life." The people are panicking and seeking out certain action and immediate cash payments. Old Man Potter is poised and ready to snap everything up. George Bailey has the clarity to see that "the people are panicking but Potter isn't" and to implore people to think out of their values and not from their fear. <br />
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What is necessary now was also necessary before covid-19. Our values and morals were made to serve us at precisely such a time as this. This is a time to live deeply into our commitment to the value of each life, to the dignity of working people, to the realization that the economy serves humanity and not vice-versa. <br />
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The Old Man Potters are not losing their heads. Jeff Bezos and other are chopping up every inch of this world that they can get their hands on right now. <br />
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The Bible continually reminds us "Don't be Afraid." This message spoken by Angels, or God, or weary prophets is one of the most significant and persistent divine words. Easier said than done. And yet, thankfully Scripture also reminds us again and again that the opposite of fear is love. Fear drives us to forget what we truly and most deeply value. Fear can lead us to destroy what we are trying so desperately to protect. What does relaxing into the wave look like today? Well, it is not doing nothing. It is doing what is essential. Breathing in the surfer example. Staying open one more day in the case of George Bailey. And for me? <br />
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Remembering what I love.<br />
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What do you love? Love that today. Love it deeply. Love it for itself. Find in that love the courage necessary for today. Just today. <br />
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<br />jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-38825944741355520752020-05-03T07:56:00.001-07:002020-05-04T04:29:26.889-07:00A Mothering God<span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><i>And I praise you for crows calling from treetops<br />The speech of my first village,<br />And for the sparrow’s flash of song<br />Flinging me in an instant<br />The joy of a child who woke<br />Each morning to the freedom<br />Of her mother’s unclouded love<br />And lived in it like a country.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">-Anne Porter</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><i>If by chance I should find myself at risk<br />A-falling from this jagged cliff<br />I look below, and I look above<br />I'm surrounded by your boundless love</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">When I was in high school my Mom and I read the Bridge Over San Luis Rey together. It was when I began to learn again (after a period of Middle School overconfidence) that my Mom was indeed smarter than me. [a much better grammarian as well :)] It was also when I began to realize something that my Mom seemed blind to—that, in the words of Toni Morrison’s Beloved—love can be too thick. Or, to put the idea into theological terms not all sin is privation. That we can do harm to others when we love them idolatrously. And yet, I also began to understand even that error can be undone by the application of more love. Oh, the ironies! If we push deeply into this overabundance and excess and over-acceptance we creep into the territory that Christians call grace--a whole continent that unnerving to explore and yet, also, so easily domesticated.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">My imagination is defiantly governed by a male deity which is mostly okay—I loved and was loved by my Father ...though he had his faults. I suspect that if I allowed myself to deeply imagine a mothering God that it would unsettle most everything. I got a bit of glimpse at what that deity might look like from Amy Laura Hall’s book on Julian of Norwich.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">What would it mean for me to live fully into</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The joy of a child who woke/Each morning to the freedom/Of her mother’s unclouded love/ And lived in it like a country.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I think this might be a fruitful spiritual discipline for me.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This quarantine reminds me most of being a very young child home through the long days of winter with my Mom, stuck in the house with no car, the wild winds howling outside, the fire in the wood stove, drawing pictures at the coffee tables, keeping busy.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">On a more personal note, I have been in a difficult time in my life where Wendell Berry’s line in his poem <a href="http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wendell_berry/poems/130">Do Not be Ashamed is very resonant: Though you have done nothing shameful,/they will want you to be ashamed.</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">It was my mother who continually called me to attend to the herons beginning their evening flights, the vacant lots raising up blue chicory flowers, and tenacity of the dandelions.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">It was my mother’s love that embarrassed me: made me wonder when we read The Bridge over San Luis Rey if her love wasn’t too much, too overwhelming. And yet, in this season of life I need to be confounded and surrounded, above and below, by God’s boundless love. It is the only antidote or as Thorton Wilder wrote the only meaning and the only survival.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">And so I will rest hard into love and I will ask the mothering God to</span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-84053224089769274072020-04-27T05:26:00.003-07:002020-04-27T05:34:11.174-07:00i thank You God for most this amazing <div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; margin-bottom: 0.1in;">
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: 9pt;">Good morning! I have a riot of orange blooms out front interspersed with the daffodils. The dog has felt the vigor in the air and has been anticipating a walk with more fervor than normal (or maybe he really needs to go pee). The past few years I have had a special place in my heart for the peacefulness of early winter and the settling of the earth into the season of Advent. Yet, one of the unexpected gifts that this quarantine has granted is the time necessary to really notice the glories of Spring. Over the past few years, the collection of Spring bulbs in the front planter has been a thing to notice as I backed the car out of the driveway or comment on briefly to my office mates. I didn’t necessarily need the crocuses to bloom or the ducklings to appear. This year--I do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">i thank You God for most this amazing<br />day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees<br />and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything<br />which is natural which is infinite which is yes</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">(i who have died am alive again today,<br />and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth<br />day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay<br />great happening illimitably earth)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">how should tasting touching hearing seeing<br />breathing any—lifted from the no<br />of all nothing—human merely being<br />doubt unimaginable You?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "american typewriter";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">(now the ears of my ears awake and<br />now the eyes of my eyes are opened)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "american typewriter"; font-size: x-small;">-e.e. cummings.</span></div>
jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-54672010587147567832020-04-26T05:48:00.003-07:002020-04-27T05:48:04.870-07:00We need to stop running The news is getting to me. Yesterday, I saw a study from the WHO that stated there is no conclusive evidence that people are immune after an initial infection with covid-19. My Facebook feed is filled with gallows humor about the latest monstrous lie coming out of the White House (that we can use disinfectant on sick people's blood). I have read many long-form articles about the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1919 and, in particular, the virulent resurgence the following Fall and Winter. Then there are the individual posts carping on State governments couched in familiar narratives of government overreach and "fake news."<br />
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I am also noting a thinning of posts about sour bread starters, inventive homeschool strategies, or poems about how the birds are singing again and nature is resting.<br />
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There are lots more people admitting that their kids are restless and unruly, that it is actually impossible to work and homeschool at the same time, and that people miss their grandchildren or grandparents.<br />
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Here in Ontario and in Michigan (where my attention habitually returns) there are indications that some of the social distancing rules will be lifted at the end of May. That is still quite a ways off and we will still be encountering a near future where the summer festivals have been cancelled, where the baseball stadiums are silent, summer camps are offering online offerings, and it is even unclear whether we will be even able to enjoy the beaches or parks.<br />
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What should we do?<br />
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It reminds me a bit of a misadventure I had once when I was in living in London-- I went out for a jog and just as I thought that I was almost finished... I discovered that I was actually incredibly lost. Right away I knew that I needed to stop running-- and it was a good thing that I did because I ended up being lost for three hours in the byzantine maze of post war suburban houses (too early in the morning to ask for directions). <br />
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I don't know what needs to be done right now, but I do know that we all need to stop running ...<br />
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... and maybe be a bit more creative than I was all those years ago in actually finding our collective bearings.<br />
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<br />jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-70963222850433666492020-04-25T08:25:00.004-07:002020-04-25T18:04:30.345-07:00Saving what we love: reflections on Star Wars and Pete Seeger <div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #cccccc;">I, like a goodly percentage of human beings on this planet, love Star Wars. We were living in Chicago when The <i>Force Awakens</i> opened and somehow I—with very little foresight</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); color: #cccccc;"> — </span><span style="color: #cccccc;">scored tickets for the first showing on opening night. I tricked Simeon into thinking we were going Christmas shopping. I remember his forlorn face as we passed our usual movie theatre and as he watched the costumed twenty-somethings boarding the bus. What fun it was to show him the tickets. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I cried actual tears when it was revealed that the hero of the story was a young woman. As they say, representation matters, and that is true even for middle-aged women! I had witnessed many women being brave in films—especially a resilient bravery in gritty places: depression era farms, coal mines, concentration camps, diners, beauty salons. Yet I confess I enjoyed seeing one empowered by the FORCE, in charge of saving the universe, wielding a light saber.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The second film in the new trilogy, <i>The Last Jedi, </i>was even more an homage to women, and not surprisingly this angered some male super-fans. The one character that attracted the most ire was Rose—how dare an Asian woman be a brave and sturdy mechanic and not a willowy and exotic, scantily clad oracle of esoteric wisdom.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This didn’t mean Rose wasn’t wise. Indeed, I believe she was given the most important line in the new trilogy. In a climatic moment she stops Finn from making a desperate kamikaze run against the First Order. When she gets to him she says: “We win not by destroying what we hate, but by saving what we love.” I don’t have any desire to trade in gender essentialism, and yet, this is a lesson I have learned in so many different ways from women that I love. The great and profound social pressure on men in our world is to make themselves into cannon fodder for some great cause and to be willing to throw their bodies onto pikes to destroy what they hate. This instinct persists even when the tools are not militaristic. I think of Woody Guthrie’s guitar that famously was inscribed with the words “this machine kills fascists.” Yes, that is a complicated message—how and in what way does folk music “kill fascists?” There is a lot to consider there.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">And yet the images, the metaphors, the imagination of death and killing is still there. I prefer Pete Seeger’s inscription on his banjo “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">How do we save what we love instead of destroying what we hate? How do we never forget the sacred glimmers of what we love found even in our enemies?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">So, my spiritual discipline today is to write a short list of the things I love. Maybe this is something that you would like to do as well.</span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #cccccc;">Johanna, Simeon, Samuel, Doug, Jesus, Truth, Friendship, Community, Vulnerable Love, Daffodils, Spring, Easter, Advent, Reconciliation, Robins, Old Karl Barth, Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, Ikiru, Curry, a Trip to Bountiful, my in-laws, 10 acres in Buckley Michigan, Church, Dogs that swim, Pussy Willows, Tomato Plants, Spotting a deer in the corner of the field, Words, breakfast, beers, coffee, ducklings, Preaching, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the opening paragraph of Cannery Row, the way it feels to turn a corner and see something new. </span></i><br />
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">As much as possible I will work to protect and save these things. </span></span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-55580043375986709272020-04-24T07:17:00.001-07:002020-04-24T11:54:17.215-07:00Emmaus <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The lectionary text for this coming Sunday is the story of the disciples walking with Jesus on the Emmaus Road. My friend Bryan has helped me to see how this story encapsulates the myriad ways we seek and are found by Jesus within our Christian Communities, the ways that Jesus becomes visible to us ... Discussing together, struggling with Scripture, struggling with recent events, hearing the story, breaking of bread. My friend Dave preached a sermon at NPTS that asked the listener to be curious about what was manifest when Jesus broke the bread, perhaps his wounded hands. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">It is also of course a story about the hiddenness of Christ:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NIV-26008"></a>As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">As soon as the disciples recognize Jesus, Jesus disappears.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The elusiveness of the resurrected Christ makes it hard for me at times to figure out what it means when we Christians confess that we are an Easter people. There is something conceptually simple in “following Jesus” even if it is existentially difficult. Yet, this vision of having Jesus with us, but often hidden, seems more ambiguous and complex. More searingly, Jesus didn’t make an appearance to everyone discussing the strange things that happened in Jerusalem, to every downcast or confused pilgrim on the road.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The story of Jesus appearing to them holds with my own experience: revelation as a kind of peek-a-boo. Look! Jesus is here! Clearly, fully. Look again and poof he is gone.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Today is the third anniversary of my Dad’s death. At times in the weeks and months after his passing his presence with me seemed palpable. I am not meaning to import this into these stories of the post-resurrection appearances as Marilyn Robinson does at the end of her book Housekeeping. There is no Christianity without the reality of the resurrection, or, at least it isn’t a Christianity that I am interested in—there isn’t enough joy to account for the suffering. I don’t believe in any calculations that tell us there is. The people that do these calculations count their own blessing more fully in the ledger than other people’s unmitigated sorrows.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">And yet, Robinson is trying to account for the very existence of longings, longing so universal in our grief, so universal in our reception of the Easter promise .... Might not there be hidden in these longings a promise ? A promise of fulfillment and restitution and restoration. Jesus ever so present in absence....</span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #cccccc;">But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.</span></i></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-65174130726718110312020-04-19T08:06:00.003-07:002020-04-19T08:10:22.242-07:00Staying Power<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">The first sermon that I ever preached was based on today’s Gospel passage from John. I don’t remember much of what I said about this well-worn passage about the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to Thomas. Other and better exegetes have pointed out that Thomas actually demonstrated a great deal of boldness and perseverance. Sacred history has been particularly unkind in giving him the moniker “Doubting Thomas.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">Recently, I realized—with some relief—that I wasn’t undergoing a crises of faith. I thought that I might be. Today, I realize the burden that places on me. A burden to speak like someone with their hopes firmly in place. . . To speak like a person who knows that the powers are formidable and perhaps even unsurmountable, but they are not almighty. . . To speak like someone who knows the powers are bold and brazen, but they are not incapable of being shamed. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">Thomas had witnessed something unbelievably traumatizing. At that point he needed more than to hear a story of the glory of risen Jesus; Thomas needed to see glory apparent in wounds and scars. He needed to see glory apparent in this world that crucifies and devastates. Thomas needed to see that the resurrection was incarnational. That the resurrection has implications for his life on that day. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">The story of Thomas reminds me that even, and maybe especially, when we are trying to be faithful we need to interrogate our doubts: need to be bold in asking for signs, markers, theophanies, thin places where we can see God or hear God’s voice or feel God’s hand upon us. It was the boldness of faith which led Moses to ask to see the backend of God as God passed over and it is the boldness of faith that compelled Thomas to ask to touch those restored wounds. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">Thomas had staying power. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 13pt;">Staying Power</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 10pt;">JEANNE MURRAY WALKER</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: 10pt;">In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">outside to the yard and question the sky,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">longing to have the fight settled, thinking</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">I can't go on like this, and finally I say</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">all right, it is improbable, all right, there</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">is no God. And then as if I'm focusing</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't there</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">that makes the emptiness flare like a forest fire</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">until I have to spend the afternoon dragging</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">the hose to put the smoldering thing out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">Even on an ordinary day when a friend calls,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">tells me they've found melanoma,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">God, I say as my heart turns inside out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">again, which—though they say it doesn't</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">Oh, we have only so many words to think with.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">You don't want to talk, so you pull out</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up</span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;">and a voice you love whispers hello.</span></div>
jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-9648445163241986562020-04-18T05:26:00.004-07:002020-04-18T07:13:50.794-07:00Psalm 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm3IAFjT_gSo1xj9Jh9y4Dqhg9i1ubeQj2Jz713TRJSbhPK16D1KG_mzc89nb7tJKwagft_x2dtgvGeSvUK_NpdWtR4mvx8WfQ0-2rrl4YotM2bNFtcAcgYEhBgcQZzq2c3vz8q4icVQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-04-18+at+8.23.40+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="549" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqm3IAFjT_gSo1xj9Jh9y4Dqhg9i1ubeQj2Jz713TRJSbhPK16D1KG_mzc89nb7tJKwagft_x2dtgvGeSvUK_NpdWtR4mvx8WfQ0-2rrl4YotM2bNFtcAcgYEhBgcQZzq2c3vz8q4icVQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-04-18+at+8.23.40+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">Long enough, God--<br />you've ignored me long enough.<br />I've looked at the back of your head<br />long enough. Long enough<br />I've carried this ton of trouble,<br />lived with a stomach full of pain.<br />Long enough my arrogant enemies<br />have looked down their noses at me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Take a good look at me, God, my God:<br />I want to look life in the eye<br />so no enemy can get the best of me<br />or laugh when I fall on my face.<br />(from Psalm 13, </span></span></span><em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">The Message</span></span></span></em><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">)</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">One summer I worked in the Grand Canyon National Park as a Server and volunteered with Christian Ministries in the National Parks. There was suppose to be a Seminary student assigned to lead our team, but he never showed. The team was very disorganized. One day I was assigned to give “the message” at one of the campgrounds and neither the liturgist or the musician showed up. In a moment of panic, I opened the Bible and because I am terrible at improvisation I </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">f</span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">ound a </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">totally </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">random Psalm and began reading. It was Psalm 13. I was embarrassed. It was a little intense for a campground kumbaya service. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">When I was in Seminary, I was in a seminar with Stanley Hauerwas and someone made the statement: “Christian are not suppose to have enemies.” </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">I readily agreed. </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">It made sense to me as a budding Mennonite, but Hauerwas </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">disagreed adamantly</span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">--you need to </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><i>have </i></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">enemies in order to love them. A few weeks ago, I wrote on how disarming it felt for the book of Lamentations to feel so relevant. It is even more unsettling </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">when we are </span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">able to pray imprecatory Psalms without too much squirming. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">From the cross Jesus prayed “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Last year, I noted in a sermon on the last words of Christ that I found it interesting that Jesus didn’t say: “I forgive you because you do not know what you do.” I pondered whether this isn’t a recognition that forgiveness is a complicated process and not something that we can coerce into existence by our own force of will. It is a grace that God gives and requires the creation of new reality/world between people. Jesus prayed for his enemies. He didn’t pretend he didn’t have them. Jesus asked for mercy for his enemies. He didn’t pretend that what they were doing was excused simply by virtue of the fact that they “didn’t know what they were doing.” </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cccccc; font-size: 9pt;">Intentional sinning is a drop in the ocean of the sinning that we do, and yet we are all responsible for the suppleness of our own hearts and our own receptivity to hearing the truth. So, I will end with what I find most disturbing about these Psalms. As denizens of the richest nations on the Earth, 90% of the world’s population could rightly pray these words about and against us. </span></span></span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-37465904011756541712020-04-16T07:27:00.000-07:002020-04-18T05:38:09.243-07:00Sabbath: Unessential work?<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">It turns out that much of our work has been unessential. Who knew? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">For many, many years Doug and I kept Sabbath together. He wanted to keep Sabbath on Saturday and it was a bone of endless contention. When I was a kid Saturday was for trips to the Woolworth’s. In the 80s in Traverse City, Michigan you could still have lunch at a Woolworth lunch counter on a Saturday. My parents were always a bit overprotective, but we knew all the Woolworth’s staff by their first names and the store was tiny. I could browse with my allowance unattended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">It is where I got my first tube of lipstick (red, if you are curious). </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWAofBgKEissDaN-3KOg6vqmR1B59g7TJiD5lu4vGfGO4KunBsk4cm8b1lNyj3h1mTCecJ4L6mQzVOnlsaCuRSdIzpRsNJxr5JMeXDsBAEzSzb1PgiMy5tvVteNhpe8l9Rn_ZWsxXK6I8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-04-16+at+10.28.42+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="461" data-original-width="612" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWAofBgKEissDaN-3KOg6vqmR1B59g7TJiD5lu4vGfGO4KunBsk4cm8b1lNyj3h1mTCecJ4L6mQzVOnlsaCuRSdIzpRsNJxr5JMeXDsBAEzSzb1PgiMy5tvVteNhpe8l9Rn_ZWsxXK6I8/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-04-16+at+10.28.42+AM.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I don't want to keep Sabbath on Saturday, I like to buy junk and get a hamburger. However, Doug and I both agreed on the importance of the idea of Sabbath. Indeed, I kept Sabbath rigorously on Sunday during my first two years of college and organized my studying schedule accordingly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">I was incredibly driven during college. In hindsight, the study schedule that I kept was ridiculous. I hadn’t been a very great student in high school and I think if I am honest that I likely have a couple learning disabilities. I just went into overdrive trying to compensate for this while I was in college. I was also attending Calvin College, and that whole Calvinist work ethic thing is no joke. This work schedule was manageable when I was keeping Sabbath, but it almost destroyed me when I stopped. I got a horrible, recurrent case of Mono that lasted for almost 9 months. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">I believe in Sabbath.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Yet, it certainly is beginning to feel like the proverbial month of Sundays around here. My typical Sabbath activities: walks, soup-making, novel reading, napping, watching television, knitting, are wearing thin. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">I think part of the reason that I am enjoying this blog so much is that it feels a little like work. In the book of Genesis we learn that labor was cursed in the Fall, like childbirth. In a perfect world both kinds of “labor” would be easier, but labouring itself would still be part of a good creation. We need to be able to find good work during this time of Quarantine, even as we reflect on the fact that our labor is not as essential as we once thought that it was... </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Maybe this is a good time to reflect on the real meaning that we attach to both our work and our rest. </span></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-80479925416466210372020-04-15T07:07:00.000-07:002020-04-24T06:04:45.281-07:00Spiritual, but not religious: A random reflection on John Prine, Candy Land, the Incarnation. <div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">I have sometimes joked that I am religious, but not spiritual. The joke is not original with me. I am sure that I overheard it from one of the theological rockstars in my broader Facebook social circle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">I really love church and church has always loved me back <a href="https://moxydoxy.blogspot.com/2020/04/returning-to-bountiful-sermon-preached.html">(for a more poetic rendering of this basic point read this sermon draft).</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">I also wrote awhile back that I feel like I am at some sort of crossroads.. I will just say that one small comfort is that I don’t feel my faith in Jesus wavering one bit. I do wonder if I might have found myself falling rather headlong into a spiritual, but not religious stage. If it wasn’t for this quarantine, I think I might be finally enjoying Sunday Morning brunch and novel reading. Unfortunately, this quarantine means that even that small rebellion isn’t possible. I confess that I haven’t attended a single Zoom church meeting (so there….I guess). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">Of course, I know that this isn’t sufficient for the long haul. If anything this time of Quarantine is reminding everyone of the importance of the embodied parts of our faith: the feel of others' songs reverberating in our ears, the smooth feeling of the pews, the din that arises when the service is over, the taste of bad church coffee, the touch of paper thin hands of the old and the sticky hands of kids. We need all that. We need all that especially because of who we believe Jesus is and how he did his work and lived his life: water for washing, wine and donkeys, the spray of the sea, rolling seeds between his fingers, scratching his toes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">This embodied life isn’t all beauty. There was also the kiss on the cheek for Jesus and all the pain that unravelled his physical life. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">Yet, Jesus, claimed embodied life again, taking time after he rose from the dead to cook fish for his friends on a beach.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">I think I have set up a false equivalence here, though. I have equated “the physical” with the religious and the religious with what happens in church. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">I have been really deep diving into the music of John Prine the last week. I really like it. Bob Dylan was said to call his songs Midwest, Proustian, mindtrips. I don’t know-- I have just been struck with his decency, hidden, sometimes in the bawdiness. The embrace of the materials of our lives and their surprising goodness. The way that we can make things a little less impossible for each other if notice each other. His songs remind me of my favorite passage in American literature. </span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none; display: inline-block; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none; display: inline-block; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">For the time being, I can’t live out my faith in church or at some Cannery Row (although I can send Doug there). I need to iron it out with the strange materials of computer screens and dried beans and endless games of Candy Land. I need to figure this out in the midst of dog vomit and never ending piles of dishes. I need to try and figure out how to hold on to Jesus and equanimity and love in the midst of cabin fever and the slow drip of an absolutely soul-crushing bureacratic process.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none; display: inline-block; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">And what can I do? Cook breakfast, embrace the material world around and trust that Jesus is here too. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="border: none; display: inline-block; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: 12pt;">(No fish for breakfast, though) </span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6i6rvTePwB6ZWvYWDM-u4aVRtD6ERLLbfOkNz5GUBh3NIDw9bHWKyLG8FfxQDbWsj6QCb-KvWB2x0FUR4cB6zlGBXcP8sFE3FvZHbhyLWJEXdQCQczQrWFifV3CqbLPH2FkaN1T9s2sg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-04-15+at+10.05.15+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="547" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6i6rvTePwB6ZWvYWDM-u4aVRtD6ERLLbfOkNz5GUBh3NIDw9bHWKyLG8FfxQDbWsj6QCb-KvWB2x0FUR4cB6zlGBXcP8sFE3FvZHbhyLWJEXdQCQczQrWFifV3CqbLPH2FkaN1T9s2sg/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-04-15+at+10.05.15+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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jbhhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15185738647922068013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8858424543600838179.post-87292562063682856582020-04-12T03:04:00.002-07:002021-04-04T02:59:54.499-07:00The Resurrecting Duck<div style="line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhgrH_VgkJ-GJGH7AF91bPde5zpTP8FpF74Jtk6xz4nHDneiBumavcJ1Sg0c793ZtWEB36Ol8b0CYZsd1j7MSoUp3NS84AvtNFiOnaAJ7_7nH6rHHNdhJ2k8wJ6sBA-mI_WABsKgcYuHc/s1600/IMG_4976.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhgrH_VgkJ-GJGH7AF91bPde5zpTP8FpF74Jtk6xz4nHDneiBumavcJ1Sg0c793ZtWEB36Ol8b0CYZsd1j7MSoUp3NS84AvtNFiOnaAJ7_7nH6rHHNdhJ2k8wJ6sBA-mI_WABsKgcYuHc/s320/IMG_4976.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #cccccc;">One Spring morning my parents brought home a cardboard box filled with baby ducks, turkeys, and chickens. I was about Sam’s age (8) and I was mesmerized by them. I kept hiding the ducklings in my bathrobe pockets and sneaking them into my bedroom. There were two ducks</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); color: #cccccc;"> —</span><span style="color: #cccccc;">a big white duck who we named Daffy and a mallard we called Cute Quack.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Daffy, possibly because of all those trips to my bedroom, imprinted on me and followed me everywhere I went. Cute Quack followed Daffy. That summer I had two duck companions. This started to become a bit of a problem when school began again in the Fall. The ducks kept trying to get on the school bus with me. I developed a method for handling the problem. I would walk out my front door and begin to walk slowly around the front of the house. When I reached the second corner, I would break out in a dead run. The ducks were usually left in the backyard lost and a bit confused.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">One day the big white duck was struck by a car. My dad buried him in our garden. I was disconsolate and prayed and prayed that my duck would come back to life. The little mallard was clearly as sad as I was and spent the rest of the day fruitlessly searching for Daffy.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">That Saturday we went to the neighboring town for shopping. When we got home a familiar sight met our eyes—a big white duck waddling around the yard with a little mallard in tow.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I was ecstatic. God had answered my prayers! I was so certain that I even started to convince my Mom a little bit.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">She questioned: “John, are you sure the duck was really dead?”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">“There is no chance that the duck that I buried was anything but dead,” my father answered with great certainty.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I checked the grave. The dirt had not been disturbed.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Well, it turned out that a neighbor, upon seeing the dead duck by the side of the road, had brought over a new duck.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">When I was a kid the world of the Bible felt very proximate. It was easy to inhabit a miraculous world where Lazarus rises out of his tomb, prayer could move mountains, and where God might just give me back my dead duck if I prayed hard enough.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The finality of road kill had not yet fully sunk in for me ... as it had for my Dad.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This morning I inhabit a world where the only type of resurrection in which I can habitually believe is metaphorical.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Daffy the duck doesn’t rise from the dead, but a kind neighbor might come on Saturday morning and bring a kid a new duck.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">In the place of a God who undoes death and destruction, I have often relied on a belief in a good community of people who do justice and kindness.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">And we are a resurrection people …</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Through small acts of fidelity we work to make better futures possible for each other.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This isn’t adequate though.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Cute Quack could have told you that. After following the white Duck around for a couple hours he got disenchanted. He wasn’t ultimately fooled by the replacement duck. The next Fall, cute quack found her wings and caught flight.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This past week there was an article in Christianity Today entitled “<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/april-web-only/coronavirus-easter-only-symbol-then-hell-with-it.html">If Easter is only a symbol, Then to hell with it.”</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The author writes:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The truest fact of the universe this Eastertide is not death tolls, emptied sanctuaries, or overcrowded hospitals. The truest fact of the universe is an empty tomb. The Resurrection is the only evidence that love triumphs over death, weakness prevails over strength, and beauty outlives ashes. If Jesus is risen in actual history, with all the palpability of flesh, fingers, bone, and blood, there is hope that our mourning will be comforted and that death will not have the final word.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I am comparatively wealthy. I am anxious this Easter, but not about whether we will have dinner today.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I can settle (mostly) for a metaphorical Easter.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">But what of those...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">whose life is grinding poverty and unremitting pain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Can they settle for a metaphor?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Whose whole lives are circumscribed, </span><span style="color: #cccccc;">mining for metals for our phones?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Can they settle for a metaphor?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Who spend lives covered with pesticides so that we can have cheap strawberries and die young.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Can they settle for a metaphor?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Child soldier hopped up on drugs armed to kill?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Is a metaphorical resurrection enough?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Children who are trafficked for sex and die in lonely places with needles in their arms.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Will metaphor bring meaning to those lonely deaths?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Babies taken by bombs before they have plucked their first flower?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">What hope is there in image of flowers in bulbs and apples in blossoms for them?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Generally speaking, we are people rich enough and connected enough that we can rely on ourselves and our family with a sprinkling of Easter metaphor to get by.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The only shallow graves we are apt to dig our for pet ducks.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Yet, not this Easter.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The shallow graves are being dug in Iran, Italy, and New York City.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">Death stalks more boldly in the usual places</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); color: #cccccc;">—</span><span style="color: #cccccc;">our long term care homes, prisons, homeless shelters</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); color: #cccccc;"> — </span><span style="color: #cccccc;">but death also stalks in grocery store lines and in our church sanctuaries.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">There are some estimating that as many as 200,000 Americans could be dead by the beginning of May.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">We do not need the Jesus of metaphorical Easter ducks this year!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">We desperately need the risen Christ the harbinger of a new world.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">For God’s sake: <i><a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/seven-stanzas-at-easter-john-updike/">Let us not mock God with metaphor,/ Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,/Making of the event a parable, a/sign painted in the faded/Credulity of earlier ages:/ Let us walk through the door.</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This year let us look hard and see that <i><a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/seven-stanzas-at-easter-john-updike/">[t]he stone is rolled back,/ not papier-mache,/Not a stone in a story,/But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of/Time will eclipse for each of us/The wide light of day.</a></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">I hope this year that we learn that we cannot settle for any Easter hope that leaves behind those who suffer meaningless death at the whims of capricious leaders. I hope that this year we learn that we cannot settle for any Easter hope that leaves behind those who die alone.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">This could become us. It always could have become us.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">It is 5:57 on Easter Sunday, 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;">The only hope in this world lies here:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><i>Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.</i></span></div>
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