Being a Human

 Yesterday, one of my Philosophy professors lectured about being human - about how a bird knows how to just be a bird and a dog just a dog, but we are not nearly as good at being just a human because we can reason. It's the reasoning that puts a distance between the borders of our skin and the rest of the world, that draws a line around us and says: This Is Me. And because we are so aware of ourselves, that awareness interferes with our just being what we are. The same reason that makes us more than animals also makes us less somehow. It might be that the most successful humans are the ones who leave at least some of their reason untapped, trailing down behind them like a thread hanging from the bottom of their pant leg, forgotten, unaware, not missed.

It is a lie this reason, this awareness. It tells me there is more, something shining and bright hot, that feels like a spirit, and that this is what makes us most human beyond the flesh and blood we share with animals. Maybe it's not completely a lie - maybe it's partly true, but only partly because this bright center is also what makes me unhappy because it is always just out of reach. 

The leaves are coming down. Yesterday I kicked through a yellow pile of them lying next to a curb on the way to walking to the edge of a big lake whose border is so far away that it lies beyond the visible horizon. The leaves may mean that another year of growing things is dying, but they just might mean that dying things can be beautiful. Or they just might be lovely leaves.

The Earth is Full of Gods

 

The earth is full of gods.

 

Water folds upon itself, always in motion.

Gentle hands push one ripple upon another

And urge fish to break through melting glass.

 

Distant mouths blow clouds into layered piles,

Painting quiet blue beside stern gray,

Shaping sky into banner, promise, and mobile roof.

 

Living things all around expel in rhythm –

Warm whisper to fierce assault.

Farflung lungs exhale.

Rain drops tears.

Storms vent anger.

Stars glance beneath lowered lashes.

 

It’s all motion.

 

Fish glide.

Elephants rumble.

Bears lope.

Men stride.

 

There the mourning doves signal a new day

And I track fresh light against a far shore.

Leaving no traces of wind, a mighty hand turns our earth towards its sun.

 

The earth is full of gods who have not yet seen fit to withdraw their favor.

Though I have taken a million before, every step is unlike another other.

Each day’s secrets reveal themselves as benevolent fingers open one by one.

 

A day will come when I will not open these eyes,

But this isn’t the day.

The earth is full of gods

And they are kind.

Why We Go To Church

 

The following is an edited version of a sermon given at the First Congregational Church of Rochester, July 30, 2023.

Why Do We Go To Church?

I got the idea for this message's subject from a friend, Mary, while we were sitting in the local coffee shop. "You know what I want to hear a sermon about? she challenged. "Why We Go To Church". That was a fine subject, I thought, so I did a little research. 

Everybody doesn’t go to church. Half of Americans don’t go to church even once a month. Interestingly enough, though, a lot of people who stay at home on Sunday mornings actually believe in God. Barna research says that ¾ of unchurched people own a bible, 2 of 3 say they are spiritual.

So, some folks who believe in God go to church and some stay home and we still have to answer Mary’s question. Why do we….the ones in church this morning….go to church? I thought I knew why I did, but needed to see what other folks had to say, so I asked them.

ANSWERS

When I was a very young Christian, this is what I was told: We go to get fed by the Word. That sounded right at first. Another answer was that we go to be encouraged or corrected in faith matters. — also sounded right, but these days, when I'm a little farther down the faith road, it seemed a little too pat and didn’t get to the root of the matter.

A surprising number of the people I asked said they go because they’re supposed to or because they’ve always done it. That's also true, but also falling short of a real motivating reason.

So I kept asking. As it turned out, a lot of the people I asked had answers like these;

We go for the fellowship of people who think like we do.

I go because I need a positive influence in my life, because it makes me feel good, because the people are nice, because I’m accepted as who I am.

I feel closer to God when I go to church, in a small church around people who are like me, who have God in their lives.

Church is the pillar that holds the rest of my life together. It is not a foundation for my faith, but self-preservation. I need it.

Now I was getting somewhere.

This last group of people all thought it had something to do with supporting and being supported, with sharing and understanding. That made sense.

We sometimes refer to the church as the house of God and Ps 84 says that one day in God’s courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, but Jesus said that God doesn’t live in this or any building. God lives primarily in us. So maybe we come here because even though there is enough God in every believer, when two or three are gathered He isn’t just in us individually, He’s in us corporately, and when we’re together, we are enabled to do something new in His name. I liked that and thought it was leading me in a significant direction.

It does feel good and right to spend intentional time with people who think like we do, who believe the same way, and with whom we can build and work and contribute. It makes us feel safe. It makes us feel effective. We belong. But there are also dangers that come with doing that – the unintended consequences of hanging out intentionally and regularly with people we love and who think like we do.

DANGERS

Danger #1: It can lead to self-satisfaction and complacency. When everyone around us agrees with us, we tend to think we’re right.

Danger #2: It resists change and change is necessary. Warm fuzzies don’t usually come with change. We want to do what we’ve always done, but we are an ever-changing group gathered around an eternal gospel and it’s only the gospel that doesn’t change.

Danger #3: It can make it hard to fold in the new people God brings us, people who will necessarily upset our familiar apple cart, or at least rearrange it.

Don’t think that can happen here? It happened in the good and loving church that helped me to my first intimacy with God. And it happened slowly, so slowly that we hardly noticed. In the end, the devastation was so complete that it broke some of our hearts. For others, it broke their faith. And I learned something in the process. I learned that any church can lose its way, but there are some warnings signs for churches that start to stray.

1)    One warning sign is treating church like a club– Clubs are by definition exclusive and we don’t get to exclude anyone because Jesus didn’t. We have to take great care that whatever membership we establish in a church doesn’t artificially lift up members simply for the reason that they belong. We are to be set apart for God, but we are not to set ourselves apart from our fellow men by pride in ourselves as being members of this church or Congregationalists or Protestants. Those are man’s separations, not God’s.

2)    Another is thinking of church as a theatrical display to be watched. Our times together are not to be observed but a common prayer to be participated in. We are here to be together, to raise one voice to God, to be more together than we can be alone. It doesn’t matter how eloquent we are or how good our singing voices sound. We gather to give our best to God, whatever it is, and not to the ears of other men, even our own parishioners.

3)    Another is thinking of church as a religious jamboree designed to make us feel good. Church is a privileged encounter with Christ. With or without bread and wine, it is supposed to be an intense communion. It’s like any time we get together with someone we care about. We talk and eat. Orderly but not by rote. Organized but not automatic. An outpouring of love from all sides. God speaks to us. We respond.

4)    There is also danger in thinking of church in terms of an institution or a denominational affiliation. The giveaway is saying "I am a…". Those are the creation of men, not God. God’s church is a movement of believers where people share collectively and apply what God has given them. Locally, we are a very small part in a worldwide machine that Jesus set in motion to encourage people to holiness – different but not better, faithful in fellowship only to Him who gave His life for us all.

We love our church and we love each other. It’s one of the reasons we show up Sunday after Sunday, but we have to be aware of the bear traps, because when we have the courage to declare ourselves to the world as a group gathered for the specific purpose of honoring the creator of the universe, bear traps come with the territory. Labeling ourselves a church tells the world we are different. It wasn’t always that way.

HOW WE GOT HERE – HISTORY

For the first 1500 years after Christ, everybody in western Europe was Catholic. The word Catholic means universal because it was. Nobody was anything else. The sacred was part of everyday life and everybody shared in it together. During the Reformation, common life began to be separated from faith life because, for the first time, Christians had choices.  Reformers expected at first that they would fix what they thought was wrong with the Catholic church and go forward united in belief and practice, but that didn’t happen. The Reformation created division not only from a corrupt Catholic church but from other protestant denominations to the point that competing denominations went to war. Things got so bad that Reformers could see no way to stop the bloody conflict other than to worship separately in order to govern corporately. This is the origin of the separation between church and state and ultimately, between church and every other aspect of life, but it worked. The new protestant denominations that resulted from the Reformation eventually stopped killing each other and figured out how to live socially side by side, but only by coming to terms with an institutionalized separation between sacred and secular that persists today and continues to widen so that God is disconnected more and more from common society.

So, In the 1500s or 1600s, religion and politics parted ways and here we are, 500 years later, dealing with the aftermath. It’s easy to forget that one of the only places left where we can combine our faith and community lives is in the church. Now, the church as we know it has become the only place where the sacred and the secular can come together again. Church is the place we come specifically to learn from God and also learn how to live those lessons outside the church. This is where our feeling of community comes from. This is why it feels so special, because it is.

 The church is the only place we can teach, exhort, encourage, and advise one another regarding how to live our faith in common ways in the world. We have to gather to do this because there is nowhere else to go. The divorce between community and faith life is virtually complete. 

This is the legacy of the Reformation:

1)    Religion changed from a way of common life to simply ones’ own choice and opinion regarding God, beliefs, devotion, and worship. We call this religious freedom but it has become at the same time religious confusion and detachment. Religion became intellectual rather than visceral, a mind activity rather than a heart one.

2)    We now have the right to our own religious anything, subject to our own rules and opinions and we can change our mind at any time for any reason to the point of absurdity. One of my college classmates had his drivers' license picture taken with a colandar on his head because he convinced the DMV that is was part of his religion. The prank started as a test and ended up an example of the scrambled religious world we live in. No civil law reins us in. Church has become about self – our decision to believe. Our decision to join. Something that started as very public became something private.

3)    Religion has been demoted to just another pastime to be taken up or put down, a kind of hobby like fishing or painting rather than what it was intended to be – the most important way we inform, educate, and guide our lives together. It may not be a good thing for faith to be dictated by the state, but it is also not a good thing for faith to be parted from the fabric of our lives altogether.

4)    We are now a secular, not a religion-based society – not a religious world. Not anymore. There is a kind of strength and growth in learning how to agree to disagree but it does not bring with it a clear way forward. As a result, our common society feels lost.

God, however, is still working. The same confusion that we inherited from the reformers puts the church in a unique position. It makes churches stand out. It gives church special status and visibility. And most important, it makes the church a potential haven for the sacred. The church, of all the places we can choose in this world, can be the one place we remember and act out something better.

We Can be a Haven for the Sacred in This Secular World

This is how it’s done – this is what the church does that helps us fulfill God’s intent for us as the bride of Christ:

We share bread and wine in a banquet that’s happened for hundreds of years, and will happen into eternity. God feeds us, we feed one another, and become one people in Him. We don’t just remember – we participate. This is the communion He made specifically for us and it is, like every other behavior He specified, the best of what we can know in this world.

We pray together, not because we’re eloquent, but because we’re needy. We state our faith together. We sing not because we’re good singers but because words sometimes just aren’t enough to express the glory we find in God. We come together to learn how to make all the parts of our life work together again – the sacred and the secular – and we do that because we understand that nothing is really secular if we do it right. Everything belongs to God and is for God.

We study the Bible together because even though we do it alone and hear God in the silence of our private hearts, He reveals another layer of Himself when we do it together.

We make church a place of conscious and active participation in building up not our own parish customs, but building up the universal kingdom of God. Where two or three are gathered isn’t just His promise to be here in church – it’s a reminder that He is already both here and in the larger world and He wants us to engage with it in His name.

When we do these things, we declare to whom we belong, in church and out, we become the light Christ asked us to be.

 CONCLUSIONS – The Answer

So why do we go to church?

1.    We go to church to learn to live together in spiritual health and holiness. If we depend on ourselves for spiritual understanding, all we get is ourselves. We may get input from God if we’re listening carefully, but we won’t get the benefit of what God has done in anybody else. There is value in learning the layers of meaning and the richness of the Bible, and in understanding church doctrine and history, but we can read the Bible at home and God will speak truth to us. We need each other to discover more.

2.    We go to church to learn to live together in practical union. The head of the church is Christ and we operate only in union in His name. In union. As one, in His one church, but with different views, backgrounds, and opinions. Being patient and grace-filled with one another. We go to church to learn how to apply our faith in the real world, first among the brethren who think like us, then in the world of those who do not.

3.    We go to church to work. Not like we do a job – to build or to achieve or to earn money. Instead, we come to church for its own sake, for the sake of the encounter itself, not to support a building or gather money to pay our pastor or to establish relationships. We do it for love, immediate love for God, like we hug a child or feed the hungry or tend the sick. Church is a corporate declaration that God is the highest possible good and we come to church to show Him in ways beyond those we can do alone. We bring the best of what we have individually and put them together to make more.

4.    We go to church because God’s lessons have to be applied in flesh and blood. The church is at its root messy. We all have to be prepared for messy -  it’s part of the church and what we’re supposed to learn in it – how to get along. That’s why we call it a family.

From the beginning, the church functioned not as a separate, privileged entity, but to show believers how to fold their beliefs into everyday lives. Our primary connection to God remains individual, but our way of working it out has to be communal. After all, we need to learn to share earth because we will undoubtedly share heaven. We may choose our companions in this life, but God will choose them for us in the hereafter. This is why living a Christian life alone isn’t enough. Trying to live a life of faith alone is like learning to play the piano on a cardboard keyboard. You never make a mistake because no real music is produced.

1.    Hebrews 10:24-25: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

2.    Acts 2:42, 46: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer... Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”.

3.    Colossians 3:16: "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts

 We show we are Christians by our love, because when we live and work together in Christ, we make each other better and thereby glorify God. Our personal experience of God is enlarged by what we share together.

Church is the place where the gospel comes alive. The setting may be a living room, a coffee shop, or an intentional building like this one. They can all be churches when they all share two things in common –seeking together the truth of God and the desire to live and love it out in the real world.

And that, Mary, is why, and how, we go to church.

Out of Practice

 

This is my piano yesterday morning. Look closely and you will see it. Dust, and a lot of it. Laying on the keys, black and white, like feathers. It's easy to look at the dust and see a reflection of poor housekeeping, and it may indeed be so, but there's more, I think. What I see when I look at the dust on my piano is something between the failure of good intentions and weakness of discipline.

This is the piano I bought two years ago  because I missed having one. I missed the sound and feel of moving my fingers across the keyboard and listening to the rich tones that resulted. I missed Fur Elise and  Greensleeves and the Moonlight Sonata, all of which I knew once, but have mostly forgotten. The hand exercise would be good for my arthritis and the music good for my soul. But somehow, because I once knew how to play these things, I thought they would come back instantly. I can hear the music in my head. Why wouldn't my fingers remember just as easily? 

But it didn't work that way. It didn't work because I didn't practice. I didn't do the very thing I needed to do to make it happen. 

One would think that, by this time we would have figured out some of this out - some of the basic life truths  regarding good and evil, right and wrong. Oh sure, in theory we have. In theory in the world at large, in the great 'they', or in someone else's life. But I don't like those truths when I have to employ them myself. They're hard. They require discipline and focus. The require more than knowledge, more than good intentions. 

In order to play the piano again, I need to actually pay my dues all over again, like with any other learned behavior. I'm out of practice, and it takes practice to do anything well and, eventually, more easily. That's true of exercise, of good eating habits, of learning, of faith habits, and of loving well, as much as it is true of playing piano. It's true of anything worth knowing or living. 

It will take more than a dust cloth to fix this. It will take action. I should have known that all along.

Life after 70, Podcast with David Tracy

 This is a great place to share my own adventure as well as a few nuggets about living life at 70, thanks to my sweet friend, David Tracy--click here!

or click here

Skin

 There is a kind of self-awareness that Descartes, the French Enlightenment philosopher expressed as "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefore I am." In the philolosophy world, this phrase is called simply the Cogito for short, forms the basis for a whole school of thought called Rationalism, and is one of the few philosophical declarations that persists into common culture.  

It's a springboard for self-examination and self-study wherein one ruminates upon one's own condition and place in the world. Based on a basic understanding each person exists as a discrete human being, separate from all others, it is the beginning of our understanding of what we call personhood now. 

As one adds years, however, the nature of that awareness changes because, well, we change. Life begins by building and growing, but if one lives long enough, eventually evolves into shedding and simplifying.  The skin is perfect mirror for these changes. When we are young, the skin can barely hold all that we are and do. It is fine and smooth and full of young oil. 

Like a balloon, however, we can't possible continue to expand. Long lives accumulate too many experiences, too much knowledge and understanding, for young skin to contain and the strain of it is reflected there. 

Skin

 Satin yields to crepe as taut and plump dissolves into slack folds,

Accomplished adventure looking for release.

What is done is not left behind but carried,

Years less burden than welcome weight.

Gradual deconstruction remarks survival and triumph -

Allows accumulated pressures to fall away,

Disassembling their hidden gathered strength

Rather than preserving dangerous retention in visible beauty

Until skin can no longer contain it

And gives way in frantic cogito,

Imploding like a star. 

Some Raspberries Don't Ripen until after the Frost

 Some raspberries don't ripen until after the frost. It wasn't what they were made to do...raspberries  are meant for hot summer days and long sunshine, when their juice gathers sweet and they turn red day after day in tart waves. Then, it seems like there will always be more. I know better, of course. I know that the days will get short and cold, and that the time for raspberries will pass. But they don't.

Some roses don't bloom until October. When all around them, more predictable buds turn to hips, they refuse to prepare for sleep yet. It doesn't matter that so many around them are ready to store up what energy is left to them and save it for other days. They use everything they have left now to remind the world of beauty. They know it will be a long winter and and they've made their job memory.

Blanketflowers just don't know when to stop. For them, it could still be June, when they first poked strong stems up from sleepy dirt, just then gone warm. All summer, they bloomed thick and sunny and liked it. They must be addicted.

The daisies are probably laughing. In June, they bloomed dense, crowding each other for sunlight in sensational, snowy clumps. Then they stopped, but their leaves stayed green. Now, they give a single gift like a child holding a dandelion to his mother. Here, this is for you. I love you,

I think maple has been listening to them all, having refused to turn proper maple-y red and gold. It concedes only its tips to autumn, telling me that it, like all the others, knows what time it is, but has so loved feeling the sap run and favorable breezes. They are not ready to die.

Me either.

Last Berries

 

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once in July when the sun is high and hot, 

when bees circumnavigate their busy route between blooms, 

leaving me to reach between them for my breakfast -

 and once in September, when dew hangs heavy on their leaves 

and branches don't tolerate bending but, anticipating brittle cold, 

snap when I lift them to peer underneath for the purpling berries hiding there.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when still young and supple, 

confident of many more risings and settings, 

when, exposing their heads to the sky, 

look unafraid toward productive tomorrows, 

full of juice and beauty.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when nearly done, while leave curl dark at their edges,

and their buds are almost spent, 

nudged into fruit that may not have time to ripen.

These branches bend under accumulated weight,

grown from resisting the storms of a full season and 

the weight of small, green berries that will not have time to redden.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

early and late,

young and old, 

carefree and wise,

innocent and full of days.

One life, one season,

producing what they can until one perfect frost cuts them off.

Taste one. These last berries are the sweetest.

That's how I know they are mine. 

Why We Make Love After a Funeral: What to Do With Who We Are after COVID-19

Image credit: Adobe stock

 We live in times unlike even those of us who wear many years have ever known. These last days, we find, take a grim toll on body and spirit. Many died, and many more walk wounded, broken by illness or dread, as though having abandoned hope of ever again living in peace.

We recognize the worst of sufferers by their resolute faces turned toward chaos because there is nowhere else to go. This chaos, the like of which we have never seen before in either scope or magnitude. This chaos, from which we can see little relief or solution ahead. It's a dismal landscape to wander and we feel every sad step of it. This is our post-pandemic world of shared grief, one which will never brag a declaration of victory. We will not have won, but we can survive. 

We Need a Funeral

Deaths are all like that, of course - endings and darkness, and the pains that come with them. What we need is a funeral. We need to lay these sorrows to rest and raise a headstone over them - "Here lies the COVID-19 pandemic. It killed something carefree in us all, but we survived its deceitful malice. We survived." And then, once we have done thrown exultant handfuls of dirt into the grave, raise a toast.

We need do away with dread and panic. Every death leaves survivors wondering how to find a new firm place to stand. It's how surviving is done, and it is always done while grieving. 

Actually, we already know exactly how, having gone to enough funerals during our long years of life to recognize them through song and rhythm, smell and flavor. We know how to preside over the coffin lid's close, over the scattering of ashes. We know how to walk away from the grave and lift faces toward a world still alive.

That's why we make love after a funeral. The love gives loud voice and firm action to the life that remains. It declares that no amount of death can defeat whatever life still holds for the breathing.

And When the Funeral is Over

We will never run out of threatening sorrows. Misfortune constantly lurks, but graveyards do not make nourishing homes. No one residing there thrives. We, the living, bear no fault for turning our backs to the tombs, even as we remember them.

There is no going back. What we've lost is gone forever, but if funerals perform any service at all, they let us leave sorrow and memory where they belong - behind us. They let us remember our living humanity, fully expecting to grin and grow again.

COVID-19 cannot dismantle our humanity unless we let it, unless we make our beds among the dead. If we breathe, we are meant to live, and so rediscover common ground and the joy of rebuilding. Look somebody full in the eye today. They are hurting, too. 

Jackson Harbor, August 26

 

He said last night that every morning, just after dawn, commercial fishermen returned to the harbor here, unloading their catch. Here, where the sun first crests the island’s horizon.

This is Homer’s rose-red dawn whose fingers gather pink ribbons followed by shining gold streaks. These fingers, however, do not caress. They are not gentle. Instead, a chill, stiff breeze blows surrounding trees so that they rush with it. All around, every surface is sodden with dew. Cranes arch graceful necks in the shallows, then gather and fly overhead like black arrows sent to battle. Jets leave distant, silent trails.

One car drives past.

A man walks straight and solitary on the next dock.

The sun has cleared the treetops and casts lines of fire across the water, moving so slowly as to look stationary, but constant enough to leave the horizon increasingly behind.

The earth still turns, this sun declares, full of glory every day, never hiding behind half moons or crescents. This sun has ever been the Lord of Days, but merciful. A gull calls, flies through its halo, and is not burned.

Waves break and froth against a single buoy.

Two fisherman carry coffee and bait in indiscernible white cups, set up chairs next to the dock, and cast hushed lines.

Just down the coast, land narrows to a single rocky point. There is no sand here, only rocks rounded by waves more ambitious than today’s. The lake is loud in this place, wave after wave turning turning themselves over in silver sheen and foam. The bay undulates like a dark serpent playing in new sunshine.

There will be no returning fishing boats today, but rolling waters still rock on the cradle of the earth. The sun still crested the edge of the earth right on time. We are given another day.

Revelation

The world is a whirling place -

Spinning in dizzying, constant motion,

masking with benevolent deceit its gesturing,

attempting to convince with thin perception,

firm feet floating and clear giddy heads.

But it doesn’t always work.

The world cannot help but reveal itself.

It’s the movement, of course.

The coils of a wave,

a dissipation of shadow,

the reeling of stars,

give it away.

Reflection reminds me that 50,000 tides have drawn themselves in and out,

and half as many risings and settings have defined the days of life.

Eight hundred moons have waxed and waned,

and blood flowed through half those to mark the promise of life,

fruit both born and unborn.

Yet, even after all of these,

all the rhythms of this living,

this one heart still fills the world with insistent percussion.

Each day brings its own new-born light,

announcing itself as though the first ever made,

ignoring that millions like it have already gone before

and that I, myself, have witnessed so many of them.

It doesn’t matter, you see.

The turning is relentless.

A million, a thousand, or the first,

they have every one, acknowledged or not,

brought renewed miracle to the world.

Breath, brilliance;

Power, promise;

converge and distill,

unable to deny their source.

They are all the time close,

as a soft breeze stroking with welcome, familiar hands.

This world,

this grace-filled, specific, intentional gift,

opens full-face every new morning,

and all one needs to know it is to raise astonished eyes,

recognizing Joy.

Park Street at Dawn

 

Cool gray.

Clean white.

Muffled, covert blue.

Safe and spare, the house resists heartbreaking human heat, the demands of purple flesh and red blood.

Ice house, clean and clear.

It cannot long hold sway.

Even now, life’s inevitable chaos rises and memories begin to gather in corners.

Flowers poke through between stones.

New books settle on shelves, bringing wild, dangerous thoughts.

Sheets of dancing notes people the piano rack, threatening music.

We all do it.

Hoard the calm, grab up the quiet.

Pull in the drawbridge and pretend that peace is a natural state.

But you see, no saving can come where nothing is out of place.

The narrow way is only a choice when surrounded by unpredictability—orange points of pain—black chasms.

But they have not come yet.

For now, this cool fortress remains, still alive in the slow breaths of hypothermia, holding on, hoping.

We will understand its stranglehold before it’s too late.

God always burns hotter than we bargain.

Even now, the mist evaporates and the drawbridge begins to shudder.

He comes for us.

Palm Sunday

 

Much less a cloaked, handpicked donkey on a dusty road.

In two weeks, the leaves will dry to cracking, tucked behind a picture frame.

Palm Sunday.

Prim.

Spare.

Measured.

Where is the crowd?

Where the sweaty exultation?

Let Him enter the ancient doors,

The King of Glory!

Shout for joy, daughters of Jerusalem!

Instead, this rote crowd shuffles, trudges,

Singing in polite unison,

Missing the slow burn,

The threat of pregnant glory already poised at the temple veil.

Who is this King of Glory?

He is the Lord of Hosts!

Silly palms.

Too little then.

Too little now.

Praying the Mass

Preserve my life and keep me from harm, not  only so that I may enjoy it, but so that I may bear witness to your Godhead.

Teach me your good that I may do it, not to be a good human, but to be an obedient child looking always to you for wisdom.

Forgive my sins and make me white as snow, not only to save me, but to reveal what you have deposited in me for your glory.

Accept my sacrifices, not because they are worthy, but because they are all I have.

Hear my prayers, not because they are beautiful, but because words re the only way I know to describe my love.

Give me a new heart and a new spirit, not only because I need them, but so that I may use them in your service in this life and lay them at your feet in the next.

Have mercy on your church, not for its victories, but for its failures--in vain leadership, in hard-hearted exclusion, in sure, self-centered righteousness. Help the church you commissioned mold itself to your intent.

Help us be content with humility, but not satisfied with partial holiness.

Help us to face and repent of sin, but not assume sanctification outside of your specific influence.

May we always be refreshed at your table, but not forget that not only are all invited, all too are children in your sight.

I hide, safe in the shadow of your wing, at the same time warm in your shared glory.

You are greater than my heart.

Credit: Donatello's Mary Magdalen, Opera Museum, Florence, Italy
 

Elizabeth

 

No one ever reminds us you’d gotten old.

The paintings are too kind--

they’ve smoothed your skin,

covered your silver hair,

draped or forgotten your knobby bones and age spots.

I know how you felt.

Not only the erratic weariness and morning aches,

but the unbidden pants,

the huddling, cold shiver,

the squinting, the pause before each stair.

Small things, each of them,

not debilitating,

only ungentle reminders of what time had done.

Add them all to a great, tussling belly.

Urgent, with a job to do.

Bursting to begin.

While your own flesh all too often remembers its own job is nearly done.

Yes, the paintings are kind.

They ignore it all,

looking at you both with Mary’s eyes, with God’s,

and revel only in your exultation.

Bradford Beach, February 28

 

The clouds draw back and steel-white yields to new gold.

Sand that had solidified into rough concrete starts to crumble back into grains.

Waves form mounting regiments as far out as the horizon and advance.

Suggestions of blue wash below their white foam

And curl onto the beach, disintegrating over hills of gleaming ice they made of their own muted thunder through long, cold months.

New wind blows them in, one that today promises hot sand leaking up radiant between grateful toes

and cool, welcome water on bare, grateful legs.

Today, visitors pull parkas tight against wind that still carries winter’s learned chill,

But the big lake is never quiet.

It won’t hide its constant churn the way smaller ones do,

The way even rivers ice over, acquiescing to winter’s dominion.

Yes, Persephone weeps below and the earth mourns, temporarily subdued, life and motion stolen, but not here.

Here defiant water still moves,

Resisting winter’s seasonal death,

Resilient.

Leading the way to renewal.

Already still-cold water begins to wash away the frozen mounds of its own making.

The earth’s arc veers again back toward the sun.

I stand and watch, not moving, but flying through space,

Remembering that even a long winter can’t stop this dance.

Escape from Mark Zuckerberg

 Plato was a pretty smart guy. 

Most people know that, of course, but most of us don't think often about what he had to say and what it might mean for us 2500 years later. For anybody who has any inclination to make sense of life and the world, Plato has always been one of the places to begin, after all, and his principles of life's essence, his Forms, have plenty to chew on. But Plato liked to tell stories, too, and one of his most well known is his Cave Allegory.

I've included a picture to help you visualize it, and *SPOILER ALERT* also stole the contemporary twist from my Philosophy professor, Agust Magnusson, but it was so good I had to share it. Thank you, sir.

So here's the basic tale: there are these people who have lived in a cave all of their lives and they're chained in there so all they can see is the back wall. Behind them is a big fire and also somebody standing in front of it holding up a bunch of shapes that mimic stuff in the world-birds, animals, that kind of stuff. So what do the chained people see? Shadows. Now, they're shadows of stuff that's real, but they don't know that because they've never seen anything real, only the shadows. And they like them. They're amusing, even beautiful in their way. And, as long as the shadows are around, the cave dwellers are pretty happy. 

But one day, somebody escapes the cave and gets out in the real world. "Whoa," he thinks. "There's a lot of stuff out here--things not only to see, but to feel and taste and hear, too. This world is way cooler than we thought." Now the story doesn't say this, but maybe this guy brings back something to show his friends. Maybe he brings back a rose. And he tells them about the world. And he gives them the rose. But they don't much like it. The rose is too fragile and too dirty and -ouch!- it has thorns. They throw it back at him and turn back to their shadows, content and safe. 

Our escapee turns to face the people holding the shadow shapes that keep his friends amused. He can't figure it out. What's wrong with these people? But the shape holders just smile. They know. Our escapee flees the cave for the last time to encounter the real world, and all the beauty and ugliness it presents and eventually, probably gets eaten or something, but at least he's exulted in the meantime. He's lived.

So the escapee dies, but the cave dwellers are still alive. Kind of.  Yeah, you say, I saw the Matrix too. What's the big deal? Take a look at the picture again. Doesn't it look like a movie theater? Or your gaming setup? Or the place you binge watch 100 episodes of The Office? And who the heck is that holding the light? Are those mouse ears on his head? Is he wearing a tee-shirt with a lower case 'f'? 

Come on. You know who he is. He's anybody who's invested in keeping your head from turning to look around, who creates a world where you lose yourself, one you can't figure out whether you love or hate. It's anybody who sucks you in, steals the irreplaceable moments of your life, and substitutes what's important to them to keep you from thinking about what's important to you. It's Netflix. The NFL.  It's Mark (blanketyblank) Zuckerberg. (Humph) Meta. It's only another word for fake. 

I deleted Facebook from my phone a month ago and everybody's been asking me whether I've had any withdrawal. Nope. Not a moment. All I feel is free. Tired of shadows, I'm out of the cave and in danger, but oh, man, it feels good. 

photo credit: reddit.com

One Thing

 

I'm looking for God. Where should I look? Well, it depends. There are a lot of choices. Jewish. Christian. Catholic. Lutheran. Evangelical. Baptist. 

It's all pretty confusing. Everyone I talk to is pretty sure their flavor is right. I want to make sense of it all, make sense of what God is trying to say to me. So I pick up the Bible. Old Testament. New Testament. King James. The Message. New International. New Revised Standard. New Living. Torah. Greek. Hebrew. Aramaic. Well, that doesn't help much, either. And among the confusion, these keep echoing:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.-Deut 6:4.

There is One God. One Faith, One Baptism. Eph 4: 5-6

I was reading this morning about Ilana Kurshan, a New York expat Jew living in Jerusalem, studying and teaching Torah, the Hebrew Bible. Now, as Midwestern Christians, we think of Jews as truncated Christians, a flawed ungrateful people, constantly forgetting about God's mercies and complaining while they trudged through the desert, chanting meaningless prayers and fingering the silly tassels on their robes. But one thing they do is study the Bible. In their own way, just like we do, trying to understand what it means and how to use ancient texts as guides to modern life.

"I believe," she says, "that Torah is divine. But for me this does not mean that God handed the entire Written and Oral Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Rather, Sinai is the human record of an encounter with God"

This is where I stopped. I stopped reading and heard the echo of what I'd been taught. The Bible is inerrant. Its words are not to be altered, jot or tittle. Its words are our perfect guide to life and decision making. "All scripture is breathed by God"- 2Tim 3:16. Okay, I'll buy that, but which Scripture? The Protestant Bible? The Catholic? The Jewish? (Read it before you turn up your nose. It's pretty amazing)

Kurshan further says, "This record has had to be adapted to later generations, both to changing historical circumstances and to evolving theological understandings" These adaptations are called Midrash in Jewish tradition, commentary and exegis in Christian tradition. She goes on. "In high school, my students had surely learned, as I had, the difference between natural numbers and rational numbers. Natural numbers are integers: 1,2,3, etc. Rational numbers are the decimals in between, including 1.1, 1.12, 1.23378. Both sets are infinite, but only the rational numbers are infinitely dense, meaning there are an infinite number of rational numbers between any two natural numbers. In the Torah, there are in infinite number of midrashim, or reinterpretations, that are possible...Midrash is the creative commentary that reworks and retells the Bible so as to render it ever relevant."

Now, she and I are on the same road, using similar measures and signposts. The Bible as relevant. Yes, please. 

But there is danger up ahead. I mean, how many times can one thing be reinterpreted and still be faithful to the original? How long will it be until the original meaning has been divided out and left behind? God and I, after all, do not think alike. How can I trust either myself or anyone else to stay true to what God intended to say in the first place? After all, critics of the Bible are quick to point out the endless translations and interpretations. Who's right in dealing with God's word, when it's so critical that we deal rightly with it? "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." 2Tim 2:15. Believe me, I'm trying.

So is Kurshan. "The Talmud at the end of Sanhedrin 99a explains that even someone who challenges the divinity of any single verse in the Torah is denied a place in the world to come...There is a fine line, I recognize, between extolling the creative possibilities of midrash and declaring the Torah can say anything we want it to."

So that's it. The Bible needs interpretation if it's to be useful, but that very interpretation can take us far away from what God intended. And we all agree on that. Jew. Christian. Catholic. Protestant. We have one goal. But how to reach it? By looking beyond the word. Looking to God-infinitely loving, perfectly righteous, endlessly holy. That, at least, we can all agree on. 

And, actually, we're dealing with one text. The Old Testament as given to the Jews and its completion in the New Testament. One God. One Word, with the epistles as the first commentators. What about Jesus, you ask?  He's already answered that. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." - Matt 15-17. 

Jesus gave us the example. The Bible is meant for us to use. We are not meant to worship the word. We are meant to worship God. In interpretation, God is our backstop. We cannot go beyond Who He is. 

There is one God. There is one Word. There is one Truth. Our job is not to find what separates us and so elevate ourselves, but what unites us before that one God. To sift together through what He gave us in both word and tradition to find out how to live to honor Him and each other. 

This text was given by God into stumbling human hands. To Moses. To prophets. To apostles. It is a "human record of an encounter with God." And, if we use it right, the encounter continues. 

Lord God, bring me to your the foot of your mountain and let me hear you speak.