First Snow 2024

 

Everyone begins in the dark, stumbling, grasping for purchase.

Looking for the way to light. Footsteps to follow.

Hearing hollow echoes, distant owl-sounds,

Emptiness so complete that breezes make the only noise, and

snow muffles even that.

 

Mother-love is not enough, the breath of God that bolsters only infants.

Beauty nestles there, and warm refuge, but no passage.

Giving little revelation when delivered into an urgent, constantly turning world  

both whirling on itself and wheeling through a star-cast space

That forces motion without specifying direction.

 

Show me the way.

 

Ah! A companion!

Reason, logic, formula, rule,

Discernable patterns with stable roots.

Frames. Handholds. Stakes in the ground.

Paths marked by firm signposts that climb clear one on another.

Someone to walk with. Aristotle’s salvation.

 

But that path tends toward a crowd, bending in common direction,

All finding the same solace in coherent method:

Syllogism. Analytics.

Forward circles on itself, becoming backward in helical stasis, patting itself on the back.

Leaving Beauty behind. And Grace. And Good.

The din of agreement going nowhere.

 

Nearby, nearly unnoticed, a cagy Socrates and refined Plato leave their marks.

 Ignoring the crowd, they stalk, leaving reasoned steps behind, to a riverbank. 

They point to where measured feet have no place to land and where only the willingness to flow allows movement.

 

The crowd scatters.

The way forward, effortless and punctuated only by geese rising, laughs in delighted rapids

And the place to rest appears.

All images photographed by the author

Trust Fall

 

I was thinking this morning of something I used to do.

From time to time, usually in the confined space of our galley kitchen, when I was standing casually in front of Dave either cooking or talking or generally doing something else, I would collapse. I'd just let go limp and fall to see whether he could catch me before I reached the floor. 

It was a test of some kind, I guess, because we both knew I had trust issues, like a lot of us do. It's hard to relinquish control, after all. We work so hard to get it and when we do, don't want to let go. After all, who knows what would happen if we actually fell? It's true. 

Of course, we all know that whatever control we think we have is an illusion. We are, in the end, all subject to forces way beyond our control, but who wants to admit that, much less live it? 

But you know what I learned? It's freeing. It feels absolutely fabulous to the point that, even if I actually fell, it wouldn't matter. It would be absolutely worth that one moment of freefall. 

In time, I came to understand that the trust fall thing was just a metaphor for something else. What I really wanted wasn't just that single moment of freedom, but an assurance that there existed somewhere a kind of erasure when the bounds of what divided me from the rest of the created world, even from God Himself, slipped away. 

It was about more than trust.

It was about a momentary union with the infinite, a kind of flight that released me from all the strings I was trying to hold, all the future I was trying to weave, all the security I was trying to purchase with the precious energy of my life. We can't do it, though, and if we live long enough, we realize that. Eventually, what we work so hard building melts away in a single moment beyond our control.

That's why, I think, Jesus told us to build up treasures in heaven. He didn't mean not to live our life, but to live it with what really lasts in mind. Circumstances twist and turn, but the energy we invest in building up God's treasures, the world and people He made, well, that lasts. It shatters the boundaries that separate us not only from each other, but from Him.

I don't intend to erect or fortify one more barrier in this world. I have little time and no constructive energy for it. And, when I remember what it feels like to trust that God really does intend the best for every one of His creatures, I can fall into His arms with ease.

It's reassuring to remember, too, that He reinforced that thought in the last thing I was able to do for Dave while he lived - to catch him, to keep him from falling when he was too weak to stand on his own, and to tell him, "Don't worry. I've got you." He had done it so often for me, never failing to make the catch. Of course, all those catches were illusions, too. In the end, it was God doing the catching every time. 

Photo courtesy of Maestri Gallery

Standing in the Prow of the Ship: A Lesson from FDR

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to describe the porch at his "little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia as being as "high as the prow of a ship." He established Warm Springs not only to bring him a place to rest and rehabilitate in the face of a depression and wartime presidency coupled with the ravages of a twenty-five year detente with polio, but to provide the same for other polio victims. He described it, however, not in terms of a fixed place on earth, but in terms of motion, of vast strength, and of unlimited space. Not the usual frame of reference we expect from someone living with a handicap.

There is a lesson here, and it grows from two aspects.

The first is pretty obvious - FDR was crippled. He had no use of his legs for half of his adult life but before the affliction, he grew up in New York, close to the ocean, and before he became President, served as Secretary of the Navy. He knew well the feel of being on the water - not just a lake or river, but a watery expanse of biblical porportions, with no end in sight from any angle. No landmarks, no obvious road ahead, and no guideposts. Just water in every direction. That boundless view, along with his natural optimism, kept him from focusing on a world collapsing in on itself because of physical disability. Rather than looking inward and seeing his world shrink, he looked out and saw it without restriction. He saw is spreading out on all sides before him, split by the prow of a great ocean liner, steaming ahead into a future he not only welcomed, but helped engineer. 

The second is seeing, if only in retrospect, that FDR's disability could have been the single qualification that made him most uniquely able to guide a floundering country through the 30's and 40's. As a nation, we were faced with a brokenness we'd not known since the Civil War and had no idea what to do next. FDR did, every time he remembered his useless legs. He knew what it took to go on when the future looked hopeless. He knew that handicap and death were not the same thing. He knew that, even the boundless ocean has a shore somewhere, and had already developed the grit needed to hold firm in search of it.

Those of us who are aging have the same choice to make. We may not have polio, but we have other maladies and restrictions to endure. We can let the horizons close in, or we can board our own ship, raise our eyes to the horizon, and welcome each broad sunrise, engaged to the full limits of our ability, aware that storms will come, but so will the rainbow.

We are exactly where we're supposed to be. Every time we are given is intentional - a trust, a gift. Like FDR, we have something to do and the only way to begin is to take whatever step we are able, with or without legs that work.

Death is not the worse that can happen. Missing the life we're given is.

Photo 1: View from QM2 via Facebook group Queen Mary 2 Experiences and Advice

Photo 2: FDR sailing a yacht in 1933, photo courtesy of ebay

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.