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. 

Buds and Fresh Breezes

 

The wind is blowing. Everything around me moves with it, but subtle changes have happened when I wasn't looking. Flowers faded. Nests emptied. Leaves brittled so that now, rather than rustling, they rattle. Summer has, without permission, drifted from what is to what has been, cramming itself into what must be my almost-full bag of  THE PAST. 

It's big, that bag, and getting bigger, full to almost bursting with first my own youth, then my children's, with the grandchildren not far behind. It holds all of our early missteps, dreams, and triumphs. It hides our disappointments and shames, too. Heavy now. Too heavy to carry, but still draggable and by now a familiar companion. 

I realized this morning that the bag of  THE PAST holds not only my youth but all my memories of Dave. That's new. It took a long time for him to climb in there, and took a lot of sad work, too, but there's more. Italy has migrated there, too, taking with it all the spontaneous music and unapologetic beauty of Florence. They've been displaced as memory always is by newer revelations and more recent days, mine accompanied these days by surf and seagulls. 

They just keep coming, the days, insisting on new sunrises and fresh breezes. More days than I'd expected, but I can't help but relish them, trying to store up the feel of them in case they are the last. 

Maybe the full bag is a blessing after all, even while it sometimes feels a burden. Not everyone's bag carries as much, nor are they all so full of so much that was so good. It may be true that summer is waning in more ways than one, but as I look around I find new buds next to almost-spent roses. Life asserting itself. There may even be enough time to see them open.