Various Bounties

A week from today will be Thanksgiving.  I am so ready for a holiday--and this is my second favorite holiday.  Christmas is my favorite, but Thanksgiving is close behind.  If Thanksgiving had a tradition of sparkly lights, it might take the lead.

Yesterday, we had our annual Thanksgiving potluck at work.  As with almost every potluck, I am amazed at how much food we had.  Our school bought the turkey:  we had a tray of sliced, smoked turkey, and we bought another roasted whole turkey, which our Director of Admissions sliced--she's a pro.

It was a wonderful spread.  The cool thing about a Thanksgiving potluck is that we have plenty to talk about:  what's our favorite food, what are our Thanksgiving traditions, what's our cooking approach.

I began the day by walking our social media coordinator around campus asking people to share what they're grateful for.  She's creating a gratitude video.  By the end of my work day, it felt like a bonus Thanksgiving.

I am grateful to be in a place where we get along well enough to eat together regularly.  We're a big group, but we still fit in a single room, so we can all eat the same meal.  We still have the problem of people who already know each other sitting together, but we know each other well enough that most people are welcome at most tables.

I'm also grateful that I'm continuing with my poem-a-day practice for the month of November.  I'm also doing my visual journaling on a daily basis.  It's a bonus that I didn't expect when I signed up for the class.

Part of my success with a poem-a-day process is that I'm writing more haiku than usual.  Writing haiku always feels a bit like cheating, perhaps because I'm only writing haiku in the sense that I'm following the syllabics for each line. I'm not following the Japanese conventions any further than that.

Still, I find them useful. It's good to think in such compressed form, even though I don't particularly like the haiku I write. I like the process.

I've written before (here and here) about gratitude haiku--a variation on the gratitude journal.  Here's one about yesterday's work:

Gratitude videos
A meal shared with colleagues
Various bounties

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, November 18, 2018:

First Reading: Daniel 12:1-3

First Reading (Semi-cont.): 1 Samuel 1:4-20

Psalm: Psalm 16

Psalm (Semi-cont.): 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Second Reading: Hebrews 10:11-14 [15-18] 19-25

Gospel: Mark 13:1-8

Here we are, back to apocalyptic texts, a rather strange turn just before we launch into the holiday season (both the secular one and the sacred). This week's Gospel is the type of text that many Christians use to support their assertion that we're living in the end times, that the rapture is near.

Keep in mind that the idea of rapture is fairly new; most scholars date it to the middle of the 19th century. But Christians have felt besieged since the beginning, and indeed, at certain times throughout the centuries, they have been severely threatened.

Most scholars believe that the book of Mark was written just after a particularly brutal suppression of a Jewish uprising and just before the destruction of the Temple, a time when the empire of Rome made it increasingly difficult to be an alien part of the empire. The Gospel of Mark is the most apocalyptic Gospel, perhaps because it was written when people really expected the end was near. Indeed, in many ways, the end was near. The whole of chapter 13 of Mark is grim indeed. Perhaps the Gospel writer uses such a chapter to launch into the Passion story, to set the mood.

Or maybe the Gospel writer wants to remind us of the cost of following Jesus. Maybe it's the larger cost of existing in the world. Even if we're lucky enough to be born into a stable time period, to be part of a country with a stable government, if we're conscious, it's hard to escape the conclusion that it could all vanish at any moment. And even if we don't suffer on the grand (genocidal) scale, most of us will endure more loss than our younger selves would have believed could be survived.

Before we sink too deeply into depression, we need to remember that Jesus came to give us Good News. And that Good News is that we have each other, and we have a God who loves us, no matter what. If we devote our lives to that love, then we can survive all sorts of betrayal, loss, and persecution.

It's also important to look at the last part of the last sentence of this week's Gospel: "this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs." Birth-pangs. What is being born exactly?

The most positive spin on this bit is to say that the Kingdom of God is being born. We tend to think of the Kingdom of God as referring to Heaven, but if you read all the references to the Kingdom of God, it appears that Jesus isn't talking about Heaven as we know it. In some places, Jesus seems to talk about the Kingdom as already existing, perhaps as Jesus walking amongst us. In other places, the Kingdom of God will come to earth later, in a kind of purifying, redeeming vision. Yet again, we see references to this process already beginning, both with Christ's efforts and with the efforts of his believers.

Those of us who have had children, or who have had relatives and friends who have had children, know that parents have to go through a fierce process to hold that little baby in their arms. Jesus reminds us that the process towards the Kingdom of God can be equally fierce. Jesus reminds us that we must stay alert and aware, but that we need not feel alarmed.

Looking Back on the First Week of Journaling Class

Here is the drawing that I made on Saturday:

It was the 7th day of my online journaling class, the day when the book we're using asked us to reflect back on the first week. We'd been writing/thinking/drawing a lot about dreams and doors. I began with the image of a road that breaks into 2 paths, one of dreams deferred and one of new dreams.

Later, as I reflected on the image, I realized that if I look at it a different way, it could be the merging of 2 paths, if the traveler was going towards the bottom of the page.

When I created the sketch, I wasn't sure what I would put in the space of the Y of the paths. I thought about some kind of field. I reread the chapter, which encouraged us to think of doors. So, I drew a door like a door I'd drawn earlier in the week:

But the door in Saturday's sketch has a Gothic arch, not a Roman arch. The door in Saturday's sketch has a stained glass window, which the first door I drew did not:

Back to Saturday's sketch. Do you see the winged creatures? I think of them as butterflies. I find the colors in their wings to be regal--it suggests vestments to me. Do I see them as angels? No. But they do suggest robes. In other words, it's churchy, but not angelic.

It's been a good first week of this online journaling class. I've drawn more in the past week than I ever have in a week. And I've been writing lots of poems. I'm very intrigued to see what happens as we go into the various holiday times that will come in the remaining 5 weeks of the course.

Sermon Notes: Bigger Barns and Gratitude

Yesterday at church, we had one worship service followed by a funeral service for a choir member who died unexpectedly 2 weeks ago in a car accident.  A week ago, my pastor asked if I wanted to preach the sermon for the worship service.  I'm almost always interested in doing that, so I said yes.

I had chosen the passage for today.  My pastor envisioned the month of November as a month of preaching about gratitude.  When he wrote to me in October to ask what my favorite Bible passages about gratitude were, I could only come up with pop culture stuff.  I suggested the parable of the man who was so prosperous that he had to build extra barns (Luke 12:13-34).

I suggested that one because it was one of the texts that we used during the Lutheridge retreat about simplifying, so it was in my brain.  I had been thinking about how much stuff I had brought with me to a retreat on simplifying.  I was thinking about my younger self, who just needed the right music on a cassette tape for a road trip.  I have often traveled with just a credit card and a lipstick in my pocket.  I am no longer that woman.

I know that the tie to gratitude isn't immediately apparent in the parable with the man who built the bigger barns only to die the night that it's all done, and he plans to spend time relaxing and enjoying it all.  It works much more obviously for a stewardship Sunday, where we're reminded of how important it is to share.

I took a different approach.  I talked about how many of us have too much stuff.  I talked about all of the books who give us various approaches to getting rid of stuff.  But what do we do when we've gotten rid of all the stuff that doesn't spark joy, and we've still got too much stuff?

It's an interesting needle to thread with this group at church, because I'm not sure we all have too much stuff.  In fact, I know that some of our members have a struggle making ends meet.

In the end, I tied all the discussion of our stuff to gratitude.  With all the time and energy and money that our stuff takes, we may feel resentment, not gratitude.  And we're likely not tending to what's important, our relationship with God and with the ones we love most.

Several people came up to me afterwards and told me how much the message of my sermon spoke to them.  I resisted the urge to quiz them--I'm always intensely interested to know what people actually heard.  Was it what I meant to say?

I do trust the Holy Spirit though, and so I resist the urge to ask further questions.  After all, we had a funeral in the offing--an undergirding of what I hoped would be the lesson of my sermon.

Praying for Peace on Veterans Day

Dawn of another Veteran's Day, cloudy and with heavy rain having just swept through. Before today was Veteran's Day, it was Armistice Day, the day that celebrated the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. In some ways, it's not a hard holiday to celebrate. Any event that restores peace in our time is worth some meditation.

However, those of us who know our history may be chastened by the knowledge of what was to come. The end of World War I planted the seeds that would blossom into World War II. World War I brought carnage on a level never before seen--but World War II would be even worse.

Why is it so hard for humans to remain at peace? There are whole series of books that address this question, so I won't attempt it here. Still, today is a good day to offer extra prayers for sustained peace in our time. World War I and all the other wars of the 20th century offer us vivid examples of the horrible consequences of the lack of peace.

Veteran's Day is also a good day to offer prayers of thanks for the military people who have been willing to fight. I want desperately to be a pacifist, but I will admit that sometimes tyrants must be dealt with forcefully. My pessimistic side believes that violence is the only language that tyrants understand, but the 20th century has given us many examples of the peaceful overturning of despots, so I don't fully believe my pessimistic side. Still, we often don't use the forces of non-violence in enough time, and so, force may be our only option (witness the example of Hitler).

Some of us will have a day off tomorrow. Some of us will go to our jobs. Some of those jobs will be military jobs. We all have our part to play.

But for today, let's take a minute to appreciate how few of us in many nations have had to experience war first hand.  Let us pray for the nations at war and the humans caught in those conflicts.  Let us celebrate a world that can move toward peace. Let us pray for a time when war will come no more.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Veteran's Day:


God of Peace, on this Veteran's Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this day, we pray for all who are damaged by wars big and small. We offer a prayer of thanks for our veterans, and we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

What the Heart Hides

Last night before an evening meeting, I took out my sketchbook, markers and book for my online journaling class.  I decided to stay in the car, where I knew I wouldn't be disturbed.  I reread the chapter in Joyce Rupp's Open the Door that talked about walls of illusions--we push on them and they seem solid, but they're really not.  Here's the quote that leapt out at me last night:  "Illusions are 'pretend doors.'  The counterfeit self is filled with these masquerades" (p. 32).

I was going to draw a wall and a hand, with a garden behind the wall and a desert on the side of the wall with the hand.  I couldn't get the perspective just right, so I traced my hand.  I thought about writing all my illusions about the future I assume I cannot have on the wall, but since I had to go to a meeting, I wasn't sure I wanted to dive deeply that way. So instead, I wrote questions on the fingers.

Yesterday I had been playing with haiku.  I came up with this one on my walk in the morning:

A monastery,

my heart shelters orphaned dreams.

Safe harbor, fierce storm.

I thought about creating some sort of collage, about the heart not as monastery but as homeless shelter and needing to find a few more beds.  I thought about that illustration about Madeline who lived in an orphanage with Miss Clavell:

But this morning, I went in a different direction:

At some point in the near future, I plan to journal about those abandoned dreams. I was going to use the word orphaned, but I needed the extra syllable for my haiku.

I like the hopefulness of this image.  I like the stars that represent the dreams in the heart.  I like the rays of light around the heart that also look like wheat.  I've had bread on the brain all week.  I'm intrigued by how these swirls come together.

Notes from the First Week of an Online Journaling Class

I'm at the the beginning of an interesting online experience which started on Sunday. It's sort of like a cross between a retreat and a class. The subject matter is journaling, but we're using a book, and we're journaling with markers, not just with words. In fact at this point, from what I can tell from what's being shared, we're journaling only with our markers We're also meeting once a week as a group, but if we can't be there, the session is recorded. There's also a Facebook group that's private--that's where we share our images and thoughts and view the recorded sessions and some art lessons from our organizer.

We are using Joyce Rupp's Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self. It's organized as daily readings and meditations. We were a list of what we would need for the class, which included just 4 colors of Copic Sketch markers. I have sketched so much this week that I ordered refill ink so that I could sketch without worrying about how much ink I was using.

I am surprised by how much I am sketching. Last night I came home with the kind of exhaustion that might have made me collapse in front of the TV for a few hours before going to bed. But I had a vision of a sketch, so I sat down to attempt it. I ended up with 3 sketches--I was still tired at the end, but my exhaustion had morphed into a less onerous fatigue.

I am carrying the Rupp book, my sketchbook (a 24 page, spiral bound, 8 x 6 book), and the markers with me everywhere. That's one of the advantages of a small sketchbook and just a few markers. My whole sketch bag is much heavier because I now have so many markers, and thus, I rarely tote it with me.

I am both frustrated and intrigued by the restriction of just 4 colors. We have a shade of blue, a shade of dusty red (more like a dried out burgundy), a yellow, and a gold. Some of my compatriots are much better at blending than I am. The restriction reminds me a bit of writing poetry in form or in a specific meter. The challenge leads me to places I wouldn't otherwise go.

When I thought about signing up for the class, I thought I would sketch just once or twice a week, to augment the Sunday morning practice I have now. I am pleased that I am doing much more than that.

My poetry is benefiting too, which I didn't anticipate. The sketches give me ideas for a poem. This morning, I wrote a poem that began, "My heart, this homeless shelter . . ." As I was walking, I was thinking about a new poem, one that jumped off of that one: heart as homeless shelter, heart as monastery, heart as harbor. I plan to write that one tomorrow.

It's now time for me to go to work, so I'll leave you with last night's image. What do you see?