Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, October 2, 2022


First Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-4;2:1-4

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 1:1-6

Psalm: Psalm 37:1-10 (Psalm 37:1-9 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 3:19-26

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 137 (Psalm 137 (Semi-continuous) NRSV)

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10


Perhaps the Gospel readings of past weeks and months have left you feeling depressed. You have begun to realize that you will never succeed at this Christianity thing. You can't even remember to make a donation, much less tithe regularly. You'd like to invite the poor to your dinner table, if you ever had time to eat dinner yourself, and you wonder if you still get Christianity Points if you invite the poor to dinner, but pick up that dinner from the deli. You'd like to look out for widows and orphans, but happily, you don't know of any. And frankly, most of the week, you don't have a spare moment to even ponder these things at all.

This week's Gospel offers encouraging news. It reminds us that belief has the power of a seed. As fewer of us plant anything, we may lose the power of that metaphor. But think of how inert a seed seems. It's hard to believe that anything can come from that little pod. And then we plunk it into the earth, where it seems even more dead--no sun, no light, no air. But the dark earth is what it needs, along with water, maybe some fertilizer if the soil is poor, and time. And with some luck, and more time, eventually we might all enjoy a tree. And not only us, but generations after us--that tree will outlive us all.

Christ reminds us that faith is like that seed. And the good news is that we don't have to have faith in abundance. A tiny seed's worth can create a world of wonders. And it's good to remember that we don't have to have consistent faith. We live in a world that encourages us to think that we'll eventually arrive at a place of perfect behavior: we'll exercise an hour a day, we'll forsake all beverages but water, we'll pray every hour, we'll never eat sugar or white flour again, we'll cook meals at home and observe regular mealtimes. We'll have time to get our various types of work done, and we'll end at a sane hour so that we're home for a meal which we'll eat with loved ones.

We want lives of perfect balance, and we feel deep disappointment with ourselves when we can't achieve that, even when we admit that we'd need ten extra hours in the day to achieve that.

Jesus reminds us to avoid that trap of perfectionist expectations. People who have gone before us on this Christian path remind us of that too. Think of Mother Theresa. Her letters reveal that she spent most of her life feeling an absence of God. But that emotion didn't change her behavior. She tried to reveal the light of Christ to the most poor and outcast, and was largely successful. She didn't feel like she was successful, but she didn't get bogged down in those feelings of self-recrimination. And even when she did, she kept doing what she knew God wanted her to do.

Many of us might have seen Mother Theresa as a spiritual giant. We might feel dismayed to realize that she spent much of her life having a dark night of the soul kind of experience.

On the contrary, we should feel comforted. Maybe these letters show that she wasn't a spiritual giant or that even spiritual giants are human.

Or maybe we should revise our definition of a spiritual giant. If you read the journals, letters, and private papers of many twentieth-century people who have been seen as spiritual giants (Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Madeleine L'Engle, Dorothy Day), you'll see that feelings of spiritual desolation are quite common. The fact that we have these feelings--does that mean that God has abandoned us?

Of course not. Those of us who have lived long enough have come to realize that our feelings and emotions are often not good indicators of the reality of a situation. Our feelings and emotions are often rooted in the fact that we haven't had enough sleep or the right kind of food.

The people who have gone before us remind us of the importance of continuing onward, even when we feel despair. Christ reminds us that we just need a tiny kernel of belief. All sorts of disciplines remind us that the world changes in tiny increments; huge changes can be traced back to small movements. Your belief, and the actions that come from your belief, can bear witness in ways you can scarcely imagine.

Perfection is not required--just a consistent progress down the path.

The Feast of Michael and All Angels

Today, the Church celebrates the role of angels in the divine plan, my prayer book tells me (The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle). Our Orthodox brothers and sisters handle the question of angels better than most Protestants. Most of the Lutheran churches that I've been a member of don't talk about angels much, and based on the ideas of some of my students, many Protestant churches do talk about angels, but with a very shaky theology.

I'll never forget one time teaching Paradise Lost to South Carolina students in my Brit Lit survey class at a community college. One woman seemed particularly confused about all the angels in the story. "How could there be angels," she asked, "when nobody has died?"

It took me a few attempts to understand her question. She knew about angels from church, but only in the sense that we become angels when we die--which is a very recent idea about angels. I explained the more ancient idea about angels, which is that they are a species completely separate from humans. We got into a bit of a theology lesson, but I could see that she wasn't happy with these ideas about angels. She was much more comfortable with the idea of the angels being Grandma and Grandpa who died when she was a child. The idea of angels as a separate kind of entity with no free will? No thanks.

In a way, I understand. Angels are scary. Death is scary. It's rather brilliant to come up with the idea that we become angels when we die--and yet, this shaky theology defangs several concepts which should, in fact, be scary. We will die--and before that, everything we love will die. How do we cope with that idea?

Some of us cope by clinging to the idea that there is a Divine God with a plan and a vision that's vaster than anything we could develop on our own. This God has more power than we can conceive of--including legions of angels, angels that are there for us too.

Let me confess that I don't do angels well either. They seem a bit too New Agey for me, especially with the spate of angel books that were published 20 years ago, books that promised me that I would get to know my angels, books in which getting to know my angels was very similar to enslaving my angels to do my will. Blcch. Giving the angels a mission is God's job, not mine.

I often joked that I should combine two publishing trends and publish a diet book: Your Angels Want You to Be Thin! The Know Your Angels Diet Book. I'm not that mercenary, though (and if you are, feel free to steal my title), not that willing to make money off the real troubles and gullibility of humans. To borrow words from Blake, I don't want to be the one that makes a Heaven off of misery.

But now, years later, I find myself a bit envious of those people who grew up in traditions that had theologically sound approaches to angels. Again and again, I find in the traditions of others something I feel lacking in mine.

Luckily, I'm part of a Lutheran tradition that doesn't insist that we remain closed off to traditions that might enrich us spiritually, even if Luther didn't sanction them. We've seen an explosion of exploration of labyrinths. Maybe angels will be next.

For those of you who want some special Scripture for this high feast day, here's what the Lutheran church (ELCA) recommends:

First Reading: Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3
Psalm: Psalm 103:1-5, 20-22
Second Reading: Revelation 12:7-12
Gospel: Luke 10:17-20

Theology and Hurricanes

I am bracing myself, even though I no longer live in Florida. I'm bracing myself not only for sad and scary hurricane stories, but for all the people afterward who will post comments about praying to God that the hurricane would miss us--and lo and behold, the hurricane had missed us.

Some will call it the power of prayer, but I call it crummy theology. Because if I pray that the hurricane misses my house, am I not praying that someone else get hit?

And do I really believe that our God of free will, our God who set the world up with certain laws of geology and physics and chemistry, do I really believe that God would intervene to curve the hurricane away from me? Am I more important than the person who loses everything if the hurricane goes elsewhere?

If my house gets hurt by a hurricane, does that mean that I didn't pray hard enough? Or that I'm spiritually lacking, so that God pays no attention to me? Or that other people prayed better?

Those questions also show us the dangers of a theology that says that if we just pray hard enough and believe enough and behave in certain ways, then we can control the world around us and control God.

We can't. That's the hard truth of the world we live in. No matter how good we are, hard times visit us all.

The Good News of the Bible is that we have a God who loves us so much that our God would come to our difficult planet to hang out with us. The Good News of the New Testament is one of grace: God will love us no matter our behavior.

Hurricanes are not punishment. On some level, hurricanes are the way the planet deals with extra heat and energy. Yet even those who would blame hurricanes on global warming (and thus see them as a fitting punishment for errant humans) would do well to look back to remind themselves of how hurricanes have always swept across the planet, even before it warmed it up so dramatically in the past few decades.

I'm not suggesting that we abandon prayer as a response. In fact, on days like these where most of us can't do much more than watch and hope, prayer seems like a perfectly appropriate response.

Prayer in the Face of a Hurricane

Creator God, who fashioned this astonishing planet of atmospheric swirls, help us remember the abundance that our habitat usually offers us. Be with those who work to protect their homes. Be with those who suffer from fear and anxiety. Be with us in times of both loss and abundance. Remind us that you are with us, and help calm our fears.

A Planet We No Longer Know

I wrote this post to a friend this morning:  "Nothing like an approaching storm to make me remember how much of my heart is in Florida--I know so many people throughout the state."

This morning's forecast track looks like it could be dreadful in a multitude of ways.  One of the worst ways would be that a major storm comes ashore at Tampa.  Others have done deeper analysis than I will do here, but here's a short version:  lots of development on lots of low-lying land, with lots of potential for flooding and other types of destruction.  Are those people insured?  Will insurance companies go broke and not be able to pay?  Will Citizens, the Florida insurer of last resort, have enough reserves?

There's the threat of storm surge.  The only hurricane advantage I had when I lived in South Florida is that the area wasn't prone to storm surge because of the deep drop off of the shelf under the ocean, as the sea meets the shore.  Much of the Florida coast doesn't have that, so a storm like Ian will be even more damaging because of that storm surge.

There's another dreadful scenario--the storm could sit over the peninsula and/or move very slowly and dump a lot of rain.  And even if it "speeds" across the state, it's still a lot of water falling on land that's already saturated.

People in the path of the storm don't have much time to make decisions.  One hopes that people have been paying attention, gathering important paperwork and possessions, and making plans.  I know that many of them have been thinking that the storm would come ashore where the panhandle meets the peninsula.  That could still happen, but if I lived on the west coast of the peninsula, I wouldn't bet on it.  I'd be making plans and finishing preparations as if the storm would pass over my head.  Soon it will be too late.

It's days like these that I'm glad I'm not in emergency management.  Of course, there's never a day when I'd want to be working in an emergency management department, but today will be intense, for many of the same reasons that the day will be intense for many Floridians:  decisions to make with many of the factors remaining uncertain.  And how to evacuate people safely?  That's a level of emergency management that would make me lose sleep.

I think of all the people with electric cars and what a headache those will cause for evacuation.  I am thankful it's not my headache, while at the same time, I feel this anxiety.  Some of it may be some variety of PTSD.  It's not that long ago that we had similar decisions to make about hurricane Irma.  For 24 hours, it looked like we would get a direct hit from a category 4 storm.  On the Wednesday before the storm hit, my spouse and I took a walk around our sunny neighborhood.  I said, "I'm assuming that if we evacuate, we're coming back to nothing."  But it was not to be that bad.

Of course, in some ways, coming back to nothing might be preferable to coming back to flood and wind damage and spending the next 2 years navigating insurance, contractors, repairs, all the while holding onto a full-time job and a part time job.  I am glad we won't be facing that in the near future.

I am now saying a prayer for those who are facing all of these worst case scenarios, and a prayer for all of us in this time of changing climate, a planet we no longer know.  This will be the 3rd record breaking storm in a week.  There was Fiona that wiped out a chunk of Canada, Noru that set records for rapid intensification (and significant damage for Vietnam and the Phillipines), and now Ian, which I'm willing to bet will set some records too.

Walking Meditations and the Path of a Storm

 So far, I've had a good week-end, my first full week-end here in my seminary apartment.  I've had Zoom-like conversation with my spouse and my quilting group, along with instant message type written conversations, so I haven't felt lonely. I've done school work, I've read for pleasure (Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which I started the week before Mantel died), I've cooked, I've gone on a quest for veggies, I've done a lot of walking.

Yesterday I walked a mile and a half to a farmer's market, but it was organic veggies, so they seemed very pricey to me.  I want to support small farmers, but I don't want to pay $6.00 a pound for sweet potatoes, regardless of how they're grown.  So on my walk back, I took a detour to Wegmans, a grocery store, and bought some cheaper veggies.

Yesterday evening, as the sun was setting, I walked to St. Columba's Episcopal Church.  I had read about DC Art All Night, where various neighborhoods had a variety of arts events.  

St. Columba's offered a walk in the indoor labyrinth (on a canvas) accompanied by music, an arts gallery/shop, and organ concerts.  

I took part in all of those things, and then I walked the two blocks to Tenleytown to see the rest of the events.  It was so crowded that I could barely make my way through the public library.  So, hurrah for the library, but I walked on home.  I felt safe from violence, but a bit worried about trip hazards.  I didn't want to walk in the street for fear of being hit by a car, but the sidewalks were much more dimly lit.  I walked on the sidewalks and took my time.

As I've reflected on last night, I thought about the process of slow walking.  I had to take my time in the labyrinth too, but we expect that.  The music was provided by overtone group Harmonic Introductions.  I confess that I liked the musical parts that had just piano, harp, cello, and singing bowls best.  The overtone singing was distracting.

I've also been keeping an eye on the glob of weather that's slowly becoming Hurricane Ian.  I don't own property in Florida anymore, so you might wonder why I'm paying such close attention.  Most of the reason is force of habit:  I've always paid attention to storms, and I've always kept a wary eye on the weather.  And of course, I still have friends who might be in the path of a storm.

I came across this sentence this morning from this blog post on the Yale Climate Connections site:  "8 p.m. EDT Saturday: As this post was being prepared, Typhoon Noru was in the process of becoming one of the fastest-intensifying cyclones in modern Earth history, strengthening far more than expected while heading toward the Philippines."  This strengthening happened during the same week-end that Canada was slammed by Hurricane Fiona, the strongest storm to hit that coastline ever.

It's made me think of a poem I wrote a long time ago, when I looked up at the pre-dawn sky and thought about how many astronomical objects are cold, hard rocks as far as we can tell.  It led to this poem, which has become a renewed favorite of mine, after the spouse of a dear friend told me how it had stuck with him and made him think about the universe differently.  It was published in my first chapbook Whistling Past the Graveyard.

Geology, the True Life Science


Our planet—warm, gooey corner
of a cold, lifeless cosmos,
a primordial ooze which forms
the perfect building blocks for life,
a miraculous exception to the universal
rule. The official astronomer’s story.

But perhaps God prefers rocks and minerals.
Why else create such a diverse abundance?
Maybe animals and humans are the experiment
gone horribly wrong, an accident of pumping liquids
surrounded by decaying flesh.

Bones calcify, kidneys form stones, arteries harden
with plaque—instead of medical disaster,
perhaps our bodies move towards their ultimate evolutionary
destiny, seeking God’s pleasure.

 

Living According to My Values

I wrote an e-mail which led to a blog post about getting my vaccinations yesterday.  It included this sentence paragraph:

I don't drive the car very much, so it was good to give it a drive. I probably won't drive it again this week. There's a lack of parking in the city, so I tend to go to nearby grocery stores and buy what I need and can carry. So far, it's working. When I go to visit people like my sister or my parents, I stock up on heavier things like bags of flour or cans

After I wrote that chunk, I thought about all the ways I'm living my values here in seminary.  I have always wondered if it would be easier to do when I'm living in my own space, and it is in many ways.  When I'm in my seminary apartment, I eat vegetarian, by which I mean I use eggs and dairy products like cheese.  For a variety of reasons, I don't drink when I'm alone.

I'm exercising every day.  Part of that exercising involves walking to get supplies, and I only get what I can carry.  When I do a bigger restocking trip with the car, I combine that trip with other things.

I don't have a TV.  Well, to be accurate, I have one, but I can't get it to work.  So far, I don't miss it, so I don't see spending money to get a new TV or to get some device that would let me stream TV on  my computer.

I will admit that much of my intentional living follows a similar path:  I don't know that I should get accolades for living according to my values when part of the reason, a large part, is because it's easier.  I walk instead of driving because there's less anxiety.  I'm lucky that I'm living in a part of DC where walking is safe, and I can walk to what I need--and I'm lucky that I can walk.

I always wondered if I would clean on a weekly basis if I knew it was just me, and I could clean and the place would stay clean for a day or two before it drifted to messiness again.  I have discovered that if it's just me, I don't need to clean once a week because the space doesn't get dirty as quickly.  I don't think it's anything special; I believe that the more humans/creatures added to a space, the more the place gets dirty and on an exponential basis.

I am happy to report that this experiment with living alone hasn't been leading to me deciding that I want to stay living alone forever.  On the contrary, I'm feeling appreciation for the communities I've had in the past, and the ones I'm part of now.

Autumn Leaves from a Different Angle

Last week in my Creative Process, Spiritual Practice class, our teacher gave us a heads up about yesterday's class:  we'd be outside in the community garden, so we should wear clothes that we didn't mind getting dirty.  All week, I wondered what we would be doing.  Would weeding be a way to be creative and spiritual?

I'm sure that weeding could take on those elements, but we did something different.  Our teacher gave us our assignment:  choose some elements from nature, without destroying the natural element (so no picking flowers off of plants, for example), and make a new creation.  It has to be intentional so that anyone coming across it would know that it was purposefully created.  As an example, our teacher gathered some leaves and laid them out in a pattern.  Then she left us to our own devices for 45 minutes.

At first I thought about going to a different part of campus.  I didn't see any elements I could use:  so many dead leaves, so many shades of brown, ugh.  But then I saw a leaf that was more rust than brown, and then a burgundy leaf, and then some leaves drifted by on the breeze, and I started examining not only color but texture.

I thought about creating some sort of creche with sticks, but it was a breezy day.  As I contemplated that base of a tree which I thought might shelter my unmade creation, and then I looked at the trunk.  I realize it had marvelous possibilities, so I took a leaf and threaded the stem of a leaf into an opening.

The breeze didn't blow it away, so I did it again, and then again.  Soon, I had a trunk full.

Then the breeze took some of them.  As I gathered more leaves, I thought about arranging them in a bouquet of sorts.  So I tried it.

I usually create art with an eye to the message I want it to have.  Yesterday I was doing art for art's sake; the process was the sole focus.  Yet as I took a longer view, I did realize that the tree looked like it was covered with monarchs or mushrooms.

Was there a spiritual element?  In some ways:  I got into a meditative state, of sort, in the end.  The process forced me to look at the leaves in a deeper way, a more appreciative way.  I enjoyed it immensely--I might even do it again.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for Sunday, September 25, 2022:

First Reading: Amos 6:1a, 4-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Psalm: Psalm 146

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31


This Sunday, the Gospel returns to familiar themes with the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus is so poor that he hopes for crumbs from the rich man's table and has to tolerate the dogs licking his sores (or perhaps this is a form of early medicine). Lazarus has nothing, and the rich man has everything. When Lazarus dies, he goes to be with Abraham, where he is rewarded. When the rich man dies, he is tormented by all the hosts of Hades. He pleads for mercy, or just a drop of water, and he's reminded of all the times that he didn't take care of the poor. He asks for a chance to go back to warn his family, and he's told, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead."

Maybe by now you're feeling a bit frustrated: week after week of reminders that we shouldn't get too comfortable with our worldly possessions. Maybe you suspect the Council who chose this common lectionary of readings of being just a tad socialist.

Yet those who study (and tabulate!) such things would remind us that economic injustice is one of the most common themes in the Bible. To hear the Christians who are most prominently in the media, you'd think that the Bible concerned itself with homosexuality.

Not true. In his book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis tells of tabulating Bible verses when he was in seminary: "We found several thousand (emphasis his) verses in the Bible on the poor and Gods' response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures Old Testament--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (mammon, as the gospels call it). In the first three (Synoptic) gospels it is one out of ten verses, and in the book of Luke, it is one in seven" (page 212).

And how often does the Bible mention homosexuality? That depends on how you translate the Greek and how you interpret words that have meanings that cover a wide range of sexual activity--but at the most, the whole Bible mentions homosexuality about twelve times.

If we take the Bible as the primary text of Christianity, and most of us do, the message is clear. God's place is with the poor and oppressed. The behavior that most offends God is treating people without love and concern for their well being--this interpretation covers a wide range of human activity: using people's bodies sexually with no concern for their humanity, cheating people, leaving all of society's destitute and despicable to fend for themselves, not sharing our wealth, and the list would be huge, if we made an all-encompassing list.

It might leave us in despair, thinking of all the ways we hurt each other, all the ways that we betray God. But again and again, the Bible reminds us that we are redeemable and worthy of salvation. Again and again, we see the Biblical main motif of a God who wants so desperately to see us be our best selves that God goes crashing throughout creation in an effort to remind us of all we can be.

Some prosperity gospel preachers interpret this motif of a God who wants us to be rich. In a way, they're right--God does want us to be rich. But God doesn't care about us being rich in worldly goods. Anyone who has studied history--or just opened their eyes--knows how quickly worldly goods can be taken away. But those of us who have dedicated our lives to forging whole human relationships and helping to usher in the Kingdom now and not later--those of us rich in love are rich indeed

The Feast Day of Saint Matthew

Today we celebrate the life of St. Matthew, one of the 12 disciples. Matthew was a tax collector, and that fact should give us all hope.

Throughout the Bible, we see God at work in the world. We see God using all sorts of humans, the kind of humans that a wise CEO wouldn't promote. But God sees their potential, and God calls them.

Sometimes, people protest and remind God of their unworthiness; think of Moses. Sometimes God has to do a lot to get their attention; think of Jonah.

But sometimes, the call comes, and the person responds, dropping everything to follow God's call. In Matthew, we see this example.

Maybe you're in a time of your life where you're feeling particularly unworthy. Take advantage of this day to remember God's grace and God's call.

Here are the Bible readings for today:

First Reading: Ezekiel 2:8--3:11

Psalm: Psalm 119:33-40

Second Reading: Ephesians 2:4-10

Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13

And here's a prayer I composed for today:

God full of grace and compassion, on this day that we celebrate the life of Matthew, help us remember that you have a plan for the redemption of creation and that we have a place in it. Thank you for the witness of Matthew and the disciples. Help us to follow in their example, that we may be a light, your light, in this shadowy world that so desperately needs brightness.

Queen's Funeral Day Melancholia

  I felt oddly melancholy yesterday; it was a beautiful end of summer kind of day, and my life perks along nicely.  Why the melancholy?

There was ongoing coverage of Queen Elizabeth's funeral, but that didn't make me feel sad.  I had tasks that felt overly onerous, like calling Wells Fargo bank, again, about the May 31 check fraud perpetrated against my South Florida church, that the bank still hasn't managed to straighten out.  I feel like my church has been a victim of fraud again and again:  once by the people who wrote fraudulent checks, and again and again by the fraud department that cannot seem to return the thousands of dollars that flowed out of the account even after we alerted Wells Fargo that the fraud had happened.

I spent much of the day working on an exegesis assignment for my Foundations of Preaching class.  It's got lots of parts, but it's not too onerous once I got working on it.  I still have a bit to go, but class isn't until 6:30.

I went on two walks, both pleasant.  So why my Monday sadness?

I had gone back to check out some dates to make sure I was remembering events properly.  I did it in the way I often do, by going to old blog postings.  You would think that seeing where I was a year ago, in a school with compromised technology and a lack of transparency about the future, you'd think those posts would make me happy to be somewhere else.  

And indeed, they did, but they also made me sad.  I remembered all the happy times, the times of appreciation from my students, the times when we made festivals--sometimes we had much in the way of resources, and some times we had very little, but every effort helped to form community.  And I felt sad yesterday, remembering what was lost.

I also felt sad for all the people treated so shabbily.  I want to believe we've all gone on to better things, but it's impossible to forget the pain and disruption.

So, yesterday I spent time at the edge of a melancholy vortex that wanted to pull me under.  This morning, I'm feeling better.  I made this Facebook post/tweet:

"Listening to The Smiths' "The Queen is Dead" (the full album) while making apple butter to go with yesterday's homemade bread and sorting photos from my walk to St. Columba's Episcopal church, as one does, the day after the queen's funeral."

And while I'm documenting, here's my favorite queen's death/funeral tweet so far:

Thomas William Ruston

@thomaswruston

·

12h

A funeral watched by 5.1billion people owes itself to people trained in disciplines the government thinks is worthless: theology, poetry, music, camerawork and media

Christ's Mission Statement

In my Creative Process, Spiritual Practice class, we discussed the first few chapters of Makoto Fujimura's Culture Care:  Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life.  We talked about Fujimura's quote from Isaiah 6:2-3 that he used when giving a presentation at an art gallery in SoHo:

"to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair."

He talked about it as a call for beauty, which is not how I have interpreted it.

I talked about the text in the context of the Jesus in the temple as an adult in at least one Gospel and that this text was the one he used and said had been fulfilled that day.  I had never thought of it as Jesus declaring the importance of beauty or of the importance of creativity.  I have always been taught that it was Christ's mission statement and creating art and beauty was not mentioned as being part of the mission statement.

I have always been in groups that focused on the earlier part of Isaiah and presented Jesus as having arrived to disrupt the empire in a social justice kind of way, not as an artist kind of way.  Might Jesus have been advocating that we use beauty and art to disrupt the empire?  Was he suggesting that art and beauty can achieve a more just society?

These juxtapositions have stuck with me for several days now which is why I wanted to record them here.  I'll let them continue to percolate to see if other new possibilities emerge.

An Hour of Sketching Nature

One of the delights of taking a class is getting credit for something I might do even if I wasn't taking a class.  But I also delight in taking a class that forces me to do what I've always wanted to do but was never disciplined enough to make myself do.

Did I learn a foreign language this week?  No.  But I did go outside and spend an hour sketching as part of my Creative Process, Spiritual Practice class.  What a simple activity:  take a pencil, take a sketchbook, try to really see what's in front of you.

We went to the lovely courtyard in the center of the campus buildings and spent a few minutes walking and observing.  We came back as a group for five minutes, and then we went forth with our task:  spend one hour fully observing and sketching, while being careful not to destroy the nature we're observing.

I had been captivated by a small tree, by the colors of the stem and the featheriness of the leaves.  I started sketching these leaves while I was standing close to them:

I tried sketching without looking at the sketch, which was an interesting process, but didn't lead to a very good sketch.  I approached the leaves from various angles.

Then I decided to sit across from the tree; in the above shot, you can see the ledge on top of the small brick wall where I perched.  That's when I noticed the trunk and decided it was time to shift focus.

I drew the curve of the branches and the swirls of the bark.  Then I decided to bend closer, and that's when I noticed a whole branch that I hadn't seen at first.  Eventually, I produced this sketch:

I remembered our teacher's instructions to get close, so I bent over and ducked under the tree too.  When I came back to my sketching perch, I had a dead leaf in my hair, so I decided to sketch that:

I felt a bug on me, but didn't stop to shoo it away.  Eventually, I looked down to see a small grasshopper (some other bug?) making its way into the sketch:

After the hour was up, we reconvened to talk about the process.  Where did we spend our hour?  Would it have been different if our teacher had specified not to erase?  Or if she had required us to stay focused on the first thing we started to sketch?

We briefly talked about the theology/spirituality aspect of the class.  Does God study us as closely?  How do we feel about that?

During numerous points of Thursday's class, I thought, I will do this process again.  I will return to this courtyard and sketch for an hour.  Will I?  Maybe.  But if not, I'm happy I had the chance to have this experience--and to get class credit for it!

Salvation in a Female Form

Yesterday I had a mostly free day, so I headed to downtown DC to enjoy a few Smithsonian museums (for a more comprehensive look at the day, read this post on my creativity blog).  Even before I knew what it was, this assemblage/sculpture caught my eye:

But up close, I was even more intrigued:  statues of the Virgin Mary!  The author did plaster casts of each one and then painted them; here's a close-up:

I thought about the visions of womanhood that have captured our imagination.  So often they are the woman who did the thing that was rare in women, like Phyllis Wheatley, writing poetry when so many women did not.

We think of the Virgin Mary as being a vessel of salvation, but we have more dynamic possibilities.  Here is a quilted picture of Harriet Tubman.  Don't let the lush fabric fool you into forgetting how fearless she was.

Meditation for This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 18, 2022:

Jeremiah 8:18–9:1
Psalm 79:1-9 (9)
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13


Ah, the parable of the unjust steward. This parable may be one of the toughest to understand. Are we to understand this parable as a pro-cheating text? It seems that this tale is one of several types of unjustness, and it's hard to sort it all out. Let's try.

Much like the parable of the Prodigal Son, which sends up wails of protests about unfair treatment of undeserving children, this text makes one want to wail at first reading. There's the master, who believes the charges brought up against his steward, who seems prepared to dismiss him, based on those charges--let us remember that the charges may be false.

But the behavior of the steward seems slimy too; accused of unethical behavior, he seems to behave unethically, dismissing debt in an attempt to curry favor for a later time when he is dispossessed.

And then there's the surprise twist--the master approves of the steward's shrewdness.

There are several different approaches to this parable. The easiest approach is to look at the final lines of the Gospel, those familiar lines that so many of us would like to ignore, that we cannot serve God and money. This parable seems to suggest that it's hard to have dealings with money that don't leave us looking slimy.

Parable scholars might caution us not to adopt the most obvious interpretation. Scholars would encourage us to see the parables in relation to each other. What are the parables that surround the one about the unjust steward?

In the text just before this one, we see the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coins, the lost sons (the Prodigal and his brother are equally lost boys). In the text after the parable of the unjust steward, we receive the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man, and you may remember that Lazarus has a tough life on earth, but a good life afterwards, and the rich man receives his reward early on, and goes to his tortures in the afterlife.

We might see this parable as one more cautionary tale about how we deal with wealth, as with the story of Lazarus. Or we might see the Prodigal Son's dad as similar in his mercy to the master of the shrewd steward--and of course, we could draw parallels to God, who gives us mercy, when we deserve rejection and to be left to our own devices.

It's hard to ignore the sense of urgency in all these texts. The steward must act swiftly, to dismiss debts while he still has the power to do so. The Prodigal Son's father doesn't have much time to decide how to act, once his son appears on the horizon. The rich man pleads with Abraham to be allowed to warn his brothers, and Abraham reminds him that they've had plenty of warning. The parables are interspersed with Christ's various admonitions to pay attention to the way we are living our lives.

Christ commands us not to lose sight of the true riches, the riches that our society doesn't comprehend fully (or at all). We are not our paychecks. There's so much more to us than our job titles. We have been entrusted with so much. We will be judged by how well we show stewardship of those resources.

Particular Geographies and Yearning

For the past 2 months, I've spent a lot of time driving long distances.  I realize that not everyone likes to drive the way that I do.  I should modify:  I like to drive the way I do when I'm driving alone.  Driving with others in the car is a whole different experience.

When I've made a long car trip, I sometimes feel like I've fallen out of time.  I used to think that I only felt that way after an airplane trip and that a long car trip would help me feel cemented in time.  That's not the case for me, at least not right now.

In the past, I've felt a longing to be in places other than where I am:  it's been a longing for a particular geography mixed with a longing for particular people.  At this time in my life, I feel fully present wherever I am, almost as if other places have ceased to exist.  When I'm in my seminary apartment, I rarely think about my little house in the mountains.  When I was in the mountains this week-end, my seminary life seemed like a dream I had.

Have I finally mastered the art of being fully present in the moment?  I'm so often thinking about parts of my past, usually with a mix of regret and sadness, mixed with yearning and nostalgia.  When I'm not thinking about the past, I'm plotting the future.

Sadly, I don't think I've mastered the art of being fully present.  I think I'm fully present because my living situations are so new.  I had only lived in the North Carolina house for a month before moving to seminary housing.  

The fact that seminary housing is temporary might also explain why I'm able to stay with the present moment more successfully now than in the past.  Or maybe it's because I'm so happy with my current situation.  When I'm mired in home repairs or job stress, my go to relief has been yearning for either the past or the present.  Right now, I'm happy with my classes and my seminary apartment--no need for my escapist coping strategies.

Can I learn techniques from this time?  Let me think about how to sustain this being present in the current moment, even when I'm less thrilled about my circumstances.  Let me think about how to train my brain to be more often in a state of Zen acceptance, less yearning for something else.

Week-end of Abundance

I head back to DC today.  I have a 6:30 pm class, so there's plenty of time.  Once, though, I'd have thrown the last load of stuff in the car, filled up my thermoses, and been on the road by 4:00 or so.  But that was back in the South Florida days, South Florida where it is never truly O dark thirty.

Here in the mountains, it's dark--dark--before the sun comes up.  It will be safer to wait until a bit closer to sunrise to leave.

Yesterday at the Crafts for Christmas retreat, one of the woman said that her father had told her that for every fog in August, there will be a snowfall.  I said, "Well, we're in for a humdinger of a winter."  Everyone nodded.  One of the few non-foggy days in August was August 28, when I headed back to seminary by myself at 4:00 a.m.  The roads weren't foggy, but they were dark in a terrifying way.

The women at the Crafts for Christmas retreat talked about weather wisdom of the elders, and about Harriet Tubman and navigating by the stars and about how younger generations have no sense of any of this.  What a relief to be amongst my people:  educators and people who know how to make all sorts of soul sustaining things, from preserved food to cookies to quilted hearts.

I ate as many cookies in one day as I eat in six months.  When I got the invite for the retreat, I said that I couldn't bring a craft to share, but I was told there would be plenty.  Yes, plenty--many people brought not only supplies for their craft, but other supplies too.  It was heaven:  tables loaded with cloth, beads, baskets, papers, wood, found objects, on and on.  

We were similarly equipped with food.  In fact, I'll be taking some of it back with me.  I felt a bit bad for not bringing food to share, but there was plenty, and I know that more than one person delighted in the fact that they were helping the seminary student who didn't have time to cook or gather craft supplies.  I apologized once or twice and then decided to quit nattering on about it.

We are all from religious communities who believe in sharing, who believe that the sharing produces abundance.  And we had an abundant week-end.

Soon I will head back to my abundant life in DC.  I have a car crammed with all the last minute items that I didn't take last time, from a laundry basket to a lamp.  I have some groceries and some treats.  I have books that I planned to read for this week's classes; I did skim them, but for the most part, I devoted myself to crafts this week-end.  My spouse and I had time to reconnect.

I indulged in the abundance of crafts and Christmas music and cookies and reconnecting, and I have no regrets.

Crafts for Christmas Retreat

I am back at my little house in the North Carolina mountains, rain pattering outside, peppermint mocha in my mug.  I made a quick trip back for a Crafts for Christmas retreat that's happening this week-end.  

I am remembering past autumns when I would make a quick trip to the mountains for a planning week-end for Create in Me.  I could never figure out how to come to both the planning week-end and the Crafts for Christmas week-end.  This year, my schedule is more flexible, there is no in-person planning week-end for Create in Me, the drive is shorter, and I have a house at Lutheridge with a spouse here doing work on the house.  In short, this year I have many more reasons to come.

Yesterday, I got up and was on the road by 4:15 a.m.  Even so, there was more traffic coming out of the city than I expected, and some road construction on I 66.  Eventually, the traffic thinned, and the fog rolled in, which made the merge onto I 81 feel harrowing in the dark.  The trip became much easier after 6:30, once I had more light to see by.

It is a lovely drive, mostly mountains, and yesterday, not too many big trucks barreling by.  I listened to various NPR shows, and marveled at the life of Queen Elizabeth, who died on Thursday.  On Thursday night, I made this Facebook post, which I want to preserve here:  "While many corners of the world discussed what the death of Queen Elizabeth would mean for the larger society, both in and out of England, I was in Church History class, learning about a much more ancient empire (first century Rome). And then I walked back across campus under a mostly full moon, which made me think about empires ancient and modern, how they come and then they go, and the moon shines on, oblivious."

I also loved Monica Hesse's article on Queen Elizabeth, with this insightful summary:  "Was it a fairy tale? Was it feminism? The highest-ranking woman in the world, and her power came not via her hard work or via a wedding ring on her finger but via a chaotic ladder of genealogy reaching through centuries: beheadings and infertility, abdications and overthrowings, all leading up to this singular woman holding the throne longer than anyone had before, or likely ever will again."

Back to yesterday's trip.  Soon enough, I was back home.  We talked about HVAC options, talked about what to have for lunch.  I took a shower while my spouse went to the grocery store. We ate lunch, cleaned up, and talked about a few more house renovation decisions that are coming up.  Then I wandered over to the retreat.

It's held in the big, ramshackle house where my family gathers for Thanksgiving and where my spouse and I stayed for Music Week this summer.  Yesterday, the tables were arranged in stations with a variety of supplies at each station.  As with the Create in Me retreat, there will be so many options to try.

Last night, I made a potholder, in the way that I made potholders as a child, with a loom and loops.  Why did I make a potholder?  I only have one at my seminary apartment, and I'd like to have more.  It was fun until the end, when I had to get the very tight loops off of the loom.  Even so, I marveled at how much progress I've made with my right hand.  Not too long ago, I wouldn't have been able to do this at all:

A few women joined me to make potholders of their own, and we talked about our memories of potholders.  I remembered my grandmother, who kept the potholders that I made for her when I was a child.  They were in her kitchen drawer when she died, even though she hadn't needed them in years.

Then we had pizza for dinner and more conversation, and I headed home to sleep in my own bed.  

Today will be another day of creating for me, while my spouse goes to a church choir retreat to work on music that they will sing from now until Christmas.  I look forward to seeing what we all create today.  What a gift to be able to be here for this time.

Reaction Drawings

In my Creative Process as Spiritual Practice class yesterday, we explored an interesting practice that our teacher called Reaction Drawings.   She gave us a stack of blank paper (just regular paper like the kind you'd use in a copier or printer) and a graphite stick (like pencil lead without the wood around it and squared edges).

It was a 30 minute exercise.  Every 30 seconds, the timer dinged, and we turned the sheet of paper over and did a new sketch/drawing/scribble.  That was the only instruction.  Here's my first sketch:

And my last sketch (which might be upside down):

And a selection of the ones in between.

It was an interesting experiment.  Thirty seconds isn't enough time to worry about technique--it's not even enough time to finish a sketch.  Some of our sketches responded to past sketches, while others went in a different direction.  The frenzied pace didn't let us sink into a meditative space (both a plus and a minus).

I said that I expected to go through my pile of sketches and find one that I didn't remember drawing.  That didn't happen.  I was also intrigued by my approach to the graphite stick.  It took me about 12 sketches before I turned it on its side and experimented with broader strokes.

We spread out all of our sketches in one space which was an interesting way to see them.  It also allowed us to walk around the room, once we all gave permission, and to look at everyone's work.  And because we had all went through the same process, it wasn't a chance for one person's sketches to shine, for one person to be lauded as the best artist.

Our instructor talked about using the process as a reaction to something specific like a newscast or a piece of music or a mood.  She talked about her own experience, about using the process to journal in a way or to jolt herself out of boredom/blockage or to move herself out of a bad mood.

My teacher brain also thought about other ways that this group process could be interesting.  Could it be used in a Composition classroom?  Are there other places where fear of the blank page might need to be overcome this way?  I think the answer must surely be yes.

What a great class!  When I begin to doubt my reasons for being on campus (yes, it happens--I'm never far away from self-doubt), let me remember this class and the opportunity to take it.

The Feast Day of the Nativity of Mary

Today across many expressions of Christianity, we celebrate the feast day of the Nativity of Mary.  Yes, that's Mary, mother of Jesus--according to some of the oldest Christian traditions, today is her birthday.  It makes sense; 9 months ago, Christians celebrated the day of her conception.

Growing up as a Lutheran in the deep Southern states of the U.S., I didn't celebrate feast days or know anyone who did.  The only time I heard about Mary was in the weeks before Christmas, and usually because we all competed for a starring role in the Christmas pageant, and we all knew that the best starring role was Mary.

Then Christmas was over, and the church of my childhood went back to ignoring women.  I don't know that church traditions that celebrated Mary throughout the year have done much better at celebrating women than the churches of my childhood.  As I've read about Marymas (an alternate name for this feast day), in some cultures, it seems to have become a harvest festival along the way.

What is a more modern way of celebrating the birth of Mary?  We could think about the role we play in the ongoing creation.  We could think about God's invitation to us to be part of this creation story.  Mary said yes to God's invitation.

Will we say yes?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 11, 2022:

First Reading: Exodus 32:7-14

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Psalm: Psalm 51:1-11 (Psalm 51:1-10 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 14

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Gospel: Luke 15:1-10


This week, we have parables of lost creatures and lost things. When we read these parables, which character calls more clearly to you? Are you the shepherd or the sheep? Are you the woman sweeping or the coin?

I never really thought about the story from the perspective of the coin, until I went to a Create in Me retreat at Lutheridge. Pastor Mary Canniff-Kuhn was leading a Bible study on parables, and she said, “What about that lost coin? What’s it doing? Nothing. It’s just sitting there.”

These parables reassure us that we don’t have to do anything to deserve being found. We don’t have to redeem ourselves. God is the shepherd who will come looking for one lost sheep, even if that sheep is the dumbest, most unworthy sheep in the history of animal husbandry. God will light the lamps and sweep under the cupboards until the coin is found.

As Christians, we have a creator who goes to great lengths to find us, to be with us, to enter into a relationship with us. If you look at both the Old and New Testament, you see God trying a variety of techniques: crafting a beautiful creation, resorting to rage when that creation doesn’t behave, wiping out populations, rescuing populations. The New Testament shows a continuation of this story, with God taking the most extreme step of becoming human.

What does it mean for our lives if we really believe that God will go to all this effort for us? Look at the story again. The shepherd isn’t rescuing a whole flock of sheep. The shepherd goes to that effort for just one sheep. What does it mean for us, if we believe that God is like that shepherd?

Many of us might not be quite comfortable with that idea. We like the idea of a distant god, maybe one who made the whole creation and then went away to leave us to our own devices. Do we really want a God who doesn’t allow us to wallow in our lostness? Do we really want a God who takes such efforts to find us when we go astray?

I've also wondered if this metaphor of a shepherd still works.  Maybe instead of a shepherd, we want a God who is like a dog who loves us.

God is the one who marks our comings and goings with as much steadfastness as a good dog. God is that good dog of popular culture who will know that something’s wrong before anyone else does. God will go to great lengths to find us, to bring us back to the flock, back to the coin purse. We worship a God who will not rest until we’re all present and accounted for. That’s Good News indeed.

Spiritual Gifts: A Methodist Assessment

For one of my seminary classes, Leading Innovation, we had to take several assessments.  One assessed our spiritual gifts and was created by the United Methodist Church; it's located here, should you want to take it.

I've taken these assessments before, many times during the past several decades, so I wasn't expecting to learn anything new.  So when the assessment returned my results, I wasn't surprised to see that it gave me high marks for teacher and shepherd qualities.  I have been teaching college level classes (mainly English) for decades, and part of the appeal of teaching for me is the ability to nurture students, many of whom are first generation college students, and to help them to success. Outside of the classroom, I am often teaching and shepherding: leading classes for my church, guiding younger faculty members who ask for advice, offering a supportive ear to my friends, and a variety of other activities.

The Spiritual Gifts Assessment placed Prophecy as my #2 gift, and that was a surprise to me. My brain immediately went to ancient prophets who spoke truth to power and were killed for their efforts or to the prophets who ran away from God’s tasks and ended up eaten by a big fish or shipwrecked.

But the Assessment included this language, which will stick with me for days, I am sure: “Prophets do not foretell the future, but they proclaim God’s future by revealing God’s perspective on our current reality.” I want to believe that I could reveal God’s perspective, but I also see the danger in believing that I do—throughout history we have seen the dangers unleashed when individuals or populations think that they know God’s perspective. I know the danger that comes with that kind of spiritual pride, so I will be cautious as I ponder this insight.

My spouse and I discussed the idea of what constitutes a prophet.  He was not surprised that I scored high in this aspect.  He mentioned my sermons and my tendency to remind people of how much God loves us.  I'm not sure I see that as prophecy, but it is God's perspective.  And there are many who might disagree that it's God's perspective.  Many might talk about how God judges us, and I tend to think that the judgmental part of God is not the truest aspect of God.

Maybe the prophecy part isn't as far off the mark as I thought.   

I was surprised by how many questions asked about foreign languages, which I had never thought about as a spiritual gift. Facility with foreign languages is not one of my spiritual gifts.

I was also surprised that there weren’t any questions that think about creative practices as spiritual gifts. I was born into a family of astonishing musical ability; sadly, I did not inherit those gifts. But I have developed other types of creative practices, like writing and fabric arts, and they have enriched my spiritual development in all sorts of ways. By sharing these gifts with others, I have enriched the spiritual lives of others too.

I continue to enjoy taking these kinds of assessments. No matter how often I take them, I always discover something new. And even if I didn’t discover something new, returning to these questions offers a good opportunity to make sure I’m staying on a good trajectory.

Labor and Labor Day

 It is Labor Day Monday, a paid time off holiday for some.  Technically I have today off, but since I am teaching online classes, if I wanted, I could take every Monday off.  I'm also a student, so my Monday class doesn't meet tonight--but I did have a written assignment due, which I've turned in.

I've spent this Labor Day week-end in Williamsburg, Virginia with my parents.  It's been a delightful time.  I will head back this morning in hopes of avoiding the worst of Labor Day traffic.  Once back at my seminary apartment, I'll work on an assignment due in my Foundations of Preaching class tomorrow and do some grading.

Many of us think about Labor Day as the end of summer, and I'm old enough to remember when college classes started the Tuesday after Labor Day.  My mom does too; she said in her generation it was because college students had jobs at country clubs that would close after Labor Day.  In terms of weather, I've always lived in places where summer will stretch on through September and perhaps beyond.

It's interesting to think about Labor Day in this time of "quiet quitting" and people restructuring their working lives.  Will we see this time period as one that changed labor relations forever?  Or will we see the forces of capitalism and empire crack down and break the momentum of workers?

Even though many of us will see today as simply a day off, it's a good day to think about work, both the kind we do for pay and the kind we do out of love. And what about the work we feel compelled to do? I'm thinking of that kind of documenting of family history, of cultural history, of all that might be lost without our efforts.  I'm thinking of our creative work.  There's so many more different kinds of work than just work for pay.

I'm thinking about our attitude towards work too.  I am glad to see that this article, published in 2016, about the theology of work is still online.  Here's my favorite quote from it, with ideas informed by Christian monasticism:  "Taking Benedict’s approach would force us to reconsider how we think about our work. Instead of, 'What work am I called to?' we might ask, 'How does the task before me contribute to or hinder my progress toward holiness?; Not 'How does this work cooperate with material creation?' but 'How does this work contribute to the life of the community and to others’ material and spiritual well-being?' Not 'Am I doing what I love?' but 'What activity is so important that I should, without exception, drop my work in order to do it?'”

And here's a Buddhist thought about work for your Labor Day, found in an interview with Bill Moyers and Jane Hirshfield who explains, "Teahouse practice means that you don't explicitly talk about Zen. It refers to leading your life as if you were an old woman who has a teahouse by the side of the road. Nobody knows why they like to go there, they just feel good drinking her tea. She's not known as a Buddhist teacher, she doesn't say, "This is the Zen teahouse." All she does is simply serve tea--but still, her decades of attentiveness are part of the way she does it. No one knows about her faithful attention to the practice, it's just there, in the serving of the tea, and the way she cleans the counters and washes the cups" (Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, page 112).

The Good Samaritan and Self-Care

I read an interesting perspective on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) for this week's Pastoral Care and Counseling in Context class. In "The Self-Differentiated Samaritan," Jeanne Stevenson Moessner notes that the Good Samaritan knows how to practice care for others and self care at the same time, noting a crucial part of the narrative that often is not emphasized:

". . . the Samaritan finished his journey while meeting the need of a wounded and marginal person. . . . He relied in a sense on the communal, on a type of teamwork as represented by the inn and by the host at the inn." (p. 66)

 
The implications? "As pastoral counselors, pastors, laity, and seminarians, we must sometimes take the wounded to the inn. The inn may be a battered woman's shelter, a Resolve meeting, a Bosom Buddies' support group, a round of chemotherapy. The inn may be represented by other disciplines in healing, such as the behavioral sciences. The inn may be the church." (p. 67)

In other words, we can care for others without sacrificing our needs and wants--and we don't have to be the only one involved in the process of caring for others. The burden doesn't have to fall only on one person.

The essay is in Robert C. Dykstra's Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings.