Remembering All the Slaughtered Innocents

On Dec. 28, we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear. The magi tell him of a new king that has just been born, and he feels threatened. He will stop at nothing to wipe out any rival, even one who is still a tiny baby.

We like to think that we wouldn't have reacted that way. We like to think that we'd have joined the band of wise men and gone to pay our respects. We like to think that we'd have put aside our worries of not being good enough and our doubts.

But far too many of us would have responded in exactly the same way, if we had the resources at our command. You need only look at interpersonal relationships in the family or in the office to see that most of us have an inner Herod whom it is hard to ignore.

If you're old enough, you've had the startled feeling when you realize that the next rising star at your workplace or your congregation or your social group is a generation younger than you. It's hard to respond graciously.

Many of us are likely to respond to our feelings of inadequacy in unproductive ways. If we hear a good idea from someone who makes us feel threatened at work or in our families, how many of us affirm that idea? Instead of saying, "How interesting," we say, "How stupid!" And then we go to great lengths to prove that we're right, and whatever is making us feel inadequate is wrong.

So often I feel like I will never escape middle school, that particular kind of hell, where the boundaries were always fluid. Kids who were acceptable one day were pariahs the next. Many adolescents report feeling that they can't quite get their heads around all the rules and the best ways to achieve success.

Adult life can sometimes feel the same way. We fight to achieve equilibrium, only to find it all undone. Most of us don't have the power that Herod had, so our fight against powerlessness doesn't end in corpses. But it often results in a world of outcasts and lone victors, zero-sum games that leave us all diminished.

But feelings of inadequacy can have lethal consequences, especially when played out on a geopolitical scale, the powerful lashing out against the powerless. We live in a world where dictators can efficiently kill their country's population by the thousands or more. Sadly, we see this Herod dynamic so often that we're in danger of becoming jaded, hardened and unaffected by suffering.

Now as the year draws to a close, we can resolve to be on the lookout for ways that our inner Herod dominates and controls our emotional lives. We can resolve to let love rule our actions, not fear. We can also resolve to help those who are harmed by the Herods of our world.

Thinking of Herod might also bring to mind the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family turned into refugees. We remember the Holy Family fleeing in terror with only the clothes on their backs -- and we remember that this story is so common throughout the world.

As we think about Herod, let us pray to vanquish the Herods in our heads and in our lives. Let us pray for victims of terror everywhere, the ones that get away and the ones that are slaughtered.

Trinity Test Site, in History, Film, and Poetry

On this day in 1945, the United States exploded the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

Robert Oppenheimer named the site, and when asked if he had named it as a name common to rivers and mountains in the west, he replied, "I did suggest it, but not on that ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.' That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God;—.'"

I love a scientist who loves John Donne. Metaphysical poetry and atomic weapons: they do seem to go together in intriguing ways.

I think of Oppenheimer watching that explosion. In one book I read, the author states that these scientists were fairly sure what would happen, but not certain. There was some fear that they might somehow ignite the earth's atmosphere and destroy the planet. But they proceeded anyway.

Oppenheimer says that he watched the explosion and thought about The Bhagavad Gita: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." Once we had a crew of guys come to cut down a tree. The leader with the shaved head took off his shirt and tattooed across his back was the same line; it was a big tattoo--I could read it from inside the house. On that same day, from the gay guys' apartment complex on the next street, I could hear disco music, The Village People and Donna Summer, in an endless loop, interrupted by the buzzing chain saws from the tree crew. Some day I'll use these details in a poem or a short story. Or maybe having recorded them in my blog, I won't feel the need to use the details elsewhere.

I thought with the film Oppenheimer, more people might know the history, but the significance of this day can get a bit lost.  I hadn't remembered until doing some digging this morning that the explosion was scheduled for this date because Truman had an important meeting with Allied leaders in Potsdam on July 17. Bomb as savior?

Oh, so many poetry possibilities! There's the desert aspect, the prophets that so often emerge from wilderness areas. There's the fact that this part of the country has become a detonation point for various immigration fights through the last four (or more) decades.

Those of you who have been reading this blog and/or my poems for awhile now will be saying, "Haven't you already explored this poetic terrain?"

Indeed, I have. Yet I think there may be more to do.

But for today, let's look back.

This poem was first published in The Ledge in the early part of this century:


Ash Wednesday at the Trinity Test Site


I didn’t develop a taste for locusts until later.
Instead I craved libraries, those crusted containers of all knowledge,
honey to fill the combs of my brain.

I didn’t see this university as a desert.
How could it be, with its cornucopia of classes,
colleagues who never tired of spirited conversations,
no point too arcane for hours of dissection.
I never foresaw that I might consume too many ideas,
that they might stick in the craw.

I never dreamed a day would come when I preferred
true deserts, far away from intellectual centers.
No young minds to be midwifed,
no hungry mouths draining my most vital juices,
no books with their reproachful, sad sighs, sitting
in the library, that daycare center of the intellect.

The desert doesn’t drown the voice
the way a city does. No drone
of machinery, no cacophony of crowing
scholars to consume my own creativity.
In the desert, the demand is to be still, to conserve
our strength for the trials that are to come.

Here, the earth, scorched by the fissile
testing of the greatest intellects of the last century, reminds
us of the ultimate futility of attempting to understand.
The desert dares us to drop our defenses.
In this place, scoured of all temptations, all distractions,
the sand demands we face our destiny.

How to Help Those Who Survive Disasters Like the Fires in California

I don't have much to add to what has already been documented about the fierce fires consuming the Los Angeles area right now.  The pictures are scary, and I imagine the situation on the ground is even worse.  It's not a wildfire in a remote wilderness place after all.  It's in an urban area.

There are many explanations as to why these fires are so ferocious.  I know that some people will see the coverage of famous movie people losing their homes and assume that everyone who experiences loss in these fires will have the resources to recover.

But if we take a minute to consider, we know that cannot be true.  The famous movie people will be the ones talking on camera, but there are plenty of others who won't get that airtime or who can't afford the exposure.

There will be many agencies contacting us to donate money to help.  If you want to help in this disaster or any other, I recommend Lutheran Disaster Relief.  They did amazing work in North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and I have no doubt they'll do the same in California.  Lutheran organizations are often the first ones on the scene and the last to leave.

If you go to the home page, you can choose from US disasters or global disasters, and of course, you can learn more about the organization.

Remembering All the Slaughtered Innocents

 On Dec. 28, we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear. The magi tell him of a new king that has just been born, and he feels threatened. He will stop at nothing to wipe out any rival, even one who is still a tiny baby.

We like to think that we wouldn't have reacted that way. We like to think that we'd have joined the band of wise men and gone to pay our respects. We like to think that we'd have put aside our worries of not being good enough and our doubts.

But far too many of us would have responded in exactly the same way, if we had the resources at our command. You need only look at interpersonal relationships in the family or in the office to see that most of us have an inner Herod whom it is hard to ignore.

If you're old enough, you've had the startled feeling when you realize that the next rising star at your workplace or your congregation or your social group is a generation younger than you. It's hard to respond graciously.

Many of us are likely to respond to our feelings of inadequacy in unproductive ways. If we hear a good idea from someone who makes us feel threatened at work or in our families, how many of us affirm that idea? Instead of saying, "How interesting," we say, "How stupid!" And then we go to great lengths to prove that we're right, and whatever is making us feel inadequate is wrong.

So often I feel like I will never escape middle school, that particular kind of hell, where the boundaries were always fluid. Kids who were acceptable one day were pariahs the next. Many adolescents report feeling that they can't quite get their heads around all the rules and the best ways to achieve success.

Adult life can sometimes feel the same way. We fight to achieve equilibrium, only to find it all undone. Most of us don't have the power that Herod had, so our fight against powerlessness doesn't end in corpses. But it often results in a world of outcasts and lone victors, zero-sum games that leave us all diminished.

But feelings of inadequacy can have lethal consequences, especially when played out on a geopolitical scale, the powerful lashing out against the powerless. We live in a world where dictators can efficiently kill their country's population by the thousands or more. Sadly, we see this Herod dynamic so often that we're in danger of becoming jaded, hardened and unaffected by suffering.

Now as the year draws to a close, we can resolve to be on the lookout for ways that our inner Herod dominates and controls our emotional lives. We can resolve to let love rule our actions, not fear. We can also resolve to help those who are harmed by the Herods of our world.

Thinking of Herod might also bring to mind the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family turned into refugees. We remember the Holy Family fleeing in terror with only the clothes on their backs -- and we remember that this story is so common throughout the world.

As we think about Herod, let us pray to vanquish the Herods in our heads and in our lives. Let us pray for victims of terror everywhere, the ones that get away and the ones that are slaughtered.

Wreckage and Ruin on the Way to Church

 Yesterday I made the trip to Bristol, Tennessee, where I preach and preside at Faith Lutheran each Sunday.  Yesterday I left at 6:50 a.m.; I took a book with me, in case I got there very early and needed something to do.  Google Maps told me that the optimum route would take me 2 hours and 10 minutes; it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes.

My spouse couldn't go with me yesterday because he's been recovering from the ways his body has been protesting all the chain saw work he did earlier in the week.  I was feeling anxious, so I decided to print the Google Maps directions, in case I got to a part of the backcountry roads and lost cell phone service, which I assumed would mean losing GPS.

I started on I 26, with signs that said the road was closed at exit 3.  I took the exit that got me to US 19, and that road was a 4 lane highway, straight and wide, with only one truck on it.  I thought, well, this isn't too bad. There were trees blazing with autumnal color, and I thought, you wanted to experience autumn in the mountains--here you go.

Then I got on NC197, a two lane road, but still not bad.  There were piles of debris here and there, a tree down here and there.  I was behind an 18 wheeler and a box truck, but that was fine--I wasn't going to be zipping down these roads because I knew that they had only just been restored.

I got to Green Mountain, where the road ran by the North Toe River, and I saw so much devastation.  I know I didn't take in the full extent of it because I was focusing on the road, which looked like it might crumble out from under us at any moment.  The road had stacks of trees on either side, and I am fairly sure that crews just cut out the middle parts of fallen trees to be able to access the roads.  On the other side of the river, railroad tracks had buckled and twisted, like some huge child had a temper tantrum.

As I went up NC226, up and up the mountain, I saw portions of the mountains where every tree had been flattened.  Yet there were other sections in the next curve of the road that hadn't been touched, trees in full autumnal glory.  The road got curvier, and I felt increasingly anxious--there was no shoulder at all, and the 18 wheeler truck ahead of me felt free to use both lanes to navigate the curves.  What if there had been oncoming traffic?

Eventually, I pulled into the parking lot of Faith Lutheran.  I felt frazzled, but took some deep breaths and pulled myself back together again.  Just 20 miles earlier, I had been in Elizabethton, Tennessee, where a different river had overswept its banks and destroyed everything in its path.  And here I was in Bristol, where the community was largely unharmed. 

When I think of October, I think I'll remember this feeling more than any other:  how can some of us suffer so much damage, while others of us (me, for example) emerge relatively unscathed?  

On the way home, my smart phone routed me down I 26, and I decided to follow its instructions.  If I was turned away and had to backtrack, I had time.  The road was closed at exit 3, at Irwin, NC, but the detour was clearly marked.  I got back on I 26 and went back across the mountains that way.

The damage at Irwin was as catastrophic as the news reports made it seem, with wrecked roads and houses no longer there, swept away when the Nolichucky River rose.  I remember last winter when all the leaves were down, and I realized what the true contours of the river were, how some of the houses weren't too far away from that wide river.  I think those houses are gone now.  

There weren't many of us going across the mountains, but as I got closer to Asheville, traffic increased.  I got gas at the station near my house.  It's always crowded, because the price is cheap, but yesterday was worse than usual.  I was glad to get home; I've been through hurricanes before, and I know there's a point when the "we're all in this together" phase of recovery shifts to despair and rage as the pace of recovery takes so very long.

At the end of the afternoon, with no fanfare at all, we realized that our internet had been restored. I spent the rest of the day, expecting it to go out again, but so far, it has held.  I'm still boiling several pots of water a day, but that inconvenience is so minor, compared to the wreckage and ruin I witnessed yesterday.

A single picture and even a series of pictures can't really do justice to the scale of the wreckage and ruin.  Neither can these words.  I've seen article after article that tells of people swept away in the raging rivers.  Those words, also, can't make sense of it all.

On some level, humans aren't equipped to make sense of destruction on this scale, whether caused by nature or caused by humans.  But as with the pandemic, it makes sense to create a record of what I've seen.  It may never be important to historians, but it's important to me to bear witness.

Hope in a Time of Global Warming

We've gotten news of another month of record breaking heat, which might lead us to feel despair.  It led me to go back to the final paper I wrote for the Environmental History of Christianity class that I took in the Spring.  I remembered the conclusion as being both a comfort and an inspiration.

I post it below, in the hopes that you, too, will find it a comfort and an inspiration:

In a time of climate transformation, some will be comforted by the now and not yet part of Jesus’ message. Jesus announces the inbreaking Kingdom of God, an event that it is happening before the eyes of those who see him, but with the creation of the new world not yet complete. That message is a powerful one in a time that can look like one of planetary collapse. God has taken chaos before and turned it into creation. Planetary history shows times of extinctions, yet they can lead to a planet full of even more vibrant life forms. These beliefs reinforce each other and can energize believers.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have declared their faith in a God who can work miracles and bring redemption to the grimmest of situations. We are facing such a situation now. Christians have looked at the history of the planet and pointed out the places where God takes brokenness and transforms it into beauty. Our faith is built on those stories of transformation, and the world is desperate to hear these stories too. Christians have preached and proclaimed that they believe in the powers of God and the powers of resurrection, and the coming century will test that faith. Christians can create the rituals and theology that will help explain and guide humanity through desperate times. Christianity is a religion that has supported humans through the biggest challenges throughout history. We are called to do likewise now.

We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.

The End of Spring Term 2024

In some ways, this week has been the first week of summer break.  In some ways, it's felt more like the end of spring semester.  I've been waiting for grades, and this week, the last of them finally came in.

I've had some grades for several weeks.  My internship class was pass-fail, so once I completed the assignments, it was easy for my instructors to submit the passing grade.  My paper for Systematic Theology was graded a day or two after I turned it in, and I was happy to get my grade of A.  Even after 9 months of Systematic Theology class, I still wasn't completely sure that I was creating Systematic Theology.  And in fact, creating a complete systematic theology, in the way that the best systematic theologians have done, would mean I'd be writing multiple volumes of books, not just a paper or two.

This week, I got my Foundations of Worship class grades.  I had gotten grades throughout the term, so I was fairly sure all would be well.  But it was a relief to get grades for the last assignments I turned in.  I had to go back to the assignments to even remember what I wrote, so that I could fully appreciate the comments, that's how long it had been for some of them.  I was happy with what I had written, and so was my professor.

I turned in my last big paper three weeks ago.  It was for Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class, and in some ways, I was covering some of the same territory as I did for my Systematic Theology class.  I wanted to talk about the ways that Substitutionary Atonement Theology has failed us.  For the EHC class, I talked about how our ideas of salvation leave us willing to let the planet die, since we're just waiting to go to Heaven.  I got an A on that paper.

But more important to me, I restored my hope.  In my paper, I talked about our failure of vision, but I reminded the reader (and myself) that we worship a God who takes the worst kind of brokenness and transforms it into beauty.  I found myself asking myself if I really believed in the possibility of resurrection--not the specific resurrection of Jesus, but resurrection in general.

The answer:  yes, yes I do.  Here's how I concluded my paper:

Throughout the centuries, Christians have declared their faith in a God who can work miracles and bring redemption to the grimmest of situations. We are facing such a situation now. Christians have looked at the history of the planet and pointed out the places where God takes brokenness and transforms it into beauty. Our faith is built on those stories of transformation, and the world is desperate to hear these stories too. Christians have preached and proclaimed that they believe in the powers of God and the powers of resurrection, and the coming century will test that faith. Christians can create the rituals and theology that will help explain and guide humanity through desperate times. Christianity is a religion that has supported humans through the biggest challenges throughout history. We are called to do likewise now.

We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.

A Doctrine of Salvation for the Turning of the Year

A post about Systematic Theology may not be traditional for the last day of 2023.  But it's what's on my mind.  My seminary professors have until January 6 to turn in grades, and while I've wanted the feedback, I haven't been as anxious as some years--perhaps because I have fewer classes for this term.  

Yesterday I was thrilled to find out I got a 58/60 on my Systematic Theology final paper; at first I had a slight panic attack because I thought I got a 58/100, which would have been quite a blow.  Happily, it only took me 16 seconds to realize that I had made an A, not an F.  The paper counts for 60% of my grade, and the midterm paper counts for 40% of my grade; unlike other classes I've taken, there was much that could go wrong with so much riding on so few papers and a topic that was less familiar to me.  I've done a lot of theology writing, but very little that is systematic.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'm doing systematic theology still.  I had to show that I understood what we'd been talking about throughout the semester, and I had to refer to theologians and to passages from the Bible.  On the morning of the day that it was due, I worried that I should have organized it differently, but I also realized that if I had, it wouldn't have been as balanced, and I risked looking like I didn't know what I was supposed to know.  So I left it alone, while at the same time worrying that there were some doctrines that I had completely missed.

When I got my grade yesterday, my first impulse was to go back to read the paper again, for the first time since I turned it in on December 14.  I'm really impressed with the ending, and since my grade is in, let me post it here.  I think it gives a hopeful note as one difficult year comes to a close and another year, likely to be even more difficult, begins:

But here is where soteriology [doctrine of salvation] gives me hope. We have seen God overcome one of history’s huge domination systems, the Roman empire. Christ was killed by the Roman empire, in a brutalizing death designed to humiliate and to keep the population terrified of resisting. In The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, Moltmann points out that under Roman law, “crucifixion was the punishment designed to deter rebels against the political order of the Roman empire, or the social order of Roman slave-owning society” (p. 163). Crucifixion was a death designed for those who were a threat to the state, which tells us how the empire saw Christ’s message, as a threat to empire. We can argue about how Jesus was raised from the dead (did God the Creator raise him? Did God the Spirit?); the Nicene Creed doesn’t tell us the particulars of the process, but all of our creeds assure us that resurrection happened to the physical body in a physical way.

Throughout human history, we’ve been at a similar crossroad, where it looks like the powers of earthly empire will prevail. But we’ve also seen that when people who believe in resurrection work together, the results can be surprising and empire disrupting.

So I will keep working for both human rights and the preservation of the planet. I believe in the Triune God who is making all things new (Revelation 21: 5). I believe in the Triune God who led people from slavery (Exodus) and who can raise the dead, both the literal dead, like Lazarus and Jesus, and the vast populations who are spiritually dead. In logical terms, it’s hard for me to imagine how God comes to our chaos and cures it all. In spiritual terms, I remember that God is the one who crafted it all from the beginning, and I trust that the Triune God has the blueprints and the plan.

The Feast Day of Saint Augustine in a Time of Various Slow Motion Collapses

Today is the feast day of Saint Augustine.  One of my seminary textbooks called him the most important thinker/theologian in the history of the Christian church.  Not one of the most important--the most important.

He was alive from 354 to 430; I'm always a bit startled when I look up his dates and remember just how long ago he lived.  Other thinkers have had centuries to rival Augustine as the most important thinker, but so far, very few people have come close.

We can trace our ideas about original sin and grace back to him. His thinking about God and God's existence outside of time has been enormously influential. His views of just war continue to be debated. His confessional style continues in writing to this day.

Many people focus on his early days, his sin loving days, and wonder how he came to be one of the leaders of the Church.  But this morning, I'm wondering if his prolific writing about such a wide variety of topics is rooted at the end of his life more than the beginning.

My Church History professor pointed out that Augustine lived until almost the end of the Roman empire, and it's important to remember that the end didn't happen with a bang.  People like Augustine could see what was coming, and he must have had a sense--perhaps a deep, deep sense--of all that was going to be lost.

This morning, I'm wondering if he wrote so much down because he knew how much would be lost, if his prolific writing was rooted in the knowledge/sense/foreboding of upcoming disaster.  And of course, my mind goes to our own time, my own pendulum swings from "I must get everything recorded" to "Why bother?  Humans will not survive this."

Augustine was living in a similar time  to ours;  there had been diseases and political intrigue and invaders coming from all directions, along with upheavals that kept various populations on the move.  I'd like to channel some of his writing energy in response to all of these slow motion collapses.

What to Wear to the Mass Extinction

Tomorrow I go back to the classroom to teach English classes.  I've been teaching all along, but my online classes are very different from what I'm  about to do.  My online classes are asynchronous, meaning that we don't have a Zoom session or required weekly meetings online.  There are modules, and while students can work their way through at their own pace, there are parts where they need to respond to classmates, primarily with discussion threads.  I am available to answer questions and give feedback, but I don't create curriculum.  Often, my primary role is that of grader.

Tomorrow I meet my classes at Spartanburg Methodist College.  It began life as a junior college, but now it has some bachelors degrees.  A fair number of students still take classes and then transfer to a bigger college, so in that way, it's similar to a community college.  But the campus is huge and aesthetically beautiful, unlike most community college campuses.

I have more freedom in teaching these classes than I have ever had.  For example, I get to choose my own books.  People outside academia might think that faculty always get to choose their own books.  But for a variety of reasons, that's not usually the case, particularly with part-time faculty; book orders often have to be finalized before faculty are hired.

I have the syllabi printed, ready for copying at the campus tomorrow.  I have no limits to how many copies of classroom materials I can make--that, too, is different.  I will get the key to my office, which I share with another person.  I will have a key and my own desk!  That, too, is a very different set up than many adjuncts have.

Even though I'm in a much safer place, in terms of where my house is located, I've continued to read and research climate collapse, which I'm convinced is happening much faster than I once thought it would.  It's sobering to think about the fact that all it takes is a summer of fires like this past one, releasing so much more carbon into the atmosphere, undoing any momentum we had, which was fairly minimal.

At one point, I thought that much of the grimmer climate collapse stuff would happen after I died, but now I'm not sure.

It's strange to think that we're staring at a mass extinction event that will likely include humans, a slow moving mass extinction event, and here I am, finishing syllabi, thinking about what to wear tomorrow, buying shoes that can be worn with skirts in the winter.  It's no wonder that humanity isn't very good at risk assessment.

Summer Solstice in a Time of Climate Change

We are still a few hours away from the official summer solstice, which occurs at 10:58 a.m., Eastern time.  Here in the mountains of North Carolina, it's more like chilly spring.  We have yet to turn on the AC; in fact, last week we had the heat on for a few minutes, just to take the chill off the air.

Let me be clear that I am not complaining.  My spouse complains about the lack of blazing heat and sun, but I like being able to take a walk in the afternoon without melting.  I like being able to get in the car without feeling like I'm suffocating for the whole trip because the car's AC can't get rid of the heat that builds up when a car sits in a parking space for an hour or two in the daylight.

I thought about this location that we've chosen as I read David Pogue's How to Prepare for Climate Change:  A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos.  Part of the book talks about deciding to move to a safer climate.  Pogue recommends the Pacific Northwest or the Great Lakes.  He also lists about 14 specific cities, all of them a bit cold for me, at this time of climate warming.  

But we've chosen a good spot.  I almost said we've accidentally chosen a good spot, but it wasn't an accident at all.  I've been thinking about this issue for at least 20 years, as it became clear that South Florida has some severe disadvantages as a spot to weather climate change or the lack of oil, which is the lens through which I first started having these thoughts.  

Pogue suggests we think about 4 things:  moving inland, moving north, being near fresh water, and finding a place with good infrastructure.  Pogue might think we're not far enough north, but it's far enough to escape the heat that worries Pogue.  We are near a huge lake and the French Broad River, plus Lutheridge itself has a lake.  So far, we also get a lot of water in the form of rain, which will be less and less true of much of the southeast in the coming years.

I am less sure about the infrastructure, but the fact that the population is less and more spread out is a good thing.  The roads seem in good shape, as do the power lines and the internet access.  The great December ice storms may have made me wonder about the water, but the city of Asheville did a great job of keeping us informed as the crisis was unfolding, and they did a great job of figuring out resources for those affected.

I read most of the book yesterday afternoon, even though a lot of it doesn't pertain to me anymore.  I have always loved disaster prepping narratives.  Even as a child, I loved books about being lost in the wilderness and needing to find a way to survive.  Hopefully, my life won't come to that, but life in Florida, particularly after a hurricane, resembled that narrative more than I wanted to live anymore, particularly as we got older.

In the past, I've written summer solstice posts about summer pleasures, in part as a way of remembering that there were some to be claimed, even as the season wore me out.  Let me think about summer pleasures in a new way this year--this season will be fleeting, I suspect, and I'll need to make the most of it while it's here.  That said, I'm looking forward to seeing how the seasons shift here in the North Carolina mountains.  Last year, I got a glimpse, but I was in D.C. for the most part.

For me, the pleasures of summer revolve around food, particularly melons and tomatoes and corn.  A week ago, I started looking at community swimming pools, and I've kept a swimsuit out of a box in the hopes that we'll get in a swim or two.  I'd like to go to an evening outside concert at the NC Arboretum.  And I'm going to have to do much of this later in July, when I'm done with the seminary class that I'm taking.

Maybe by then, it will be warmer; if last year is an indicator, that's when we get the most summerlike weather, in later July and early August.

Calamitous Centuries Past and Present

I am listening to the Throughline episode that explores Omar El Akkad's novel, American War.  I read the book in 2017, and I remember it as a searing experience, searing in a good way.  It begins with a discussion about the past and the future, about sci-fi and futuristic fiction (will it be hover cars or will it stay rooted in the conflicts of past ages?).  It's a great conversation.  When I finished it for the first time, I listened again.

As I drove to Williamsburg, I listened to an episode of On the Media about the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence, followed by news of devastating weather crashing into California.  I thought about the century we're in, the 21st century, and I thought about the decades that will unfold.  I think that if humanity survives, we will use the word "calamitous" to describe the 21st century, much the way we use it with the 14th century (see Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror) or the collapse of the Bronze Age.  

Yes, I think there will be spots where we marvel at how humanity solved one problem or another.  Maybe it will be the vast fields of solar panels (and we will wonder why humans didn't attempt this sooner, maybe staving off the climate catastrophes that cascaded through the 21st century) or the ways we've learned to vanquish some diseases.  Some of us won't perceive the century through a lens of disaster and catastrophe.  Many of us won't survive long enough to think about the 21st century at all.

My mom and I spent a lot of time over the week-end returning to the issue of the future of church, both The Church (the institution) and the Sunday service itself.  My thoughts have continued to circle around the various developments I learned about in Church History I, the times when the Church could have become something else, could have championed a different set of values and beliefs.

I find myself thinking about the emphasis on personal salvation vs. the salvation of societies.  When we face threats that are more existential, does the Church abandon the personal salvation/substitutionary atonement theories?  Or does society give up on church altogether, thinking that if there's a hope for salvation, it won't be coming from The Church?

The coming decades may illuminate these questions, if any of us have leisure time to reflect on them.

La Nuit de Temps, and Other Types of Apocalypse

I have had apocalypse on the brain for many reasons.  In part, because it's the week where we've had Halloween, All Saints and All Souls.  I've seen the faces of collapsed jack-o-lanterns and wilting Halloween decorations.  The wind blows many of the remaining leaves off the trees, and the mist obscures the moon.

Our Foundations of Preaching class has moved to preaching from Hebrew Scripture texts, and I chose the Isaiah 2:  1-5 text, beating swords into ploughshares.  Of course, it doesn't seem like we'll be doing that anytime soon.

Last night, I found myself at various nuclear war sites, and I watched the first chunk of Threads, the scariest nuclear war movie ever.  And then I had the best night of sleep that I had all week--what does that mean?  Am I just exhausted or is there something about a worst case scenario that lulls me to sleep?

My Church History I class has arrived at the fall of Rome, which was really more of a slow motion collapse than a quick fall.  On Thursday night we talked about Augustine, who was alive for much of the end times.  Our professor talked about Augustine being able to see what was coming and asked if we had ever thought about what that might be like.   I wanted to say, “Every single day.” I feel like we’re at a hinge point of history where things could go terribly wrong, but there’s a slender chance that we might shape a better future. I wonder if Augustine had similar thoughts, a hope that he knew was naïve, but he still wanted to cling to it.

Our teacher gave us the French term for the Dark Ages: La Nuit de Temps.  I know why many historians don't use the term "Dark Ages."  I wonder if the French term is equally problematic.  The ancient prophets remind us that we've had many a dark age.

Thursday night my professor referenced the book One Second After. I could hardly believe it. I read the whole trilogy in August after a college friend mentioned that he had taken a side trip to Black Mountain during a vacation to Asheville because the book had so impacted him. He described it to me, and I couldn’t resist. What a great book! I have thought of it often as Putin has made his nuclear threats throughout this autumn. I want to believe that he wouldn’t attempt something like a high level EMP, or any other kind of nuclear explosion, but I know enough about war (and life) to know that things can go wrong/escalate, especially when rulers think they’ve got the whole situation under control. We have certainly seen evidence of that in the history we’ve covered in Church History I.

As my professor talked about an EMP, I thought about the age of my classmates and how they had probably never thought about all the ways that electronics rule our lives.  Your car won't start (and may come to a sudden stop) without electronics.  I think about my first car, the mighty Monte Carlo, a 1974 model that I kept a few years longer than perhaps I should have, because it didn't have an electronic ignition.

This week's big possibility for apocalypse:  election day on Tuesday.  What's more likely is that we won't know much this week.  I voted weeks ago, as did many people in this country.  I know many people who claim that there is voter suppression, but it's much easier to vote now than it was when I first applied for an absentee ballot, back in 1984.  I had to prove that I was out of town and couldn't get back to my polling place.  It was easy enough to do, since I was a college student.  But it took more effort to get an absentee ballot in 1984 than it did this year.

Are we in a night of time or just a hinge point--or both?  As an old boss of mine used to say, "More will be revealed."  These days, I find myself thinking, or it won't be revealed.

Packing Light, Packing Heavy

 I am on the road again this week-end.  My sister and I are headed down to Williamsburg to celebrate our mom and dad's 60th anniversary on the 27th, and my sister and I are going with our dad on an Honor Flight tour of DC.  Yes, we're going to W'burg today, on a bus to DC and back to W'burg tomorrow, then a less-travelled day on Sunday.

As I've packed today, and as I loaded and unloaded and then loaded and unloaded the car after last week-end's journey, I thought, what happened to younger Kristin who said that all she needed was a pocket to hold a lipstick and a credit card?

And then I stopped myself--I used to say that, but I never travelled that way.  On the contrary, I'm the person who travels as if there might be a nuclear war when I'm away:  lots of socks and underwear, an extra pair of shoes or two or three, good books, and now, my laptop.  

Of course, if there's a nuclear war, I'll wish I had packed more books and left the laptop behind.  Hysterical laughter ensues--if there's a nuclear war . . . how things come full circle.  

When I was in college, I'd strategize with my boyfriend who would become my spouse about what we would do if the bombs fell when we were away from each other, where we would meet up.  It was a surprise to hear myself say last Saturday, "Listen, if anything nuclear happens, you stay here.  It's safer in the mountains.  If I'm still alive and if I can get to you, I'll come here."

Immediately I thought about the fact that I'd be travelling on foot.  How long would that take?  Could I find a horse along the way?  Could I ride a horse after all these years?

And yes, I realize how ridiculous it is to ponder these things.  And yet . . . and yet . . . we have at least one despot (Putin) thinking about the use of nuclear weapons.  He's not deranged, and I want to think that might keep us safer (as in, "Only a mad man would drop nuclear bombs . . ."--use of gender intentional).  But I don't.

I am not prepared for a nuclear war, in any sense of that idea.  But I am prepared for my trip to W'burg.

Travel During a Time of Turmoil and Peak Leaf Season

 I am writing in my little house in the mountains, in Arden, NC.  I am at the end of a reading week for seminary, a week where I also turned in grades for one of my online classes that I teach, while also finishing the course shell for an online class that starts Monday.  When I entered these dates into the calendar, I thought my spouse might come to me to spend a few days in our seminary apartment.

But I'm the one that likes to drive.  I'm the one who has been craving a trip to the mountains for an apple orchard or a winery or a hike.  So I offered to be the one to drive back for a long week-end together.

I had been looking forward to seeing the mountains that were supposed to be at full peak color.  As I set out, the rain started to fall.  Through much of my drive yesterday, the mountains were cloaked in mist, clouds, and full out rain.  Although I didn't see far-off vistas for much of my drive, the individual trees were gorgeous.  Or to be more accurate:  some of them were gorgeous, while some of them had lost all of their leaves, while others only had a burst of color amidst full-on green, and others were half in color and half twiggy branches where leaves had been recently.

Despite the rain/mist/fog, it was a fairly easy drive.  When I left my seminary apartment, I heard a BBC episode about how the war in Ukraine might end and the mindset of Putin.  Along the way, I heard from Iranian activists who are hoping to secure more rights for women (and perhaps a regime change) and updates about vaccination rates and upcoming seasons of disease.  

I got back in the car at the end of the day to do a quick grocery store run, and I was just in time for the roll call vote from the January 6 committee, as they voted to subpoena Donald John Trump.  It was an interesting book-end to the day that began with commentators thinking about the path to nuclear war over Ukraine.

But the leaves are glorious.  During the last part of my trip through the North Carolina mountains, I saw the blazing colors that I had been promised.  This morning, I wrote these lines, after reading this provocatively titled essay, "We Are On a Path to Nuclear War."

We wait on leaves to fall
Or maybe nuclear bombs to drop.

Then I added a line from my list of interesting lines that didn't see development in previous essays:

I travel with a bag; I may not make it home

Here's how it looks right now:

We wait on leaves to fall
Or maybe nuclear bombs to drop.
I travel with a bag; I may not make it home

I'll keep this document open on my computer.  Perhaps I will add to it as I work on seminary papers and presentations that are due next week.  Maybe I will just enjoy the leaves.

Transfigurations: Atomic and Spiritual

On this day in 1945, the world was about to change in dramatic ways that we likely still don't fully comprehend. On this day in 1945, the first nuclear bomb was used in war.

The effects of that bomb obliterated much of Hiroshima--and vaporized some of it. There were reports of people fused into pavement and glass--or just vanished, with a trace remaining at the pavement. The reports of the survivors who walked miles in search of help or water are grim. And many of those survivors would die of the effects of radiation in the coming years.

In a strange twist, today is also the Feast Day of the Transfiguration in Orthodox churches, the day when Jesus went up the mountain with several disciples and becomes transfigured into a radiant being. Those of you who worship in Protestant churches may have celebrated this event just before Lent began, so you may not think of it as a summer kind of celebration. Pre-Reformation traditions often celebrated this day in conjunction with blessing the first harvest.

I find these intersections interesting.

Today is a good day to think about what distractions, atomic, cosmic, or otherwise, take our attention away from the true work. Today is a good day to think about mountaintop experiences and how we navigate our lives when we're not on the mountaintop. Today is also a good day to meditate on power and how we seek to harness it and how we use power once we have it.

Today is a good time to spend with the texts for the day, to carve out some time for quiet contemplation. Go here for readings, complete with links, so that you can read online, if that's easier.

Today is also a great day to celebrate the transfiguring possibility of power. After all, not all uses of power lead to destructive explosions. Some times, we find redemption.

The Urge to Knit Socks on the Second Day

 On Friday night, I wrote this Facebook post which I then shortened into a tweet:  "I have this strange urge to knit socks for the war effort. I realize that there is no such war effort yet, and that there are factory produced socks that will be much better for any war effort yet to come than anything that I can knit. But still, the urge to knit is strong--and I prefer to crochet, so I find it even stranger that I have a yearning to knit."

Various friends responded to remind me of the other things I might knit/crochet for other populations that need care, or other ways, like planting seeds, I could show defiant hope in the face of geopolitical madness.  Indeed, we did contribute to a fundraising campaign of a teenager that we know at church who is raising funds for further schooling.  Later this week-end, I will give money to Lutheran World Relief, as I always do, when there's a crisis.

But giving money seems like such a small thing to do, even as I know that money to assist refugees will be important.  I realize that no one needs the lumpy socks I would create, but it would keep my hands busy.  I am not going to fly to Europe to make my way east to fight.  I am a middle-aged woman with arthritic feet and limited ability with weapons.  I am not going to be the freedom fighter/spy who defeats Vladimir Putin; I do not have that level of skill or beauty.

Of course, it's not going to be a "normal" war, whatever that means.  It will not be won with socks or victory gardens or spies who pass secrets--maybe.  In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman says, "This is the first war that will be covered on TikTok by super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones, so acts of brutality will be documented and broadcast worldwide without any editors or filters. On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed by Google maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams."

Last night we went to the top floor of the parking garage to watch the sun set.  My spouse brought his violin, and I brought our copy of With One Voice, which has the music to "Dona Nobis Pacem."  I thought of people playing their instruments in the  rubble of past cities torn apart by war (Sarajevo?  Did it really happen or was it a scene from a movie?).  I watched people leaving their offices and other people arriving for Friday night festivities.  My spouse played his violin, I prayed, and the sun set on the second day of this war-like situation.  

On the First Day of a Land War in Europe

Let me capture some vignettes from the first day of a full scale invasion of a sovereign nation in Europe; Russia invaded Ukraine in a hot war kind of way yesterday.  Years from now, we may look back on these hours/days/weeks as the last or the first of some sort of new world order/ruins of old world order.  

--Periodically throughout the day yesterday, I looked at the brilliant blue sky with its beautiful cloud sculptures.  I thought of ICBMs and wondered where Russia has them pointed these days.  I can still sing all the words to Sting's "Russians," or at least the refrain.  Does Putin have children?  Can you imagine having Putin as your dad?

--My friend sent me this message:  "I wish I could come over and we could have tea and bake things and not be in wwIII"; I responded, "I can arrange tea and baking but there may only be 1 man who can help with the decision not to go towards WWIII--and I don't think Putin shares our love of tea and baking."  I spent the rest of the day thinking about tea and scones with Putin and remembering a different song composed by Sting, "Tea in the Sahara."  

----My friend and I also shared an interesting exchange about women in previous world wars, plucky women in war rooms, and what would that look like today?

--I thought about electromagnetic pulses and all the ways our data can be destroyed.  I asked my spouse if we should take a screen shot of our bank balance page, print it out, and save it.  My spouse told me about the special nuclear weapon that Russia has that will do something to the stratosphere and wipe out humanity immediately.  I said, "So I'm hearing you say we don't need to bother printing proof of our bank balance?"

--My spouse wrote his thesis for his MA in Philosophy on the morality of the ambiguous bluff in a world of nuclear weapons.  It may have been the last academic writing to refer to the Soviet Union, which was coming apart in those days, but no one could have imagined this world we currently inhabit.

--I had an appointment with my spiritual director yesterday, who lives in Cutler Bay, which is about 45 miles from my house.  What if Putin did something spectacularly stupid?  I decided to make the trip; if Putin is going to do something so spectacularly stupid that I am stranded and have to walk home, it probably won't be on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine.

--It was a fruitful appointment.  I'm glad I went.  I'm glad I made it home.

--I listened to a bit of Biden's press conference.  I thought about all the Russian investment in the South Florida area.  So far, no analysts have thought about what sanctions might mean for the real estate market, at least no analysts that I've read/heard.  If the bottom falls out of the real estate market, I predicted it here first.

--My spouse cooked while I was away.  He took a can of coconut milk, reduced it, and made a spectacular sauce for our rainbow trout that I got in the freezer case of Trader Joes.  I bought the fish months ago, when an actual invasion of Ukraine seemed like a very remote possibility. 

----My sister called to try to figure out which nuclear war movie from the 80's she was remembering.  I am inordinately proud of the fact that I was able to tell her.

--It is strange to discover that normal life continues in the face of a land war in Europe:  dishes must be washed, and I had class to attend last night.  Before I settled in front of my computer, we went to the parking deck, to the top floor that is open to the sky.  From our perch seven stories above the city streets, we watched the sun set.  We sang "Dona Nobis Pacem."

--I will continue to sing that prayer for peace, today and every day.

World Orders and Ancient Prophets

 Almost an hour ago, I wrote this tweet:  "Thinking about geopolitical conflicts of my youth, watching young versions of old rock stars in 'Sun City' video, thinking about Reagan and constructive engagement, looking at a map of Ukraine/E. Europe, feeling doomed, writing blog posts into the void/madness."

But I have yet to actually write a blog post.  I have toggled between opinion/analysis pieces and old videos:  "Sun City," "Silver and Gold," and "No Easy Walk to Freedom," with a side trip to "El Salvador," a Peter, Paul, and Mary gem that I had forgotten.  I have resisted the temptation to revisit old videos, like The Day After, although the last line of Timothy Snyder's piece in The Atlantic made me want to do just that (his lines:  "The creativity and historical awareness of the Biden administration has made war costlier for Russia. Of course, there might be another level to consider: that the mobilization (or even an invasion) is meant to divert our attention from something else.").

I have heard the drumbeats of war, and I've heard every analyst declare that we will not send U.S. youths to die for Ukraine.  I've heard these similar sentiments my whole life.  What that really means is that we'll be careful not to show the images of caskets on TV.

I read this article in The New York Times which includes a very useful map of Eastern Europe and Russia, and I've thought, we're doomed.  In the days before George H. W. Bush's excursion to protect Kuwait, I went out to put gas in my car.  In these days of underemployment, I don't drive much, so I don't really need gas.  As I've been on my morning and afternoon walks, I've listened to accents, and I'm realizing how much more I'm hearing accents from Eastern Europe than from Latin America.  My pattern-making mind wants to see the larger picture.

I want to believe that saner minds will prevail, but I look at Putin and I see the bad boyfriends and abusive husbands that are the worst kind of afflictions for female safety.  He looks out and sees a world of enemies.  Here's another gem from Timothy Snyder's piece:  "However that may be, the habit of provocation might be making it harder for Putin to read the outside world. Just because you live in a house of mirrors does not mean that you can find the exit."

I think about the nuclear weapons, and I know that if we have nuclear exchanges of any size, these past two years of pandemic will look like a time of bliss.  But I also know that there have been many other times when my fearful brain has thought about the possibility of apocalypse, and the world walked back from that brink.

May we be at a similar time, backing away from this precipice.  

Now I will go for my walk as if the world isn't hanging by a slender thread.  I will do my seminary homework due today analyzing Paul's letter to the Galatians.  I will then turn to my project that asks us to consider the ancient Hebrew prophets and the role of the prophet today.  That project could go in so many ways.  I will let the drumbeats of war remind me to pray throughout today.

The Body Politic and the Parts of My Brain

 I have spent the last two days being intensely aware of my joints--so achy.  I know it's likely about either changes in the weather and/or the fact that I've been on my feet more than most week-ends, but it's unsettling.  The part of me that has read every book on the body keeping score even as the mind isn't aware of all the stress, that part says, "You sold the house, and now you have to deal with all the difficult emotions you've been suppressing and delaying."

The Apocalypse Gal part of my brain says, "The U.S. has just ordered the families of diplomats to leave Ukraine.  Your aching joints are not what you will remember when you reflect on the early part of 2022.  Enjoy these halcyon days while you have them."

I think of the Body Politic.  Are there small countries feeling fretful this morning?  Countries beyond the current locus of conflict?  I think of all the countries of Central America, countries that are more familiar to me because they were the settings of proxy wars of my college years.  I think of our college conversations about what we would do if the U.S. suddenly went from a cold war to a hot war status and tried to make all of the men of our generation go to war.  We were in the early years of men being required to register for the draft in order to be eligible for student loans.

Those years seem so distant--and it is a shock to realize how long ago those days were.  I hear an occasional dispatch from those Central American countries, an election result for example, and then the news moves along.  Those stories don't merit more than just a mention at the top of the news hour.  

The Sensible Woman part of my brain says, "Are you sure you've completed every task for seminary that you need to have done right now?  Have you thought about your seminary tasks for the coming week?  Don't forget to check on your online class that starts today, the one that you're teaching; make sure to send that welcoming e-mail."

The Foxfire part of my brain works in concert with the Apocalypse Gal.  They want to start canning.  They wonder if we could raise chickens in this condo, if it all comes to that.   They made a huge pot of yellow split peas and barley yesterday.

Sensible Woman thinks about the days to come, when she will be tired of this concoction that she will now be taking to work.  She has lunch for days, months, but part of her just wants to eat Beef and Guinness Stew or maybe a lovely ricotta cake.  She hasn't made a ricotta cake yet, but she's aware of the tub of ricotta cheese in the fridge with a pull date just past.

All of these selves will now suit up for a walk in the chilly morning, a walk before work, the last chance to let all of these thoughts swirl before heading to the office, where these thoughts can swirl in a different setting.