Prayers and Poems for the Artemis Mission

Like many others, I get the occasional e-mail that tells me that the sender can help me find new readers for my brilliant books, millions and millions of readers.  Yesterday I got a different e-mail, an old-fashioned fan letter of sorts.  

The e-mail writer told me that she had selected my poem for a specific reason:  "This is to let you know that as a member of a Lectio Poetry group that met this morning, I chose your poem 'The Moon Remembers' for our session. Because of the recent NASA mission to send humans farther into space than ever before, and to study the dark side of the moon, I felt fortunate to find your poem to share."

The e-mail concluded this way, "In this world of chaos, 'The Moon Remembers' gave us an hour of peace, of joy, of hope."

Wow--what writer could hope for more than that?  I mean that sincerely.  It is one of the reasons I write, in the hopes of bringing something positive to people.

I don't get many fan letters anymore, and the ones that I get are usually about "Heaven on Earth," perhaps my most famous poem, read on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.  Yesterday's e-mail referenced "The Moon Remembers."  It's a poem I barely remember writing, and at first, I wondered if she was writing to the wrong poet.

Happily, my blog answers many a question for me.  I posted it in this blog post, and I'm guessing that's how the group leader found my poem.  Even though it's not one of the poems I remember, I'm still happy with it.

Let me post it here again, as I also say a prayer for the Artemis Mission which returns home Friday:

The Moon Remembers

                “I sing and the moon shudders"
                            Li Po, “Drinking Alone by Moonlight”



The moon does not approve of elementary choir
masters who stop the rehearsal, make each quivering
child sing a solo to find the one
who is off key. The helpless moon, marooned
so far away, wishes she could offer sanctuary.

The moon knows what the choir master forgets.

The moon doesn’t understand scales or the division
of voices into the caste systems of chorus:
superior sopranos, dowdy altos, basses as the bubble
of depth holding us up, the star tenor.

The moon remembers what the choir master forgets.

The moon sees our best selves as we sing:
the lonely driver late at night, singing to stay awake,
the melancholy mother, humming Christmas carols
to cheer the babies, the desperate lover
serenading the empty window.

The moon remembers what we all forget.

The moon knows that if we believed in our songs,
strengthened our fragile voices, and sang
as if we meant it, then galaxies would blow
to bits as the universe expands.

Partial Restoration

I wrote this post earlier this morning, but had no way to post it, since I still have no internet:

I sit here writing on this desk that was damaged by Hurricane Irma, almost exactly 2 weeks to the day and time we lost power in Hurricane Helene. What’s remarkable about that sentence is that we went through Hurricane Helene in the mountains of North Carolina.

We are just south of Asheville, so we have been spared the worst. We did go without electricity for two weeks, and we still can’t drink our water right out of the tap. But water does come out of the tap, and we can flush the toilets without a bucket. We still don’t have house internet restored, but the phone can work as a hot spot.

If I didn’t live so much of my life online, with classes that I teach and classes that I’m taking for seminary, this might have been an enjoyable time off. But I’ve needed to have an internet connection almost daily, so twice I’ve gone to a friend’s house in Columbia, SC to stay for 48 hours, and this week, my local church, Lutheran Church of the Nativity, opened up their fellowship hall from 10-2 to offer the community a place to charge devices, free wi-fi, and free water, both drinkable and not. It’s been a great service to members and the community.

As I reflect on our experience, I’m realizing how many parts of our lives have prepared us for these weeks that have been somewhat off the grid. We’ve kept some of our hurricane supplies and equipment, like the French press coffee pot. When we remodeled the kitchen, we chose a gas stove, thinking that if the power went off in an ice storm, we could still cook or heat water. Through the years, we’ve lived in various houses in various states of remodel and those experiences have given us skills in doing without modern conveniences.

I will be the first to admit that I did not take this storm seriously, and I won’t make that mistake again. It was my spouse who filled up our first round of water containers and captured rain water in every five gallon bucket he could find. We had both cars full of gas, but that was a fluke. I thought I’d be commuting, and I wanted to fill our cars up on Wednesday night, not Thursday when it would be raining. We had some cash on hand; we’d have had more if I hadn’t spent it at the farmer’s market a week earlier. It was a fluke that we had it at all.

Today I return to work at Spartanburg Methodist College. This past week, both the schools where I teach were closed due to different hurricanes, and today they will both be open.. Tomorrow we make the trip to Bristol, and then on Sunday, from Bristol I go to DC for the onground intensive week for two of my seminary classes. I hate that I will be missing my onground classes for a week so soon after this long hurricane break, but it can’t be helped. I had planned to spend this past week getting the students prepped for my week away, but now I’ll have them write about their hurricane experience.

Hurricane Helene Breaking Points

 One week ago, I would be sitting in the dark.  I would have gotten up early, as I always do, and when I made the coffee, I thought, let me make this now, before the power goes out.  But I didn't expect the power to go out so early.  I didn't think it would still be out a week later, at least not back a week ago when the lights first went out.

I had just made this Facebook post at 3:27 a.m., when I got up to check on the progress of the storm:  "Why I could never be a forecaster for the National Hurricane Center. I would say something like, "Hurricane Helene is in Flannery O'Connor country now. Beware of odd men in black cars, Helene. If a Bible salesman tries to seduce you, just keep going. You're in strange territory now, but you'll emerge able to tell stories of grace and salvation in new and terrifying ways."

The power went out, and I sat there for a few minutes.  I went to get a flashlight, and then I assembled our other battery run lights, which are mostly strings of fairy lights.  Happily, we have lots and lots of AA batteries to keep them running:

I've had a few breaking points along the way.  It's surreal to be experiencing a hurricane so far inland.  But we've done this before, and we know what to do and how to endure.  I felt a brief moment of panic the first time that water didn't come out of the tap.  But I reminded myself that other communities aren't impacted, and I can get to them to buy what I need.

My latest gulp/grief moment came last night when I looked up ways to get to Bristol, Tennessee, where I usually preach and preside on Sundays.  I saw a post that said the most direct way, across I 26, would be closed until March of 2025.  I tried to find information on alternate routes.

Not for the first time, I wish I had a paper map.  But even a paper map won't tell me which roads are washed away.  I can't find a website that tells me either--and yes, I've gone to the obvious ones, and they tell me the information might not be accurate because roads may have been washed away.

I will not be making the trip this Sunday.  We are still being asked to stay off those roads, which may or may not be there, so that emergency crews and restoration teams can get to where they are needed.  I will try making the trip next week-end, and then I'll see what the future brings.

Hurricane Helene Aftermath: The Overview

I don't have time to write a long post today.  I'm at a friend's house who has power, water, and internet, which I don't have at my house.  I need to make the most of this time with those things to catch up on seminary work, get some grading done for my online classes, and then I need to do some shopping and banking before heading up the mountain on Friday.

Last Friday, we lost electric at 4:30 a.m.,  as I was writing a blog post about how I didn't expect to suffer many effects from Hurricane Helene beyond some additional rain.  I didn't worry too much until a few hours later when trees started to fall.

Hurricane Helene's Position when the Power Went Out

We are fortunate.  No trees fell on our property or our house, like the 3 that fell on a neighbor's house:

We have spent the last week trying to help our less fortunate neighbors.  

We haven't had much internet access and spotty cell phone service, so it's been good to have a purpose.

Yesterday I headed to a friend's house in Columbia.  I needed to get to a place that had power and enough cell phone service that I could use my phone as a hotspot.  Happily, last night her internet was restored.  Today I plan to write and grade and try to regroup.

Spartanburg Methodist College still doesn't have power, so I don't know if classes will resume on Monday as previously planned.  My friend has offered to have me come back next week, and I may take her up on it if SMC doesn't have power.  I will need to do some additional class work, both for my seminary classes and the online classes that I teach.

I am still stunned by this storm.  I still find it surreal that I moved hundreds of miles inland and still found myself in this situation, and I'm still surprised, as I always am, that a tropical storm strength event can do this amount of damage.  I am hopeful that this will be a once a century storm, and I won't have to see this kind of storm in the mountains again.  But I am also suffering under no delusions that past planetary performance can predict future performance.

But let me once again stress that overall, I am in good spirits.  I know that I am lucky:  I have friends, family, support, a great neighborhood, resources of all kinds.

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.

Eclipse Regrets

I now have eclipse regret.  Perhaps I should have gone on a quest for totality.  I knew we were going to be at 85% totality, and I thought that would be enough.  But now, seeing other people's pictures and reading about their experiences, I'm wondering if I should have made more of an effort.  After all, we won't have these opportunities often, at least not in driving distance.

I'm also feeling a tinge of sadness for other reasons.  I made this Facebook post yesterday afternoon:  "Strange to think about how much has changed since August 2017, the last time I viewed a solar eclipse. Back then, I wrote this conclusion to a blog post: 'Make plans now: August 12, 2045, my house will be on the path of full totality. If the rising seas haven't washed it away, you're all invited to my house. Full totality will be at 1:37 p.m.' That was my Florida house, now someone else's Florida house, and that post was just a few weeks before Hurricane Irma."

We stayed in that house for four more years, many of them years of trying to stay sane in the midst of home repairs from hurricane damage.  Sure, we were one of the lucky ones--our insurance paid for the repairs, with minimum struggle to get them to do it.  We thought it was going to be a struggle, with a need to send documentation about our contractor and to get said contractor to fill in reports periodically to get the funds released periodically--and then, out of the clear blue sky, the funds were released in one big check.

I spent the next four years expecting the insurance company to come and demand paperwork or demand their money back or somehow make my life more difficult.  Happily, they did not.

Thinking about 2017 makes me sad for all sorts of reasons.  Even though I didn't have the amount of leave accrued in my new job that would have let me go on a quest for totality, I was happy in that job at that moment.  We had just had a successful accreditation visit.  Our new president who was in charge of two campuses was still mostly at the Ft. Lauderdale campus, still mostly not concerned with my campus, the Hollywood campus.  It was all going to go badly in many different ways in the coming years, but if I had any sense of that fact, it was only a glimmer.

There's also some sadness because we spent that 2017 eclipse in and near the pool in our backyard; my sister and nephew were down for a visit, and we were having a marvelous time.  We still have a marvelous time together, but it's different now, in the normal ways that everything changes as we age.

I have spent time trying not to look back, but every so often, I'm stopped in my tracks.  Usually, I'm stopped for happiness.  If I could go back to 2017 Kristin and tell her how life has changed, she would be amazed:  a home in the mountains, almost done with an MDiv program, a part-time preaching position, and a teaching job at a small, liberal arts college.  That list represents lots of dreams coming true.  It also represents some severances:  something we don't always remember when we think about dreams coming true, that dreams coming true mean some dreams fade away.

It is time to get ready for that teaching job--off I go, soon, down the mountains to teach English at Spartanburg Methodist College.  I teach, while the bathroom install is happening here.  It will be good to be away.

Let me close with another Facebook post from yesterday:  "Today I looked at the sky and looked at the ground, hoping for interesting shadows during the eclipse. No interesting shadows, but I did realize for the first time that one of our spindly trees is a dogwood, one of my favorite trees."

All reactio

Eclipse Glasses and Easter

I thought about crafting a sermon for the adults around the ideas of Easter and the eclipse.  But I decided to use the ideas for my children's sermon--in the church where I am Synod Appointed Minister, the adults listen to both the children's sermon and the one for the adults.

I ordered enough eclipse glasses for all, children and adults, and before the children's sermon, I gave each child a pair, had them put them on, and took a picture.  I've edited these pictures to protect the privacy of minors.

Then I had them take the glasses off.  For those of you who haven't gotten your eclipse glasses yet, these are very dark, as they should be.  If you put them on and can still see objects as you look through them, they won't protect your eyes when you stare at the sun.

I told the youth to be listening in the post-Easter readings, because people would have this same experience when they met the risen Jesus.  They wouldn't recognize him at first.  Then something would happen, usually involving food, and it would be as if they took their eclipse glasses off--suddenly they'd be able to see what was right in front of them.

Our lives are the same way.  God is at work in the world, but often, we can't see it.  Maybe we're wearing our eclipse glasses of grief, despair, or cynicism.  Maybe we're too anxious to look.  Maybe we're focused on the wrong thing, while something of celestial magnificence is happening.

Jesus appears, and gently, he reminds us to take off our eclipse glasses.  In the breaking of the bread, we recognize divine love.

The Feast Day of Saint Thomas

Today we celebrate the life of Saint Thomas. It's also the Winter Solstice. It's the time of year for doubting, as we finish another year full of doubts and dread.  The specifics of our doubt and dread may vary from person to person.  But here we are, at the end of the year, dealing with disappointments and changed expectations and more pivoting to be done. Those of us in the northern hemisphere may feel that the dark will never recede. It's a good day to celebrate the most famous doubter of all.

Who can blame Thomas for doubting? It was a fantastic story, even if you had traveled with Jesus and watched his other miracles. Once you saw the corpse of Jesus taken off the cross, you would have assumed it was all over.

And then, it wasn't. Thomas, late to see the risen Lord, was one of the fiercest believers, legend tells us, Thomas walking all the way to India.

I wonder if Thomas is near and dear to the heart of the more rational believers. We're not all born to be mystics, after all. I worry about our vanishing sense of wonder. We've all become Thomas now. We don't believe anything that we can't measure with our five senses.

We've spent significant amounts of time recently even doubting what we can measure with our five senses. We've spent even more time arguing about what it means to measure. We seem to be in a time when we can't even agree on some basic truths, let alone more complicated information.

The more I read in the field of the sciences, the more my sense of wonder is reignited. Just this morning, I read this article in The Washington Post about trees and what their rings tell us about the changing climate.  I love the term "latewood," a term I hadn't known before today.  I started thinking about my own bones, and what they might tell a researcher.  I created some lines that might become a poem.  Later today, on my neighborhood walk through the church camp Lutheridge, I will look at trees differently, with a new sense of wonder.

So today, in the Northern Hemisphere, as the earth leaves its darkest time and inches towards light, let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to St. Thomas, who showed us that we can have doubts and still persevere. Let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to solstice celebrations and all the ways that the natural world can point us back to our Creator. Let us pray that our rational selves live in harmony with our sense of wonder. Let us also offer a prayer of gratitude to those around us, Divine and ordinary humans, who don't cast us away for our inability to believe, to trust, to accept.

Here's a prayer from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Winter for this day:

"Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son's resurrection: Grant me so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that my faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen."

Children's Sermon for a Baptism Sunday

I am a Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran, a small country church near Bristol, Tennessee.  When I look at the population who comes to church each Sunday, I don't anticipate many baptisms or weddings; it's an older population for the most part.  But there are 5-9 children every Sunday, mostly grandchildren of members.  

We did have a baptism on Sunday--we baptized the grandchild/great grandchild of family members who attend.  The parents live in Nashville and were in town for the week-end.  Back in early autumn (late September?  early October?) the church members asked if I could do a baptism, and I treasured the look of joy on their faces when I said yes.  We began to plan for a baptism on the Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end.

I offer a children's sermon every week, so I didn't want to let this opportunity pass.  I knew that this baptism might be the only one the children see.  My sermon talked a bit about sacraments, in a less mystical way than I might have presented the ideas to adults; as I reflect on it now, I realize that children might be able to grasp the mystical ways in a more capable way than most adults.

I wanted to talk about the other aspect of baptism in the Lutheran (ELCA) church--that we're making promises that later the child will decide to continue with or not.  I also talked about the fact that we as a congregation are making promises too--we will promise to support the child and pray for our new sibling in Christ.

I had a family tree chart that my mom made for our September family reunion.  I saved it and brought it to our smaller family reunion at Thanksgiving.  I showed them the chart and added my name to it and Stephen's name to it--he and I are people they know, and we are part of this family tree as the generation goes on.  I added our names on sticky notes.

Then I talked about the Christian family--imagine a family tree that contained the name of every baptized Christian.  Imagine how we are all connected.  We are individuals in different times, and yet our baptism connects us.

I could have done more, of course.  There's the interconnectedness of literal trees through root systems and the fungi that support them.  There are ways that older trees protect younger trees (for more on this fascinating research, read this article from Smithsonian Magazine).  There's always more I could have done and so much church history that I always decide not to include.

I think it worked well, but I often think that.  It's a sobering fact of both teaching and being a minister that I will rarely know whether or not I've been successful in what I hope I am passing on to others.  But I'm also aware that this preaching and teaching feeds my soul too; I'm lucky to be able to do it.

Poetry and Climate Change and an Acceptance

 In a week where southern California is under a tropical storm watch, with storm Hilary expected to dump as much rain in 2 days as some parts of the southwest get in 2 years (2 years!!!), and wild fires continue to blaze across northern Canada, and a heat dome will break all sorts of records across the nation--I began this week of historic weather by getting my contributor copies of this book, Dear Human at the Edge of Time:  Poems on Climate Change in the United States:

I'm very pleased that "Higher Ground," one of my Noah's Wife poems was selected.  When I read this poem, I remember clearly its genesis:  the flood of 2019 just before Christmas that wiped out one of our cars that was parked on the street.  There wasn't a tropical system or any warning at all.

This week was also the week where another one of my Noah's Wife poems was chosen for publication:   "Noah's Wife Gets to Work."  One of the joys of blogging is that I have an easy way of looking up my writing process, at least for this poem.  This blog post tells the genesis of this poem, the day in January of 2020 when my boss insisted that the registrar put unqualified/uninterested students in classes so that we would meet our ARC goal, which brought the wrath of Corporate on us, which made our boss enraged, an unpleasant day all the way round.

I look back and think about the ways our lives and our school were about to unravel, all of the power struggles that would mean so little in the end, as the pandemic unspooled, and new owners arrived to change the school in ways that meant that very few of us would still be employed there.  I think back to days like the one in January of 2020, and I'm amazed that I could tolerate that work situation as long as I did.

But back to the current publication.  I am pleased with the variety of poems that are included in this book.  One contributor and poet friend of mine, Dave Bonta, made this Facebook post, giving this review, an elegant expression of the beauty of this book:  "I got my contributors' copies of this, and have been extremely impressed by the variety, including poets from various walks of life, not just the usual suspects - everyone from a high school kid to a climate scientist to the current US poet laureate. It's also fun to share space with social media pals like Caitlin Gildrien, Kristin Berkey-Abbott, and Lesley Wheeler, not to mention folks I've met through qarrtsiluni and such. The topic is dire, but the fellowship is real. I suppose there's a lesson in that..."

Here's the poem that appears in the book:

Higher Ground


On the last day of the year, Noah’s wife waits
for the insurance adjuster.
She thinks of the Christmas flood
and the larger flood before it.

Her husband’s god speaks
in terms of measurements and building
instructions. Her husband’s god gives
out directions and punishments.

Noah’s wife has always heard
the subtle messages, the daily
communications that the men
ignore: how to feed
the family, how to comfort
the forsaken, which breaches
need repairing.

Noah’s wife studies
real estate listings and elevation charts
while she waits
for the insurance adjuster.
She should be researching
vehicles. She already knows
what the adjuster will tell
her about the drowned car.
She seeks answers
to the larger question
of how to find
the higher ground.

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.

Celebrating Earth Day with First Pelagius Lutheran Church

It is Earth Day; on my seminary campus on Thursday, we celebrated by using natural materials to dye silk scarves.  We had a pot of black beans, a pot of turmeric, and a pot of turmeric blended with iron water, which is created by soaking rusty nails in a jar of water and vinegar.

We will hang them up in the courtyard on Tuesday, and people leaving chapel can take one.  That means that my Chapel Visuals class had the joy of dying extra scarves on Thursday.  I experimented not only with dyes, but also with leaves and tree detritus that I picked up off the ground.  We left everything soaking in dye, and my teacher took everything home with her to soak, and later this week-end to dry.

It took me back to Girl Scout days, where I worked on a merit badge by dying cloth with onion skins or beet chunks.  And yes, I do get class credit--ah, the joys of a seminary program that has a track for theology and the arts!

One of my classmates has two small children, and they've been having fun with chalk and sidewalks.  She's been having fun too.  

I noticed one theology on the sidewalk in the picture above, and decided to add another:

My problem with so many theologies of the cross is that they leave us all up there on that cross, crucified together with that message of sin and the worthlessness of humanity.  But that discounts the very first chapter of Genesis, which I paraphrase in my chalked walk.

To me, this contrast says much about the modern church, about 2000 years of Church History, and about Earth Day and the future.

I'm thinking of the last discussion post we are writing for my Church History II class.  The prompt concludes this way:  "With that in mind, come back to Tutu's remark, and look ahead a little bit. Where might be a place where the Christian enterprise would serve its mission, not by "raising the voice" but by "improving the argument" and how?"

I concluded my post this way:  

"I think that Christianity can “improve the argument” by moving away from our more common message of sin and unworthiness, and moving to a message of the inherent goodness of all creation, the creation that God proclaims “good and very good” (Genesis 1: 31, NIV). So please join me in worship at the First Pelagius Lutheran Church where we will have a Mimosa Mass every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. and a Creative Arts Worship experience every Wednesday at both 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (this last sentence is just a dream at this point, but if you should find such a church, I’d love to know about it—and so would lots of other people, I’d be willing to bet)."

Flooding, Windows, and a Retreat Begins

 After a week of really good sleep, last night was rougher.  I would have expected it to be better--we were at the end of a successful installation of sliding glass doors and windows.  But I was jangled.

I spent the day reading reports from my old neighborhood, the one in South Florida that flooded on a regular basis.  One of my neighborhood friends posted video of her flooded property, which I watched.  If her place flooded, I'm sure our old house flooded, since we often flooded when she didn't.

Ft. Lauderdale got 25.91 inches of rain in a 24 hour period.  The previous record was 14.59 inches.  I was first aware of the situation because I'm still on an e-mail list from the city of Hollywood, which was also inundated.

Yesterday was such a strange mix of emotions:  gratitude for not owning a house in a flood zone, survivor guilt because we left while others haven't been able to do that, sadness over a historic flood that one day will seem like a small flood in comparison, worry about friends who are still there.

I had emotions not related to the flood.  Yesterday was our window installation, which made me anxious:  fear that the wrong windows would be on the truck, fear that more rot would be discovered, fear that we'd have the wrong size openings for the windows going in where there weren't windows before.  Two of our windows are very high, up in the vaulted ceiling.  One of the installers told me that it wasn't really that high, that they'd worked on much higher windows.

Happily, I didn't have to stay in the house trying not to watch the installation.  I headed up the hill to Lutheridge's Faith Center to help get ready for the Create in Me retreat.  This year, we're exploring the theme of Creation out of Chaos, and our text is the Noah and the ark story.  We chose this theme and text back in 2018, for a 2020 retreat which had to be canceled.  Back in 2018, I pushed for that theme because of my experience with Hurricane Irma.  Sadly, it is no less relevant.

I created some fish out of foil and decorated them.  I made strips of fabric for an interesting garland that was designed to evoke water.  I helped others get materials and drove people to parts of camp and tried to stay out of the way when people were on ladders to create installations like this one:

I'm sure I will have more pictures later.  Today is the first full day of the retreat, and I am so blown away by all the raw materials that are in the Faith Center.  I'm sure that I was in a jangled state last night in part out of anticipation of the wonders of this retreat.

Breakfast will be served soon, so let me get ready for the day.  Again and again, I know how fortunate I am.  Again and again, I offer thanks.

Shifting Agricultural Zones

 I do not have much time for writing this morning, not the non-academic kind at least.

No time for gallivanting among the cherry blossoms today.  Seminary writing summons me.

But here's a cherry blossom fact that I found sobering:  "Washington’s Yoshino cherry trees aren’t going anywhere, of course. But in garden stores and landscape architecture, the Japanese species isn’t among the varieties being planted in the D.C. region and other parts of the country, he said. Instead, popular cherry trees nowadays are descended from species native to Taiwan, at a latitude hundreds of miles south of Japan’s."  (from this article in The Washington Post)

We are changing our planet in ways that we can scarcely comprehend.  I have hopes that we'll continue to find ways to adapt, like shifting plants to latitudes that are better for them.  

I have fainter hope that we'll manage to stop our accelerated warming so that we don't have to shift plants.

The Feast Day of Saint Thomas and the Winter Solstice and Our Long Season of Doubt

Today we celebrate the life of Saint Thomas. It's also the Winter Solstice. It's the time of year for doubting, as we finish another year full of doubts and dread, a year that many of us thought would bring some kinds of closure (in terms of politics, in terms of disease).  But here we are, at the end of the year, dealing with disappointments and changed expectations and more pivoting to be done. Those of us in the northern hemisphere may feel that the dark will never recede. It's a good day to celebrate the most famous doubter of all.

Who can blame Thomas for doubting? It was a fantastic story, even if you had traveled with Jesus and watched his other miracles. Once you saw the corpse of Jesus taken off the cross, you would have assumed it was all over.

And then, it wasn't. Thomas, late to see the risen Lord, was one of the fiercest believers, legend tells us, Thomas walking all the way to India.

I wonder if Thomas is near and dear to the heart of the more rational believers. We're not all born to be mystics, after all. I worry about our vanishing sense of wonder. We've all become Thomas now. We don't believe anything that we can't measure with our five senses.

We've spent significant amounts of time recently even doubting what we can measure with our five senses. We've spent even more time arguing about what it means to measure. We seem to be in a time when we can't even agree on some basic truths, let alone more complicated information.

The more I read in the field of the sciences, the more my sense of wonder is reignited. I continue to be so amazed at the way the world works, both the systems we've created and the ones created before we came along. The more I know, the more I want to shout from the rooftops, "Great show, God!" (long ago, when my friend had small children, they would shout this refrain whenever they saw something beautiful in nature, like a gorgeous sunset; I try to remember to shout it too).

So today, in the Northern Hemisphere, as the earth leaves its darkest time and inches towards light, let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to St. Thomas, who showed us that we can have doubts and still persevere. Let us raise a mug of hot chocolate to solstice celebrations and all the ways that the natural world can point us back to our Creator. Let us pray that our rational selves live in harmony with our sense of wonder. Let us also offer a prayer of gratitude to those around us, Divine and ordinary humans, who don't cast us away for our inability to believe, to trust, to accept.

Here's a prayer from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Winter for this day:

"Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son's resurrection: Grant me so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that my faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen."

Chlorophyll, for Trees and for Humans

 Yesterday I returned to my seminary apartment after a day away to celebrate my dad's birthday at my sister's house where my mom and dad stopped on their way back from their quick trip to Pennsylvania.  It was a whirlwind day, and when I got settled back into my seminary apartment, I felt that familiar upwelling of sadness.

I love being here, being alone, focusing on what matters to me--but I'm also missing a wide variety of people.  This dissonance is not new to me.

So I took myself out for a walk in the glorious autumn afternoon.  I picked up two beautiful leaves--solace for the moment, solace for later, as I tried to sketch them.

I'm using Copic markers, some of which blend better than others.  So there are places in the sketch I'd like to change, but overall, I'm pleased.

I continue to think about chlorophyll, vital to the process of making nutrients for the tree.  It's only when the nutrient making stops in the autumn and the chlorophyll breaks down that we see the true color of the leaf.

Or is it the true color?  Why is the color more true with the chlorophyll or not?  Is the summer color just another version of what is true?

Or maybe I want to think about chlorophyll as masking agent and ask what chlorophyllin our lives needs to fade away so that different colors can emerge.

This morning, as I was doing some online research about chlorophyll, I marveled at all I once knew about photosynthesis and all I no longer know.  I also marveled at the fact that enough people are taking/drinking chlorophyll that there are articles about the wisdom of this supplement.

I will just say that I am not a tree; I find it takes so much time, planning, prep work and eating/chewing/digesting to get the nourishment that my human body needs that I am not going to add tree nourishment to my plan.

My brain often returns to leaves in the autumn.  But this is the first time in decades that I've actually lived in a place where I could see the process, day by day.  It's fascinating, and I'll write more later as I have more time to reflect.

A sketch from autumn 2021

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.

 

Coastal Ministry

Last week, I saw this tweet from @revpaulwhite, which I'm still thinking about a week later:

"Just had an interesting talk about rural ministry. 

However, in my new context, it would be interesting to think about coastal ministry: fishing industry, seaside tourism, end of the road poverty, seasonal work in leisure. Feels like an area not much talked about..."

I thought about commenting, but as I scrolled through the comments, I reflected that my perspective in southeast Florida might not align with the English context of the tweet and its responses. For example, we don't have much of a fishing industry.  Much of our economy is rooted in tourism, which means that many people are working in all sorts of hospitality industries.  But I'm guessing that's true of many (most?) coastal areas.

My comment would have talked about climate change and how coastal communities will face very difficult challenges in the coming decades.  How will coastal ministries help communities face the enormous losses that are coming?

That's an issue in coastal ministry that's not talked about much . . .