Begin Again

In some parts of the country, children are already back in school.  I know because I've seen their pictures on Facebook. 

Down here, our K-12 students go back on August 21.  My nephew in Maryland goes back after Labor Day.  Still, it's clear that summer is ending.

On Friday, I made this sketch in my spiritual/visual journal:

I am ready for changes.  While it will be awhile before we get changes in the weather, I can make some other changes now.  My sketch gives you an idea of where I might head.

Lazy, Hazy Dog Days of Summer

We have hit the dog days of summer.

The world takes on a haze. 

We long for a crispness in the air that we will not feel for months yet.

We see the light of autumn in the distance, but it is not ours yet.

We feel dried up into little husks.

Let us remember that our rivers run deep.

Let us find a bench where we can be together.

Let us see where these summer steps lead us.

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.

Prayers, Facebook and Monastic

I've been awake since just before 2:00.  I'm the first person the alarm company calls when the alarm goes off at school.  Just before 2, the company called.  I couldn't fall back asleep, so by 3:00, I was up and at the computer.

I did what I almost always do first thing in the morning:  I checked Facebook.  I was surprised by how many people had been on Facebook between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. (EDT) to post about their pain.

As I so often did, I said a small prayer for each person who posted.  I prayed for everybody, whether they had happy news or pain reports.

When I'm up this early, I also think about the monks who are in my same time zone, many of whom report to the chapel for their first set of daily prayers around 3:00 a.m. or so.  They keep watch, while the rest of us sleep.  I have often lulled myself back to sleep with this knowledge.  People may scoff, but I like the idea that at any hour of the day, in a chapel somewhere, monastics pray for the world.

Soon the sun will begin to stain the morning sky, and some monastics will report for Lauds, the service that welcomes the morning.  Down here on the southern tip of the North American continent, we have hazy skies, thanks to the African dust that has travelled across the Atlantic to be with us.  Our sunrise forecast calls for glorious.

As we shift from Vigils to Lauds, let me remember to sing my modern Psalms of joy and concern at every hour.

Good Fruit, Bad Fruit

This week at our church, we continue our off-lectionary journey through the Sermon on the Mount. 
Our time with the Sermon on the Mount is drawing to a close.  This Sunday, we will ponder Matthew 7:  15-23.  What part jumps out at you?

Perhaps it is the warning about false prophets that seems timely, those people who seem sheeplike from the outside but are ferocious wolves inside.  These days, I'm even more worried about the ones who don't bother to disguise themselves.  I know I should be grateful--at least I know my enemies.  But the unguarded ferocity of our times never ceases to worry me.

I am always struck by good fruit and bad fruit, and always, my inner voice of worry pipes up.  What if I'm bad fruit?  What if I'm going to be cut down and thrown in the fire?

I'm not sure that Jesus meant for us to identify with the fruit itself.  A Lutheran minister friend of mine, David Eck, just preached on the seeds that land in a variety of soil, and he has chosen to view the metaphor differently.  He says that we're not the seeds, but the soil.  There are no bad seeds--what good news!

But we're not completely off the hook.  Eck continues, "When we see ourselves as the field, an interesting thing happens: The need to label others stops, and all the finger pointing gets turned in toward ourselves."  (for the complete sermon, go here)

No matter whether or not we see ourselves as good fruit trees, bad fruit trees, or the soil that holds us all, there's still improvement that can be made.  I think of my parched petunias on my porch.  Once they grew so vibrantly, and now the summer is taking its toll.  But I still water them.  I still hope for a revival.

Likewise, we, too can nourish our spiritual lives.  We can make the chance for good fruit more likely.  The ways we do this will be as varied as our human existences.  Some of us will turn off our gadgets and devices.  Some of us will head out to be in natural surroundings more.  Some of us will add some devotional time.  Some of us will paint.  Some of us will invite the neighbors over for dinner.

God is not the harsh gardener who will chop us down and throw us into the fire.  Frankly, God doesn't have to do that.  We marinate in the bad choices that we've made, and that's punishment enough.

But the Good News comes again and again.  Death doesn't have the final word.  Resurrection awaits.  Choose your spiritual manure and get to work bearing good fruit.

Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The readings for August 6, 2017:

Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22 (Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21 NRSV)
You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Ps. 145:17)
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

The story in the Gospel lesson is familiar; indeed, a version appears in each Gospel, which may mean it’s more likely to be a factual reporting, or it may mean that each Gospel writer realized the significance and implications of the story and couldn’t bear to leave it out. Jesus preaches to the multitudes, who grow hungry. Jesus commands the disciples to feed them, and they protest that they only have five loaves and two fish. But miraculously, not only are the thousands of people fed, but the disciples gather basket after basket of leftovers.

Christian approaches to this story are varied, from share your resources to rely on Christ for what you need. But today, I'm interested in the human response to the miraculous.

Look at the behavior of the disciples. Jesus commands them to feed everyone, and they protest that they can’t, that they don’t have enough food. They’ve followed Jesus for some time and they’ve seen him perform many miracles, including making dead people come back to life. But their first response is that they can’t possibly do what Jesus expects.

 This story tells us an important lesson about the human resistance to the miraculous. We limit God, and our fellow humans, by our inability to dream big visions. We assume that we’ll always have hungry people, oppressed nations, and what can we do?  We only have so much and it will only stretch so far. But we forget how much is possible—how much we have already seen with our own eyes.

For example, imagine we could time travel back to the year 1985, not so very long ago. Imagine that we told the people of that time that in a few short years, the Berlin Wall would come down. Not only that, but Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and free elections would follow five years later. Not only that, the Soviet Union would soon be no more.

The people we encountered would not believe us. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that Nelson Mandela would die in his South African prison and that his nation would disintegrate into civil war. The people of 1985 would have been convinced that the Soviet Union would always be a part of the geopolitical landscape, and that there would always be a literal wall that separated east from west.

To talk about how these miracles happened would take a much larger space than I have here, but it’s important to remember that one reason is that ordinary people dreamed of something different. For example, in numerous interviews that I’ve heard, Desmond Tutu, gives credit for the fall of apartheid to the governments, institutions, and individuals who fought for divestment from a corrupt regime. And even when the call for divestment was not successful, those calls started an important conversation.

Desmond Tutu also always gives credit to the believers throughout the world who prayed for a peaceful way out of an insolvable situation. Even if you didn’t own a solid gold, South African Kruggerand, you could participate in the process of mercy and justice.

And don’t let my emphasis on political miracles keep us from remembering the other miracles that surround us: health restored, relationships repaired, the student who suddenly understands an impossible subject, the hungry fed, the homeless who come in from the inhospitable climate.

I know that for every miracle, someone has suffered the pain of loss:the cancer that didn’t go into remission, the job loss that leads to other losses or a weather catastrophe from which we cannot recover.  For every South Africa, there are a dozen Darfurs.

But we are called to keep our eyes towards a different reality. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just after death, Jesus declares. It is among us, here and now. And we can be a part of that glorious creation.

The Kingdom of God Is Like the High Point of Summer

On Sunday, we came home to feast on sweet corn.  Our friend had gone to Ohio and was willing to share her stash of sweet corn with us.

I thought of all those teaching moments of Jesus that begin with The Kingdom of Heaven is like . . ., or the Kingdom of God is like . . .  Throughout the summer, the Program Director of Lutheridge, Pastor Mary Canniff-Kuhn has been posting modern updates with a camp theme:

"The kingdom of God is like gingerbread cookies made in KidzCamp. Delight is essential. Judgement is irrelevant."

"The kingdom of God is like snow in July. All things are possible."

The Kingdom of God is like a friend who shares her sweet corn with you who are stranded at the tip of the continent without good sweet corn to call your own.

Let me end with a different kind of quote about summer, that I got from this blog post.  RJ quotes Parker Palmer:

"Summer is the season when all the promissory notes of autumn, winter, and spring come due, and each year the debts are repaid with compound interest. In summer, it is hard to remember that we had ever doubted the natural process, had ever ceded death the last word, had ever lost faith in the powers of new life. Summer is a reminder that our faith is not nearly as strong as the things we profess to have faith in - a reminder that for this sing season, at least, we might cease our anxious machinations and give ourselves to the abiding and abundant grace of our common life."

As always, Palmer's words leave me in awe of the power of language and the power of seasons.