Pet Blessing Service 2019

We are headed into the Pet Blessing Service zone.  Across the nation this week, many churches will have this kind of service as we celebrate the life of St. Francis (the one of Assisi, not the current pope who has yet to be canonized).

Our church did its Pet Blessing service yesterday.  Some years we do an extra service, but this year we moved the service into the fellowship hall and held it as our regular Sunday service.

At first, I thought we wouldn't have many pets, and I wondered why we did this at all.  But as the morning progressed, we had more pets joined.  And then I remembered that we also bless pets from a distance.  People brought pictures of their pets, and there might have been one or two pets attending remotely, by way of smart phone.

Our organist was away, but we had great music with our other musicians.  We had a meditation about the role of pets.  Afterward, we had pizza for a congregational meeting.

I have often wondered if we might have more attendance if we welcomed pets to our service every week.  I don't know what we'd do about the people with allergies or those who are scared of animals.  If you're the kind of person who would object to random noises by pets, children, and other people, you're likely going to another church already, so we wouldn't have to worry about that.

Still, we won't be the bring your pets to worship church anytime soon.  Or maybe we will.  I've been surprised by various turns of events in the past.  We are a church of radical welcome after all.  This year we're welcoming people of all genders/sexual preferences, so perhaps in a future year, we'll extend that to pets.

The Hinge Holiday of Michaelmas

If we lived in an earlier culture, we would celebrate Michaelmas today.  It's one of the harvest holidays, one of the quarterly celebrations that kept people rooted to traditions of the seasonal cycles.

If we lived in a high church kind of time, we would celebrate the feast day of St. Michael and all angels. The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle, explains that this feast is a celebration of the role of angels in the divine plan.

I am more interested in the idea of a hinge holiday, the way we shift from one direction to another.  In Holidays and Holy Nights, Christopher Hill explains, "In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michaelmas balances that feeling (for) in autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name. We feel like wayfaring strangers... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun'" Summer is the sacrament of natural harmony with God... while autumn we fall away from the dreaming paradise of summer back into the conflict of light and dark" (pp. 36-37).

I am trying to slow down, even as the world encourages us to zoom, zoom, zoom.  I want to savor the way the afternoon light slides into evening from a different angle now.  I want to enjoy the seasonal decorations that we have now.  Two weeks ago, I started the transformation of the front porch:

Yesterday, I bought an autumnal bouquet.

Last night, we lit the candles in the terracotta candle holder:

I love the shadows made by the flickering lights, which I have not been able to capture on film:

A few weeks from now, I'll add real pumpkins to the mix, once they arrive at my church.  First I'll help offload them from the truck.

Of course, we still don't have much in the way of cooler weather.  But that's the nature of these hinge holidays, at least where I've always lived.  I've always had to provide some additional prompts to keep my attention coming back to the seasonal shifts.

High Holy Days and Low Ordinary Days

In later years, I wonder what I'll look back on and wonder why I didn't write more about that.  I go back to my journals that I kept in college, and I'm always very surprised by what huge national and international events get no mention in those pages.

I feel like I should write more about the impeachment proceedings of this week.  Frankly, I imagine that with the advantage of years between the Trump administration and the future, we will look back and wonder why this incident warranted impeachment, while so many other issues slid right by.

It's been the kind of week where I've been working intensely at work to get ready for a mock accreditation visit by Corporate folks today.  I've had evening meetings and a variety of obligations.  Race, race, hurry, hurry.  I've been more frazzled than usual.

When I come up for air, I check the news to see what new part of our long, national nightmare has been revealed.  Some part of me always wonders if I'm not reading some dark satire.  And then I dive deep into work again.

It's not the kind of work for which one will ever be awarded the MacArthur genius award.  Sigh.

These are the days when a variety of cultures celebrate high, holy days.  It's a hinge time between seasons.  It's a time when I wish I could slow down and savor the shift.

Let me look for ways to do that as I move through the next days.

Stewardship Campaigns in a Time of Climate Change

It's been a tough week or two in terms of reports of the future:  declining song bird populations and seas rising faster than we thought and hot blobs of water travelling through the oceans.  And yet down here in South Florida, it's a beautiful morning where it's finally temperate.  I heard more birds this morning than I've heard in a long time.

I thought, it's mornings like this one that lead to climate science deniers.  How can there be fewer birds?  I hear so many of them singing?

And yet, for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, the signs are here.  Even on this morning with the songs of many birds, the water burbles up through the storm drains and seems up from the ground itself, a reminder of how close we are to sea level.

In a hundred years, my house will probably be underwater--literally.  In fifty years, it's quite possible that the house will be gone.  My floorboards are 2 feet above sea level.  I keep an eye on sea level rise, but can't quite figure out what to do.

This week people have been in New York for a UN Summit on Climate Change--of course, just assembling everyone made a big carbon footprint.  I don't have much hope that those folks will be able to come up with a good plan. 

And yet, I remain stubbornly optimistic about the future, although I do think the next 100 years will be one of the more difficult centuries in human history.

Fall is often the time that churches launch stewardship campaigns.  I suspect that most of them will not focus on the larger stewardship issue:  how will we care for the earth in this time of increasing challenges?

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for Sunday, September 29, 2019:


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

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

Psalm: Psalm 146

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

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Raggedy Individual Prayers to A Hoop of Prayers

Yesterday, I preached the sermon.  We've been doing a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer, and I got to preach on "Give us this day our daily bread."  As I thought about what I would say, and as I sorted through old possessions coming from the cottage, I got an idea for my big hoop that I bought but have never used for quilting.

As people came into the church, I asked them to choose a strip of cloth that spoke to them. 

In the beginning of the sermon, we thought about what we needed for sustenance as we held the strip of cloth. Then I passed the hoop around and asked everyone to tie their piece of cloth on the hoop. 

I talked about our individual wants and needs and the needs of the larger community--and how our solitary prayers feel like raggedy scraps, but when we add our prayers together, we can transform the world.

I did keep trying to loop back to the ideas of daily bread and what sustains us--but also a larger vision of sustenance. I was pleased that everyone took a strip of fabric and that everyone enthusiastically tied their strip to the hoop.  I talked about what we personally need to for sustenance, but also what the larger society needs for sustenance.

I also added another element.  I wanted a cross in the middle, and I thought about using one of the crosses made of palms that are left over from Palm Sunday.  But in the office, I had lots of crosses to choose from, and I chose the one above.

I really like the way what it does for the hoop:

And now we have a different element to take us to All Saints Sunday.  Here's the larger view:

I'm calling Sunday morning a success, even though my sermon went in an entirely different direction.  I want to say it was the Holy Spirit, but some days I worry that it's sloppiness and my inability to stick to my sermon prep.

Language and Expectation and Equinoxes

Today is the last full day of summer--the autumnal equinox arrives tomorrow.  Some of us have already had some autumnal weather.  I feel like I will never feel cool air outside again, although it has been astonishingly windy.

Down here at one of the southernmost points in North America, I mark the change of seasons differently.  One must be alert to realize that the sun is coming at us from a slightly different slant.  I notice that the sun rises about a half hour later now than it did in early July.  We have a person who comes every other week to mow and edge the tiny bit of lawn we have--the lawn used to be very shaggy in between cuttings, and now it's not.

We're not to winter yet--the yard still needs attention once we approach the two week point.  But I'm not worrying about Code Enforcement getting to us before the yard guy does.

Is it disrespectful to use the term "yard guy"?  I mean no disrespect.  I do know his name:  Jose Sanchez. 

This has been a summer where I'm thinking about language and how it shapes us.  That idea is never far away from my brain.  This summer has been the time where I've shifted from saying "slaves" to "enslaved people."  Does it make a difference?  I'm not sure.  The word "slave" has always conveyed horror and terror to me, but I realize not everyone has that enlightenment.

Similarly, I've been thinking about how many of our housing developments use the word "plantation."  This blog post does a great job of explaining why it's problematic; I confess I hadn't really given the word much consideration before reading that blog post.  What's next:  Auschwitz Acres?

I am listening to a fascinating On Being episode about the power of the brain--some stuff I knew, and some I don't.  The guest, Erik Vance, talks about the doctor who prescribes going to church as part of a pain relief regimen:  "And one of the doctors, world-renowned researcher who, I think, is established enough in his position to be honest with me, said, 'Look. I’m lucky if I can help 40 percent of my patients. If I’m a baseball player, I’d be making millions, but as a doctor, that’s not a great number.' And he’s the one who actually says — he recommends to patients, 'If you’re a lapsed Catholic, go back to church. Try it,' because, first of all, he’s looking for anything. But second of all, he wants to create a sense — even if they’re continuing treatment with him — that good things are coming, that there is an order — . . . .  And just going back to church and feeling like they’re getting some sort of sense that this will go away, good things are coming, is the first step "

Today I am in charge at church--my sermon will revolve around daily bread and what sustains us and what we need.  There will be fabric and a hoop involved.  More will be revealed in a later blog post.  Now I must get ready.