Making a List and Checking It Twice…

 

   It’s the 21^st of December, the solstice, the anniversary of my father’s death, and more to the point, four days until Christmas.  There are very few events or celestial movements that take precedence above the list of purchases to make, dry cleaning to drop off, packages to wrap, parties to attend, bills to pay, sermons to write, pastoral calls to make, items to return to their point of purchase, gifts to procure from a spectrum of sources, devious and straightforward, cards to write, address, stamp, and mail.  The only way to keep track of this chaos is ‘the list.’   

   My wife is a blessing in many ways.  Her ability to bring some sort of order to a chaotic universe is one of them.  In her infinite wisdom, she knows better than to attempt to push and shove all these discordant entities and vectors toward an order that she has determined.  Her experience as a single parent has taught her that this is a waste of energy.  Rather, she composes, magically, bringing it to being from the bits and pieces of sensed and known dynamics, capabilities and possibilities, arcs and planes, the answer to all our worry and lack of understanding.  It seems to be just a piece of discarded envelope with numbers and words, paper-clipped to coupons and receipts, but we all know that this is what all magic is made of, common elements, herbs and minerals gathered together in to proper way, bits and pieces seeming so common until they are joined with words and motions, each exactly right.  Words like, ‘Well, we’ll be over there, it makes sense to drop by their house.  We’ll only stay a minute.  Then we’ll go to the mall.  We can get Starbuck’s while we’re there.  That will hold us up until lunch.’  See what I mean?  You’d never know that magic was brewing.  Magic that holds the world together.  Magic that allows all the insanity of this crazy season to become Christmas.

What's In Your Textbook?

I heard the other day that text books mentioning evolution were banned from Texas schools.  There is little doubt or discussion that this has to do with people’s unwillingness to allow any competition to the creation story in Genesis.  I could do some ranting about a terrible lack of understanding about the Bible’s intent.  An explanation of ‘How’ was not its purpose.  The identification of ‘Who’ was.  Nuff said.

 

But an even more basic discussion is about evolution.  Most consider uniformity the rule.  What is happening now will continue with small changes toward some evident result.  But such has as little to do with evolution as a six day agenda has to do with the Bible’s story of creation.  Evolution has to do with moments of change, sudden jumps and starts, unforeseen lightning strikes pulling forward  unappreciated strengths, altering species’ destinies.  Such a mechanism more closely resembles miracles than it does some ‘natural’ law.  It demands that we pay attention to the meek, the ones who are not dominant, who are not powerful according to the world’s definitions.  Gee, I’ve heard someone else talk like that.  Some guy who was giving a sermon on a hill in a back woods place called Galilee.  Taking all of that into account, I’m more comfortable with evolution than uniformity’s stolid unwillingness to confront God’s and nature’s obvious preferences.  Texas, put that in your pipe and smoke it.    

Omen

 

 

At that time in the morning, we were little more than groggy.  The mug of latte consumed during the walk in the cemetery is designed to peel the veils from the eyes and allow the morning sun into the shaded senses.  We were on the gravel, under the trees that line the road when the hawk squeaked twice and lifted across our path, up into the lower branches to the southwest.  He sat there, looking at us, intruders stopped, stunned by his short flight. 

I broke the silence with a diagnosis.  “It’s an omen.”  “An omen of what?”  A good question, but one that meant nothing to the teen aged red tail up in the tree.  Omens aren’t pointers toward some specific bit of our normality.  We’re going to run out of gas.  The guests are going to be late.   Omens are rumblings, touches of that which is beyond us, outside our cause and effect universe.  They express relationships that dance at the edges of our small vision.  They shimmer.  Reading omens seems so silly, so non-evidential.  What would CSI think? There’s a fallacy pointing to this weak way of thinking.  But there sat the hawk.  I wonder if he knew what he meant to us.  I wonder.

Ghost in the Machine

I have a new computer.  Do you ever wonder if there is a mind inside the machine you're blithely using?  Is it listening to what you're trying to say?  Does it watch what you're trying to design?  Does it smirk at the silliness, the fallacies, the redundancies, the unsupported inferences leading you out of the present tenses toward plans and supposed understandings and opinions?  Or is it a complicated shovel, a lawn mower with many attachments?

I never do that.

I'm pretty sure this is a female.  Shirley or Rhonda.  She doesn't talk much, yet.

Herbert’s Discourse

There’s a hawk that spends a lot of time yelling at us.  When we come out the back door, when we walk in the cemetery, and sometimes we can hear him when we’re watching the Yankees.  The truth is, I’m not sure he’s yelling at us, or just yelling.  He may be calling for his girlfriend, or alerting other hawks he’s in the neighborhood, or complaining about a stomach ache.  I’m not sure if it sounds angry or lonely.  I don’t speak hawk.

It made me realize that there are a lot of languages I don’t know.  I’m not even aware of many of the priorities driving others.  Even others that walk around on the ground and don’t have wings.  It’s scary how arrogant we are, isolated in our assumptions.  And it’s so rare that we ever even notice how our small attitudes shrink our environments.  The glory is that it doesn’t take a lightening bolt to open us to bits and pieces of truth.  All it takes is a hawk’s cry.

Chris named him Herbert.  I wonder if he likes the name. He might be a Red Sox Fan. He does have a red Tail.

Waiting for the Rain

It’s hot, hot as only New Jersey can be.  The humidity is higher than the temperature.  Everything’s sticky.  They’ve been forecasting rain, even heavy rain every day for a while.  It gets cloudy, it rumbles, it feels like a cool breeze will bring a deluge.  And then the sun comes out.  What the heck!  If we’re going to put up with the ramp up to Noah’s flood, build the ark, buy the golf umbrellas, make sure all the windows are sealed shut…  We’re ready.  The hydrangeas are beginning to wilt.  The koi are gathered under the water lilies, assuming they’re going to need protection from the down pour.  So where is it?

There are frustrating bits and pieces of life, sticky, pregnant, ready to deliver something that we’ve been expecting, preparing for, working toward, even depending on, and it hangs there, just beyond actual.  It leaves us in the discomfort of labor, full of anxiety and frustration.  Sticky doesn’t cover it. 

Now, you’re all expecting a conclusion, a point.  Right?  No such luck.  Now you know what it feels like.  Pain in neck, isn’t it?

Witness

Nelson Mandella is dying.  His life has been so full of threat and abuse, it’s a miracle he lived this long.  But his life cannot be measured in days.  He’s a giant of history.  He was imprisoned for years for standing up for justice.  He refused to believe what he’d been told by the powerful people who had been telling such things to black Africans long before he’d been born.  The whites had told them to keep their place, to give up their rights to vote, to stop want a good education, to marry who they wanted, to get a good job.  They were told to give up their dreams for themselves and their children.  They were beaten and killed.  They were like lambs led to the slaughter.

In spite of all the horror and ugliness, Mandella refused to back down.  He insisted on maintaining his dignity and his humanity and his faith.  And his faith and his dignity pushed him beyond all the ugliness that had been heaped on him and his people.  He said, don’t let your past determine your future.  He lived by those words and by the dignity and faith of his Lord and Savior.  And because of his courage and witness he became an incarnation of the power of the Good News that guided his life, refusing to trade violence for violence, refusing to be determined by the ugliness offered to him.

Every time I get the feeling this faith business, this preaching business has little power or importance, I read the call of Jeremiah.  He was told that the words he spoke would “…destroy and overthrow, …build and plant.” 

If we are to believe in the promises of God and remember the cloud of witnesses that have lived by those promises down through the ages, we will never be able to denigrate the calling that has brought us to the ministry and the pulpit.  And we should never believe the statements of the smart and intelligent people who tell us we are wasting our time in this religion business, who tell us to take our Lord’s vision of love and justice back to the dark corner where all ideals should be kept. 

Nelson Mandella is dying, but he will never die.  His life rests in the hands and in the heart of his crucified and risen Lord.  As does each of ours. 

Thanks be to God.

Memories

Someone who was chronologically gifted once told me that we should make sure we live full lives full of love and beauty and fun because later on, in our old age, memories are all we’ve got left.  I didn’t agree with him then, and now from my advanced perspective, I still don’t.  One phrase that gives me hives is, “I’m too old to do ….”  If we’re breathing, we have the gift of life.  Gifts are made to be unwrapped and played with, used or worn.  Today is another day to live lives full of love, beauty, and fun, no matter how chronologically gifted we may be.

But I do think memories are important building blocks to what we are.  Gratitude is so important to how we see life.  Our harvest of the fruit of God’s gifts and a consideration of the glory that fills each day creates a sense of wealth and security that makes life an adventure that never quits. 

I remember finding a duck’s nest along the river near our house and hiding in the bushes watching the female mallard warming her children.  I remember a dark church, with a choir up somewhere above singing Randal Thompson’s ‘Alleluia.’  I remember falling in love in 9^th grade, 10^th grade, 11^th grade, etc, etc.  I remember my father’s sermon when I was ordained.  I remember Indian wrestling my brother until we fell on a table in my parents’ hallway and smashed it, laughing like idiots.    I remember ….

If we are to be wise, if we are to see the world from a of perspective that allows us to be open to the gift of mown grass on a summer’s day or proclaim the Good News of love and justice, then we must allow the memories of God’s goodness in history and in our lives to guide us and lead us, to teach us and to remind us of the faithfulness of the One.

So let us claim the deeds of our Lord, the gifts given down through the ages, that we may be wise and live each day in gratitude.  And let us live this day as the gift it is, that today may be a song to be sung, a source of glory and gratitude for us and those who follow.  Alleluia!

Prejudice

I’m prejudiced. 

Let me unpack that a little.  When the Supreme Court voted to gut the voting act, I was horrified.  When they voted to put down DOMA, I was elated.  It’s evident I have some presuppositions that underlie my opinions.  In other words, before I make decisions I’ve already made up my mind.  So, that makes me prejudiced. 

My stepdaughter just moved to Roanoke, Virginia.  She’s a doctor.  She’s anything but stupid.  Her husband is one of the most intelligent and capable people I’ve ever met.  They’re superior parents.  Their two kids are evidence that can’t be denied.  So, when they chose Roanoke, Virginia over Boston and Philadelphia, civilized places, I wondered.  There it is, prejudice again.  We went down to help them move in and I was exposed.  The place is beautiful, her hospital is one of the best, their new friends are gracious, intelligent, and have good senses of humor.

So what do I do about my lack of balanced reasoning?  How do I make my way through life even pretending to be anything but an uncultured, uncivilized, irrational, perhaps even un-Christian, idiot.  I may as well be wearing a hood.

On the other hand, without a few presuppositions we can’t begin the tortuous discipline of logic.  Somewhere back down the line of questioning there has to be a place where we dig in and begin.  It’s hard to know where in the universe of possibilities we should choose this place.  Almost everything is questionable.  Solid rocks of assumption succumb to the ugly pressures of brutality or the bit picking, tiring evidence of our wrongness and our weakness that creep in on the slime of fatigue and disappointment.  These solid places become mushy, undependable.

But is it about them or the horrible burden of free will that we carry like some backpack of terror.  If we surround ourselves with unquestionable bedrock, re-bared cement, unquestionable assumptions of truth, justice, and the American way, we become closed.  Our ability to claim something more than the ugly sadness of the past is eclipsed by all this ‘We-always-did-it-that-way-before.’ If we reach out beyond all that convenient and comfy ballast, we might be wrong. 

Ah, there’s the rub.  There’s the problem.  We have to be willing to be wrong if we are to begin or proceed.  We have to make a choice.  We have to choose where we stand and how we proceed.  We have to be willing to be wrong.  Such is life. 

I think we’ve all got a lot of learning to do about establishing some sort of environment of living where we are willing to learn as a rule, rather than only when we are shocked into it or dragged through it by a gifted and talented teacher, or grand children for that matter.  I’ve got some pretty definite assumptions.  Some of them I’ve heard about from others.  Some of them are incarnate truth.  Some of them blast my silliness to bits.  Some of them giggle when I tickle them.  Ain’t life grand?  Now that’s an assumption.

Learning

I do bonsai. It is a discipline of relationships. The trees I work with become a form of art, art that is never done. The trees need intensive care, care that is not the same from tree to tree. A maple and a spruce need different kinds of attention, water, sun, fertilizer, soil composition, pruning. To treat one like another is to abuse it and to ultimately invite its death.



I read a lot about trees to get to know what they need and so how to relate well with them. Just recently, I discovered I was prejudiced. I found out I was operating on a set of assumptions that had more to do with my ignorance than with the tree. Running into one’s own ignorance is a constant normality when we open ourselves to truth.



It’s easy to slide down that slippery slope. Consistency makes so much sense, even when we pride ourselves in being self aware. But perhaps that is the widest gate toward arrogance. We are so proud of ‘knowing.’ But what do we know? Our knowledge is a structure that makes sense to us. We’ve built it with that sense as a blue print. The universe has little respect for our plans and schemes. Our only hope is to constantly reach beyond our normality, our assumptions, our perspectives. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes sad, often frightening. Once in a while, too rarely we learn. We see clearly our limitations in time to do something about them. Each of those is a victory, a new hope.



Red maples need direct sunlight and a lot of water, every day, sometimes twice a day. So I moved the red maple and started watering it more. I hope it didn’t suffer too much. I hope its happy now, tree happy. I’ll prune it next spring.

Shell Shock

The weather reports were unanimous. A tropical storm was on its way, they named it. Bad weather is no big deal. This close to the shore, we’re used to it. The word ‘tropical’ raised hackles. Conversations about the weather were very different. Awkward silences punctuated any comment mentioning temperature, humidity, wind, or rain fall. When we heard the name, there were no cracks, ‘Dumb name.’ ‘I had a girlfriend named that.’ None of it. It scared us.



Last fall we were mauled by a beast named Sandy. It tore our normality to shreds. The ocean ate our beaches, our neighborhoods, our landmarks. It beat the crap out of our world. A named storm brought all of that back. It’s called post traumatic stress syndrome. You don’t have to be crawling around on the floor mewing like a kitten to experience your now being overwhelmed by the horror of a past that broke through the structures of sense in which you live. That specific then becomes a present power, though the war or the storm or the horror of then is long gone. It can be triggered by a phrase, a sound, a smell, or a weather report.



An older member of my church here came to me the week after 9-11, obviously upset and anxious. He was afraid to go to sleep. Nightmares owned his sleep. During World War II, he’d been a Navy officer who was in charge of a unit that cleaned out below decks of ships that had been torpedoed and made it back to port. His unit preceded the engineers and mechanics. They power washed and steam cleaned the soot, blood, and hair off the walls and out of the machines. He told me that the wind had been blowing our way from Manhattan since the attack. Two thousand people getting burned and pulverized made human smog. The smell took him back to the horror of those engine rooms. His courage and sense of duty had gotten him through the war. But the ugliness had come with him. Now that smell took him back there.



There is nothing cowardly about struggling with such demons. No one should have to live through such ugliness. All of us have limits. We may maintain our faith in God, our sense of self, and loyalty to family or flag, we may function like heroes, but the ugliness of the then that we wrestled with is now imbedded deep within us. They used to call this shell shock. But this isn’t just about artillery strikes or suicide bombs. Mothers and firemen and rescue workers get this condition. None of us are stuck with the torture of living with such ugliness. We can work through it. But we have to admit our pain, trust another, and go back to the event that washed over us like a storm surge and share. That’s hard. But it’s the only way to freedom.



Her name was Andrea, the tropical storm. It dumped a few inches of rain on us. A few of my conversations with people were a little longer than normal. Some of them went back to Sandy. I go fishing sometimes. Sometimes I catch stuff. We’ve been working on setting up our church house to make room for work crews to stay while they’re working on the wreckage. It makes a great segway. Beware of sneaky ministers going fishing. And beware of sitting on your horrors. Such eggs hatch dragons that will eat your soul.

Grand Slam

The Yankee’s first baseman Mark Teixeira is a great fielder and a monster with a bat. Just before the season began, he was injured. He finally got back from rehab, and everybody, including Teixeira himself said he didn’t expect much as far as hitting for a while. Last night in the third inning with the bases loaded, he hit a home run. Grand Slam! It doesn’t get much better than that.



Grand slams are combinations of so many small circumstances. Three people have to get on base. And then the ball, thrown at ninety miles an hour, has to get slammed three or four hundred feet, inbounds. That’s just this side of a miracle.



There are so many times when we load ourselves with expectations, ‘We always did it that way before,’ or ‘We never did it that way before,’ or any combination of should’s and ought’s that demand that we be something or not be something else. The terrible burden of these unseen demands is that we give away the present to some other tense, some other place. It’s almost impossible to be effective on any level when we’re not living in the here and now with all its limitations and possibilities.



Humility is more than not blowing your own horn. Humility is a deep sense of honesty. It rests in strength, not in its denial. If you meet a humble person, you meet a capable person, because they’re living in the now, able to make something of what presents itself. It is a sign that there is wisdom there.



So, Teixeira’s a wise guy. He also hit another home run tonight; only two guys were on base this time. I’d say he’s catching up just fine.

Shake Rattle and Roll

Our choir director is a miracle worker. Our introit this week was an arrangement of a piece written in the 1500’s. Our anthem was a spiritual that included clapping. The ancient one wasn’t a huge stretch. But for white bread Presbyterians to actually ‘git down’, clapping, swaying, and singing like they meant it, with hearts tuned to joy rather than anxiety of getting the right note, now that’s rough. The miracle part of it is, WE PULLED IT OFF! The congregation almost fell off their pews.



Religion is strange bird. It lifts its hands toward a multi dimensional reality whose purposes transcend our understanding while it intersects with us in very specific and overt ways. Such intersections are fearsome. They demonstrate our limitation and show us glory, glory too much to categorize or express systematically. And yet we try. Thus, religion.



It’s hard to find ways of recalling and expressing bits and pieces of the glory. Song allows us to shake loose some of the clods of mortality and limitation. It lifts us and joins us in ways concepts and words can’t. But even music can become locked and limited by our refusal to open to the glory. It has little to do with genre. The soaring glory of Bach opens ways toward the ‘Other’ as effectively as the enthusiasm and rhythms of spirituals, but only if we let it. Few are willing to be touched by Bach. We’ve become jaded in our now.



But that can happen with any key. It is sad. The issue is to be willing, to be open. The issue is to sing, ‘Hallelujah’ with heart, mind, and soul. Yup, she’s a miracle worker. “All praises be to the Lord our God, He is wonderful.” Amen.

Half Mast

Shrewsbury is a small town, used to be a farming town, now it’s a bedroom community for high end folks who work elsewhere and live here to have a safe and quiet place to raise the future shakers and movers. But some of the old fashioned stuff still pops up its head once in a while.

Memorial Day is one of those once in a while’s. The girl scouts march with the flags. The school band plays a medley of patriotic songs, fourth graders sliding trombones always makes me proud. It’s a long story. I stand with the firemen, the Rev and the boys. We stand behind the cops, next to the ambulance folks. One of the firemen who happens to be a woman sings the national anthem. She’s pretty good. Then a sixth, a seventh, and an eighth grader each reads an essay that speaks to What Memorial Day means to me. Then they read a list of the one’s we’ve lost, starting in the Revolutionary War and working all the way past Vietnam. Then they raise the stars and stripes and lower it again to half mast, while the pipes play “The flowers of the field ha’ all wiede away, followed by Amazing Grace” Then I say the benediction.

I always appreciate the whole thing. There’s something so real about it. But this year while they read the list, I started to tear up. The pipes put me over the top. Why? Each name seemed to be a personal loss, a tragedy. The terrible price of war stood up and spoke those names. And then it was my turn to talk, to send them out.

I climbed up next to the flag pole and looked over the crowd. They were waiting for something. People do that. They know something is about to happen, something that fits into the normality and might actually mean something. They wait for it.

“Tecumseh Sherman, hero of the Civil War, savior of the nation was asked to speak at the graduation of West Point the year after the war ended. They expected a two hour speech. He came to the podium and looked over the eager cadets and said three words. ‘War is Hell.’ He sat and looked at his shoes.

“Sherman knew. Every one of the people whose names we read died in Hell. They suffered and paid a terrible price so that we can live in peace. Now claim what they have paid for. Live in peace, each day, every day, live in peace. It has been bought with a terrible price. Amen.”

I don’t know if that was normal enough for everybody, but about twenty people told me that it made sense. Maybe that’s all we can hope for.

Sherman hung out with the guy who used to own my house. They drank bourbon in my dining room with another guy who’d been to Hell, Grant. I hope it was good stuff, they deserved it.

I Met a Prophet

When I was told I needed surgery, I got out my calendar and set it up, surgery Thursday, back to work Tuesday. Made sense to me. The doctor told me it would take a month, but I figured I could get by, what the heck. I don’t expect whether forecasters to be accurate. Why should I expect doctors to know what they’re talking about?

In our Tuesday morning Bible study, we’re talking about prophets. These scary people who are the mouth pieces of God, standing with one foot firmly planted in the world of here and now and the other in the clarity of the eternal now of the One who knows and sees all that was, is, and shall be. “Thus says the Lord,” has rarely been greeted with gladness or eagerness. We don’t like to be told that most of what we’re doing is wrong and will get us into a lot of trouble. We don’t want to hear that we shouldn’t smoke, or eat half a bag of Doritos, or judge people because they’re different. We don’t want to be any more generous, forgive our enemies, or reduce our carbon foot print. We’ve worked hard on our excuses. We’ve even find ‘good’ reasons to tune out all these weirdoes. Why should we listen to somebody that doesn’t agree with us, let alone believe what they say?

I’ve found inspiration in the prophets. Though nobody listens to them, they keep at it because their relationship with God drags them toward the clarity from which their inspiration comes. So, when I get slapped around or worse, ignored, I remember them and keep at it.

I doubt my surgeon considers himself a prophet. But I doubt he has any easier time convincing stubborn patients like me to believe the probabilities that are coming at them like an eighteen wheeler. Last week Chris told me it was nice to see the brightness coming back in my eyes. I looked at the calendar. Yup, a month. I have to tell my doctor about the prophets. And, I have to stop being such an idiot. I’m sure
that's going to happen, real soon.

Clean Desks

I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs personality preference profile a few times. Some of the insights it reveals about my personality are no brainers. I’m an extrovert out the whazoo. And then there’s the way I keep order. I don’t. I have a tendency to not worry too much about how my desk looks at any time of day, week, month, or year. True, I’m infamous for loosing things. But then there’s always the epiphanous moment when I rediscover them.

I was at a continuing education event once where we were sorted by personality type. We’d all taken the test and sent them in before we got there. So I was in a group of six other extroverted, disorganized ministers. Fifteen minutes into the exercise we were laughing at our shared normality. One guy put a trash can at the end of his desk every six months and emptied whatever was piled on it into the gaping maw of oblivion. I asked him, “Did you ever miss anything?” His simple answer was “Not unless you count all the anxiety I dump with the trash on my desk.” In another fifteen minutes we were trying to figure out where to go for beer after the class and I noticed the other groups. One of them had found and easel and markers. They were making a list. Another group was sitting quietly. I bet they all had clean desks.

I used to worry about the creation story that most people are familiar with. There’s an awful lot of ordering and separating and judging going on there. I worried that God was the ultimate bean counter. This god liked things neat. And the chaos that was conquered by all the ordering and separating and judging was more similar to my fly by the seat of the pants reality. So did that make me on the outside of God’s orderliness?

You might scoff, but I’ve been told point blank and almost diplomatically over the years that my lack of order was paramount to a failure in my moral system and a good reason why my spiritual leadership was questionable. The budget types wield powerful influence over the hearts and minds and pocket books of the church. And they are faithful workers in the vineyard.

It was pretty easy for me to get the idea that God’s image that we were made in didn’t include a nose. Creativity and separating and seeing that stuff was good were more in line with a family resemblance each of us receives, noses and such. But there’s more to our resemblance to God than some such specificity. Sure God ordered things. But the order included pretty intricate things like snowflakes and down right messy stuff like birth. And just because something’s messy doesn’t mean it’s wrong. And when the One decides it time to step outside the nice neat order of things and make something happen, we don’t call that wrong, we call that a miracle.

So in this convoluted manner, using whatever kinky form of logic my messy brain would allow, I decided that even if the writer of Genesis would disapprove of my lack of a coherent filing system, the Holy Spirit allowed for all kinds of loop holes. Even for people with messy desks.

Whew, what a relief. Now where did I put that sermon I was working on?

Peanut Butter Road

It’s been a while since I sat down to write.  Been sitting a lot, but there’s little drive to write.  Being sick is weird.  It’s not only a collection of symptoms that illicit ooo’s and oh my’s from observers, it’s a fatigue that makes the normal routine a journey through peanut butter.  Thank God the world is blooming.  Just walking around the back yard is like taking vitamins.  If the azaleas can explode after putting up with winter, there’s hope.

Transformation

I was walking down a hallway at school between classes. It was late in the week, I was pooped. The only thing I was thinking about was getting home, shucking my shoes and slipping into a novel as a prelude to dreams. Few students were around. Most were in classrooms, trying to pay attention.

Coming toward me was a girl, long dark hair framing her face. She was looking down, carrying some weight of sadness or fatigue or worry. She looked like I felt. She looked like a large percentage of our culture felt. ‘The world is too much with us, late and soon.’ Some instinct, perhaps empathy, perhaps lowly duty pushed me to smile at her as we came closer through the dimness. Glancing up she, noticed me coming, smiling. She responded her face breaking into a shy grin, showing her teeth, responding to the bit of brightness walking toward her.

It was an amazing thing to see. She became beautiful, transformed. It lit her. A window opened on some bright place in her and let an internal light shine through. As she passed me her head tilted up as she looked ahead down the hall.

It occurred to me that I carried the same weight she did, or a similar one. It also occurred to me that though I could never be as beautiful as she, I could do a lot toward improving the scenery. I’ve heard, when we smile, we literally improve our mood. It releases pheromones. We become happier from the evidence of happiness we display. Talk about acting our way into feeling!

Too often we’d rather display our misery, wearing the burdens we carry like badges of honor. Do we want others to share our pain? Or are we simply proud of it? Or is it simply a habit, like a slouch? Standing up straight is better for our back, more attractive, lets us breathe better, allows us more energy, and still we slouch. Maybe frowning’s simply lazy.

But perhaps there’s a darker basis for this. Imbedded in the choices we make everyday are the options of energy and entropy. Alfred North Whitehead posited that when we make such a choice toward energy we allow the nature of God to become more real. And when we choose the other… Perhaps that is the true nature of Evil, allowing our potential to slide into chaotic entropy.

So, our mothers were right, “Stand up straight!” “Smile, frowny-pants!” The rule is, listen to your mother.

How to Write a Eulogy III

When you’re speaking at a funeral, it’s not important to make any sort of list of the accomplishments of the person who has died. Such lists are part of the articles recorded in the newspaper. Other than being redundant, any such list is almost useless in allowing the person’s person to live in the memories of the people there. People remember small bits and pieces of a person, not what they’ve accomplished. Rather than the job, we remember how they worked. Rather than their leadership, we remember their smile, their forgiveness, their faithfulness, the way they played the piano with their eyes closed.

If I knew the person well, I try to remember something specific about them, the way they laughed, the way they loved to dig in the garden, they way they loved to go to flea markets. I call that a hook. I describe that specificity let it live in the midst of the people and let them remember the person digging in the dirt or bringing home an old chair, and I speak about how that was part of their persona. They loved to nurture things, to help things grow. They loved to see in things that were discarded, the possibility of treasure. Each person’s life is a story. Our job in that moment is to remind people of a moment in that story so the person’s tears and laughter can be heard and shared.

I try to not repeat what others are going to bring up, or at least if it is the Yankees or the beach, I try to take in toward another tangent. I try to get folks who are planning to speak to talk to each other before they do so. Editing can go a long way toward helping the occasion to work.

If I didn’t know the person, I talk to the family ahead of time. I ask them what was the person’s favorite season and why. What was their favorite room in the house? What kind of music did they like? Did they like to travel and where? I ask them to name one moment that comes to mind when they think of them. By that time they are usually crying or laughing or both. They are talking to each other about their lost loved one. It’s a good place to begin building a eulogy.

One Day

It’s April. It’s cold. Easter was early this year. It’s supposed to be warm after Easter. But the tilt of the planet has something else to say about the chill in the air.

Yesterday we drove to a concert in western Jersey. On the way out there the woods were winter gray. While we heard young talented students play Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, Ravel, and List the sun shone, the temperature lifted and stuck around sixty blessed degrees. As we drove home, the woods had a deep red cast. Buds had pushed out, invited by the sun its warmth. There was no longer a tracery of stark grey lines, there was lace. After we got home, we went over to see my mother in law. And there stood a crab tree, exploding with a color somewhere between lavender and pink. One day, one single day of warmth had created a new environment. There is no going back now.

There are moments in all our lives, no matter how deep our winters, no matter how long we’ve waited for some sort of thaw, moments when warmth from far beyond our efforts offers possibilities of growth and bloom. Too often our frustration and fear demand that we remain bundled in the winters that have defined our exhausting days and sleepless nights. Too often the inertia of our dark normality freezes us in spite of glowing moments that offer another possibility.

We were not meant to survive, we were meant to live. I guess that’s what Easter’s about.

How to Write a Eulogy II

There’s one basic difference between a funeral and a Christian funeral. The best you can hope for in a funeral without a Christian witness is a memorial and a lifting of the heritage left to us by the one who has died. In my humble opinion, if a funeral can climb up to the point of lifting up of heritage, it’s better than a canned set of prayers and scriptures. The name Jesus may be stated but there’s not much Holy Spirit blowing through there.

But a Christian funeral that focuses on the presence of a living Lord, imminent, and powerful plants a blooming flower in the midst of the dim twilight of this moment of loss and grief. I take that as my job. But anyone who is a person of faith can witness to the power of the resurrection. You don’t do this by horning in, or by denying the weight of grief. The presence of faith, and the healing love that comes with it can make a world of difference with the simple words, “I’m sorry for your loss. You’re in our prayers.”

I taught my boys to say that when they went to a funeral, to shake hands with the grieving family, to speak simply and directly, then to stand and listen. Presence means everything.

But what I try to offer in a funeral service is to remind people of the truth that even in this darkness there is the presence of something more than a life that has ended. That’s Christian hope. I don’t like funerals that don’t have hymns in them. We need to sing. It’s good to have the symbols of the holy around us. We need to be surrounded by the colors and reminders of the moments of inspiration that have lifted our lives beyond the ordinary and usual. As we see the one who’s died and ourselves in the context of Christmas and baptism and communion and Easter we share this moment with the journey of our Lord. That’s a funeral that offers us an opportunity for hope.

So now, you’ve heard what I think of funerals. Next time we’ll talk about Eulogies.

How to Give a Eulogy

   Last week we had a funeral of a church member, a deacon, a nice guy.  It was a good service.  I always ask the family to participate and a nephew stepped up to give a wonderful eulogy.  He told me that he really didn’t know how to do what he’d volunteered for.  He looked it up and found no basic guidelines for lifting up the memories of a loved one.  He did a fine job, but his comment started me thinking.  I’ve done this for more people than I would know how to count.  I know how.  Sooooo…  I figured I’d share some of this expertise with those of you who happen to read my ‘Back Pages.’  I’ll serialize it.  If any of you have questions, just drop them into the comment section and I’ll do my best to answer them.  As I tell my students, ‘The only dumb question is the one that doesn’t get asked.’  Share your questions and help the others that are trying to learn.

  

I.                    What is the purpose of a funeral?

   This is a very common question that doesn’t get asked and most folks don’t have a clue why we go through this whole thing.  ‘It’s what should be done.’  That’s means nothing.  That’s another way to say, ‘I’m following the mob.’  Lemmings use that for population control, but we ought to have better reasons for what we do. 

   A funeral is for the living, not for the dead.  They don’t need this, they’ve moved on.  We have this structured moment to give us a chance to gather together and grieve together.  Grief is a process.  Grief that is shared works better.  The structure of a funeral gives us a chance to share our grief, to speak about the one who has died.  To cry.  To laugh.  To remember.  To celebrate their life.  And to validate the relationships that we have, family, friends, community, so that we can realize this person’s death is not something to be bourn alone.  We celebrate birth by getting the bunch together.  We celebrate weddings by getting the bunch together.  We celebrate death by getting the bunch together.  Death is weird.  It’s creepy.  It’s scary.  It’s sad.  A funeral can, and I emphasize can, help with all of that. 

   We need to be honest and down to earth about the person who has died, and share as much as we can, rather than be a spectator to some sort of set piece.  We also need some structure to keep the whole thing from wallowing in all of the above issues. 

Next time we’ll get into a funeral based in a faith structure.

The Day After

We walked into a foggy sunrise this morning. The moon watched the sun coming up through the trees. A cardinal’s call hammered down from the old apple tree, surrounded by clouds of others, yelling “I’m here!” We plodded, tired to the bone. Even Sam was tired, sniffing here and there half heartedly.

It had been a glorious week, Hosannas, the cross, Easter’s triumph. With the music and drama, iconic shadows and light, every moment too full to breathe, too real to go through the motions. It is the core of who and what we are. It demanded everything we could give. And now, empty, hollowed out by the fires of sacrifice, we’re here, gliding through the fog.

There is a clarity and goodness in this fatigue. I’ve run races and felt like this at the finish line. Woven with the aches and need for rest are memories that bring small smiles. Snatches of power and song run in harmony with the sunrise through the mist.

I wonder if they felt like this then. I wonder if they smiled a bit thinking of small memories that we now call scripture. Holy moments are consecrated, set aside. They weave into our daily lives threads of glory. They go with us as we wander on our way.

Jelly Beans and Bunnies

I have a problem. One of the heirlooms entrusted to me is a ceramic Easter Bunny, complete with pastel lederhosen, pulling a ceramic two wheeled cart. It’s a candy dish decoration for the pagan celebration of fertility, better known as Easter. We tend to do a lot more with the pagan part of this holiday than with the resurrection of our Lord. I guess it is more fun to have egg hunts and chocolate bunnies than crosses and cemeteries, torture and death. Even in church we tend to pay a lot more attention to lilies and whoopee-doo than empty tombs. Most people don’t come to church on Thursday or Friday. They just skip to Sunday.



Anyway, I want to put out the heirloom. Easter is coming up, just a few days from now. But that’s just it. Those few days are why it happened. How do we decorate now? Deny it? Or do we have one room for mourning and the other with the ceramic bunny as a center piece?



Sometimes I feel my life is like that. If I pay attention to the suffering of the world, how do I find time to giggle? Or shall I live in denial so we can decorate and celebrate? Maybe it’s appropriate that Easter is crammed up against the cross. The victory of life rising out of the worst and most painful we can come up with. Maybe that’s Easter’s meaning. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’



Yup, I’ve got a problem, if you want to look at it like that. Maybe it’s more of an opportunity. No denial. No surrender. Tonight, we’ll celebrate the Last Supper, betrayal, death. But the bunny’s coming out. Take that darkness.

Dirty feet

I have a hard time with Holy Week. I used to think I was so grumpy on Palm Sunday because I was pooped from Lent. I used to think that Maundy Thursday was rough because I was so busy getting everything in order for all the services. I used to think… Since I gave up thinking everything’s been much easier.

One year the calendar put communion on the day for having the kids parade into church with palms. I got up to do communion and I started to cry. I realized I was so mad it hurt. Everybody was whoopiedooing and He was crying. Where the hell do any of us get off being as obtuse as everybody was then? How can we be so self centered? How can we ignore the Christ in His pain? Whew! Took me a minute to get that set of monsters back in their harness. People told me I ought to get some rest. I must be really tired from Lent. They were lucky I remembered my mother telling me it wasn’t nice to knock people down and punch them in church. Yo! His heart is broken and you’re discussing how to make little crosses with leaves?

Since then I’ve approached this whole thing a lot differently. And they have too. Funny thing. Maybe we spiritual leaders need to spend more time with the Lord. Might do us all some good.

But this washing the feet thing still gets me. Since I paid attention to what was going on during this week, the relationships and all their gives and takes are so poignant, so loaded, I don’t know how He got through it. Here He was, knowing what was going on (I really don’t think it required the Great Kreskin to figure out what was ahead), and they’re having a party. That would leave me somewhere between walking out on the idiots and getting Gabriel to fry them. But He stuck in there, even without a pension to preserve. He moved inside all the self centered idiocy and gave them a lesson they would never forget. He wounded them with the only weapon that would leave them with anything except embarrassment and self defensive excuses. He washed their feet. Talk about counter intuitive.

It left them abashed. It leaves me absolutely positive that I am not worth His concern. I am still so angry about His pain and their unwillingness to pay attention to it, I know I haven’t learned what I need to.

But that’s the point isn’t it. We’ll never learn. Even at our best we’re a lot less than good at this growing-up-into-our-potential-as children-of-God business. Our own anger and pain and lack of vision and faith and generosity and compassion and courage etc, etc. will always, sooner or later, put us in the shoes of the Pharisees or Judas or Peter or good old naked John. And that’s when we’ll see Him kneeling in front of us, taking our feet in His hands as He tells us that He loves us.

I don’t know about you, but this guy gets under my skin, dirty feet and all.

Monster dandruff

My journey through life has offered opportunities at every turn. When I was unemployed after seminary I had the opportunity of pumping gas and working in a leather factory. I learned things and grew in ways that I am very grateful for. One would think the ministry would be such a place, full of fertile ground in which to grow and become and develop. But the ministry is a job. It entails a lot of meeting deadlines, going through the motions, living up and down to expectations, just like any other job.

One of the hardest disciplines for me is to deal with the day to day, the routine and not get buried under the monster dandruff. When I was green in the business, I made sure that I adopted mentors. I visited them regularly and pumped them for how’s, when’s, where’s, and brilliant tidbits that I could claim and use to make things work. One of these saints shared with me that the people would put up with just about anything I had to say as long as I “paid the rent.” I asked him what that entailed. Very simply, visit them. Or more accurately, let it be known that you are visiting them. He told me most of them don’t want you to come to their house, but they want to know that you are doing that for the people that “really need it.” I thought that was rather cynical. But after thinking about it I realized that what they need to know is that we care about them on a personal level. That’s how they figure it out. OK, it made sense. But putting it into action, getting out of the church, away from classes to teach, and counseling sessions, and crises to deal with was hard. Breaking the inertia of my priorities to sit with someone who didn’t really have any pressing problems seemed…, like paying rent. The drifts of bits and pieces of hours and days, of routine business, of times when inspiration seemed far away, and a cup of coffee was my only defense against fatigue, all of it piled up and made it hard to let light shine.

Back in the days when I played and sang in bars and coffee houses and anyplace I could get a gig, I learned a trick. Most of the time people don’t listen to you. They treat you like elevator music and ignore your efforts to bring beauty and soul into the moment. So I used to sing to one or two people in the room who seemed to be paying attention. And if it was a hard house where no one was with me, I’d try to worm into the song and let it speak through me. I’d put me into the song.

So, I started to do that with my visits. I’d try to find something about the person to celebrate. And if they were ornery or nasty, I’d wrap the moment around me and try to find something interesting or hopeful in the environment. It started out as a survival mechanism, evolved to a habit, and now I treasure it as a gift.

It’s easy to get buried. There is so much that sandbags our gifts and makes our moments dim and difficult. But we are gifted. We are gifts, if we are willing to invest ourselves in the moment.

But honestly, sometimes it ain’t easy.

We’re not in Kansas, Toto

Being born a Presbyterian of Presbyterian father and Evangelical Lutheran mother, the pope was never much of a figure head to me. There are so many bits and pieces of me that lie far beneath choice, assumptions that preclude the entire idea of such a figure of authority let alone veneration. But as I have formed a personal mythology including mid-evil figures of nobility and authority, tangled with devotion to a very personal Lord makes Mr. Pope more intriguing. The concept, the focus, the incarnate power that all rest on those terribly human shoulders. And so much of the church’s direction depends on that one person’s willingness to reach beyond what has been or what’s comfortable. It's called potential.



All of that came clear to me when the new Bishop of Rome said that the church should be of the poor and for the poor. Something in me lit up. It was more than simply good news about a comment by an important guy. It was a light shining in the world and in my life. It gave me inspiration and motivation to be a more faithful follower of our Lord.



This past Sunday was a train wreck of teaching, worship, preaching, meetings, pastoral work, pre marital work, junior high fellowship, and a concert of sacred music. In the middle of the deluge a homeless young woman came wondering if she could find a place to sleep for a couple hours. Without thinking I opened my office, bedded her down on the couch there, gave her a blanket, got some shoes and sox from my wife and pizza from the youth group. I think my sense of normality, offering without thinking, at least part of it bubbled up from Frances’ statement. See what I mean?



I’m not in the process of converting. The protestant bed rock is still there. But it is nice to have an inspiration in a position of authority. And a Jesuit no less. We’ll see how it goes. I doubt he’ll be wearing the red shoes.

Alma Mater

Chris found a piece of mail I’d sidelined for recycling. It was from Lafayette College, my alma mater. We don’t have the resources, time or money to play in those waters. This was from the fencing team. I was one of them, they guys with the swords and knickers. Actually, I was captain of the team. She told me this would be a good way to decompress.



So, we went back. We went back to the place that put up with my adolescent development and still managed to teach me more than I knew there was to learn. We went back to a place that has changed in a number of ways. Buildings, women (that my friends, is a monster), resources for students, and attitude. There used to be 17 fraternity houses. Most of them are now dorms or administrative buildings. And a student we talked to said that she found there was little room to experience independence. She thought it was more like a prep school.



Construction and social trends aside, it was still Lafayette. Kirby Hall still had the Marquis de Lafayette’s coat of arms carved in high relief over the door, with the family’s motto, ‘CUR NON,’ ‘Why Not.’ That has been one of the pillars of my life. Then, plodding to class I’d pass it and smile, wondering if the stogy philosophy professor that I really couldn’t stand had a clue how revolutionary the stone work on ‘his’ building was. Chris and I climbed to the library of Philosophy and Law there, it still smelled of leather and old books. The reading tables still had the lamps with the green glass shades. The bronze busts of the giants that began our outrageous experiment in democracy still watched whoever came into the place. I used to have conversations with Ben Franklin. His slight smile always brought a bit of wistful humor to my doubts and confusion.



Time warped and my present and past overlapped. But anchoring me in the now was a new glory, a love that smiled at my joy. And even more, when we went to the gym, she got excited as Lafayette beat Lehigh on the basketball court. Go Pards!



The new gym already smells like dirty sox. Maybe they pipe it in.

Pain

Life has a lot of pain. Sinus pain, headaches, broken, dislocated, sprained, fingers, ankles, arms, ankles, bee stings, paper cuts with lemon juice, and so many other forms and incarnations of that four letter word. Eskimos have something like 23 different words for snow. Don’t you think there should be more words for pain?



Anyway, I just discovered another. This morning it felt like somebody drove a nail into my thumb. Arthritis. Either that or some little gnome worked his way into my joint and used a tiny little claw hammer and roofing nail in there. My son asked what was wrong and I diagnosed myself to him. I think it was weird for him to hear his father complain about one of those things that tends to be a curse of age. For him, it was painful to hear that. And then it was painful to see him react like that.



Pain. Ben and Jerry don’t have as many flavors as there are permutations of this tiny word. But down at their base there’s a lot there that gives us information we need, information that opens realities and possibilities that we wouldn’t consider or imagine. In spite of all that good stuff, sometimes I’d rather have a gnome or two. Then again, ewwuu.

What Do We See?

I was standing on the chancel, up in front of the church, half way through a funeral. A granddaughter was speaking about her ‘Pop-pop.’ I was behind her, backing her up in case she fell apart. Above her head, all the way on the other side of the sanctuary, colors, deep stained glass colors shining out of the louvers that control the volume of the pipe organ. The colors came through the organ, all the pipes, bellows, air boxes in the dark back there behind the balcony. I stood there, amazed.
Later, I looked up and the lovers were in a different position, revealing only shadows. I real ized I’d never look up there again without searching for the stained glass shining through.

What do we see when we look at something or someone? How much of our expectations have to do with a moment, a glimpse that becomes the template for what we see? How many of our prejudices, our fears, our guilts, barriers that separate us from each other and from hope and acceptance have to do with simple perspective? How many walls in our world are nothing special until we see through them to the colors shining through the darkness?

I think I’ll alter my expectations about blank walls and shadows. You never know what might come shining through.

Watermelon and Skinny Dipping

It’s February. We’re past the celebrations of Christmas, cleaning up in the infancy of the year. We get to whoop and holler during the Super Bowl. We get to be romantic on Valentine’s, but the month is hard. It’s cold, and we’re tired of it. It’s dark. Each morning feels like we’re tunneling out from under this rock better known as winter. Everybody ought to get a trip to the Bahamas included in their health insurance as a preventative strategy for health and well being. In our dreams. And then there’s Lent. Hey, if there’s a season to intentionally put pebbles in our shoes, this is it.



That’s not a snide comment. We’re rarely interested in spiritual disciplines at times when everything is clicking along, happening the way we’d like them to. The grand concourses of life rarely draw us to disciplines of self examination and contemplation. But these narrow, in these narrow, dim days it seems natural to consider depths that we would rather skim across.



So, right now we’re considering what we’ll use as a Lenten fast and a Lenten intention. We give up something and we do something extra. A friend of mine, who lived in the warm and balmy state of Wisconsin, always gave up watermelon and skinny dipping. The depth of his sacrifice was less than effective at self examination or contemplation. He told me that story in seminary. Something changed. He found the value of seeking that which cannot be found in the shallows.



Two years ago we gave up popcorn. That was rough. It doesn’t sound so difficult, but it had become a ritual of comfort and sharing after rough days. The salt and butter didn’t hurt, but its value lay far deeper than taste. So we found out. We wouldn’t have without giving it up. I suggested we give up working. Certain problems arise with that. This needs to be a reminder, not an injury. We’re working on it. I’ll let you know what we come up with.

Coming Home

Coming back from study leave is always a bit wrenching. From the quiet to the bus station that is our home and my work. There I made choices between reading, writing, walking, napping, or staring and wandering into spaces beyond here and now. Here I choose between priorities established by calendar and issues and needs, few of which are of my choosing. As I said, it’s a bit wrenching.



The past week was a gift, undeniably. And as all gifts it must be treasured, appreciated for its value, if it is to be used well. I learned some things, the most significant of which has to do with limitations, my own. The chief purpose of Sabbath, a time of rest, is not to allow us to refuel our engines that we can keep on grinding through our lives. If that is all they do for us, then they are not holy, consecrated, set aside. They are part of our unrelenting toil. Their purpose is to allow transformation to creep into our existence. Transformation allows what is to become something new, allows it to evolve beyond the limited structures we have claimed as our turf, our lives.



Our choices are obviously less than full of the grace that would take us to peace and healing and hope. Without these we become prisoners existing in cages built of demands and necessities and fears. I considered the bars of my cage. I considered Sabbath rest. I considered some options and I realized however I looked at the situation, there were real limits to the speed I could move. There were real limits to what I could accomplish. There were real limits to the significance of the judgments that I fear. And there were no limits to the grace of God. Funny thing.



I think I learned something. Welcome home

Study Leave V

When I came down this morning, Sister Frances was already there. “Sit down and eat your porridge.” The bowl was already on the table. I hesitated. “While it’s hot.” There is little in this world that can stand against the wind or the sea or Sister Frances. I took my jacket off and thanked her. She’s going to visit a lady in Toms River. An early start is necessary. So, the two of us sat eating as the place slowly came to life around us. Eating in silence can be an oppressive experience. So much hangs in the air, it gets hard to breathe. But it can also be soothing, a quiet meal with another. By the time I was finished, she was up and gone. Others came to take her place, but I had a walk to take.



I made up my mind yesterday to climb down the cliff. It is easier said than done. Boards, timbers, bushes, plywood, rocks, concrete, plastic bottles, gravel and all manner of junk lays up against the clay escarpment. Any step has to be picked carefully. Any step must be an act of faith. There are no guarantees that what looks solid is not about to collapse, even without the weight of a clumsy intruder. So, do it quickly. It collapsed. But it also deposited me on the beach. I moved away from the avalanche that followed me. Didn’t even get my hands dirty. God watches over fools.



The beach is mostly gravel, stones worn smooth, from pea size to a couple inches across. Sand that’s left is under these fields of small stones. They fascinate me. They are so much alike and yet each one is etched and worn individually, cracked along lines of inclusions, broken and then worn again. As I walked on them they crunched.



To the south of the center two houses hang, clinging to the cliff, parts of their supports and guts hanging over. Windows that had revealed breathtaking views were now boarded over. Yellow tape drapes across them like derelict Christmas decorations. They are broken, sad. These aren’t homes, they’re summer houses. But hanging there, they’re sad.



Further toward the jetty and bulkhead, a hole, ten feet deep, ten feet wide, has been carved out by the tides’ brutal intrusion. It’s eerie. It seems a grave for an SUV or a dream. Leaving it behind, I moved away from the rocks and timbers that still defend what’s left. And so, I found a gift. For some reason only known to the uncaring sea, the cliff there is only a high step for a stretch of fifty feet. A large vacant lot stretches at the top of the step toward Ocean Avenue, bordered by hedges, populated by a back yard timber jungle gym. The grass is unmowed, long and hummocked, if that’s a word. Perhaps since there was no structure to assault, the storm was kinder here. It left a kindness for me. I trudged through the grass inland to the road and back to the center.



As I came back I realized I hadn’t considered climbing back up the cliff. As I said, the Lord watches over fools.

Study Leave IV

Joe was in the kitchen this morning, making oatmeal for the sisters, and now for me. He’s here because there are others, retreating. They’ll be eating later. I slipped out the back door into the cold after saying hello to him.



Chain link now spans the east of the property. There’s less of it, property that is, than before the storm. The fence keeps wanderers like me from the new cliff, ten feet down to the beach. Not today. I squeezed around the end and walked along the edge. The soil up top is frozen and firm ground supporting grass and shrubs. The sea took sand and stones and bulkheads, but it also took land, dirt, claiming that which we walk on and plant in, and depend on. The cliff is reddish in the predawn light, jagged and draped with boards, pipes, broken shrubs, stones, floats, plywood, a sign or two, and a cluster of tennis balls. I studied that one for a minute, wondering what club was invaded by a non-member. I doubt Sandy paid dues or dressed appropriately. How dare she come all the way up here where she doesn’t belong? It’s a bit frightening not to be in control of the ground we walk on. I considered clambering down to the sand, but continued on, squeezing around the other end of the fence. We’ll save that adventure for a warmer moment.



Cupped between birms is a labyrinth, different colored paving stones laid down, inviting a journey toward…? Perhaps that’s the point of the maze, to provide an opportunity to discover the value of wandering. There is no prize at the center. There are no awards or affirmations. There is only following the path, discovering dead ends and switchbacks until it is solved. This one was laid out to be a journey of prayer. Its tangle leads toward letting go of any agenda other than openness and acceptance. I stood at its beginning. I’d done that yesterday as well, and made the same choice, not to answer its invitation.



I live in a labyrinth, curling in upon myself, choosing paths toward… Just now I would rather wander without paths. Standing there in the rosy light, I was glad to choose other. Soon enough I would be back, considering the twists and turns of each day’s living. Just now, I’ll thank the maker for this moment when I can turn away from those demands and walk back to the kitchen for company, some hot oatmeal, and perhaps a scone.

Study leave III

Walking out onto the deck, roofed by the third floor wasn’t an adventure. But with my cigar in hand, glowing in the darkness, I journeyed around to the sea side. It was darker there. The waves shuffled in, no growl or thud. It was more like a deck of cards, working into each other. So still that the lights from airplanes on the holding pattern from Kennedy flashed over the water, intermittent moments like shooting stars. But the show wasn’t in the water. It was up there, up where stars polluted the skies. Once in a while I look up at night and converse with Orion, dependable in his belt, carrying his club. His knees shine, like mine when I’ve pushed too hard in exercise. And the Pleiades, clustering close, a tiny dipper, there above the hunter. There’s a star between. Perhaps it’s a planet. It shines, constant and bright, but it’s always there. Planets wander you know. It made me wonder if it had a name, planet or star. Anyway, the personalities were all there, but they were accompanied by a host, strewn out across the blackness, above the darkness of the sea.



When I walk Sam, after the parking lot lights have winked out, those friends are there with that bright one between. But here, over the shuffling darkness there were more, more, more of them. Each time I looked there were more. It was a wonder. It was a sadness. How many times had I looked up and not seen, because of street lights, or house lights, or because I didn’t look up at all, occupied by the small necessities of down here. Perhaps there are more of them there than I thought. Perhaps I missed them, blazing out there, distances beyond thinking, shining down on my world and I missed them.



I smoked my cigar and considered all that unseen and unnoticed, listening to the sea shuffle in to the shore. God, life is amazing.

Study Leave II

I woke last night, in dark unrelieved by stray lights from street or passing cars. The sea’s low rumble, constant and then rhythmic lay under me. I roamed, poking in the dark, peaking out a curtained window and saw the moon rise. Less than half, it still cast a silver road down across the dark moving deep. I remembered my childhood, standing on the dunes with my sisters, wondering if I was careful enough could I travel it? And where would it take me? I felt my way back to bed and let the sea’s rhythm lead me out the silver road.



I woke hours later. It was less dark. Day was coming, rushing around the planet’s shoulder, but now only a glow. I bundled against the wind’s bite. ‘Cover your ears.’ It was always the cry when I went out into winter. And so with covered ears, I went out into the dim invitation of day.



The wreckage of the coast spoke silently of the storm’s fury. Bulwarks and jetties broken and moved, chunks of land bitten and chewed, some swallowed. I noticed stones standing out, obviously from some other beach or garden or foundation or road. But now they were here, cast like runes. I tried to read their message, but all it spoke of was my smallness. Perhaps that is enough.



A sea gull lay, cast down next to a bent bush, its wings still graceful in death. They are such miracles. No wonder De Vinci studied them. Beyond it was a pond, bordered in stones worn to smoothness, each a testament to the power of wind and water, transforming even stones. The ice was clear, undisturbed by wind. To be that clear perhaps it is necessary to be sheltered, perhaps.



Further, a tree, old, leaning, pushed by forces more powerful than its deep roots. It was still planted firmly, heaving the ground on one side, but holding on. One of its massive branches, formerly lifted toward the gull’s sky was now a pillar, helping the roots to hold the load of wind and weather. What had been a living prayer, reaching up and out had become a support. I stood there, my hand on the trunk considering the prayer life of a tree. And mingled mine with it. Adoration, receiving gratefully, reaching, surviving, holding on, carrying life’s loads with dignity, appreciating.



The sun came then, red into a clear sky.



It was time to find the kitchen. Sister Francis would be making oatmeal and perhaps scones. You don’t need to butter them, there’s more than enough already there.

Study Leave

Each year I come to this convent by the sea, a few miles from my home, to be alone with my books, the sea, and God. I don’t mean to sound grandiose, or puffed up as the King James would put it. In a real sense, that’s why I’m here. Four days with nothing on my agenda except what I put there. If truth be told, it’s a bit daunting, sitting alone, studying, reading, gazing out at the mother of all rolling in to the rocks. No phone, no ‘Pastor, I know you’re busy, but…..,’ no responsibilities except that of studying.



I make an agenda. Despite the definition of ‘Study Leave’ demanding that I put the work of the church behind, that’s mostly what I do. I plan whole seasons of sermons and classes and retreats. I can’t get that stuff done at the office or at my house. Life’s too much with me late and soon. But I do get a good amount of thinking done. I take walks. I forage for stones for my bonsai, and feathers and drift wood to adorn my wizard’s tower. (That’s sort of like a man cave without a TV). I tend to take naps, and smoke a cigar or two as I investigate the wreckage the winter sea makes and leaves as it interacts with the flimsy land.



I can’t visualize having such a retreat without the winter sea. The land is busy and productive and demanding. The summer sea is sensually inviting. It draws me into its embrace and onto its sandy skirts. No, it’s here and now I must retreat like some beast, valued for its ability to perform. Now I don’t need rest, sleep and inactivity, though if truth be told, I need that too. No, I come here to the winter sea, brutal and unforgiving, beautiful and steady to find my balance.



Back there, in the office, the study, the class room, around the committee table, producing the stuff that makes the whole thing roll with the minimum hassle and difficulty, rolling in the most efficient, least costly, in people’s feelings and their money, and all the time keep it leaning, sometimes ever so slightly toward the eternal, there is no time to pay attention to the source. To do so is inefficient and too often rude to the one in the door way ignoring my focus on book or paper or key board. Ministry is done in the hall way and in the cross roads. I’ve told my staff and leaders that we run a bus station. Security and safety and dependable parameters are not only too much to expect, but are probably counter to our ultimate purposes.



Beside the sea, the winter pounding frigid sea I remember the source of it all. Perhaps that’s why I’ve learned to go out there before the dawn to watch the miracle each day. The light comes softly, reminding all of us that walk in darkness that though our resources are limited there are other sources of illumination. And then it comes proudly, all subtly is laid aside. The world comes clear. And I remember why I came here.

Hard Work

Psalm 19

Preaching for me is a frightening endeavor.  Part of it is research of what was, part of it is consideration of what is happening in the world, part of it is remembering what issues are working in the community of faith.  But that makes up less than half of what happens in this holy moment.

I remember my father working on sermons.  He’d close the French doors that sealed off his study like some wizard in his tower.  If I stood at the right angle, I could watch him working, hunched over the desk, covered with volumes of commentaries.  After hours, these would be replaced with a Hebrew or Greek text and an English text.  Then there would be times of elbow supported head holding.  I never saw him all the way through this process, I had other things to do, trees to climb, things to imagine.  But many times when I came back from my excursions, he was still there. 

Years later I’d been taught to use those magical tomes.  I was now the wizard, I had my own tower.  And I came to realize that all the incantations within the tomes, all the ingredients I could gather from the wide and local world meant nothing.  They were dry weeds and empty words.  And I remembered him, elbows planted, holding his head.  I came to realize that he’d been praying, praying for the lightening, praying for the spirit that altered these bits of news and scholarship, transformed them with the breath of the eternal into a living and breathing moment of God’s touch.

He did that.  He opened the pipes for people to be touched with a sense of more.  Everything else he did for and with and in the churches that he ran and administered and pastored may have been important to the world and to the people, but it was all secondary to those moments of touch.  Because then and there, God was present. 

I also came to realize over time, that all the preparation in the universe couldn’t open any pipes, because the Lord of all time tends to work in the present tense.  That time of preaching is consecrated, set aside.  It is a place of glory and of storm.  It is full of hope and fear.  It is full of darkness and of light.  And I remembered the prayer he said each Sunday, ‘May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, our rock and our redeemer.’

Then I realized, and have ever since that this whole thing is not about producing some sort of presentation or even achieving a result to be measured by categories of success or failure.  It is an act of prayer.  It is about placing everything one can gather, every bit of wisdom and perspective before the living Lord as a sacrifice, to be used by that Lord as He wills.  It needs to be acceptable in no one’s sight except His.  And that net is thrown over the entire congregation.  We’re all confronted by the measure of the God of all that is, was, and will be.  So, why aren’t we simply terrified?  Because, as we pray, we also claim this Lord as our ‘rock and our redeemer.’  We preachers open ourselves in humility and confidence, we claim this Lord as our own.