Resolutions

   It’s that time of year again, time to look back and forward at the same time.  We tend to be too busy dealing with the now to spend any time doing either one.  Our form of looking back is regret and guilt.  Our way of looking forward is planning how to fit more doing or running into the moments we see ahead.  Our way of looking back is mostly regret that fuels the anxieties that have something to do with the more doing and running.

   Such are not contemplative disciplines of the spirit.  Neither are they effective at pouring the footings for our construction of a creative life style. 

   With this in mind I try to spend some moments, sitting still, considering the successes and failures, the moments of joy and grief.  I try to put them into the context of who I’d like to be and to become.  It takes a while, and sometimes it’s hard to hold myself to the task.  I tend to drift away from the focus.  Anxiety and guilt have a way of tangling us in their sticky webs.

   The results of my excursions produce a list.  They are in reality a bridge from then to there, constructed of hopes and dreams as much as stuff.  They may be grounded in the common, everyday activities.  And they may be potential alterations of the landscape of my life.  Or better, alterations of my pathway through the landscape of my life.  I go back to them now and then throughout the year, to keep my moments of clarity in mind.

   It’s time.  Happy new year.  May it be full of moments of clarity for us all.

Fear Not

Luke 2:1-14

 

   Whenever I hear the words of the King James translation of this passage, chills go up my back.   The season trembles around me.  ‘And it came to pass in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.’  It’s a switch that initiates all the pageantry and wonder speaking from places of shadowed mystery.  It whispers of beings beyond our understanding, presenting themselves to teenaged girls and blue collar workers.  Poetic words that open an epic made of anything but heroes.           

   Woven into the all too human story are these beings from beyond, messengers from the creator of all that was, is, and shall be.  Ever since I was a child I couldn’t buy the way people spoke of and pictured these messengers.  They were cute, sentimental projections of anything but the majesty and glory that messengers from beyond our understanding could be.

   I can understand why the pictures and stories of angels are done so.  There is no way to portray such beings.  It is beyond our capability.  So we give them wings, we give them halos.  But more, we reduce them, because beings of power and glory intruding on us are fearful.  We don’t want to fear in this time of sentiment and affection.  We want the security and affirmation that Christmas stands for. 

   I collect angels.  Most of them are beautiful, graceful human figures with flowing robes, dancing through space.  In this season they change our home into a preserve, a safe landing zone in these three dimensions for these bringers of God’s Word, reflections of the Maker’s glory.  They still tell a story of grace, a very human story begun so long ago, at least according to our perspective.  It is not only a story of one child’s birth, but also of that birth here and now, in this house, in this family. 

   They speak of memories, of songs sung at birth and death, of moments of affection and the new joy of relationships.  They speak of new faith, of heart felt understanding where before there were only words and human traditions.  They speak of the miracles that are ours to embrace.  So the multidimensional conduits of God’s news here and now in these beautiful, yet limited forms speak of our limited apprehension of God’s mystery and glory.  They speak of this incarnate specificity, born to us a savior.  They play human instruments.  They read and sing from manuscripts.  And they remind us that this is a season for us, we limited, needy, broken beings.  And so the multidimensional beings, here and now are beautiful, graceful, winged dancers, rather than reason defying, sense violating, terrifying beings. 

   And the songs they sing allow us to rest in the Good News that we, as we are, are loved. 

 Merry Christmas.

“O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”

 

Decorating

 

Christmas begins in the McKirachan house, after Thanksgiving with the migration of angels, flocks of them, fleets of them, a veritable population of the winged beings.  There is a troop of Santa’s too but the rooms are transformed by the representations of the multi-dimensional messengers.  It’s more than tradition, it’s like the leaves changing color.  It’s a seasonal reality. 

This year, after discussion with my wife, we decided to begin the migration earlier.  Such a simple change.  But it’s like a snow storm in August.  It’s unnatural.  But  I’m sticking to it.  The boxes and tins are coming down from the attic.  And the messengers are intruding into our space.  I guess that’s what it’s all about.

Behold the days are coming.

Where’s Christmas?

Here we are a whole week into Advent and we’re already up to our ears, eyes, nose in just about everything except the gift that is coming.  Christmas is a celebration of something so far beyond our logic, beyond our sentiments, beyond our cookies and tinsel that it is ridiculous to even consider the limits of our frenzy as we approach the experiences described in the Gospels.  And the ordeal of our celebration leaves us with anything but hope, peace, joy, or love. 

Yet we yearn for Christmas.  And as we reach toward something more than tinsel perhaps the yearning itself, reaching toward something more, something beyond all the dead ends that we’ve lived with, invested in, been disappointed by, perhaps that  yearning is what the holy day is about. 

Perhaps the words of the prophet of ‘Comfort ye my people…’ reach toward more than treaties and disarmament.  Perhaps they point toward the hurt we carry away from hard words from a friend, from Christian leaders forgetting vows of reconciliation, from people using love and punishment in the same sentence, from all the moments we’ve neglected the least of these. 

Prophetic visions see far beyond this or that moment.  They reveal a landscape that is founded in a reality beyond time, bound in mystery.  They speak truth that cannot be pinned down with calendars or three dimensional measurements.  If we to hear the prophet speak, really hear him we need to look beyond our small specificities into the cloudy places of the heart.  Out there where we yearn and dare to believe that the angels sing to us.

And ye beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low

Who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow

Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing

Oh rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

 

Being a Fan

 

Each season I look forward to football season.  So call me a testosterone addled idiot.  Worse, I’m a Giants fan.  I have a strange relationship with this enthusiasm.  The team has always been a strange mixture of clumsy and sad stirred in with amazing miracle workers.  They seem unable to be consistently good, but have been known to pull off impossible victories against a seeming landslide of impossible opponents.  It’s hard to watch some of the games.  Moments of victory turn into moments of tragedy.  And then back again.  It’s probably not that good for the adrenal system.  I know some people who refuse to watch the games.  I can understand that.  But Big Blue is my team.   

Such loyalty is a strange thing.  But it is instructive.  It allows me to understand the value of identity more clearly.  It has little or nothing to do with success.  It has more to do with a consistency, a willingness to be faithful in the face of even embarrassing defeat. 

I would hate to be predictable.  But, by claiming some bits and pieces of reality as ours and sticking to them, we establish a home in this here and now, which is mostly defined by change.  The question is, what bits and pieces will we choose?  Some of that decision must be carefully weighed, ethics and practicality, spiritual truths and the hope of the Kingdom of God, not to mention how it touches the least of these are all critical.  And then there’s the extra wing nut that doesn’t seem to match the functioning of the machine.  It’s part of who we are. 

Call me what you will, I’ll still be a Giants fan.  And someday, against impossible odds, we’ll be stunned to watch them win another super bowl.  For whatever that’s worth. 

Go Big Blue!

Sick

I’ve spent a good amount of time sick and in pain.  Let’s have a collective awwww…  I find it interesting all the different kinds of limitations sickness and pain dump into our living.  They slow us down, they get in our way, they confine us to prisons of beds and hospitals, and in worst case scenarios end our lives. 

But during a recent go round with a bug, one I’ve been blessed with before, I realized something else about such situations.  A pawl falls over our existence, limiting our ability to focus on anything but the plod between the bed and the bathroom.  Sleep is unconsciousness, and not much different than the strange twilight of being awake.  And time becomes a very strange tangle.  Memories of what was and is and things that are imagined, the order of events, time itself are tangle and swirl like a half melted chocolate fudge sundae.   

Fatigue that is based on physical exhaustion and boredom allow us to simply lay back into our illness like mud, clogging any possibility of moving, thinking, or appreciating.  It’s taken me a lot of years to realize how limited we are when we’re sick.  It think we tend to forget it when we climb out of bed and reenter our lives.  I guess we can learn even when we’re submerged in the body’s battle with bugs.  I hope I’ll remember this next time I visit or see someone who’s where I’ve been recently.  It’s nice to climb out of the mud.

Something Other than a Pencil

At four o'clock this morning I woke up with a pencil, a very well sharpened pencil stuck in my right eye.  Actually it just felt like that.  I've had this feeling before and I've tried to figure out exactly what it feels like.  I settled for the pencil.  I use pencils.  The big yellow ones with the erasers on one end.  I sharpen them with my pocket knife.  They're sharp.  That's what it feels like.

It's called Iritis.  It's an inflammation of the iris of the eye.  It's nothing you want to have or have long enough to figure out exactly what the pain feels like.  I wandered around the cabin.  Being on study leave, I'm in a cabin in the woods on the Connecticut River.  So I wandered.  The pencil went deeper.  It usually does.   So, I walked outside, trying to figure out what to do.

I drove to the hospital.  Dumb.  But in the long run it kind of made sense.  I found a mental institution.  Lots of bricks and a pleasant lady who wanted to know if I needed help.  With her and a great amount of grace I wandered into the emergency room.  The security lady asked me "How are you today?"  I took a moment, hand over my eye, spasms shooting into my head as some giggling demon jammed the pencil in and rotated it, just a moment to tell her that I've trained people who visit suffering souls in the hospital to never ask, 'How are you?'  They're in a hospital.  How do you think they are?  Teaching moments abound.

 They were nice to me.  I tried to be pleasant.  The doctor dropped this stuff into my eye that hurt like hell and then took all the pain away.  Wow!  He used a portable version of the thing my eye guy uses to inform me that I had some sort of mark on my eye.  It looked like a twisted knot imprinted on the cornea.  No Iritis.  Good news.  But somehow the druids reached me, in Connecticut.  Go figure.

I have little perspective on this whole thing.  Gratitude per usual.  But who gets a symbol of the eternal connectedness of all things etched onto his eye?  I guess it's better than a pencil.  But sometimes things are too strange to shrug off. 

I apologized to the guard lady.  She told me nobody had ever told her that before, but it made a lot of sense.  She told me it was good advice.  She hoped I felt better.  All that to teach a guard lady?

Luke 17:11-19 You Can’t Go Back

 

I’ve often wondered if I could go back in time, what would I be able to change without altering the future in some unspeakable way?  I’ve heard it called the butterfly effect.  If on our jaunt into the past we smush one butterfly, change something infinitesimal, as days and weeks and years pass, that tiny change would alter the future radically. 

But I’ve known people, myself included, who try to live in the now acting as if parts of our past didn’t happen.  We try to forget that moment of weakness or arrogance or foolishness.  Some of those moments are so powerful that we wince or worry or dream about them.  They may be buried by the monster dandruff of time and new acquaintances, logistical alterations, behavioral switches, new habits, new jobs, but those moments, those pot holes, those choices, those lapses, those horrors are still there.

Whether we like it or not, now is an amalgam of then’s that are the raw material for now.  No matter how we’d like to make them go away, they are part of the bed rock that our center hall colonial of now is built on. 

When I went to a reunion of my graduating class from High School, it was one of those moments of embarrassment and gratitude all stirred into the same pot.  They all knew me, geek, fencer, football team mascot (a great way to meet girls), singer, proto hippie, etc.  High School was a time of devastating awkwardness and loneliness.  It was full of those moments I would have gladly altered, removed from my time stream like teeth crooked and painful.  But the reunion revealed less pain than nostalgia and an amazing sense of gratitude.  Gratitude for what that time taught me, gave me as tools for the future and in retrospect laughter at our mutual silliness and audacity.  It was an amazing experience, especially since I had a lot more hair than most of the guys.

In my first book I recounted this story from Luke’s gospel about the ten lepers from the point of view of one of the lepers who didn’t go back to thank Jesus.  He couldn’t because he wanted to leave the horror of that part of his life behind him.  But no matter how he tried, it was there, following him, polluting him, holding him back. 

I do PTSD therapy for people who have been through horror and find themselves caught in those moments when the world stopped making sense and caved in on them.  The chief therapy is to get them to walk through the moment again and again until they can allow it to become a memory not a living nightmare.  They have to go back, they have to remember it to allow themselves to face the now.  A now that includes that moment in the past.

We are Christians.  At the center of our faith is the cross, a traumatic horror.  Our job is to embrace that event and accept our culpability in it.  Then we can move on to the Resurrection and transformed life. They are all a part of who and what we are.  They all make the bedrock of our faith upon which we build our hope and our abundant life.  Not only can we go back, we have to if we are to accept ourselves, forgive ourselves and others, and accept the miracle of life and life abundant that blooms before us every day.

At the reunion some of the same tormentors that used to make me sweat tried to pick on me again.  I laughed with them.  There we stood laughing.  But I noticed they were wondering what the heck happened to the geek.  I guess I grew up.

 

The Plague

 

 

Our struggle for survival has been an up and down affair since we dropped from the trees and shambled out into the grass lands.  It’s been a tale of ups and downs in our journey through history, periodically bringing us close to the endangered species list, if there had been one.  Now our numbers seem to pad such edges.  Thousands, even millions might die, but we make so many more, so fast that there seems no end in sight. 

Disease is frightening.  Contagious bugs that move from one to the other touch a cord, if not in our conscious minds then somewhere in memories passed down from ancestors who watched their families and even towns die from the Black Death, or Small pox, or Cholera.  Such specters have haunted us since we stood up.  They sneak into our fortresses, under our gates, past our privilege and bring us down, peasant and king alike. 

Are they punishments for neglecting our God?  Are they cruel tricks of some demonic spoiler?  Are they merely evidence of the vulnerability of all life?  Whatever they may be, they remind us of our fragility and demand that we climb down from our high and mighty attitudes and adopt humility not as a virtue, but as a way of life. 

But far beneath the discussion of cosmic perpetrators lies a more basic issue.  The plagues we fear are dwarfed by our own success at survival.  It has become a plague in itself.  The sixth great extinction that is shutting down polar bears and frogs and corals, bats and bees and bluebirds is not the result of some massive asteroid or even some silent virus, it is the result of the relentless pressure of our infestation of every nook and cranny of our planet, including its seas and atmosphere.  Our light, our heat, our noise, our lack of restraint have created a place where life is struggling to survive. 

It is hard to see ourselves and our off spring as a plague.  But what else can we call it?  Such dark thoughts trouble our dreams and darken our days. 

There is a Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’  Surely that we do.  The challenges of this day seem daunting to a species so young and too powerful for its small measure of wisdom.  Perhaps the impractical lessons that call us beyond our roots of dominance and self-importance, the ones that we are left with when we face Ebola, the ones that are the only options to fear could apply here as well.   We do have options, we always have options.  They may not be easy.  They may demand that we grow beyond the laws of tooth and claw.  They demand that we become more than the ultimate survivors.  They demand that we become truly human, even in these interesting times.

I’m pulling for us.  After all, we invented the cello and pecan pie.      

Master at the Craft

 

 

I’ve been doing this ministry thing since…  It seems since Biblical times.  My memories are artifacts that I excavate from the comings and goings of this present day.  They could fill a museum.  There are many difficult parts about aging.  We creak when we stand up after sitting for a while.  We run out of energy more quickly than we’d like.  We aren’t as good with our thumbs as anyone below the age of 15.  Our arms are too short to read things without glasses.  But there are good things as well. 

 

One of those is a sense of confidence about the craft of ministry.  Forty years of practice really does help.  Those of us that have been at it a while have seen situations come and go repeatedly.  We’ve confronted shortages and resulting panics, we’ve been confronted by angry, suicidal, addicted, disappointed, grieving, homeless, excluded, sick, dying, betrayed, cynical, arrogant, hopeless, seductive, bipolar, schizophrenic, sociopathic, terrified, nasty, immature people  (That being a partial list).  And we’ve lived through it all.  We’ve designed classes, stewardship campaigns, worship services, mission projects, funerals, weddings, sermons, receptions, roasts, and banners.  We’ve moved furniture, recalcitrant people, mountains of books, and the hearts and minds of congregations.  And we’ve made it through despair, poverty, death, loss, terror, and being wrong, coming out the other side with some scars and a lot of gratitude. 

 

An incredible amount of learning goes along with all that experience.  It is a gift to be here, with all of that to support and inform the now of life.  But there is more than that.  This job is about more than skill at diplomacy and knowing when to cut and run.  It is more than being good at working a room.  At the core of our work is a deep consciousness of being owned by that which is so far beyond our philosophy or theology or business sense as to be unknowable except through grace.  And the older this old war horse gets, the more I rely on that grace to provide what my skill or experience cannot.  I am His.  That’s my bottom line.  That’s my credential.  That’s my ground of being.  That’s my ultimate concern. 

 

 

Secret Identity

 

My father always wore tabs, the white strips that descend from the throat over the Geneva gown.  Mom starched them every week.  He insisted that wasn’t necessary, but she did it anyway.  I think she considered it part of her role.  I found out later that they stood for the tablets of the law.  The Old Covenant that was the foundation for the New.  It made sense to me.  Those starched tabs were diving boards from which my father’s words bounced into the flips and swans that thundered and whispered from the high pulpit every Sunday.

 

When I started my ministry I wore a shirt and tie with the black robe over.  In some ways I didn’t know what else to do.  I was working, unconsciously, on a style, a voice.  The tabs were from another era.  I did the easiest.  I was busy.  But as I moved into the jungle, I realized I wanted something to help differentiate me in my role from the other denizens of the forest.  I was a missionary, a warrior of the light, a Marshall come to bring order to Tombstone Territory.  I needed a badge, a uniform, something to let folks know the Rev had come to town (Can you tell I was and am an unrepentant romantic?).  So I shopped (It’s the all American thing to do).

 

The Protestant version of the collar, a stripe around the throat, kind of turned me off.  I have no idea why.  I opted for the Roman collar, with a notch.  I guess I’m secure in my Protestant identity, I can wear Catholic.  I wore and wear it for worship and during Holy Week.  It’s my discipline.  It makes sense to me. 

 

I subsequently found out that the collar is a symbol for slavery.  It’s a slave collar.  That reaffirmed the whole thing.  It gave me an angle.  It resonated with the Apostle Paul.  He spent a lot of time in jail.  He called himself an ambassador in chains.  But after 9-11 it became much more than an angle. 

 

I live near New York City.  A lot of my folks work there.  Some of them were there.  Some of them died.  I worked at Ground Zero with the rescue workers, helping them stay sane and at the family of victims’ center in the old ferry station in Jersey.  But I also wore my collar, every day, every where I went.  People stopped me on the street, in diners, wherever. They took my hand, they told me about their son or their sister or their cousin.  They asked for prayers.  They cried.  We all needed something we could depend on.  Our security was gone.  People needed a symbol.

 

It changed my attitude toward my collar.  It changed my attitude toward being a slave of Christ.  It’s closer to my old attitude of warrior of the light and it’s much more real.  I am part of God’s army, the host of heaven.   I am a pillar.  Lean on me.  But never forget, I am a slave.  And never forget the one I belong to.  It’s where I get my authority, my orders, my direction, my hope.

 

Spider Man, not quite.  The Rev, definitely.

Lord, preserve us.

Way back in the dark ages, when I was an impressionable child, my sister, who considered it her duty to bring me beyond the sheltered haven of my parents' protection, took me to see Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas duke it out as The Vikings.  I was blown away.  I still remember scenes and lines, not to mention bits of the score.  Every chance I got I became a barbarian.  My play mates were mystified.  I did research on the subject, without Google, the Web, and as an 8 or 9 year old could, finding out every scrap I could understand about these giants that came from the ice bound fjords, I loved to say that, to strike terror into the hearts of the sad and ugly English.  Hollywood had created a monster, with the aiding and abetting of my sister.


I remembered one image from the movie that showed a manuscript from those dark ages, recording a prayer illuminated with ancient images of people hiding in their castles.  It read, "O Lord, preserve us from the Vikings."  Simply put, but very clear in its terror, its horror, and its realization that very little but the hand of the Almighty could save them from this scourge from the sea.  It was said that the Norse raiders would come into towns and cleave the chests of citizens, removing their lungs and draping them over their backs, calling them Christian angels.  They were brutal, sociopathic worriers.


There is a group in the Middle East that claims no allegiance to a country or any other group.  They have left them behind.  They call themselves the Islamic State, or perhaps that's what others call them.  But it has become clear that there are few means they will not employ to reach their end of a purified Islamic State, a new Caliphate whose law and punishment and normality is terror.  And the prayer of Muslims and Christians alike is "Lord, preserve us from the IS."


Barbarians have no philosophy.  That implies a willingness to debate, which implies a willingness to listen.  They have no real desire to build a state or any structure of rule.  Talleyrand said, "You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them."  So, there is only conquer and destroy.  The brutality has no limit, so there can be no debate or discussion.  There is no law or rule of law except submit or die.  Such behavior is nothing new.  Most of us have such impulses muzzled and leashed by the lessons and teachings of our parents and those who worried and worked to make us better than Narcissistic sociopaths.  Some of us have enough reservation to couch our desires to rape and pillage within business or sports.  But not far beneath the civilization that leads us to stop at red lights and not slug our neighbor when they complain to us about the leaves blowing on his lawn, lies that battle axe wielding monster that gave rise to the prayers of the 'civilized English.'  


How are we to contest the world with them?  We cannot do it with reckless abandon, or vengeance.  Then the world will be taken over by the barbarians, those with the better weapons and better planning taking the prize.  We must be civilized.  We must be ruled by the law that makes civilization what it has become.  Tolerance, restraint, and a willingness to listen to even our enemies while we insist on the virtue of peace sound awfully philosophic or even religious.  But in a dark and brutal world, they represent the only way forward.  Oh, I forgot mercy.  What can you expect from someone who was so impressed by Kirk Douglas doin' his thing?


But when it comes down to it, I pray with all the faithful, 'Lord, preserve us from the barbarians.'

      

Labor Day

The summer is beginning to slip away.  Walnut trees are dropping yellow rain on the driveway, despite my vocal injunctions to stop acting as if it was October.  But at 8:30 tomorrow morning I have a class to teach.  There will be a room full of sophomores, half asleep, showing up because they're supposed to, that I have to drag into semi consciousness and invite on a journey of discovery.  Whew. 


The lush growth and dripping heat is only part of what I miss about the season of tomatoes and corn.  I miss not even considering what to wear, unless I'm trying to be appropriate or impress my lady.  I'll be emptying my drawer of T shirts soon.  I miss the switch from remembering what night of the week I  have to work, to do I have an evening off.  I miss reading for the hell of it.  I miss digging in my garden, and communing with my bonsai.  I miss long slow dinners in the gazebo by candle light.  I miss sand in my shoes. 


Don't you?

Duet

My wife, Chris and I sang a duet in worship this morning.  Sound kind of bland, doesn't it?  She reminded me that we did it seven years ago, just before we got married.  This year it was the Sunday after our anniversary.  Sounds kind of bland doesn't it?  It was anything but.  I felt as close to her in those few minutes as I've ever felt to anyone.  I was so grateful to the congregation, to our minister of music, to God for the opportunity to be involved in worship in that way. 

I realized that so many of us put lids on the possibilities we allow ourselves.  We see ourselves as limited, forgetting the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  'Oh, I couldn't do that...' becomes a litany of limitation.  But the limitation is not only on us, it's on the community and on how we are allowing the community to become, how we are allowing the community to represent to the world.

OK, OK, I'm making a big deal out of one song.  But this day is the only one that we have.  Today is it.  Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is uncertain.  This is the day to do what we can, and more importantly, to do what God can, using us.  Maybe it's time to get out of God's way. 

But hey, wow, that was way wonderful.

Epitaph

It's taken me this long to process the loss.  How could he be gone?  'O Captain, my Captain...'  Maybe he was from another planet, left here, marooned here by some cosmic storm.  He certainly operated in multidimensional currents.  No 'coming about' for the unwary listener or watcher.  But in spite of all the surprise and non sequitur, he was so tender, gentle in his unwillingness to hurt.  He saw tangents in every bland statement of reality.  He saw connections and possibilities and dared express them while holding on to us as we stood in wonder at what he could do with a simple question, an answer, or a shawl.

And in these discovered tangents he saw expressions of humanity at its silliest and at its best.  He found thin places, liminal, close to each of our questions about limitation and possibility.  And perhaps close to answers that do not come from rigid logic or the hard arithmetic of stuff, but only rise from where's and when's beyond, and precious in their rising.

Perhaps he was a castaway.  Perhaps he was tormented and alone.  Ahh but he will not soon be forgotten.  And what he leaves is more than the pain.  He leaves a whisper, a vision, and a gentle tear, along with the pure joy of now.  Gifts that will not die, even in the darkness.  The light shines and the darkness has not overcome it.

Go with God.

Pinko Liberal

Pinko liberals

It’s always been hard for me to understand how Christians can get upset with talking about money in church.  If you read just about anything in scripture and don’t waste your time looking for loop holes, you get a very clear indication that if we’re going to live according to what’s there, we’re going to have to get over any preoccupation with defending our own pile. 

My parents were upstanding Americans in the 1950’s, which meant if you weren’t toeing and healing the line, you were suspect.  Dad was pastor of a tall pulpit in the homeland of Ike.  And mother was the classic pastor’s wife.  She wore gloves on Sunday and taught the women’s bible class.  If you read history you know that at the time there was a monster polluting the brains and spirits of this nation.  It was fear.  And some in the political arena used it for their own purposes.  I was a kid and knew very little of what was going on.  But I wore an I Like Ike button and was roundly patted and appreciated as a ‘good kid.’  Even then I wondered what about that button made me ‘good.’

Years later I was asking my then retired parents about what it was like to live in that time.  Did they have any misgivings about the attitudes and assumptions that demanded so much of people and condemned those that didn’t follow the pack.  They both got quiet, which is something neither one was wont to do when discussing politics or social movements.  I said, “OK, what’s going on?”  My mother broke the ice.  “I voted for Stevenson.”  My father almost fell off his chair.  She went on, “Twice.” 

I didn’t put this in the wow category, but it was clear he was amazed.  “You never said a word about this.” 

“I didn’t want to make trouble for you.”  He smiled at her and took her hand.  “I did too.  Twice.”

After the laughter and the tears they had a new sense of alliance.  They talked about their subversive foray into liberalism and its roots in a very simple source, scripture.  They couldn’t leave the poor outside the voting booth.

They taught me that no political party was godly.  They taught me that if I was going to be Christian I had to let others have their opinion.  But they also taught me that if anybody needed something, it was our job to do something about it. 

I would hate to think that the resurrection would make the church liberal.  I’m pretty sure it would make the church radical.     

Tea and Crumpets

   I was pastor of one of the up and coming congregations in the presbytery.  Numerical growth, focused mission, willing to get its hands dirty, active adult education, lots of energy.  The nominating committee had put me on a couple of committees that made big dents in the life of the churches.  I was chair of one and up for reelection.  I was a big cheese. 

   I took some continuing education that included taking a test to determine spiritual gifts.  I was eager to find out the results.  I wanted to move along in harmony with what God had given me.  I was an arrogant young man.

   The sheet of paper listed my highest scores.  At the top was a surprise, a puzzle, and a disappointment.  I wanted to put on armor and slay dragons.  I wanted to lead.  I wanted to discern the will of God for the lost sheep and carry them home.  This score must be wrong.  I put up my hand and asked what if we disagreed with our scores.  The facilitator smiled sadly and inserted a burr under my saddle.  “We often try to run away from God’s calling, ignoring the still small voice that is offering us a new way to go.  Sometimes we’d rather listen to the voices of the world or our own agendas.  I find quiet prayer to be the best response to a sense of dissonance in what we hear.”  I felt handled.  ‘…a sense of dissonance…?’  This was nuts.  I was ready to put up with anything, but HOSPITALITY?  What was I supposed to do with that?  Maybe take cooking lessons?  Or should I study interior decorating? 

   I’ve discovered something about myself.  When I hear something about myself I’m not satisfied with, I get defensive.  I find justifications about the inaccuracy of the judgment and other good reasons to discount what I don’t want to hear.  And here I was again, denying what I didn’t want to hear.

   In this culture, we tend to discount ‘homemakers.’  We don’t consider helping people feel cared about and cared for to be as valuable as producing, overcoming, and winning.  And the list goes on.  The virus had infected me.  And now this crazy test had the audacity to remind me that I had the less valuable gifts, at least valuable in the accounting of the world.  It took me a while to process this experience.  And when I did, I went in to the presbytery executive and talked to him about creating a hospitality committee.  I offered sound theological and organizational justifications and I volunteered to form the bunch, and we’d let them pick a chair. 

   We became known as the Tea and Crumpets Committee.  We organized retreats, dinners, parties, talent shows, and support groups.  We ended up publishing a cook book.   We developed a reputation for having the most fun of any committee in the history of the presbytery and having the most interesting reports.  And we managed to do almost all of it without spending presbytery money.  Obviously, we weren’t important people.  We were just trying to listen to our call.  Who said cucumber sandwiches never accomplished anything?

Summer evening

   Summer takes us to another environment, if we let it.  Chris and I sat in the gazebo last night after we ate leftovers, and watched the birds taking turns at the feeder and the fountain that burbles in the middle of their bath.  They were unconscious of our presence because we were still and silent.  How often are we thus?  When do we sit and watch the world go about its business in our own back yard?  As it grew dim, the lightening bugs began to transform the shadows into flickering corners of elven magic, gentle and just beyond clear sight.  You see?  Another environment.  These summer evenings are seductive.  They invite us to lay down our labor and appreciate what the breezes bring, the sounds only heard if we are silent, the lights too twinkling to see in the glare of normality. 
   Don't be afraid.  There is no waste here.  Evening comes.  There, did you hear the owl?

Community

There’s a willow tree I planted in a pot near the fence in my back yard.  It’s grown well for a couple years, but the clear, hot days of July seem to be baking its roots.  I soaked it but realized that the sun would still play havoc, heating the dirt in the pot beyond reasonably healthy temperatures.  So I dragged a couple other potted plants over, creating a bunch, protecting the willow and at least one side of each of the protectors. 

   We’re made to run in bunches, packs if you will.  Like wolves we are built to protect and help each other.  Our instincts all lead us toward each other, give us empathy and reward us with the advantages of civilization, art, philosophy, science, technology, architecture, and baseball, not to mention families, education, medical care, love songs, and the Super Bowl.  We’re tied together by more than choices or ought’s or should’s.  Deep within us is a magnet that pulls us toward each other, leads us to make friends, build families, and communities.

   I find it ludicrous if not a bit dangerous for us to preach individualism.  We just aren’t built that way.  And alone we are likely to fall to the vicissitudes of day to day living.  Just ask the willow tree in my back yard.  Besides, the geraniums and sunflowers make the whole thing more colorful.

Awards

   On the wall of what is affectionately known as ‘David’s Hole’ hangs an interesting collection of debris: mirrors (to keep the vampires in line), masks (offering various views into the souls of the artists), sculptures (from the crucified Christ to a commemorative bottle of bourbon (sadly empty), pictures of angels, a close up of a sculpture of a Madonna, an elderly woman walking past a grave yard, fishermen bringing boats onto the beach, waves breaking, the Giants winning the Super Bowl, a sea bird in flight, , Marilyn holding down her skirt,  the church where I grew up, the twin towers (lots a pictures).  Then there’s a shaggy doll of Gerry Garcia, a clay casting of an Assyrian battle plaque, a Chinese Dog, a Butterfly in a plastic case, a muskrat’s skull, an amethyst geode, a silver trophy given to my father for being first in his class in high school, crossed foils, my high School varsity letter, two bronze medals for college fencing, a nautical map of a section of the Maine coastline, Ethiopian spear heads, a fork made by my grandfather, a brass fire nozzle, homemade knives (not by me), a Goofy hat from Disney World, a Celtic cross covered with fish and sea monsters, a whale tooth, a dragon claw (novel in the works), a cork board, a hanging plant, and a ton of books (or at least half a ton).  There are other things I haven’t mentioned, awards given in honor of some things I did along the way. 

   Awards are nice.  They say nice things.  They bring back memories.  They remind us that somebody is watching and appreciating.  But in some ways all the ‘debris’ on the walls and shelves of my ‘hole’ are awards.  They commemorate days lived, adventures come home from, glimmers of beauty and glory that lit my life. On my desk is a picture of my birth family with my kids, gathered on a sand dune just after my mother’s funeral, yelling at the camera, and next to it is a close up of my wife.  Are they awards?  More like blessings living outside of time forming me as surely as everything I’ve been recognized for and managed to collect. 

   All our lives have awards.  We just have to claim them and treasure them.  They are invested with the power of the moments that brought them into our lives.  Don’t be afraid of such debris.  I knew a guy who collected rocks.  Each one had a name that reminded him from where it came and what had happened in his life there.  It was a hard collection to move around.  We don’t need monuments.  We just need to appreciate the miracle of life as it comes to us and open ourselves to our role in it.    

   As Bobby Burns said:

                        I burned the candle at both ends, it did not last the night

                        But oh my foes and ah my friends, it gave a wondrous light.

Being a Patriot

   As a college sophomore, I was a wise fool.  Such is the fate of the young to be filled with a confidence to forge ahead and assume they have enough wisdom and energy to deal with the problems of the world without making the same mistakes that have been made before.  Energy there may be.  Seething torrents of it.   But wisdom?  Well, they do have the wisdom of the young.  Wisdom to claim happy endings.  Wisdom to believe we could be doing better.  Wisdom to face walls as obstacles rather than necessary additions to the land scape. So you see the paradox.  There is great wisdom and power in these possibilities.  And there is glory.  Ah glory. 

   So, armed and shackled with this paradox, I went forth from the ivory tower to face the bastion of entrenched darkness, home.  So the foolishness shows its gory face.  I wasn’t horrific, but close to it.  My parents looked forward to having me come and breathed in relief to have me go.  My local congregation had arranged a ‘Folk Service’ led by the ‘Young People’ complete with a ‘Dialogue Sermon.’  Talk about foolish.  It was 1967/68.  They were desperately trying to be relevant.  They were trying to see the upheavals around them with some perspective other than fear.  The stench of their burning center city was still fresh in memory.  The war in South East Asia was becoming a wound.  The young were not staying on the tracks so lovingly laid for them.  And the cacophony of Rock and Roll was swamping The Rat Pack, Rosemary, Bing, and Big Band Music in pounding rhythms and feedback.  Slick and pretty had become shaggy and bra-less.  Scotch and soda had been traded for pot and LSD.  And worst of all, the kids were protesting everything from cutting down trees to supporting the boys-over-there.  They had stopped being American.  Perhaps these church leaders who planned the dialogue service were a bit sophomoric themselves.  Or they were trying to build bridges.  It was a deep chasm. 

   The place was packed.  We played our songs, even had a sing along without incident.  But the dialogue sermon was loaded with tension.  The kids actually got honest about the war and a pervasive judgment on their life styles.  Finally one of the ‘older guys’ stood up and almost cried, “Why don’t you love your country anymore?”

   The room went silent.  The question was loaded.  He wasn’t only raising a question about our patriotism but about our identity, about our value systems, and most about our relationships with these people who were struggling to have a clue about who we had become.

   Everybody looked at me.  I had the longest hair, I played the guitar, I was a minister’s kid, and I had said I wanted to be a minister.  So obviously I was the one to field this land mine.  Hey, I was a sophomore.  The motto of my college is “Why Not?”  So I forged ahead toward… 

   “I do love my country.  I consider myself a patriot.”  I let that one sink in for effect.  “We are the best educated generation in the history of this nation, because of the schools you have built.  We’ve studied more history and American history than any generation before us.  Thomas Jefferson is one of my heroes.  So is Ben Franklin and George Washington.  These guys were revolutionaries.  Their vision of what this nation could be is revolutionary.  It’s nuts.  It makes room for everybody.  The Bill of Rights is off the wall.  It offers an equal footing to anybody.  They were crazy enough to believe it was possible, not probable, but possible.  It still is nuts.  Jefferson thought we were going to need a good revolution every 20 years or so, just to keep the dream from getting bogged down in the power plays that have defined history since it began.  So, Jefferson was right.  We’re having a revolution.  No guns.  Just Jimi Hendrix.  We’re fighting for your country too, for its soul.  You taught us to do that.  We don’t expect you to approve.  Why should you?  Just listen, listen with your hearts and believe that we’re not totally nuts.  And love us.  We need that.  We’ll grow up.  Then you can retire and let us fight with our kids.”

   Pretty good speech, huh?  Somebody recorded it with one of the old reel to reel machines.  My mother cried.  My father was preaching at another church and asked for prayers for the congregation where the dialogue service was happening.  God listened.  The last line got a laugh.  To this day I have no explanation for the content, except for the Holy Spirit.  It’s what I’ve come to believe, but then?  Gimme a break.  I was a sophomore.  But I guess I was a patriot, even then.  Peace bro’.

   Happy Fourth of July.      

Foundation Stones

   This is Derek Jeter’s last year as a professional baseball player.  This is either of no interest to you or something you were already aware of.  He has played short stop (don’t worry about what that means) for the New York Yankees, won awards for his defensive play, set records for offense, been captain of the team, and in the process set an unusual example of what we would like a sportsman to be.

   Once in a while they show highlights from his career.  There’s one scene of him sprinting after a foul ball across the third base line.  He caught it, but had no chance to slow down.  He ended up diving head first into the stands, fans doing their best to catch him, coming up with a bloody nose and a shiner.  He got a standing ovation. 

   These guys are the elite.  They get paid big bucks to play a game.  They are entertainers, right?  Well, yes and no.  Their games are about working as a team, facing opponents together, backing up each other, putting themselves on the line, their talents, their energy, their commitment to the game, to their team to win together.  In baseball one of the strategies is even called a sacrifice fly.  So, cynical pronouncements aside, the games represent something about us, ideals that we use as foundations for our society. 

   Games are a lot more than amusements.  The games we play and how we play them say an awful lot about who we are and who we aspire to become.  And the people who are icons for us say an awful lot about what we celebrate.  Winning is important in whatever context it happens.  It speaks of excellence and power.  But when a winner also plays ‘the game,’ whatever that game happens to be with a sense of personal humility and integrity, they become more than entertainers.  Mariano Rivera, a pitcher for the same team just retired, a star in his own right said recently in an interview that he wanted everything he did to point to God, whether he won or lost, he wanted everything he did to demonstrate his faith.  Sounds like more than an entertainer to me, more like a stone for a foundation.

   Go team.

Wow!

 Believe it or not, I was actually successful.  I navigated through the Colorado rapids of Blog reality.  Hubris assumes that success is the norm.  Hubris is not part of this scenario.  I  realized recently that success is as possible as a lack there of.  How’s that for a realization?  Fifty-fifty odds aren’t bad are they?

Going Tangential

 

   I love school.  I guess that’s one of the reasons I enjoy teaching.  I end up learning as much or more than the students and I get to be engaged in the dialogue of the intellect.  It’s a form of exploration. Indiana Jones never found a golden artifact more precious that a student’s dawning realization, a discovery of new terrain, landscapes of life never considered.

   So I went to school-for-a-day last week, a writer’s symposium at the local community college.  A workshop in the morning and one in the afternoon, one from column A, two from … you get the idea.  I took ‘Blogging’ in the morning and ‘Writing from the Dark’ in the afternoon.  The later one spoke to my creative side.  But more about that later.

   The Blogging seminar opened a lot of doors about this endeavor I embarked upon with you all a while ago.  The class led me to look at what I’d been doing with a new eye.  It led me to ask questions of myself in concrete terms ranging from what I call this collection of musings, to what script I use to write.  The interesting thing is that many of the questions it led me to ask were not part of the discussion.  But the discussion going on in the room was only tangential to the discussion going on inside my head.  And my conclusions shared the same vectors.

   So, I’m going to make some changes in the Blog.  If I can actually pull that off without causing a blackout in the northeast corridor, it will be a personal record.  I hope you don’t mind the changes.  Actually, I hope you actually enjoy them.  But probably more to the point, I realized that I need to be going tangential more.  It’s the way I learn best.  And as Joni Mitchell says, “Life is for learning…”