tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89197390731500689392024-02-19T08:56:01.540-06:00the patience of trees"...and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." Revelation 22:2Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger639125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-5513459335395988352024-02-18T13:49:00.000-06:002024-02-18T13:49:19.418-06:00When the Promise Comes Close: On Earth as It is in Heaven<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Bath-time in the Melton home is a beautiful and sometimes also harrowing hour of the day. A veritable roulette wheel of parenting possibilities bending</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">both time and space, as in, it lasts just a few minutes and an eternity, all at once. The stakes are unspeakably high, regularly marked by life-altering questions, like, “Will this rubber ducky be enough to distract the young child screaming for the other parent?” And, will said rubber ducky, moments later, be voraciously claimed as “no, my ducky,” by rival sibling in the wings? (Spoiler: obviously.) Yet to be addressed are important considerations of correct water temperature and adequate water depth. All before the moment within the moment on which everything depends: the shampooing and washing of the hair.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Sorry, I need a minute.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The washing of the hair. Forbid it, Lord, that even a single drop of water desecrate the landscape of those precious eyes. A dozen years ago or so, to avoid this great calamity, I came up with an original rhyming formula that 100% of the time works 40% of the time. A little sing-song call and response to diffuse the moment toward the good. “Look to the sky!” I’d say, and child in the water would (ideally) sing back, “Eyes stay dry!”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Let’s try it. Look to the sky, eyes stay dry.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">A promise and prescription for peace in the midst of volatility. Not to be overly self-congratulatory, but in addition to being highly catchy and hygienically instructive, it’s also biblical. Consider psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Reminder that what is good for the eyes in the bathtub is sometimes equally edifying for those who wait on the Lord.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Look to the sky, eyes stay dry is an apt starting place for considering the scriptures that meet us on this first Sunday of Lent. Look to the sky! There, you’ll see the rainbow in the clouds. The first promise of God to his people. As in, in the whole Bible. This is the first promise of God to his people. A covenant. In it, God breaks God’s tools of retribution and revenge. The bow and arrow are retired. Turned into lawn ornaments. Exchanged for a decision toward peace and forgiveness. The rashness of wrath replaced with the decision to only ever be the God who belongs to God’s people. And the sign of the promise is there, shimmering, shining, in the sky.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Ever after, looking up to the heavens has been a good and faithful thing for Christians to do. Led by St. Paul, who writes, “with my eyes fixed on the goal I push on to secure the prize of God's heavenward call in Christ Jesus.” When things are difficult in this life, following Paul, we can seek to rise above it. Find assurance in the promise that waits for us out there. Up there. In the heavens. Look to the sky. Eyes stay dry. The beginning of a trust in God.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But then something unexpected happens. And the unexpected thing changes everything. In the gospel today, the heavens that hold the promise of God up there, out there, kept in safekeeping for a far off “someday,” well, they tear open. And the promise falls from the sky. The promise doesn’t break. But the promise comes close; the promise of God comes down from the sky.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And what you and I are meant to see is that, even though the rainbow and the baptism are two different occasions, it’s the same sky, and it’s the same promise the one sky holds. So when the heavens tear open on this man in the water, that first promise of God pours out on the earth. Shows up in him. And since he’s our brother, bone of our bone, the Spirit is now on us, too. In an instant, eternal life enters this life. The far off comes close. It’s the beginning of the prayer Jesus later gives his friends when they pray, on earth as it is in heaven. The high up and heavenly promise of God has been poured on the earth, not just as God’s restraint from violence, but as God’s presence as our peace. And the Spirit sends Jesus, with this blessing - who IS this blessing - out into the desert.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">That last part had to be a mistake right? GPS broke or something. The blessing of heaven comes down and he takes it to the desert? I’m sure he meant to find St. James. Ended up in Oklahoma. Just kidding. But when the heavens tear open and the promise falls into the river, it’s like the waters of Jesus’ baptism bubble up into something new - a spring of living water to reach out and cover, even to heal, every last parched and aching place on this earth.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Church, do you see what is happening? Jesus is changing the lines of hope. It’s not good enough anymore to only “look to the sky,” but now also, to borrow words from the prayer book, we ask God to “open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works, that rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">My friends. This is a significant development. Back when hope was only in the heavens, people would seek to put themselves in position to score a golden ticket through good behavior, maybe. Last train to Harps and Clouds. Only the best of the best need apply. Or maybe the far off promise of God could be a carrot on the end of a really long stick for those unable to change the circumstances of their oppression. Hope for something more, but don’t dare hope for too much here. But now with heaven in pieces and the Son of God out in dry places, those ways of thinking no longer fit. The Spirit has come to the desert! To the entire creation. And all through the scriptures, the desert is full of what you’d expect: struggle, broken things, people who are certain they are lost, forgotten, or don’t count. The Son of God, God’s own Spirit, comes to these.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">One of the most touching desert stories in the scriptures is the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave, left for dead in the desert with her son, exiled by Abraham, the father of faith. A heartbreaking reminder that the healing of God doesn’t always come only to or through the faithful but sometimes it comes to those harmed or left behind by the faithful. In the desert, Hagar is hiding from her child so she won’t have to watch him die. And she sobs. And suddenly the voice that thunders over the waters today speaks to her. And his word is new life in the desert for herself and her child. After that experience, Hagar gives God a new name, my favorite name for God that you’ll find in the scriptures: El Roi. It means the God who sees me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">What wondrous love is this? How is it that things which had grown old are being made new? Things that had been cast down are being lifted up? How is it that hope is not only up there in the sky but balm on the earth, poured out to heal the darkest desert, such that the psalmist can sing, “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yes, I shall see the goodness of our God, hold firm, trust in the Lord”?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Oh church, do you see what God is doing? You and I in the wilderness of this Lent may have at first thought that this was about our getting it together, cleaning up, looking sharp, extracting ourselves from the mess. But it turns out this Lent is about us getting clean but God getting dirty. And inviting us to come and see, in ourselves and in the world around us, on the faces of those we are likely to see without seeing, the least, the last, and the earth, that all of it, all of us, are the landscape of God’s redeeming.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As the late Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon puts it, “The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones; they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the created order forsaken; it is the created order - all of it - raised and glorified.”</p><p class="p4" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">This Lent, don’t be afraid of the desert. Don’t hide the hardest parts of yourself and your life. Neither turn your eyes from those you encounter in the deserts of the world around you. God’s promise is for there, too. God’s promise is at work there, too. But listen to your Savior as he calls you with your heart and life to live the prayer - as he calls us with our hearts and lives to become this prayer: on earth as it is in heaven.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p4" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Amen.</p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi08TO7mh1mtw14MK8eZoV0Pv0_qR9vlK9h-lhOjD_zT367taybx8TOXlZMUnCX0sRPfy3djtE5xbJ5DE2cKr7cgO4-NV_ScWTe7z1jJovM26q3W7NMM35aIU3k2Wfn8j5tm_IHG_GXMPQoSVMKWL1QibxQoXFT35vW6tnJdVknhMdB5s6JntJ-NXnP5SO_/s1034/327440476_1114006852629700_5760640826780621225_n.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1034" data-original-width="827" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi08TO7mh1mtw14MK8eZoV0Pv0_qR9vlK9h-lhOjD_zT367taybx8TOXlZMUnCX0sRPfy3djtE5xbJ5DE2cKr7cgO4-NV_ScWTe7z1jJovM26q3W7NMM35aIU3k2Wfn8j5tm_IHG_GXMPQoSVMKWL1QibxQoXFT35vW6tnJdVknhMdB5s6JntJ-NXnP5SO_/s320/327440476_1114006852629700_5760640826780621225_n.jpeg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p3" style="background-color: white; color: #060606; font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-33038990532712254292024-01-03T13:16:00.002-06:002024-01-03T20:07:30.284-06:00Sobriety & Thanksgiving for the Year I did not Expect<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px;">Today is January 3, the last day of a good week spent outside of Cleveland with family of my wife’s side. Last night we engaged an annual tradition at the dinner table: naming thanks for particulars of the year just ended, offering hopes and naming challenges for the year ahead. Simple enough, but with so much life to absorb where does one start? Probably with the breath and the pause that says, “Stop. Look back. Reflect. Give thanks.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Unbeknownst to me, an article I recently read had prepared me for the process. Acknowledging at the outset that life contains multitudes, the article suggested giving yourself a simplifying template, a filter to try on, for either before or after the fact. Example: “2023 was The Year of ____” or “2024 will be The Year of ____.” Imagine yourself filling in the blank, in retrospect, twenty years from now. See what you hope for. What lands as most true?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Reductionistic, sure. But also useful for identifying the location of one’s heart. The way some art forms, like haiku, use the gift of limitation to produce, to lovingly lure out of hiding, creativity, beauty, and truth.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So it was that I was able to look back on a year and first name these wonderful gifts (not exhaustive):</p><ul class="ul1"><ul class="ul1" style="list-style-type: disc;"><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>the call to serve as rector to St. James Church & School,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>our family’s purchase of our first home and subsequent relocation to East Dallas, streets and stories of my childhood,</li><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>so much love and support and generosity from family, church, and friends, making both of the above possible,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>the discovery of good schools for our children,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>life-giving vocational opportunities for my wife and for me, and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></li><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 13.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>acquisition and completion of an as-of-yet-vacant chicken coop.</li></ul></ul><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Having named all of these, I then found myself giving voice to an answer I did not expect. Twenty years from now, how will I ultimately regard 2023?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">2023 is and will be the year of my becoming sober.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I didn’t set out to give up alcohol this year. But I realized about three months into 2023 that maybe wondering at regular intervals if my relationship with alcohol was serving me was itself the answer I both needed and didn’t want to hear. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a problem to be a problem. Or maybe I get to decide what counts as a problem. (It was a moment not dissimilar from <a href="https://slowchurch.com/sold-back-smartphone-guest-post-jonathan-melton/"><span class="s2">a realization that led me to ditch my smart phone for a time, back in the day</span></a>.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Years ago, it was a therapist in Wisconsin who, after patiently listening to my struggles with anxiety and exhaustion, asked if I drank. Yeah, but not that much. “Huh,” he shrugged. “Well, just know it works against your goals.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">For better or worse, my own story doesn’t include waking up needing to make apologies for things I couldn’t remember. I wouldn’t even swear to be being drunk often (or ever). For me, drinking was more of a creeping superstition. A security blanket. An end of day ritual. A six pack a week. A marker of the passage of time. Years later, become a second six pack a week. Become blushing embarrassment in filling out the forms that accompanied a doctor’s visit. Still not enough to prompt intervention. “Just something you’ll want to watch,” the doc would say kindly.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">All these years later, and it wasn’t enough. What was I waiting for my relationship with alcohol to show me? That new life was really there, after all, at the bottom of the whatever numbered drink? That I could somehow drink my way to an end dissimilar to the grandfather I never knew, who died, before I was born, of liver disease fueled by drinking fueled by what we now know to call PTSD as a result of service in the Korean War and World War II? To drink and manage to not die like that - would that be my victory?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I share some of those personal details to name the personal shape of the discernment for me, which comes without judgment of those who drink. I admire those who enjoy a drink without thinking of the next one. I’m not one of them. In the end, I gave up. I decided to save the energy I was wrestling away.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Similarly, I’m not bothered to be around drinking, apart from my occasional and embarrassed resentments at society's general lack of interesting alternatives. (Sodas being really bad substitutes because sugar inhabits a relatedly addictive world of its own. I do like Olipops now.) But, truthfully, the hardest aspects of this first year, for me, were felt individually: the first few backyard grill outs without brews; the first Christmas Eve, coming home from services to a sleeping house, without a celebratory nightcap.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I also share some of my personal story because the stories of others gave me courage to ask questions and take steps toward what I’ve experienced as a healing. Brené Brown’s <a href="https://brenebrown.com/articles/2019/05/31/what-being-sober-has-meant-to-me/"><span class="s2">What Being Sober Has Meant to Me</span></a> was a gift and revelation. I still return to her description of life’s “sparkle,” which I’ve known on every day - even the hard days - of this journey. I wonder if there are others like me who, because they’ve never woken up wondering where they are, endure a purgatory that, because they know it isn’t hell, never ask themselves if they “qualify” for the sparkle, too. My friend, you absolutely do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">From Brené, again:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“If you’re struggling, reach out and ask for help. Find a meeting. Get a therapist. Call a friend. We don’t have to do this alone. We were never meant to.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We don’t have to do this alone. We were never meant to. If that’s not the Good News that belongs to this season of Incarnation, of Christmas, I truthfully do not know what is.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">2024 will probably be the year of something less dramatic for me. I hope so. The year of the chickens? (Finally!) I like it. The year of deep roots and soil quality, metaphorically in my neighborhood and faith community, and actually, in my backyard? I’m here for it. I’m still auditioning possibilities. But 2023, for all its blessings, has just one name for me: the year of my sobriety. I couldn’t be more thankful.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-30845145695994794122023-10-01T14:18:00.001-05:002023-10-01T14:18:24.494-05:00Bad Puns, the State Fair, & the Gift of Being God's People on this Earth Together<p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It’s that time of year again. State fair is in the air. And opening day this past Friday had me thinking of my grandpa, who loved both the fair and the opportunities for friendly competition it offered. After my grandmother died, Grandpa more or less taught himself to cook, which he hadn’t really done before (explaining his odd repertoire of sandwiches, like peanut butter, bacon, and onion), but the next thing you know he takes to baking cookies, which he becomes pretty good at, and sometimes he’d enter them in the fair. Sometimes he won! He loved the challenge of it all. Grandpa told me that one year, even, there was this one-time competition for puns. You could enter up to a dozen. Grandpa loved puns, but couldn’t quite come up with a full dozen. So he settled on ten of his favorites. Proudly sent them in. All but certain the blue ribbon was his, that one of his gems would claim the prize and finish first. But. Well.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">No pun in ten did.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">(That one was his favorite.)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In honor of October, the state fair, and Grandpa…well. It’s not quite a pun, but there’s a single word doing double work in our scriptures today, pointing in the direction of two true things at once. One word on which everything depends. And the word it turns out that everything turns on is turn. The Lord, speaking up through the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “…get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” So the first turn we see is a turning we’re called to do. Do me a favor and just - a little bit - show me a turn in your shoulders. That’s it. A turning. Turn then and live, says the Lord.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And the picture is of a word, turn, spoken to a people in exile. Born into exile, even. By the time of Jeremiah, God’s people have been in forced displacement from home for so long there are generations now who have never known it. And they’re listless. Understandably kind of hopeless. Convinced of their own insignificance to make a difference in their world. They assume the generations before them sinned so badly, messed things up so foully, that their forbearers so profoundly broke life and relationship with God, that, well, why even try? And so they put limits on their imagination for what is possible. We’re told the people give up believing, - watch this now - that God will give them a meaningful turn at being God’s people together on this earth. They’ve even made up a proverb to express their assessment of the situation: The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. It’s another way of saying, “I didn’t make this mess, but I’m afraid I will never get out from under it.” It’s another way of saying, “God has buried us before we were even born.” And maybe you’ve known that feeling in your life. And maybe, in your life, you’ve never known that feeling. And if you’ve never known that feeling there are certain teenagers I can point you to. Some, sure, just grumpy, moody. Others, though, thoughtfully and existentially distraught at the condition of, for example, humanity’s heart and care for creation, problematic since at least the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. I can show you plenty of young people discouraged by, if not despondent for, this country’s generational inability to honestly confront and be present to the legacy of America’s original sin, namely slavery. With all of its persistent patterns in our own day. I didn’t ask for these challenges, you can imagine a younger generation lamenting. That’s Israel’s gist at the time of Jeremiah.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But then God shows up and says something surprising. I don’t like your proverb, God says. The goofy one about grapes that’s hard to understand. It’s not as catchy as you think. It’s complacent. It’s complicit. “Do you really think,” God asks them, “that I’m punishing you for what they did? Do you think this moment is still about them? Come on now. That’s not how it works. How is that fair? No sin of theirs will keep me from being present to you. Don’t for a second think they finished your script. But look alive! Show up. Turn. Be as fully present to me as I already am to you. I see you. Lo, I am with you. Child, I love you. You will have your turn at being my people on this earth. You show up where the world would give up and I will make you a part of my promise and the repairing of all things.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Anathea Portier Young explains God’s good news through Jeremiah this way, “The life of this present generation is God’s, and what God brings in the present is <i>for them </i>and <i>about them. </i>They can stop looking back and start looking around. This is their moment with God.” This is their moment with God. They get a turn. And the invitation of this unexpected good news is to turn toward the good news and live.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I got to thinking about this turning, and it occurs to me you and I have our own practice at turning toward the good news to live in this place. We turn away from things that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, toward the new life of Jesus, in our baptism. After that, each week in this space, the gospel book goes out to the center, and what do you do, but turn? And some people turn left. Others turn right. You might think you’re centering yourself on Christ, but you’d be wrong. When you turn you are centering us on Christ, because - as we turn - Christ takes our many tiny turnings and makes one Christ-centered people out of us. Makes us one body. A new thing. A thing that wasn’t before Christ became our center. A church. You and I discover that being made friends of God, God would make us holy friends of each other. As we turn, we discover that we, too, are being given a turn at being God’s people on this earth, made bearers of the fruit of the Spirit, a community of sharers in the self-emptying love of Jesus.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I don’t have to tell you the cosmic improbability, statistically, of being born. The short of it is, you’re pretty special. I don’t think it takes much convincing that this life is a gift. How much more so the peculiar and particular combination of lives God has gather and made into the people of God called St. James Church and School at Audelia and McCree in 2023. Take a minute. Look around. Church. School. School that for fifty-five years has been an extension of the heart of this church. All of you, look around. Take a gander. Church, you are a gift. The life we share is a kind of miracle. This moment, just now, is God’s answer to the prayers of saints before us. And friends that’s so much more than a preacher’s hyperbole.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Long-time parishioner Pat Hind, of both past and present seasons of our common life, tells the story of some of those prayers, as lifted by her husband John, decades ago, in an especially challenging season: John thought the church needed to be in prayer daily, she says. He started dropping by every morning around 5:30, before heading to work, to pray in the sanctuary. He prayed for himself and his family. But one morning it occurred to him, “this church needs to be prayed for every day!” Each morning he prayed, “God, fill this church with people who love You and would come to love You!”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He did this for a year. Today, she says, the church’s congregation tops 400 members and has become a beacon of love and hope for the neighborhood. Our (prayers and) perseverance led to a wonderful example of “what the Lord…has brought about!” What the Lord has brought about - that’s you! That’s me. That’s us!</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Church, school. Long-timers. New-comers. Like me. Each of us, all of us. Lifting hearts, offering gifts. Opening lives. Encountered by Christ. Time and again made a part of his body. Shown something new. Made sharers of his self-emptying. Made one. Made able to be a healing, a balm, for the soul of the world around us. Called to turn and discover that God has given us God’s self and all that we need, given us God’s fullest attention in this generation, you and I made alive to the truth that we have been given a precious gift, the gift of a turn at being God’s people on this earth together.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: Arial; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">This year’s stewardship theme is Growing in Faith Together. If you’re like me you’re glad for </span>help to see that that spells GIFT. And gift is like turn, a word pointing us toward two truth things at once today: gifts of our resources are what we ask each other in this season to prayerfully consider making to our common life. Gifts of ministry, presence, and planned financial contributions. It’s a season of acknowledging that we experience the belonging we’ve been given most fully as we share what we have with one another. That’s why a special goal of this year’s stewardship season is pledged participation from every household. Because no gift of the body is insignificant. Because every member is a part of the larger gift to which our theme would point us: the gift of life together as God’s people, which we have seen and known, and which, by ourselves, is beyond the grasp of any one of us.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But, somewhere along the line, while we were living our ordinary lives, somewhere snuck into our endless, numbered, days, God has shown up and said something surprising. “I see you. Lo, I am with you. Child, I love you. My children, I love you. You will have your turn at being my people on this earth. Turn toward that life and live. You show up where the world would give up and I will make you a part of my promise, all things made new by the mercies of Jesus.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">Amen. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-66594840535856628092023-06-02T11:17:00.005-05:002023-06-02T11:28:50.327-05:00God's Motivation is Love<div style="text-align: left;"><p style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://classicalartsuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-Destruction-of-Leviathan-Gustave-Dore.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="638" height="320" src="https://classicalartsuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-Destruction-of-Leviathan-Gustave-Dore.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><i><br /></i><p></p><p style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>"There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.” </i>Psalm 104:27, Translation from The Book of Common Prayer</p><div style="text-align: left;">When I was in college, the prayer book’s mention of “that Leviathan” always brought a smile to the face of my priest. “For the sport of it,” he’d chuckle. “Can you imagine? That at least some part of God’s reason for creation is God’s enjoyment of it? Even parts of creation, like the Loch Ness monster, we will only ever guess or gossip about. Even those parts we’ll never know at all. Each one, known by God. Enjoyed by God. Creation brings God joy.” Maybe, added to the other verbs we remember about God’s relationship to us, we’d do well to remember “enjoys.”</div><p></p></div>In his short, whimsical book<i> God is an Amateur</i>, John Claypool obverses that, where you and I are likely to read the word “amateur” to mean “a person who isn’t good enough at a thing to be professionally paid,” the origins of the word suggest one who does a thing because they love to do the thing. So, he says, “God as an amateur in the original sense of the word, not as one who is a novice or inexperienced, but one who does something for the love of it. God’s only motivation is love.”<br /><br />God’s approach to creation helps center me in the summer season. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. And, if I’m honest? Summer presents its challenges. Four kids and no schedule? Or is it four kids and six schedules? Friends and neighbors, coming and going, sometimes ship passing. How on earth do you get a thing done? But also, how many times does the orbit of the urgent only talk us out of the space we might have made for other things that could have breathed our hearts to life? <br /><br />I know, I know. Easier said than done. But as a start this morning I spent thirty minutes cleaning the insides of a fountain pen. Taking my lead from my Maker, I did a thing for the sport of it. Not because it was essential but because it brought me joy. And as I worked the pen flush through the chambers, I remembered that you and I are fountain pens of God’s delight. If I’m lucky, the next time I’m in church, I’ll still remember and blush a little bit. I might even break Episcopal protocol and laugh out loud. <br /><br />You and me and our new to us neighbor, all of us, saved from the tedium of justifying our existence. Enjoying God and each other. Made for joy. And God’s delight. <br /><br />Who knew? <br /><br />In the joy and delight of Jesus,<div style="text-align: left;"><div>Jonathan</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Excerpted from <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Hello-St--James-Your-James-Journal-is-here-.html?soid=1103542707344&aid=C2ImJgBTAB4">this week's James' Journal</a>, the weekly eNews of St. James Episcopal Church in the Lake Highlands neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. <a href="https://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1103542707344&p=oi">Click here</a> to have it delivered to your inbox!</i><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-28924289649974056932023-03-28T16:41:00.001-05:002023-03-28T16:41:25.771-05:00Gun Violence, Tragedy, & Resources for Children & Families<p><span style="font-family: arial;">I've given much of today to being a pastoral presence for those grieving/seeking to make sense of a thing for which it is imperative to grieve and there is no sense. Sharing these good resources from the director of the school my younger two kids attend, for those who might find them helpful.</span></p><h3 style="background-color: white; color: #58595b; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 16px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Helping Children Cope with Tragedy</span></span></span></h3><ul style="background-color: white; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 24px; margin-top: 12px; padding: 0px;"><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 12px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-y/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw1dhcHcXVfx7TC4ItBJEr8b" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-y/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Talking to Children About Tragedies</a> <span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">(American Academy of Pediatrics) </span></span></span></p></li><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-j/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw2bUFlAaZfy2v3xfS4Adqg8" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-j/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Helping Kids After a Shooting</a> <span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">(American School Counselor Association) </span></span></span></p></li><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-t/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw0qShcPGyPbjJMdjU0l2Sji" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-t/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Promoting Compassion and Acceptance in Crisis</a> <span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">(National Association of School Psychologists) </span></span></span></p></li></ul><h3 style="background-color: white; color: #58595b; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 20px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Media Consumption</span></span></span></h3><ul style="background-color: white; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 24px; margin-top: 12px; padding: 0px;"><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 12px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-i/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw0rblBCzKhWi5ejcIyEiO4Y" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-i/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Children and the News</a> <span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">(American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry) </span></span></span></p></li><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-d/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw1vaiVUcYVuLzPOGhUMlJcj" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-d/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Explaining the News to Our Kids</a> <span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">(Common Sense Media) </span></span></span></p></li><li style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-h/&source=gmail&ust=1680124183582000&usg=AOvVaw0OTAFWXcRoeULUQK9SbjWw" href="https://nationalassociationofindependentschools.cmail19.com/t/j-l-etjftl-tdtyittla-h/" style="color: #0000ee; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">Helping Children Cope with Frightening News</a> </span><span style="color: #4d474d; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(Child Mind Institute) </span><br /></span></span></span></p></li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-8614036347090069002023-03-03T14:59:00.000-06:002023-03-03T14:59:01.907-06:00Living with Limits (and Trust that Gives Thanks)<i>Each week I write a short article for the James Journal, an e-snapshot of that week's good things at St. James. This is from that. If you want to receive the e-note and don't already, <a href="https://www.stjamesdallas.org/news/the-james-ejournal/" target="_blank">you can sign up here</a>!</i><br /><br /> Ash Wednesday has a way of throwing us off the deep end of our creatureliness. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Just in case we have found occasion to forget, these words remind us that we are creatures created and sustained by an Other, by God. The wilderness Jesus enters is likewise full of dust, the reminder that we do no make ourselves.<br /><br />Creatures, of course, have limits. My kids reminded me the other day that I've slept for 14 of my 42 years on this earth. Not because I'm lazy but because I'm a human bound by rhythms of night and day, wakefulness and sleep. I affirm my trust in the God who made me when I nightly enter the surrender of sleep (some days more easily than others, so much left undone!). Likewise, I have known the limits of my creatureliness to save, for example, a loved one dying.<br /><br />Christians, historically, have been at our best when we embrace our creatureliness. Rather than get hung up on the fact that we have real limits, we show up and keep a faithful presence, hold holy space, even with those we can't save. See, for example, the legacy of St. Jude's children hospitals. St. Jude is the patron saint of "lost causes." Christians do not limit our presence only to those situations we know in advance we can solve. Christians show up in love and not knowing. Which may just be different words for trust.<br /><br />To be a creature means that, for Christians, grief and gratitude often share the same apartment. To hide from our grief blocks our gratitude. And the fullness of our gratitude will require us to occupy spaces of grief. I think this is because both grief and gratitude are practices that make us more truthful. Maybe more true. In the week ahead, will you join me in nightly praying <a href="https://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001C6i_aDKbG8jOdj2lx2bEpTSKEfcuDHnMB2JDEvxD04jQKczhQ-vaXMQgXbUMtcG020EvzELl4xsYQdGLn9QeuhoroyS8pFoCZ7_MzLrTlxlsdpXQ9ZfJzy9o7JG1kuD7YIzIcpoZiqoKMR4hofngMRup_bNvYL4gEMYbc8X_NE7cbV5-sX-7Ng==&c=GYAG1I3nqhCPpLnJS9f1JQraV2oEji7UKRrk-AQq_ysnDkSf3kQ9Cw==&ch=h943XXQx6h837dFbMK7QFAg50ypj38NgDscMZ02ZoXTs-cxTVa8TAA==">t</a><a href="https://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001C6i_aDKbG8jOdj2lx2bEpTSKEfcuDHnMB2JDEvxD04jQKczhQ-vaXMQgXbUMtcG020EvzELl4xsYQdGLn9QeuhoroyS8pFoCZ7_MzLrTlxlsdpXQ9ZfJzy9o7JG1kuD7YIzIcpoZiqoKMR4hofngMRup_bNvYL4gEMYbc8X_NE7cbV5-sX-7Ng==&c=GYAG1I3nqhCPpLnJS9f1JQraV2oEji7UKRrk-AQq_ysnDkSf3kQ9Cw==&ch=h943XXQx6h837dFbMK7QFAg50ypj38NgDscMZ02ZoXTs-cxTVa8TAA==">he prayer of thanksgiving from The Book of Common Prayer</a>? And, if God opens something to you in the praying, would you share what God has shown you with a friend? In this way, we might know together what the old Christmas hymn tells us is true of our Savior, the one who became flesh for our sake: And he feeleth for our sadness, And he shareth in our gladness.<br /><br />Peace,<br />Fr. JUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-34404661130472323652022-09-13T14:52:00.004-05:002022-09-13T14:55:28.484-05:00In Which He Attempts to Write a Blogpost Again<p> I recently saw somewhere an interview in which world-famous NASCAR
driver Danica Patrick observed, “If you’re looking at the wall, that’s where
you’re headed.” (For those unfamiliar with NASCAR, the wall’s not a good thing
to be headed toward.) Her observation mirrors that of leadership guru Simon Sinek,
that the human mind is incapable of comprehending negatives. As evidence, he
challenges us <b>not </b>to think of an elephant. (Aww, too bad.) So skiers, he
says, who focus on trees are more likely to hit one (or at least more likely to
find their experience defined by them), while skiers who focus on even a path
surrounded by trees are astonished to discover how much path there actually is.
More than enough. The challenge is that walls and trees represent big threats to
things that are important to us. They are understandably challenging to ignore.
But ignore isn’t quite the right word, is it? If Sinek is right about the
brain, we can touch the negative by attending the positive. We can acknowledge
the trees, in part, by attention to the path.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One time I found myself at a national gathering of campus
ministry leaders. If anyone has reason to fear big (and often financial)
threats, it’s campus ministers who hold holy space with teenagers and largely
rely on the support of those outside the community. Conversations at leadership
gatherings about fear of not having enough money, or losing the money one had,
were frequent. At this gathering I got curious. What is the path of each heart
surrounded by these daunting trees? “If you got $50,000 today,” I went around
the room asking, “what’s the first thing you would do?” I had realized that,
while I needed to navigate the trees, what I longed for was to learn from the
paths of others and allow the imaginations of others to inspire my own; to open
my heart to the path of God’s revealing in the context where I showed up each
day and prayed to live in faithful community. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Experience and observation suggest that it’s easier to name
the trees than the path. <i>Will there be enough?</i> is an easier question to ask than <i>for what?</i> To answer the latter question is to share a path, is to share your heart. It’s
vulnerable and sometimes scary. Sometimes we don’t know. “Lord,” said Thomas. “We
don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way?” We see what gets <b>in
</b>the way, but of what? We’re not always sure. I shared with a friend one
time that I prayed for a life determined by the waters of baptism and shaped by
the Easter Vigil. His blank look suggested he did not share this prayer. But
then his face opened. “I don’t know what that means,” he said. (Fair enough.) “Tell
me what that’s about for you.” And we were together, for a few minutes, on a
path. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Don’t get me wrong. Some trees need naming. At one time or
another, most do. But the path is what inspires to overcome them, the
possibility of what could be. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where do we look when we’re looking to what could be? Danica
asks. What vocabulary do we draw from when we share our hearts and hopes? Not
just individually, but in the communities (families, schools, organizations,
churches, etc.) of which we are a part?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In his book, <i>The Way of St. Benedict,</i> Rowan Williams describes
what we called the “currency” of a community: “All communities need a medium of
exchange, a language that assures their members that they are engaged in the
same enterprise. It involves common stories and practices, things that you can
expect your neighbor to understand without explanation, ways and styles of
doing and saying things.” Williams goes on to describe the experience of an
English priest visiting a university mission, attempting to discover “what the
currency of the university is.” After days of observation, the priest concluded,
“What did these people exchange with one another when they met? You’d be
surprised – they exchanged grievances. So the currency of that University is
grievance.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Williams goes on to shift the metaphor of exchange into one
of circulation in the body, both an individual body and a body like, say, the
Body of Christ. What do we put in circulation? With what do we inspire the life
and being of the body, mindful that what we put in circulates through, becoming
later what we receive. “If you put in grievance, you will get back grievance.” Meanwhile,
the lives of so many communities are aided, if not healed, as members circulate
instead the currency of goodness, positive expectation, and kindness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other currencies Williams names includes anxiety or
censoriousness, pressures to conceal truths in the name of “peace,” on the one
hand, and “a habit of stable determination to put into the life of the body
something other than grudges” on the other. On the point of accountability before
Christ, Williams observes that leaders of (not only) Benedictine communities
are in unique position to put into circulation “the habit of hope, trust in the
possibilities of compassion.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At this point in this post, I’m mindful that I’ve<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->written for longer than I intended (if you made
it this far, my deepest gratitude),</li><li><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->probably glossed a good bit of a favorite author’s
(Williams’) thoughts, and</li><li><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->risked conflating 2 ideas, the tree/wall idea
with currency and circulation,</li></ul><!--[if !supportLists]--><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">so I’ll just end briefly by suggesting that the connection,
for me, is the invitation to risk reflection on our habits of contemplation and
contribution, individually and in the lives of those to whom we’re bound in
love. So many of our thoughts are thoughtless (the fruit of unexamined
imitations or habits). I say school’s not cool because it’s the cool thing to
say. But in the space of an unthreatened heart, how <i>do</i> I understand the
path? The good life? What holy yearnings has God planted in my heart? What do I
believe the trees obstruct or diminish? With whom do I risk sharing the heart
or vision God’s given me for the good and the true and the beautiful? What are
my habits of circulation, both shared and individual? What do these habits convey
about the path I pray God to be on? What opportunities to circulate the joy of
the new thing God is doing does this day present? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have a sign on the wall I face in my office that says, “Look
for the Good, the True, & the Beautiful.” I have a prayer book that says, “Seek
and serve Christ in each person.” I have, we have, been given all that we need (more than enough, even) to circulate the abundant life of new creation in, for, with one another. In the One Body we share. What a calling. What a gift. <o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-53442538190363775692022-04-16T16:05:00.003-05:002022-04-16T16:06:14.547-05:00Christ the Flower<div><i>A meditation for Good Friday. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div>Once upon a time there was a forest full of trees, but it wasn’t so much The Trees as this One Tree that caused the trouble. You know the story. The garden, woman, man, and fruit. Serpentine transgressions. I wonder, when they would look back on the events years later, were they haunted by the what fors and whys? Or the absence thereof. It’s hard to even tell from here just what it was all about. Was it gluttony, lust, or pride, I wonder? Poisoned peek a boo with God. Selective hearing, maybe. Exile, swords of fire.<br /><br />A friend tells, “avocado.” Avocado? Yes, he says, the fruit that undoubtedly, to his mind, marked the sin. He was probably projecting, but I sometimes ask myself what fruit would be shiny enough, just ripe enough, enticing enough that I would dismiss, neglect, put down God’s voice of love to me. <br /><br />Well before too long, the man and the woman were themselves made fruitful, found with child, but that had long stopped being an obvious good thing. The hiding from God had hit them hard. And without clear means for mending, their offspring hit each other harder. Whole cities built on the blood of brothers. And it’s fruit again, the parent’s sin, the cry of Abel’s blood. And Abel’s blood’s still crying. Good God, is Abel’s blood still crying. <br /><br />And every night on channels one through ninety-nine, hell, any screen you carry to the toilet or wherever else you go, you can see him, hear him, they call him different names now, but you can still hear Abel’s blood. And it’s the echo coursing through the whole Hebrew Scriptures. Where it’s Abram and Sarai, Moses, Elijah, Deborah and David, Elisha, Esther, and Jonah, God bless him, and Nahum and all of God’s prophets, his judges and kings, the high priests of the people, trying to give God back Abel’s blood. <br /><br />Sometimes I pray when I hear it, and sometimes I laugh when I hear it; other times, when I hear it, I sink into my sofa and drip through to the floor, the weight of the sadness slaying my tears and as heavy -- oh, as heavy -- as the endlessly flickering light is blue against the wall. <br /><br />They sprinkled blood, not Abel’s, on their beaten, wooden, doorposts that first, last night called Passover; that first last night in Egypt, just as God commanded. Prefigured Lamb of God. The Egyptians were howling; God, he was faithful, and the Hebrews walked out on dry land. Pillars of cloud. Columns of fire. God broke the bondage. And the Hebrews walked out on dry land.<br /><br />But college freshman everywhere will tell you, when they’re talking to you at all, that unexpected freedoms are the hardest kind to handle. And the people who walked free from their mud bricks in Egypt had a hard time believing that the One who had freed them from their mud bricks in Egypt, would keep them, could keep them, from their mud bricks in Egypt. That they would be cared for. That God would bring them home.<br /><br />And so, in an ironic twist, somewhere along the wandering road, somewhere among the endless, numbered, days that followed, the people who wandered in wilderness griped one time too many, and God brought back the snake. You know, the one that started the whole mess in the first place. He brought him back. With friends. Snakes to bite their heels. Some were even dying.<br /><br />Moses said, “Have mercy, God,” and God heard and had mercy, had Moses make a separate snake, this one made of bronze, and put it on a pole; the people were told to look on the snake on the pole in order to be saved. And the ones who did were saved. And some millennia later, the disciple Jesus loved, the one called John, he saw that snake, and called it Christ. The sinless one becoming sin, that we might see salvation. <br /><br />Which brings me to a second tree that caused the trouble. One tree from the forest. You know the story. A garden. A man. With some women and men. Where they found him, with their swords and flaming torches. Does this sound familiar? Exiled Son of God. Or at least that was the goal.<br /><br />The disciples had swords, too, but there would be no battle here. No second spill of Abel’s blood. The cup first drunk at Passover, now come before the Lamb. And Peter, who would have fought for him, would not, will not, die with him, and the cock crow names the hour. <br /><br />They gave the man a trial, the people did. Or close enough to one for their intentions on that day. And they dressed him like a king, and pranced before the powers, and the powers lost their power in the madness of the night. The night as dark as blood. The day that looked like night. And they crucified our Lord. <br /><br />Once upon a time, this mother, she could smile. But darkness knows no friend. <br /><br />Two trees by which to see the grief, to hear the cries and taste the blood of wars that will not cease. The rivers flowing blood. Infernal blue lights flickering. But eyes to see and ears to hear pick out the pin-prick hope against the darkness, amidst the blood, if faint, if far off, flickering. And this is the pin-prick hope -- God’s own happy sadness – this is the moment, the instant we see it, when despair itself loses hope -- this is God’s secret: the two trees are one tree and his wounds heal the first. <br /><br />Christ the flowering blossom of the tree we left for dead. Christ the first flower of creation made new. Christ, that flower which, trampled underfoot by us, did not withhold its fragrance, but poured it out all the more. In him, this one, the love and logic of God, the grain of the universe, all revealing. Where there, in God’s heart, it is mercy and mercy all the way down. <br /><br />The flaming sword extinguished now, Life’s tree holds high its fruit; and Christ himself, pressed, crushed, for us, becomes the very wine of heaven. <br /><br />And heaven prepares the song.<br /><br />Amen. <br /><br /><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGhu8NF4EuMcjSVMqQNrsT4jsv9Ohtuff8DyuaMOw4Tcu9C6dDwTH9iOYlOz1dp4xsw9N07VXhenrevXMbfzezNz_s72fR7D_TS64n7SagqOK2z0RkSp7pLn4pyOuMYhJIRtGkl4_R7mGsfJ_LOqZAWiNJU7xlQvMAAibili6l9YZ5kY68116_cBMFQ/s900/278347156_10100515348546058_7215025595740870291_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGhu8NF4EuMcjSVMqQNrsT4jsv9Ohtuff8DyuaMOw4Tcu9C6dDwTH9iOYlOz1dp4xsw9N07VXhenrevXMbfzezNz_s72fR7D_TS64n7SagqOK2z0RkSp7pLn4pyOuMYhJIRtGkl4_R7mGsfJ_LOqZAWiNJU7xlQvMAAibili6l9YZ5kY68116_cBMFQ/s320/278347156_10100515348546058_7215025595740870291_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-64865463760890866872022-02-11T12:09:00.028-06:002022-02-11T12:32:56.239-06:00A Prayer for Protection (Learning to Fear the Right Things)<br>Prayers for protection are ancient and good in the Christian tradition. And there is a lot in the world that might lead us to seek out protection. But from what? And for what? <div><br /></div><div>These are not just a philosopher's questions. These are questions that matter for how I will learn to talk to my children. About God. About fear. About the life that is life.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Our answers to these questions reveal our most dearly held priorities and, in turn, shape our prayers for protection. But at least one significant challenge to making reflective space to consider these questions is the sense that there's no time for that. The threats are at hand! Just get the protection in place already. Some days we get up and live lives of largely unreflective reactivity, performing fears so old we don't remember where we learned them. </div><div><br /></div><div>But whether we take the time to explore them or not, these questions will linger and share invisible, unnamed space with us. They will haunt us. Haunt us until we turn to them and discover, in the faith, the alternative to reactionary fear that God has revealed in Jesus and opened to the people called 'church.' </div><div><br /></div><div>Stephen Colbert recently quoted the poet Robert Hayden in an interview with Dua Lipa, </div><div><br /></div><div><i>We must not be frightened nor cajoled<br />into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.<br />We must go on struggling to be human,<br />though monsters of abstraction<br />police and threaten us.</i></div><div><br /><div>So I was delighted the other day to stumble on this new-to-me hymn from the 6th century church, which paints the alternative to prayers for reactive protection to unnamed fears by its engagement with the invisible questions - from what? for what? - to sketch understanding of the harms from which we rightly ask God's help to save us. Sharing it with you and, maybe also, with my kids:<br /><br />Now that the daylight fills the sky,<br />we lift our hearts to God on high,<br />that he, in all we do or say,<br />would keep us free from harm today:<br /><br />Our hearts and lips may he strain;<br />keep us from causing others pain,<br />that we may see and serve his Son,<br />and grow in love for everyone.<br /><br />From evil may he guard our eyes,<br />our ears from empty praise and lies;<br />from selfishness our hearts release,<br />that we may serve and know his peace;<br /><br />that we, when this new day is gone,<br />night in turn is drawing on,<br />with conscience free from sin and blame,<br />may praise and bless his holy name.<br /><br />To God the Father, heavenly Light,<br />to Christ, revealed in earthly night,<br />to God the Holy Ghost we raise<br />our equal and unceasing praise.<div><br /></div><div>Hymn no. 3 in the Hymnal 1982, Latin, 6th cent.; trans. Neale, Scagnelli, Coffin, and Chandler.</div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-87687428271865898872022-02-03T08:15:00.001-06:002022-02-03T08:15:35.148-06:00The Art of Understanding: Collaboration, Curiosity, and Removing Old Couches<div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><i>A prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, as found in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 833.</i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div> A friend and colleague recently turned me on to the <i>Hidden Brain</i> podcast, where Shankar Vedantam "uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships." The podcast now owns a regular place in the lineup I enjoy on my morning and evening walks. </div><div><br /></div><div>This past week, each of the three episodes I chose, mostly at random, brought to mind in different ways the above prayer of St. Francis and especially that phrase woven in among so many beautiful and challenging others, "to be understood as to understand." Each of the episodes explored different aspects of understanding others, the work it takes, the errant assumptions we often make, blind spots, and tools that serve the work. Most of us have known either the experience of having felt understood or, conversely, the pain of not feeling heard/understood. Most of us having experienced varying levels of success in our attempts to communicate understanding to others. Anyway, I was super grateful for the emergence of the unintentional theme. Here's the episode list, in case you'd like to listen or check them out:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://hidden-brain.simplecast.com/episodes/what-makes-relationships-thrive-jS9ourkj">What Makes Relationships Thrive</a></li><li><a href="https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/work-2-0-the-obstacles-you-dont-see/">The Obstacles You Don't See</a></li><li><a href="https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/our-noisy-minds/">Our Noisy Minds</a> </li></ul></div><div>In a nutshell, the first episode seeks to establish understanding as an ingredient every bit as important as even more high profile possibilities, like love, in relationships of all kinds. The second begins with the story of a wildly popular furniture maker that initially struggled, despite the popularity, to complete sales. The company tweaked prices, improved product, pulled their hair out. Nothing worked. The eventual solution? Offering to remove the old furniture for customers when delivering the new furniture. Sales skyrocketed. A lesson in perspectives, positions, and understanding. The third episode begins with the story of CEOs at insurance companies, who errantly assume that the variability among their agents in offering premium prices, etc., is about 10%. A researcher comes along who determines that the actual number is more like 55%. A big deal in insurance, and also in sentencing and incarceration, where the assumption that most people, like judges, see the world and make judgments in ways similar to our own perspectives and judgments is, generally speaking, wildly overestimated. The variability between us is a gift (potentially), but only if we are honest about the extent to which it exists in the first place. Which brings us back to understanding, a challenge complicated by the fact, says the third episode, that we seldom fully understand ourselves.</div><div><br /></div><div>Against the backdrop of this week of walks with this unintentional theme, my family has been planning a memorial for my wife's grandfather, who died this past December. I thought the world of Grandpa Baker and thoroughly enjoyed him, his presence, his thoughtfulness, and our shared conversations. (I was delighted to learn early on that we shared an affinity for the work of Robert Farrar Capon, a theologian and Episcopal priest whom a mentor once confessed "a guilty pleasure.") More than anything, there was in Grandpa Baker a curiosity that opened space for others: other ideas and other people. "Maybe so!" he would frequently respond to a thought or opinion in opposition to his own. "Tell me more about that," was an invitation found in most every conversation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes when loved ones die, we discover things about them we didn't know before. Some things just never come up, for whatever reasons. I knew Grandpa Baker worked in education, and that he had done so in pioneering ways. I remember lots of stories, but they were usually one-offs. It was only in reading correspondence occasioned by his passing, from colleagues he had worked with and/or who continued his work, that I learned about his formal contribution to the work of understanding; he and a colleague pioneered the process that became known as The Seven Norms of Collaboration, a pillar of education so foundational that is now simply for granted, but only because they discerned it and wrote it for the rest of us. I share it at the end here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Collaboration, understanding, is an art. And maybe, says Shankar Vedantam, a science, too. Both. Also a discipline with practices that require our submitting to each other. "Tell me more." And, "It sounds like you're saying _____. Am I hearing you right?" It's good work at the heart of relationships between individuals, communities, and every nook and cranny of life. And I'm so glad for the space these conversations and discoveries from this past week's worth of walks occasioned for me to explore the work from difference angles. </div><div><br /></div><div>So. A post full of what have been tools for me. But what for you? What aids have you discovered for the work of understanding? What helps you better live the prayer? Asking not a preacher or exhorter, but as one who is curious. If you are willing, tell me more about that.</div><div><br /></div><div>I appreciate you, friends.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgi6gbHeILmz2tDC8U2hlMUWzZwCAHVKXRB2hr1tvMPHD5lOl9DNc4uFZCm3M_M8GnyDRRmnIhDDiVAJl-RpAiH-OWtglG8Xi1q2Q4noBaCUn9xeJ4kULEDTDIn_VZVApnLM7BNsPUGn3uCUPuAiQOZqI97Z8f_59x-OqwmvsdKIqkErr29Ty2T7XSWkw=s663" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgi6gbHeILmz2tDC8U2hlMUWzZwCAHVKXRB2hr1tvMPHD5lOl9DNc4uFZCm3M_M8GnyDRRmnIhDDiVAJl-RpAiH-OWtglG8Xi1q2Q4noBaCUn9xeJ4kULEDTDIn_VZVApnLM7BNsPUGn3uCUPuAiQOZqI97Z8f_59x-OqwmvsdKIqkErr29Ty2T7XSWkw=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji-Zd68ZGUdUTGUc71QzkAMW_vPeEwNM1X0WT60VHfjbeCwGOwahHnF1rnX1KxEXIep475aktfVKyriL1ppP1lhWHoizTlf64EDGL-fPUPop6lEr33gGx4bbNnNOqH3oYLPE0jUkcL5oq1nM9xksCXhj0ysZeyYM9Zu0dmqE6_mCqc6yAa5d0YQRSHOQ=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji-Zd68ZGUdUTGUc71QzkAMW_vPeEwNM1X0WT60VHfjbeCwGOwahHnF1rnX1KxEXIep475aktfVKyriL1ppP1lhWHoizTlf64EDGL-fPUPop6lEr33gGx4bbNnNOqH3oYLPE0jUkcL5oq1nM9xksCXhj0ysZeyYM9Zu0dmqE6_mCqc6yAa5d0YQRSHOQ=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-50169119901524256432021-09-11T10:14:00.001-05:002021-09-11T12:43:18.079-05:00A Prayer for the 20th Anniversary of 9/11<p>Gracious God, our Good Shepherd, we remember to you the events of 20 years ago - a day on which we knew ourselves to be walking in the valley of the shadow of death. We did fear evil. </p><p>We remember before you the nearly 3,000 dead, the families torn open, the selflessness of first responders and helpers who gave their lives for their friends, as well as for those they did not know, still knowing that they were giving their lives.</p><p>We pray your continuing balm on wounds of so much loss and love and grief. We pray your balm on wounds of mistrust and accumulated habits of fear, many of which we have forgotten we carry. Heal these broken bones. </p><p>We pray you would anoint our heads and every tender, fragile part of us. Touch our anxieties with your compassion. Still our seas of desperate violence. </p><p>Good Shepherd God, who sets a table before us in the presence even of our enemies, we remember before you the day we discovered that even our attempts to be nice cannot prevent our having enemies. God of Jesus Christ, open our hearts and give us your help to love our enemies well. Hold us in the truth that belonging to you we belong to each other and incline our hearts to seek you in every face on earth.</p><p>Hold us in your promise, Lord, that we may surely see the goodness of our God in the land of the living. Make us instruments of your peace and people of your truth, and so people who listen with patience, who come to share as freely as we have known the wideness of your mercy, beyond the measures of our minds.</p><p>We thank you, we love you, and we pray this in Christ's Name.</p><p>Amen.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-11037774724582978882021-06-21T14:22:00.001-05:002021-06-21T14:22:23.144-05:00Trinity River Trail: Highlights and History<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2E_FEDY-klEQpy8_YwA-qZzEZCDuigrKlOsH7ruV2gGbsDIV3RQbLmamv0FrUQT-lM-O26GSakejnYsdu7GzJaIAjYMjulUXIUGy3TgT7qIGKqgMp26CU_8QtrGZ4xTPfyxwhMivYJ_g6/s732/river.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="732" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2E_FEDY-klEQpy8_YwA-qZzEZCDuigrKlOsH7ruV2gGbsDIV3RQbLmamv0FrUQT-lM-O26GSakejnYsdu7GzJaIAjYMjulUXIUGy3TgT7qIGKqgMp26CU_8QtrGZ4xTPfyxwhMivYJ_g6/w320-h310/river.PNG" width="320" /></a></div> <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; text-decoration-line: underline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Uniqueness of the River Dallas has Struggled to Understand</span></div><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Trinity’s watershed constitutes the largest urban</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: center; white-space: pre-wrap;"> forest in the United States. </span></span></li><li><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Empties near Galveston</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Dries up and floods (“untamable”)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">“Pins” poor communities and especially <span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">communities of color against its boundaries </span>and <span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">interstates (creating food deserts, etc.)</span></span></li></ul><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-b4b784d7-7fff-f2f9-2763-c740017565f5"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s in a Name?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Caddo of North Texas called it the Arkikosa; closer to the coast, it was called the Daycoa. French explorers called it, “The River of Canoes.” 1690 Spanish explorer Alfonso De León names the river La Santisima Trinidad - the Most Holy Trinity.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Becoming Big D</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1830 President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1836 First steamboat attempts</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1841 General Tarrant leads massacre of Caddo Indians on the banks of the Trinity.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1841 Dallas is established.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the Civil War</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1873 Freeman’s town of Joppa is established - between the Trinity River / Great Trinity Forest and railroad tracks (now also flanked by dumps, wastewater treatment facilities, shingle mtn)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About this same time, the thriving black community of Glen Hill was founded in Rockwall. The community’s cemetery, which you can still see today, is among the oldest African-American cemeteries in North Texas.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1893 Steamboat Harvey completes trip from Galveston to Dallas</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1896 Church founded in Forney</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">20th Century Developments</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1908 Flood of 1908</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1919 Beginnings of Bonton neighborhood</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1930s/40s Canal and steamboat ambitions fade</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1968 Lake Ray Hubbard (a dammed portion of the Trinity) is completed.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1973 HTbtL moves to Heath</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnABVblwXeRGQPnkW-zYejBiDYFlhQdkQGQRDOBd_mFl-twtsi-dHSY81MgG7vfrJ4S7IbVvWUDkxRl49489sNLJfYV2lmexDCKrFrBvgpC10lWym1uPRkJJksJCz811QCO6f87exneTyu/s748/Trinity_River%252C_Dallas%252C_Texas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="748" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnABVblwXeRGQPnkW-zYejBiDYFlhQdkQGQRDOBd_mFl-twtsi-dHSY81MgG7vfrJ4S7IbVvWUDkxRl49489sNLJfYV2lmexDCKrFrBvgpC10lWym1uPRkJJksJCz811QCO6f87exneTyu/s320/Trinity_River%252C_Dallas%252C_Texas.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-8061226824021506192021-06-14T12:33:00.002-05:002021-06-14T12:53:32.299-05:00What Good are Summers, for the Church?<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>Excerpted from my June Report to the Holy Trinity Vestry.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">My
seven years in campus ministry forced me to confront an uncomfortable question
related to summers, namely, “What do you do with them?” The students were gone
(mostly). Colleagues from other churches with whom I would ordinarily partner
were taking turns on vacation (as was I). Why bother doing anything in the
summer?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
answer I came to receive is that 1) it’s good to be confronted with seasons of
reluctant rest and 2) the summer is an ideal time to try new things without the
burden of unrealistic expectations. (Have y’all ever heard the “joke” about
every Episcopal event being “The First Annual?” Ha.) But summer can be
different, if we let it. We can explore. We can give the reigns over to new
leaders, for a short-term project. We can invite members inside and outside of
our faith community, maybe folks from different services who wouldn’t otherwise
cross paths, to come together for, say, a Spanish learning class. In other
words, we can experiment, have fun, and maybe discover a couple of things that <i>will
stick</i>, in one form or another, when the rhythms of fall return. Imagined
this way, summer is less about letting up and more about opening up –
especially to the new possibilities of God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">All
of the above is the spirit in which the events I’ve organized, under Adult
Christian Formation, are conceived. I’ve been delighted to discover game
planning partners, new leaders, and some familiar leaders taking on new roles!
As we continue to share these pop-up opportunities, please participate as you
are able (recognizing, again, it’s summer…), but also by encouraging the folks
you see participating and leading in their different ways. It’s a discerning, for
sure, and the planting of new seeds of faith.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> ___________________________________________</o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">PARTICULAR MINISTRY NOTES</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As
ever, this report tries to limit itself to my 3 areas of primary
responsibility: 1) Worship Coordination, 2) Adult Formation, and 3) Staff
Development. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">WORSHIP</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;">Since my last report…</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;">We’ve seen the return
of wine to Communion (cups and trays) and we’ve moved to ‘masks optional.’ I’m
grateful to <b>Kathy Roemisch</b>, our fearless altar guild director, for her flexibility
and patience as we fine tune the wine preparation process, etc. Our ushers and
acolytes have likewise been wonderfully receptive to small tweaks I’ve introduced
to streamline the process.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;">We’re singing again!
The return of the choir has been a wonderfully emotional gift.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Newcomers and visitors continue to
bless Holy Trinity’s doors. I can think of 7 folks, just from the last two weeks,
with our informal 8 month tally at something like <b>30 folks</b>. Fr. Keith plans
to introduce a welcome committee, to support and continue the work of greeters,
as well an Inquirers Class, in the fall.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ADULT
CHRISTIAN FORMATION</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Several
things that, in the last report, presented as ideas now wonderfully exist as community-wide
events. As you’re able, we’d love your participation and support:</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">June 19 Trinity River Trail Hike</span></u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">,
meeting at 10am at the Joppa Preserve. I’m especially grateful to <b>Bob Quimby
</b>for happily agreeing to help us spot native plant life along the walk! We’ll
additionally look at the history of the river, how it has shaped settlement,
and what all this means for loving our neighbors well.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">July 10 Bonton Farm Service Saturday</span></u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.
I’m still lining up details for this event, but it will be a Saturday morning
project (~9-12pm) in conjunction with their monthly Service Saturdays.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">First Sundays at Santa Natividad</span></u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.
I am organizing monthly trips of interested parishioners over the summer months,
for their 5am bilingual service. Remaining dates are July 4 and Aug 1.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Beginners Spanish brown bag lunches</span></u><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.
Began last Thursday! We’ll continue through Thursdays in June and July. Huge
thanks to <b>Zoe Holmes </b>for agreeing to teach (I think she kind of loves
it). Interest has been strong, she’s a wonderful teacher, and it’s bringing
people together from different corners of the parish.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">STAFF
DEVELOPMENT</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
staff gathers June 15 for our <u>½ day mini-retreat</u> looking ahead to the
fall. As Fr. Keith observed to me the other day, this is the first true fall I
have been in place to prepare for at Holy Trinity (I arrived mid-August in
2019, and 2020 was, well, 2020). Add to that that Lauren and Jordan both
arrived after me, the adjustments we have made as a staff around the
communications position, and this is the first true fall for this team.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As
many successes as we have to celebrate from this past year (and I believe there
are many!), the season ahead represents new opportunities for HTbtL. We
continue to grow in communication and connection, with each other and the
congregation, and to a person we can’t wait to see what God would show us, how
God would grow us, in the season ahead.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So
grateful, as always, for each of you and the body we are together. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Every
blessing, and God’s good peace.</span></p>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.5pt; border: none; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1pt;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Fr.
J<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRGU-b-wkI4YeuzilDbsW9-KTECScnpojCPTZmzMKCXYjekrXsQkgF9KgzT0ctsJtWqB0r9Ff7unkux4ihNw0bs7jyWFsN6uCNMJS_jlUL2SbhIesLQ_rN4wjkJljsAzlESXbcsM_G1dO/s242/sun.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXRGU-b-wkI4YeuzilDbsW9-KTECScnpojCPTZmzMKCXYjekrXsQkgF9KgzT0ctsJtWqB0r9Ff7unkux4ihNw0bs7jyWFsN6uCNMJS_jlUL2SbhIesLQ_rN4wjkJljsAzlESXbcsM_G1dO/s0/sun.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><p></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-50548313977193094982021-06-13T12:56:00.002-05:002021-06-13T14:23:22.262-05:00The Kingdom of God is Like - Being Surprised<p><i><a href="http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp6_RCL.html">The readings for this Sunday are here</a> (track 2).</i> </p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ac9d9841-7fff-b3a7-5e58-918e65a9acc7"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some years ago, a young man walked into the Episcopal student center I directed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And he might have walked in for any one of a million reasons. Maybe he finally saw the chalkboard sign I’d put on the sidewalk every one of the other 999 days he’d walked by without turning in. Maybe he’d finally seen our social media posts. Maybe a friend had caught his ear with an invitation and he listened. Maybe he had learned about our outreach projects and come to believe that a community known to its friends for love without strings might be able to make room in love for him, too. Maybe his class had been canceled. Maybe it was because I’d propped the front door open 130 degrees, and not only 105. Maybe he had to pee and we had a bathroom. Who knows why anybody does anything, really. So I asked him.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hey friend. What brings you in today? He looked at me nervously. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know, he said. I’ve walked by this place 1,000 times and never once thought about coming in. But today. I don’t know why I’m here. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Friend,” I said, slowly remembering Jesus' words about the imperceptible seed that precedes all of our efforts, “Do you need a place to pray?” He looked up at me, with visible relief on his face. Yes. That was it. Yes, he said. I would like that a lot.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he doesn't know how.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is not always easy to say we don’t know how. We’ve been taught to believe we should know how, we must know how, but believing we know how can sometimes blind us to the invisible thing that’s actually happening. Can cause us to lose sight of the One whose first action we are always attending. The young man came through the doors that day because God was calling him in the beautiful, patient, and relentless way God does.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My own first year of college, I found myself in a village called Taize, chaperoning a group of high schoolers from our church, on pilgrimage. Our group of twelve or so met up with two thousand others, mostly young adults, for the week we would share in rhythms of prayer and work together. One afternoon, a large group of us from a host of English speaking countries were talking with one of the brothers who lives in the religious community there. During a poorly structured Q and A, one of the teenagers cut to the chase, the elephant in the room so large we didn’t see it until he said it, but inevitable when you invite two thousand teenagers to hang out with a hundred religious brothers. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “I mean, really, no wife or kids. No real job. No future. It’s just. You don’t even own stuff, right? Weren’t your parents disappointed when you told them? I'm planning on being a doctor. I know how disappointed my parents would be if I just up and threw my life away.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The brother smiled a true smile that bore an absolute kindness and told us how, one day, he came upon the story Jesus told about a pearl of great price. I tiny thing that everyone else had missed. Of so much worth to the man who found it that he looked around and couldn’t believe his eyes, that no one else saw the treasure, too. So he went home, sold all that he had, and bought the field for the treasure it contained. I have found the pearl, the brother said simply.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed so small no one thinks to value it, because they do not see the life it will sustain. A moment so small as to be misjudged inconsequential. So they don’t value it for what it is, which is the source of all true value. But, no worry, this seed grows anyway, even while they are sleeping, apart from anything they do. It’s a humbling thought, that things we overlook or undervalue are often nearer the heart of God than the things we exchange them for. It’s a heart-holding thought - a heart-sustaining thought - that the mercy of God continues in this world and in our lives, regardless.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sometimes wear a tiny leaf around my neck to remember all these things about God’s kingdom. For me, it takes a visual reminder because my world is full of strong nudges and loud arguments in the opposite direction. Arguments like, “The bigger the better.” And “dress to impress.” “Make a big splash.” And, “If a thing goes well, it’s to my credit. It’s because I did the hard work and finally got the thing right.” And sometimes these things might be true. But these things are not as true as we often think. And, more importantly, says Jesus, these things are not what the kingdom of God is like.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kingdom of God, says Ezekiel, is the sprout from the stump that no one prepared for because it was the radical thing we did not see coming. The reality that lived on the other side of our hopes, so wild as to be just out of reach of even our prayers. The unexpected new life after the old life appeared to be felled. The kingdom of God is like being surprised.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So now there’s a tree from a mustard seed so small that Jesus has to remind them of their relation. A strong tree to join all the others in scripture, with room in its branches for birds, joining the tree in the garden of Eden, at the story’s beginning. Joining the timbers Noah used in obedience to his Lord to fashion the lifeboat of salvation, prefiguring - we are told - our baptism and the saving life found here. A tree to join the oaks under which Sarah and Abraham opened their hearts and their table to strangers from strange lands and later discovered that, opening their hearts to strangers, they had opened their hearts and their table to God. A tree to join the tree, in Revelation, growing on both banks of the river, the river whose streams make glad the city of God.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is a hard thing to receive, that we are not as good at identifying the things that make a moment meaningful, what makes a moment what it is, much less successful, as we would like to believe. A harder thing to accept that these ingrained habits of misidentification sometimes blind us to true things about God. The God who preferred the whisper and the quiet to the earthquake and fire. But once we do receive this, our eyes can be opened to grace such that striving finally surrenders to thanksgiving and the joy of the new life we did not predict.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground. And Christ is the seed on the ground. The One in whose branches we are learning to live. “Very truly,” he told them, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” We find this fruit at this table, and here at the cross, standing at the center of the scriptures' sacred trees. Behold, the wood of the cross, we pray, on which was hung the world’s salvation. To gaze on this cross, we are told - a cross, of all things - is to begin to be healed.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s radical how much unlearning this story, these trees, require of us. Like the bigger the better. Like dress to impress. But instead, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Still the seed, the treasure, we so often miss, is undeterred by our not seeing. Instead, the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. And his love now makes us one, that is, calls us into a church made of living stones, where we will be like him.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2nd century Christian apologist Justin Martyr describes the lives of those whose eyes are trained on Jesus in this way:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We who ourselves used to have pleasure in impure things now cling to chastity alone. We who dabbled in arts of magic now consecrate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God. We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand everything over to the treasury for all, and share it with everyone who has need. We who formerly cheated and murdered one another and did not even share our home with those who were different or from a different tribe, because of their customs, now, after Christ's appearance, live together and share the same table. Now we pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us unjustly so that they too may live in accordance with Christ's wonderful teachings, that they too might enter into the expectation.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That they might enter into the expectation. Because for too long we stood outside it. They, yes, but us, too. No matter, though, it grew. Look alive, and take heart. The kingdom of God has come near. And the kingdom of God is like being surprised. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amen.</span></p><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-28624113044500942872021-01-31T12:46:00.003-06:002021-01-31T12:46:47.754-06:00Associate Priest's Report, 2021 Annual Meeting<p><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here, O my
Lord, I see thee face to face;</span></i><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <span style="background: white;">here would I touch and handle things unseen; </span></span></i><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white;">here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace,</span>
<span style="background: white;">and all my weariness upon thee lean.</span></span></i></p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Horatius Bonar, hymn 318 in the Hymnal 1982<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Reflecting on the past
year brings this hymn to my heart. For starters, you and I have collected more
than enough weariness to lean upon God. So much to grieve. So much loss. So
much to carry. So much endless flexibility, adjusted plans, difficulty, and
surrendered control: individually, in our nuclear and extended families, our
friendships and social circles, and together as the Body of Christ in this
place. I am grateful for the hymnist’s giving us permission to admit to our
weariness in God’s presence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yet, just as surely, I find
myself wanting to say that this season has also been one of grasping “with
firmer hand eternal grace.” This year has witnessed so much generosity,
creativity, and compassion. This year has asked us to open our hearts to love
without condition, given and received, through the vulnerability it has asked
of us. This year has made the work of pretending difficult and so has asked us
to trust God to meet us in our need for God and one another. Time and again,
God has met us in the space of that living trust. When I reflect on this past
year, my heart both grieves and is full of gratitude.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic";">I am so grateful for and proud of the resilience I have seen
in our church. Very little of the last ten months is what we would have chosen.
And yet. The showing up with God’s help to each new day in trust and hope and
determination and expectation has been both inspiring and a witness to the God
we gather to praise. I have seen this living witness </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">across the gamut of our common life, in my
share in the weekly youth activities, and in each of Holy Trinity’s active ministries.
I’ll be focusing the remainder of this report, however, on the three main
area’s of the Associate’s responsibilities: a) coordination of worship, b)
adult Christian education, and c) staff meetings and development. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Worship<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Worship coordination is a
work of daily appreciation. So many folks, in ordinary years, offer their lives
and labor to make our common worship possible, but that much more so in a
season of pandemic. We have worshiped in no less than five separate formats
this year, with more painstaking considerations for each one than I have paper
to detail. I am so grateful for Fr. Keith’s decision making and overall
direction and guidance, always with the well-being of our parish family and
visitors to our community in mind. Amanda McCoy has been a miracle (and
tireless) worker as the director of recordings and in making all services
accessible and available online. Marilyn Ford has been a glue at every stage
and especially in preparing for the reintroduction of in-person worship. And I
don’t have words adequate for our many musicians, led by Lauren Murphy-Hale and
Dennis Kinzler, with Al Clark playing a tremendous and largely invisible support
role with sound editing, who have been amazingly creative, flexible, and
faithful as they help our parish family continue to make a joyful noise to God.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Additionally, the Altar
Guild, directed by Kathy Roemisch, has ably assisted the clergy through
countless changes and adjustments, with characteristic generosity and grace.
Greg Fox gave so much time installing the new camera equipment that helped make
the weekly livestreams possible. Grace Johnson and the acolytes. Zoe Holmes with
the readers. Terry Tunks and Matt McCoy with the ushers. Patsy Pratt and
Marilyn with the greeters. Sally Meek with the Vestry. And all of you who have
continued to serve in these respective ministries. Ken Bailey built HTbtL an
outdoor altar! Malinda Miller and Sharon Fullington shepherded our children and
a lot of joy at our outdoor Christmas pageant. Lauren Murphy-Hale and Marla
Quimby kept us singing at the manger beneath the star. Thank you. Bless you.
And God love you. We truly are the church together.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Adult
Christian Education<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll include at the end of
this report a summary of the Christian education offerings this past year,
which serves as a kind of time capsule looking back, especially after March,
but here I’ll simply name my appreciation for the adaptability of each one of
you. Few of us knew much about Zoom at the start of this year. Now several of
you are setting up and hosting your own meetings. Many of you are joining the
weekly and monthly offerings of the church. Our formats are different, but we
have navigated the changes in ways that allow us to keep the focus the same:
growing together into the likeness and full stature of Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the things you’ll
notice that the role of technology allowed us to do is involve speakers and
guests from a wider range of places and contexts. This is something we hope to
continue, even after the necessity of distanced programming subsides. This
year’s topics sought to be pastoral, encouraging, responsive to current events,
and conferring of dignity to the ministry of each person. Your life and
vocation matter to God! My prayer is that these opportunities have strengthened
each one’s sense of imagination, empowerment, and belonging for the good work
God has given us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I want to especially name
here the prayer group ministry that formed in response to the desire to grow in
relationship and connection, even at a social distance. Zoe Holmes worked with
Amanda McCoy to steer the ship out of harbor, with respect to logistics. Others
of you signed up to lead. Still others of you signed up to pray. A beautiful
embodiment of Holy Trinity’s commitment to seek the flourishing of our faith
community at a difficult time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Staff
Development<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Holy Trinity by the Lake
is blessed with a remarkable staff. It is both humbling and a tremendous pleasure
to seek out prompts and questions to open and guide our weekly reflection time
and frame our meetings together. It’s an honor (and a lot of fun) to work with each
of them. I admire and learn from them. And I thank God that life and this work
can mean our personal and professional friendships. Please join me in naming
appreciation for them as often as you think to.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Finally, I thank God for
the gift it is to walk the life of faith with you as your associate priest in
this place. I am glad for the opportunity to serve alongside my colleague and
friend, Fr. Keith, and to grow in holy friendship with each of you in community.
On a personal note, many of you know that this year’s weariness for me included
the death of my grandfather to COVID-19. I have been deeply touched by and
grateful for your many expressions of love and support, for me and my family,
as we remember, name our thanks, and grieve. I’m glad for the opportunity to
share our joys and sorrows, one with another, along this pilgrim way, and I’m
grateful for your heart for Jesus and the new kingdom to which he’s called us.
Thank God that he’s so called us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">May God continue to grow
our grasp of God’s eternal grace at Holy Trinity by the Lake, in ways that grow
our affections for each other, bless and serve those beyond these walls, and
ever and always give glory to God.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Every blessing, and God’s
good peace.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Fr. Jonathan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Christian Education Summaries<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Lenten Series:
Lent, Life, and Following Jesus.</span></b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Taking our lead from the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2020 Lent Book, we engaged a series exploring
creation care, looking especially at the work of ministries like Bonton and
Plainsong farms, the scriptures, and next steps available to individuals and
the church. This series was moved to an online setting midway, owing to the
pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Special Programs
in Response to the Pandemic<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 8: <b>Pray and Stay
Awake</b>. A conversation on prayer and the altar of repose with the Rev. M.
Randall Melton.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 15: <b>Formed in
Time and Space</b>: Reflecting on Christian Gathering, Worship, and the Spaces
We Inhabit. A conversation with the Rev. Dr. Daniel Cochran about how our
spaces shape us as God’s people and the ongoing nature of conversion and formation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 25: <b>At Home with
Holy Chaos</b>. Kate Byrd helped me collect stories from across the country –
including those of some of our members! – about how life was going and how
people of faith were finding ways to navigate their still new pandemic
circumstances. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 30: <b>Mental
Health, Musicians, and the Rest of Us.</b> A conversation about mental health,
first in music, then applied to pandemic circumstances with organist and licensed
therapist Lauren Murphy-Hale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">May: <b>Prayer Group
Training for Leaders</b>. It was such a gift to offer the orientation to these
leaders, whose ministry provided life-giving connection to our parish family in
an extremely difficult time. Some of you reported feeling closer to members of
your parish family than before the pandemic. Prayer group leaders stepped into
an unknown role at an important time, and I am so very grateful for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">June 17: <b>Solidarity and
Support in N. Minneapolis</b>: Following George Floyd’s death and subsequent
community responses across the country, a conversation with Steve Mullaney,
campus minister at the University of Minnesota, about solidarity understood
through the lens of baptism, mutual aid, changing models for emergency
assistance, and the needs of local neighborhoods there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Fall Programs<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">September: <b>Labor of
Love</b>, a behind the scenes and in-depth series of conversations with
ministry leaders from a full range of the church’s life, sharing stories of joy
and encounter with Jesus. A complementary piece to Fr. Keith’s <b>Love Thy
Neighbor</b> series in August.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">September: <b>Stop-Motion
and the Scripture</b>. A youth-oriented online series in which we explored the
stop-motion process and discussed the process involved in identifying the main elements
of a story and telling it through stop-motion. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">November 15: <b>Intergenerational
Online Talent Show</b>. A warmly supported opportunity to gather as much
talent, across all ages, as we could muster on Zoom. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Theology on
Tap</span></b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gathering the first Wednesday
of each month at 7pm (currently online):<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">February: Poetry Night! (Y’all were amazing.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March: Lent, Life, and Following Jesus (overlap
with Lenten series)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April: Lent, Life, and Following Jesus (overlap
with Lenten series)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">May: </span><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic";">Pain, Praise, & Pandemics</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic";">June: Racism
and Listening to Voices of the Black Community</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic";">July:
Covid, Connection, and the Enneagram (a summer pop-up series with Lauren
Murphy-Hale)</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">September: Human Dignity, Humility, and Joy<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">October: Learning to be with One Another:
Imitating the Life of Heaven (Sam Wells)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">November: Refusing to be Enemies (Daoud Nassar)
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">December: Do not be Afraid (Nadia Bolz Weber)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">January: Epiphany: Prayers in Pajamas!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sunday School</span></b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;"> (These were mostly 3 week series gathering at
9:30am on Sundays)</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Feb: The Way of Love (following Presiding
Bishop Michael Curry)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mar/Apr: 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversation<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sept: Living Faith: Faith’s Expression in Our
Every Day Lives<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Oct: Sing a New Song<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nov: The Book of Common Prayer (Confirmation
and Inquirers’ Class)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dec/Advent: Be Not Afraid: In Conjunction with
Illustrated Ministry<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Courier New";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">o<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jan: Crafts and New Creation: Exploring a
Theology of Making<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Holy Chaos<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">12-15 folks from HTbtL, on
average, joined the Rev. Kate Byrd and me for this monthly gathering oriented
at discerning God in (the sometimes messy) rhythms of ordinary life. Having
gathered at 12N on 3<sup>rd</sup> Wednesdays in 2020, this gathering looks to
take on a different format in 2021, with details TBA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br />
_____________<o:p></o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-44495789396919832962020-11-11T16:58:00.000-06:002020-11-11T16:58:40.975-06:002020-21 Annual License Renewal Letter<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Each year, just before Advent, I request the Bishop's renewal of my license to serve in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. These annual letters have become wonderful opportunities to step back and reflect, and I have made a practice of posting them here on the blog, as a small window into and review of a given year.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Peace,</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>J</i></span></p><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dear Bishop Sumner,</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I pray this email finds you well! I am writing to request licensing for the upcoming year, beginning in Advent. My form is attached, although I will readily admit that determining the number of Eucharists this year is still a work in progress for our church (what with hybrid online services, etc.). </span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By way of the less formal report, what a year to attempt to report! Additional duties of my position in pandemic have included beginning an interactive, online worship service, training up virtual small group leaders (these groups have been a remarkable gift to our community's life), and continuing to develop especially adult Christian formation opportunities, making lemonade out of lemons and bringing in as many outside (Zoom-able) voices as possible. In these and my other continuing responsibilities (assisting with youth, staff development, liturgical planning), I've developed an approach that I've tried to remember again each day: as quickly as possible, let go of what we cannot do in a pandemic (rather than feebly attempting to make sad replicas of things we've lost) and (also as soon as possible) look for the things that we either could not or would not do EXCEPT for the pandemic (the way our largely elderly small group leaders overcame reluctance to master Zoom still makes me emotional - we have relative newcomers reporting to us that initiatives like the small groups have them feeling MORE connected than they felt on track to feel after many months in church). </span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, there has been so much loss. Lives and jobs lost, to such an extent that admitting personal struggles strikes some people as overly self-centered. I have tried to discourage that way of thinking. Much of my staff development work has been to find new ways to hold space in meetings for the humanity of our staff, with the stresses of rising to new challenges always threatening to come at the expense of the individuals working tirelessly to do the work. It has been interesting to observe stages to the stress, and then to learn from experts across the country that there are normalize-able patterns many of our teams are sharing. For example, Form, Storm, Norm, Perform is a 4 stage dynamic that, upon discovering it, allowed our team to quickly locate ourselves in those stages across the past 8 months and, most importantly, discover that those processes did not mean we had done the thing wrong. Indeed, we could each feel a sense of accomplishment for having made that journey not just once, but in each of the important circles in our lives (work, family, friendships, etc.).</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Back a few months ago, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0887571RK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">a book for which I had been invited to contribute a chapter</a> was published. I had written it back before we moved, so it was a gift to be connected to a larger project and see it come, at long last, to fruition.</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At Holy Trinity, things are a lot like life - there's a lot of life and generosity, there's a lot of emotional strain and uncertainty. Much grace, and also weariness sufficient to prevent our forgetting for a second our need of said grace. Personally, navigating office life has proven a special challenge to protecting personal bubbles necessary to stay connected to my at-risk parents. I am so weary, on the human level, of having each day to either hold or not hold boundaries that will be perceived either way as a measure of my commitment to ministry. But on the more life-giving side, my father-in-law, a radiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, sent me an article a while back, <a href="https://careynieuwhof.com/were-all-start-ups-now/">We're All Start-Ups Now</a>, that helped me account for the unexpected energy that has attended these days for me: seven years in campus ministry was, for me, the ultimate start-up experience and to have the parish require those skills has opened beautiful and adventurous spaces. There will have been much in this season, when it is over, for which we will need to overcome our embarrassment at what will seem an inappropriate or scandalous suggestion, and thank God.</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But one day at a time. Thanks, as ever, for reading. And for your leadership of the Diocese of Dallas, especially in this season. </span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Peace,</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jonathan</span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br /></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-72030011514950370192020-11-10T09:31:00.005-06:002020-11-10T09:35:09.506-06:00Coffee Chat, Show Notes!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMXFz1ldy0GWOSskbaNdfg_a9NsSHt_lxqILGjqzN9XSZLia7ddGEE2vSFgGoZphiMEcT05hDJa7iiIX-FxIUwsijaeCnHVAdTNQ6U4NlihcVc9wfDISDJGcp5nIuy7dMoRfXz1L6qaf2k/s413/listening.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="285" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMXFz1ldy0GWOSskbaNdfg_a9NsSHt_lxqILGjqzN9XSZLia7ddGEE2vSFgGoZphiMEcT05hDJa7iiIX-FxIUwsijaeCnHVAdTNQ6U4NlihcVc9wfDISDJGcp5nIuy7dMoRfXz1L6qaf2k/s320/listening.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Fe11OlMiz8" width="560"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SBxpcGfznos" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div><p><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SBxpcGfznos" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5uUDvjiWrkh0qf1n5uBcPD"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Mike's Advent Spotify List!</span></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-12835067547366943762020-11-02T16:07:00.001-06:002020-11-02T16:07:07.903-06:00Sam Wells and "Being With"The presentation and questions for October's online Theology on Tap at Holy Trinity by the Lake. <div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w2Zci7KBXms" width="320" youtube-src-id="w2Zci7KBXms"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Questions for Discussion: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="A">
<li class="MsoNormal">With
whom does “being with” come most easily for you?<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">How
are being with, being for, working with, and working for distinct and/or
connected? Have you experienced one leading to another? What was that
like?<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Why is
it sometimes easier to help a person without spending time with them?<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">When
have you experienced relationship with a person you found challenging
transformed through spending time with them?<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">What
are your thoughts about Sam Wells’ observations that Jesus prioritized
being with and that being with is one way we imitate the life of heaven?<o:p></o:p></li>
</ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNNIXcirgqGWfLF-oqM8D3CNdaG1IezYjd5jcDv6fYD2z3W4rTSKUUa1wc6lNgEUSKUuSugU3VIcmH2e-cCfZGZOvsJgUsOS-gOVu7o3xg9HwVBaSWx5KXcrgJajqr7Ic2pdZVHv2gT4Q/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="291" data-original-width="2585" height="36" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGNNIXcirgqGWfLF-oqM8D3CNdaG1IezYjd5jcDv6fYD2z3W4rTSKUUa1wc6lNgEUSKUuSugU3VIcmH2e-cCfZGZOvsJgUsOS-gOVu7o3xg9HwVBaSWx5KXcrgJajqr7Ic2pdZVHv2gT4Q/" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-19767364185863140352020-07-27T20:08:00.001-05:002020-07-27T20:08:45.463-05:00Vacation in 2020I used to approach vacation as a celebration, an escape, a carrot on a stick to endure the hardest parts. Which is fine as far as it goes, but where it goes, inevitably, is to a dread or apprehension that will find you, confine you, about three days before returning. When the countdown to Relief resets to 365, give or take, and so you brace yourself all by yourself to hold again the longest breath.<div><br /></div><div>Without trying, this has changed for me. Which is to say vacation no longer names for me escape. And because it does no longer, vacation, yes vacation, now occupies a place much more like discipline in my life. And, yes, this names a privilege, to have work that one loves. And also an achievement: to learn to love my work on the emptiest of days has taken work of its own and all kinds of help; to learn and to trust that discomfort names a day of new possibilities unfurling.</div><div><br /></div><div>The only dread I fear now is that of failing my obligation to the work, with all the imagination, preparation, perseverance, and surrender that entails.</div><div><br /></div><div>So vacation comes and says, "Hey, put it down." </div><div><br /></div><div>And I think of it as practice for retirement. Or death. Was it Michael Jordan who said he could imagine himself dying, just not losing the ability and position to which he'd grown accustomed? Vacation, retirement, death, all of it defying my claims to be essential, to be operating in any other than the space of life that comes as gift.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, gracious God, and help me to receive it, and wear it well,</div><div><br /></div><div>this space of life,</div><div><br /></div><div>that comes </div><div><br /></div><div>as gift.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8NM1mYNzARBLk8QsbiWcPcjWjTBfqNH_iSJ5IVayIw-iNhaNlM96CQIH1qMfu_aJPJEJBBD085ibBA6JS4_OhLaKDD68hufjaRcYZk5xKiP86MrUezoffd_2etziUWDmiKiY6E_jGfl4/s2048/Photo+Jul+27%252C+5+05+23+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8NM1mYNzARBLk8QsbiWcPcjWjTBfqNH_iSJ5IVayIw-iNhaNlM96CQIH1qMfu_aJPJEJBBD085ibBA6JS4_OhLaKDD68hufjaRcYZk5xKiP86MrUezoffd_2etziUWDmiKiY6E_jGfl4/s320/Photo+Jul+27%252C+5+05+23+PM.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone is ready for her trip. 💗</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-16229039937446230652020-07-12T15:25:00.001-05:002020-07-12T15:34:03.397-05:00This Week's Links!<ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Tues and Thurs, 12pm: <b>COVID, Connection, and the Enneagram</b> with Lauren Stroh and Fr. Jonathan. <b style="color: #1155cc;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T50FKJBYRSeaOUUOM8vKwg&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNG32Iyg_UnPTrKY1L49SaVaWLt7kA" href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T50FKJBYRSeaOUUOM8vKwg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">REGISTER HERE!</a></b></li>
</ul>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Wed, 12pm: <b>Standing with One Another in the Messiness of Life</b> with the Rev. Kate Byrd and Fr. Jonathan.<b> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvduyoqD8sG9N5or9glrPLEkfFgPnDzkW4&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNGnENzmqJWIV0TKvnOWp-_3yd1C_g" href="https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvduyoqD8sG9N5or9glrPLEkfFgPnDzkW4" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">REGISTER HERE!</a></b></li>
</ul>
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<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Wed, 5:30pm: <b style="color: #1155cc;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89666241894&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNFqcr5dcoZykduKrKMYJMaTHxKiWA" href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89666241894" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Healing Prayers</a></b></li>
</ul>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Sunday, 10:30am: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82489147897&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNGt2GX2JzL1F9vJfAzV4EOpSkJMtA" href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82489147897" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><b>Holy Eucharist</b></a> </li>
</ul>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">Monday, 9am: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83089872290&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNH5G-Vy525iXQvXpDESz39rQP32FQ" href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83089872290" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><b>Coffee Chat with Fr. Jonathan</b></a> </li>
</ul>
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="margin-left: 15px;">This past <b><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://youtu.be/2v0vrXBo_z4&source=gmail&ust=1594671801140000&usg=AFQjCNHd2D2YSHf4Zg2h0OHKfaSh5osWiQ" href="https://youtu.be/2v0vrXBo_z4" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Sunday's sermon</a>: </b>An Unsettling Farmer & the Merciful Disappointment of Life (and Love) We Don't Control</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAxsrGLc49nOwupQ1_MSYV6dTwstrEhyphenhyphenyMi8_5WqmJodZg7BN6-abqZEmJ97gi4TTS6jnJrCzGymatuxSVkjBXfEm5B20DuBZkW1ZDlJtzQ98jk0whGJUjkIs01n-0s286l9eyldoWUxZt/s2048/35b01f01f3dd60741e80b18998e1c0d8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAxsrGLc49nOwupQ1_MSYV6dTwstrEhyphenhyphenyMi8_5WqmJodZg7BN6-abqZEmJ97gi4TTS6jnJrCzGymatuxSVkjBXfEm5B20DuBZkW1ZDlJtzQ98jk0whGJUjkIs01n-0s286l9eyldoWUxZt/s320/35b01f01f3dd60741e80b18998e1c0d8.jpg" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-1452094485100875082020-06-21T22:40:00.003-05:002020-06-21T22:40:56.860-05:00Following Jesus on a Path that Turns<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1mPLJ-EHGME" width="320" youtube-src-id="1mPLJ-EHGME"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d704e8ab-7fff-12f5-d33f-0e40f64c287f"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The earliest Christians were called followers of the Way. It’s the name Paul uses in the 22nd chapter of Acts to refer to the people he had formerly persecuted. The nickname finds roots in Jesus’s own claim about himself, when he says in John’s gospel, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” And these words in turn led St. Catherine of Sienna to famously say, “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the Way.” To simultaneously enjoy the presence of Jesus and yet still to be on the way, on the path, is the experience and situation of every Christian pilgrim.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">About this time last year, my friend Gary was walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, making a pilgrimage that covers most of Spain and often includes portions of France or Portugal along its five-hundred-plus mile route. The journey is at once fantastic and ordinary. Fantastic: in 2018 alone, over 327,000 pilgrims made the sacred trek. Ordinary: foot care, good socks and shoes (I am told) are among the secrets to completing the journey. Ordinary: one pilgrim wrote a book about his experience which he titled simply and profoundly, “The Way is Made By Walking.”</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are those strange people called Christians, and so we are followers of the Way. We are pilgrims on a path. We are the people who some days find it too fantastic, too much to take in, too spectacular, to have been made a part of the mystical Body of Christ, to have encountered grace and God’s mercy, the Good News of Christ like this. We are also all too familiar with the ordinary. That we are not beyond need of the encouragement and reminder to not neglect our socks. To take one step. And then another. To show up again and repeat. The Way is made by walking.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But of course it’s one thing to imagine a path and another to be on it. What had sounded straightforward at the ranger’s station becomes significantly less when the path and, say, the map disagree. Or the signpost shows signs of tampering. And what about the unexpected trail that’s not supposed to be there? Where did that come from? The map shows just the one route, but in what is coming just now as a major disappointment, several more possibilities present themselves?</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, for Christians called followers of the Way, perhaps most frighteningly of all, what happens when following the path of Jesus takes us off of and away from a central path we had been following all before and until the paths divided? Away from the familiar? Maybe we had assumed that the two paths simply ran parallel the whole way or that they were really just one road that went by several names. Until one day it happens. Where we had assumed a journey that would allow us to thoughtlessly continue without much in the way of critical choices or sacrificial options, the path of Jesus clearly invites us to take a turn that departs from the old way we had known. </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Evidently, to follow Jesus is to follow a path that will turn and take us away from the familiar, what we know, and into something new.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, as I’ve observed before, for most of us, it is not news that daughter and mother-in-law might experience conflict. What is news is that following Jesus might occasion the conflict. What is news, to listen to Jesus, is that conflict isn’t even a sign that we’re doing it wrong; but to be ready for conflict is to remember that following Jesus leads to an encounter with something wholly substantial. The living God makes claims on the lives of God’s people that are real, concrete, embodied, and true.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus proclaims Good News. News that is good. And goodness that is new. So the life of discipleship, of following Jesus, presents a necessary contrast to the life we knew before it. That is to say, it is a gift that asks us to empty our hands. When in your life have you taken a turn that took you away from what you had previously known in order to stay closer to Jesus?</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every Wednesday evening, from five to nine pm, Dominque opened her modest Minneapolis home for pasta night, an open dinner for anyone who would join her. No sign in the yard, only festive Christmas lights strung on the top of her chain linked fence out front. Some regulars she could count on to help with the hosting. And then, between 40 and 70 people, over the course of four hours. Some familiar to the regulars and some, like me, strange. Word of mouth, invitation, only. Friends and neighbors. Rich and poor. Black, white, and latino. Students and professionals. The just off work and the out of work. Single moms who relied on the community as a parenting reprieve. Families looking to breach the walls of their suburban fortresses. Six digit incomes and those without incomes. Laughing together. In enough languages to go around. Lots of pasta, of course (Dominque only rarely left her place by the stove top.) No beer or hard alcohol, which would have presented particular challenges whose battles with addictions had left scars on their bodies and their lives. The night I went as a guest of my friend Steve, a stranger eagerly invited me to try his homemade kombucha. The regulars never brought faith up at pasta night, but faith had started pasta night. And kept it alive in that community, through 3 different hosts (Dominique was the 2nd) over fifteen plus years. It was like a new family, each week expecting to discover lost kin. To attend, much less host, pasta night requires an intentional and sometimes anxious departure from familiar paths of socioeconomic status, individualism, predictability, and self-protections. Paths sometimes difficult to imagine leaving. That’s what makes the joy one encounters so beautiful. My friend Steve calls it the closest thing he’s experienced to the Kingdom of God.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anna was speaking one night at a gathering of three-hundred and fifty mostly undergraduate students, crammed in and hanging off the balcony at a church at UW-Madison. Seventeen campus ministries, including the one I served at, had organized the event together, simply to witness that God has taken a good many of us followers of Jesus on a turn that led us to a deeper awareness of sins of systemic racism, of which Christian churches have very often been complicit. A turn that occasioned repentance and the desire to listen and engage. And Anna stood up before everyone and said that, as a white woman, a student at UW-Madison, with a commitment to racial justice, she had been challenged by her Black friends to act on what she could not yet feel. She did not know what it felt like to have her criminality presumed. She could not imagine what it felt like to stare down statistics that could land a quarter of her family in an incarceration industry that felt designed for the purpose. She cared, but did not show up, did not prioritize, did not act, did not turn, until her friends asked her to prioritize the acting before the feeling, and trust the feeling to come along. She did, and it did. Jesus invited Anna on a path that turned off of the old one. With God’s help and good friends, she followed. And, in following, she found new life.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conflict names the turning. Jesus tells us, when we feel it, the conflict, not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid, he says, because you belong to God, and God will not lose no one who belongs to God. Don’t be afraid. But there are so many mostly good reasons to fear! What if I do lose something? What if I get lost on the way, that is, what if I lose myself? What if I mess it up? What if I embarrass myself or can’t find my place? Maybe it’s better to stick to what I know. The script with which I am familiar. The silence that keeps me safe. What if the status quo pushes back? What if I’m told I’m a sell out, a traitor, or worse? What if I do something wrong? What if I am wrong?</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want you to take these questions seriously, because I want you to take just as seriously the answer that Jesus speaks next. The answer that Jesus gives to his friends.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher...So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did you hear that? Three times Jesus tells them, “Don’t be afraid.” Christians find our fearlessness not in the assurance that we are up to the task or that it won’t cost us anything or that we know what comes next, but Christian find our fearlessness in the faithfulness of God’s love for us. Not because we’ll get it right, but exactly because we may get it wrong and still God’s love will blanket us. Even in such a moment, God’s love, God’s truth, defines us. The waters of baptism don't evaporate! And so we take the risk.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s that question again: when in your life have you taken a turn that took you away from what you had previously known in order to stay closer to Jesus?</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A young Roger Schuetz, years away from founding the ecumenical community of brothers called Taize, revolutionarily bridging age-old chasms between Catholics and Protestants, was simply imitating his grandmother’s example when, at the outset of World War II, he moved to that small town, on the edge of the fighting, to harbor and provide safe-haven for Jewish refugees. You can imagine the risk. After the war, once the Germans had lost, the refugees safe, Roger went back to his family. Except Roger did not go back to his family; instead he opened his home again, this time to escaped German prisoners of war. For Roger, trust in God’s love led him to seek out and stay in the place of risk-taking love for another his cumulative work, his track record, guaranteed to make sense to no one, except and only as measured by the mercy of the Kingdom of Jesus.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s an astonishing thing. An astonishing reversal. You can imagine that trusting God’s love as the most true thing about a person might easily have lead a person the other way entirely; it could have lead a person to use divine love as an excuse, a fallback, a safety net, isolation and permission to check out or neglect right relationship with God and/or one’s neighbors on the Way. Let someone else show up and do the hard and dirty work. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, after all. But instead, Paul invokes God’s love today, grace, as exactly the thing that makes it possible for us to show up, to enter uncomfortable space without fear. You are loved. You have nothing to lose! And so we can lose. We can put down all the rest. We can turn toward hard things, even things we don’t know how to fix. We can seek out hard conversations with each other and even strangers. Unthinkable for Americans, we can even be weak, which is to say, we can be our true selves. We can be opened. We can see God in each other. And on the days God is harder to see in some people, we can even love our enemies, just as, before we knew God, God first loved us. We can take the costly turn and follow.</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So St. Paul asks the Corinthians, and us, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” The conflict names the turning. Jesus tells us, when we feel it, not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid, he says, because you belong to God, and God will not lose any of those that belong to God. </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O my Child, do not be afraid. More is possible than we fear. Trust in God, and show up for the mess - even this COVID ridden, racial justice yearning moment, even the sometimes reduction of politics to formation in disdaining the other, a forgetfulness of our common identity as citizen and as children in the kingdom of God - all of this mess of humanity God is yet redeeming, determined to make beautiful. Take heart. Look alive. Child, you are loved. You belong to God! Trust in God, do not be afraid. God ain’t about to let slip even one of those beloved of and belonging to God. But neither would God deprive you of the abundant life, the good life, the beautiful life-that-is-life life, that takes - for each and every one of us and all of us together - some turns along the path to follow. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Sermon preached at Holy Trinity by the Lake Episcopal Church (virtual worship), June 21, 2020.</i></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-89461844061564921052020-06-17T21:34:00.003-05:002020-06-17T21:37:51.779-05:00Next Steps & Ways to Support N Mpls<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="414" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffrmelton%2Fvideos%2F10100377820877608&show_text=false&width=600&height=350&appId" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="600"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="helvetica">Hi friends!</font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div style="text-align: left;"><font face="helvetica">Big thanks to my good friend and former campus ministry neighbor Steve Mullaney for sitting down with parish leaders Julia and James Braaten and me today, to talk about solidarity and the shape of support for North Minneapolis. If you haven't already, I encourage you to watch the video! Among other things, we explore </font></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><font face="helvetica">solidarity through the waters of baptism, </font></li><li><font face="helvetica">Christian responsibility that understands the call to be present in local, national, and international ways, </font><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">beautiful and prophetic examples of beloved community in N. Minneapolis,</span></li><li><span style="font-family: helvetica;">the situation on the ground in N. Minneapolis, as well as the changing shape of front line support,</span></li><li><font face="helvetica">holistic, deferential, and relationship-based approaches for walking in and with communities.</font></li></ul><div><font face="helvetica">As promised, Steve has provided links below to the organizations doing good and trusted work in the North Minneapolis community. I'm excited both for these individual opportunities to pray for and financially support North Minneapolis <i>and </i>future conversations in community as we discern the new possibilities to which God might call us.</font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">Thank God for pasta nights. (Inside joke. Made open to you! Watch the video. haha)</font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">Peace,</font></div><div><font face="helvetica">Jonathan</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="helvetica">______________________________________________________________</font></div><div style="text-align: center;"><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><b>From Steve Mullaney: </b></font></div></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">Most up-to-date links below!</font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">I'd say that Bahai Center would be a Phase One response to folks in the neighborhood. Sanctuary Hotel is a Phase Two--help us get some breathing room--type response. And the KIPP School would be a Phase Three "this summer tutoring program" will help us bring healing through the season. And Phase Four is the folks asking the questions "How do we change law/policy/resources to create Beloved Community?" Nothing I can really point to yet--this is still emerging.</font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><font face="helvetica"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.organiconeness.com/donate.html&source=gmail&ust=1592527814333000&usg=AFQjCNHQt68hLc7VQeyybprVlHKzDJSGLQ" href="https://www.organiconeness.com/donate.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.organiconeness.<wbr></wbr>com/donate.html</a> <br /></font><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">To donate to the Baha'i Center's frontline response this is the place. You'd need to select the South Mpls option.</font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gofundme.com/f/sanctuaryhotel&source=gmail&ust=1592527814333000&usg=AFQjCNF4bBIO4kqdWJJ9rRTIkjkE-hx2kw" href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/sanctuaryhotel" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.gofundme.com/f/<wbr></wbr>sanctuaryhotel</a><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica"><br /></font></div><div><font face="helvetica">Minneapolis Sanctuary Movement. This is a loose-knit group of folks that's changed their name like 3 times in the last week.</font></div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-63196006897184542022020-06-11T22:13:00.001-05:002020-06-11T22:25:16.531-05:00Racism, Whiteness, & Good Social Media Conversations<h1 class="post-headline" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(216, 216, 216); box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; line-height: 1; margin: 20px 0px 11px; padding-bottom: 17px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;">"<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-bestseller-list-books-about-race-in-america-2020-6." style="line-height: 1;">The New York Times bestseller list this week is almost entirely comprised of books about race and white privilege in America</a>." </span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1;">This is surely good news, long overdue. But what if you're not a reader? Or what if you are looking for resources to engage while you're out on a run? Here are some social media resources that I really appreciate and from which I'm learning a lot (in addition to Instagram which has seen a remarkable groundswell of tremendous resources in the last few weeks). I discover new resources each day from friends like you. </span><u style="line-height: 1;">SO WHAT WOULD YOU ADD?</u> Where are you finding learning and life? Add one or a couple in the comments, and let's make a good list together.</span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;">Can "White" People Be Saved?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">The Rev. Dr. Willie J. Jennings</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">One of the theologians I've for a long time (since grad school) admired and from whom I learn daily, Jennings' observations about the importance of geography and land (place, <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 1; text-align: left;">à</span> la Wendell Berry) for conversations about race feels like the connecting of broken pieces that have long haunted me, but/and/also in a way that helps me see hope and new possibilities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">Also, he's as funny as he his insightful in these brilliant off the cuff remarks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1;"><b style="line-height: 1;"><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/espn/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones" style="line-height: 1;"><span style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;">'The Right Time' with Bomani Jones (podcast)</span></span></a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">I came to Bomani Jones through Dan LeBatard and Stugotz (whose radio show is a favorite guilty pleasure and, in its own right, a fantastic radio show/podcast). LeBatard trusts Jones as one who understands issues of race in this country better than most, and that's enough for me. I enjoy and learn from his honest conversations immensely.</span></span></div>
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<b style="line-height: 1;"><span style="font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;"><a href="https://lnns.co/PVI1YGC8UE0" style="line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;">'Sincerely, Lettie' with Lettie Shumate (podcast)</span></a></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">Instagram introduced me to Lettie Shumate a couple of days ago. Her podcast is patient, honest, and educating. Her arrangement of voices and history, and the gift of her own clear voice, is a gift to which I am regularly returning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-size: x-large; line-height: 1;"><a href="https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html" style="line-height: 1;">THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE</a></span></span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><em style="line-height: 1; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">From <a href="http://www.dismantlingracism.org/" style="color: rgb(141, 120, 36) !important; line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups</a>, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun</span></em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium; line-height: 1;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 1;">Like a crowbar for opening the door, toward <i style="line-height: 1;">beginning</i> to understand the deformed and distorted nature of the air we breathe.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-90825462300550195092020-06-07T14:48:00.002-05:002020-06-07T14:58:57.839-05:00God in Three Persons: Diversity, Unity, and the Movement of God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: medium;"><br />Happy, holy feast of the Holy Trinity! Our namesake. Our history. The namesake of our church and also the river that sustains life here in our part of northeast Texas. And, even more than that, the heart, gift, and mystery, the irreducible center, of the Christian faith. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God, in three persons, blessed Trinity. <br /><br />Trinity names the ‘in the beginning’ God of the first chapter of Genesis. God speaking, the Word God spoke creating, the Spirit hovering.’ Through whom all things were made. The ‘delivered them out of slavery in Egypt’ God. God again speaking, fiery pillar illuminating, showing the way, waters gushing from the rock to quench the people’s thirst. The ‘he went down to the river Jordan’ God, to be baptized in the river by John. The Voice again speaking, the dove now descending, hovering over the waters, 2nd Genesis, birthing new creation, the Son, submerged in those same waters, pledging every inch of who he is to every inch of us, to every inch of the mess and mud of our humanity. <br /><br />And Trinity names the ‘When it was evening on that day,’ God - you know, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” The Son appearing, glorifying the Father, breathing the Spirit, announcing forgiveness, Pentecost. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained. It’s only and always after Pentecost that the Church each year celebrates the day called Trinity, because now we’ve seen it all. The fullness of God revealed. God in Christ has held nothing back, but the Son makes clear God’s decision not to be, except to be the living God who is with and for us and the world. <br /><br />That’s why the scriptures today start creation and take us to the great commission. We are being enlisted. We are being called into the movement and love of the same One whose love first moved the sun and the stars.<br /><br />That movement is one of the things most striking in two of the earliest visual depictions of the Trinity. The first one you’ll recognize as the 4th century symbol that adorns the front and the side of our church. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: medium;"><br />The second is the one and only officially licensed non-symbolic image of the mystery called Trinity. It’s an icon that remembers the time Abraham and Sarah were visited by three strangers. In both, you’ll notice first of all the movement. Whether in the curve of the lines or the gaze of the eyes. Both images are complete and restless all at once. And with the visitors, you’ll notice that the fourth side of the table is left open. For you. This is what it means to say God in Christ has held nothing back, but Jesus makes clear God’s decision not to be, except to be the living God with and for us and the world. This is what it means to say we are being called into the movement and love, into the circle, of the One whose love first moved the sun and the stars. Impossibly, wonderfully, the picture of the Trinity has become a picture of our communion with God, where for each and every one of us there is room at the table.<br /><br />But if the scriptures today helpfully trace the movement of God - and the invitation of God to join in the movement - from creation to great commission, today’s readings also carry two common misunderstandings of what the movement of God is like that, if we do not name them, will make us clumsy dance partners of the Triune God at best and, at worst, will put us at odds with God’s movement in this world completely.<br /><br />The first misunderstanding comes with the command God gives humankind just after God creates them in the image of God. As we heard in Genesis:<br /><br />So God created humankind...in the image of God he created them...God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”<br /><br />The first misunderstanding arrives in the words subdue and have dominion. These words have been distorted for centuries to justify a militant posture of domination over the earth. So we relate to the earth with verbs like extracting. Exploiting. Consuming. Assuming that creation exists 1) as a thing of which I’m not a part, and 2) primarily if not solely for my benefit. But the original Hebrew language is not as confident about this one-way relationship, this me-first dynamic, between humans and the earth. Hebrew Scripture scholar (and fellow Episcopalian) Ellen Davis suggests that a perhaps more faithful translation is serve and preserve. If this is the case, it would certainly suggest a different sort of movement. One grounded in humility and the fruit of the Spirit: gentleness, patience, long-suffering, self-control. Generosity, and love. Fill the earth, serve and preserve it.<br /><br />But suppose you don’t find the translation compelling. Dominion and domination it is! Then I would suggest considering the words of Jesus to his disciples on the day they picked a fight about which one should be the regarded as the best: Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” <br /><br />So even if we settle for dominion, Christians cannot imagine any dominion other than that which follows the shape and the steps of our crucified Savior. The one who, in his dying for us, revealed himself to be our Lord and king. <br /><br />So this is the first misunderstanding, that the movement of God could ever mean exploitation or violence toward creation, toward the earth, toward those that God has made. And the second misunderstanding is like unto it. The great commission of Matthew’s gospel “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” has too frequently been understood as the mandate for something like a colonial conquest. “Go, make the others more like you! Go, give them what you have. Fix them. Complete what is missing in them with your wisdom, abundance, and wealth.” So Christians have sometimes or often times participated in patterns of conformity enforced or extracted by violence and power over others until the only access the others had to public spaces, if they were granted any at all, came at the expense of the heart of their identity, their dignity. This distortion mirrors the experience of the people of Israel, exiled in Babylon; it is a distortion that has been known and felt across the globe in centuries ever since, and it is a particularly evil version of this distortion that so many African American sisters and brothers are grieving, alongside so much else, following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Amaud Arbery, names added to lists whose pages span centuries, the distortion against which they and so many others are presently railing, if society and its members will resist natural instincts toward defensiveness and instead find ears to hear them. <br /><br />So does all this leave the Christian wanting to be faithful? Wanting to live the great commission? Wanting to live in, to dance with, the movement of God?<br /><br />As we listen to the voices of the dispossessed, and as we contemplate the mystery of the Trinity itself, we find a hope and new possibility. Remember, way back in Genesis, the tower of Babel? The people only spoke one language, and they made goals for themselves that depending on insisting that the just one language never change. So Babel represented an imagination of building toward God through sameness, uniformity, empire and oppression, where participation took the shape of silence or sacrifices offered on the altar of the status quo. But then God scattered their languages, so that they could not understand each other. God rejected an ambition that would insist on the absence of difference, diversity, and the dignity peculiar to each one. Life lived only through the lens of the powerful. So, last week, when the day of Pentecost arrived, Babel was not only reversed, as in, they could all understand again, more profoundly the sin of socially subsidized sameness was undone. They all understood, but each in their own language! Just like at Babel, pre divine interference, but this time no one was asked to surrender their voice. Their heritage. The unique image of God imprinted on their hearts. They all understood, each in her own language. As the Spirit is poured out on all people, God’s mission, God’s movement is revealed to be more generous than our hearts.<br /><br />And it is with this Spirit that God gives us the invitation to go, make disciples. As Willie Jennings puts it, "not just to make conquered Christians," but to truly and deeply make ourselves Christians in a space that would mean that...we ourselves would be changed (see Jennings' fabulous Theological Commentary on Acts).<br /><br />It’s Peter, being sent out to Cornelius, going to an unclean Gentile, discovering the impartiality of God. It’s Paul, a Jew’s Jew become an ambassador for the wideness of God’s mercy. It’s Annanias, sent to Paul, discovering that a murderous past does not insulate another human being from becoming the location of the redemption of God.<br /><br />Go to the others. True, they need you, but/and/also go because you do not know and cannot yet see your need of them, what God will show you there. Wherever Christians go, we know God goes before us, and it is for our mutual blessing, in expectation of our own continued conversion, that Christians engage the great commission.<br /><br />So I think we need a third and final picture of the movement of God, and what it might mean to share in it.<br /><br />The third picture is a beautiful and ancient form of Japanese art, kintsugi. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: medium;">In kintsugi, broken bowls and vessels are reassembled. But unlike the way I was taught to put together broken dishes as a kid (not that I ever broke any), with super glue and attention to hiding the cracks, kintsugi sees the cracks as occasions for beauty. Mixing gold dust in the mortar, brokenness is highlighted, mended bowls and vessels are imagined to be more beautiful than those that have not yet had the occasion to become transformed into art; those bowls still convinced that the best way to be a bowl is to never admit weakness or break, so who must live in silence and fear. <br /><br />But we are different from bowls condemned to live in fear or silence, pretending our purity from a safe place on a shelf. We trust Christ with us, come hell or high water, even to the end of the age. So Christians are those daily discovering invitations to go, make disciples, who know that our weakness is no reason to decline and that our brokenness, our systemic sins, our wounds, name opportunities, are exactly prime locations for the mending, for the glory of God, God’s strength made known in our weakness. This story and this movement, after all, it’s not our own. It is the story and the movement of the One whose Table we enjoy through the delight and mercy of God:<br /><br />God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919739073150068939.post-40550291700159487972020-06-03T23:01:00.005-05:002020-06-08T14:13:06.305-05:00Theology on Tap: Racism and Listening to Voices from the Black Community<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We opened and closed our time with this Litany for Those Who Aren't Ready for Healing...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Litany for Those Who Aren't Ready for Healing" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
by Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce</span><br />
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Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness
of the injury & the depth of the wound.<br />
Let us not rush to offer a bandaid, when the gaping wound requires surgery & complete
reconstruction.<br />
Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular
pain
being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical
moment.<br />
Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations &
restoration, or how we can repair the breach & how we can restore the
loss.<br />
<br />
Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s
child…someone’s beloved son.<br />
Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects
while human lives hang in the balance.<br />
Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice.<br />
Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, & the pain
that is life in community together.<br />
Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn
asunder.<br />
Instead…<br />
⠀ <br />
Let us mourn black & brown men & women, those killed extra judicially
every 28 hours.<br />
Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor
just.<br />
Let us call for the mourning men & the wailing women, those willing to rend
their garments of privilege & ease, & sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin.<br />
Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say.<br />
Let us be humble & listen to the pain, rage, & grief pouring from the
lips of our neighbors & friends.<br />
⠀ <br />
Let us decrease, so that our brothers & sisters who live on the underside
of history may increase.<br />
⠀ <br />
Let us pray with our eyes open & our feet firmly planted on the
ground.<br />
Let us listen to the shattering glass & let us smell the purifying fires,
for it is the language of the unheard.<br />
⠀<br />
God, in your mercy…⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />
Show me my own complicity in injustice.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />
Convict me for my indifference.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />
Forgive me when I have remained silent.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />
Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />
Never let me grow accustomed or acclimated to unrighteousness.<br />
[By Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, Director of the Center for Black Church Studies
& Associate Professor of Religion & Literature at Princeton Theological
Seminary.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Presiding Bishop Michael Curry</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bryan Stevenson, Author, Just Mercy</span></div>
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<br /><iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u51_pzax4M0/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u51_pzax4M0?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">Reconstructing the Gospel, with </a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">(video available via link)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">Bill Moyers interview with </a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">Michelle Alexander</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/259701691" target="_blank">(video via link - starting at 30:50)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michelle Alexander, Author, The New Jim Crow</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Questions for Conversation</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What did you hear?<br />
What’s Staying with you?<br />
What images from scripture emerged?<br />
What from our faith prompts you to make this conversation (and action) a
priority? What scares you?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Litany for Those Who Aren't Ready for Healing" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury & the depth of the wound.<br />Let us not rush to offer a bandaid, when the gaping wound requires surgery & complete reconstruction.<br />Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular pain being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical moment.<br />Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations & restoration, or how we can repair the breach & how we can restore the loss.<br /><br />Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s child…someone’s beloved son.<br />Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects while human lives hang in the balance.<br />Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice.<br />Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, & the pain that is life in community together.<br />Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn asunder.<br />Instead…<br />⠀<br />Let us mourn black & brown men & women, those killed extra judicially every 28 hours.<br />Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just.<br />Let us call for the mourning men & the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege & ease, & sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin.<br />Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say.<br />Let us be humble & listen to the pain, rage, & grief pouring from the lips of our neighbors & friends.<br />⠀<br />Let us decrease, so that our brothers & sisters who live on the underside of history may increase.<br />⠀<br />Let us pray with our eyes open & our feet firmly planted on the ground.<br />Let us listen to the shattering glass & let us smell the purifying fires, for it is the language of the unheard.<br />⠀<br />God, in your mercy…⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />Show me my own complicity in injustice.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />Convict me for my indifference.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />Forgive me when I have remained silent.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.⠀⠀⠀⠀<br />Never let me grow accustomed or acclimated to unrighteousness.<br />[By Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, Director of the Center for Black Church Studies & Associate Professor of Religion & Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0