The afternoon of Christmas Eve our family was getting ready to head downtown for the 5:30 Christmas Pageant at First United Methodist. While some of the children in the pageant work hard to memorize lines, and the adult leaders have the young people amazingly well prepared, the whole thing is a rather chaotic, wild, rich, swirling, beautiful mess. (Which happens to draw hundreds of people...so that the sanctuary is, year after year, nearly full.)
As we were getting ready we asked four year old Ella and two year old Olivia if they wanted to be angels in the pageant. Olivia, who is a cute little brown-eyed thing, said, "No, I want to be a dragon."
Many of us have been reading stories for years about children wanting to play their own roles in Christmas pageants. Someone told me that a girl in the last year or two here at First wanted to be a dog at the manger! They had advertised roles as sheep, donkeys, cattle, wisemen, etc. but this young woman wanted to be a dog.
Livy said, "I want to be a dragon." It is hard to see this little girl as a dragon. She sure looks more like an angel to Grandpa but there must be a dragon in there wanting to get out!
The cool thing is that when we got to the church, where adults were helping children into costumes, Nicole heard that Olivia wanted to be a dragon and she smiled. She said, "Sure, she can be a dragon. Let's see what we can find..."
I like the idea that God welcomes not only donkeys, cattle, and sheep at the manger...but also dragons. Luke would have understood, I think. Luke makes a point of telling us that the first visitors to the manger were shepherds. And shepherds were considered dirty, ritually unclean, impulsive, and untrustworthy. There were, I once said in a sermon, the first century's version of traveling carnival workers.
We have a God who is big enough to make a place at the manger for dragons. Wild things. Untamed creatures. Who set fields and trees on fire when they sneeze. Whose appearance is unsettling...and whose scales are rough. But who, in their eyes, have the light of God's kingdom.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Change Agent?
One of my seminary professors (who happens to be a rather prolific author) is fond of saying that one of the most amazing things about Jesus is his expectation that people can change. It is really rather stunning to see him speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well, whose life is a series of failed relationships, speaking as if a new kind of life for her is within reach. Jesus goes to the home of a tax collector, breaks bread, and somehow the man whose life has been built on greed becomes a giver.
People had this way of changing when Jesus got involved in their lives. When people hung out with Jesus, when they had him over for a meal, when they asked questions of him and listened, and when they stood on a hill outside Jerusalem and watched him die, they changed. Not all of them. But many of them.
It's stunning to see this. Especially in a world where we are told, as children, that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" or "a leopard can't change its spots."
So this evening, as we tip-toe up to the start of a new year, I am thinking of change. How exciting the prospect of change may be for those of us who are stuck in lifeless, frustrating, soul-numbing, broken places.
Perhaps it is possible not only for people to change but for nations. And for churches. Which is a good thing...because while there is beauty and grace in most churches the truth is that many congregations are turned inward. Not only are too many churches focused on being a provider of religious services that will please constituents but the church has too often fallen silent in the face of injustice and profound human need.
Change is never easy. Change rarely comes quickly. But with God there is the possibility of change...new life. Jesus says if we take his love and truth into our lives (he talks about himself as bread that brings life to those who receive it) then we can live in new, eternal, free, right ways.
Remember that tonight (or today...or whenever you read this), okay? The Carpenter shows up and leopards change their spots, old dogs learn new tricks, tax collectors start giving money away to make things right, and a Samaritan woman stops trying to fill the hole in her heart with one more boyfriend.
People had this way of changing when Jesus got involved in their lives. When people hung out with Jesus, when they had him over for a meal, when they asked questions of him and listened, and when they stood on a hill outside Jerusalem and watched him die, they changed. Not all of them. But many of them.
It's stunning to see this. Especially in a world where we are told, as children, that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" or "a leopard can't change its spots."
So this evening, as we tip-toe up to the start of a new year, I am thinking of change. How exciting the prospect of change may be for those of us who are stuck in lifeless, frustrating, soul-numbing, broken places.
Perhaps it is possible not only for people to change but for nations. And for churches. Which is a good thing...because while there is beauty and grace in most churches the truth is that many congregations are turned inward. Not only are too many churches focused on being a provider of religious services that will please constituents but the church has too often fallen silent in the face of injustice and profound human need.
Change is never easy. Change rarely comes quickly. But with God there is the possibility of change...new life. Jesus says if we take his love and truth into our lives (he talks about himself as bread that brings life to those who receive it) then we can live in new, eternal, free, right ways.
Remember that tonight (or today...or whenever you read this), okay? The Carpenter shows up and leopards change their spots, old dogs learn new tricks, tax collectors start giving money away to make things right, and a Samaritan woman stops trying to fill the hole in her heart with one more boyfriend.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
You Never Stop Missing.
Just over a week ago I took a road trip north to the lake country of Indiana. Our extended family has a lake cottage at Webster in Kosciousko County and Sharon's folks live on Koontz Lake in Marshall County.
On a ferociously hot Thursday afternoon I climbed in the Miata, kept the top up and the AC, and headed north. Just north of Indianapolis I stopped for fast food and put the top down. Turned off the AC. And listened to songs like "In the Still of the Night" and Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love."
As the air began to cool and the sun disappeared, I found myself thinking of my brother Eric. We were about two years apart in age. Close as two peas in a pod. Thick as thieves. You get the picture. We'd begin most days by strapping on our pretend six-shooters. (These were the days when Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were cowboy heroes to most young boys across the United States.)
On his 5th birthday Eric was being taken to the Hershey chocolate factory on an outing. The road was wet. The car slid. In those days before seatbelts and airbags his head tapped the dashboard and he was killed.
I heard, as my Dad drove me home from school, that Eric had been killed.
I've never gotten over his loss. The hole in my heart has never entirely healed.
So as I was driving north through Grant County, where he is buried in the Jefferson Township Cemetery, I found myself crying. Not heavily. Not enough to make it difficult to drive. But my eyes were wet. My heart ached. My world, you know, has never felt the same since that accident...since I lost him.
There has been a lot of talk lately about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' "stages of death" (shock, denial, anger, etc.). People are now saying the stages she identifies make it look like some process you go through and then you are finished. You get a little certificate and then go on.
The truth is the work is never done. You never stop missing.
The Bible says the Lord is near to the broken-hearted. I find that a promise that keeps me going down the road...headed north.
On a ferociously hot Thursday afternoon I climbed in the Miata, kept the top up and the AC, and headed north. Just north of Indianapolis I stopped for fast food and put the top down. Turned off the AC. And listened to songs like "In the Still of the Night" and Jerry Butler's "For Your Precious Love."
As the air began to cool and the sun disappeared, I found myself thinking of my brother Eric. We were about two years apart in age. Close as two peas in a pod. Thick as thieves. You get the picture. We'd begin most days by strapping on our pretend six-shooters. (These were the days when Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were cowboy heroes to most young boys across the United States.)
On his 5th birthday Eric was being taken to the Hershey chocolate factory on an outing. The road was wet. The car slid. In those days before seatbelts and airbags his head tapped the dashboard and he was killed.
I heard, as my Dad drove me home from school, that Eric had been killed.
I've never gotten over his loss. The hole in my heart has never entirely healed.
So as I was driving north through Grant County, where he is buried in the Jefferson Township Cemetery, I found myself crying. Not heavily. Not enough to make it difficult to drive. But my eyes were wet. My heart ached. My world, you know, has never felt the same since that accident...since I lost him.
There has been a lot of talk lately about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' "stages of death" (shock, denial, anger, etc.). People are now saying the stages she identifies make it look like some process you go through and then you are finished. You get a little certificate and then go on.
The truth is the work is never done. You never stop missing.
The Bible says the Lord is near to the broken-hearted. I find that a promise that keeps me going down the road...headed north.
Some Things Were Better.
Last week I headed north on Thursday afternoon. The family was gathering at Lake Webster in Kosciousko County, where our extended family has a cottage, and then at Koontz Lake in Marshall County (where Sharon's folks live).
It was a fiercely hot day. I drove with the top up on the Miata and the AC running into I got to Carmel/Fishers. Then, I stopped to pick up some fast food, put the top down, cranked up the stereo to play some favorite 1950's and 1960's "doo wop."
The fields were full of corn and soybeans. The sun dropped low. I drove through small towns whose names weren't all that familiar. You see I have never really done much driving up the east side of Indiana on highways like 13 and 37.
A couple of things happened to me as I drove north. The one thing I want to mention in this blog entry is the awareness that in some ways -some ways- life was better 25 and 50 years ago.
I thought of that as I drove through the small town of Point Isabel. Like many small towns I suspect it had more life before big box stores showed up in the county seat and pulled business out of those small, independent stores. Then, I noticed just north of town an abandoned, three story brick schoolhouse. There was fencing around it to keep troublemakers out. But the building was still standing...the closing evidence of the wave of school consolidations across the midwest back in the 1960's and 1970's. People said children would get a better education if they went to a school of 600 instead of a high school of 150 or 200. People said students would have better curriculum, advanced placement classes, and so on. In many ways that is true. No doubt about it.
But something has been lost. All across the midwest students were going to small schools where the teachers knew them and they knew the teachers. Out of those small schools came business leaders and astronauts and physicians and successful farmers and teachers. They may not have had the opportunity to take advanced placement calculus or beginning Chinese but those small schools, in those small communities, were often places where students were known, given a place to grow up, and allowed to be. You didn't need to be an athletic superstar to play varsity basketball or volleyball the way you need to be to play at a school of 1-2,000. You didn't need to have a extraordinary voice to sing a solo in the high school's annual musical or the Spring concert.
It is ironic, now, to hear people talking about the ideal size of schools. It is ironic to hear educators talking about reducing the size of schools so that students don't get lost and the staff know them well enough to coach them...in life.
So the music on stereo is up loud. Some group whose name I can't recall is singing "Since I Don't Have You." The sun is hiding behind the rows of corn to my left as I head north. The brick schoolhouse is left behind. And I realize that in some ways things were better in the past. Does that mean I have been overcome by nostalgia or am a dinosaur? Or is it possible we've left some good things behind as we keep trying to catch the next "new thing?"
It was a fiercely hot day. I drove with the top up on the Miata and the AC running into I got to Carmel/Fishers. Then, I stopped to pick up some fast food, put the top down, cranked up the stereo to play some favorite 1950's and 1960's "doo wop."
The fields were full of corn and soybeans. The sun dropped low. I drove through small towns whose names weren't all that familiar. You see I have never really done much driving up the east side of Indiana on highways like 13 and 37.
A couple of things happened to me as I drove north. The one thing I want to mention in this blog entry is the awareness that in some ways -some ways- life was better 25 and 50 years ago.
I thought of that as I drove through the small town of Point Isabel. Like many small towns I suspect it had more life before big box stores showed up in the county seat and pulled business out of those small, independent stores. Then, I noticed just north of town an abandoned, three story brick schoolhouse. There was fencing around it to keep troublemakers out. But the building was still standing...the closing evidence of the wave of school consolidations across the midwest back in the 1960's and 1970's. People said children would get a better education if they went to a school of 600 instead of a high school of 150 or 200. People said students would have better curriculum, advanced placement classes, and so on. In many ways that is true. No doubt about it.
But something has been lost. All across the midwest students were going to small schools where the teachers knew them and they knew the teachers. Out of those small schools came business leaders and astronauts and physicians and successful farmers and teachers. They may not have had the opportunity to take advanced placement calculus or beginning Chinese but those small schools, in those small communities, were often places where students were known, given a place to grow up, and allowed to be. You didn't need to be an athletic superstar to play varsity basketball or volleyball the way you need to be to play at a school of 1-2,000. You didn't need to have a extraordinary voice to sing a solo in the high school's annual musical or the Spring concert.
It is ironic, now, to hear people talking about the ideal size of schools. It is ironic to hear educators talking about reducing the size of schools so that students don't get lost and the staff know them well enough to coach them...in life.
So the music on stereo is up loud. Some group whose name I can't recall is singing "Since I Don't Have You." The sun is hiding behind the rows of corn to my left as I head north. The brick schoolhouse is left behind. And I realize that in some ways things were better in the past. Does that mean I have been overcome by nostalgia or am a dinosaur? Or is it possible we've left some good things behind as we keep trying to catch the next "new thing?"
Killing Applause.
Whatever you may think of the opinions of the politicans who stood on the stage at the recent GOP presidential debate, it was stunning to hear the audience break into applause at the mention that more than 234 persons have been executed in the state of Texas during Governor Rick Perry's tenure. An audience of soccer moms and suburban middle class folks (a good many of who, I presume, attend church most weekends) cheered the killing of 234 persons? Really?
Study after study shows serious problems with the way that the death penalty is carried out. Cases of mistaken identity are not that unusual (which led the State of Illinois to halt executions), and there is evidence that some innocent persons have been put to death. Studies show the penalty is applied disproportionately so that minorities are more likely to receive this most extreme of all penalties. Some who should know also say that capital punishment does not serve as a significant deterent to violent crime. Finally, the cost of applying the death penalty -when you factor in legal appeals that often go on for years- can exceed the expense of putting an individual in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
Oh, there is one more thing: it seems impossible to me for a Christian to cheer the death penalty while claiming to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus said we are to turn the other cheek when struck. Jesus told his disciple to put down the sword. And Paul encourages us to overcome evil with good.
Truth is I believe Christians are called to be pro-life. For me that means opposing the death penalty and opposing abortion in most cases. It also means supporting government policies that will enrich the lives of children and encourage a republic where there is life, liberty and the opportunity to pursue happiness.
Long ago Baptist preacher Will Campbell, who has been friend of the Black Panthers and served as a chaplain to the KKK down south, was asked to go on public tv to debate the death penalty. Will listened to a proponent of capital punishment make a lengthy opening statement, and then Will simply said, "I think it's tacky."
I don't know what it says about us that a washed up, well dressed room full of middle class and upper income types cheer the death of 234 individuals. Maybe it says we are afraid. Maybe it says we have somehow lost the connection between our political views and our souls. The next time Christians are tempted to cheer the killing of men and women they might want to open the New Testament, hang out with Jesus, and listen for the voice of the Galilean.
Study after study shows serious problems with the way that the death penalty is carried out. Cases of mistaken identity are not that unusual (which led the State of Illinois to halt executions), and there is evidence that some innocent persons have been put to death. Studies show the penalty is applied disproportionately so that minorities are more likely to receive this most extreme of all penalties. Some who should know also say that capital punishment does not serve as a significant deterent to violent crime. Finally, the cost of applying the death penalty -when you factor in legal appeals that often go on for years- can exceed the expense of putting an individual in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
Oh, there is one more thing: it seems impossible to me for a Christian to cheer the death penalty while claiming to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus said we are to turn the other cheek when struck. Jesus told his disciple to put down the sword. And Paul encourages us to overcome evil with good.
Truth is I believe Christians are called to be pro-life. For me that means opposing the death penalty and opposing abortion in most cases. It also means supporting government policies that will enrich the lives of children and encourage a republic where there is life, liberty and the opportunity to pursue happiness.
Long ago Baptist preacher Will Campbell, who has been friend of the Black Panthers and served as a chaplain to the KKK down south, was asked to go on public tv to debate the death penalty. Will listened to a proponent of capital punishment make a lengthy opening statement, and then Will simply said, "I think it's tacky."
I don't know what it says about us that a washed up, well dressed room full of middle class and upper income types cheer the death of 234 individuals. Maybe it says we are afraid. Maybe it says we have somehow lost the connection between our political views and our souls. The next time Christians are tempted to cheer the killing of men and women they might want to open the New Testament, hang out with Jesus, and listen for the voice of the Galilean.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Gifts We Give One Another in a College Town.
Bloomington has been busy this week. Folks down here call it "Move In Day." It used to be the single day when IU students descended on the campus and town. Now their arrival is spread out over several days. You can feel the town -especially along Kirkwood- coming alive during the days of late August. Every day there are more students on the streets and in the stores. There is a kind of "buzz."
Even spread out the return of the students fills the streets and slows down traffic. Getting from east to west (or vice versa) in Bloomington is almost impossible. People from other towns of 80,000 would never believe this and residents of New York City will laugh but our world down here feels like a "mini New York."
I've seen a lot of parents looking weary. Getting your son or daughter's things up to a room on the fifth floor of a dorm, or squeezed into an apartment, and doing the hard work (I know...sometimes it is blessed relief for all concerned!) of saying goodbye to your college student, is hard work.
As I navigated my way through traffic around College Mall today, I realized there are two things these two population groups -students and townspeople- need from one another. First, college students need to be welcomed. I don't mean just because they and their families pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy each school year. They need to know we are glad they are here. They need to know we are glad to share our streets and sidewalks and neighborhoods. They need to know we are praying for them.
College students need to give full time residents of Bloomington a different gift: respect. When I was here as a student I heard some of my classmates refer to townspeople in patronizing or negative ways. Students often, by the way they drove their cars or talked in restaurants or mistreated their apartments and dorm rooms, communicated a "we're better than you and we'll use all of this the way we want to use it." There are a few who act spoiled and have a demanding attitude. (Maybe it isn't an act!) People here are great people, many of them work hard at the university or local businesses, and they deserve the respect of the students. It would be super cool (a phrase a red-headed friend in Elkhart often uses) if students came to IU committed to leaving the place (the town...the campus...their apartments) better than they found it.
"Live responsibly," Paul says in Romans 13 (The Message). Live that way not just to avoid punishment but also because it's the right way to live.
Classes start on Monday. Bloomington is humming. Here we go. Let's take good care of one another, okay?
Even spread out the return of the students fills the streets and slows down traffic. Getting from east to west (or vice versa) in Bloomington is almost impossible. People from other towns of 80,000 would never believe this and residents of New York City will laugh but our world down here feels like a "mini New York."
I've seen a lot of parents looking weary. Getting your son or daughter's things up to a room on the fifth floor of a dorm, or squeezed into an apartment, and doing the hard work (I know...sometimes it is blessed relief for all concerned!) of saying goodbye to your college student, is hard work.
As I navigated my way through traffic around College Mall today, I realized there are two things these two population groups -students and townspeople- need from one another. First, college students need to be welcomed. I don't mean just because they and their families pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy each school year. They need to know we are glad they are here. They need to know we are glad to share our streets and sidewalks and neighborhoods. They need to know we are praying for them.
College students need to give full time residents of Bloomington a different gift: respect. When I was here as a student I heard some of my classmates refer to townspeople in patronizing or negative ways. Students often, by the way they drove their cars or talked in restaurants or mistreated their apartments and dorm rooms, communicated a "we're better than you and we'll use all of this the way we want to use it." There are a few who act spoiled and have a demanding attitude. (Maybe it isn't an act!) People here are great people, many of them work hard at the university or local businesses, and they deserve the respect of the students. It would be super cool (a phrase a red-headed friend in Elkhart often uses) if students came to IU committed to leaving the place (the town...the campus...their apartments) better than they found it.
"Live responsibly," Paul says in Romans 13 (The Message). Live that way not just to avoid punishment but also because it's the right way to live.
Classes start on Monday. Bloomington is humming. Here we go. Let's take good care of one another, okay?
Love Means Showing Up.
When you're young you don't fully understand the gift of showing up. (Or at least I didn't.) We're invited to a wedding, or a graduation party, or we know someone who has lost a person they love, and we don't think it is that big of a deal if we show up -or not. They'll barely notice you stuck there in the middle of the crowd, right?
As our boys graduated from high school I noticed what it meant to us when people showed up. People drove a couple of hours, people carved out a good part of a day, and they showed up when Bryan, Nathan and Michael graduated. We noticed. It meant something. Somewhere down deep inside we felt the reality of friendship's blessing. We also, on the other hand, noticed good friends who didn't show up. Most of them had good reasons but some just hadn't learned that love means showing up.
I thought of this today as I drove north to Lebanon, Indiana for the funeral service of a colleague. David Patrick was a 46 year old United Methodist pastor who did great work mentoring young pastors and served on the Board of Ordained Ministry with me. I didn't know him well. He had served most of his ministry in the "old" South Indiana Conference, and I have always hovered around the Michigan state line. Until we came to Bloomington I had never served a congregation south of #30! So we didn't know one another all that well but David was a brother.
When you are a United Methodist pastor you are a part of something we call "the connection." As I write that it almost sounds mysterious. Or threatening (like the word is a synonym for organized crime!). Whether you like it or not, whether your theology or ministry style or political ideas match those of the pastor serving down the road in a nearby United Methodist Church, you not only belong to Christ but you belong to one another.
So I drove north on this beautiful morning with the top on the Miata down, the music of the Rolling Stones and then Joshua Bell playing on the stereo, with a cup of coffee in my hand. I sat in the back of a packed sanctuary. The family will never know I was there. I believe David noticed. I believe that love means showing up if there is anyway to do that.
Paul, in Romans 12, says if we are in Christ we are a part of one body. The apostle says love is to be genuine (not faked...not a going-through-the-motions type of love). He summarizes the commandments and then finally says love does no wrong to a neighbor (13:10) and that, in fact, love is "fulfilling of the law." In verse 15 he encourages us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Love means showing up (if there is anyway to do that).
As our boys graduated from high school I noticed what it meant to us when people showed up. People drove a couple of hours, people carved out a good part of a day, and they showed up when Bryan, Nathan and Michael graduated. We noticed. It meant something. Somewhere down deep inside we felt the reality of friendship's blessing. We also, on the other hand, noticed good friends who didn't show up. Most of them had good reasons but some just hadn't learned that love means showing up.
I thought of this today as I drove north to Lebanon, Indiana for the funeral service of a colleague. David Patrick was a 46 year old United Methodist pastor who did great work mentoring young pastors and served on the Board of Ordained Ministry with me. I didn't know him well. He had served most of his ministry in the "old" South Indiana Conference, and I have always hovered around the Michigan state line. Until we came to Bloomington I had never served a congregation south of #30! So we didn't know one another all that well but David was a brother.
When you are a United Methodist pastor you are a part of something we call "the connection." As I write that it almost sounds mysterious. Or threatening (like the word is a synonym for organized crime!). Whether you like it or not, whether your theology or ministry style or political ideas match those of the pastor serving down the road in a nearby United Methodist Church, you not only belong to Christ but you belong to one another.
So I drove north on this beautiful morning with the top on the Miata down, the music of the Rolling Stones and then Joshua Bell playing on the stereo, with a cup of coffee in my hand. I sat in the back of a packed sanctuary. The family will never know I was there. I believe David noticed. I believe that love means showing up if there is anyway to do that.
Paul, in Romans 12, says if we are in Christ we are a part of one body. The apostle says love is to be genuine (not faked...not a going-through-the-motions type of love). He summarizes the commandments and then finally says love does no wrong to a neighbor (13:10) and that, in fact, love is "fulfilling of the law." In verse 15 he encourages us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Love means showing up (if there is anyway to do that).
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Little Lights.
I've traded a place on a beautiful river for a spot in a condo development. This is a good place. Surprisingly quiet...which is in sharp contrast to the student apartments four or five blocks up the hill and down. Things are a bit more lively there!
One of the unexpected treasures of this place -there are almost always unexpected treasures wherever we are- is the fact that Fenbrook has no street lights for about one quarter of a mile. Fenbrook is the east-west road that our street "t's" into forty yards from our house. Walk down the sloping street we live on and you hit Fenbrook. You turn right and follow the sidewalk and, at night, the world is surprisingly dark.
There is a large yard behind a house to the right, just past a small woods, and there are often three or four deer in there. When they see you they look up and stare at you as if to say, "Who do you think you are staring at us?" If you stop you can hear the frogs down in a nearby pond. They sound like basses with an attitude. If you lean back, on a night like tonight, the stars seem close enough to touch. The darkness of the street allows them to shine.
The really cool thing about late June is that the woods, along the creek that runs along the south side of the street, are full of lightning bugs. (Are they the same as fireflies?) So in the woods there are these flashes of light going off and on. The pattern seems random. I remember reading that the bugs light up as some kind of way of attracting a mate. So the words, you might say, are full of love. Wondering if lightning bugs have speed-dating opportunities?
The dark of the woods seems as solid as mahogany. Impenetrable. Then, the little lights flash on and off...here and there...high in the trees and then down low to the ground. It makes me smile. And, after I stand there for awhile, it causes me to say, "There is a God."
Only God would put together a universe where something so silly, so delightful, so absolutely unnecessary, as lightning bugs would -at 11:27 at night- light up the woods along the creek.
Psalm 8 says that the heavens declare the majesty of God. There is something to be said for little lights.
One of the unexpected treasures of this place -there are almost always unexpected treasures wherever we are- is the fact that Fenbrook has no street lights for about one quarter of a mile. Fenbrook is the east-west road that our street "t's" into forty yards from our house. Walk down the sloping street we live on and you hit Fenbrook. You turn right and follow the sidewalk and, at night, the world is surprisingly dark.
There is a large yard behind a house to the right, just past a small woods, and there are often three or four deer in there. When they see you they look up and stare at you as if to say, "Who do you think you are staring at us?" If you stop you can hear the frogs down in a nearby pond. They sound like basses with an attitude. If you lean back, on a night like tonight, the stars seem close enough to touch. The darkness of the street allows them to shine.
The really cool thing about late June is that the woods, along the creek that runs along the south side of the street, are full of lightning bugs. (Are they the same as fireflies?) So in the woods there are these flashes of light going off and on. The pattern seems random. I remember reading that the bugs light up as some kind of way of attracting a mate. So the words, you might say, are full of love. Wondering if lightning bugs have speed-dating opportunities?
The dark of the woods seems as solid as mahogany. Impenetrable. Then, the little lights flash on and off...here and there...high in the trees and then down low to the ground. It makes me smile. And, after I stand there for awhile, it causes me to say, "There is a God."
Only God would put together a universe where something so silly, so delightful, so absolutely unnecessary, as lightning bugs would -at 11:27 at night- light up the woods along the creek.
Psalm 8 says that the heavens declare the majesty of God. There is something to be said for little lights.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
The Sad Heart Says the Journey is Worth It
Every day I am in Bloomington I see evidence that God has me in the right place. Confirmation of the rightness of this setting for ministry is all around me.
And yet, at the same time, the advent of summer has meant the onset of a pretty deep level of grief. There are a variety of factors to that, I think. A bit further down the road from old friends is certainly a part of it. Another part of it has been discovery, the reality, that I can't throw my gear in the back of the Miata and be at either Koontz Lake or Lake Webster in an hour to water ski. We could bounce over and back during the week and on the weekends. Whether or not I was preaching. So the summer confirms the fact that something has changed.
A colleague and fellow pastor named Paulwatched me go through a pretty profound greiving process when I left New Haven, and he told me he didn't think -and I agreed with him- I could survive another "uprooting." I know that is pretty dramatic language. And I know we all go through levels of grief as we pick up and move to the land the Lord is giving us. I suppose in some ways I "attach" too strongly to people and a place. Maybe a product of being a wandering Aramean as a child. Only a few of us have picked up and moved after a pastoral tenure of 14+ years (actually close to 20) so maybe the length multiplies the level of dis-location.
There's not a thing anyone needs to do or say about all of this. And the quiet sadness of the grief doesn't mean for a minute that I am anything but delighted to be in this place and with the blessed people of The Open Door/First UMC.
I thought, though, I would share two things I read in Christian Century while at the Y today. Carol Zaleski talks about the impact Virgil's Aenid had on C.S. Lewis. The Roman epic shaped his understanding of vocation. Aeneas obeys his calling and in Lewis' translation he says he is being led far over "alien foam." He says, "The mind remains unshaken while the vain tears fall." He speaks of Trojan women caught "Twixt miserable longing for the present land/And the far realms that call them by the fates' command."
In a conversation with Tolkien Lewis talked about the adult work of vocation. It's helpful for me to look at the journey as an opportunity to grow up, to grow deeper into Christ, and to understand that sometimes we are "men with a vocation, men on whom a burden is laid."
Dorothy L. Sayers, after reading the Aenid, said, "The effect is one of immense costliness of a vocation combined with a complete conviction that it is worth it.." Zaleski observes that Lewis understood "the poetry of vocation."
Whatever I am feeling is nothing compared to the challenges and tests in the lives of others. It pales to nothing when compared to the challenges before our friend, Stan Buck, or the losses endured by those living in Alabama, the Sudan, or Syria. But I thought it might be something I could share with friends.
In her book The Long Goodbye: A Memoir, Meghan O'Rourke talks about going through her mother's losing battle with cancer. She writes this: "I kept thinking, 'I just want somewhere to put my grief.' I was imaging a vessel for it: a long, shallow, wooden bowl, irregularly shaped. I had the sense that if I could chant, or rend my clothes...I Could, in effect, create that vessle in the world." But there was no ritual and she says "without ritual, the only way to share a loss was to talk about it."
God is good. I am so blessed. The work Jesus has for me among these blessed people is joy. After worship or a conversation or a meeting I sometimes almost dance down the hall! And, yet, there is always the heart.
The sad heart says the journey is worth it! Maybe you understand.
And yet, at the same time, the advent of summer has meant the onset of a pretty deep level of grief. There are a variety of factors to that, I think. A bit further down the road from old friends is certainly a part of it. Another part of it has been discovery, the reality, that I can't throw my gear in the back of the Miata and be at either Koontz Lake or Lake Webster in an hour to water ski. We could bounce over and back during the week and on the weekends. Whether or not I was preaching. So the summer confirms the fact that something has changed.
A colleague and fellow pastor named Paulwatched me go through a pretty profound greiving process when I left New Haven, and he told me he didn't think -and I agreed with him- I could survive another "uprooting." I know that is pretty dramatic language. And I know we all go through levels of grief as we pick up and move to the land the Lord is giving us. I suppose in some ways I "attach" too strongly to people and a place. Maybe a product of being a wandering Aramean as a child. Only a few of us have picked up and moved after a pastoral tenure of 14+ years (actually close to 20) so maybe the length multiplies the level of dis-location.
There's not a thing anyone needs to do or say about all of this. And the quiet sadness of the grief doesn't mean for a minute that I am anything but delighted to be in this place and with the blessed people of The Open Door/First UMC.
I thought, though, I would share two things I read in Christian Century while at the Y today. Carol Zaleski talks about the impact Virgil's Aenid had on C.S. Lewis. The Roman epic shaped his understanding of vocation. Aeneas obeys his calling and in Lewis' translation he says he is being led far over "alien foam." He says, "The mind remains unshaken while the vain tears fall." He speaks of Trojan women caught "Twixt miserable longing for the present land/And the far realms that call them by the fates' command."
In a conversation with Tolkien Lewis talked about the adult work of vocation. It's helpful for me to look at the journey as an opportunity to grow up, to grow deeper into Christ, and to understand that sometimes we are "men with a vocation, men on whom a burden is laid."
Dorothy L. Sayers, after reading the Aenid, said, "The effect is one of immense costliness of a vocation combined with a complete conviction that it is worth it.." Zaleski observes that Lewis understood "the poetry of vocation."
Whatever I am feeling is nothing compared to the challenges and tests in the lives of others. It pales to nothing when compared to the challenges before our friend, Stan Buck, or the losses endured by those living in Alabama, the Sudan, or Syria. But I thought it might be something I could share with friends.
In her book The Long Goodbye: A Memoir, Meghan O'Rourke talks about going through her mother's losing battle with cancer. She writes this: "I kept thinking, 'I just want somewhere to put my grief.' I was imaging a vessel for it: a long, shallow, wooden bowl, irregularly shaped. I had the sense that if I could chant, or rend my clothes...I Could, in effect, create that vessle in the world." But there was no ritual and she says "without ritual, the only way to share a loss was to talk about it."
God is good. I am so blessed. The work Jesus has for me among these blessed people is joy. After worship or a conversation or a meeting I sometimes almost dance down the hall! And, yet, there is always the heart.
The sad heart says the journey is worth it! Maybe you understand.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
A Wedding on the Beach.
Yesterday afternoon we stood on Cinnamon Beach here on St John, US Virgin Islands, as our son Nathan married Westra Bea Miller. This really wasn't a "destination wedding" since Westra grew up here.
The weather was just perfect. Slightly overcast with a breeze...which is just what you want at this time of year down here.
Westra was stunning...she is an extraordinary young woman. Bright as a whip and beautiful with a good heart. She was walked down the beach by her brother. Nathan was waiting for her in a pair of khaki slacks and a white, open-necked, dress shirt.
I was asked to say a "few words." Although couples rarely ever remember a thing a preacher says at their wedding I gave it my best shot! I read from 1st Corinthians 13. The translation of the Bible in the hotel room was King James so the language was a bit foreign to the thirty or so folks gathered on the beach. People heard, though, what the apostle Paul had to say about love being patient and kind, not keeping a record of the wrong but rejoicing in the right.
Several days before the wedding I had sent Westra and Nathan an email asking them to tell me, in a few sentences, what it was about the other that they most treasured. Their responses were both beautiful and honest...celebrating a very special kind of love and grace they have found together. So I read their words...and we all got quiet. Leaned in. Listened in. And realized we were in the presence of a very special kind of love.
I had all sorts of thoughts and feelings as I stood there on the beach, for the ceremony, and as I joined the party at the Ocean Grill in Mongoose Junction.
First, there was this deep gladness at watching our three sons be together. Bryan took the pictures. Michael helped the party happen. It was good watching them "hang" together. It was a joy watching the delight in the eyes of Michael and Bryan as they watched their brother get married.
Second, it is amazing how love links families people. People who were strangers to me before this weekend have now become a part of our lives...our family. I stood on a beach at a barbecue for friends of Westra and Nathan this weekend and looked around me with amazement...my family has grown in unexpected and delightful ways. Love brings us together...we end up making the journey together and it is all rather amazing.
Third, I realize how precious and powerful the love between young lovers is. It really is an extraordinary, breathless, miracle. The journey we call marriage is about finding some way -prayer, conversations in the evening before turning out the light, taking time to play- to keep that passionate, yearning, aching, delighted kind of love alive. Love changes over time. That is just the way it is. But too often we allow the exuberant love of youth to get lost along the way. So the marriage miracle is about holding onto the delight he had when we first found one another.
Fourth, for marriage to flourish we also not only need to hold onto the joy of our first love but also be open to new lessons along the way. To be open to the possibility that love may become a bit more quiet along the way but it also may deepen and mature in extraordinary ways.
Genesis tells us God created the first person and that person had it all. They did not, however, have a partner. God saw that wasn't good. So God made the second person. We may not all be married but we all need someone in our life who can be a partner...a dear friend...a brother or sister in the journey.
I am blessed...my face has been made bright by the sun and my heart is full.
The weather was just perfect. Slightly overcast with a breeze...which is just what you want at this time of year down here.
Westra was stunning...she is an extraordinary young woman. Bright as a whip and beautiful with a good heart. She was walked down the beach by her brother. Nathan was waiting for her in a pair of khaki slacks and a white, open-necked, dress shirt.
I was asked to say a "few words." Although couples rarely ever remember a thing a preacher says at their wedding I gave it my best shot! I read from 1st Corinthians 13. The translation of the Bible in the hotel room was King James so the language was a bit foreign to the thirty or so folks gathered on the beach. People heard, though, what the apostle Paul had to say about love being patient and kind, not keeping a record of the wrong but rejoicing in the right.
Several days before the wedding I had sent Westra and Nathan an email asking them to tell me, in a few sentences, what it was about the other that they most treasured. Their responses were both beautiful and honest...celebrating a very special kind of love and grace they have found together. So I read their words...and we all got quiet. Leaned in. Listened in. And realized we were in the presence of a very special kind of love.
I had all sorts of thoughts and feelings as I stood there on the beach, for the ceremony, and as I joined the party at the Ocean Grill in Mongoose Junction.
First, there was this deep gladness at watching our three sons be together. Bryan took the pictures. Michael helped the party happen. It was good watching them "hang" together. It was a joy watching the delight in the eyes of Michael and Bryan as they watched their brother get married.
Second, it is amazing how love links families people. People who were strangers to me before this weekend have now become a part of our lives...our family. I stood on a beach at a barbecue for friends of Westra and Nathan this weekend and looked around me with amazement...my family has grown in unexpected and delightful ways. Love brings us together...we end up making the journey together and it is all rather amazing.
Third, I realize how precious and powerful the love between young lovers is. It really is an extraordinary, breathless, miracle. The journey we call marriage is about finding some way -prayer, conversations in the evening before turning out the light, taking time to play- to keep that passionate, yearning, aching, delighted kind of love alive. Love changes over time. That is just the way it is. But too often we allow the exuberant love of youth to get lost along the way. So the marriage miracle is about holding onto the delight he had when we first found one another.
Fourth, for marriage to flourish we also not only need to hold onto the joy of our first love but also be open to new lessons along the way. To be open to the possibility that love may become a bit more quiet along the way but it also may deepen and mature in extraordinary ways.
Genesis tells us God created the first person and that person had it all. They did not, however, have a partner. God saw that wasn't good. So God made the second person. We may not all be married but we all need someone in our life who can be a partner...a dear friend...a brother or sister in the journey.
I am blessed...my face has been made bright by the sun and my heart is full.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
A Short Pilgrimmage on Mother's Day Weekend.
Friday afternoon we headed north to Walkerton. Walkerton is located in the southwestern corner of St. Joseph County in northern Indiana. It's where Sharon and I both graduated from high school.
We went that way to join about 80 others in a surprise birthday party for Sharon's younger sister, Linda. The air got chilly as people partied out in a large garage on a farm between Plymouth and Walkerton. Kids played games. A fire was burning in a fire pit out near the fields. A slice of the moon appeared despite occasional clouds. It was good.
This morning I spent some time chatting with my in-laws, and then I made a solo trip to South Bend to visit my Mom's grave. Her body is buried across from the University Park Mall on the north side of South Bend. Knowing how much our Mom enjoyed "retail therapy" we all thought the setting was just right.
I stopped at a nearby store and bought one,red rose to place on her grave.
In the past I have had to search to find her grave but this time I walked right to it. I placed the red rose across the grave marker that lies flat against the grass. A marker that says "United Methodist Missionary" was half-covered so I spent some time cleaning it all off.
What do you do when you stand at the grave of someone you love? You try to pull up some memories, some mental pictures, but you discover that is too much. You can't do a life justice in a few minutes like that. I looked up at nearby trees full of spring life, and I realized how death cannot quiet the music released by a life well lived. My Mom had her share of the craziness that marks every human life, but when God gave her to the world it was a good day...a special gift. She brought joy and music and faith and passion to us. She could be distracted. Overly involved in the church. She drank diet pop and loved Twinkies. She was a gift. Death cannot silence the blessings she gave away.
I stood there looking up at the traffic passing by. I studied a nearby tree. Then, I turned away. With a heart more full of gratitude than loss.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
We went that way to join about 80 others in a surprise birthday party for Sharon's younger sister, Linda. The air got chilly as people partied out in a large garage on a farm between Plymouth and Walkerton. Kids played games. A fire was burning in a fire pit out near the fields. A slice of the moon appeared despite occasional clouds. It was good.
This morning I spent some time chatting with my in-laws, and then I made a solo trip to South Bend to visit my Mom's grave. Her body is buried across from the University Park Mall on the north side of South Bend. Knowing how much our Mom enjoyed "retail therapy" we all thought the setting was just right.
I stopped at a nearby store and bought one,red rose to place on her grave.
In the past I have had to search to find her grave but this time I walked right to it. I placed the red rose across the grave marker that lies flat against the grass. A marker that says "United Methodist Missionary" was half-covered so I spent some time cleaning it all off.
What do you do when you stand at the grave of someone you love? You try to pull up some memories, some mental pictures, but you discover that is too much. You can't do a life justice in a few minutes like that. I looked up at nearby trees full of spring life, and I realized how death cannot quiet the music released by a life well lived. My Mom had her share of the craziness that marks every human life, but when God gave her to the world it was a good day...a special gift. She brought joy and music and faith and passion to us. She could be distracted. Overly involved in the church. She drank diet pop and loved Twinkies. She was a gift. Death cannot silence the blessings she gave away.
I stood there looking up at the traffic passing by. I studied a nearby tree. Then, I turned away. With a heart more full of gratitude than loss.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
Healing Power of the Road.
I've had friends going through deep water. Each of them seemed to be headed down the road to visit a family member who was ill or they were packing for a new chapter. I sent several notes and said "May the road give you healing mercy."
I know Jesus is the source of all healing. I know blacktop and gravel can't lay hands on us and put together the pieces that are broken. However, there is something about the road that can offer healing mercy. The road can be a place where we discover the reality of loneliness: that's true. It can also be a place of healing.
There have been frantic, exhausted times in my life and I have set off down the highway with a Diet Coke, a stack of CD's, and a gym bag packed with clothes for a day or two. Something has happened to my heart and soul as I've driven along. I've followed the road as it rhymes it's way up and down the gentle hills of southern Indiana, I've listened to the hum of the tires on the blacktop, and something about being on the road calms me...heals me.
Music is often a companion. I'll sample different channels on XM. Early rock and roll, anthems by Queen, jazz, Springsteen all work together to do something good about the broken, tired places in me. Then, though, I turn the CD player off. I unplug the iPod. I shut down the radio. And the only music I hear is the music of the wind rushing past the half-opened window or the hiss of the tires on wet pavement. There is, I have discovered, a special melody that only the sounds of the road can provide.
There is that Irish blessing that says "may the road rise up to meet you." I don't know how exactly a road can "rise up" to meet us but maybe it involves some kind of healing power.
I know Jesus is the source of all healing. I know blacktop and gravel can't lay hands on us and put together the pieces that are broken. However, there is something about the road that can offer healing mercy. The road can be a place where we discover the reality of loneliness: that's true. It can also be a place of healing.
There have been frantic, exhausted times in my life and I have set off down the highway with a Diet Coke, a stack of CD's, and a gym bag packed with clothes for a day or two. Something has happened to my heart and soul as I've driven along. I've followed the road as it rhymes it's way up and down the gentle hills of southern Indiana, I've listened to the hum of the tires on the blacktop, and something about being on the road calms me...heals me.
Music is often a companion. I'll sample different channels on XM. Early rock and roll, anthems by Queen, jazz, Springsteen all work together to do something good about the broken, tired places in me. Then, though, I turn the CD player off. I unplug the iPod. I shut down the radio. And the only music I hear is the music of the wind rushing past the half-opened window or the hiss of the tires on wet pavement. There is, I have discovered, a special melody that only the sounds of the road can provide.
There is that Irish blessing that says "may the road rise up to meet you." I don't know how exactly a road can "rise up" to meet us but maybe it involves some kind of healing power.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Bin Laden: Sometimes Love is Tough.
The news from Pakistan about the killing of Osama bin Laden has elicited cheers from around our country. That's understandable. Bin Laden and others like him have been driven by a blind conviction that the world would be better off with one particular kind of fundamentalist Islam in control of all things big and small. Their willingness to take the lives of innocent people in the pursuit of their political and religious goals was unrestrained.
A friend sent me the following quote from Mark Twain: "I've never wished a man dead but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Mark Twain
As a follower of Jesus I have struggled for a long time with the question about the appropriateness of war/violence as a means of solving problems. Jesus, after all, says (Matthew 5), "Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously."
Early Christians caused a scandal when they refused to serve in the army of the Roman Empire. Many Jesus followers were, from the beginning, pacifists. A great many Christians -including the sizable Amish and Mennonite populations in northern Indiana- continue to renounce violence in all situations.
I am not a pacifist. I believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Period. There is no "but" coming. I believe the world would be a much better place if we "bombed" nations like Iraq with things like food, blankets, and medical supplies. I believe living generously, practicing compassion with those who distrust us and wish us ill, will get us further down the road to a better world than resorting to violence. I am deeply concerned by our continuing high level of spending on weaponary. If we are not careful we are going to end up as a hollow empire with unlivable cities, failing schools, inadequate healthcare, and a state-of-the-art military machine. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned America against the temptation to build our national agenda around the "military industrial complex."
And yet. And yet...we live in a world that is imperfect. We live in a world where there are very dangerous people who want to hurt the innocent. Every now and then there is a kind of evil loose in the world that must be confronted. Not to oppose this kind of implacable evil is to become a partner to the destruction caused by that evil.
I suppose the issue that "tipped" me in support of the "just war" side that of the Christian community (which claims there are times when military force may be our last, best option) was the Holocaust. As a teenager I came face to face with the reality of the deliberate efforts of National Socialism in the Germany of the 1930-40's to exterminate the Jews. Historians say that more than six million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and others were killed by the Nazis and their helpers in such nations as France, Russia and Poland. I did my best to imagine how a non-violent response, on the part of Christians in Europe and around the world, might have stopped Hitler and his plan. I finally came to the conclusion that this evil would have been prevented if France, Poland, Belgium, and other nations had militarily confronted Nazi Germany as it began its expansion.
Sometimes what you get when you seek to satisfy the demands of a little bully is a bigger bully. I learned that on the playground.
Reinhold Niebuhr, a pastor during the middle years of the last century, broke with other Christian leaders who were insisting that we stay out of the conflict against the Axis Powers. Niebuhr said that love sometimes means you do all you can to maximize justice in the world.
One Christian writer says there are two sides to love: one is soft (grace, acceptance) and the other is hard (accountability, discipline).
We live in a broken, imperfect world where there is too much injustice and where there are some very, very dangerous people who intend to harm the innocent. I am thankful that Osama bin Laden will not be able to create any more destruction in the world. His removal was, I believe, necessary. I do not feel joy at his death but a weary kind of relief.
Before I end these thoughts I need to say how deeply grateful I am for men and women who do heroic things to confront evil. The team that went deep into Pakistan and took a great risk and was extraordinarily brave, bright, and gifted. What they did was amazing.
I still yearn for the day when, as the song says, we aren't going to study war "no more." I yearn for the day when, as the prophet says, we will beat our swords into plowshares.
A friend sent me the following quote from Mark Twain: "I've never wished a man dead but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Mark Twain
As a follower of Jesus I have struggled for a long time with the question about the appropriateness of war/violence as a means of solving problems. Jesus, after all, says (Matthew 5), "Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously."
Early Christians caused a scandal when they refused to serve in the army of the Roman Empire. Many Jesus followers were, from the beginning, pacifists. A great many Christians -including the sizable Amish and Mennonite populations in northern Indiana- continue to renounce violence in all situations.
I am not a pacifist. I believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Period. There is no "but" coming. I believe the world would be a much better place if we "bombed" nations like Iraq with things like food, blankets, and medical supplies. I believe living generously, practicing compassion with those who distrust us and wish us ill, will get us further down the road to a better world than resorting to violence. I am deeply concerned by our continuing high level of spending on weaponary. If we are not careful we are going to end up as a hollow empire with unlivable cities, failing schools, inadequate healthcare, and a state-of-the-art military machine. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned America against the temptation to build our national agenda around the "military industrial complex."
And yet. And yet...we live in a world that is imperfect. We live in a world where there are very dangerous people who want to hurt the innocent. Every now and then there is a kind of evil loose in the world that must be confronted. Not to oppose this kind of implacable evil is to become a partner to the destruction caused by that evil.
I suppose the issue that "tipped" me in support of the "just war" side that of the Christian community (which claims there are times when military force may be our last, best option) was the Holocaust. As a teenager I came face to face with the reality of the deliberate efforts of National Socialism in the Germany of the 1930-40's to exterminate the Jews. Historians say that more than six million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and others were killed by the Nazis and their helpers in such nations as France, Russia and Poland. I did my best to imagine how a non-violent response, on the part of Christians in Europe and around the world, might have stopped Hitler and his plan. I finally came to the conclusion that this evil would have been prevented if France, Poland, Belgium, and other nations had militarily confronted Nazi Germany as it began its expansion.
Sometimes what you get when you seek to satisfy the demands of a little bully is a bigger bully. I learned that on the playground.
Reinhold Niebuhr, a pastor during the middle years of the last century, broke with other Christian leaders who were insisting that we stay out of the conflict against the Axis Powers. Niebuhr said that love sometimes means you do all you can to maximize justice in the world.
One Christian writer says there are two sides to love: one is soft (grace, acceptance) and the other is hard (accountability, discipline).
We live in a broken, imperfect world where there is too much injustice and where there are some very, very dangerous people who intend to harm the innocent. I am thankful that Osama bin Laden will not be able to create any more destruction in the world. His removal was, I believe, necessary. I do not feel joy at his death but a weary kind of relief.
Before I end these thoughts I need to say how deeply grateful I am for men and women who do heroic things to confront evil. The team that went deep into Pakistan and took a great risk and was extraordinarily brave, bright, and gifted. What they did was amazing.
I still yearn for the day when, as the song says, we aren't going to study war "no more." I yearn for the day when, as the prophet says, we will beat our swords into plowshares.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Where Did the Double Spaces Go?
A month or so ago I sat down to blog and when I posted the article all the paragraph breaks, the double-spaces, had disappeared. Which made the whole thing tough to read.
I like some open space between thoughts. It helps you as a reader, I think. Sort of like a wide-open field where you can sit down, while on a long walk, and catch your breath. Look around. Appreciate where you are. Before you walk on. But the paragraph breaks aren't "holding." I put them in but when the blog is posted to the web site it all runs together. And nothing I seem to do changes that. Doesn't matter how I type the article the program jams it all together.
One of the lessons I learn when I deal with technology is how limited I am. I feel like a pawn in a world of processors and binary codes and glowing LEDs. I sometimes feel like a visitor from 1746 Georgia to 2011 Manhattan. Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe I won't. But I'll keep writing.
I like some open space between thoughts. It helps you as a reader, I think. Sort of like a wide-open field where you can sit down, while on a long walk, and catch your breath. Look around. Appreciate where you are. Before you walk on. But the paragraph breaks aren't "holding." I put them in but when the blog is posted to the web site it all runs together. And nothing I seem to do changes that. Doesn't matter how I type the article the program jams it all together.
One of the lessons I learn when I deal with technology is how limited I am. I feel like a pawn in a world of processors and binary codes and glowing LEDs. I sometimes feel like a visitor from 1746 Georgia to 2011 Manhattan. Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe I won't. But I'll keep writing.
Growing Up Can Be Hard To Do.
There was a song by pop singer Neil Sadaka titled "Breaking Up is Hard to Do." It was doo-wop lament about the challenges of ending a relationship. I thought of that song this morning as I glanced at some national newspapers on-line, and read the articles about the debate in Washington D.C. regarding our economy, the need to reduce our national deficit, tax policies, and the staggering accumulation of wealth by the top 1-2% of our citizenery.
There are too few people acting like adults in this discussion. People who would be leaders keep playing to their "base" but for the challenge to be solved we are going to have to do some adult things.
Which means some programs will need to be cut. Costs will need to be contained. Tough choices will need to be made. (We were wrestling, in medical ethics classes at IU more than thirty years ago, with the need to make tough choices in medical care. Does an 85 diabetic male receive a heart transplant if those same funds could take care of the medical needs of one hundred children, for example.)
What is alarming to me is the way some of our leaders seem eager to cut programs that assist the very young, the very old, and the very vulnerable -while saying almost nothing about tax breaks for oil companies and the need to trim our massive military budget. I wonder if some of our leaders, who seem most eager to make the cuts in social programs, have read the prophets of the Old Testament or the words of Jesus in Matthew 25. God does not take kindly to empires that forget the people at the bottom of the economic hill.
It means that tax revenue will need to be increased. It is stunning to see what would happen to our deficit problem if the tax cuts from an earlier era were allowed to expire. In fact, some folks I read say -people on the left and right seem to agree to this- the entire tax code needs to be simplified and made more fair.
I saw a column by Walter Mondale this morning that said Americans will pay for their priorities. I think he is right. I agree with some Republican leaders who say our people will make sacrifices if we are all in this together. The people of America, I am convinced, have more courage than their leaders are giving them credit for. Americans sacrificed during the Depression. Americans sacrificed during World War II. Our people will do without if that is what it will take to move forward. To keep our grandchildren from living in a debtor nation.
I tell people that my decision to leave Elkhart was an adult moment for me. My heart wanted to stay but I was convinced Elkhart Trinity needed a new start, a new voice, and I believed God had good work for me to do among great people here at Bloomington First. But I had to set aside the easy thing to do the right thing, the adult thing. This is a growing up moment for our country. We need to begin acting like adults. And growing up can be hard to do.
There are too few people acting like adults in this discussion. People who would be leaders keep playing to their "base" but for the challenge to be solved we are going to have to do some adult things.
Which means some programs will need to be cut. Costs will need to be contained. Tough choices will need to be made. (We were wrestling, in medical ethics classes at IU more than thirty years ago, with the need to make tough choices in medical care. Does an 85 diabetic male receive a heart transplant if those same funds could take care of the medical needs of one hundred children, for example.)
What is alarming to me is the way some of our leaders seem eager to cut programs that assist the very young, the very old, and the very vulnerable -while saying almost nothing about tax breaks for oil companies and the need to trim our massive military budget. I wonder if some of our leaders, who seem most eager to make the cuts in social programs, have read the prophets of the Old Testament or the words of Jesus in Matthew 25. God does not take kindly to empires that forget the people at the bottom of the economic hill.
It means that tax revenue will need to be increased. It is stunning to see what would happen to our deficit problem if the tax cuts from an earlier era were allowed to expire. In fact, some folks I read say -people on the left and right seem to agree to this- the entire tax code needs to be simplified and made more fair.
I saw a column by Walter Mondale this morning that said Americans will pay for their priorities. I think he is right. I agree with some Republican leaders who say our people will make sacrifices if we are all in this together. The people of America, I am convinced, have more courage than their leaders are giving them credit for. Americans sacrificed during the Depression. Americans sacrificed during World War II. Our people will do without if that is what it will take to move forward. To keep our grandchildren from living in a debtor nation.
I tell people that my decision to leave Elkhart was an adult moment for me. My heart wanted to stay but I was convinced Elkhart Trinity needed a new start, a new voice, and I believed God had good work for me to do among great people here at Bloomington First. But I had to set aside the easy thing to do the right thing, the adult thing. This is a growing up moment for our country. We need to begin acting like adults. And growing up can be hard to do.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Times When Beauty Is Enough.
The world outside has turned dark. The street lamps up and down South Baldwin Drive are now on. They are lighting up the blossoms on the ornamental pear trees up and down the street. I began this day sitting at my desk working in my home office. The pink light of the morning sun was working its way through the trees that stand on the ridge above the creek just a hundred yards or so south of us. The blossoms on the trees surprised me. It was as if someone had, over night, painstakingly placed every blossom in the perfect spot.
This morning I wrote an email devotional that talked about the importance of bearing fruit. These ornamental pear trees, if they are anything like the tree that stood outside the office at Elkhart Trinity, won't produce any kind of usable fruit. They'll scatter blossoms in the Spring, drop small, cherry-like fruit in late Summer, and distribute tiny leaves in the Fall. But they won't produce any kind of usable fruit.
Maybe my article that focused on the importance of bearing fruit, making a difference for God with our lives, told only part of the story. Maybe it is enough, sometimes, to produce beauty. In a world where there is too much ugliness and too little beauty, perhaps creating beauty is enough. The musical group the Cowboy Junkies produced an amazing song in "Blue Moon." If they never accomplish another thing in their lives maybe producing something so beautiful is enough. I've walked through the Art Institute in Chicago and studied the work of Monet. He has a way of capturing the light in every moment. I don't know a thing about the artist's life but maybe with God it is enough that Monet created beauty.
The Bible teaches us that God is a God of justice. And a God of compassion. And a God of extravagance. And a God of second chances...grace. The Bible also tells us God is a God who delights in, creates, beauty. In Psalm 8 the psalmist writes: "When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast made..."
Maybe beauty is more important than we think in our society that is so focused on utility and production. The blossoms won't last long. But today they have captured me...stopped me in my tracks...and caused me to offer up a Doxology. That is, I suspect, no small miracle.
This morning I wrote an email devotional that talked about the importance of bearing fruit. These ornamental pear trees, if they are anything like the tree that stood outside the office at Elkhart Trinity, won't produce any kind of usable fruit. They'll scatter blossoms in the Spring, drop small, cherry-like fruit in late Summer, and distribute tiny leaves in the Fall. But they won't produce any kind of usable fruit.
Maybe my article that focused on the importance of bearing fruit, making a difference for God with our lives, told only part of the story. Maybe it is enough, sometimes, to produce beauty. In a world where there is too much ugliness and too little beauty, perhaps creating beauty is enough. The musical group the Cowboy Junkies produced an amazing song in "Blue Moon." If they never accomplish another thing in their lives maybe producing something so beautiful is enough. I've walked through the Art Institute in Chicago and studied the work of Monet. He has a way of capturing the light in every moment. I don't know a thing about the artist's life but maybe with God it is enough that Monet created beauty.
The Bible teaches us that God is a God of justice. And a God of compassion. And a God of extravagance. And a God of second chances...grace. The Bible also tells us God is a God who delights in, creates, beauty. In Psalm 8 the psalmist writes: "When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast made..."
Maybe beauty is more important than we think in our society that is so focused on utility and production. The blossoms won't last long. But today they have captured me...stopped me in my tracks...and caused me to offer up a Doxology. That is, I suspect, no small miracle.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Adjustment Bureau.
The Christian world in North America is soaked through with Calvinism. That is the belief that God is sovereign, that God is all powerful, that God has a plan for every moment of every day of every person's life, and that God directly causes everything that happens.
We survive a car accident when two others are killed? God spared us for a reason, our Calvinist brothers and sisters would say. A couple gets pregnant, a politician loses an election, a baseball player swings the bat and makes good contact with the ball: it is all God's doing. God has a plan.
United Methodists look at God and life in a different way. We believe God is at work in history. We believe God is working to bend history in the direction of healing, justice, peace, and life. We believe God has made it very clear -the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount- what kind of life works best. But we also believe God trusts creation -and life- to us. God gives us something we call "freewill." Our choices count. We are not puppets on a string.
The Bible is full of moments when God places a choice before people. Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God gives them the freedom to obey...or disobey!
Abram and Sarai are asked by God to leave home and head hundreds of miles to the west.
Esau is asked to forgive the brother who stole his birthright.
Hagar, when a part of her wants to die because of the shameful way she has been treated by Sarah and Abraham, chooses to listen to an angel and live.
Joshua says to the people of Israel, "Choose this day whom you will serve."
Jesus says to would-be disciples, "Follow me and I will teach you how to catch people in God's net of amazing grace." Those men and women who hear his voice can either stay where they are, living their old lives, or they can follow Jesus into a new life. The choice is their's.
All through the Bible we see God respecting the freedom God has given God's people. God gives us options, God allows us to choose, God challenges us to use our best judgment and to pray, but God never forces us to be obedient or to trust or to give.
The reason this all comes to mind is because of Matt Damon's new film, "The Adjustment Bureau." It is Hollywood's attempt to frame the whole question about how free we really are. Handling freedom, working through the choices that define who we are and who we will be, is not an easy thing the film says.
Our choices count. The Bible makes that clear. Be careful...freedom is a powerful gift that can bring joy and healing or it can -if handled badly- bring misery and heartbreak.
God loves you. God chooses to restrain God's power so that your choices will matter. Don't live thoughtlessly, don't think you can do life on auto-pilot, and assume God's "plan" is to clean up every mess you or I make.
You are so loved that God not only gave you his only Son, but you are so loved that God gave you the gift of choice...of freewill.
We survive a car accident when two others are killed? God spared us for a reason, our Calvinist brothers and sisters would say. A couple gets pregnant, a politician loses an election, a baseball player swings the bat and makes good contact with the ball: it is all God's doing. God has a plan.
United Methodists look at God and life in a different way. We believe God is at work in history. We believe God is working to bend history in the direction of healing, justice, peace, and life. We believe God has made it very clear -the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount- what kind of life works best. But we also believe God trusts creation -and life- to us. God gives us something we call "freewill." Our choices count. We are not puppets on a string.
The Bible is full of moments when God places a choice before people. Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God gives them the freedom to obey...or disobey!
Abram and Sarai are asked by God to leave home and head hundreds of miles to the west.
Esau is asked to forgive the brother who stole his birthright.
Hagar, when a part of her wants to die because of the shameful way she has been treated by Sarah and Abraham, chooses to listen to an angel and live.
Joshua says to the people of Israel, "Choose this day whom you will serve."
Jesus says to would-be disciples, "Follow me and I will teach you how to catch people in God's net of amazing grace." Those men and women who hear his voice can either stay where they are, living their old lives, or they can follow Jesus into a new life. The choice is their's.
All through the Bible we see God respecting the freedom God has given God's people. God gives us options, God allows us to choose, God challenges us to use our best judgment and to pray, but God never forces us to be obedient or to trust or to give.
The reason this all comes to mind is because of Matt Damon's new film, "The Adjustment Bureau." It is Hollywood's attempt to frame the whole question about how free we really are. Handling freedom, working through the choices that define who we are and who we will be, is not an easy thing the film says.
Our choices count. The Bible makes that clear. Be careful...freedom is a powerful gift that can bring joy and healing or it can -if handled badly- bring misery and heartbreak.
God loves you. God chooses to restrain God's power so that your choices will matter. Don't live thoughtlessly, don't think you can do life on auto-pilot, and assume God's "plan" is to clean up every mess you or I make.
You are so loved that God not only gave you his only Son, but you are so loved that God gave you the gift of choice...of freewill.
God Is on the Other Side of the River.
We read the Bible stories so many times, perhaps, that we lose our ability to see how very real they all are. We know how the story ends, we know God shows up, and so that makes it very tough for us to see how scary it was for Abram and Sarai to pick up and head west towards Canaan. We know God is out there in Sinai, among the rocks and the dry ground and the wild wilderness, so it almost impossible for us to understand the fear in the gut of the Hebrews when Moses and Aaron led them away from the security of Egyptian slavery towards the unknown.
Where was Moses leading them? How was this going to end? They didn't really know and yet they packed their things -quickly!- and headed off. In the direction of two barriers that seemed impassable: the sea and the desert.
We've slipped into March. I am in a new place. The last time I "blogged" we were living north of highway 30. In Elkhart. Now we are south of that by a fair distance. Instead of looking out my study windows to see the St. Joseph River in Elkhart, which had become home in all sorts of deep ways, I look out my study window in Bloomington. To see a small hill on the other side of a creek. I wonder what the trees will look like, on that hill, when the leaves come in this spring.
The Christian way is a life that moves through death and discovers -when we live with God and for Jesus- resurrection on the other side. I have told close friends that my decision to be obedient to the whispers of God in the call to Bloomington meant that I have carried "the cross" of saying goodbye to people I love very, very much. The pain of that leaving was almost more than I could bear. (It was also true when we left New Haven back in 1996 for Elkhart: I thougth I was going to die. A close friend, my associate pastor there, said he thought I would never survive another move.)
Here is the discovery I have made: God is on the other side of the river. When the Hebrews, in Joshua 3, go across the Jordan River they discover God is at work on the other side of the river. There is life on the other side of the wandering time, the leaving chapter, even if it is in a place that isn't familiar as the place you have left.
Whatever river you are facing I want to tell you something I know, something I have experienced: God is on the other side of the river. God is over there in that new chapter with all of its questions and uncertainty.
I find myself being thankful. I find myself lighting up when I see the faces and hear the voices of those in Bloomington who are already becoming living treasure to me.
God is on the other side of the river. I want you to know that.
Where was Moses leading them? How was this going to end? They didn't really know and yet they packed their things -quickly!- and headed off. In the direction of two barriers that seemed impassable: the sea and the desert.
We've slipped into March. I am in a new place. The last time I "blogged" we were living north of highway 30. In Elkhart. Now we are south of that by a fair distance. Instead of looking out my study windows to see the St. Joseph River in Elkhart, which had become home in all sorts of deep ways, I look out my study window in Bloomington. To see a small hill on the other side of a creek. I wonder what the trees will look like, on that hill, when the leaves come in this spring.
The Christian way is a life that moves through death and discovers -when we live with God and for Jesus- resurrection on the other side. I have told close friends that my decision to be obedient to the whispers of God in the call to Bloomington meant that I have carried "the cross" of saying goodbye to people I love very, very much. The pain of that leaving was almost more than I could bear. (It was also true when we left New Haven back in 1996 for Elkhart: I thougth I was going to die. A close friend, my associate pastor there, said he thought I would never survive another move.)
Here is the discovery I have made: God is on the other side of the river. When the Hebrews, in Joshua 3, go across the Jordan River they discover God is at work on the other side of the river. There is life on the other side of the wandering time, the leaving chapter, even if it is in a place that isn't familiar as the place you have left.
Whatever river you are facing I want to tell you something I know, something I have experienced: God is on the other side of the river. God is over there in that new chapter with all of its questions and uncertainty.
I find myself being thankful. I find myself lighting up when I see the faces and hear the voices of those in Bloomington who are already becoming living treasure to me.
God is on the other side of the river. I want you to know that.
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