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.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
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.
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