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.
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.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Looking Back.
Genesis 19:26 tells us Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Many other places in the Bible, though, tell us we are to remember. To tell yesterday's stories to our children and grandchildren. Deuteronomy 4 is all about remembering who God is and how God has been with us, and telling those stories to the kids.
Tonight the rain is coming down outside and I am looking back. I didn't intend to look back. I came into the office tonight to sort through files. (One of the things I try to do is leave a sparkling clean set of files for whoever follows me.) So I have been sorting...tossing...keeping... writing notes on files that need to be re-labeled.
I keep finding things. A wonderful Advent hymn a friend found on the United Methodist web site years ago. I look at the hymn and the words are a gift.
There is a file on The Green Room. Some of you may remember that TUMC got creative as we tried to reach out to young adults, and Trinity opened up a coffee shop in downtown Elkhart. As a place where young adults -and people of all ages- could gather. The coffee was good, the food was just fine, and the music was cool...but we closed it after a few years.
Fifteen years ago Trinity had three Sunday morning worship services. All were wonderful and all were essentially the same. We weren't reaching a new generation. So one of the files I came across is all about the creation of a "Contemporary Worship Task Force." Our leaders were putting that together as early as January of 1997. There are song lists. Some of them would embarrass us now, I suppose. And I remember that week after week, long after the "Celebration!" service was begun (bet you had forgotten that name!), our staff got headaches as we worked through the "bugs" in our primitive sound/projection system. We wanted our worship to glorify God and we wanted it to be excellent in every way...and some weeks it was!
There are names, too. Names of people I married. Names of friends, of saints, like June and John and Helen, whose funeral services I was privileged to lead. People whose faith and love and sense of humor and generosity has marked me forever.
So tonight I am looking back. And I don't feel salty at all. I feel blessed...thankful...gifted.
The words to that Advent hymn by a Jesus follower named Kilgore? They are in part these: I am here in the stars, in the dark of the night. I am always within you, and I am the light. I am who I am, sings the God of my soul. In your waiting and home I am making you whole.
Sometimes stopping and looking back is a very, very good thing, you know?
Tonight the rain is coming down outside and I am looking back. I didn't intend to look back. I came into the office tonight to sort through files. (One of the things I try to do is leave a sparkling clean set of files for whoever follows me.) So I have been sorting...tossing...keeping... writing notes on files that need to be re-labeled.
I keep finding things. A wonderful Advent hymn a friend found on the United Methodist web site years ago. I look at the hymn and the words are a gift.
There is a file on The Green Room. Some of you may remember that TUMC got creative as we tried to reach out to young adults, and Trinity opened up a coffee shop in downtown Elkhart. As a place where young adults -and people of all ages- could gather. The coffee was good, the food was just fine, and the music was cool...but we closed it after a few years.
Fifteen years ago Trinity had three Sunday morning worship services. All were wonderful and all were essentially the same. We weren't reaching a new generation. So one of the files I came across is all about the creation of a "Contemporary Worship Task Force." Our leaders were putting that together as early as January of 1997. There are song lists. Some of them would embarrass us now, I suppose. And I remember that week after week, long after the "Celebration!" service was begun (bet you had forgotten that name!), our staff got headaches as we worked through the "bugs" in our primitive sound/projection system. We wanted our worship to glorify God and we wanted it to be excellent in every way...and some weeks it was!
There are names, too. Names of people I married. Names of friends, of saints, like June and John and Helen, whose funeral services I was privileged to lead. People whose faith and love and sense of humor and generosity has marked me forever.
So tonight I am looking back. And I don't feel salty at all. I feel blessed...thankful...gifted.
The words to that Advent hymn by a Jesus follower named Kilgore? They are in part these: I am here in the stars, in the dark of the night. I am always within you, and I am the light. I am who I am, sings the God of my soul. In your waiting and home I am making you whole.
Sometimes stopping and looking back is a very, very good thing, you know?
Friday, November 26, 2010
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