Toe-in-the-Water Sunday

Life was almost always pretty good when I was a child. We didn’t have to lock doors, and nobody ever heard of bad things (other than alcoholism, dancing, playing cards and the like) except in church (or if the neighborhood alcoholic, a member of a GOOD family) walked by. Our family lived in a very safe neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else, and I couldn’t get into much trouble before somebody turned up to get me out of it and take me back home. The preacher at our church lived in our back yard (and also was a frequent pair of knees under our dinner table). I got occasional spankings and slaps from Mama, but it was usually because I had been naughty, like running off to visit a neighbor on our street without telling her where I was going. There were some bad things in my life, like verbal taunts and mean words from a relative, but it was never discussed or called “abuse.”  It hurt, but I learned it was just something I had to learn to live with.  In the church, about the closest thing to abuse we experienced was being shut in a room and told we couldn’t leave until we had signed a pledge not to drink alcohol ever. I think I was about ten then.

Lots of people weren’t as lucky in their childhood and adolescence as I was. For some of them, the home wasn’t a safe place, and abuse was not unheard of. Nobody ever talked about it, though. It was one of those things that “Just wasn’t done.”  Perhaps it should have been.

Abuse means more than physical or emotional punishment. It is cruelty, violence, or improper use of a person or animal (and sometimes of an object, such as forcing it to work harder or longer than it is intended to bear). It’s an all-too-familiar word to us today and has grown to include places where abuse takes place that seem as if they should be free from such evil, places like schools, offices, and most of all, churches. There’s scarcely a denomination where it has not been a suddenly “discovered” or “uncovered” offense. Often it is known about but simply swept under the rug to preserve the good image of the Christian faith.

About eleven years ago, I left a church I loved, not because I disagreed with its theology or positions, but because I felt I was verbally and emotionally abused by a member of the clergy. I had been very active but gradually dropped out of everything because it seemed I was under increasing scrutiny and was unable to meet expectations – or perhaps it was just a power trip for that person. I felt hurt, disrespected, and worthless. I should have developed a tougher skin and let such things bounce off me, but I couldn’t. I knew before I left that others felt the same way, so it wasn’t just me. Still, it was hard not to blame myself as much as the one who, I felt and knew, was the cause of it.

I loved my church. It was my community and like a family to me. But there came a time when I had to do as Jesus said in Matthew 10:14, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet (NIV).”  It put me off the church, but not off God or faith.  I went by that church every day going to work or shopping, but I could not bring myself to go back in or even ask for help when my husband died, I had cancer surgery, or anything else. I still had friends there, but I didn’t have a home.

Fast forward eleven years.  I’ve gone through a lot and grown in the process. The offender has left the parish; there are new people in charge. I was invited to return by a person enrolling in my online Education for Ministry (EfM) group who happened to be from that parish.  I took my reluctance in hand and made an appointment with the new rector. He seemed to be someone I could trust and who would respect me as an individual (and that I could respect in turn).  I felt God tugging on my heart, and my mind was full of possibilities.  It was time.

So tomorrow, I’m celebrating what will be a “Toe in the Water” Sunday. I can’t commit unless I am convinced that this is the place I should and need to be.  I won’t be asked the first Sunday which ministry I would like to join, although there are a couple in which I am very interested.  I have amends to make to several people for various things, but most of all, it is time for me to do what God has told me so often to do – “Go. Sit. STAY!”  God knows I’m not a dog, but I do need to be reminded that I was led to the Episcopal Church many years ago, and that’s apparently where God wants me to be. I need to be reminded of that once in a while, it seems.

I’m nervous, yes.  It’s not easy to go back to a place where abuse has taken place, not just of me but of many others as well, just like it’s not easy to jump off the end of a pier into deep water without learning how to swim first. What I’m doing is like sticking a toe in the water to check the temperature and then gently wading out, deeper and deeper, until I am comfortable and once again a participating and contributing part of a community that accepts me and whatever gifts and ministries I can bring them.  It’s not rebirth—once was enough for that—but it’s like a reception or hopeful return home. It’s an acknowledgment that I need community, and this one is offering me that. So I’m straightening my shoulders, holding up my chin, and sticking my toe in the water, hopefully for the last time.

Still, I could use a few prayers for courage, please?

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, July 27, 2019.

Professions of Faith

Television is a marvelous thing. I remember a child being mesmerized by cowboys and Indians, and their sidekicks: dogs, horses, female friends, and jeeps. Television has never stopped being something amazing and almost necessary for me because I learn things from programs it presents, from forensics to religion to history to travel to places I’ve never been or will ever see for myself.

I was watching a program on the travels of the apostles after Pentecost. One of the stories that they presented was the story that appears in Acts 8:26-39 that we know as Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  Philip was following the instructions of an angel to travel along a particular road. He came across a foreign man sitting in a chariot reading a scroll. Philip went to the man and asked if he understood what he was reading, which happened to be the book of Isaiah. The man, a eunuch and a high official of the Queen of Ethiopia, said that he was unable to do so because how could he understand unless someone taught him. Philip proceeded to talk to the Ethiopian, explaining that when Isaiah referred to the Messiah, he was speaking of a man named Jesus. As they walked along, talking of Jesus, the eunuch expressed a desire to be baptized. He and Philip went into a nearby body of water, and Philip baptized him. Philip was taken away by the Spirit to another land, and the eunuch proceeded on his journey home.

Something about this program got me thinking. The script had the eunuch utter the words, “I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God,” and that served as his profession of faith. The book of Acts reports instead that the Ethiopian remarked that there was some water and asked what prevented him from being baptized.  That made me wonder about whether or not Philip had required a profession of faith, and what is sufficient for us to be baptized now?

In the church of my youth, each service would be geared towards the last few minutes when the preacher would come down from the pulpit and stand in the center of the aisle as we sang a hymn, usually “Just As I Am.” Between each verse, the preacher would urge us to open our hearts to Jesus and accept him as our “Personal Savior.” The calling would go on for several minutes before he started the next verse. After the second verse, there would be another pause and encouragement to come forward.  The third, fourth, fifth, and even sixth verse followed the same pattern. 

He reminded us of our sinfulness and how Jesus had come to save us, but we needed to accept that and be baptized for it to become a reality. Becoming a Christian could only be accomplished by publicly accepting Jesus as a “Personal Savior.” Then, several weeks later, I was immersed in the baptistry at the front of the church at a Sunday night service.  I did what was required, got dunked as a sinner, and walked back up the baptistry steps, soaking wet and able to proclaim that I was now a Christian. I was saved from my sins and with a hotline to God to ask forgiveness for any fault, great or small, that I might commit in the future, something like a “Get out of jail free” card.

What came to my attention through the television program was the simplicity of the affirmation of faith the eunuch pronounced. There was no personal savior involved; it was an acceptance that Jesus was the Son of God, and that was all that was necessary to believe. Perhaps the writer of Acts didn’t feel a specific affirmation of faith was required. The formula for such professions would come later as the church grew, and the times became more perilous. Still, the Ethiopian’s statement caught my attention and made me do some thinking.

At this stage of my life, I have pretty much rejected the idea of a personal savior. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I can say the Apostles’ or the Nicene Creed without crossing my fingers more than once at a phrase or two. I can identify fundamental (as opposed to Fundamental) Christian beliefs, recite things like the Beatitudes and a number of the Psalms. I can retell the stories and parables, and explain them with some understanding, but I can’t claim Jesus is purely my personal savior.

I believe that when we say that Jesus came to take away the sins of the world, he didn’t only come for a few people, like his disciples and his followers that came with him on his journeys. He came not only for the Jews, but also the Samaritans, even the Romans, and, as time went on, for the Gentiles who encompassed everybody who was not Jewish. To me, that is a much more significant and more powerful belief than merely claiming a personal savior. Either Jesus came to take away the sins of all the world, or he didn’t come to take away the sins of any. That phrase, “the sins of the world,” makes all the difference to me.

I believe that Jesus Christ was, is, and will always be the son of God. His mission on earth was to teach us how to live in relationship with God and with each other. I would say that that is my statement of faith and the reason I am a Christian.

Each of us has to come to our own statement of faith. As I contemplate my particular statement of faith this coming week, I will be looking deeper to see where I am in relation to that statement of faith, and where I can find God as well as Jesus in it. Give it a try yourself. Make a statement that embodies your belief, not necessarily using the language of the church but rather the language of the heart. See where it takes you.

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, July 20, 2019.

Lesson from a Baby Blanket

The baby blanket I was knitting was going well. The knits were where they were supposed to be, and the purls were in their proper place. Things were nicely,  and I thought, “I’ll get this thing done in no time,” and then disaster struck. I got a little too comfortable with a simple pattern that I was doing, and all of a sudden, I had a mess, or what I consider to be an error. It only takes one stitch put in the wrong place to really mess up a pattern;  it seems to stick out like a white rabbit amid a crowd of black cats.

One thing is for sure, none of us goes through life without somehow messing up the pattern, whether a craft item or a something else, leaving a distinct error either visible or invisible. It’s frustrating, but it happens to all of us. Sometimes we get a little too comfortable with the way things are going, and, in turn, we make a mistake and things get out of whack. Sometimes the error can be erased or unraveled, and the correct configuration put in place, but sometimes, that error is just plain there for good.

I know for sure that God watches my errors and mistakes, and very probably clucks God’s tongue at how I could mess up something so badly. So I purled four stitches instead of three, or perhaps I did five instead of four. Whichever it is, it throws off everything. God notices those errors a lot sooner than I do and it all comes down to whether I am willing to rip out however many rows or rub out however many mistakes I’ve made in my work to redo it. The thing is, though, that God loves me anyway, and sympathizes with when I get frustrated at making the same error over and over again, no matter how careful I try to be. The tendency to make mistakes does not make me any less lovable to God, and thank goodness for that.

I know how frustrated I get when I make a mistake, whether it’s in writing, knitting, or just about anything else. I know that in some cultures, it’s customary for an error to be made somewhere in the product to show that a person made it and not merely a machine. I love that concept, but in my own work, it’s hard for me to make a mistake I can see and not fix it. It may not be visibly apparent to someone else looking at it for the first time, but I have to live with knowing that there are flaws in my work, no matter how hard I try to get them out.

I'm glad God loves me, even if I'm an inattentive knitter sometimes. I'm happy that I'm old enough to realize that God loves me no matter what, even if I make mistakes and grieve God by making those mistakes. But by being willing to try and fix them, or ask forgiveness for them, shows God that I understand what is expected of me and acknowledging my humanness. I have come to realize this more and more as I grow older, and it's more and more comfort each passing day. So what if I have to pull out some stitches, I can always put them back in and do it correctly. If I make a mistake in my life, I may not be able to pull it out and correct it, but I can do my best to make it right, whether it's rubbing out a bad sum or a wrong word, or expressing regret to someone I've harmed. It gets less stressful each time I do it. I also find it's a great deal easier to take responsibility, and then give it to God and let God take it from there.

So now I will go back to my knitting. I only have about a foot left to go, and I will try to be careful not to have to rip whole rows out again and again because I didn't pay attention. I may be doing this baby blanket as a gift for someone, but I'm also offering God’s love in it, the love comes from God who forgives all my mistakes and loves me in spite of them.

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, July 13, 2019.

Patches

Matthew 9:14-17

Isn’t it amazing that you can read a passage from the Bible a hundred times and each time there seems to be something new that you haven’t considered as much as you might have? That was the case for me reading the passage from Matthew about the bridegroom being present and also the part I think more people remember, which is the cloth, wine, and wineskins part of the story. Jesus reminds us that new wine is not put in old wineskins because those skins might burst with the fermentation of the wine. While wineskins and cloth could both be patched, it had to be done very carefully to preserve the usefulness of everything.

It made me think about patches as I’ve experienced them. I remember when holes and slits were covered carefully by pieces of cloth that made the garment it last a little longer, but you would never put a patch on a dress you would wear to church or school unless there was absolutely no alternate item of clothing to wear. In my grandparents time, and for many centuries before that, patches were often seen as a mark of frugality. Getting one was a symbol of getting a little more wear out of an otherwise useless dress, apron,  or pair of pants. Patches were very carefully done to be as neat as possible, and, when the clothing finally wore out, the cloth could be cut out and made into patchwork quilts which prolonged the life of the fabric while producing something quite useful to the household.  It was an example of “making do,” especially when times were hard and money was tight.

While I was reading, I thought of patches and remembered going to college for my freshman year. I had carefully packed just about everything I owned, and one of the things that I took with me was a wool blanket from my Aunt Edie’s house. I loved that blanket. It was scratchy, and it had a scent of wool and some other things. Of course, it had moth holes in it, so Aunt Edie had run new seam binding around the edges and patched the gaps with more of the same brown satin seam binding to make it serviceable. I unpacked my stuff and made up my bed before my new roommates came in, friends who had been together for years, and who came from a considerably higher social status than I did. They unpacked their new sheets and blankets and then decided we would go downtown to buy new bedspreads. I could see that they were looking askance at my patched cover, but I didn’t care. It was a link to home, and I was in a strange place, learning to live with people who were unknown persons that I had never met before, and the blanket spelled comfort. I didn’t really care about the patches, but I sometimes wished they weren’t there.

In Jesus time, there was very much a belief in the scarcity of goods. If someone had more of something, then others would have less to balance it out. If a wineskin got a hole in it, it would be patched with the hope that it would hold the wine added to it. Just because something had a hole in it did not mean it could be discarded and a new one procured to replace it.

It occurred to me that there are times when trying to put new ideas into rigid minds is very much like putting new wine in old and patched wineskins. The patches will shrink and leak, but the memory will simply slap another one on and hope that it will hold.

I noticed that as I get older that there are many times when it’s tough for me to change my mind about something, a kind of keeping old and patched ideas wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket with moth holes. Then I realize how many times I have come to new ideas and even beliefs that have opened my mind. It was like putting new wine into new wineskins so they can ferment and be stored safely. I think of that as a God moment. It makes me stop short and think about the transfer of this new knowledge this new wine into a wineskin put there just for it. Yes, the wine changes a bit, and the wineskin has to make a few adjustments, but still the new thoughts are there, the container is there, and it’s a perfectly natural process.

We never see Jesus with patched clothes, but maybe he had angels to patch them for him, or maybe artists and sculptors never considered that he would wear out the garments that he wore every day to travel and to preach in. Perhaps we should put a few patches on Jesus clothes. Maybe it would remind people that work wears things out, but if they are tended carefully and repaired regularly, they are a lot more useful for a longer time.

I may be old, and have plenty of patches on my soul, but if I allow Jesus to carefully patch those inside my soul, heart, and mind, then I can hopefully extend my usefulness into the project of bringing the kingdom of God here and now. I don’t even mind if Jesus uses very bright patterns of cloth. I’m planning on being a patchwork quilt when I go to meet him.

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, July 6, 2019.

Love, Sheep and Lambs

John 21:15-19

As we go through the Gospels in the Daily Office and the Eucharistic services of the year, we run into the same passages again and again so that even though we may not know exactly where we found them, we know we have heard them. The Eucharistic reading for today, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, offer us a familiar story that seems so applicable this go-around.

To begin with,  it seems to start as an ordinary day, with Jesus and the disciples having breakfast. Funny, I never really thought about Jesus having breakfast. It certainly wasn’t raisin bran or Cap’n Crunch out-of-the-box, but I wonder what he did have? That’s just an idle question; there’s more serious stuff to be thought about.

Jesus begins to question Peter with the words, “Do you love me…”. Of course, Peter is going to affirm that yes, indeed he does love Jesus more than than the others in the group. Then Jesus tells him to tend his sheep. I wonder if Peter caught the real meaning of that statement. He knew that there weren’t any actual sheep around to be herded, but did he understand that Jesus meant those who were still learning about him and his message.

Jesus asked Peter again if he loved him, and Peter, of course, said a bit more forcefully that of course, he did. Then Jesus said, “Tend my sheep.”

Then Jesus does it a third time, asking again if Peter really loved him. The rating tells us that Peter was hurt. He had told Jesus twice that he loved him, so why did he ask a third time? This time he was a little testier when he replied to Jesus, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” After that, Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep. Jesus then went on to talk about how Peter and the other disciples had passed their youth where they could put on their belts and go where they pleased. The time would come where someone else would put a strap on them and force them to go where they had no desire to be. Of course, Jesus was talking about how the disciples would end up just as he would soon be, in death, probably very painfully. He also wanted to make sure that Peter and the others knew that their mission now was to tend to, feed, and teach as many as possible, both young and old. Death was coming for all of them, and they needed to realize that and be ready.

I think the phrases “Feed/tend my sheep/lambs” are probably as relevant now as they ever have been. We see daily pictures of children forcibly separated from their parents by human jailers rather than armies and rebel groups. We see those children packed into detention centers, many of them mere tents, far from their parents, lost, alone, frightened, dirty, sometimes sickly, and probably hungry. These are lambs, and lambs are supposed to be tended, fed, and cared for because they don’t know how to fight for themselves.  They have been denied soap, toothbrushes, clean clothes and diapers, blankets, warm places to sleep, and so many other things that our own children take for granted. It’s enough to break anyone’s heart, especially those who take the words of Jesus very seriously. These lambs have not been fed and tended. They are lost sheep, lost lambs, who don’t know where they are, or what’s going to happen to them.

Their parents are probably not much better off than their children, although the parents have many more coping skills than someone between the ages of a few months and ten years. Again Jesus has told us to feed/tend those people who have sought green pastures and safety in a land far from their own troubled homelands. We don’t seem to be doing a very good job of following Jesus’s words, and this is not an isolated case. Victims of famine and starvation, warfare and mistreatment around the world face the same problems. Even though the children may not be separated from their parents, the families still have to fight to exist in lands where plenty is a word no one knows.

I wonder what Jesus would say if he came back right now. There would be many who would rush to touch him or to speak to him or to even worship him, but yet who have ignored many of the lessons that he taught us through the Gospels. They may have good excuses, or so people will think, but I don’t imagine Jesus would approve of those excuses. He would recall to them stories of how the Israelites were mistreated in several exiles and to have, in essence, returned the favor with the Palestinians. I think there are a lot of things Jesus would take exception to, especially proclaiming oneself to be Christian but ignoring all the lessons that deal with relations with Gentiles, children, women, aliens, weak, or sick, but especially those who claim to follow Jesus but who do so by mouth only with no heart in it.

Please, God, could we have a week where the children are taken care of in the way they should be, no matter whose children they are? Can they not be warehouse like cattle, or treated like enemies instead of as lambs. Can we feed and tend the sheep and the lambs as we should? Once we try it, we might find our hearts are a little more open, our vision a little more acute, and our brains more filled with thoughts of love and not suspicion and hatred. Please God, help us to tend the sheep and lambs, in Jesus’ name.

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, June 28, 2019.

Worry?

Matthew 6:24-34

There are days when things go so well that I kind of look around and say, “Okay,  what’s going to happen now?” I don’t know, maybe everybody has days like that, but I know my really great days don’t happen all that often and more and more of my days seem to be the kind that has at least one disaster, sometimes very small, sometimes very large, for me to get beyond. I had several this week, and it’s enough to make me a little bit itchy.

I had one day where if I could drop something, lose something, break, tear, or forget to do something necessary, it happened. It may not be a huge thing to lose a bit for my electric screwdriver, that is unless I want to use that particular bit to tighten up screws on a piece of furniture that I sit on somewhat regularly. It’s a little more aggravating to try and lift a bag of used cat litter from the back of my truck and stuff it into a neck-high dumpster while holding up the lid with my other hand, only to have the kitty litter bag break halfway between the two. That was enough by itself to make me wonder what else could happen, and create a little bit of worry about what that could be.

Jesus definitely spoke about worry in the passage from Matthew for today. He compared people worrying about receiving daily necessities and more to the birds of the air and flowers of the fields, which have an entirely different perspective. It’s enough to take care of this minute, rather than trying to anticipate what’s going to happen after this. It’s a way of saying take today as it is and go with it. Don’t worry about tomorrow before the next sunrise.

I wonder if flowers worry when they start to droop for lack of water. Probably not, since we don’t consider them sentient beings any more than we believe rocks to have self-knowledge and be capable of feeling pain and. As for trees, we may have some feeling of them having a kind of self-knowledge that we can’t understand but do they worry, do they scream in pain when an ax or chainsaw cuts into their bark and limbs? I hope not, but you know, I’m not sure, and I’m not certain that that is something I should worry about, as much as I love trees. The same goes for the ocean or any body of water, sacred spaces, or maybe a house in which I have happy memories.

Just reading the news even very briefly is enough to give a body cause for worry, at least in my case, it does. I can only take so much news unless it’s about the royal family, a hero, either human or animal or some other kind of uplifting story — those things I can handle. I can’t worry about whether we’re going to get bombed by somebody, or we’re going to attack somebody,  not to mention tear families apart with no plan as to how to reunite them. I feel helpless because it seems there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.  I can vote and encourage others to do the same, but ultimately I have only one vote that can be counted, so I guess I would just have to leave that part of life to God and go on with the rest of my existence.

Jesus said in Matthew, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today (6:34) .” I wish I could say it’s an easy thing to do, but when the checking account doesn't cover next week’s groceries, or the heating element in the oven burns up, or some other situation arises where I have little or no control, it’s hard not to worry. If I stay in that moment, I will still end up worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow? Well, what can I do about it now? What possible thing could I do to change tomorrow when I don’t know what’s coming?

The 12-step programs have a common prayer, part of which members recite at every group meeting that covers pretty much what Jesus was telling us to do in that verse in Matthew:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,  and the wisdom to know the difference. – Reinhold Niebuhr

That prayer has been my mantra for many years. It’s the one I say just before I go to sleep, and it comes to mind in times of stress, because of having repeated it so often, I have learned to let it take my worries and rid me of them at least for the moment. If I can’t change something, it reminds me that the serenity and calmness are what I need rather than struggling against inevitability. I’ve learned patience from that prayer. I’ve learned not just to accept things I can’t change but also the guidance to find a way to change what I can, namely myself. The third thing is the wisdom to know the difference, to stop trying to climb mountains that are only small hills or purposefully listening to a friend rather than trying to solve their difficulties through my suggestions of how it should be done.

Today I will work to not worry about things that Jesus and Reinhold Niebuhr warned me about.  I will also use the verse from Matthew and the serenity prayer together to stop being fearful of the future and concentrate on living in the present. It sounds like a pretty good plan to me, and it does work. I know that from experience.

God bless.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, June 22, 2019.

God's Ambassadors

2 Corinthians 5:14-21

The apostle Paul almost always gives me heartburn. I realize that he never actually met Jesus in the flesh, yet he, of all the apostles and disciples, made as much, if not more, impact on the formation of the church than anyone other than Jesus himself.

For Paul, Jesus is an example for us because he was born of love, and his death was a gift of love as well. He did it for us. He became a human being like we are, yet he could do things that ordinary human beings are unable to do. I think that’s something that may be a little hard to understand, especially given the cruelty of his death, but without his death, there would have been no resurrection, and without the resurrection, there would be no hope for the rest of us.

Paul tells us to not look at one another merely from a human point of view. Then the question arises, how can we look at the human beings in any other way since we are human ourselves. I can’t look at someone like I would at my cat, or even as a totally different person than appears before me. Paul says even though we knew Christ from a human point of view, our view has now changed because we have seen his divinity. We are new creations by merely having been exposed to the stories, miracles, and parables of Jesus. As Jesus told us, we are to see things as God does,  with love since the entire universe and beyond was created out of love.

Jesus preached reconciliation, even if it means seeing it through human eyes. The father of the prodigal son forgave his wayward offspring, much to the anger and dismay of his older sibling who had stayed at home and faithfully worked for his father. From that parable, we learn to see ourselves as the wayward sons (and daughters) of a parent who welcomes us back when we mess up and need to return home to get things sorted out and back on track. Yes, we may be like the older son who had the anger of self-righteousness because he had done what he was told while his brother went off and lived a dissolute life. Still, the father gave the older son a reason to forgive and reassurance that it had cost the elder son nothing except hurt feelings and extra work.

Paul informs us we are ambassadors of Christ.  When ambassadors go out to their new posts, they find themselves facing new people, new situations, new customs. They must tread lightly not to offend or alarm the residents of the city or country to which they were sent. They have a message to bring to them.  As ambassadors of Christ, we are charged to convey the message of love and forgiveness, peace and equality, care for the earth and its people in all its diversity.  It’s a message the world sorely needs to hear now, just as it has been for millennia, and we are the ones charged with spreading it.

So back to Paul, who encourages us to live joyously in Christ, adoration of God, and reverence for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not to see them as humans, but instead as what they are, which is God in God’s own manner and way.  Being human is hard enough, and it requires some expansion of the mind and spirit to follow not just Paul’s words with the teachings of Jesus, the commandments of God, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. No matter how good we are, we can always be better. No matter how low we have sunk, we can still grow and rise upward. That’s pretty much Paul’s message, and an excellent topic to ponder.

God bless.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, June 15, 2019.

Graduations

Looking at the temperature today, at least in this part of Arizona, summer has already arrived. It’s early in June, and it’s just now reaching summer temperatures. Usually, we get it earlier in May, but we had a lovely long spring. That means that probably summer is going to be a real humdinger.

Early June always reminds me of the end of school. When I was growing up, our school year lasted from just after Labor Day to mid-June. A lot of places still observe those dates, but here, we start in mid-August and end in the middle of May at the latest.

Graduation is a significant step. In our school, we didn’t have kindergarten, elementary school, or middle school graduations. We simply ended up one year and the next year went into the next class. Graduation was a big deal because that meant high school was over, and it was time to get on to the next phase of life. I imagine it still is for those who have reached the end point of their first twelve years of education and who are now ready to either extend their educational experience or go out into the world and make lives for themselves.

College graduations are interesting. While the gowns and hats may be the same color, all of a sudden, there are splashes of different colors on the hoods, each denoting a separate area of extended learning. Some will be teachers; some will be business executives. There will be nurses,  doctors, lawyers, or professors.

No matter what specialization a person studied, many of them will not end up working in that particular field. It’s weird, but it happens. The important thing is that the learning has taken place. Employers know that this person has the will and the drive to pursue knowledge and to make that knowledge work for them.

This week, my Education for Ministry (EfM) group online is having their graduation. Some of the class members have completed their four years of education by extension from a program sponsored by the University of the South School of theology. Our group will be losing four valuable members, part of our online community and, surprisingly, people who have become like family to us. We’ve all shared our thoughts, problems, needs, and hopes as well as what we have learned, what amazed us, disturbed us about what we read, confused us, or delighted us about our text and our supplemental readings. The great thing about online is that we meet people from all over, only a few of us have ever met others in the group face-to-face. Our viewpoints are different, beliefs may be a little different, our practices are probably different, but we all joined together to explore the many ways there are to learn to think theologically and to use what we have learned about the Bible, church history, and theology, in our ministries both in and out of the church. We’ve had great discussions, and some odd ones, but in each one of them, at least one person has had an Aha! moment that opened a window in their mind to something they hadn’t considered before. It’s a joyous thing, and even more so when more than one has such a moment.

Graduation is a bittersweet time because many of us will not cross paths again, although many keep in touch with other group members and we enjoy hearing what our former classmates are doing. Still, graduation is a happy event for us, with prayers, shares about the things that our graduates want their classmates to know what they’ve learned from it, how they felt about the group, and what they will take with them as they go about their ministries. Perhaps they will even go into the discernment of new ministries. Will miss them, but we rejoice that we have shared the time with them.

The disciples had a graduation of sorts when Jesus ascended into heaven, capped by Pentecost. They couldn’t go back to Jesus and say, “Could you repeat that lesson again, please?” They were pretty much on their own, but they had their own memories and learning, and they continued to learn as they went out into the world to spread the gospel. Graduation for them was the same as it is for a high school or college graduate today, a doorway into a different world, a world where one uses their ability to think instead of memorizing answers from a book for an exam.

For myself, I had a graduation of sorts this past week. For seven years, I’ve been taking a drug which has a list of side effects about as long as your arm and containing just about every possible thing from aches and pains to possible death. After seven years and three months, I don’t have to take it anymore, and I only have to see my doctor once a year. That feels like a graduation. The door’s open, and I can think a little further ahead now. I’m still aware that another bout of the disease might be around the corner, but somehow my step is a little bit lighter and my a mind is a little more settled so that I can look at each day without thinking to myself, “Is this the day I’m going to get news about that?.

I think God, Jesus, and the Spirit for helping me get through to this graduation. I feel I can now put my tassel on the other side of my mortarboard and walk out the door into a new day with a little more confidence because I feel I have passed my left my final exams, but without precluding further education down the road.

May God bless all the graduates of all the schools and all of the programs and even all of the ones who have been struggling with illnesses and diseases which have, if not having been cured, have been healed, and step out boldly to make the best life that they can.

Happy graduation to all. There are an awful lot of people who are wearing visible, and sometimes invisible, mortarboards for both educational institutions and for real life.  May all of us continue to learn and to grow, for the benefit of ourselves, our families, and our world.

God bless.


Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, June 8, 2019

O Clap Your Hands

I love words, especially when they describe things in such detail that I can picture it in my mind. However, I am not much of a fan of poetry. Most of it leaves me somewhat cold, except for Mary Oliver’s poems. Somehow or other, hers speak to me in a way I don’t find in other poets.

Sometimes I have a problem with the Psalms. The poetry doesn’t rhyme, but that’s okay. I grew up listening to the Psalms done in the King James English, the English of Shakespeare’s time, and to me that’s poetry.  Even so, often the psalms start out praising God, among other things but then turn into whining sessions.  Thank you, but I can whine quite well on my own without needing King David.

I was delighted when I ran across Psalm 47 today. I started to read it, and my mind started playing a recording of this Psalm as set by Orlando Gibbons in the early 1600s. Written for eight voices, it is very much like listening to Messiah, but without having to wait for Christmas or Easter to hear it.

There’s been so much glorious music written for the church, some in Latin, some in English, some in German, and other languages. For me, it’s a joy when I run across a piece of Scripture that starts my mind playing and sometimes singing along with a piece of music with which I’m familiar. Somehow it makes the text more accessible, especially those done in the old style and language. Gibbons’ version of “O clap your hands” is a bright, joyous piece of music; there’s a richness to it and, in my mind, it is a beautiful marriage of lyrics and melody. I think that’s one reason I like church music so much, especially from the Baroque period. It’s written to the glory of God and incorporates scripture, parts of the liturgy, and prayers that can be sung by choirs of not just clergy but lay people as well.

I went to church with my husband right after we were married. He was Roman Catholic; I was Episcopalian, so since he wouldn’t go to my church, I went with him. I didn’t attend the Roman Catholic Church in our town for very long. There was little music, and much of it was sung almost listlessly. Even in the Baptist church, music was an important part of the service, and the hymns and anthems sung in the Episcopal church were like deep drafts of oxygen when I was feeling spiritually short of breath.

When I stopped going to church with my husband, he asked me why. I explained that I missed the music. His response was, “You don’t go to church for the music.” Wrong thing to say to a former Southern Baptist turned Episcopalian who was also a music major and lifelong choir singer. Yes, I go to church for the liturgy and the Eucharist, but I also go for the music, the chants and the anthems, and even the hymns. There are hymns with tunes and sometimes words that go back a thousand years or more. How can I compare that to a piece from a contemporary composer I never heard of and to whose music I can’t relate?

There are some great contemporary composers, like Rutter, Vaughan Williams, and others who reach past the banal and into the sublime. They use scriptures, prayers, and they use other religious texts. Yes, I can I like Taizé for its meditative qualities and also its harmonies. I love hearing congregations from the African churches because they also sing in harmony and with joy. It’s not how loud the music is; it’s how joyful, solemn, or even emotive it is.

I was glad to run into “O clap your hands” in the psalm because I hear it in a musical form where different parts are singing polyphonically. It is complex and interesting while also being worshipful.  No one style of music will suit everybody. Still, I’m glad that I can go back in time and hear pieces like “O clap your hands” which help me to feel so many emotions and also to retain texts I wouldn’t be able to remember if I relied simply on documents. I would never miss what I haven’t heard, but having listened to it, I can rejoice that such a setting is still available after 400 years.

I think music is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, and I’m glad that we have so much of it to hear, enjoy, and with which to connect. I’m happy there is music to thank God in such beautiful ways, and I’m glad that psalms, scripture, and other sacred texts are available for us to hear not just is written words but through the ears, voices, and instrumentations of composers who sought to worship God through music.

I think I’ll listen to Gibbons again. I invite you to give it a try. Perhaps you won’t like it, maybe you will. Perhaps you’ll find a new way to praise God in it. 

God bless.

Four Settings of “O Clap Your Hands” (Psalm 47)

Composer: Orlando Gibbons. The Oxford Camerata.

Composer: John Rutter. Choir of Somerville College, Oxford. Conductor: David Crown.

Composer: Ralph Vaughn Williams. Christ Church Cathedral Choir. Conductor: Stephen Darlington.

Composer: John Leavitt. Covenant Christian High School Concert Choir.

The Storyteller

Matthew 13:24-34

Summertime is just around the corner, and that means vacations and family trips. One kind of trip that a lot of families enjoy is camping, getting out of the suburbs and out into nature, more or less. Quite often they are accompanied by a travel trailer or an RV that provides many of the conveniences of life, but one thing that seems to stay as a standard is a campfire. Many of us have memories of sitting around fires in the gathering dark, listening to stories, often scary ones, but we also heard family stories and reminiscences, stories that taught us where we came from, who our ancestors were, and how they lived. That particular kind of adventure has been going on since time began.

When a baby is born, they grow up hearing stories and having books read to them. The books are full of pictures because pictures convey ideas that they haven’t the words for yet. It teaches them the words and the concepts of the story, and their love of images in books can help determine how able they are to learn school work. I never could get the hang of math because there weren’t any pictures, plus I’m a dud when it comes to figures. I lapped up the stories in history, English, and literature, though. Those made a great deal of sense to me. Even when I couldn’t see the words or had only the words in front of me, my mind could make them turn into pictures as I read. Now, almost three-quarters of a century later, they still do.

Jesus frequently taught using stories. We call them parables, stories that represent concepts and practices that marked the difference between good and evil, hopefully allowing the listeners to understand the abstract concepts in a more concrete fashion. In today’s reading of the gospel, Jesus told three stories, each one was illustrating something that he wanted his listeners to learn and to understand.

At the end of the passage, Jesus told his disciples that he taught in parables. Those who understood would be like wheat in a field while those who didn’t would be like weeds. Workers couldn’t pull up the weeds while the crop was growing because they would pull up stalks of good grain with them. So the weeds had to remain until it was time to harvest the wheat and then they would be separated.

The storyteller has been an essential figure in communities and rural areas. The storytellers not only brought news from outside the village where he was visiting but had often had a  long apprenticeship under older storytellers, learning the epic stories and tales word by word so they could pass them along to the next generation. That is still found in several cultures around the world, for instance, the Navajo. Their stories and chants must be learned without any deviation before the young man can become a shaman or a medicine man. For the Jews, stories are essential, especially those about the patriarchs and the Exodus. The Passover story is their prime lesson repeated every year without change. For Christians, the stories of Jesus are foundational; the most important of these is that of his resurrection. We still listen to the parables Jesus taught and see them as valuable aids in learning and models for the teaching of younger members in ways that they can comprehend long before they’re able to understand abstract concepts.

Today, we use the Sunday school class curricula and programs like Godly Play, which are ways of presenting Bible stories geared to the individual levels of children’s understanding. I think any person exposed to Christianity in their early years will recall stories like Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark. As they grew older, they learned about Abraham and Isaac, Joshua and the walls of Jericho, and the stories of Saul and David. While many of those stories are not parables, they are tools for learning our religious history. We still look at mythological stories like the Star Wars films and the Harry Potter books. Both of those series are stories of made-up people and places, but incorporate realms somewhat different than we are accustomed to but where many of the lessons that young Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter had to learn to gain in wisdom and ability. I don’t know how many older folks can enjoy such stories, but I know I do. Good stories are ones that can be appreciated by all ages.

When we read the parables of Jesus, we look to see what he is using to make his teaching applicable. We remember the good Samaritan, which is probably one of his best-known parables. While there was never a Samaritan who stopped by the roadside to help an injured Jew, Jesus used that story to point out that we are all neighbors no matter what our differences are and we need to care for those neighbors no matter what. Just because something never really happened doesn’t necessarily mean it’s false; often the best lessons are taught through myths which show truths without being factual.

This week will look I think I will look at the parables again under a microscope, looking to see exactly how Jesus structured his parables, what they pointed out, and how he made them understandable to the people. I know there will be many things that are strange and foreign to me in this modern world, but if I look through the eyes of first-century followers, I will look for the things that just don’t fit or that seem to go against logic and investigate life at that time that the listeners would see and think of. It’s going to be an exciting journey. I hope you’ll join me.

God bless.

Originally published on Speaking to the Soul at Episcopal Café  Sunday, May 26, 2019.