Fragments Toward A Whole

His Was Not the First Cry at Birth

2011-12-31T05:00:00.000-05:00

His was not the first cry atbirth
and certainly not the last cry at death.
Many before and since have crossed
these vast thresholds and likewise uttered.
Yet his brief span, his first and last cries –
sinewed with flesh and blood, as ours,
contrapuntal with joy and pain, as ours –
voiced all birth and death, all hopes and sighs,
and sounded heaven and earth, above,
below, with full-spent passion, with love:
thus pierced our silent, brooding night
with heart-cleft notes, toward a lilting light.

Christmas2011

Expectations and God's Good News

2011-12-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

"Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel."

Rejoice. God will be with you, Israel. It seems a simple thing. God comes in grace and love to dwell among his people. Surely his people will welcome him and take joy in his presence. Yet clearly many, even most, in Israel did not rejoice when God came to be with them in Jesus. They did not recognize, they did not welcome, God-with-them-in-Jesus. Jesus, the long anticipated and much hoped for messiah, savior, did not meet expectations.

We are no different today from Israel then. God's good news does not conform to our expectations, yet it is good news. How can it be good news if it does not appear to fit our expectations, even our hopes? It is good news because God makes it good news, because God, not we, knows what news is good for us, what is good for us. Our radical disjunction from God so profoundly affects us that we cannot accept or even know the good God knows we need, the good God has in store for our being.

So we miss it and even reject it. The good news of the child born in Bethlehem gets tossed into the rubbish pit of the cross. Yet even there, in God's grace and love, it remains good news for Israel, for us, for all the world. For this news, as God himself, with us in Jesus, persists and indeed triumphs through life and death to new life, from good to good, more true and more glorious than any good we can imagine or hope to know and live.

Honeysuckle in October

2011-12-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

Light rain and mist spatter the last of October,
even as this late, oh so late, fragment of summer
vines through the rusted bracken and bramble
which crowd both sides of the road we travel.

Overcoming Evil

2011-09-11T05:00:00.000-04:00

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Anniversary of September 11

Ineluctably, this week we come to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against targets in the United States. The hatred and evil of the attacks were stunning and heartrending, particularly for those intimately affected by injury and loss. The storm of effects carved, and continues to carve, the landscape of life for individuals, families, and communities. And now, this anniversary of the attacks raises afresh the complex challenges of remembrance and response. How do we remember and respond to such hatred and evil?
Romans 12:9-21

I contend that Romans 12:9-21 should frame and form how the community of Christ remembers and responds to the events of September 11. This passage from this letter of Saint Paul to the followers of Jesus in Rome begins with these words: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good….” It concludes with these: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” In this week when the remembrance of those acts of hatred and evil is prominent in the hearts and minds of most in the United States, this passage is God’s grace to guide and shape the remembrance and response of the community of Christ.
Remembrance and response

How then do we – the community of Christ – remember and respond to such hatred and evil? How does this passage – Romans 12:9-21 – guide and shape the community of Christ as it remembers, prays, and acts in response to those events? In the truth and power of God’s Word in this passage, the community of Christ remembers and responds through genuine love and steadfast adherence to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good.

What does it mean to love genuinely and to hold fast to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good? The community of Christ loves genuinely and holds fast to what is good in the following ways, enumerated in the passage.

Rejoicing in hope, being patient in suffering, and persevering in prayer. Contributing to those in need, whether fellow saint in Christ or stranger (for in Christ the stranger is always a neighbor). Blessing those who persecute the members of the community – blessing, not cursing. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep – acting in solidarity, compassion, and empathy to bear other’s burdens. Not repaying evil with evil, but doing what is noble in the sight of all. Doing all we can to live in peace with all people. Not seeking to avenge ourselves or others, but leaving the sorting of actions, consequences, guilt, and blame to God. Acting in great charity even to our enemies. In short: overcoming evil, and doing so with loving and good actions, not evil ones.
Transformation and renewal

How is it possible to remember and respond to such hatred and evil through genuine love and steadfast adherence to what is good, in order to overcome evil with good? It is possible through the transformation and renewal of our lives in the powerful grace of God.

This passage, from the last part of Romans 12, follows as the necessary or inevitable ethical outworking of the first part of Romans 12. A key statement from the first verses of chapter 12 provides the foundation for the ethical injunctions in verses 9 through 21, as summarized in verse 21 with the injunction to overcome evil with good. In verse 2 of chapter 12, Saint Paul exhorts the community of Christ, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Hence, we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed and renewed in our hearts and minds by the powerful grace of God. Because of the transformation and renewal of our lives in God’s grace, the community of Christ is framed and formed, enabled and empowered, to live in what God determines to be good and acceptable and perfect – as against what any particular nation, culture, or government determines to be good and acceptable and perfect.
Citizenship in heaven

This passage highlights the truth that our citizenship and allegiance are fundamentally and ultimately in heaven, not in the United States or in any other country. We do of course live in the United States. Our earthly citizenship in this country is profoundly significant for our lives – for the general shaping of our perspectives, emotions, and identity, and for our remembrance of and response to the particular events of September 11, 2001.

Yet our earthly citizenship and allegiance are not unmixed goods. Our earthly citizenship and allegiance – with their influence on our perspectives, emotions, and identity – are ambiguous and penultimate. They are always to be measured and qualified by our fundamental and ultimate citizenship and allegiance. They are always secondary and subordinate to our fundamental and ultimate citizenship and allegiance.

As citizens of heaven fundamentally and ultimately, in the power of God we are to be transformed and renewed in our whole lives, and thus conformed to the patterns of heaven, not to the patterns of this world. And in conformity with the patterns of heaven, we are to love genuinely, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, and overcome evil not with evil but with good.
The way of Jesus

This passage from Romans 12 does not indicate that it is easy to overcome evil with good. It does not specify when good will overcome evil, or how much effort it will take to overcome evil with good. The effort to overcome evil through genuine love and doing good may take much time and effort. It has already taken 2000 years. It may involve much suffering, even death. It cost God his only son. Yet, as we remember and respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11 as the community of Christ fundamentally and ultimately, this passage from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans clearly describes none other than the way of true discipleship for the community of Christ, because the way of hating and overcoming evil through love and doing good is the way of Jesus, and the way of Jesus in this world of hate and evil is the way of the cross.

Hope in Relationships

2011-08-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the truest and best hope we can have in and for any relationship is that someday the other will say, "My life is better for having known you."

Simply Sounds of Birds

2011-08-05T05:00:00.000-04:00

Neither symphony nor cacophony,

simply sounds of birds in day's first light

awake, awake, among leaves in the wind.

Ah, to be as a bird in this plein morning ...

Baptism: Death and Resurrection in Christ

2011-07-28T05:00:00.003-04:00

Reading in Colossians 2:6-15, especially verses 12 and 13 ...

The divine, salvific mystery is that God exchanges Christ's death for our death, such that our death is no longer our own but is Christ's. We must make no mistake about this. We die. Indeed, apart from Christ we are already dead spiritually. This side of the second coming, ineluctably and certainly, even if we are in Christ, we will eventually die physically as well. Yet in this God-acted mystery of salvation, which we experience sacramentally in baptism, we no longer die in ourselves; we die in Christ. God translates us from that death which is our death to that death which is Christ's, which becomes our life in the mystery of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

Summer Rain

2011-07-08T05:00:00.000-04:00

Summer rain --

against the inscrutable screen

of beech and big-tooth aspen,

fractal leafing seeming endless --

silvers the massed cloud down

to earth, to soil and pavement,

and all creatures here below,

of life sore beauty-parched.

This Late May Morning

2011-05-30T05:00:00.001-04:00

On this late May morning

in the hour before dawn

southwesterly-born breezes

gust the massed honeysuckle,

its supple vines and flowers

barely seen but amply sensed

in air so moist, intoxicating

swirling toward the surging day.

More on the Powerlessness of Jesus

2011-04-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

Arrested and brutally interrogated by the secular and religious leaders in Jerusalem, about to be pushed off the precipice into the abyss of crucifixion, Jesus knows he is one with the true creator and ruler of the whole congeries of elements of which the abyss is perversely made by all pretenders to the ruler's power; and then he lets himself be pushed.

The Powerlessness of Jesus

2011-04-22T05:00:00.001-04:00

Reading closely the accounts of the arrest, suffering, and death of Jesus in the gospels, one can only be struck by the utter powerlessness of Jesus in the face of the forces against him. If this was -- is -- God's method to overcome evil and recreate the world in truth, beauty, and goodness, it is astonishing, stunning. Give self up completely. Give up every claim to privilege, right, power. To love, only to love, utterly and absolutely to and through the end, no matter the end.

Non Sequitur in Holy Week

2011-04-19T05:00:00.002-04:00

In the gospel reading for Tuesday in Holy Week -- John 12:20-26 -- some Greeks attending Passover in Jerusalem approach Philip, a disciple of Jesus: "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip goes to Andrew, and together they go to Jesus with this request. Does Jesus agree to meet these Greeks? Or does he put them off with a claim to being too busy, here in this tumultuous week? Neither. Jesus responds to Philip and Andrew with what appears to be a strange non sequitur. He begins to talk about the Son of Man, about a climactic moment approaching the Son of Man, about the need for a grain to die in the ground before it can produce a bounty of wheat. Does Jesus misunderstand Philip and Andrew and the eager Greeks? Does he not care about these Greeks and their request as he seemingly launches into these oblique references to himself and his sense of mission? Is his response a non sequitur? The answer is no and yes.

The answer is no in the sense that Jesus -- in his commentary on the Son of Man, on death, on losing one's life for the sake of Jesus, and only thus and then gaining true life -- precisely answers the Greeks, precisely tells them what it means to see Jesus. Do they wish to see Jesus? Do we wish to see Jesus? Look to the cross. There he is, loving God and loving the world, in and through suffering and death, for the sake of the world. This is where we see him, or we do not see him at all.

The answer is yes in that Jesus on the cross does not portray or embody the wisdom of the world. Jesus crucified is, in worldly terms, a non sequitur, a cipher of utter foolishness and failure. Moreover, to see Jesus truly is to be where Jesus is, in suffering love, not in self-focused pursuit of achievement, satisfaction, and fulfillment, the way of the world. In Holy Week, crossing off the days to the climactic end of the week, we follow the non sequitur of our crucified savior and lord, or we do not follow him at all.

Eastern Redbuds

2011-04-17T05:00:00.001-04:00

Mid April, and long down the lane the eastern redbuds in bloom, prior to leafing, mist the gray dawn in purple understory.

A Kind of Wild Beauty

2011-04-16T05:00:00.002-04:00

On an early morning drive to the Blue Ridge today, I stopped near Paris, Virginia. Clouds thickened down the ridges and valley, and a chill easterly wind drove hard rain across the land and pond, the surface of the pond being pushed relentlessly to the western edge. Such a wildness to the weather and morning -- all a kind of wild beauty amid the unfurling and flourishing of spring.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

2011-03-25T05:00:00.004-04:00

Today marks the grim 100-year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: March 25, 1911, in New York's Greenwich Village. Due to heartless labor practices and negligence by factory owners, 146 people died in under 20 minutes from fire and leaping from the building's 9th floor in desperation. Most of the dead were females; most in their late teens and early twenties.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

Near the End

2011-03-21T05:00:00.001-04:00

Near the end

of this cold March day, mark

how the tall, straight trunks

of tulip poplars in mass –

leafless from winter

and ranged up the slope –

enbark and furrow

the last slant of light

to a ruddy-gold glory,

before dusk, before night ...

LangDetectes>en GoogleDicC

colina, cerro, otero, montaña, cuesta

A non-moral paradigm of the fallen nature of existence

2011-02-05T05:00:00.000-05:00

Recently I experienced a non-moral paradigm of the fallen nature of existence, certainly including my own. On a Saturday morning this winter I left home by car before dawn to explore west. After I crossed the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah River, I noticed in the car's rear view mirror the light from the rising sun. Two horizons figured significantly in perspective here. The sun had emerged above the plane of the coastal plain east of the Piedmont, but it had not yet cleared the Blue Ridge itself, to be seen directly and fully in the sky by me west of the mountains. Thus hidden, in a sense, the morning sun nevertheless burnished the broken clouds overspreading the ridge to a ruddy luminosity. I turned off the highway onto a smaller country lane paralleling the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah to seek a back-east view conducive to an attempt to capture this moment of glory in a photograph. As I stood in the snow at the fence to a farm pasture, through the viewfinder of my camera I carefully framed and focused the scene with ridge and clouds and light. When the composition seemed right to me, and the color at peak in the sky, I pressed the shutter button. No image appeared in the display on the back of my digital camera. Puzzled, I pressed again. Again, no image, meaning no photograph. Baffled but stubbornly persistent, I pressed the button a third time. Still no image, no photograph. Frustrated, I pressed one last time to no avail, then checked the camera settings more closely. Deflated, I discovered the camera had no media card, so no image could be recorded. As it happened, when I had used the camera the week before and taken the media card out to transfer images to the computer, I neglected to reinsert the card into the camera immediately after the transfer. Hence, a malfunctioning camera, or to be more accurate, photographer. And so on this Saturday, west of the sun, east of my foolishness, I missed a moment for photographic beauty. When the glory passed from the clouds, I ruefully chuckled at my mistake and loss, tucked myself and my memory of the view back into the car, and continued through the gray morning.

Christ of the Birds

2010-12-20T05:00:00.002-05:00

Amid the crumpled grays and browns
of these late December leaves,
scattered and muted on cold-laden grass,
juncos come in mass, hop the ground here about,
for seed, for moisture, for life in itself –
their slate-colored bodies instantiating
a beauty so subtle, a glory all but hidden,
small and flitting through the dull
of this dusk-fallen hour.
Christ of the birds of this world
came down, came down,
to birth, to death, to winter among us,
wanting sorely to be graced,
as even juncos under heaven.
Christ of the birds, Christ of all creatures,
come again, come again.

3 Advent 2010.

2010-12-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

Cold rain over night, with temperatures close to freezing. Now at dawn fog settles in and fills the spaces between houses and trees, between heaven and earth. To this world, God, you came to us in Jesus, vulnerable as a child, tender as a hope. Thus you bless this cold and fog, thus you bless us, with blood and bone of your love, with life both now and ever. May we, with cold and fog and all elements of this world, kneel in thanks and praise before this lowly child, savior and lord of all creation.

Keep Us, Lord, Toward Bethlehem: A Prayer in Advent

2010-11-28T05:00:00.000-05:00

On this rough back of time, we plod the days toward Bethlehem. How long, Lord, until we get there? What will we find when we arrive? In the aging of the year, daylight pales and stoops before the cold and dark. And the ride jars and coarsens after so many, many miles. We long for welcome, for kindness, for some sort of rest. Will you be there, Lord? How will we know? A child leads us, but to what and for what? We bear our many wanderings, our fears, and, yes, our fervent hopes. Keep us, Lord, toward Bethlehem, toward a tender dawn and a mercy incarnate. Amen.

Hope - Some Thoughts on 1 Peter 1:1-12

2010-11-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

We commonly use the word “hope” in at least two senses. Some times we speak of “hoping against hope.” In this sense we use “hope” to indicate a kind of doggedness of will, but it is a sheer doggedness without real expectation of fulfillment. Hope thus experienced is more desperate than it is, well, hopeful. At other times we speak of “hope” more in terms of confident expectation, of trust that something will occur or be fulfilled. Hope thus experienced is not desperate but, well, truly hopeful.

Peter, a disciple of and witness to Jesus, wrote this letter to followers of Jesus scattered around Asia Minor in the early 60s A.D. He wrote to encourage and foster hope and faithfulness in those dispersed Christian communities. The hope of which he spoke was hope of the latter kind – expectant and confident of fulfillment of God’s purposes in the world and in the lives of his beloved people.

Peter wrote of hope not because he was naïve. He had seen the worst, from his own failure before Jesus to Jesus’ horrible death. Yet he knew also the great mercy of God leading to new birth, to new life in the risen Jesus. In a sense, after all he had been through with Jesus, Peter knew this mercy better than he knew his own failure or any other failures in life. God – loving, good, and powerful – thus gave him hope in Jesus.

Nor were Peter’s readers naïve. They knew trouble, discomfort, and adverse circumstances. Though they lived in it, they were “strangers in the world.” This was a period of increasing persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. They suffered or expected to suffer. Yet they also experienced God’s mercy and new life in Jesus. God thus gave them hope in Jesus.

We may look at the world around us, and at our own life, and we may ask what hope there is. Is there only hope against hope? Or is there true hope – expectant, trusting, confident? There is hope, declared Peter, not by ignoring trouble and adversity, but amid trouble and adversity, in that God in mercy gives us new life in Jesus. Through worship, Scripture, prayer, fellowship, and faithful living, we experience Jesus, and God fashions hope in us, more each day. And so in turn we become agents of hope in a world in desperate need of it.

A Few Glorious Moments

2010-11-17T07:49:00.001-05:00

A few glorious moments this morning just as the sun emerged above the horizon, after overnight rains, with high remnants of clouds dark gray above, but brightly illuminated underneath with stunningly pink-to-red-to-orange trailers toward the earth. A sky saturated with creation's splendor.

The Church: First Fruit of Re-Creation

2010-11-08T05:00:00.001-05:00

In To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (p. 158), James Davison Hunter remarks that ecclesiology is, for what he terms the neo-Anabaptist perspective, the form of engagement with the world. This stems from the significance of the communal aspect of Christian faith in this view. The individual is of course significant, but Christ formed a community of believers or followers: the church. Christian ethics is not solely or even primarily individual. It is corporate; it is ecclesiological.

Hunter is right about this in a certain sense. However -- and I am not necessarily reacting to Hunter or to any person in this so-called neo-Anabaptist perspective -- I contend that the reason for the existence of the church is not to engage the world. To employ Hunter's terms, the reason for Christ forming the community of believers is not in order to have a form or means of engagement with the world. The church is not utilitarian in the divine economy. The church is essential in the divine economy. The purpose in the divine formation of the church is the re-creation of the cosmos. The coming-into-being of the church is fundamentally an act of redemption or salvation, first and last, not ethic or mission. Ethic and mission derive from that redemption which is the divine formation of the church. Ecclesiology gives rise to ethic and mission. Or perhaps a more nuanced way of putting this is to say that a comprehensive ecclesiology seeks to understand and explicate both the essential being of the church (redemption, re-creation of the cosmos, the vanguard of the new humanity) and the necessary acts of the church in manifesting that being (ethic, mission). In the end the church is not a divine tool to engage the world outside of the church through ethic and mission. Were that the case, the church would cease to exist in the age to come. Rather, the church is the first fruit of the divine re-creation of the cosmos. In the age to come, when all of time and space are made new, beyond sin and death, in God's grace and power, the church will be the last fruit of that re-creation. Outside of the church will be nothing, for the church will be all, as God will be all in all. With and in God, the church will humbly and joyfully persist in God's good re-creation.

The Mystery of Coming-Into-Being

2010-11-06T05:00:00.002-04:00

The mystery of the involuntary coming-into-being of anything, including you and me, must continue to astonish us, inducing wonder and humility.

On a Sense of Place: From Edwin O'Connor's "The Edge of Sadness"

2010-09-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

"For this was a moment I had postponed for a long time, and one I had never dreamed would finally take place.... I had come back, not to stay, but only for an hour or so -- long enough to see and savor again...that small and surprisingly unchanged part of the city where I was born and had spent so much of my life, where I knew every building and back alley as well as I knew my own front yard, where I had been a young priest, where I had had my own parish, and where, as in no place else, I had belonged, I had been at home. I suppose it's the mark of the provincial man, but in any case I find I have a special and lasting love for this place, which is so obviously just a place, which has no particular beauty or grace or grandeur of scene, but which is, quite simply, a neighborhood, my neighborhood, a compound of sights and smells and sounds that have furnished all my years. What kind of a man is it who, after almost fifty years, can still spend half his time remembering the cry of the chestnut man, as it came floating down the street on a winter night...?"

This novel is one of the finest I have read. I recommend it to my friends.

Conviction and Humility

2010-09-27T05:00:00.002-04:00

Grant us grace to pursue passionate conviction with commensurate humility. Conviction without humility tends toward coercion and eventual violence. Humility without conviction tends toward mere sentimentalism and eventual subjectivism. Passionate conviction with commensurate humility. This is the way of truth in love.

Disappointment and Hope: Martha Speaks to Jesus

2010-09-09T17:09:00.007-04:00

In the daily lectionary for today, the gospel passage -- John 11:17-29 -- locates us in the midst of the story of Jesus and the raising of Lazarus. Yesterday's text -- John 11:1-16 -- launched us into the story. Lazarus, brother to Mary and Martha, has fallen deathly ill. The sisters send word of the illness to Jesus. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus live in the village of Bethany, about two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus, seeking to avoid further controversy and danger from his recent visit to Jerusalem, is a good distance away with his disciples, across the Jordan River. Though Jesus has a close relationship with the sisters and brother, when he receives the news of Lazarus' condition he enigmatically decides to remain in the trans-Jordan area for two more days. After those days, Jesus determines to go to Bethany in response. His disciples, deeply anxious, remind him of the danger in being so close to Jerusalem. As they all know too well, powerful figures in the city desire to do away with him. Nevertheless, Jesus departs for Bethany, and the disciples grimly accompany him.

Martha, hearing that Jesus is nearing the village, goes out to meet him. And here we come to one of the truly plaintive addresses to Jesus in the entire gospels. Martha greets Jesus with these words, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." (John 11:21, 22; NRSV.) Do we not hear the anguish in the conditional statement, "If you had been here..."? Do we not perceive the rebuke in the unstated conclusion, almost accusation, "...but you were not"? And so Lazarus, dear brother of Martha and Mary, has died, to the sisters' great sorrow. Then Martha continues to Jesus, "But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." (John 11:22; NRSV.) And do we not hear in this second statement the beginnings of Martha's inward movement of heart and soul toward trust and hope in Jesus, despite the disappointing and painful circumstances? In these two sentences addressed to Jesus, we come to one of the great significances for us of this gospel story of death and life.

For just as we find ourselves at this point in the midst of the biblical narrative of Lazarus' illness and Martha's response to Jesus after her brother's death -- a response marked by seeming disappointment and anguish, then tentative trust and hope -- so we hear the story speaking to us in our particular circumstances. Most of us at times find ourselves disappointed and even anguished with life, whether a specific situation or a more general and overall character. We, like Martha, live in the narrative of those two sentences. Frustration, sorrow, pain. Jesus, if only you were here, things would be different. Trust, hope, love. Jesus, you are compassion incarnate, life in and beyond death. All things are possible with you. Between our birth, rebirth, death, and resurrection in Jesus, the story of our life moves through the hard space, the potential space, between Martha's two sentences: a narrative of lament and praise interwoven.

The Photograph

2010-08-31T05:00:00.005-04:00

Is this that moment for which we wait,
when the late-summer rose,
lifted on green thorny cane
and full scarlet-crowned,
opens to petaled perfection,
exquisite in flowing form,
just before the photograph,
then slip of time and space?

Life Abundant

2010-05-21T05:00:00.001-04:00

""The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10, New Revised Standard Version.)

Here we are in the final week of the Easter season in the church year. Last week we observed Ascension Day, Jesus' post-resurrection departure from this earthly sphere to rule the cosmos alongside God. This Sunday we mark Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, birthing and empowering the community of Jesus' followers for faithful life in this world.

Because of Jesus' resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit, in a true sense we live in the season of Easter all year round, year after year. It isn't just for "spring." Jesus came -- lived, died, was raised -- that we might have life, life abundant, now and always.

To be honest, though, I don't actually feel that way all year round, year after year. I don't consciously experience Easter life all week or even all day, at least not that often. Spiritual faults, physical ills -- in me and in the larger world -- degrade and even war against life. The kingdom of God is here, to be sure, where people follow Jesus in faith, hope, and love. However, the whole of the cosmos, the whole of life, are not yet fully and finally transformed into that kingdom, both within and around me.

Still, I do feel, I do experience Easter life, life abundant, in moments and places, and even in stretches of time and space! When and where? What kinds of times, what kinds of places, what kinds of experiences pulse, quietly or vibrantly, with life abundant? When do I feel truly alive? What gives me a glimpse or an actual experience of the wondrous fullness of life Jesus came to birth and empower within us and within the entire cosmos? At times and in places when writing, exploring nature and history, photographing, and connecting with people, for example, I experience the instantiation of Easter life; and these are to be treasured and multiplied in the progressive transformation of all life in the kingdom of God's son.

All a Kind of Praise

2010-04-10T20:15:00.004-04:00

A brisk but glorious morning, with bright sunshine, trees greening, redbuds and dogwoods blossoming. I spent a good hour and a half early today slowly traversing a gravel country road in Fauquier County, Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge, with a farm and a lovely creek nearby, and a bald eagle flying over head at one point. All a kind of praise.

Easter Day 2010

2010-04-04T21:16:00.002-04:00

Karen and I participated in an Easter sunrise service (6:30 a.m.) at The Falls Church (Anglican), in the churchyard. Worship started in near dark among the graves; the sun ascended the horizon about midway through; by the end, as we ate and drank in Eucharist, the emerging leaves of the tall oak above us took on green in the light. In all, a splendid sacrament of life from death!

The Way of the Cross: Multimedia Presentation

2010-04-02T05:00:00.000-04:00

I commend this well-done multimedia presentation as a meditation for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

http://www.beliefnet.com/religion/christianity/holyweek/easter/cross_lite2.html

Some Thoughts on Galatians 6:11-18

2010-02-17T05:00:00.001-05:00

Coming to the end of his letter to the Galatian Christians, Paul summarized in his own handwriting his primary purposes in writing. Apparently an amanuensis or secretary had written down Paul’s thoughts to this point. Now Paul took over to emphasize his message.

Advertising, marketing, and public relations inundate our culture: business; education; politics; sports; and even churches. What appeals to people? How can our product, service, or idea be packaged and presented attractively to draw people in and win them over to make the purchase or join our side? How can we tailor language and image to lower resistance, touch a felt need, and sometimes even beguile?

Let us then read carefully the end of this letter. What message did Paul emphasize to the Galatians and indeed to all to whom he witnessed? Crucifixion! Paul pledged to advertise, market, and publicly relate nothing more nor less than the crucifixion of Jesus, and the critical need for us to be incorporated into Jesus’ crucifixion: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

This is the gospel: the cross of Jesus Christ! No one in Jesus’ day would have understood a cross as a piece of jewelry, a gilded symbol on a Bible or prayer book, a brilliant stained glass image, or anything of beauty. With deep shudders, they would have known a cross to be one of the most horrible evils invented and exacted by human beings on other human beings.

This – Jesus’ death by torture at the hands of political and religious powers, all because of our sin – is what Paul straightforwardly proclaimed in person and by letter. The saving death of Jesus is the one and only good news, above and even against all financial, philosophical, political, psychological, or spiritual advertisements to some other “good news” or good thing that will revolutionize our lives and satisfy us in heart, mind, or body. The only news that counts as truly good, as Paul affirmed and embodied, is new creation through death and resurrection in Jesus.

When we speak and act in the name of Jesus, what message do we live and present as God’s good news for us and for all people?

Weekend in Winchester, Virginia: Saturday

2010-01-30T17:18:00.002-05:00

With a temperature outside of about 16 degrees on this Saturday morning, snow began lightly around 8:00 a.m. as Karen and I breakfasted in the George Washington Hotel restaurant in Winchester, Virginia, where we are spending the weekend. We discussed some activities for the day, beginning with a drive west of 15 miles on Rt. 50 to the tiny town of Gore, VA, in a valley just into the Alleghenies. American writer Willa Cather was born in Gore in 1873; she lived there for ten years in two different houses before moving to Nebraska with her family. Both houses still stand; one is the house in which she was born. Just before Gore, on a gravel road about 100 yards off 50 are the remains of a house and small farm from at least the early 20th century, possibly latter 19th century. Next to that is a small, nearly forgotten family cemetery. Pioneer Jeremiah Smith moved onto the land in the early 1760s, with a grant from Lord Fairfax. He and a number of his descendants are buried there. Most gravestones are small, worn, even broken; names and people obscured by time, weather, inattention. Cold and thickening snow accentuated the poignancy. After exploring this area and the town itself, we headed back to Winchester. Along the way, sloping down the ridge into the Shenandoah Valley, we stopped along 50 so I could walk back up the highway to photograph ice formations on the rocks slanting high up on one side of the road. An interesting aesthetic and naturalistic experience as cars and trucks zoomed by on the snowy, icy pavement while I stood on the shoulder of the road. From there we aimed to visit the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley on the west side of Winchester. However, by that time (nearly 11:00 a.m.), snow had been increasing for a couple of hours, and the museum had closed due to weather! A portent as it turned out. We coped by going back to the hotel to park the car and focus on in-town adventure. Hence, we walked a couple of blocks to the Old Courthouse Civil War Museum in town. Too much to report on a fascinating visit there. A few details: the courthouse and yard were used as a hospital, prisoner of war facility, and barracks during the Civil War. There are graffiti inside from captured soldiers. Displays of Civil War relics and photographs are most interesting and informative. Meanwhile the snow continued heavily, with about 4 inches on the ground and the temperature at about 17 degrees. And so staff decided to close the museum early about 1:00 p.m.! We had had a good time there, and we were ready for lunch, so we didn't mind. We walked around the pedestrian mall of old town Winchester, and it became clear the town was starting to close up because of the snow. Many shops and eating places were closed or closing. We finally found a place for lunch, and that was good, for we were hungry and beginning to wonder where might find a place still open for us to eat lunch. After eating, we decided to walk the two blocks to the Handley Library, should it still be open, so we could explore the historical archives; but alas it too had closed early! And so at 2:30 p.m., after splendid adventures in history and geography and weather, we decided that returning to the hotel for reading was the best option for the remainder of the afternoon. Snow is now tapering off in the late afternoon, with about 5 inches in total, still very cold outside, and dark coming on. So far, with what we have done, and despite early closings, it has been an absolutely delightful winter day in Winchester and environs. The only question is whether we can find a place open for dinner!

A Festival in Winter

2010-01-15T05:00:00.006-05:00

A wet snow had fallen a couple of days before, in advance of a bitter cold front scudding in on fierce, northwesterly winds. In the early morning, the wind still blustering, under a gray-metaled sky with a thin band of ruddiness eastering along the Blue Ridge, I slanted across fields and lanes at the state arboretum in Clarke County, through snow now compacted and hardened to crust and ice.

Painfully cold at first, I lost most sensation in my ears and extremities after a while, such that I adjusted and moved past the worst of the pain. Nevertheless, I sought some refuge from the bitter wind by taking a path among scrub brush. The tall bushes and saplings cut the wind noticeably, and I felt more comfortable. The cold became distinctly more bearable, and I began to be able to focus more closely on the surroundings.

Amid this severe beauty, I continued on the path into a wooded area, even more sheltered from the wind. Now it was just cold, around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, but tolerable. I stopped to observe, to watch and listen, in the calm at my level, while the heights of the trees, 40 to 50 feet above, swayed and rattled in the wind. I became aware of other movement and sound around me; and I wondrously realized there were at least several dozen cedar waxwings flitting around me in the woods, clustering on tree branches and fallen logs to eat of berries and drink of snow. The whir of glossy brown wings and bodies, basically unconcerned with me, took over my senses while I stood as still as I could.

The cedar waxwings and I were in a stand of hackberries. The common hackberry tree produces a green fruit in summer that ripens reddish brown to purple in autumn. After a hard frost, the small berries are particularly sweet. Hence the congregation of waxwings, for these elegant birds dine largely on fruit, especially in fall and winter. Fruit constitutes such a significant part of their diet that they are known as frugivorous birds. They favor hackberries, when available, greatly.

And there, in my stillness, I stood, I watched and listened, for an indeterminate time. A half hour? An hour? A quarter of an hour? In that moment, that space, I could not tell. I lost track of time, of cold. I knew only the flashing mass of cedar waxwings at feast among the trees and snow.

Some Thoughts on Ephesians 4:1-16

2010-01-05T05:00:00.003-05:00

When I was an infant I was truly but not fully human. Being truly human – in the sense of being human instead of some other creature – is only the beginning of being fully human. To live into the fullness of human personhood takes a lifetime.

We see this manifestly in children. Children grow in many ways: intellectual; emotional; moral; and spiritual. That children grow physically seems to make visible the reality of their non-physical growth. We expect change over the years for children. We expect growth in a myriad of ways, physical and non-physical.

When we reach adulthood, we may lose much of this expectation for our self. We no longer mature physically as children do. We age instead of mature. To the extent we grow physically, it is often in unhealthy ways. Sadly, along with this we may lose an expectation of continual maturation in intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual ways. Far too much, we only grow in these things unevenly, fitfully, or meagerly.

Yet Paul, in this rich passage in Ephesians, exhorts us to continual spiritual growth or maturation. His evocative phrase – “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” – and his unpacking of it deserve our long, prayerful reflection. In this space we can only note two principles of great importance.

The one principle is the necessity of spiritual growth. God truly gives us new life in Jesus. The fullness of this new life requires growth over time. It is unworthy of Jesus and our relationship with him to remain spiritual infants. We must grow in spiritual maturity over our entire life. The second principle is the measure of a worthy life. God calls us to live in a manner worthy of the new nature he has given us. How do we know what is worthy? A clamor of voices in our culture promote this or that standard of the full and good life. Paul points to one standard only: “…become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

God makes us new people. God energizes us through the Spirit to mature continually. God shows us in Jesus what it means to live truly and fully human, over this life and into the next. What a glorious goal! Nothing else is as worthy as what God desires and makes possible for us in Jesus! May we, with Paul, ever grow in living a life worthy of what God has made us.

Orion's Cosmic Cartwheel

2009-12-29T20:00:00.002-05:00

For those keen to enjoy the heavens, these are the nights of Orion's brilliant, cosmic cartwheel arcing southeast to southwest across the sky - coming into view above the horizon especially around 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.

What Glory Was It That Suffered

2009-12-24T05:00:00.000-05:00

What glory was it that suffered
a little child to bear such weight
when there was all the world for the part?

Ah, such glory was love, love divine,
discontent to lord in majesty above,
passionate to plod among us, as one of us,
so low and worn, so destitute we were.

And so was fleshed in humility, in sacrifice,
through and for love, a thing of little weight,
a child, yet of such glory, for all the world.

Photography and Self

2009-11-19T05:00:00.000-05:00

In my best moments, in my photographs I do not want people to see me but to see what I see.

Old Waterford Road

2009-10-24T16:45:00.002-04:00

My wife, Karen, and I found a break between rains this morning for a lovely drive out of Leesburg VA up Old Waterford Road (much of it gravel and narrow) to historic Waterford VA. The fall colors are at or near peak, inducing wonder at the glory curving along land and sky and foliage. Adding to all, the weather was strange and wild, with warm and gusty winds in front of an approaching cold front. Gusts strong enough to crack and blow a 25 to 30-foot tree down onto the the road at one point, some time a short while before our coming, and leaving little space to pass. I drove carefully far to the left on the road, crunching over the very top branches. The sight and experience so impressed me, I was lost in amazement. (It doesn't take much to do this to me.) Karen, more level-headed and civic-minded, despite her suffering with a cold, suggested it would be a good idea to move the tree from the road. Conceding the sense and sensibility of this, I parked as far to one side of the road as I could and slowly (barely) dragged the tree off the roadbed as far as I could, with Karen clearing broken branches and debris from the road. None the worse for wear (surprisingly), and a bit chuffed with civic pride, we drove on in the splendor of the morning, glad to have been of some slight service to a greater good.

Late the Blood-Red Rose

2009-10-15T05:00:00.001-04:00

Here and now in mid October
has late the blood-red rose
opened to the dying sun,
which by the day is paling
toward that flat of wintered light,
yet does still bleed such beauty
through thorn through petal
for this our ruinous fall.

Like Water Striders

2009-10-05T05:00:00.001-04:00

Like water striders, we skate along on the surface of glory we scarcely fathom.

Reading Wallace Stegner

2009-10-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

To read Wallace Stegner is to become more human. His was a life that mattered, in word and deed.

Sunday into Monday: Taking Worship into the Week

2009-09-18T05:00:00.014-04:00

“Work is not redemptive – God’s work – but it is or it can be devoted.” So writes Donald Hall in his book Life Work. I take this to mean that our work, however dutifully and diligently we apply ourselves, does not redeem. It does not redeem ourselves or others. God does. God redeems us and others. That’s his business, his work.

Yet our work can be devoted. I don’t think Hall urges us to be workaholics. I don’t think he presses an argument for work as life. Rather, he refers to how we might go about our work; indeed, how we might go about life. The implicit encouragement is to engage work in specific and life in general devotedly rather than blithely. This suggests a way of undertaking our work, our life, wherein we labor lovingly – toward God, toward neighbor, toward the world around us. Thus, not work as life, but life as work. As craft.

Liturgy assists us here. The word “liturgy” stems from the Greek “leitourgia,” referring to a “public work.” When Greek citizens undertook a project of public service, they performed “leitourgia.” The translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek used this word for the public service in the temple. Early Christians carried forward this religious sense. When they gathered to worship God, they performed “leitourgia.” The aim, at best, is to serve God devotedly not blithely. “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” (Psalm 29:2, ESV.)

Incorporating Greek and Judeo-Christian notions then, when we undertake work and life devotedly, lovingly, toward God and neighbor and world, we perform public service, liturgy, worship – the craft of holiness – Sunday into Monday.

Labor Day

2009-09-07T05:00:00.002-04:00

Today, Labor Day, we recognize and honor workers and their achievements through organized labor. Many of the benefits of modern work we take for granted today resulted at least in part from the efforts and sacrifices of women and men acting in solidarity against injustice, against inhumane living and working conditions: fair labor standards, child labor laws, living wages, reasonable hours for work per day and per week, and more. The following links provide brief surveys of some of those efforts, sacrifices, and achievements.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/37.asp
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep05.html
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

Additionally, these four movies vividly depict aspects of workers' struggles to make a better life for themselves, their children, and others: "Salt of the Earth" (1954), "Northern Lights" (1978), "Norma Rae" (1979), and "Matewan" (1987).

May we enjoy and acknowledge this Labor Day for what it is -- a holiday and a recognition of ordinary people banding together to seek fairness for themselves and others!

Some Thoughts on James 2:1-13

2009-08-31T05:00:00.002-04:00

Jesus summed up the way his followers should live in a twofold love commandment: Love God with the entirety of your being; love your neighbor as yourself. The first love begets the second love. The second love reflects and expresses the authenticity of the first love.

James assumes and applies this twofold love commandment in writing to the community of Jesus-followers in those first years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. “You believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord,” he says, “then love your neighbor as yourself.”

That sounds grand, but how do we love our neighbor as our self? James gives us one concrete, highly practical way to love our neighbor: Do not show favoritism to those who are rich in worldly terms. Success and wealth as measured in terms of our worldly culture – money, clothes, jewelry, property, popularity, physical appearance, and so on – are not God’s marks of favor. God favors those who are poor in worldly terms. He lavishes them with richness of faith – with trust, hope, and love. These are their assets. These are true riches. (Compare Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20.)

Clearly even in James’s time, so close to Jesus’ sojourn on earth, the love commandment was a challenge. When believers gathered for worship, they tended to show favor to the wealthy and disdain for the poor. James warned that this pattern of thinking and behaving contradicted the twofold love commandment of love for neighbor and love for God.

Do we show this kind of favoritism today? In what ways? Why might we do this? I suspect that we do it because – in too many ways shaped as much as by our culture as by the kingdom of God – we desire to possess the cultural marks of favor for our self. We envy worldly riches in others because we want them for our self. Consciously or unconsciously, we betray this cultural pattern of thinking and behaving when we show favoritism to those who possess worldly riches.

Yet God wants to humble us in order to exalt us with true richness – richness of trust, hope, and love in him. When we possess true riches, the riches of the kingdom, we will lavish not envy and favoritism but love on our neighbor, no matter their circumstances in worldly terms.

Some Brief Thoughts on Work as Blessing and Curse

2009-08-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

In the world as we know it, work is ambiguous. It is both blessing and curse. The admixture makes us ambivalent about work. In general, it is better to have work than not, though we tire of work and desire not to work. Yet not having work or not being at work finally has positive value for us only as respite from having work or being at work.

Even this way of putting the matter evokes the ambiguity and our ambivalence, for there is a subtle but significant difference between the phrases "to have work" and "to work". Likewise, there is a subtle but distinct difference in meaning between "at work" as a place and "work" or "at work" as a verb or an activity. "I am at work" means something different from "I work" or "I am working."

God created us to be, yes, and also to do or to make. So in God's good created order, being and making are blessing, even if, as finite creatures, we tire as we live and act. Yet in a sinful world, tiredness takes on a different quality, the character of a curse. Tiredness results not only from our finitude but from our servitude, our bondage to sin and death. Being wears upon us, and making wears us out. Compare the tiredness an athlete feels after hours of exertion in a favorite sport with the tiredness a seamstress feels after long days in a sweatshop.

Work as God intended it and made us for in original creation is more like what we experience in this life as activity when engaged in hobbies.

God Loves Us

2009-08-12T05:00:00.000-04:00

God loves us as we are, but he never leaves as we are.

A Glory in This Day

2009-07-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

Well into July, there is a glory in this day seldom experienced around here this deep into summer. We have traded winds from the southwest for winds from the northwest, a pattern not unheard of but infrequent for our summer weathers. In the low 80s, humidity is tolerable. Clouds and sky have not hazed into each other in nondescript color. Rather the clouds, white and light gray beneath, insubstantial as they would be were we flying through them, but seemingly massive and dense from earthly vantage, slowly move in sharp relief against the clear enamel of cerulean sky. Leaves of tulip poplar and bigtooth aspen and beech, on fractal branches from sturdily rising trunks, play their solid and varied greens on the breeze, under the pure light. A cardinal flits about, feathering the trees and grasses with bolded red. Today these created things body forth glory and praise without trying - simply by being. The kingdom of God is near.

Leaves Live Light upon the Wind

2009-07-17T05:00:00.001-04:00

In this trinity of tree and dawn and air,
chlorophyll now greens your glory, Lord,
as leaves live light upon the wind.

Love is Grace, Love is Gift

2009-07-05T05:00:00.008-04:00

St. Paul makes clear that none of us deserves a relationship with God on the basis of our worth, in character or deed. "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ...." (Romans 3:22a-23, New Revised Standard Version.) All of us must say in the end, whether to God or to any person who loves or cares for us, "You are good to me; I don't deserve it." Hence, in our relationships with each other, in marriage or in family or in friendship, when we love and care for one another, we image in our own small but true way the divine character and deed, that we are all "justified by ... grace as a gift." (Romans 3:24a, NRSV.)

It is true that for various reasons we experience some people as simply, intrinsically more lovable. We find that caring for certain people - spouse, family member, or friend - comes more easily and naturally, perhaps even compellingly. Yet no one is wholly lovable, even ourselves. We may joyfully and affectionately connect with the best self in another person, yet no one is entirely his or her best self. Therefore, when we truly love and care for another, we embrace both that person's best and worst self - in grace as a gift. Likewise, when a person truly loves and cares for us, that person embraces both our best and our worst self - in grace as a gift. In the end we all must acknowledge that, in God's sight and even in the sight of those around us, we fall short, we sin, we do not deserve. None of us merits love from and a relationship with another person.

So when we love and care for another, we image God's character and act, in creation and redemption. Love is grace. Love is gift. Essentially. From first to last.

Consider a Basic Thought about Work and Worth

2009-07-02T05:00:00.001-04:00

Consider a basic thought about work and worth which is most essential to understand. Work is not the measure of our person. If it were, then many persons would measure as worthless. I think here of those for whom work is no question at all – the severely handicapped, the chronically infirm, the imprisoned, the utterly destitute in this land and other lands. For them work as the measure of their person would be but burden and condemnation. But in God’s sight, important as work ought to be, it is but part of a total scheme of things, and in this divine scheme the ultimate and therefore true measure of a person’s worth is God himself. Namely, it is God who measures the person, so to speak. It is God who accords worth to each person. When we seek the measure of a person, we go to the cross on which our Savior and Lord died, and we see God’s ultimate affirmation of this world and the persons who live in it. Do we see there the intrinsic goodness of persons or the intrinsic value of human beings? No, we see that God gives worth, and so in this ultimate giving do we see where persons – equally, with no pleading of one’s ability or skill or virtue or ambition or perseverance of courage, for at the cross all such illusions and oppressions of self-worth are stripped of their vain power and appeal – stand. They stand judged and redeemed by the holy mercy of God, incarnated and manifested in Christ. They stand made worthy by the very God who made them stand at all.

Some Thoughts on Art and Existence

2009-06-20T05:00:00.002-04:00

The trouble with existence is that it’s too much. The soul wishes that God had given us, shall we say, a less detailed world—a world of less overgrowth. For example, when my mind really gets going, when I really start thinking, it works like history. The more it goes, the more detail there is, and the less any sense can be seen in it. Detail begets detail, which obscures and chokes out the shape we seek, as honeysuckle increases and tangles while the shed wallows and goes under the burgeoning mass. The same happens when I write, as even now. Word begets word; sentence begets sentence. Writing becomes a vain attempt to catch up with and bring to a satisfactory completion the verbal profligacy. Writing sometimes seems like an arithmetic model attempting to solve an exponential process. It isn’t even so much that word begets word. It’s more like word begets twins, or quadruplets, or worse. Even now I can’t stop, satisfactorily. Oh, I can stop, and I will. But I can’t stop by having brought it to a satisfactory completion. That’s the real trouble with it. I utterly long to pursue words, sentences, existence; I long to pursue until all comes to perfect completion under one grand shape, and nothing is left to pursue. Yet I can’t do it. The more I pursue, the more I get lost; it’s all too much. I wallow and go under. There are always more words.

Here is where art comes in, though it’s a toss up whether art is more than a gloriously brave and orderly retreat against the overwhelming. As Frost said in the character of Job, “The artist in me cries out for design.” And elsewhere he wrote,

"The present

Is too much for the senses,

Too crowding, too confusing—

Too present to imagine."

As an example, the art of telling history is knowing what to include and what to leave out. Indeed, the art of every explanation is knowing when to stop.

Compare an example in another vein.

I saw a lovely ink drawing of a tree at the Sarah Scaife gallery of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. I thought to myself, “It’s quite lovely and poignant, but it’s so ordinary a subject—a sketch of a tree. Why draw it? Why look at it?” And then it occurred to me. The drawing stops the tree in a very particular way; it stops the tree, and now gives it to us to examine. And here we have a tree, which in a forest or a meadow or a yard is far too much for us to take in. If we see a tree in any of those places, we see, as it were, but a glimpse of the tree, the barest fraction of what it was and is now and shall become. So when we see it we want to hold it still so we can get a good look at it and see it all. But the tree is in a jetstream of time; it never holds still long enough to satisfy our looking. And we have not the power to hold it still. Except in art. The drawing holds the tree still, and while I know in my mind that I’m still not going to satisfy my looking, I somehow feel that at least I’ve got a chance to look enough to see it all, or even to see all of a fraction. I feel I’ve got the time to look satisfactorily, or I would if I also could hold still. The soul sometimes longs for an Artist to hold it still.

Art then works to redeem the trouble with existence. Art takes life (actually, the barest fraction thereof), holds it still, and gives it to us to examine. Art takes all this unmanageable begetting and puts a kind of stop to it so we can try to make some sense of it. Or we could say that Art takes hold of this profusive begetting and tries to direct it to a satisfactory completion. The trouble with existence is that it’s too much: art perfects by reducing to essence. Then things have a chance at making sense. Art is a gardener. It clips the honeysuckle where necessary; the shed emerges, to be seen again.

Some Thoughts on Beauty, Meaning, Value

2009-06-15T05:00:00.007-04:00

The idea and the reality of beauty involve meaning. Beauty gives meaning. It infuses things in specific and existence in general with meaning. The meaning it engenders and infuses is not so much rational meaning, as existential meaning. Beauty participates in and even, in a sense, answers the very reason for being. When we perceive beauty, we understand, whether intuitively or consciously, that we are made for beauty. We are made for a world with beauty. The experience of true beauty in the world as we know it may perhaps be infrequent or even rare. Yet it is for such that we are made. It is for such that we live.

That beauty gives meaning to existence in general and to things in specific leads to another aspect of beauty. Namely, beauty gives value to life and to specific things in life, with value being the worthiness we recognize in something. Value is indeed the close correlate or derivative of meaning. That is, when we apprehend that life or things have meaning, the realization leads us to the implicit or explicit valuation of those things and even of existence itself. We value things that have meaning, and to the extent we see life in general as having meaning, we value life in general.

Hence, beauty, inasmuch as it infuses things with meaning, suffuses things and existence with value. We value beautiful things and beautiful aspects of existence. We find them worthy. We find them worthwhile. Because we value beautiful things, we want to apprehend them, make them, conserve them, foster them, enhance them, and praise them.

Some Thoughts on 2 Corinthians 10:1-18

2009-06-07T05:00:00.002-04:00

Paul’s personal witness led to the first followers of Jesus in Corinth, a city in southern Greece. After some time there, Paul left to witness to Jesus elsewhere. But the church in Corinth developed problems. In thought, spirit, and behavior, some were grievously deviating from the teaching of Jesus. Paul responded by writing to the Corinthians, including this letter around 55 A.D.

Paul’s basic point threading through the passage is captured by a contrast early in it. This sets up the rest of his remarks. Paul refers to “some people [in Corinth] who think we live by the standards of this world.” In contrast, Paul writes, “…though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” Thus he draws a sharp distinction between the standards of the world, or human standards, and the standards of the kingdom of God. Paul applies the distinction to how he and the Corinthians should conduct themselves in these problems. Yet he does so because the distinction is fundamental to life for followers of Jesus. We – followers of Jesus – are not to live by worldly standards. Even while our lives are embedded in a particular human society, we are to live by kingdom standards.

With this contrast, Paul characterizes how followers of Jesus are to live. All ideas, attitudes, and behaviors are to be made captive or obedient to Jesus. They are to be shaped by the life and teaching of Jesus, not the spirit and teaching of the world, of human society. When problems arise, we are to resist and overcome wrong ideas, attitudes, and behaviors by kingdom means, by prayer, exhortation, and discipline exercised in love – not by worldly means, not by arrogance, contempt, or hate exercised in anger and violence.

In all we think, feel, and do, with respect to self and others, we are to measure ourselves by Jesus, not by any other measure, whether from our self, our little group, or our society. In the end, we are to live in such a way that Jesus commends us, because his standards, his measure and approval, are infinitely superior to any other standards.

Summer

2009-06-03T05:00:00.005-04:00

Summer —And twilight rolls in, deep and slow.
Vines swell as on a sea, fences sink beneath waves,
and honeysuckle, spawning schools of white petals,
sends pools of fragrance on gulf currents.

Summer—Then go forth! Launch upon the green tide,
lose your self amidst the extravagant spawning,
breathe deep of sweet spray that breaks, swirls behind
(as you drive) in green and white foam...

Master Model Maker

2009-05-25T05:00:00.001-04:00

I am not an avid model maker as some people are. Yet over the years I have snapped and glued together my share of model planes, cars, tanks, ships, spaceships, birds, and even dinosaurs. I confess, though, a fundamental failing in my model making. “Paint all parts before assembly.” Those may not have been the exact words, but they constitute the gist of instructions I failed to follow every time. When I looked at the box in the store, I did not see a lot of dull, monotone parts affixed to plastic strips – a bewildering array of small and large pieces requiring a master maker to paint and assemble carefully and lovingly from beginning to end, step by detailed step. I saw the whole thing. I saw the beautifully painted, fully assembled result on the cover of the box. That is what I desired. That is what I bought. Or at least that is what I thought I bought. Until I opened the box at home; balked at the mass of parts; impatiently began to snap and glue together with only the barest regard for instructions; and ended up with a dull, messy object sort of approximating the work of art the real maker had completed and displayed on the box cover. Then I tried to paint it to look like the image on the cover. “Paint all parts before assembly.” Regularly, frustratingly, I discovered the reason in this instruction. I guess I thought I could make the entire model without painting the parts first, and without following instructions too closely, then paint it in detail to its most beautiful state, as if by magic. What I really needed was a true master model maker, for I am not one.

I thought of all of this when recently re-reading John 13, about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet the night of his arrest, in prelude to his crucifixion, then instructing them that they must follow his example. The foot washing embodied for them that he – their Teacher and Lord – had become a servant to them. They – his followers – must become servants to each other and to others. In our turn, we also – to be followers of Jesus – must become servants.

In reality, we want to be the master model maker of our life. We want to build the model in our own way and in accord with our own image of it. So we follow the instructions little or not at all. Instead, we want to give Jesus the fully assembled model of our life – the model we constructed without painting the parts first or following the instructions – and have him paint it after the fact to cap the beauty of it. In other words, we do not really want to be like Jesus if it means certain things – such as becoming a servant. We want to be like Jesus in the ways we want to be, not the ways he wants us to be.

If Easter life means anything, if death and resurrection in Jesus mean anything, they mean that we cannot give him our life fully assembled, according to our own design and instructions, and expect him just to cap it with paint – that is, bless it after the fact. He must assemble our life. He must paint all the parts first, and then assemble it rightly. This means he must disassemble our present life (death in Jesus) and then reassemble our life anew according to his design and instructions (resurrection in Jesus). Our life will then become a beautiful model of him as he paints and assembles it carefully and lovingly from beginning to end, step by detailed step. For Jesus – our Teacher and Lord – is the true master model maker.

Ascension Day

2009-05-21T05:00:00.001-04:00

Christmas. Good Friday. Easter. Pentecost. We know these days and have a sense of the meaning of each. These are “high holy days” in the Church year, foundational days for followers of Jesus. Apart from them, Jesus would be just another human being – born and dead a long time ago. Apart from them, there would be no Church; there would be no point in being a follower of Jesus.

Yet there is another day in the Church year of equal significance. It comes between Easter and Pentecost. We often just glide over it, perhaps with scarcely a thought about it. That day is today: Ascension Day. Ascension Day marks the departure of the resurrected Jesus from his earthly sojourn. It marks the day God lifted Jesus up to be at his right hand in heaven. (See Acts 1:1-12 for an account.)

Ascension Day has receded from the consciousness of much of the Church in the modern era. I am not sure why. It cannot help that it is marked on a weekday. Also, it does not seem to have the same sentiment or drama as Christmas or Good Friday. Doubtless there are other reasons. For whatever reasons, this receding is a poverty in the life of the Church and the lives of we who love and follow Jesus.

Why is it a poverty? Lifted up to heaven to be at God’s right hand. It sounds interesting, even exotic. But what does the ascension mean? What does it mean for Jesus? What does it mean for the Church and for followers of Jesus? It means much – much more than can be discussed here, decidedly much more than I truly grasp intellectually or spiritually. Nevertheless, this much can be said – can be gladly grasped in mind and heart by each of us. The ascension signifies and certifies that Jesus is Lord of all of created existence, Lord of all people. Jesus, once abased in bleakest humiliation, now reigns on high. The incarnate, crucified, risen Jesus is the ascended Lord who reigns in glory.

However, while he reigns from on high and in glory, he reigns not from an unfathomable, unbridgeable distance. Because he ascended, he sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in the world and in his followers. Ascended, he yet exercises his reign deeply, intimately, and pervasively through the Spirit. Whatever the circumstances in the world, the ascended Jesus is Lord of the cosmos. Whatever the circumstances of life for you and me, he is Lord of you and me. It is a lordship he exercises in and through the Spirit. Thus, in the Spirit, he is deeply, intimately, and pervasively present with you and me. Christmas – Good Friday – Easter – Ascension Day – Pentecost. Because of each and all of these days, we can love Jesus, we can follow Jesus, we can trust Jesus – in all circumstances, in all of life.

Considering the Death of Jesus

2009-05-03T05:00:00.001-04:00

In considering the death of Jesus, of the Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity; of the sense of abandonment experienced by the Son of God on the cross; the heart-piercing, spirit-plummeting alienation from comforting Spirit; of God's thus taking into his very being for eternity the utter despair and pain, the abyss, of this abandonment: we must not think we have wounded God, as if he has that vulnerability and we have that capability. We must not think that in this abandonment, this death, we are the center, the central characters, of the action, the drama. The Trinity are, the triune God is, the center, the drama. Yet we must at the same time grasp that somehow, in God's freedom and sovereignty, not in any intrinsic vulnerability or intrinsic capability, not because of any central importance we bear, we have indeed sorely wounded God. Or rather, God in the Son, through the loving obedience of the Spirit, has chosen to be wounded. And into this divine drama has God graciously crossed his world, thus to be healed by that wound.

Monday in Easter Week: Meditation on 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

2009-04-13T05:00:00.000-04:00

We rise from the joy of Easter Sunday to the Monday after. What kind of day will it be? Monday can seem like a descent. In the world which most know, which popular culture reinforces, Monday, the first day of the work week, presses down like a large stone rolled over life. What kind of day will this Monday, the Monday after Easter, be?

Jesus did not die on a Friday – that Friday we know as Good Friday – to redeem Mondays for us and make us happy about them. Yet because he rose on a Sunday – that Sunday we know as Easter – Mondays can never be the same. The week can never be the same. Life can never be the same. On Good Friday the old days died. On Easter Sunday all days became new.

The question is whether – this Monday, this week, and the days which follow – we will live in the new days or not. If yes, how will we live in them?

The answer to both questions lies in death and resurrection. In Jesus’ once-for-all death and resurrection, our old self must die, and our new self rise. Our old days must die, and our new days begin. In these new days, by the power of the risen Jesus in-Spirited within us, we must make choices to give our self to God and to our neighbor in faith, hope, and love rather than mistrust, despair, and hate.

This connects with Paul’s affirmation of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. As Paul reminded the Christians in Corinth, in and by this good news we are saved. Jesus died for us. Jesus rose for us. Not figuratively, but actually. Thus he made life new for us. Not figuratively, but actually. We stake life itself on this good news, or we have heard it in vain. Therefore, we must dwell decisively in these new days, in this new life, by letting our old self die and our new self rise in such truth, beauty, and goodness that we can only begin to imagine. Mondays should never be the same.

How Luminous the Common

2009-04-12T05:00:00.002-04:00

how luminous
the common –
of daffodils
lifted up
from bulbs
bound in earth
to mass of green
white and yellow –
this glory-passioned lawn
and morning’s first hour

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T05:00:00.000-04:00

It is for the ills of our mortality as well as our sinfulness that Jesus, in and by God's steadfast mercy and love, suffered and was raised for us. Hence, it is a happy Easter on the least glorious of our days as well as the most.

Happy Easter!

Meditation from the Seven Last Words of Christ. "It is finished." (John 19:30.)

2009-04-10T05:00:00.002-04:00

As he was about to die, Jesus exclaimed, “It is finished.”

Imagine, if you will, that Jesus had said, “I am finished.” That would make sense to us. After betrayal, arrest, rough interrogation and accusation, flogging, and crucifixion, it would have been the normal human thing to think or utter as death neared. It is likely that the other two crucified that day, as well as the many thousands and thousands crucified in the ancient world, despairingly thought much the same on their crosses.

“I am finished.” It is what I would have thought and said were I on that cross. It would have been the gasp of a person giving up in the face of suffering and death. It would have been a resigned or bitter admission of defeat before circumstances and forces – religious, political, social, and physical – which could no longer be resisted.

But Jesus did not say, “I am finished.” He cried out, “It is finished.” Jesus’ exclamation – “It is finished” – was a cry of victory, as one commentator has astutely observed.[1] Following long and excruciating humiliation and suffering, at the brink of death, where all the world would see only utter defeat in its most desperate and stark reality, Jesus declared victory. This is not victory as the world sees it. This is victory as God and Jesus see it.

That little word “it” showed all the difference. When Jesus declared “It is finished” he meant his whole mission on earth was fully accomplished. What God had sent Jesus to do, Jesus did. On the cross, Jesus finished what God intended him to do to overcome sin and death, to restore us to God and to true life.

The way Jesus fulfilled his mission – the “it” of his exclamation – was to take on himself all that separates us from God and destroys us. In obedience to God and love for us, Jesus refused to wield sin and death in the world. Rather, he suffered our sin and our death so that they would be destroyed by God’s life-giving love, first in him, and then in us. By suffering and dying on the cross, Jesus accomplished this mission. As the painfully dying Jesus cried out in victory, “It is finished.”

Now, what Jesus finished on the cross for us, he wants to acconplish in and through us – namely, to live God’s love in the world against the forces of sin and death that seek to destroy us and others. May we, with Jesus, walk in the way of the cross. It may seem like defeat to the world, and even to us at times, but in God’s good purposes it is the way of true life and love.

[1] Newbigin, Lesslie. The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (1982), p. 256.