Marvel at the Elegant Ungainliness

Marvel at the elegant ungainliness
with which the lone great blue heron
slowly strides down the water's edge --
spindle legs lifting, crooking, reaching,
somehow balancing that feathered mass --
all the while itself, fishing and being,
as if unburdened by a clumsy gravity
from some self-tripping consciousness.

Brief Note on the Nature of Reality

The first question is not what do we think the world ought to be like, but how has God fashioned the world to be.

Animal Adventures in the Night

This much must be perfectly understood. We do not own a pet, and we do not live in the country ... For the second weekend in a row, we have been awakened in the night with the sound of an adult red fox loudly barking in front of our house -- i.e., in the little cul-de-sac of our townhouse group in a suburban neighborhood in Sterling, Virginia. "Barking" is a mild way of describing the sound, for a red fox's barking is more scream than bark. (The link leads to someone's recording of a fox barking.) Actually, I was already awake as I could not sleep; Karen was awakened by the sound. When I, already dressed, heard the sound, I went out the front door and saw the fox in the street right in front of our townhouse. We looked at each other as the fox barked a few more times. Then it trotted away past the other townhouses; I followed it a ways in hopes of seeing and hearing it again. I did hear it bark again, but I did not see it because it had slipped into the shadows of the pre-dawn hour. So I returned home and went inside. A few minutes later I heard another strange sound out front, so I opened the door again. I am happy to report that we have a screen door, for right on the front step, pushing up against the screen, was a good-sized cat, loudly mewing to be let into the house! It kept this up -- pushing against the screen and mewing -- for a number of minutes as we looked at each other from our respective sides of the door. Perhaps the cat and the fox had had some kind of wary encounter, and each was seeking avoidance. Christian hospitality would compel us to welcome the stranger, but I must confess I did not open the screen door to let this stranger-cat into our house. Mea culpa. As it is Sunday, I will remember this at confession during the early Eucharist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxLHUxzEoRU

The Kwanzan Cherry Tree

Exquisitely soft falls the chill April rain
that separates blossom from leaf
and petals the pavement with color,
as if in lamentation for splendor passing.

Beside the Ephemeral Pond

Beside the ephemeral pond,

among the low wild grasses

bent-brown and green,

winter-summer tangled

the earth-scurrying killdeer

nested four mottled eggs,

then brooded, vigilant

in April's lilting uncertainty

which is when we came along

and heard the anxious cry,

then observed, so keenly

the fierce urge toward life

Some Thoughts on Substitutionary Atonement

Reading a book of essays on NT Wright's thought, and coming out of reading Wright's "How God Became King" and participating in the Good Friday liturgy ....

It seems to me that much of substitutionary atonement thinking is highly individualistic. In this thinking, Jesus substituted for me, for each one of us. That is, Jesus the one man or one person substituted for the one man or one person. In this sense, Jesus capitulates Adam for me, for each of us. Now NT Wright, without denying or dismissing this, contends as well that Jesus capitulates Israel, the nation or people. This would broaden substitutionary atonement to corporate identity and action, not simply individual identity and action. That is, it would broaden it from a narrow emphasis on the sacrificial system alone to encompass the fullness of a people and a body politic (in the broad sense, not simply the political sense); otherwise we reduce the identity and history and formation of Israel, and God's saving action therein, to merely the sacrificial system. What if we then take all this further to recognize that Jesus capitulates not only Israel and humanity but creation itself, the whole of creation. Thus Jesus substitutes for creation in his life, death, resurrection, and even in his ascension (in the sense that God created humanity to rule in creation). That is, Jesus had to die because creation was dead, and only by taking on creation's death could Jesus (God in Jesus) take away creation's death. Thus: sacrifice, substitution, atonement; but not narrowly or solely construed and enacted within the meaning and mechanism of the sacrificial cult as seen in the temple.

Vision and Simple Pleasure

Mid day on a January Sunday, and we drive the cold miles of the toll road to visit family for the afternoon. Along one stretch on our right a wintered stand of mature tulip trees -- tall, straight, and well-spaced -- ranges across the rises and ravines through which the highway paves. My heart and spirit lift with the trees every time we pass this way.

We must inculcate in ourselves vision for and simple pleasure in these little instances of quotidian beauty scattered variously around us, else we miss them, we miss them, to the fading of heart and spirit.