I preached for one of my classmates at Grace UMC in Newburgh, NY today. It was fun; they are smaller than Ann Street and it was an off Sunday for them (5th Sunday and all) but I was very well received. And they had chocolate cheesecake for their coffee hour after the service. That was good!
A wonderful and talented high school student sang for their special music. Show tunes, of all things, and yet they worked: "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha and "Seasons of Love" from Rent. A kindly gentleman brought us flowers--just a few carnations--as the ushers brought up the offering. All in all, a very good day! So here's my sermon:
a sermon on Luke 15:11-32
Some stories are so good, they need to be told again. I’m a storyteller by inclination; I love to read Scripture, and I read it in hopes that it will come alive for you. But I’m also cautious by nature, and in case you didn’t hear it the first time, I’m going to tell it again. But this time, I’ll tell it my way.
Once upon a time, there was a young man who just couldn’t wait to be a grown-up, to go out and make his way in the world, to get out of his father’s house and live on his own. He longed for the day when he would inherit his share of his father’s estate and told himself, “Then I’ll finally be free!” One day, he had an epiphany. The lights went on in his head and “What are you waiting for?” he said to himself. “Go and ask Dad not to wait until he’s dead…he can give you the dough now!”
So he did, although this was very bad manners, and was not much different from the son just saying, “I wish you were dead”. And then his dad did: with a heavy heart and great love for his son, the father divided his estate, and gave his son his share. Off the young man went to seek his fortune, with his money burning a hole in his pocket, while his older brother stayed home, faithfully tending their father’s lands and his own inheritance. And eventually our young man fell into some trouble. He had a great time partying with his friends, but whenever it came time to pay, his friends all said, “What are you waiting for? You’ve already got your inheritance. You pay the check.” And so he paid for all the fun, until the money ran out.
By this time, he was far from home and feeling really sorry for himself. The only work he could find was dirty, smelly work in the worst place he could imagine, and he’d never felt so alone. He couldn’t even get food to eat, and no one would help him. He began to regret leaving his father’s home, and to plan to return. After all, he thought, he couldn’t live as his father’s son anymore, but being his father’s hired hand was much better than what he was doing now.
So he worked out a little speech: “Dad, I have sinned before heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.” Did you notice there’s no please in there? And so he practiced and practiced his speech, “Dad, I have sinned before heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands. Dad, I have sinned before heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired hands.” And after he’d gotten it down, he said to himself, “what are you waiting for? Let’s get out of this place.”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was his father, spending hours every day staring off down the road. “What are you waiting for?” the servants and his family asked him, and each time he just sighed, and shook his head, and went on staring. But one day he saw a figure, far off in the distance, trudging through the dust. When the father saw him, he realized what it was he’d been waiting for so long and flew down the road to meet his son.
“Dad, I have sinned before heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son…” the younger son started his speech, but his father wouldn’t wait for the rest. Instead he embraced him, and called to the servants, “What are you waiting for? Prepare a feast! My son was dead to me, but now he is alive again! He was lost, but now he is found!”
The festivities began, with music and laughter and good smells from the kitchen and from the freshly bathed and scrubbed son. As the older brother heard the commotion, he called a servant to find out what was going on. He heard that his brother had returned home and was being treated as an honored son instead of the boy who had wished for an early inheritance…and then wasted it. The older brother paced and he fumed, and he refused to go in to the party, until his father came out and asked, “Son, what are you waiting for? We thought your brother was dead and gone from us forever, but he is alive…what’s not to celebrate?”
“My brother wished you dead so he could go off and squander your money like a fool, while I have worked like a slave for you. I have loved you and served you and honored you and been obedient to you, and I’ve never had even a little party for my friends. How could you give him such a feast, when I’ve had nothing?” The older brother was furious!
“Nothing?” the father asked. “Son, everything I have is yours…all my land, my house, what’s in the bank, all of it. Even the coffee cans full of change buried in the back yard are yours. You are faithful, and I love you for it. But come, share my joy, because our lost one is not dead, but has come home. It’s a good party…come have some fun. What are you waiting for?”
This story is traditionally called the parable of the prodigal son. You have no doubt heard it before. Many of us have known a prodigal or two in our time: black sheep, free spirits, loved ones who are lost. And some of us have been a prodigal child, ourselves. I won’t ask for a show of hands on that one…but some of us know what it’s like to have been lost for a while, and to return to family and friends with changed and new lives, and to be received well or poorly, to be welcomes, resented, or turned away.
There is a dual meaning to the word “prodigal” that we’ve got to understand here. Prodigal, according to the dictionary, means recklessly wasteful, and the younger son certainly fits the bill there. But the second meaning is more interesting: prodigal also means extravagantly generous, and in this story, I think it’s fair to call the father a prodigal, too. And even the older son is prodigal in his own way; he is recklessly wasteful of his good father’s love when he sulks, and won’t join his brother’s coming home celebration.
We have it in all of us, don’t we? We have it in us to be prodigal too, even now. Inside each of us, like it or not, is the ability to cast aside God’s grace and throw away the trust others have in us. It’s too easy to fail, to hurt someone, to break faith with our friends and family. And yet perhaps in even greater measure we have in us the ability to receive God’s prodigal love and grace, to embrace for ourselves the love of God and to open our arms to receive one who is lost, lonely, hurting…and to be received by God ourselves in turn.
The beauty of a parable is that it gives us the freedom (or maybe it’s the rope to hang ourselves with) to see ourselves as each of the major players. Have we been impulsive, foolish, hurtful like the younger, prodigal son? Have we thrown away the riches of our lives, our friends’ trust, our families’ faith? Have you ever been lost, alone and afraid? Have you ever been repentant, but still frightened and unsure of how you would be received? Have you ever been given a far better reception than you deserved? Many of us have stories to tell of a time when we have wandered off from home to make our own way—and yet God still calls us, still loves us, still forgives us.
Have we, like the prodigal’s prodigal father, been hurt by one we loved and trusted? Living with a broken heart, waiting for some good to come back into our lives? Ready to offer grace with joy when the lost has returned to us? Waiting, waiting, waiting, for the day when our prodigal would return? And then questioned for “wasting” our time and energy, our love and grace on a prodigal child? Some of us can tell this story, too, and know how a life is forever changed both in the leaving and in the coming home—and yet we love, because God loves.
Have we, like the older, prodigal son, wasted the opportunity to show love and mercy and compassion? Have you ever been too convinced of your own merit and rightness to see someone else? Have you ever felt unable to receive grace that was offered to you? Have you ever felt unable to offer grace and forgiveness and mercy to someone else? This is also our story—of honoring rightness over grace, and sometimes hardening our hearts against love.
There are many ways to be a prodigal, to be recklessly wasteful or extravagantly generous, and we’ve all had the opportunity to try it at least once in our lives. We take for granted the good in our lives, and unwittingly abuse those who love us. We throw away our love on those who do not return it, or do not care well for our hearts. We sometimes find it hard to offer grace and forgiveness when we have been hurt, or neglected. But I suggest to you today that it’s time, time to be prodigal in your love and in your forgiveness. Forget recklessly wasteful; it’s time for the Church to be extravagantly generous.
And just as we have it in us to be the lost and wandering prodigal son, we have it in us to be generous, to reach out for the lost, to offer grace and love and forgiveness to one another and to those who aren’t a part of our faith family. We have it in us to look at every person as a beloved child of our Prodigal Father, and that means that we look at them as our own brothers and sisters, whom we too love.
What are we waiting for? God is always waiting, like the prodigal father, to lavish grace and love on his repentant children. We don’t even have to memorize the speech: “Father, I have sinned before heaven and against you. I am not worthy to be called your child.” God is waiting for us, and for us to share his love with others with the same reckless abandon he has in his love for us. Joachim Jeremias said, “Repentance means learning to say, ‘Abba’ (Father) again, putting one’s whole trust in the heavenly Father, returning to the Father’s house and to the Father’s arms.”
And returning in repentance means that everything changes. The young prodigal son’s heart changed toward his father. In his repentant return, and with his father’s loving acceptance, his heart grew (2 sizes too large, perhaps), softened, and knew the true love of caring for another more than yourself. His relationship with his father forever changed. And we are left to hope and pray that the older prodigal brother would repent of his own hardness of heart, his own blindness, his own resentment and fear and pride, and turn to his father and his brother in love and openness. Just as one brother wasted the father’s love and wealth, just as the other brother wasted the opportunity to share in that love at the homecoming feast, we sometimes turn away from family, friends, and God. But we can turn again, and know that God’s love is even more prodigal, more extravagant, more generous, than any we’ve ever known. So what are we waiting for?
Once upon a time, God’s children, on whom the Father had radically, prodigally, recklessly poured out love and favor and a garden of unending goodness and blessing, recklessly wasted that love by disobeying God, and wandered from the home the Father had given them to roam the world.
Out of the Father’s great love for all his children, he sent his own Prodigal Son to lavishly and extravagantly and literally share his life with others, so that they might again see and know the extravagant and prodigal love of the Father. The Son lived and loved and laughed with the children of the Father, and taught some of them about the endless goodness and grace of God, so that they, and we, could teach others.
In the end, to make possible the redemption of all God’s children and to make a way for them to return home to the Father they’d left, the Son gave his life on a cross, was buried, and was resurrected. He has shown the way, and now waits for us to follow him home to the Father and the endless, reckless, abundant, extravagant love and mercy and grace waiting for us. What are you waiting for?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Summer Reading Friday Five
From Songbird:
Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.
This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.
1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?
3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?
4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?
5) What is the next book on your reading list?
Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.
This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.
1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
Yes and no. The long days make me want to be outside. But it's generally too stinkin' hot to be outside, so I'm inside reading.
This summer is the exception, though: I'm currently in NJ taking classes for my DMin, so no fun reading for me. Research starts imminently.
2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?
No. I've never had the patience to stay with a book that long on the beach. At "my" beach, there was so much to see: giant Navy ships and huge tankers, sailboats in every size, jet-skis and dolphins and surfers (at the right end of the beach, in the right weather). And now, I feel like laying on the beach is a waste of my time.
3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?
The Trumpet of the Swan was one of my favorites. Watership Down is a summer read for me, too.
4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?
Okay, here's my guily little secret: I love vampire stories. Not so much the dark brooding ones as the newer, more humorous, sarcastic ones (see my answer below). I also like fantasy, science fiction, and medical and science thrillers.
5) What is the next book on your reading list?
Twilight, I think. There's been a lot of online buzz about the new book coming out, and there's a vampire story I haven't read.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
My final project for my Virtual Faith class
Virtual faith is among other things a way of engaging in relationship with God and one another that is characterized by the numinous, the impossible-to-quantify endless potential that exists in our relationship with God. We experience our relationship with God virtually in many ways: today we had an excellent presentation on the Cross and celebrated communion that made such great sense of it.
As I was thinking about my final project for this class, I thiought about the Natasha Bedingford song, "Unwritten", which I have blogged about before.
So for my final project, I chose to explore two areas of virtuality: art is inherently virtual because it's meaning comes in the interaction of each individual with it. I have a different understanding, for example, of a Rothko painting than anyone else, because of the unique set of experiences and thoughts I bring to it. Also, I was intrigued by the notion of ephemera. Paper in art is considered emphemeral, impermanent, because it can be so fragile. Pencil is easily smudged and erased...and rewritted. And so I dug out my watercolors and made a painting, which I then folded into a book, into which I wrote the words to "Unwritten".
What I am trying to convey here is that virtuality is not contingent on the use fo technology. It's easy for us to call anything online or in a powerpoint presentation virtual, but that misses the point: it's not only about the ease of changing digital media (which does dramatically increase virtuality), but virtuality has always existed in that we are each unique and capable of unique relationships with people and things. Not only that, but in a sense, we are each an unwritten or partially written book, being written over in relationship with God and one another. What has gone before is a part of our story, but the rest is still unwritten...
As I was thinking about my final project for this class, I thiought about the Natasha Bedingford song, "Unwritten", which I have blogged about before.
So for my final project, I chose to explore two areas of virtuality: art is inherently virtual because it's meaning comes in the interaction of each individual with it. I have a different understanding, for example, of a Rothko painting than anyone else, because of the unique set of experiences and thoughts I bring to it. Also, I was intrigued by the notion of ephemera. Paper in art is considered emphemeral, impermanent, because it can be so fragile. Pencil is easily smudged and erased...and rewritted. And so I dug out my watercolors and made a painting, which I then folded into a book, into which I wrote the words to "Unwritten".
What I am trying to convey here is that virtuality is not contingent on the use fo technology. It's easy for us to call anything online or in a powerpoint presentation virtual, but that misses the point: it's not only about the ease of changing digital media (which does dramatically increase virtuality), but virtuality has always existed in that we are each unique and capable of unique relationships with people and things. Not only that, but in a sense, we are each an unwritten or partially written book, being written over in relationship with God and one another. What has gone before is a part of our story, but the rest is still unwritten...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
For what it's worth, again
This is my presentation for my Virtual Faith class. It may make no sense to anyone but me.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Catching up
I am so glad there's not a poetry party until next week...maybe next week I can grab some time to do it!
Belated Friday Five:
Summer Word Association:
1. rooftop: tar softening in the "hot heat": my mother-in-law's term for humid heat
2. gritty: sand between my toes
3. hot town (yeah, I know, it's two words): take-your-breath-away hot heat in the summers
4. night: velvet skies punctuated by fireworks flowers on July 4th
5. dance: it's too hot to dance in the summer!
And some thoughts on the movie, "Juno". Every now and then I respond to a movie or a book in a way that's out of proportion to the actual content. I've blogged before about the occasional cathart; "Juno" prompted one. If you haven't seen it, see it first. There are spoilers of a sort below.
I'm not really sure what got me. I didn't share the objections I heard so much about when the movie came out. For a kid who basically raised herself, I thought the lead character made the best decisions she could, and that she was often the most mature person around. Bad Jason Bateman, bad! But at the end of the movie, when she had the baby, and her dad said something like, "One day you'll be here on your own terms," I started to lose it. And when the adoptive mother sees her baby for the first time, that was pretty much the end for me. I basically lost the last five minutes of the movie.
I'm not really sure what got me. 99% of the time, the no-kids thing is fine. I'm content; I can't imagine how children of my own might fit into my life, and Ben and I made the decision, even before we married, that children are not for us. We love them, and especially Jamie the Exceptional One, but simply not for us. Several years ago, we learned that our deciding that was moot; I can't have children anyway. I took that much harder than I thought I would or should.
When we heard that Jamie would be coming, I was so happy for my sister, and so upset for myself. I can't even tell you what all I was feeling: grief and jealousy, to be sure, some self-loathing, which I'm mostly over, but there was so much more. Something about the movie stirred all that up. Perhaps it was the baby...both the birth and the adoption stirred something in me that I keep thinking I'm over, and keep sweeping under the rug.
Truth be told, for now that's my long-term management strategy. I'm pretty happy with my life. I like school (mostly). I love my church, and senior pastor, and all the great people at Ann Street. Ben and I are starting to feel like we've got a handle on our lives (there should be a sign here that says, "Warning: Danger ahead!"). And I rarely think about the whole kids thing. Mother's Day gets me a little...people don't realize, and there's no reason they should, that wishing me a happy Mother's Day makes me a little uncomfortable. And Ben's mom, who knows better, called him on Father's Day to tell him how much she wished he had a little Ben. But really, it's rarely a surface issue for me.
It's just that every now and then it sort of boils up. And comes out. And if I'm not at home with Ben, then I embarrass myself a little. I did Friday night, with "Juno" and my classmates, who fortunately had the class to do the exact thing I needed right then: ignore it until I got myself under control.
Which I am. At least for now. And that's good enough.
One day I will probably want to deal with it in more detail (like therapy). But in the meantime, I just know that from time to time I cathart. The pressure bleeds off (and it's always about stress of any kind, as much as the baby thing, don't let me mislead you). And I don't know why I blogged about it at all, except that maybe it was time to take one more step toward a better long-term solution.
Eh, who knows?
It's late, and I'm tired. And I may regret this in the morning, but for now, I'm publishing it. And I feel pretty good about that, too.
Belated Friday Five:
Summer Word Association:
1. rooftop: tar softening in the "hot heat": my mother-in-law's term for humid heat
2. gritty: sand between my toes
3. hot town (yeah, I know, it's two words): take-your-breath-away hot heat in the summers
4. night: velvet skies punctuated by fireworks flowers on July 4th
5. dance: it's too hot to dance in the summer!
And some thoughts on the movie, "Juno". Every now and then I respond to a movie or a book in a way that's out of proportion to the actual content. I've blogged before about the occasional cathart; "Juno" prompted one. If you haven't seen it, see it first. There are spoilers of a sort below.
I'm not really sure what got me. I didn't share the objections I heard so much about when the movie came out. For a kid who basically raised herself, I thought the lead character made the best decisions she could, and that she was often the most mature person around. Bad Jason Bateman, bad! But at the end of the movie, when she had the baby, and her dad said something like, "One day you'll be here on your own terms," I started to lose it. And when the adoptive mother sees her baby for the first time, that was pretty much the end for me. I basically lost the last five minutes of the movie.
I'm not really sure what got me. 99% of the time, the no-kids thing is fine. I'm content; I can't imagine how children of my own might fit into my life, and Ben and I made the decision, even before we married, that children are not for us. We love them, and especially Jamie the Exceptional One, but simply not for us. Several years ago, we learned that our deciding that was moot; I can't have children anyway. I took that much harder than I thought I would or should.
When we heard that Jamie would be coming, I was so happy for my sister, and so upset for myself. I can't even tell you what all I was feeling: grief and jealousy, to be sure, some self-loathing, which I'm mostly over, but there was so much more. Something about the movie stirred all that up. Perhaps it was the baby...both the birth and the adoption stirred something in me that I keep thinking I'm over, and keep sweeping under the rug.
Truth be told, for now that's my long-term management strategy. I'm pretty happy with my life. I like school (mostly). I love my church, and senior pastor, and all the great people at Ann Street. Ben and I are starting to feel like we've got a handle on our lives (there should be a sign here that says, "Warning: Danger ahead!"). And I rarely think about the whole kids thing. Mother's Day gets me a little...people don't realize, and there's no reason they should, that wishing me a happy Mother's Day makes me a little uncomfortable. And Ben's mom, who knows better, called him on Father's Day to tell him how much she wished he had a little Ben. But really, it's rarely a surface issue for me.
It's just that every now and then it sort of boils up. And comes out. And if I'm not at home with Ben, then I embarrass myself a little. I did Friday night, with "Juno" and my classmates, who fortunately had the class to do the exact thing I needed right then: ignore it until I got myself under control.
Which I am. At least for now. And that's good enough.
One day I will probably want to deal with it in more detail (like therapy). But in the meantime, I just know that from time to time I cathart. The pressure bleeds off (and it's always about stress of any kind, as much as the baby thing, don't let me mislead you). And I don't know why I blogged about it at all, except that maybe it was time to take one more step toward a better long-term solution.
Eh, who knows?
It's late, and I'm tired. And I may regret this in the morning, but for now, I'm publishing it. And I feel pretty good about that, too.
My new home? maybe not
I've been in airports all day! First I got to Jacksonville, NC in plenty of time for my flight to Charlotte. I waited and waited, but there was no plane. Finally it took off about an hour late, leaving me a few minutes late for my flight to Newark.
This would have been a real problem, but even though all the displays said the flight was leaving ontime (necessitating running, sweating, and heavy breathing, all of which I hate to do in airports), the flight was actually itself delayed an hour. So I bypassed the little healthy connection deli and had a chili dog for lunch, and waited and waited to get on the plane.
Finally they let us get on the plane, only to tell us that we will have to wait another hour and a half to take off. Because it was approximately a thousand degrees on the the plane, they let us get back off, so here I am in my new home: Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
There is, of course, the small matter of my class tonight, and my classmates who are coming to pick me up (in the same class, of course). I called after the first delay, and confirmed that we just won't know when I get there until I get there. Joy. I was hoping for an uncomplicated day. Instead, I'm fighting the very strong temptation to go find chocolate somewhere.
I'm thinking I'm going to lose that fight.
UPDATE: I am in New Jersey, finally! Only took 2 1/2 hours longer than it should have. And now I'm back in class.
This would have been a real problem, but even though all the displays said the flight was leaving ontime (necessitating running, sweating, and heavy breathing, all of which I hate to do in airports), the flight was actually itself delayed an hour. So I bypassed the little healthy connection deli and had a chili dog for lunch, and waited and waited to get on the plane.
Finally they let us get on the plane, only to tell us that we will have to wait another hour and a half to take off. Because it was approximately a thousand degrees on the the plane, they let us get back off, so here I am in my new home: Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
There is, of course, the small matter of my class tonight, and my classmates who are coming to pick me up (in the same class, of course). I called after the first delay, and confirmed that we just won't know when I get there until I get there. Joy. I was hoping for an uncomplicated day. Instead, I'm fighting the very strong temptation to go find chocolate somewhere.
I'm thinking I'm going to lose that fight.
UPDATE: I am in New Jersey, finally! Only took 2 1/2 hours longer than it should have. And now I'm back in class.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Busy as a bee
I've been having fun, going to classes and feeling good that I got the prerequisite work done, so this first week wasn't too stressful.
That lasted half the week.
I have a project due tomorrow. It exists in my mind, but not in a form I can present (yet). And I've been wrestling with internet connectivity and a cell phone that doesn't want to work here (no good signal, so it's constantly searching, so the battery's needing to be charged way too much).
So now I'm going to bed, and thinking about prayer and wirtual faith.
Thanks, online friends, for once again giving me fodder for my homework!
That lasted half the week.
I have a project due tomorrow. It exists in my mind, but not in a form I can present (yet). And I've been wrestling with internet connectivity and a cell phone that doesn't want to work here (no good signal, so it's constantly searching, so the battery's needing to be charged way too much).
So now I'm going to bed, and thinking about prayer and wirtual faith.
Thanks, online friends, for once again giving me fodder for my homework!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
A thing I said last night
First day of class; all in all a good day. Long. Tiring. I have not slept well since conference began, because I don't sleep well away from my bed, at least not for the first several days.
But I said a good one today, and I need to remember it: "God is in control, but God is not a control freak."
I like it.
But I said a good one today, and I need to remember it: "God is in control, but God is not a control freak."
I like it.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
For what it's worth
I'm here in NJ.
The drive to Falls Church was so slow that I took pictures with my phone. I'll post them later.
The drive to Madison was much better, despite a few slowdowns (like the whole time I was in Delaware--what's up with that?) I like how they drive up here--fast, and perhaps a little reckless, but you certainly don't get bored!
The Exceptional One was, as always, exceptional in every way. The child is brilliant, and we had a great time. Can't wait for my next visit!
The drive to Falls Church was so slow that I took pictures with my phone. I'll post them later.
The drive to Madison was much better, despite a few slowdowns (like the whole time I was in Delaware--what's up with that?) I like how they drive up here--fast, and perhaps a little reckless, but you certainly don't get bored!
The Exceptional One was, as always, exceptional in every way. The child is brilliant, and we had a great time. Can't wait for my next visit!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A smoky Annual Conference
If you don't already know, there's a massive wildfire burning in NC. As of right now, it's the largest wildfire in the country. It's burning in a wildlife preservation area in the eastern part of the state, but the smoke is spreading--to Chesapeake and even Richmond, VA earlier in the week, and now that the winds have shifted, past Greenville to Raleigh NC today.
Which means there's smoke in the air in the convention center, and in my room at ECU. It smells just like wood smoke (go figure).
While no one has been killed and there has not been significant private property damage (due to the rural nature of the area where the fire occurred), it's just a matter of time. It's been hard to control the fire, as it's burning both in dense layers of organic material on the forest floot, and also has penetrated to the peat layer below the surface--where it might burn for years. Part of the challenge is controlling flare-ups, where a sub-surface burn breaks through somewhere away from the main fire.
And then there are other observations on Annual Conference. Which I'm not making. I remember what Peter Rabbit's mama told him.
Nothin' at all.
I'm just sayin'.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Raptor Poetry Party
It's time again for the Abbey of the Arts poetry party.
Here's this week's image:
Far seer, soarer,
eagle brother
If only I could fly with you
Share your vision
Fly on your free wings.
Instead, myopic,
earthbound
I close my eyes, slip my skin
and dance with you
in the Creator's light.
Horsies! I saw horsies!
This morning, when I was meant to be pastoral, meeting with the family of a gentleman who is dying to talk about the details for his funeral, I had one of those no-I'm-really-not-5 moments.
The house we were in is on the water, and the living room has huge picture windows that look across the cut at the barrier island. This morning, the horses were right across from the house--at least ten of them. That's enough to make it a good morning, but it got even better.
As I was surreptitiously counting horses and trying to pay attention to the grief of the people I was with, I noticed the horse nursery off to one side. Both of the year's foals were off to one side, with a mare watching over them. I finally had to confess what I was doing--my pastoral failure could no longer be hidden--but we then had a good time watching them together.
We also saw a couple of stallions posturing; they weren't really fighting but just sort of (you'll pardon the expression) horsing around.
I only wish I'd had my camera!
The house we were in is on the water, and the living room has huge picture windows that look across the cut at the barrier island. This morning, the horses were right across from the house--at least ten of them. That's enough to make it a good morning, but it got even better.
As I was surreptitiously counting horses and trying to pay attention to the grief of the people I was with, I noticed the horse nursery off to one side. Both of the year's foals were off to one side, with a mare watching over them. I finally had to confess what I was doing--my pastoral failure could no longer be hidden--but we then had a good time watching them together.
We also saw a couple of stallions posturing; they weren't really fighting but just sort of (you'll pardon the expression) horsing around.
I only wish I'd had my camera!
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Go and learn what this means
it's time for another sermon.
This one's on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
I read this news story yesterday, while taking a break from packing to go to New Jersey:
PATNA, India (Reuters) - A rich 80-year-old Indian widow has spent thousands of dollars on a feast for 100,000 people in the hope it would please the gods and open the doors of heaven for her, local officials said.
People from surrounding villages and towns were fed lunch over two consecutive days by Phuljharia Kunwar, who lives in the eastern state of Bihar and has no family or relatives. Kunwar spent $37,500 on the feast. Local officials said she spent lavishly on the meal because she had no one to bequeath her property.
"She told us she could now begin her final journey and her soul could rest in peace in heaven," Ajay Kumar Bulganin, a local lawmaker who attended the feast, held over Wednesday and Thursday, said. "She was worried that no one would care about throwing a feast after her death."
It’s enough to make me grateful to know the God we have, to know the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ, and the live of the Spirit in our lives. We don’t have to wonder about heaven, don’t have to throw a feast or curry favor with the gods (g being lower case, of course). Jesus told us in today’s scripture lesson: “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
I suspect that poor Indian woman offered her feast as a sacrifice to please man and gods alike, out of a fear that she could not do enough, could not be righteous enough, faithful enough, obedient enough, to please her gods. But what does it mean for us that God through Jesus wants from us mercy more than sacrifice?
We have 3 different stories within today’s reading to help us find out.
First we have the calling of Matthew, named Levi in Luke and Mark. He was a tax collector. Since Jesus was on the road along the Galilee, Matthew was probably a customs agent, claiming a portion of each traveler’s trade goods for the Roman Empire and also for himself. Tax collectors were not the most popular people: the rich despised them for cutting into their profits, the poor despised them for taking food from their children’s mouths, and everyone knew that they took more than the Empire demanded to line their own pockets. For the Jews, a Jewish tax collector was a powerful betrayal: a servant of the Most High God, yoking himself to Rome and a ruler who claimed, falsely, to be a god himself.
There are some interesting things about this call story. First, Jesus sees Matthew at work—there was no denying what he was—and says simply, “follow me.” Although with other people Jesus would talk about repentance and giving up one’s life, I think Jesus saw in Matthew something different from what everyone else saw. Where the disciples, even, might have seen a hated tax collector, a thief, Jesus appears to see in Matthew a desire for change, for new life. And Matthew answers Jesus’ call by getting up and following him. Matthew hosted Jesus, the disciples, and Matthew’s own friends to a meal, upsetting the Pharisees.
Now, the Pharisees were rightly concerned with strict obedience to the law; this was their calling, and the way they knew to be certain that they would please God and be blameless before him. Like the Indian woman, they hoped to earn a place in God’s favor by doing all the right things, even avoiding contact with those who were unclean, or tainted by their sin or association with Gentiles. And so when they asked Jesus’ disciples why he would be eating with heathens, they were asking a legitimate question. They knew, as we do, that the company we keep often determines our behavior, and so they felt that Jesus’ companions at the dinner table might be putting him at risk.
Jesus’ response is telling: those who are well do not need a physician; the one who is sick does…I came to call not the righteous but sinners. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus is telling us something important about the people whom God reaches out to: those who are in need, those who know their need, those who are alienated from God and one another. The Pharisees were convinced that following the law would make them righteous before God. They knew that they were doing all the right things. They were faithful in worship and attended carefully to the teachings of the rabbis—and they thought they had the path to God’s favor all figured out. But, Jesus says, there was something that they were missing.
While Jesus was talking to the disciples and the Pharisees, a synagogue leader came in, desperate to see Jesus. The other gospels tell us that this man’s name was Jairus, and he understood about needing Jesus: his daughter had just died. He begged Jesus to come and lay his hand on her, so that she might live. Jairus was also one who was faithful to the law and to the prophets, one who had believed that following all the rules would earn him God’s pleasure—but in this moment, Jairus needed something more: he needed God’s mercy, God’s healing, God’s power, and he saw that Jesus, God’s Son, could give him what he needed. And so Jesus got up, and followed him.
On the way they met a woman who had been ill for 12 years with hemorrhages. For the Jews, any contact with blood was unclean, and so this woman had not only been sick for 12 years, she had been separated from her family, from her friends, from the temple, from God as far as she knew. She was desperate enough to break the rules, to approach Jesus, to literally sneak up on him just to touch the hem of his cloak for healing. And she was rewarded for her faith by being reunited with “polite company,” able to rejoin her family again, to work and to worship and to have friends again.
Finally Jesus got to Jairus’ home, and saw the mourners already there, singing songs of lament and making a commotion. The girl was dead, and the funeral preparations had begun, when Jesus walked up and said, “Go away. The girl is not dead, she’s sleeping.” They laughed at him, but eventually they were all cleared out of the house, and Jesus went in, took the girl by the hand, and she got up. Again, a taboo is broken: this time the restriction against contact with the dead, which would also have rendered one ritually unclean, and therefore would have been something those who were counting on strict obedience to the law would not have done. And so, as with all of the words and works of Jesus Christ handed down to us, the reports of these happenings spread, leaving us with these miracle stories, and Jesus’ charge: Go, and learn what this means.
What does it mean for us that God in Jesus Christ chose not to fulfill all righteousness by avoiding tax collectors and sinners, bleeding women and dying little girls? What does it mean for us that new life is offered not to those who are most deserving but to those who are most in need? What can we learn from these acts of Jesus, who Matthew says fulfilled the law and the prophets as the Messiah, when they seem so counter to the culture and teachings of the time?
It is easy enough for us to say that Jesus came so that sinners might be reconciled to God. Matthew certainly qualified. Collecting taxes for Rome was not like working for the IRS; tax collectors paid for the privilege of collecting a set amount of taxes. Anything else they were able to collect was theirs. And there was no way to look in a simple registry and find out how much a person owed: they had to pay what the tax collector said. Being a tax collector meant being a turncoat, a traitor to one’s own people, a leech who lived off the work of others. It may have been a lucrative profession, but certainly not one in which Matthew would have made a lot of friends. In accepting Matthew, Jesus was making a powerful statement about the kind of people God is willing to accept: not just the Pharisee, not just the righteous, but anyone who will answer the call, “Follow me.”
And it is a simple enough thing for us to say that Jesus heals the sick—now, in our time and culture where we do not have such fear of illness. But in the time of Jesus and Matthew, blood and death were greatly to be feared. Not only was there a fear that blood and death were catching (and so often, they were) but also there was the sense that there was power in blood and death. When properly practiced, in the temple, by a priest, the death and blood of an animal as a sacrifice to God could bring great favor. But anywhere else, the mere touch of blood or any contact with a dead person could render one ritually unclean, unfit in God’s eyes, until a cleansing ritual was practiced. To touch someone who was bleeding, to touch the dead, was an act of profound generosity and mercy that signaled, along with Jesus’ welcoming of Matthew, that God’s love and favor is for those people traditionally considered outsiders—for those who needed God’s love.
Now the truth of the matter is that the Pharisees needed love and mercy as much as anyone else. They simply didn’t know it. They had taken the path of rigorous adherence to the law just as far as they could take it, and a bit farther than was wise. Jesus would call them “blind guides,” knowing that they could not see their need, could not see any farther than the carefully concocted shell of rules and self-protective behaviors they had made—that in their zeal for righteousness and closeness to the will of God, they had closed themselves off from a relationship with God, from an awareness of mercy and love that has the power to transform lives. But there is hope, even in this story, for the Pharisees: the story of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, who in his need was able to see clearly that the love and mercy of God, in the presence of Jesus Christ, could heal his daughter and change his life.
And the truth of the matter is that we, as Christians, as church-goers, as people who try to live as Jesus would have us, can sometimes have the same blindness, the same boundaries that would fence us off from others. We can look more like Pharisees than like someone who truly needs God. And let’s face it, isn’t that how we think of ourselves? We’re the clean ones, dressed for worship in our finery, the ones who try to do the right thing, to be the right kind of people. We’re the ones who are here, in this sanctuary, doing what we know how to do to get closer to God, to have God’s favor, to know God’s love. We’re the ones in danger of not knowing it as well as we could, of forgetting our need, of getting so familiar with the love of God that the power of the Spirit in our lives becomes more of a memory than a presence in our lives.
“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy more than sacrifice,” is a challenge to all of us, all people, who wonder about God and what our relationship with God might be. It calls us to see the Incarnation lived out in the church: to learn from one another, pray for one another, support one another. But then we are also challenged to reach out beyond the walls of the buildings, beyond the boundaries of our fellowship with one another, to extend the love and mercy we’ve come to know to those who are not here. And those to whom we are called to offer love and mercy are just as foreign to us, just as taboo, as the tax collector, the bleeding woman, the dead child were to Jesus Christ.
In our culture and time, that means accepting the foreigner, from folks “from off” to folks from Mexico, Africa, Asia. It means welcoming into our church those who are not like us, from people with developmental disabilities to people who don’t hear well, to those who are sick or who don’t have the nice homes and clothing we have. It means welcoming the sick, just as in Jesus’ day; just as then it means offering mercy and love to people with diseases we’re afraid of, like HIV.
It means that we, as the people called by the name Christian, are to be living testaments to the love and grace of God we’ve seen in our own lives, we’ve witnessed in others’ lives. And we are to share it with others. Jesus, when he came, set the world on its ear because he taught that conventional wisdom was inadequate, insufficient, just plain not enough. It’s not enough to surround ourselves with people we’re comfortable with, who are just like us, because they know how to worship God the way we do. It’s not enough to offer worship to God and not invite God’s mercy into every part of our lives, because Jesus said clearly, “It is mercy I want, more than sacrifice.”
And when we live in the mercy of God, when our own blinders are stripped off and we realize that even we still need God’s mercy (maybe we even especially need it), when we realize that we are less righteous than we are needy, then we can meet Christ—then we can follow with Matthew, be healed like that woman and child, and then we can have confidence that poor woman in India didn’t have: the Kingdom of Heaven is not lived out here and now with feasts and grand parties and trying to make friends with lavish gifts. The Kingdom of Heaven is not lived out even in having the most beautiful sanctuary, the best music, or even wonderful preaching (if we say so ourselves).
The kingdom of Heaven comes near when we greet a stranger as a friend. It comes near when we acknowledge that we, no less than anyone else, need mercy and grace and forgiveness from God, and it comes near when we offer mercy and grace and forgiveness to others. The Kingdom of heaven comes near when we worship with all our hearts and open our hearts not only to Christ’s Spirit within us, but when we open our eyes to see that same Spirit in unexpected places. Heaven comes near when we, like Jesus, welcome others into God’s mercy, and find ourselves welcomed again, in return.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
This one's on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
I read this news story yesterday, while taking a break from packing to go to New Jersey:
PATNA, India (Reuters) - A rich 80-year-old Indian widow has spent thousands of dollars on a feast for 100,000 people in the hope it would please the gods and open the doors of heaven for her, local officials said.
People from surrounding villages and towns were fed lunch over two consecutive days by Phuljharia Kunwar, who lives in the eastern state of Bihar and has no family or relatives. Kunwar spent $37,500 on the feast. Local officials said she spent lavishly on the meal because she had no one to bequeath her property.
"She told us she could now begin her final journey and her soul could rest in peace in heaven," Ajay Kumar Bulganin, a local lawmaker who attended the feast, held over Wednesday and Thursday, said. "She was worried that no one would care about throwing a feast after her death."
It’s enough to make me grateful to know the God we have, to know the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ, and the live of the Spirit in our lives. We don’t have to wonder about heaven, don’t have to throw a feast or curry favor with the gods (g being lower case, of course). Jesus told us in today’s scripture lesson: “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
I suspect that poor Indian woman offered her feast as a sacrifice to please man and gods alike, out of a fear that she could not do enough, could not be righteous enough, faithful enough, obedient enough, to please her gods. But what does it mean for us that God through Jesus wants from us mercy more than sacrifice?
We have 3 different stories within today’s reading to help us find out.
First we have the calling of Matthew, named Levi in Luke and Mark. He was a tax collector. Since Jesus was on the road along the Galilee, Matthew was probably a customs agent, claiming a portion of each traveler’s trade goods for the Roman Empire and also for himself. Tax collectors were not the most popular people: the rich despised them for cutting into their profits, the poor despised them for taking food from their children’s mouths, and everyone knew that they took more than the Empire demanded to line their own pockets. For the Jews, a Jewish tax collector was a powerful betrayal: a servant of the Most High God, yoking himself to Rome and a ruler who claimed, falsely, to be a god himself.
There are some interesting things about this call story. First, Jesus sees Matthew at work—there was no denying what he was—and says simply, “follow me.” Although with other people Jesus would talk about repentance and giving up one’s life, I think Jesus saw in Matthew something different from what everyone else saw. Where the disciples, even, might have seen a hated tax collector, a thief, Jesus appears to see in Matthew a desire for change, for new life. And Matthew answers Jesus’ call by getting up and following him. Matthew hosted Jesus, the disciples, and Matthew’s own friends to a meal, upsetting the Pharisees.
Now, the Pharisees were rightly concerned with strict obedience to the law; this was their calling, and the way they knew to be certain that they would please God and be blameless before him. Like the Indian woman, they hoped to earn a place in God’s favor by doing all the right things, even avoiding contact with those who were unclean, or tainted by their sin or association with Gentiles. And so when they asked Jesus’ disciples why he would be eating with heathens, they were asking a legitimate question. They knew, as we do, that the company we keep often determines our behavior, and so they felt that Jesus’ companions at the dinner table might be putting him at risk.
Jesus’ response is telling: those who are well do not need a physician; the one who is sick does…I came to call not the righteous but sinners. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus is telling us something important about the people whom God reaches out to: those who are in need, those who know their need, those who are alienated from God and one another. The Pharisees were convinced that following the law would make them righteous before God. They knew that they were doing all the right things. They were faithful in worship and attended carefully to the teachings of the rabbis—and they thought they had the path to God’s favor all figured out. But, Jesus says, there was something that they were missing.
While Jesus was talking to the disciples and the Pharisees, a synagogue leader came in, desperate to see Jesus. The other gospels tell us that this man’s name was Jairus, and he understood about needing Jesus: his daughter had just died. He begged Jesus to come and lay his hand on her, so that she might live. Jairus was also one who was faithful to the law and to the prophets, one who had believed that following all the rules would earn him God’s pleasure—but in this moment, Jairus needed something more: he needed God’s mercy, God’s healing, God’s power, and he saw that Jesus, God’s Son, could give him what he needed. And so Jesus got up, and followed him.
On the way they met a woman who had been ill for 12 years with hemorrhages. For the Jews, any contact with blood was unclean, and so this woman had not only been sick for 12 years, she had been separated from her family, from her friends, from the temple, from God as far as she knew. She was desperate enough to break the rules, to approach Jesus, to literally sneak up on him just to touch the hem of his cloak for healing. And she was rewarded for her faith by being reunited with “polite company,” able to rejoin her family again, to work and to worship and to have friends again.
Finally Jesus got to Jairus’ home, and saw the mourners already there, singing songs of lament and making a commotion. The girl was dead, and the funeral preparations had begun, when Jesus walked up and said, “Go away. The girl is not dead, she’s sleeping.” They laughed at him, but eventually they were all cleared out of the house, and Jesus went in, took the girl by the hand, and she got up. Again, a taboo is broken: this time the restriction against contact with the dead, which would also have rendered one ritually unclean, and therefore would have been something those who were counting on strict obedience to the law would not have done. And so, as with all of the words and works of Jesus Christ handed down to us, the reports of these happenings spread, leaving us with these miracle stories, and Jesus’ charge: Go, and learn what this means.
What does it mean for us that God in Jesus Christ chose not to fulfill all righteousness by avoiding tax collectors and sinners, bleeding women and dying little girls? What does it mean for us that new life is offered not to those who are most deserving but to those who are most in need? What can we learn from these acts of Jesus, who Matthew says fulfilled the law and the prophets as the Messiah, when they seem so counter to the culture and teachings of the time?
It is easy enough for us to say that Jesus came so that sinners might be reconciled to God. Matthew certainly qualified. Collecting taxes for Rome was not like working for the IRS; tax collectors paid for the privilege of collecting a set amount of taxes. Anything else they were able to collect was theirs. And there was no way to look in a simple registry and find out how much a person owed: they had to pay what the tax collector said. Being a tax collector meant being a turncoat, a traitor to one’s own people, a leech who lived off the work of others. It may have been a lucrative profession, but certainly not one in which Matthew would have made a lot of friends. In accepting Matthew, Jesus was making a powerful statement about the kind of people God is willing to accept: not just the Pharisee, not just the righteous, but anyone who will answer the call, “Follow me.”
And it is a simple enough thing for us to say that Jesus heals the sick—now, in our time and culture where we do not have such fear of illness. But in the time of Jesus and Matthew, blood and death were greatly to be feared. Not only was there a fear that blood and death were catching (and so often, they were) but also there was the sense that there was power in blood and death. When properly practiced, in the temple, by a priest, the death and blood of an animal as a sacrifice to God could bring great favor. But anywhere else, the mere touch of blood or any contact with a dead person could render one ritually unclean, unfit in God’s eyes, until a cleansing ritual was practiced. To touch someone who was bleeding, to touch the dead, was an act of profound generosity and mercy that signaled, along with Jesus’ welcoming of Matthew, that God’s love and favor is for those people traditionally considered outsiders—for those who needed God’s love.
Now the truth of the matter is that the Pharisees needed love and mercy as much as anyone else. They simply didn’t know it. They had taken the path of rigorous adherence to the law just as far as they could take it, and a bit farther than was wise. Jesus would call them “blind guides,” knowing that they could not see their need, could not see any farther than the carefully concocted shell of rules and self-protective behaviors they had made—that in their zeal for righteousness and closeness to the will of God, they had closed themselves off from a relationship with God, from an awareness of mercy and love that has the power to transform lives. But there is hope, even in this story, for the Pharisees: the story of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, who in his need was able to see clearly that the love and mercy of God, in the presence of Jesus Christ, could heal his daughter and change his life.
And the truth of the matter is that we, as Christians, as church-goers, as people who try to live as Jesus would have us, can sometimes have the same blindness, the same boundaries that would fence us off from others. We can look more like Pharisees than like someone who truly needs God. And let’s face it, isn’t that how we think of ourselves? We’re the clean ones, dressed for worship in our finery, the ones who try to do the right thing, to be the right kind of people. We’re the ones who are here, in this sanctuary, doing what we know how to do to get closer to God, to have God’s favor, to know God’s love. We’re the ones in danger of not knowing it as well as we could, of forgetting our need, of getting so familiar with the love of God that the power of the Spirit in our lives becomes more of a memory than a presence in our lives.
“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy more than sacrifice,” is a challenge to all of us, all people, who wonder about God and what our relationship with God might be. It calls us to see the Incarnation lived out in the church: to learn from one another, pray for one another, support one another. But then we are also challenged to reach out beyond the walls of the buildings, beyond the boundaries of our fellowship with one another, to extend the love and mercy we’ve come to know to those who are not here. And those to whom we are called to offer love and mercy are just as foreign to us, just as taboo, as the tax collector, the bleeding woman, the dead child were to Jesus Christ.
In our culture and time, that means accepting the foreigner, from folks “from off” to folks from Mexico, Africa, Asia. It means welcoming into our church those who are not like us, from people with developmental disabilities to people who don’t hear well, to those who are sick or who don’t have the nice homes and clothing we have. It means welcoming the sick, just as in Jesus’ day; just as then it means offering mercy and love to people with diseases we’re afraid of, like HIV.
It means that we, as the people called by the name Christian, are to be living testaments to the love and grace of God we’ve seen in our own lives, we’ve witnessed in others’ lives. And we are to share it with others. Jesus, when he came, set the world on its ear because he taught that conventional wisdom was inadequate, insufficient, just plain not enough. It’s not enough to surround ourselves with people we’re comfortable with, who are just like us, because they know how to worship God the way we do. It’s not enough to offer worship to God and not invite God’s mercy into every part of our lives, because Jesus said clearly, “It is mercy I want, more than sacrifice.”
And when we live in the mercy of God, when our own blinders are stripped off and we realize that even we still need God’s mercy (maybe we even especially need it), when we realize that we are less righteous than we are needy, then we can meet Christ—then we can follow with Matthew, be healed like that woman and child, and then we can have confidence that poor woman in India didn’t have: the Kingdom of Heaven is not lived out here and now with feasts and grand parties and trying to make friends with lavish gifts. The Kingdom of Heaven is not lived out even in having the most beautiful sanctuary, the best music, or even wonderful preaching (if we say so ourselves).
The kingdom of Heaven comes near when we greet a stranger as a friend. It comes near when we acknowledge that we, no less than anyone else, need mercy and grace and forgiveness from God, and it comes near when we offer mercy and grace and forgiveness to others. The Kingdom of heaven comes near when we worship with all our hearts and open our hearts not only to Christ’s Spirit within us, but when we open our eyes to see that same Spirit in unexpected places. Heaven comes near when we, like Jesus, welcome others into God’s mercy, and find ourselves welcomed again, in return.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Taking in the View Friday Five
It's Sally's turn at the Friday Five! She writes:
1. How important is the "big picture" to you, do you need a glimpse of the possibilities or are you a details person?
2. If the big picture is important to you how do you hold onto it in the nitty gritty details of life?
3. Name a book, poem, psalm, piece of music that transports to to another dimension ( one....what am I thinking....)
4.Thinking of physical views, is there somewhere that inspires you, somewhere that you breathe more easily?
5. A picture opportunity... post one if you can ( or a link to one!)
This week I took some time out to stop and walk and take in the view; my son Chris is studying in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, too often we simply drive up there, turn around and come home! This time Tim and I took time out to take in the view. It occurs to me that we need to do that more in life....
With that in mind I offer you this weeks Friday Five:
1. How important is the "big picture" to you, do you need a glimpse of the possibilities or are you a details person?
I'm definitely a details person. I need a glimpse of the big picture for motivation, and to "keep my eye on the prize." I like the smaller projects, the steps along the way.
2. If the big picture is important to you how do you hold onto it in the nitty gritty details of life?
With claw and nail: I don't work well on tasks that I don't understand or see the value of--so I have the keep the big picture in mind!
3. Name a book, poem, psalm, piece of music that transports to to another dimension ( one....what am I thinking....)
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, Tolkein, George R.R. Martin, and C.S. Lewis (for pure fantasy), the music of U2, Chris Rice, Rich Mullins, and most folk music, I can get lost in Octavio Paz and Robert Frost...
4.Thinking of physical views, is there somewhere that inspires you, somewhere that you breathe more easily?
The ocean, always. I need to see wide open spaces, and have a sense of the enormity and beauty of creation, and the presence of God. Mountains will work, too, and I've never been far enough west to try the desert--one day!
5. A picture opportunity... post one if you can ( or a link to one!)
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