email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
September
2005
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Bono on our amazing God |
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First Thoughts from Utne Magazine |
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Dallas Willard on the times |
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Where was God? |
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Jean Janzen poem “A Catechism” |
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Hurricane Katrina, personal witness |
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“Sparkling Rills” hymn with Maddy Prior |
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Moltmann “The world as dance” |
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G. T. Smith on discernment |
Link for hurricane relief: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05448.htm
Meditation
It feels good to be back at work, a sign of a good vacation in my mind. In catching up on the mail piled on my desk, I found this in the “Century Marks” section of The Christian Century Magazine of Sept. 6, 2005. It comes from the book “Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas” Riverhead Books/Penguin Group, 2005.
“It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma…Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”
Bono is a rock music star, one of the members of the group U2. I like the implied Christian wisdom about God’s love and our need for it. Where do YOU find God’s love in your life? What are some of the “stupid stuff” you’ve done? Those two questions could be your prayers for today.
It’s nice to be back with you all. Grace & peace,
Geoff
Link for hurricane relief: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05448.htm
Disaster response – see below.
Utne magazine has become a good read for me, like the Reader’s Digest for progressives. Each issue has a section called “First Thoughts,” brief statements that get one thinking. Here are some from the July-August 2005 issue.
“Being in possession of all the answers holds no appeal at all, but owning a good pocketful of unanswered questions is to me like bread to the starving.”
Cathy Johnson, “On Becoming Lost: A Naturalist’s Search for Meaning” Peregrine Smith Books.
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terrible important.”
Bertrand Russell, quotes in “Experience Life” magazine, March, 2005.
“Sharing is under siege. It is the sworn enemy of the global market—which is why so much of international trade law is designed to criminalize sharing.”
Naomi Klein, Dissidentvoice.org
“Human rights violations are not accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm.”
Paul Farmer, “Pathologies of Power,” University of California Press.
None of these quotations are directly Christian, but each of them challenges our understanding of our faith and how we implement that faith in our lives and in the world around us. Were someone to ask you how you would respond to one of these statements, what would you say? A little mind exercise for you.
May you find the grace of God ready to help you cope with life’s challenges today and in the days to come.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
The Presbyterian Church has much experience in dealing with disasters. The denominational website has become more sophisticated each day since the hurricane hit. There are opportunities to give, pray, volunteer, help locate people, etc. Check it out at: http://www.pcusa.org/pda/response/usa/hurricanekatrina-index.htm
Are these apocalyptic times? Yes, and no. Are there signs God will return soon? Yes and no. Here’s a view of the transition to Christ’s reign that I find refreshing and true to my understanding of the Bible. It comes from Dallas Willard’s “The Spirit of the Disciplines,” Harper, San Francisco, 1988.
“But how can the transition to Christ’s reign through his people come to pass? Often, we are told that the rule of God upon the earth will be fulfilled in a great act of violence, in which multitudes of people are slain by God, followed by a totalitarian government of literally infinite proportions, headquartered in Jerusalem.
While it may be true that humankind deserves no better than this, the kind of government it associates with God does not seem compatible with the news that Jesus brought about God. Further, if this is what is to happen, why would the action be delayed so long? Simple force of the kind envisioned would have been effective whenever it might (have been) applied. I believe, to the contrary, that the coming rule of God is to be a government by grace and truth mediated through personalities mature in Christ. It will not be by force, but by the power of truth presented in overwhelming love. Our inability to conceive of it other than by force merely testifies to our obsession with human means for controlling other people.”
How “mature in Christ” are we? Can we imagine a world ruled by grace & truth? Devotional practices or disciplines can help us to mature in Christ. A world of grace & truth is something we can only imagine. How we put the practices and our imaginations together is part of the challenge of faith. May you rise to that challenge today.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Last Sunday we put some energy in our worship services to remembering Sept. 11, 2001. AS I prepared for that, I reviewed some of the material I’d put on our church web site as responses to the terrorist attack. Though the disaster of Hurricane Katrina was less evil in that it was not a deliberate act of one group against another, the responses are similar in that humans react to the suffering of others. One of the links is to an anonymous piece written by a New York resident. I’ve edited it to reflect the general human responses to disasters. Much of what was said in the document with 9-11-02 as the background can be applied to the response to Hurricane Katrina. Here’s my edition.
Where was God in all of this?
God was in the rescue workers who were running into the buildings as most people were running out.
God was in the two men who carried a wheelchair-bound woman down 70 flights of stairs to safety.
God was in the people who stood bleeding, in line to give blood.
God was in the strangers in cars, picking up strangers stranded in the city and taking them home to their families.
God is in the people who are begging to volunteer, to do anything to help.
God is in the thousands, if not millions, who are flooding blood banks thousands of miles away to help people they have never met.
God is in the people who are comforting someone even when they don't know what to say.
God is in the people who watched and cried for people who may remain anonymous in name, but never in their sacrifice.
God is with the heroes, most of whom will never be on the news, whose stories will only be told to their closest friends and family; but who saved someone's mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, husband, wife, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousin, lover, colleague, acquaintance, teacher, mentor or friend with a single act of kindness, compassion and bravery.
However, God was indeed there, where he was needed the most.
You can see the full document on the church web page by going here: http://www.whitpresby.org/where_was_god.htm
I don’t usually recycle the material in my emails, but this one was too good not to send out again. God is ever-present with us, no matter how we feel about it. May you sense God present with you in some unexpected way today.
Grace and peace,
Geoff
I recently took a trial subscription to the journal “Image” (www.imagejournal.org) and in the Summer 2005, Number 46, edition I found this poem by Jean Janzen.
“A Catechism”
What is the definition of Glory?
It is the fire at the center of pain.
Where does it live?
Everywhere in this world.
Why does Glory exist?
To make us whole.
How does it work?
It draws us to the water.
What does water do?
It washes the pain.
Does the Glory die?
No, the fire cannot put it out.
Does the pain die?
No, because it is love.
Can Love make us whole?
Yes, because the fire
and the water are one.
Glory and pain are some things only the Christian faith can mix healthily, and that needs a healthy Christianity at that. In Jesus we see pain glorified, pain transformed into glory. The potential is there for us, with Christ’s help, to transform our pain into glory. It is one of the mysteries of our faith that such can happen. It is worth tending to in our lives and the lives of those around us.
May you find glory as you tend to the difficult parts of you life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
My wife has two cousins who live in Slidell, Louisiana, one of the places hit by Hurricane Katrina. When I sent the email around last week about “Where was God in all of this?” one cousin responded with this personal reflection on the situation there. I was so taken with her eloquence that, with her permission, I’m sending this around to you all. A personal reflection on Hurricane Katrina. She opens with a response to the question “Where was God…?”
“I have to confess I'm looking really hard to find Him amidst the chaos, grief, and displacement. It is hard for anyone not here to fathom how entire communities and lives have been uprooted and obliterated in a moment—and we're the fortunate ones who got out and didn't die or suffer in the process. I hardly know anyone whose house hasn't been destroyed, whose kids haven't been sent to school far away, and whose job isn't seriously in jeopardy or lost. And we can't even call and comfort each other because the communications networks are down. I don't know where half of my friends are, and the ones I do know, I can't reach. My beloved secretary is in Houston in a stranger's home, my friend and nanny to Makin is in Lafayette, and we're moving to Washington DC. The media have been so fixated—and rightly so, at least early on in the news cycle—on the physical destruction that they have missed what is now almost equally horrific, the emotional devastation of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of communities. Baton Rouge has doubled its population overnight with refugees, and the roads now look like LA freeways.
There are bright spots, and we're trying hard to stay focused on them. Makin and I are living at Mother's in Baton Rouge. (We sent mother to her sister’s because she doesn't need the discomfort or hassle of what is transpiring here). The neighborhood Presbyterian church, where my grandparents were charter members almost 50 years ago and where I went to kindergarten in 1967, has made a spot for Makin in their Mother's Day Out Program starting next week. It felt so good to walk into that early childhood education center almost 40 years later and be so welcomed and comforted. (The church is also one of thousands upon thousands of Red Cross shelters). Makin was to have started Mother's Day Out at the Methodist Church in Slidell the week of Katrina, and I so wanted him to be in a church-based program.
Please pray for all of the Katrina survivors. It is so strange to be one of "those people" that you've watched on TV for years. And thanks for letting me ramble here late at night. No one really sleeps anymore, and that is just weird, too.
Now, on a lighter note, you might appreciate the following. The week before Katrina I was in church with Makin. Since he became a toddler, we've never made it to the end of the service, but he's done very well all things considered. I leave the second he fusses or becomes a distraction. On this Sunday, he got busy and squirmy fairly fast, and I pulled out my "quiet church books," foam books with animal cutouts. Apparently, we've taught him his animal sounds well, because in the middle of the Lord's Prayer, he began to moo and meow as he handled the book. We left rather quickly, and I don't think anyone realized what he was "saying." Some people moo; some people pray. I might try mooing myself soon, as all words have failed me.”
By way of explanation, Makin is her two year old son. Sometimes God is found in the eloquence of someone able to articulate their sense of pain and loss. May you find the articulation you need for your faith today.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the compact discs I’ve been listening to for the last few months is “Bib & Tuck” by Maddy Prior & the Girls (being her daughter Rose Kemp & Abbie Lathe), Park Records, 2003. One of the songs that appeals to me is called “Sparkling Rills.” It is listed as a traditional song, arranged by these artists. But it sure looks and sounds like a hymn to me. See for yourself.
His are the thousand sparkling rills
That from a thousand fountains burst
And fill with music all the hills
And yet he saith ‘I thirst’
All fiery pangs on battle fields
On fever beds where sick men toss
Are in that human cry he yields
To anguish on the Cross.
But more than pains that racked him then
Was the deep longing thirst divine,
That thirsted for the souls of men,
Dear Lord! And one was mine.
O Love most patient, give me grace;
Make all my soul athirst for thee;
That parched dry lip, that fading face,
That thirst were all for me.
That Christ’s thirst on the cross could be seen as his thirst for me is a new insight for me, that puts God’s love and care into something of a new light. I love finding little insights about God and God’s ways with us, no matter where I find those insights.
May you be surprised by insight into God’s ways today.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I love to dance and am thrilled whenever I find a connection between dancing and faith. Here is something I found in Jurgen Moltmann’s book, “God in Creation,” Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1993. Its in a subsection entitled “The World as Dance” and Moltmann presents his version of an Easter hymn of Hippolytus, a Roman theologian in the early centuries of Christianity.
“O thou leader of the mystic round-dance! O thou leader of the spiritual marriage feast! O thou leader of the divine Pasch and new feast of all things! O cosmic festal gathering! O joy of the universe, honour, ecstasy, exquisite delight by which dark death is destroyed…and the people that were in the depths arise from the dead and announce to all the hosts of heaven: ‘The thronging choir from earth is coming home.’”
If the truth of Easter can’t get you excited enough to move you body, or at least want to, you’re not listening closely enough. The opening up of creation, the gift of forgiveness and new life, the many ways that Christ’s resurrection re-makes the world, are reasons for dancing. May you find a depth of joy from God in your soul today, such joy that makes you want to shout and dance and praise God with all your energy.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the classes I’ll be taking this coming January in my second term of the Spiritual Direction program (see more at http://www.whitpresby.org/geoff_schooling.htm) is a class in discernment. One of the texts is “Listening to God In Times of Choice” by Gordon T. Smith, InterVarsity Press, 1997. The opening chapter is called ‘Dancing with God’ and I thought ii might find something more about dancing with God, as in last Tuesday’s email. Alas, nothing about dancing, but some good words on discernment.
“Deep within each of us is a desire to choose well—to do what is right, to act in wisdom, love, truth and justice. We long for this in part because we fear the consequences of poor decisions. But we also long to please God, and we long to do what is right for those we love and those we serve. And the only way we will rise above our potential for foolishness and misguided choices is to learn to make decisions well….
This is why developing the art of discernment is essential to Christian maturity. But as with any art, time and patience are required if we are to learn and master the craft. Discernment comes with growth in wisdom and maturity. Just as children need the guidance of parents, new Christians need the guidance of more mature believers as they grow up in their faith.”
The ‘more mature believers’ that Smith will work with in the book are Luther and Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola and John Wesley. It is wonderful to have the traditions and thinking of great men and women of the church to lean upon and learn from as we grow in faith. May you find some help from others around you who might be more mature in faith, particularly as you face decisions in your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
