Blessings Made Easy

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's talk about blessings.

I don't mean blessing someone out, which is bad, but imparting a blessing, which is good.  

"Blessing" is a great word and a great concept, but it has a crappy etymology.  It comes from an Old English word blodisoian which means "to consecrate with blood."  Picture doing that to someone's nose after they sneeze!

Like many things vocabulary, the word has undergone changes, so that it carries a meaning that inspires others.  Few words in the English lexicon are as positive as the word "blessing."

We say a blessing, receive a blessing, feel blessed, bless others, and before every meal some say The Blessing while closing their eyes even if they are in a restaurant full of pickpockets and purse snatchers.

I like blessings that happen easily.  They are spontaneous and go undetected until during a moment of meditation when the "blessing event" is revealed.

This happened to me recently at Mrs. Wilkes.

Here in Savannah there's a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes that is one place where everyone in the world should eat before they die.  It opens from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM, Monday through Friday.  You better get there around 10:30 because the line builds up fast.

They seat ten people at one table.  Unless your party is a party of ten, you will be sitting among strangers.  Spread out on the huge round table were serving plates of meat and bowls of vegetables.  The experience has the enchantment of a meal that started out as a few loaves and fishes.  

Now, I love to talk to people.  I'm more than happy to take the lead at a table encircled by people looking at each other as if they are each an unfamiliar food steaming inside a serving bowl.  

The blessing event unfolded after all our plates were filled with multiple portions all of us hungry strangers had passed around and dished out. That took a few minutes while diners expressed how the cornucopia before them surpassed their prior culinary experience.

I asked the couple sitting nearest to us if they were tourists.  Well, of course they were.  How did they hear about Mrs. Wilkes?  They were passing by and saw the line.  Where were they from?  Texas.  What did they do in Texas?  He was a middle school band director.  She was an accountant.

Without missing a note, I told him how I owe my love for music to Mr. Charles Cassavant, my unforgettable junior high teacher who taught me how to play the clarinet.  I explained how I played "Air for Strings in G" by Bach when I was twelve years old, and it remains to me still one of the loveliest compositions I have ever heard.  

I said, "I love every kind of music there is because of that one teacher.  He transformed my life.  You may never know how you affect your students, but I can tell you that what you teach is rich and never lets go."  

I think I said it better than how I just wrote it.  I can't recall exactly what I said, but the band director said nothing at first.  He seemed stunned as if someone had given him the deed to Mrs. Wilkes.  His wife was grinning ear to ear.  

I did not think much of it until later.  I wondered how justified I would feel, and how consecrated, if someone told me their literature teacher put them on the path to everlasting wholeness.

Yes, I want to be the Forrest Gump of blessings.  I want blessing others to come natural to me.   

There is so much hatefulness in our shitty world that I feel a spiritual obligation to cancel out as much wrath and fear with grace whenever I can.  I count myself blessed that I do not have to try very hard.

Blessings...

  

The following is a revised version of a post from 6/22/2015:

CARBINES AND FELINES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

      Welcome back.

     Allow me to start off by saying that I am not against gun ownership. Nor am I entranced by guns the way others seem to be. There is more magical thinking than science firing from the barrels of Gatling gun gullets prattling about the 2nd Amendment.  

     Gun preachers are the young earth creationists of violence. All the tragedy following a multiple homicide is as complex as natural selection, but to hear gungelicals talk, the problem of guns is as simple as making a tree without sunlight or a man from mud.

  We need more levity, less gravity. I suggest we laugh at the ideals preached by these gungelicals because they can be quite funny.

     Nothing triggers a good laugh from me than watching the politricks of politicians who legislate as if they are standing in front of a firing squad. They might have solutions in their sights, but the NRA got the drop on them as soon as they were elected.  

     And the shoot-first-think-never pundits make matters worse firing the same four bullet shit reasons why guns make us all safe. 

     I get a kick out of it, and to make it funnier, I imagine them using squeegee voices when they talk. 

     Indeed, we must laugh.  Reason and logic are prosaic to the average American thinking apparatus.  No matter how horrible, frequent, or shocking the increasing the number of multiple homicides have become they continue unabated within the impenetrable protective shell of gun lobby influence.  Laughter is the only remedy left to us even though a murderous deception happens every day in the United States that is not funny.

     The gungelicals preach a standard stock of false reasons why every American should own a Carcano 91/38 rifle, a .22 caliber Iver Johnson, a 30 06 Enfield, a Remington 30 06 rifle, a 10-shot Hi-Point model 995 carbine rifle, an Intratec tec dc 9, a Savage 311-D 12 gauge double barrel shotgun and Savage-Springfield 67H 12 gauge shot gun (they work best sawed off), a Bushmaster AR 15 assault rifle, a .40 caliber pistol, a Bushmaster XM 15 rifle, a Smith and Wesson M&P15 assault rifle, a Remington 870 pump action double gauge shotgun, a 9x19mm Glock, a 9mm Sig Sauer pistol, and a 45 caliber handgun like the one Dylan Roof used.

    The reasons are four.  It just so happens those stock reasons are the same reasons for owning a cat. 

Reason#1

     I am safer with a cat in my home. Actually, I’m not. Even with kitty in my home, one killer or several could get the drop on me. They could kick my door down and blow me away before I am able to toss my cat onto their faces. Moreover, I am not safer away from home. I could take kitty to a movie, or a restaurant, and any gunman might blow me away before I have the chance to fire my cat back at him.

Reason #2

     Only a good cat can stop a bad man. That’s not true either. It is possible that some bad men might see my cat and stop what they are doing. I know I would, but it's not likely a bad man would. If I toss kitty at a bad man while he is firing away, I might miss.  Kitty thereby lands on an innocent person, disfiguring him with horrible scratches, and we have another mass shooting to forget until the next one.

Reason#3

     The government is coming to take away all of our cats. This makes as much sense as petting a stuffed cat. If the government sends a tank and a platoon of Marines to pry kitty from my cold, dead hands, he will be no match for their fire power, nor will he be anywhere near my cold, dead hands.

Reason #4

      If the government takes away our cats, then only criminals will have cats. Maybe, but they will be black market cats and will cost thousands of dollars. Kitty was given to me for free by a little girl looking to abandon him at a rock concert. I would not have paid a dime for him back then, but now, it would be abargain for me to pay the ten thousand dollars his value would command on the black cat market.

     Let us recall, a divine sage once said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  

     

     Imagine substituting the word “sword” with the word “gun.”  It’s easy if you try.

     Blessings…

Knowing Advent

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  Every year my church publishes a daily devotional for the four weeks of Advent.  I was invited to contribute.  I have included my essay in today's post below:

           A vivid memory that will follow me to the grave, or perish in the black hole of Alzheimer’s, is the last Riddle family reunion I attended in the late 1980s. My maternal grandfather, who was a fundamentalist Baptist pastor from Alabama, announced that he no longer believed Jesus would return in his lifetime. His words stunned everyone.

            My grandfather remained simple and unchanged throughout his life, just like the churches where he served as pastor.  Any one of his churches could have been attached to poles and carried from town to town. They were not unlike the churches already built there.  

            For my grandfather and for the churches I attended throughout my life worship was simple: an opening hymn, a prayer, announcements, a hymn, an offering, a prayer, another hymn, a sermon, the invitation, and a final prayer. Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day were the only holy days observed. The calendar was not liturgical; it was Gregorian and tacked onto Sunday School walls throughout the building.  

   

            Now, I’ve been asked to write about Advent, which I had to look up. Until our pastor's wife kindly gifted an Advent wreath to my wife last Christmas, Advent might as well have been a Japanese car or a painkiller to me.

            Advent concerns the Jewish expectation of the coming Messiah. Advent is the Latin word translated from the Greek word “Parousia,” which means "second coming," that is, the second coming of Jesus the Christ for Christians.  Advent carries an expectation beyond yuletide. In the Christian liturgical calendar, Advent is the first of four weeks to spiritually prepare before Christmas arrives.

In his book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg, a recently deceased religion professor and Christian writer, writes that Advent is one of those “thin places” spoken of in Celtic Christianity. Thin places are those times when God’s presence breaks into our awareness.

Hebrew prophets claimed to have such awareness. They envisioned a society where God’s rule would create justice among nations. Jesus came and proclaimed God’s rule. He was executed for it. An expectation that Jesus will return is church doctrine.

Are we waiting for Jesus today?  The spirit of our times is as brutal and unjust as any time in the past. A revival of religious murder wounds humanity even now though science has cast doubt on the thinking that undergirds holy book literalism. Like many Jews of Jesus’ day, Christians are waiting for God to show up and fix humanity.

There are signs that a profound expectation exists in the world. Consider the wondrous advent of Pope Francis in church history. The enthusiasm for this pope has been unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Roman Catholics venerate him. Many Protestants adore him. After he washed the feet of impoverished women at a halfway house, I began to follow his “popery” with admiring fascination.

Pope Francis’ ministry has shown a deep yearning for Christ that exists in the world. That is the only explanation for his ability to streak across the firmament of the media like a star captivating magi.  I sense that millions long to see the love of Jesus that was promised to heal humanity millennia ago.  The world has been waiting for two thousand years for Christians to reveal Christ and not something else that is like the world:  indifferent, mean, hateful, and violent.

That expectation is Advent. The Church must fulfill that expectation so humanity can be saved from itself. We, the Church, may truly have always been the last best hope for humanity. If that is true, then humanity yet waits to see the incarnation of Christ in the lives of church members all over the world.

Were my grandfather alive today, I would remind him that Jesus did return during his lifetime. Others, like Simeon in Luke’s birth narrative, beheld Jesus each time my grandfather’s love revealed the salvation of God. 

Blessings...

Gundolatry

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Below is an article I wrote recently and submitted to some magazines.  

         Here in Savannah, citizens are shooting each other, it seems, every day. In some cases, people are just shooting other people with no apparent motive except they can. We have a device the police uses that can discern the difference between firecracker sounds and gun shots. Between January 1 and September 14 of this year, ShotSpotter detected “4374 cases of gun fire.” (Savannah Morning News) 

Even worse, our local news anchor included a bit that explained to viewers what to do in case a shooter is “in the building.”  She delivered her instructions as if she were explaining how to change the batteries in a fire alarm every equinox.

Guns are not making anyone safer. There is no greater lie than the lie that guns make me safer. Guns are not making me safer. Guns are not making my wife, or my daughters, or my other loved ones safer. I am safer because there is no gun in our home. There was never a gun in my parent's home. Guns are not making my students safer either.

You hunters and law abiding gun owners are not making me safer, yet you are in greater danger of being shot than I am. This new turn in gun politics that many of you let happen and others of you fervently support is making us all less safe. An insanity has gripped minds, throats, balls, and morality, strangling everything. The insanity is saying that what we need is more guns, more people carrying guns, and more guns and also more guns and the passing of more laws allowing more citizens to carry more guns. A condition is festering in our society whereby all are being surrounded by gun violence and we all fear one another.

Killers and good people are stockpiling weapons because the lie is being used to scare people into believing that an arsenal is the answer to our security woes.  The problem is exacerbated when a few good men snap for whatever reason and their clips snap too.

You're afraid the government will take over and take away your guns? Well, this new gun politick is arming police with more dangerous weapons. Soon we'll see groups of murderers from the right of America and the right of Islam coordinate attacks on multiple targets. Soon we'll see people being shot on back roads, side roads, and interstates just because someone doesn't like their bumper sticker, or their pretty wife, or maybe they just don't like the way they look. How long will it take the government to post military personnel in the streets? Trump that possibility.

There are so many ironies here. The more guns, the more killing, the more we accept that powerful weapons for cops and soldiers are normal.  That is a huge irony.

Here's an economic irony: a lot of gun customers are being murdered. How many NRA members are being gunned down?  How much is the dollar cost per citizen ruined or killed by these weapons? “(See Mother Jones: June 2015)  I reckon we who are alive must purchase more guns to make up the lost revenue gone from those cold dead hands.

Guns are affecting my consciousness. I bet they are affecting yours too.  The other night I sat in my car on a side street in Savannah, waiting for my wife and my pastor's wife who had gone into a house to care for a pet. Their good deed took about five minutes.  A car turned down the street, driving slowly. My first thought was about people who had been shot sitting in their cars in Savannah, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville, and Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles. My next thought was how unsafe I was--being without a gun--and how unsafe I would be with one. It would not have mattered either way if someone had driven past and blown me away.

By the way, the American Sniper was armed.  Someone got the drop on him.  He wasn’t safe.  He is a well known example among thousands of armed people who are gunned down and get recorded as statistics.  I mean no disrespect to Chris Kyle or his loved ones.  I’m just pointing out the truth, but people sure get mad at me when I bring him up.  I wonder why.

Guns are affecting my consciousness in new ways now.  Once they existed on a shadowy wrack in my imagination.  Now, I see a stranger enter my church, or a late arrival enter a movie theater, and I look at their hands and pockets.  I look at what they are carrying.  I try not to be obvious, but I cannot help but wonder if they are going to go Aurora on me. Indeed, I know and respect a lot of people who put their faith in guns as if their belief is an Apache ghost dance that will keep them safe, but I would not want them packing in a theater when someone seems to be attacking or when someone is mowing innocent people down. I do not like my wife’s or anyone’s chances of surviving in a place where fools start firing at lunatics. 

Lies get their power from illusion. Gundolatry creates the illusion of security, which is what an idol does. At least an idol is safer in the sense that you aim a hundred dollar bill at me, or a statue of Zeus, they do not blow my brains out. Idolatry gives security without providence. True security is the result of something else...usually sheer luck, the company we keep, the places where we live, you know, providence.  And providence is the culmination of the luck, the company, and the safe places.

Those places are safer without murders of people carrying guns.

Blessings...

    FIFTY SHADES OF COMPLICITY

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's talk about violence. 

      I deplore violence. It is hatred incarnate.  Human history testifies to the scars cut into the world every time "ruthless mortals wage incessant wars."  

The pages of history are soaked with bloodbath battlefields, where warring ideologies clashed, and bloodbath battleaxes, when dissenters' limbs cracked.

     When there is violence, there is complicity. From bloody red to bandage orange, we who participate in society are guilty of soaking the human stain into the world. 

Complicity is not black and white, but different shades of red. Think about that rich ruby of human endeavor we call war. An American general once said, and I alter it just a shade, “War is all red hell.”

Indeed, it is:  from the reddest red to the faintest hue fading into Earth. Consider the following:

Platonic Red

     The politicians who make war are the essence of red. The kings and queens and fuehrers and prime ministers and presidents who mobilize a military and order an attack share a redness about them that is chemically impossible to duplicate into paint. The so-called just wars are just as red too.

     I can only think of three, possibly four, "just" wars in our nation's history:  the two-part war against Great Britain, the Civil War, and World War II. The “maybe” war would be World War I. All were the essence of red.

Blood Red

Parliamentary or congressional politicians who vote to make a war possible are the color of blood. Their hue diminishes not a nuance when they say, "I didn't know the president would actually use the authority my vote gave him to go to war.”

Head Wound Red

     The intellectuals who use reason to justify war are complicit.

Heart Wound Red 

     The preachers who proclaim they speak for the god of battles who is on their side in a holy righteous cause and the theologians who use reason to justify a holy righteous cause are complicit.

Jugular Wound Red

The scientists who invent implements of death are guilty.

Hand Wound Red

The industrialists who manufacture implements of death are guilty.

Lip Wound Red

      The propagandists who sell war to soldiers, to workers, to taxpayers, and to those who do nothing to stop it are guilty.

Goose Bump Red

     The film industry is complicit when it glorifies war.

Flesh Wound Red

     Citizens who support war by working and paying taxes are guilty.

Cloth Stain Red

     Citizens who do nothing to stop war are guilty.

First Wash Red

     The citizens who leave the country are guilty without knowing it.

 

Second Wash Red

      The citizens who protest after the war has begun are guilty. Once the bloodbath begins, it better bloody well end as soon as possible.

Boots on the Ground Red

     The soldiers, sailors, airmen, spies, and support operators who are doing their duty are compelled by training and circumstances to be complicit.

Day to Day Hue of Complicity

     Okay, my title is a shade hyperbolic, but would you read this if I wrote thirty-seven more?

     My point is that we are all complicit in war just as we are complicit in the internecine violence that occurs in our society.  

For example, every time someone says something racist and I say nothing, I'm arm in arm with the Dylan Roofs of the world.

     Or when I say nothing after Walmart employees ignore me but come charging after the black people behind me because my purchase set off an alarm. I have the receipt that proves their employee did not do what needed to be done to nullify the signal, but they don’t ask me.  

Again, arm and arm with Dylan Roof if I say nothing.  That's how day to day complicity looks.

Blood of Christ Red

     Alas, my brothers and sisters in Christ have been complicit in the most heinous crimes against humanity. Of Christians, history should have nothing to say except: "They never hate.  They love."

But such is not the case. The blood of Christ should never commingle with the human stain, but it has and still does.  

When Christians kill one of God’s children, and that's anyone who's been created, we kill Christ again and again by resurrecting him into a malevolent spirit.

     I have some good news. Jesus the Christ can be found where some would never see him. There is one religion that is a faith of peace. It is Buddhism. Can you believe that?

     When was the last time I heard the words "Buddhist" and "militants" in the same sentence? It seems I heard something about that a long time ago, but it's possible I dreamed it.

When was the last time I heard about a Buddhist nation committing genocide?

     I confess I wish I could ask the same rhetorical questions about the family our God of love has called to incarnate love into the world.

Nonetheless, we refuse to quit love. So never ever quit my brothers, and sisters, and anyone else who wants love to replace hate. 

Indeed, love is the only shade of red that saves us all.

     Blessings...

CARBINES AND FELINES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

    Welcome back.

     Allow me to start off by saying that I am not against gun ownership. Nor am I entranced by guns the way others seem to be. There is more magical thinking than science firing from the barrels of Gatling gun gullets prattling about the 2nd Amendment.  

     Gun preachers are the young earth creationists of violence. All the tragedy following a multiple homicide is as complex as natural selection, but to hear gungelicals talk, the problem of guns is as simple as making a tree without sunlight or a man from mud.

  We need more levity, less gravity. I suggest we laugh at the ideals preached by these gungelicals because they can be quite funny.

     Nothing triggers a good laugh from me than watching the politricks of politicians who legislate as if they are standing in front of a firing squad. They might have solutions in their sights, but the NRA got the drop on them as soon as they were elected.  

     And the shoot-first-think-never pundits make matters worse firing the same five bullet shit reasons why guns make us all safe. 

     I get a kick out of it, and to make it funnier, I imagine them using burp voices when they talk. 

     Indeed, we must laugh because at the heart of it all there is a murderous deception going on in the United States that is not funny.

     The disputable reasons for owning a gun are five and hilarious, but the incontrovertible reasons for owning a gun are two and not so funny.

     The reasons to own a gun are: 

#1. I want to.

#2. I can.

     The gungelicals preach a standard stock of five reasons why every American should own a Carcano 91/38 rifle, a .22 caliber Iver Johnson, a 30 06 Enfield, a Remington 30 06 rifle, a 10-shot Hi-Point model 995 carbine rifle, an Intratec tec dc 9, a Savage 311-D 12 gauge double barrel shotgun and Savage-Springfield 67H 12 gauge shot gun (they work best sawed off), a Bushmaster AR 15 assault rifle, a .40 caliber pistol, a Bushmaster XM 15 rifle, a Smith and Wesson M&P15 assault rifle, a Remington 870 pump action double gauge shotgun, a 9x19mm Glock, a 9mm Sig Sauer pistol, and a 45 caliber handgun like the one Dylan Roof used.

    It just so happens those stock reasons are the same reasons for owning a cat. 

     Forgive me.  I began this post with a cat word in the title, so I feel compelled to make this about cats. I could have chosen snails, elk, or abalone. I picked cats because I have the best cat in the world, and I've always wanted to work him into one of my posts.

     His name is Atticus Finch. He thinks I keep him in my home because it's really his home, and if I want to live there I have to be his pet. For the sake of argument, let's say he is wrong. In that case, there are five reasons why I keep a cat in my home.

Reason#1

     I am safer with a cat in my home. Actually, I’m not. Even with kitty in my home, one killer or several could get the drop on me. They could kick my door down and blow me away before I am able to toss my cat onto their faces. Moreover, I am not safer away from home. I could take Atticus Finch to a movie, or a restaurant, and any gunman might blow me away before I have the chance to fire my cat back at him.

Reason #2

     Only a good cat can stop a bad man. That’s not true either. It is possible that some bad men might see my cat and stop what they are doing. I know I would, but it's not likely a bad man would. Atticus Finch might be hiding better than Boo Radley as he is wont to do. It's also possible if I toss kitty at a bad man while he is firing away, I might miss. Kitty might land on an innocent person, disfiguring him with horrible scratches.

Reason#3

     The government is coming to take away all of our cats. This makes as much sense as petting a stuffed cat. If the government sends a tank and a platoon of Marines to pry Atticus Finch from my cold, dead hands, he will be no match for their fire power, nor will he be anywhere near my cold, dead hands.

Reason #4

      If the government takes away our cats, then only criminals will have cats. Maybe, but they will be black market cats and will cost thousands of dollars. Atticus Finch was given to me for free by a little girl looking to abandon him at a rock concert. Actually, that’s not true. He was not given to me. The little girl put Catness Evershed into my girl friend’s hands. I would not have paid a dime for him back then, but now, he's worth the ten thousand dollars his value would command on the black cat market. 

     By the way, I kept him and ditched the girlfriend.

     To sum it all up, I own a cat for the same indisputable reasons I would own a gun. I want to and I can.

     Well, also because he's so damn adorrigible and cuddly.

     Let us recall, a divine sage once said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  

     

     Imagine substituting the word “sword” with the word “gun.”  It’s easy if you try.

     Blessings…

THOUGHTS ABOUT PLACE SETTINGS

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back to thee and me.

During my morning perambulation about the neighborhood, I saw a lovely hydrangea flower on a sidewalk, toward the road side, a few feet from a Methodist church. This is the same Methodist church that puts out those pumpkins every autumn.

As I walked, I pondered. My first thought is the one that comes from my childhood: "God put it there for me."

My second thought: "I will take it to my wife."

My third thought: "That first thought is ridiculous."

My next thought: "Someone may have put it there, dropped it there, kicked it there, or the wind blew it there."

Next thought: "If someone does not put it there, then God never puts it there. So it is not ridiculous to say God put it there."

Next: "Isn't it my theology that God works in the world through Being itself?"

I continued on to the place where I loop to walk back home. On my return, I paused to examine the hydrangea. Indeed, the stem appeared to be snipped not torn. The flower looked for all the world to be arranged within that one concrete square on that sidewalk, not dropped or windblown.

Next thought: "It’s a social experiment. A camera is recording to see who passes by it, who stops to look at it, or who takes it."

I looked around for cameras or social scientists hiding in the hedges running along the side of the church wall.

I took the blossom to my wife, set it in a small, empty glass that had once contained Kraft cheese spread, but was being used for smaller portions of orange or apple juice that we like to drink for breakfast. I set it on our dining table beside the place mat where she eats breakfast.

The next morning, I saw a Miller Lite beer can looking for all the world as if it had been arranged as well.  It was set on the same sidewalk square in the same place as the hydrangea.  

First thought:  "God put it there to test me."  

Second thought:  "I'm not picking it up.  I don’t want passersby thinking I drink beer in the morning."

Third thought:  "Tomorrow, I’ll bring a trash bag and pick up all the beer cans I see."

The next morning I forgot the trash bag.  The beer can was there, this time turned over on its side and in the middle of the concrete square.  

First thought:  "Some bicyclist might run over this beer can and wreck."  So I picked it up.  

Second thought, "This is a social science experiment."  I looked along the wall of the Methodist church for cameras and social science students with note pads and pencils hiding in the hedges, and then I looked across the street where a Baptist church could just as easily hide cameras and researchers.

Next thought: "These trucks going past think I’ve been drinking beer at six in the morning."

In three mornings, a special moment of loveliness occurred.  The hydrangea was lovely.  The sidewalk became lovely again after I removed the litter.  Something lovely happened in me.  

Blessings...

WHEN GOD SITS ON HARDWOOD PEWS WITHOUT CUSHIONS

In the beginning, the elohim created the skies and the earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about how we are raised in church.

The church I attend follows what is called the Charleston Baptist model. Numinous churches like it are found on the Southeastern Coast.

Charleston Baptists possess an educated clergy and congregations. They are liturgical in their worship, and they follow the Christian calendar.

Church members comment how different our church is from the "one that brung them."  For instance, one of our members preached this past week about celebrating Epiphany. He said the church he was raised in only celebrated Christmas and Easter.

Amen to that. My home church on Signal Mountain, Tennessee celebrated simplicity in a sanctuary that at first had been carved out of wood.  There were no purples, blues, yellows, or other colorful hues in my home church.  Apparently, God's shekina glory glowed best in brown and white. Wooden pews without cushions, a wooden pulpit without a microphone, wooden walls with painted windows kept worship simple so church members could turn themselves more faithfully to God's presence among them.

After the church burned down from a lightning strike, and it burned rather quickly because of all the wood, a new sanctuary of river rock arose. Purple, blue, and yellow painted windows lined the walls. I recall a pretty dove scene installed inside the baptistery.   

Even with such nice touches, the church still celebrated only Christmas and Easter. Those services were not unlike other services throughout the year except that members glittered in newly gotten clothes.

We never celebrated Epiphany in that church. In fact, I have never celebrated Epiphany in any church, ever. Indeed, I never heard the word until I read The Sacred and Profane by Mercea Eliade in a religion class during my sophomore year.

I still do not know what to think about the Charleston Baptist model. The services at First Baptist contain numerous liturgical responses, prayer recitations, and statements of faith that I botch every Sunday. I begin reading late or I read the wrong thing, but I never quit or get frustrated. I am learning a new way to worship. 

This past year, I observed (watched, literally) Advent. Soon Ash Wednesday will be here. My pastor mentioned that it would be early this year. That means a lot of reflection I never knew before will precede Easter.

What a fascinating way of being a person of faith in the world!  Last night I wrote about how pumpkins signal the cycle of autumn in a year. Now, I can actually experience a special frame of heart so that my calendar is filled with cycles that are new, mystical, and unforeseen. I look forward to assimilating those new cycles into my own spiritual journey.

Blessings...

All the Pretty Pumpkins Gone Away

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about pumpkins.














As I perambulated in the early morning yesterday, I walked past a church that annually fills up its yard with hundreds of pumpkins in October. You can see a photographic view I took this year during one of my walks.  

The air felt breezy and cool. A full moon glowed through a thin layer of fast moving cloud cover, illuminating dark stretches of sidewalk beyond the reach of the street lights.  

When I passed the church, the hard dirt lawn covered with straw looked desolate. Maybe I had noted before that the pumpkins were gone as I drove past, or even walked by, but I had the sensation yesterday as if for the first time that they had all vanished.

Their disappearance did not strike me as gradual, but as occurring overnight. I did see buyers coming and going in the yard. Surely, the number of pumpkins decreased, but that was forgotten yesterday morning.

Those pumpkins make my life interesting. Every year they represent the changing of the season from torrid summer to delicious autumn. Now, that they are gone, it feels as if they never existed.  

There's an awareness of normalcy that can be very comforting when the seasons change. A sudden surge of joy can catch us off guard when something familiar that has been long gone appears again.  

I will smile when I see pumpkins set out again onto that church yard. It reminds me how difficult it is to describe a spiritual moment. 

Most of us think speaking in tongues is spiritual or praying is divine. I have no experience with the former and the latter often has all the sensation of an exercise. 

Indeed, I imagine a genuine spiritual experience would be rare, not weekly, and it would contain an element of surprise.

Like when the mere sight of pumpkins annually shrouded in night can suddenly become numinous and suggest a reality that has always been, but is not always revealed.

Blessings... 

    

'Twas the Before School...

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about tomorrow.

They're coming. They're coming. Nothing can stop them. No ministry of magic can halt them. They will be here soon enough. In fact, they are just a few hours away. No amount of medication can ease the anxiety of their arrival. It will happen. I must let it happen.I have no choice. To resist is futile.

I'm writing about students of course.  Our second semester begins tomorrow. I will be teaching a subject I've never taught, British Literature, and one subject I've taught twice now, American Literature. Luckily for me, they are my favorites besides the Bible and theology.

In truth, I can talk to anyone for hours and hours about great literature, the Bible, and theology. I am never intimidated by content.

However, earlier today, as I looked over the names of the students, none of whom I know, I wondered how many among them would be teachable. Heck, I wondered how many would be approachable. With that wondering came visions of sullen, irate, crabby kids. Surely, a few will dawdle day in and day out. Others will militantly defy any learning I might try to whip up in my classroom. I could just about bet the house on that. 

I know something now that I merely intimated before. Those emotions are old feelings emerging from ghosts of hellish classes long past. Such emotions fuel anxiety dreams that I have from time to time where an administrator suddenly pops into my classroom to evaluate me on the day I forgot to wear my trousers.

Oh those irrational fears torment us so. Indeed, when I consider the facts of late, I know that I am unable to make one reliable prediction about the students who are coming.  

Last semester, only seven students failed my three classes. That's seven out of ninety! Only three failed the Georgia writing test. Many of my students were polite, fun, and interesting. They refuted my phantoms from yesterday.

This kind of experience makes it impossible for me to accept the finality of my judgment about anything. I am reminded once again of my own fallibility and ignorance. I can never say with certainty what God is, what life is, who people really are, and who my students will be tomorrow.

I can only say that the worst moments of the past do not dictate what is happening to me now. So I hope, believe, and love with a view that the places where those ways lead me are overwhelmingly the best settings for my life story.

Blessings...  

HEARD AT CHURCH:  

How to Make a Christ

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

Today, the preacher said that the church reveals Christ to the world.  That is our mission.  

I could not help but think (to borrow from an atheistic criticism of faith in God) if Christ did not exist in the world, it would be necessary that we invent him.

Over the centuries, Christ has been absent from the deeds, thoughts, and doctrines of church people.  

Where truth is maligned, including scientific truth, Christ is absent.

Where kindness is seen as weakness, Christ is not there.

Where forgiveness is exclusive and not universal, Christ is far away.

Where violence is, Christ is not.

There does not have to be a particular belief about a god for love to exist.  The atheists are right about that. 

I've known a lot of infidels who were more decent and more humane than most of the Christians with whom I was raised.  

I've read the writings and watched the lives of many atheists who were more decent and more humane than the god and the life-in-Christ proclaimed by my Christian brothers and sisters.

Where there is love, there is Christ.  Where there is church, there should always be love.  

If the church is present, but love is not, then the church is fallen.  It trips up everyone else trying to go upward and onward.

The church which is not a building, but people who would reveal Christ in the world, can always be born again.  The church always has the potential to make a more convincing case for the presence of our God of love when we love as Christ loved. 

That is really all we must do and must believe.  If we cannot do at least that much, we knock a lot of other folks down.

So that was what I thought today after hearing a message about what God revealed when Jesus was born.

Blessings...