Lament: All that’s old is new again

Watching television this evening we witnessed American politics torn at the seams:

• Harbingers of peril for a fragile democracy;
• Fear the Constitution will not stand, absent those to defend it;
• The intractable divide of the party system;
• Political leaders beset by personal vice; 
• Friends turned enemies by political disputes;
  
• The co-opting of so-called news media to serve the machine of gossip and propaganda;
• Subjugation of human beings due to the color of their skin …

All of this in a two-hour PBS documentary (1997) about the Jefferson era in U.S. history. 

We repeat history more often than we think, and little is truly unprecedented despite our recency bias telling us things have never been this bad.

Looking back, we can infer fixity of purpose for benevolent cause, despite vehement disputation about the means. History tends to camouflage sin and exaggerate virtue.

As for today in real time, we watched the Iowa Legislature vote to remove civil rights among its citizenry, and a U.S. president and vice president insult decency on a scale reminiscent of a January day four years ago.

How will the documentaries of the future tell the story of 2025? The more things change, the more they stay the same? Or that once again, the so-called “experiment of American democracy” survived a turn toward a dark and uncertain future?

Meanwhile, we pray the lament of Psalm 130 and sing the hope of Psalm 19. Lord in your mercy, may I trust in the kin-dom of God that is eternal, even as I pray your will be done on Earth.

The fiction of childhood imagination and the complexity of place

My backyard was in Montana. Rather, my backyard was Montana.

In the summer afternoons of my childhood, I pretended the scrubby patch of lawn behind our Midwestern house to be the grasslands and rolling ranges of the Mountain West. I dodged tumbleweeds, heard the approaching rumble of wild mustangs, and fancied myself a cowboy-hat wearing, rope-wrangling cowhand.

The fictive scene was a Montana ranch, quite inventive considering the aforementioned backyard measured a quarter-acre and I lived in a small city in Wisconsin.

Imagination does that. Whether it’s the fancy of an 8-year-old dreaming of a West he’s never seen, or any of us envisioning a destination yet to be explored, our minds conjure landscapes more vivid than real geography.

Pretending also makes the trip shorter. I could walk out my back door and be in Montana in 11 steps rather than driving 1,100 miles from Eau Claire to Butte.

(As a sidebar, the weedy parking lot next to our house became Wrigley Field in my eclectic mind’s eye. Cracks in the pavement served as first base, second, third and home, and by throwing a rubber baseball at the paint-worn garage door, I could mark balls and strikes. Montana and Wrigley were but a short flyball apart from each other, another advantage of childhood imagination.)

I forgot about Montana after grade school until sophomore-year political science class. We learned about enclaves of libertarians who holed up in Montana and other sparse outposts. They loved individual freedom, limited government, and guns, more or less in that order.

Maxim Loskutoff wrote recently in the New York Times about that American West, the home of outcasts seeking refuge, wearing T-shirts that called Montana “The Last Best Place to Hide.”

The notion of Montana as “a wilderness of possibility” has beckoned everyone from David Letterman to the Unabomber.

Speaking of the latter, Montana-native Loskutoff appreciated growing up in a state that seldom made the news until Ted Kaczynski’s murderous exploits attracted national media. They usually showed up only for the annual Testicle Festival. (You can look it up.)

With the national spotlight comes caricature: Montana as retreat for entrepreneurs seeking simpler lives, as sanctuary for those trying to escape the past, as unlimited playground if you’re into fly fishing (probably not a caricature). And it remains a haven for the anti-establishment who make Montana as red as the ruddy falls in Glacier National Park.

All of this is prologue to the fact our daughter is getting married in Montana this summer. This is the daughter we didn’t imagine would ever live more than an hour from where she grew up in Milwaukee. Who craves quiet nights cuddled up by the fire more than hiking the Beartooth Range. (Or so we thought.) The daughter who lives to save every animal on earth, from an orphaned kitty to a broken-winged sparrow, who left for Montana hitched to a boy who hunts bear and elk and anything else moving and legal.

What Montana will we see when we travel there?

As with any visit, we’ll see it first through the eyes of our hosts. Or in this case, the love-crossed eyes of our child and her soon-to-be. They have extolled the virtues and vistas of Montana even as they lament the high rent and lengthy drive to the nearest Target or Culver’s.

They’ll start a new life together where mountain ranges and river valleys conjoin Glacier and Yellowstone under the vastness of what they call the Big Sky.

True, they could live more cheaply elsewhere, as the likes of John Mayer and Justin Timberlake move in and the fictional Duttons of Yellowstone attract real money.

They’ve left a state of 6 million people and zero grizzly bears to live in a state with 1 million people and 2,000 grizzlies.

The fiancé aspires to the Montana that captured my childhood imagination. The difference being he’s going after it and has the aptitude to do so.

I’m captivated by the West – loved living in Idaho for one summer – but I neither hunt nor fish. I’d be as out of place living in Montana as a cowboy living in New York City. (Maybe that’s why I liked the McCloud television show in the 70s.)

But the boyfriend is true Montana material. He hopes to work as a ranger, sheriff’s deputy or in fisheries & wildlife. He in fact shot a bear and brought it home for our daughter to cook. (“Why couldn’t he just hunt deer like everybody else?”)

He’s also a University of Wisconsin history graduate, so he’s not just about shed antlers and nymph flies. Neither is Montana. It’s too easy to caricature, remember? My handy Wildsam guidebook to Montana lists as many coffee shops and bookstores as it does fly shops and mountain trails.

Montana – if not the whole of the American West – somehow invites our real-life exploration without having to abandon our untamed imaginations.

For every fishing guide and rancher in Montana, there’s a poet or artist. Trout streams are plentiful, but so are urbane towns and historical landmarks.

As for our daughter, she’ll not only be marrying her love, but into the complex, beautiful, contradictory, not-to-be caricatured landscape of Montana.

Meanwhile, she’ll follow her passion to care for all living creatures. Montana kitties and puppies need saving, too. Maybe someday she’ll even save a grizzly bear.

Photo: EnjoyYourParks(dot)com

A Prayer for Labor Day 2022

God, you initiated our work through your work. You created all things and called them good. May we be grateful for the goodness of your creation and find goodness in our work of co-creating with you.

Bless us with the rhythm of activity and rest, work and Sabbath. Keep us from the temptations of both addiction to work and loathing work.

Ground us in knowing that our work is ultimately about relationships: in providing for ourselves and our families while serving the communities in which we live.

May we be aware of the trends in our contemporary workplaces so we can respond to the needs of our current day. Yet, keep us from discouragement that the way things are is the way things will always be. 

Give us the courage to act justly, O God, when inequities and abuses are present in our workplaces. Help us to be collaborators in creating healthy environments for employers, employees and those they serve.

Lord, direct our Saturdays or Sundays of worship toward the Mondays in our lives. Help us to integrate our lives in such a way that our work honors our faith, and our faith strengthens our work. 

Inspire us to not see ourselves as the sum total of our work, but as the living out of our life purpose, embracing all the dimensions of our human existence and our place in your world. 

Lastly, O God, visit your grace upon those who are unemployed but seeking work, underemployed and cast in a misfit role, and those whose time of active employment may be behind them but yearn to know your purpose and meaning for their lives.

Amen.

Dear family

The last Wednesday morning I felt such disconnect between sky and soul was Sept. 12, 2001. Today, as then, dawned sunny, clear and warm, a climatological feat for early November in southern Wisconsin. Both then and now, the cloudless sky masks a mood of despondency.

Regardless of where our Electoral College takes us, we are a troubled lot. I'm no political scientist, but tell me if this seems true:

"Conservatives" disdain "liberals" because of their perception of government overreach, hyper-regulation, infringement of personal freedom, and bureaucracy run amok. This seems to be a reasonable perspective held by rational people.  

"Anti-Trump" voters disdain "Trump supporters" because they can't comprehend how reasonable, rational people can support an elected official who is politically incoherent, openly conspiratorial, intentionally divisive, and narcissistically incapable of recognizing truth. This seems to be a reasonable perspective held by rational people.

The identifications in "scare quotes," to me, indicate why there is no compromise. We're not having the same conversation. 

Those who identify as conservatives dismiss Trump's errant behavior because he has coalesced their anger against the common enemies he has contrived: the political establishment, media and science. He declares himself the unequivocal kingpin against those foes. 

Those who identify as anti-Trump cannot fathom how their friends and family support a president whose behavior would not be accepted in civil conversation at their own family dinner table with their children watching.

Am I wrong about these two characterizations?

There are, of course, dedicated statesmen and stateswomen who can vigorously debate governance according to reasonable progressive and conservative principles. 

But when a conservative sees a Biden T-shirt, they think: Liberal elite snowflake. 

When an anti-Trumper sees a MAGA hat, they think: How can you support this cruel, obnoxious braggart?

[This is where the economy is offered as justification for the current president's qualifications for office. It is worth studying economic growth during the presidencies of Truman onward. Can we agree the economy itself is neither Republican nor Democrat?]

I don't know how to bridge these divides. 

If "politics" denotes the set of activities associated with making decisions in groups, governing the relationships among individuals in a society for their common good, then politics are certainly debatable but not inherently vitriolic.

Bob Hood used to say (I'm told) that a person needs the chance to draw their neck in gracefully now and again. Ann can correct my misquote. The idea is to create a space of quiet reflection before re-engaging conversation.

In history, an interregnum was the period between regimes following a particularly difficult reign.

We as a country need an interregnum. We need a timeout. A chance to draw our neck in gracefully.

I have spent equal time in disbelief and anger the past four years. Today, I am simply crestfallen. It's not because anyone has won or lost. We don't even know the outcome yet. 

It's the realization that if we don't change ourselves, it won't matter much who wins.

Gasping for Air, Grasping for Words

Whether we have awakened this morning to a city in smoke in ashes, or we sit saddened and stunned by the images we’ve watched these past six days from the relative security of our homes, we are tired.

We are tired of violence, tired of trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. And we didn’t begin with much in our emotional reserves, because we are tired of the coronavirus, tired of quarantining and the social disruption we have endured these past 2½ months.

George Floyd
Photo: WTAP-TV

This morning, we are all the members of the choir of the Bible’s book of Psalms as we cry out together: “How long, O Lord? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” [Psalm 13:1-2]

It will be hard for us to shake the images of our cities burning, of shattered glass and neighborhoods overtaken and freeways closed and the angry shouts emanating from Minneapolis all across this nation.

But I have been called into accountability this week by being reminded the image that matters most is the one that began it all: an officer’s knee pressed for minutes on end upon George Floyd’s neck, which ended with the death of a 46-year-old black man who was being apprehended for reportedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

Listen to the words of former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak:

“Sleepless and mortified, my heart melts in real-time as parts of the city I love so deeply burn away. Knowing these neighborhoods as I do I see way too clearly what is going up in smoke. ...

“It is nearly impossible to get these horrifying images out of our heads, but we must, because right now our eyes have to stay focused on one single image:

“A human being, staring calmly off into the middle distance, while his knee suffocates another human being. Our repulsion should boil over as we see this is a white police officer, who took an oath to protect and serve that person on the ground, who is a black man, who we know would not be treated like that if he was white.”

The complexities of the protest and civil unrest that have followed Floyd’s death are beyond what we can address in these few minutes this morning. They are worth our attention, our conversation, our sorting out.

It should be noted that what we have seen the past several nights are not just the protests of disenfranchised people of color who have viscerally experienced the death of an unarmed black man. The violence has, by credible accounts, been stoked by random trouble-makers as well as right-wing agitators, many of them white, who have driven to our city centers to literally ignite the flames of racial conflict with senseless looting. They have helped destroy, in fact, small businesses and livelihoods of the very persons of color who have already been sickened by George Floyd’s death.

A former St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter, Linda Owen, remarked: “In one week we've gone from flyover country to the center of some kind of existential battleground, and we're not even sure who the combatants are.”

The confusion of recent days ought not diminish the genuine anguish crying out to be heard. For those of us who are white, it is perhaps a time to listen more than speak.

How fitting that today in the Christian church is Pentecost Sunday. In the early church, Pentecost was once the second greatest celebration of the Christian year, following Easter. It was the day to commemorate the Holy Spirit coming down upon God’s people.

 It is the story of the 2nd chapter of Acts. Not long after Jesus’ resurrection, the people had gathered in one place for the spring harvest festival, when suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible, in fact, says the Spirit appeared as tongues of fire. The image of Pentecost Sunday is often fire, and songs are often sung on Pentecost of the church being on fire for the Lord.

Maybe our normal celebrations of Pentecost are too tame. Maybe today we see that fire is not a docile symbol of some warm and fuzzy feeling but is the presence of something that easily escapes our control. Fire that can both warm our hearts as well as express the rage that lies within.

After the incomprehensible killing of a black man and the violence that follows, it's cliche for a white preacher to invoke the words of Martin Luther King Jr. King would have understood Pentecost. He was an ordained preacher who earned his Ph.D. at a Methodist seminary.

The images of this past week don't look much different than they did in 1967 when King wrote in The Other America:

"I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? ... It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention."

To be black in America, to be a person of color amidst the privilege of whiteness, is to be gasping for a language in which to be heard. The miracle of Pentecost becomes that those upon whom the Spirit landed as tongues of fire began to understand each other, though they came from different places and spoke different languages. It was a miracle of hearing. Lord, in your mercy, we ask again for the miracle of hearing.

I will venture that many people hearing my voice share the same privilege I do. We go through each day giving little thought to our personal safety based on the color of our skin.

If I had walked into a store and for some reason was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, and if I became scared and ran, it is a near certainty that my pursuit and capture would not end with me gasping for life.

As George Floyd gasped the words, “I can’t breathe.”

The same words Eric Garner gasped while in an officer’s choke hold before his death on New York’s Staten Island in 2014.

As Parker Palmer writes, “I can’t breathe” are words that thousands of lynching victims in this country might have said as they died, words that freedom-seekers now living in limbo south of our border could say as they watch their dreams and sometimes their children die.

“I can’t breathe,” Parker continued, might have been the dying words of the 100,000 + American victims of COVID-19 just before they were intubated, deaths that have hit communities of color the hardest.

Palmer concludes by saying, if you or I walked down the street and heard a stranger say, “I can’t breathe,” we’d dial 911. We’d stay with the stranger until help arrived and do anything we could, the Heimlich maneuver, or CPR, or a hand to hold. We would NOT walk on by as if nothing were happening.

We can’t walk by now. The church considers its birth to have occurred on the first Pentecost. The church’s source of life is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is also known through Scripture by its Hebrew name: Ruach. It means breath.

To all who gasp for breath, let us all, you and I, listen to anyone who says, “I can’t breathe,” and be whom Christ calls us to be to them.

Let us pray, for:

The family of George Floyd, as they grieve privately, even as their loved one’s death has incited a public mourning across this nation.

The complex and bewildering tangle of racism, the evil weed sown long ago in the garden of humanity, that entwines and entraps us.

White privilege, which is so prevalent that we take it for granted and don’t even think about it.
Institutionalized racism, that although laws ended segregation and discrimination in the 1960s, these changes did not go to sufficient death to transform the systems and institutional structures that are responsible for the misuse of power.

Recognizing that conflict is inevitable when diverse peoples come together, and that it is not conflict that is our greatest problem but our inability to resolve it as people of God.

That dismantling racism is about tearing down and building up. That there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven, as Ecclesiastes tells us.

It is exhausting work, O God. Give us the will, give us strength, give us breath. The breath of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

This message was preached on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2020, to the online community from Milton (Wis.) United Methodist Church, after a week of rioting across the U.S. following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

Thank you to the Rev. Allie Scott for sharing the words of Parker Palmer. Prayer adapted from Understanding & Dismantling Racism by Joseph Barndt, © 2007 Fortress Press.

Getting my heart in the right place

I confess I have not always been as faithful as I would like during this time. I think I’ve been faithful to God and my call, but I have fallen prey more often than I would like to the negativity and division I see in the world.

Like the apostle Paul, I find myself doing the things I ought not do. Like reading comment threads on political posts and news stories, or talking back to the television. (I suppose Paul actually didn’t do that.) Too often I become jaded at human nature, to the detriment of my spirit.

My shock at how partisan we are is actually a naïve reaction, because it’s a biblical narrative as old as time. We all get to choose whom we serve, whether it is political party, lowercase gods, or ego. Opening ourselves in relationship to the holy humbles us, because it opens us to one another.

The platform we are privileged to share on social media gives us an inordinate entitlement to being “right,” which is far from a humble impulse. My confession is that too often, I succumb to that temptation: to be persuaded of my own “rightness” and seeking to align myself with those who perpetuate that elevated bit of self-absorption. Which is much different than opening myself humbly to my fellow sojourners in life.

Sitting here this evening, on my screened-in back porch with birds singing and dog at my side, knowing Ann is out with her horse on the trail, I am brought to a place of uncomplicated gratitude. Tonight, at least, it matters less whether you or I are on the right side of history than realizing our common good is inextricably linked to one another. Whether I am right or wrong will matter less than whether I live with empathy and compassion.

Postscript:

As friends have suggested in response, we are still called to stand up for the right and good. My faith tradition has always made that clear. To paraphrase a former professor, caring for one another is an art.

There is a place for righteous anger, and a time to act on it. For me, it's become imperative to tend to my heart and evaluate its motives. Anger and hate can too easily become roommates, and when that happens my heart's home becomes a cluttered mess.

The cardinal virtues in 2020

We have endured pandemics and plagues throughout history. We have never had the scientific ability to address them as we do now.

However, we’ve never been as acculturated to expect immediate results as we are today. Patience is not our virtue.

Viruses are ignorant of cultural expectations, and pandemics are not brief house guests. They overstay their welcome.

The 1918 influenza (e.g. Spanish flu, which actually began in Kansas) lasted for 15 months. That is the short end of most pandemics.

We have unprecedented science and knowledge to address Covid-19. We have historically unmatched financial resources, albeit unequally distributed.

Do we have the will? Plato (and the Bible) stated the case still relevant today: can we appeal to the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance and fortitude for such a time as this?

The Bible recasts those virtues as faith, hope and love. The greatest of these ...

I miss worshiping with my congregation. But ...

Thankfully, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declined the request Sunday (April 5) of Republican legislators who called for the resumption of in-person services for Easter and Passover.

But to the hubris of the suggestion in the first place: No. No on so many levels. Not the least of which is that the first rule of our faith is to do no harm. Do we miss worshiping together? Emphatically yes. This social distancing is a devastating blow to our expression of Christian community.

Is the church essential? We certainly believe so. But it is idol worship to assert that our desire to be together trumps the necessary precautions asked of schools and other entities to protect our public health. A loving God would not wish us to flaunt our faith in arrogant disregard for the vulnerability of our communities.

These lawmakers' ill-advised statements leave those of us seeking to responsibly minister to our faith communities having to reiterate again and again the need to listen to public health officials and stay home. "Do no harm."

The request of these lawmakers also is disturbingly on trend with the false narrative spun in the halls of government: That one party represents God's interests, and that the other is antagonistic to faith.

That Republicans would feign to speak for people of faith at such a precarious time is only the latest calculation designed to appease right-leaning voters in the name of religious values.

That Democrats disengaged from the conversation decades ago leaves them maddeningly ineffectual if not sadly silent in such public dialogues.

None of this should be surprising, any more than the president's disingenuous pining for the churches to be "packed" on Easter as a way to disguise with a religious cloak his contempt for science and knowledge.

We are, after all, entering Holy Week. When the Galilean sage Jesus so challenged the self-interested motives of government that it led to his death. Every time we worship the government, especially when it claims to speak for God, we unwittingly join the angry mob in rooting for the wrong savior.

We will, with deep sadness, not worship together this Easter Sunday. Not because we don't believe God will protect us. But so that God will save us for all the good that needs to be done during and after this time of pandemic.

Rev. Steve Scott, Milton United Methodist Church, Special to the Journal Sentinel, Published 9:09 p.m. CT April 5, 2020

When systems theory negates grace

We have done well to learn and adapt systems theory to groups of human interaction: family, workplace and church, for example.

Thanks to Edwin Friedman and others, we understand our behavior is shaped by those with whom we interact. An assertive adult may become passive as the child they once were when reunited with family at Thanksgiving. An introvert among peers may emerge gregarious among those older or younger. A conflictual personality in one setting may be serene in another.

Systems theory allows us to gain deeper understanding of the groups in which we work and live. It can help us see where change is needed and understand why it's resisted. (Systems tend to preserve themselves more readily than adapting.)

image by Emaze

It's specious, however, to blame everything on "the system."

"The media are dishonest." "Government is corrupt." "The church is broken."

Yes, systems can promulgate (or protect) dishonesty, corruption and brokenness. But it's superficial, and too easy, to blame everything on the system.

"The church is broken," for example. Yes, the church too often falls far short of Jesus' command to welcome, teach and heal in his name. But to blame everything on "the system" is like saying all politicians are crooks. I've had both politicians and preachers in my family, so I guess I take exception.

Whenever I hear someone begin "The church ..." or "the media ..." I'm on alert that an expression of pain and frustration is to follow. I need to listen. I need to honor the person's experience. But by "the church" do they mean all of Christendom? Am I to blame the entire enterprise, given my knowledge that most of the church members I know are doing their best?

I resonate with Lillian Daniel, who wrote Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong To. I don't mean to negate real experiences of real pain caused by neglectful or harmful practices by the church. Even, or especially, those perpetuated by systems of embedded power and privilege by the few over the many.

(I listened to the stories of too many victims of clergy sexual abuse to not be horrified by "the church's" tendency to cover-up sin and crime. But it's intellectually lazy of me to castigate every priest, even as I weep with the victims.)

Recently, a colleague was unfortunately slighted in a most untimely way by a promised action that wasn't acted upon. I resonated with their disappointment. But that disappointment, vented in a public way, became a denunciation of "the system."

"The system," in fact, included me. And others who worked very hard. And a ball was dropped. Quite unfortunately, I might add. The "process" suffered from a most untimely glitch. Is the "system" broken? That's the easy assertion, when we take systems theory to the point where the complexities of human interaction are reduced to a matrix of inevitable right or wrong behavior.

We need to take responsibility when our "process" fails. But when we blame everything on "the system," we leave little room for understanding the dynamics of human error, forgiveness and grace that govern our relationships with each other.

Seeing from God's view

1969 was a profound year in American history. 

However, for the fact I was 8 years old that summer, I was oblivious to much of it. But on one warm evening in the summer of ’69 I got to stay up late and, with most of the planet, watched Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the moon. Fifty years ago, it was clearly one of those “Where were you when …?” moments in our lives. 

I’m quite certain that even my childhood self grasped the enormity of sailing this new sea, of climbing this highest mountain, of going to the moon because we chose to go to the moon, and that we chose to do such a thing not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

That President Kennedy had memorably spoken those words a mere seven years earlier would’ve impressed even my pre-adolescent self to realize that time was accelerating in unprecedented fashion, and that humankind was living in an era of rapid scientific advancement and breakneck societal change.

Because July 20, 1969, was a Sunday, I’m quite certain I was in church that morning. The message, alas, is beyond my recall. So I’ve wondered, how did we as people of faith contemplate this remarkable achievement? What did preachers preach? What did Sunday schools discuss?

I’d like to imagine that if I were to preach that day, I would’ve included the 19^th Psalm.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” - Psalm 19:1

Neil Armstrong’s small step for man and giant leap for mankind was in fact humankind merely dipping its little toe into a cosmic ocean so vast that we cannot fathom its depth or breadth.

Just as Jesus long ago made the invisible God visible, the lunar landing put flesh and bone and moondust on the previously held fairy-dust fantasy of space exploration. We humans could now dare thrust ourselves onto God’s magnificent celestial stage and live to tell about it.

To look skyward on that July night 50 years ago and imagine real men on the lunar surface rather than the mythical Man on the Moon was a moment of awe, wonder and mystery.

I hear the word of God coming to us from the prophet Isaiah:

“To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?” - Isaiah 40:25-26

Indeed, we may have engineered the spacecraft and the technology to travel to the moon, but we didn’t put the moon there in the first place.

That’s the kind of cosmic reordering we can all use from time to time. The world doesn’t begin and end with us, and we aren’t the center of the universe.

My favorite image of the moon landing is seeing Earth from that vantage point.

Look at our earthly home as God sees it. There is, from this vantage point, God’s vantage point, no rationale for not sharing equally among God’s beloved the resources of this abundant sphere, no justification for treating people differently because of the color of their skin.

We are, rather, created in God’s image in this one creation, related, inextricably, to one another.

Perhaps we need the awe of another event like a moon landing to remind us of what Martin Luther King said so eloquently, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

To know that would indeed be one small step for us, one giant leap for all of God’s creation.

The photo and inspiration for this reflection were posted on Facebook on July 19, 2019, by the Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin 

A birthday from beyond the veil

Today is my mother-in-law's 88th birthday. Not that she knows, of course, anymore than she knows Monday from Wednesday or her family one from another. The clutch of dementia has drawn down the shade to hide personality, awareness and acknowledgment. But make no mistake, she was - or is behind that impervious curtain - learned, well-read, engaged and opinionated.

On this birthday, she gave me a gift. As I pulled her Jerusalem Bible off the shelf, I opened the hand-written pages where she inscribed the details of her family tree and the record of her children's and grandchildren's births, baptisms, schools-attended and marriages. They are events beyond her memory's reach but not ours.

This leather-bound Bible, however, is more than a family keepsake. Its taped cover and worn pages reveal copious underlinings and notes in the margins. This was her study Bible. It's unclear whether she used it in one of many classes she taught, or when she went back for a second college degree in her late 60s.

She jotted in the end piece references to a dozen Scriptures: Philippians 4 (on money), John 5 (take up your mat and walk), 2 Corinthians (on reconciliation). Next to a notation for the dry bones in Ezekiel was one for the tree by the waterside in Jeremiah 17.

An entire section of Ecclesiastes is paper-clipped. I note to myself that my late father had similarly set off the same book. Perhaps each resonated with the cynic of Scripture.

I wonder what she thought as she highlighted a footnote in Exodus explaining the image of a woman in labor as a common biblical metaphor. Or the passage in Psalm 55 where she circled: "Were it an enemy who insulted me, I could put up with that ... But you, a man of my own rank, a colleague and a friend ..."

Eventually I turn to the editor's foreward, penned by Alexander Jones from Christ's College, Liverpool, 1 June 1966. As time has stopped still for my mother-in-law, I realize life in many ways is timeless.

Jones writes of this "new" translation of Holy Scriptures as being necessitated by two principal dangers: First, the reduction of Christianity to the status of a relic, irrelevant to our times. Second, its rejection as mythology cherished in emotion with nothing to say to the mind. Furthermore, the foreword suggests the Bible, though crystallized in antiquity, is not to be considered fossilized.

"Now for Christian thinking ... two slogans have been wisely adopted: aggiornamento, or keeping abreast of the times, and approfondimento, or deepening of theological thought."

I imagine sitting at a dining room table over coffee, or in a church study with my mother-in-law holding court, discussing with her the enduring pull of Scripture and our ongoing tug-of-war as we wrestle with its place in our lives and our lives' place in Scripture. It's not a conversation that will take place today, but I'm thankful for all those who had it with her over the years.

Happy birthday Nancy.

No, I'm not a crybaby

This has been making the rounds of social media today, 11 months after the 2016 presidential election.

I commented I couldn't agree more. Upon which I was called a crybaby, and told to get over it. And moreover, that the above-referenced clip was taken out of context.

There is nothing out of context when a person, especially an elected leader or candidate for same, mocks another human being. 

I have lived through the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Some resonated more than others. 

I've never been a crybaby. And I'm not a crybaby now.

I'm aghast at the pass our current president received to be handed the reins of our nation's leadership despite his dehumanizing behavior. Mocking the disability of a reporter was neither the beginning nor the end of his offense to decency. 

That said, I believe we will never move forward as long as progressives continue ridiculing those who voted for the current president, and conservatives continue ridiculing those who oppose him. I concede the analysis of the vagaries of the 2016 election to political scientists and sociologists who might someday reason its complexities with historical perspective. 

In the meantime, how then shall we live? 

Yes, there are political issues about which I care deeply, particularly the fragility of our global climate and the vulnerability inherent in our health care system. On these and other matters, I disagree, in some instances strongly, with the leanings of our current president.

However, nothing troubles my soul more than when our leaders degrade those who are adversely affected by their partisan decisions as if they are somehow lesser citizens. (To wit, the exultant posturing of boastful vainglory in the Oval Office each time the presidential pen strikes a blow against one or another segment of our citizenry. See below. It's not as if they're creating national parks or celebrating a moon landing.) 

This has happened on the state level in Wisconsin (upon the passage of Act 10, when teachers and public servants were castigated as adversaries of good government) and occurs repeatedly on the national stage.

If you can mock one reporter's disability, you can create whatever "reality" you wish while categorizing anything opposed to your ideology as "fake" and those who stand opposed as subhuman.

Winner take all

A two-run homer by Gary Gaetti, center, powered the Cubs to a 1998 Wild Card tie-breaker victory (Daily Herald photo)

Winner-take-all games in Chicago Cubs history:
Oct. 4, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at Chicago, Cubs 5, Pittsburgh 2
Oct. 8, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at New York, Cubs 4, New York Giants 2
Oct. 10, 1945, World Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Detroit 9, Cubs 3
Oct. 7, 1984, NL Championship Series Game 5 at San Diego: San Diego 6, Cubs 3
Sept. 28, 1998, NL Wild-Card tie-breaker at Wrigley Field: Cubs 5, San Francisco 3
Oct. 5, 2003, NL Division Series Game 5 at Atlanta: Cubs 5, Atlanta 1
Oct. 15, 2003, NL Championship Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Florida 9, Cubs 6
Oct. 7, 2015, NL Wild-Card Game at Pittsburgh: Cubs 4, Pirates 0
Nov. 2, 2016, World Series Game 7 at Cleveland: Cubs 8, Cleveland 7, 10 inn.
Oct. 12, 2017, NL Division Series Game 5 at Washington: Cubs 9, Washington 8

Baseball is a streaky game

The longest winning streaks in major league baseball history:

26 - New York Giants, 1916
22 - Cleveland Indians, 2017
21 - Chicago Cubs, 1935

The 1916 Giants are credited with the longest streak at 26 games.

From Sept. 7-30, the Giants won 26 games and tied 1. They won 12 in a row, then tied Pittsburgh 1-1 in a game shortened to 8 innings, which was the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 18. The Giants then won their next 14 straight.

Remarkably, the Giants had won 17 in a row earlier in the season after starting the season 2-13. They finished the year wth an 86-66 record, in fourth place behind NL champion Brooklyn. Subtracting the two long winning streaks, the Giants were 43-66 in the rest of their games.

(And yes, the Giants' logo was purple in 1916.)

When the '35 Cubs began their streak on Sept. 4, they were in 3rd place in the NL, behind St. Louis and the N.Y. Giants. By the time the streak ended on Sept. 27, the Cubs had clinched the NL pennant and a spot in the World Series against the Yankees.

During the Indians' streak, which ended tonight, they outscored their opponents 140-36 and were behind in only seven of the 181 innings they played.

Cousins 4.0 (with pooch)

See how they've grown: here and here and here

Happy birthday from Vinegar Bend

Coincidence? On the day Ann was born (May 21, 1956), only two major league baseball games were played: the Yankees beat the Kansas City A's 8-5, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Giants 4-1. The Cardinals' winning pitcher was Vinegar Bend Mizell, a 6-foot-3 left-hander just back from two years of Army service.

The day I was born (Oct. 7, 1960) was a travel day between games 2 and 3 of the World Series. In the first game of my lifetime, the Yankees and Whitey Ford shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates 10-0. The losing pitcher? Vinegar Bend Mizell, whom St. Louis had traded to Pittsburgh midseason.

Mizell was born Wilmer Mizell in Leakesville, Miss., but his family routinely picked up their mail in the nearby town of Vinegar Bend, Ala. That town of 200 people provided a better nickname than Leakesville Mizell.

After a nine-year major league career (with a 90-88 win-loss record), Mizell became a three-term U.S. Congressman from North Carolina until he was swept out of office in a post-Watergate Republican purge. He would later serve in the administrations of Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.

Photo: Baseball Reference. Bio adapted from SABR.

Keys in the song of life

Funny how one's memory of a thing forms and then you find you've blurred the details.

I learned today the piano I grew up with - which I bequeathed to someone long ago - has found yet another new home. They sent a picture. I didn't remember the thatched woven fronting or the Wright-like wooden music stand.

I remember it was an Everett upright, and that the right front corner was worn and rounded by years of my mother leaning on it as she taught piano lessons in our living room.

Lots of hands have touched those keys, from the groping aimless fingers of her countless elementary students whose lack of practice was painfully evident, to the occasional bright student who might still today be able to play Moonlight Sonata, to the one prodigy who began on that piano and now is a professional in the Twin Cities who makes a modest living at it.

And, of course, my impatient attempts to coax music from that piano, from hymns to 60s folk songs to my faking renditions of 70s rock music. I used that piano to try to impress a girl, and to vent adolescent rage. (In one particular tantrum, I banged on middle C so forcefully the hammer broke inside. It wasn't a sin you could overlook, like dropping a piece of rarely used fine china no one would notice until next Thanksgiving. The broken piece required immediate confession and replacement.)

But apparently, it's still playing music, which shows that things can outlast people and adapt to being useful to others who will never know the stories they could tell.

The burning bush

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, thinking about Union Theological Seminary in New York, the "burning bush" of American theology in the 20th century. The cauldron of conversations about racism, oppression and liberation. 

Thankful for James Cone and forebears Barth, Tillich and others. 

And for Nina Turner's words at the MLK Memorial in Washington, D.C.:

"We may not have gotten here on the same ship, but we are in the same boat right now."

“The mountain might be higher, but we’ve been here before. The valley may be lower, but we’ve been here before.”

"And guess what, sisters and brothers? We can’t have a testimony without a test, and we are being tested right now for whether or not we’ve got courage enough, hope enough, fight enough, love enough to do what is necessary.”

The nature of the giver

The longest Christmas morning I ever had was when I was 5. My father was a pastor. At the time, he served three churches in northern Wisconsin.

We lived in Stanley, the center between the three. On Sunday mornings my dad would drive east to the first church, lead worship, get in the car and drive to the church in our town. After worship he was back in the car driving to the westernmost church, after which he would circle back home. It was a morning that began driving at 7 a.m. and brought him back well after 12’o clock noon.

He seemed to be overly proud of saying that after being stopped for speeding on his first Sunday on this circuit, the sheriff’s deputies would mark their watches by the time Roy Scott would drive through and then clear the road.

Most any Sunday, I was oblivious to this schedule. We would get up in time for church in our town, which was next door to where we lived. By the time my dad returned home after the 3rd service it was time for lunch, or dinner as they called the noontime meal in northern Wisconsin.

But that Christmas, the one in my childhood when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, that’s the one I remember. Imagine a 5-year-old bounding out of bed on Christmas Day. There’s maybe no better feeling in the world. The tree has exploded with gifts beneath it, and that’s as I remember that morning. Except … except my dad was already gone. And there were no presents to be opened … until he returned.

I might as well have been at the dentist. It was painful. The gifts taunted me. The tree sparkled as if its lights were little eyes winking at me and saying, “Not yet, little boy. These gifts are still mine.”

I don’t know what you’ve waited for most in your life. What you still yearn for … The thing that would bring you the most joy if only it would come …

I know that nothing, not even a young child waiting to open presents, compares with the desire to be accepted, known and loved -- by others, and especially by God.

We hoped for a Savior, but we didn’t know how or when a Savior would come. As it turns out, we were quite surprised.

The Savior didn’t come as royalty but in poverty. Not in a far-off place but in a village. The Savior wasn’t protected by security to keep him from us, but rather those who were present called to us and said, Come! Look! See!

If the thing you’re yearning for most is peace, in your mind or heart or the world, then today is the answer to that wish. Not the holiday itself, but Christ.

We tend to evaluate our relationship with God by how we’re holding up our end. What we forget is that our relationship with God is profoundly set in motion by what God does -- especially what God does at Christmas.

The gift is made special by the giver.

I remember another Christmas, also in Stanley, when I received a snow globe from Solveig Ondahl, the grandmotherly woman who baby-sit me and also, as it were, taught me how to tie my shoes and helped me learn to read. I did the latter while sitting at her formica-topped kitchen table and read the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast.

What I remember of her husband, Ingvold, was that he had thick, gnarled knuckles and had, in fact, lost two fingers on his left hand. He worked at the mill, and often had already left for work by the time my mom dropped me off at the Ondahls’ house.

What I remember most about Solveig is that she let me drink Coca-Cola, which never would have been allowed at home. We had a secret pact, she and I.

One Christmas she gave me a snow globe. I admired it and was carrying it around the living room showing it off when it slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. There’s nothing sadder than watching the water pour out of a shattered snow globe, leaving nothing but little shards of glass and snow sprinkles in a tiny, pathetic puddle.

My dad admonished me for my carelessness, and then said that tomorrow morning we were going to go down to the Five-and-Dime store and buy a new one. And then he said, and don’t tell Mrs. Ondahl that you broke the other one; she’ll never know.

Why was it, I wondered, that he appeared to be more concerned about Mrs. Ondahl feeling bad that I had broken her gift than he did for me who had just broken a present?

Is it that the giver of the gift is as important as the one who receives it? Could there be truth to the adage that the joy of giving surpasses the joy of receiving?

Our relationship with God is profoundly defined by God being the giver of the gift. And should we forget what the gift is, we hear the words of today’s Scripture:

To paraphrase:

Going through a long line of prophets, God addressed our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Then he spoke to us directly through Jesus. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning, and it will all belong to the Son at the end. Jesus perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what he says—powerful words!
And Jesus became so much greater than the other messengers, such as angels, that he received a more important title than theirs. [MSG + NRSV]

 I guess, when we forget which gift is the most important, these words remind us.

We live in a time of incredible abundance, by the standards of the rest of the world and the standards of history. It is hard, when you have much, to remember what is most important.

Don’t get me wrong, I love gifts under the tree. I’d love to give my wife a new car for Christmas, if I could. I savor Christmas cookies, a little too much, and sometimes I actually enjoy shopping for other people. I like singing about Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire as much as O Come All Ye Faithful (although I’ve never known anyone who actually roasted chestnuts on an open fire).

I don’t believe Jesus would come down too harshly on our secular celebrations, as long as they don’t dishonor God. Jesus was always finding the divine in the midst of the ordinary: food, housework, dwelling, fishing.

It’s that Jesus reminds us – Jesus shows us – not that ordinary things don’t matter, but what matters most.

That Christmas morning when I was 5 wasn’t the only time in my life I sat nervously and fidgeted while waiting for something good to happen. I imagine I’ve lost some hours of my life dreading that bad things would happen, too.

But like a baby will come when a baby comes, Jesus comes when Jesus needs to. Now. In every moment. Because in every moment, what we need most is a Savior.

Like every true gift, the nature of giver is revealed in the gift of Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

Photos courtesy of BigRig Travels Video Vault, Of Woods and Words and Jackson Scott

A year of mourning

A year of mourning draws to a close today. Of course, the mourning will not cease, but we have passed once thus far through each season. By grace alone.

It is no more clear what comes next than it was a year ago. Then, it was mustering the strength to "have" Christmas, for "celebrating" Christmas did not seem possible. For the grandchildren's sake, we said.

For 365 days since, we have tried to put one foot in front of the other as we learn how to walk again. We stumble and sometimes fall, getting back up to face the day because the sun keeps rising every morning.

In fact, morning and mourning are reliable visitors. One is welcome, by which we mark the rhythm of life. The other refuses to play by rules, sometimes barging in and at others knocking at the door bidding entry.

We honor mourning but put our trust in morning. Let the morning bring word of your unfailing love, the Psalm-writer says, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.

Here's to life. Hers and ours.