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