Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, May 7, 2023:

First Reading: Acts 7:55-60

Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Gospel: John 14:1-14

The Gospel text for this Sunday has much to say to modern people.  I come back again and again to the beginning:  "Let not your hearts be troubled."  We are in a time period where so many of us have troubled hearts.

I worry about our hearts becoming hard as stones once we all decide that we're tired of being troubled.  History shows us this trajectory.  Right now many of us are steadfast in our resistance to becoming a country/world that doesn't seem true to our values.  But what happens when we grow tired?

I look at the way part of this passage has been misused, verse 6:  "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"  I think of all the ways that passage has been used to persecute those who believe differently.  Are we ultimately on that path?

I worry about the ways that so many of us are engaged in binary thinking, the either-or, in or out thinking that can get us into so much trouble.  We spend much time with ideas exactly identical to ours.  We can go for weeks/months/years without meeting someone with different political ideas than ours.  We live in a different kind of segregated world than that of half a century ago, but it's no less dangerous a segregation.

This morning, I came across a quote from Thomas Merton, in this post from the ever-wonderful Parker Palmer:

"This is of course the ultimate temptation of Christianity! To say that Christ has locked all the doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved — while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.”

In this quote, we see a way forward.  Even as so many of us are in despair about so many things, God is making creation whole again, in ways that we don't always perceive.

The Gospel text for this week includes an implicit invitation.  Jesus invites us to be part of this redemption of creation when he says, "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

Where and how will you respond to this call?

Gloomy Skies: Goodbye to Gordon Lightfoot

 I am listening to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which I only usually do "when the skies of November turn gloomy" (to borrow a phrase from the song).  But Gordon Lightfoot has died, and it's a gloomy May day, so the song fits my mood.

Of course, Lightfoot was 84 years old, and from what I can tell from the various news stories, he seemed to have lived a good life.  He wrote amazing songs and had a good run as a performer.  Lots of people will be reflecting on his life and appreciating him today, and plenty of us have been doing this for over 50 years.

His music is the background of my childhood, along with Neil Diamond, Simon and Garfunkle, and John Denver.  Yesterday on my drive back to my seminary apartment, I heard John Denver's live version of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy"--what a great song.

He also wrote songs that other people made more famous, like "Early Morning Rain."  I've been listening to some of those songs this morning.  At some point, when I don't have seminary papers to finish, I might do more reflecting on how this folk music formed my perception of what it would be like to be an adult--not because I listened to it as a child, but because I continued to listen to it in adolescence.

Well, we do have an early morning rain, but today is not a travel day for me.  I need to do my last revisions on my Queer Theology paper which is due at 5 p.m.; when I went to bed last night, I thought it was mostly finished.

And then it's on to my paper for my class on the Gospel of Luke:  looking at the Annunciation as a kind of call story, thinking about different kinds of call stories.  If you're like me, you think that a call means that you're leaving your home, going out with very little, and converting the ones you find along the way.  But what if Jesus has a different call?  One that has to do with hospitality?  

Solidarity Forever! Happy May Day!

Here we are in the merry month of May--how can it already be May?  The first day of May has ancient roots as a celebration of Spring and new growth and the return of warm weather.  More recently, the first day of May has become a celebration of workers.

So let's think about some ways we could make the day special:

--The traditional way would be flowers, traditionally flowers that we would leave on dark porches for people to discover when they woke up.  It's probably too late for that approach, but it's not too late to appreciate flowers.  You could buy some flowers or a flowering plant.  Or, for future enjoyment, you could do what we did:  buy some seed packets, plant them, water them, and see what happens.

--It is probably also too late to weave long ribbons around a Maypole.  But we could braid ribbons or strips of cloth and meditate on the types of joy we'd like to invite into our lives.

--Today is a good day to think about workers, workers of all sorts.  We're having more of a national conversation these days about work, about gender, about who takes care of children and elders while people work, about the locations of work.  I look forward to seeing how it all turns out--I'm holding onto hope for positive change, even as I'm afraid we can never make the improvements that need to be made.

--If we're one of the lucky types of workers, the ones who aren't under threat by bosses or by globalization or by robots, we can support those who aren't as lucky.  Send some money to organizations that work for worker's rights. I'm impressed with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which works to protect the migrant workers in the fields of Florida, but you certainly have plenty to choose from.

--Can't afford to make a donation? Write letters on behalf of the unemployed, the underemployed, everyone who needs a better job or better working conditions. Write to your representatives to advocate for them. What are you advocating? A higher minimum wage? Safer worksites? Job security? Work-life balance?

--Today, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Lutherans celebrate the feast day of Philip and James; others will celebrate May 3. These are not the most well-known disciples. Today you could reread the Gospels, a kind of literary Easter egg hunt, to try to find them.

--Can you create something that weaves these strands together? Here are some possibilities: a sculpture made out of ribbons that explores the world of migrant workers. A poem that celebrates flowers and contemplates the ways that we love some blooms (flowers) but not others (algae, cancer). A painting that uses weaving in some ways to think about the past century of efforts to enlarge the workplace and make it safer. A short story that updates the story of Philip--who would he be today? 

One Year Anniversaries

Yesterday, I realized we were at the one year anniversary of making an offer on the house that we now own.  I was trying to figure out when my wrist surgery took place last year (May 2), and along the way, I figured out another piece of history.

I didn't blog about the process in real time, in part because I had a broken wrist that made it hard to write.  In larger part, I didn't blog about it because I didn't want anything to happen that might jeopardize the process.  I did write some blog posts after the fact, once we purchased the house in June (here and here).

At the time, a year ago when my spouse was talking to the owner of the house on the phone, I remember being a bit worried about making big decisions in a place of emotional vulnerability.  I remember saying words to the effect of, "I'm happy to have a house at Lutheridge, but right now, I'm focused on my wrist surgery, so I might not be thinking clearly."  My wrist was not the only thing shattered a year ago; my faith in my ability to know my body took a hit too, and I was feeling vulnerable, because if a little tumble could do so much damage, what other catastrophes might be waiting?

Yesterday my spouse and I talked about some of the decisions we've made in the past year.  We felt lucky to get this house at a really good price because it needed work.  We may end up spending as much (or even more) on it than we would have spent if we had bought a house that was more move-in-ready.  But oddly, I feel O.K. about that.  We're making good decisions (like putting in a high quality/efficiency HVAC system) that people who wanted to sell a house quickly at top dollar might not have made.  We're making design decisions that work for us.

A year later, I am glad to have this house in more ways than I would have anticipated, and I anticipated being glad to have this house.  I didn't anticipate that seminary housing might become more precarious.  Now I know that there are plans to bulldoze the building that has apartments, including mine.  I don't know exactly when that will happen, but I've felt lucky to have a place to go.  I knew the housing market had been weird, but I didn't realize it would continue to be weird; yesterday I read an article in The New York Times that noted that lots of people want to buy houses, but increasingly, as interest rates rise, many people don't want to sell and lose a lower interest mortgage.  If we had waited to invest the money from the sale of our prior house into another place to live, we might not have been able to find anything.  

I am glad to have a house in an area that's a bit safer from all the destruction that climate change is unleashing; several weeks ago, I looked at pictures of flooding in our old neighborhood and felt a bit of survivor's guilt.  But more, I felt relief.

A year ago, the people who owned this house accepted our offer to buy it.  And I continue to be grateful.

Patterns Made with Detritus

 Before moving on to other topics, one last post about silk scarves.  

The main way that we got this variety of patterns was with rubber bands--tie dye, basically:

I had done tie dye many times before.  Long ago, I was part of a department that had a quarterly festival, complete with tie dye.  So I decided to try something else.  I looked down and saw lots of tulip petals, both purple and yellow.  So I put them onto the silk, in a circle, and I ended up with this gorgeous pattern.

I also tried dying another scarf with a leaf, and some detritus from a tree.

But that approach yielded a more subtle pattern.

To be honest, I'm not real sure which scarf goes with which approach.  I also experiment with mixing dyes, so the green in each scarf may come from the vegetative matter or it may come from some dye mixing.  It doesn't really matter, since I was just having fun with the experiment.  I don't need to replicate it.

Silk Scarves and April Breezes

 On Thursday of last week, as part of our Chapel Visuals class, we dyed silk scarves in vats of liquids made out of natural materials:  black beans, turmeric, and turmeric with iron water (created by soaking rusty nails in water and vinegar).  I wrote this blog post about it.

We left the silk scarves soaking in the liquid.  My teacher took the vats home, left them soaking until Monday, and then hung them up to dry in her basement studio.  She brought them all to campus yesterday morning, and she strung twine between some of the trees in the courtyard of our seminary campus.

Then we pinned the scarves on the lines.  Our goal was to complete this task before chapel, and we were successful.  

It was the perfect day for this installation:  there was a breeze which kept the scarves fluttering, but it wasn't the kind of breeze that would rip them from the lines or flip them around.

I was intrigued by the ways that the scarves were both so similar and yet so different, even though we had all used similar techniques:  the same choice of dyes, the rubber bands to hold it all together in the vats of dye.

I loved the way they resembled prayer flags as they fluttered in the breeze.  Someone else took this picture of the courtyard from above, from a second floor window:

I am intrigued by how something relatively simple transformed the outdoor space, and the potential to impact the indoor space.  For example, people have this kind of encounter as they approach the chapel--our chapel has only the one way through the courtyard to it (for most of us who don't have keys to the other doors of the building that are kept locked), so people had to walk by the scarves--what would happen if the worship service built on what they encountered on their way to the chapel?

That's not what happened yesterday; we just had a regular chapel service.  But the potential is there, and I want to remember it.

I did something slightly different with the scarves that I dyed, but this blog post is getting a bit long.  Tomorrow I'll write about how I used other botanicals with my scarves to get a different effect.  Today I'll remember the beauty of them as they fluttered in the chilly April breeze.

A God that Cannot be Contained in Our Death Traps and Tombs

This week is the last week of seminary classes.  Next week we turn in final papers and projects, and then we're done.  Part of me is astonished--it feels like we just started.  

Last night I made this Facebook post.  I want to preserve it here, because I like the poetic language:  

This week is the last week of seminary classes before final exams and papers next week. Tonight was the last night in my class that's a deep dive into the Gospel of Luke--what a fabulous class it has been. What a great way to end, with the resurrection story and the reminder that God cannot be contained in the death traps and tombs we devise for the Divine.