Reflectionary

On the Road to Shambala

(A sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost July 6, 2008 Song of Solomon 2:18-23; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30--and a warning, the video clip contains a TV-14 phrase)

For the past few years, the TV show Lost has been a favorite in our family. We have followed the complex and mystical adventures of a band of airline passengers who crash-land on a mysterious island somewhere in the middle of who-knows-where. Lucy, who was too young to watch the show at first, is now catching up on DVD. And last weekend we watched an episode featuring that old song by Three Dog Night, “On the Road to Shambala.”

Being played in a VW Van…on an eight-track…

If you’re old enough to know what that means, you’ve just time-traveled with me!

All week long the song has been running through my head, with its notion of people being kind and helpful, of lights shining and a road being traveled, the voices and the music swelling with good-hearted enthusiasm.

What is Shambhala? The song tells you it’s a good place, and I can tell you it’s a mythical kingdom in the Himalayans, the name taken from a Sanskrit word. It’s just one of many idealized, Utopian communities people have imagined or attempted to create throughout history. Many people came to this continent, to what they thought of as the New World, in search of their own utopia.

Here’s the definition of Utopia, right from Merriam-Webster.

• Etymology: Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place
• 1 : an imaginary and indefinitely remote place
• 2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
• 3 : an impractical scheme for social improvement

Many hopeful people, many desperate people, came to this “new” world because their understanding of how to be faithful people did not fit into the mainstream. That is not the whole story of the settling of this continent by people from Europe, but it is a large part of it. In a land that had no social standards, no religious biases and establishments, they believed they could life their faith fully, faithfully. At this time of year, I feel their excitement and their idealism keenly, although I know their arrival unsettled the people who were already here, and we still answer for that. Still, I believe in that “often capitalized” definition of Utopia: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.

Our founding fathers started something they hoped would be ideal with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain *inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These concepts continue to be intrinsic to our view of being American. It is the very nature of our existence to be free and forward-moving, to be seekers, and to include everyone in that freedom. We value life, according to the Declaration, and liberty—or freedom—and the pursuit of happiness, which I have always taken to mean the pursuit of that which fulfills each individual. But declaring these things is not enough to achieve Utopia or to find we are suddenly dwelling in Shambala!

The passages we heard this morning are two very different and beautiful expressions of what it means to be free. The first is suffused with love, the kind of love that just makes you shine to hear about it. The other invites us to put down what we are carrying and take up a new way of doing things. A yoke does not sound easy if the first picture we have in our minds is of the double yoke two oxen might wear. There is perhaps some appeal in the idea that we could be in harness with Jesus, but scholars suggest Jesus more likely meant a different kind of yoke, the sort a person might wear to spread out a burden and make it easier to carry. You’ve probably seen a picture of a woman carrying two buckets of milk on either end of a yoke, to distribute the weight? The Jesus who tells us to lay down our burdens and take up his yoke is not suggesting we will have little to carry, but that carrying it is possible, that the tools for doing his work and being his people are available.

...for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. (Song of Solomon 2:11, NRSV)

Our Peter is away at his version of Shambala this summer, six weeks of music camp in Interlochen, Michigan. For six weeks he is surrounded by other young musicians, working with wonderful teachers and conductors, overwhelmed with opportunities to hear and play music in all sorts of settings and by all sorts of people: symphonic music, chamber music, private classes, guest teachers, pick-up jazz with friends, no doubt, too.

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. (Song of Solomon 2:12)

At the same time, he is hard at work. His placement audition on the first day disappointed, and so he disciplined himself to prepare, again, for the next round, when his chair for the second two-week block would be determined. He considered attending concerts and spent his free time practicing, instead. He gave everything he has to the work, and play, he loves.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. (Song of Solomon 2:13)

On Friday night he called to say he will be First Clarinet in the World Youth Wind Symphony, at least for Weeks Three and Four of camp. I could have sworn he was calling from Shambala.

And I think this is the key to understanding Jesus and his mystical yoke. In this complicated excerpt from Matthew, we hear Jesus struggling with the reaction of those around him, the people who will never be pleased no matter what he does, because they have their idea of who and what the Messiah will be, and he does not match up with it. He thanks God, and I believe there is a little edge to his tone, that the supposedly smart people don’t “get” who he is, because the ones who do are responding not to his posture or his wardrobe or his social position but to his kindness, his welcome, his love.

Love is the yoke he offers us, as surely as he offered himself in love, a love we will remember and experience as we break bread and share the cup together this morning. What would our lives look like if we wore the yoke of love in all our actions? What would our church look like? I suspect we and it would be made new.

Unfortunately, we resist. We behave like “children sitting in the marketplace,” sniping, or like Pharisees with a laundry list of complaints. We wish for a Jesus who bends to our thoughts and our desires, who does what we expect him to do. Or we fear wearing his yoke, concerned that it will change our lives, make us seem different to others, as he did. But if we could only accept it, oh! If only we could lay down the burdens of pride and stubbornness, of self-reliance and over-reliance on our own wisdom. If only we could lay down those burdens and choose instead the yoke of love! That could be Shambala; that could be Utopia; that could be heaven, right here on Earth. Amen.

*Highly nerdy readers will note that I am using Jefferson's spelling. Adams changed it to "unalienable" later.

Happy Camper

Snowman is at Land o' Lakes Summer Camp in the wilds of Mitten-Shaped State, for six weeks of pretty intense music. Upon arrival, he had a placement audition that gave him a chair for the first two weeks, and he was disappointed in the results. Despite that, he has been working hard, and last night he called to say that for the second two week block, he will be first chair clarinet in this group.

He may also be "called up" to the orchestra to play auxiliary parts (E flat or Bass Clarinet), though that is yet to be determined.

He is a Happy Camper!!!

Commitment

I'll admit it. I love the 4th of July! Maybe it's because it's a holiday for which I have no worship responsibilities, so I can just enjoy it along with everyone else. Maybe it's because there are no presents involved. I'm sure parades and fireworks have something to do with it, too.

 

At our house, there is a ritual re-watching of the movie version of "1776," that musical telling of the story of the Founding Fathers of our nation, complete with dancing. We have spent many long car trips over the years singing along with the original Broadway cast recording, sharing John Adams' frustration with the people reluctant to declare, as he put it, Independency.

 

One of my favorite moments comes near the end of the show, when Adams is discouraged, convinced that the conclusion he KNOWS is the right one will never be reached. He has done everything he can to push and pull others along; now he must step back and watch, see how things play out, and he feels profoundly sad.

 

In real life, Adams and his wife, Abigail, carried on a lively epistolary relationship, writing to each other about everything from their farm and children to religion and politics. In the play, she stands at the side of the stage, singing and talking to her husband, offering the encouragement he needs, a living letter of love. At his most downcast, she reminds him of something he once said to her:

 

There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.

Then she sings the most unlikely love song ever. I get choked up every time I hear it, or rather sing along with it:

Abigail:
Compliments of the Concord Ladies Coffee Club,
And the Sisterhood of the Truro Synagogue,
And the Friday Evening Baptist Sewing Circle,
And the Holy Christian Sisters of Saint Claire
All for you, John
I am as I ever was and ever shall be,
Yours, yours, yours!

John (speaking):
Abigail, what's in these kegs?

Abigail (singing):
Saltpetre, John!

What are you committed to as we observe this 232nd Independence Day? What are you hoping will come to pass, but perhaps need to sit back and just observe?

Whatever those things might be, and however you might be feeling about our country's place in the world today, remember that there is hope, just as there was in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy...Philadelphia!

In Case You're Interested

My sermon about Abraham, Isaac and George Carlin is posted at Christian Century Blogs!

They Call the Vineyard Moriah

I know, it's Wednesday, and I probably appear to have nothing to say about this week's texts. It happens that I have some ideas brewing, but I took part of the day off today since there are activities at church all weekend, and I wanted to be prepared in case I felt crummy the day after taking methotrexate. There was more Scorching Ray today, and #1 Son tells me there is no saving throw against that spell. You just have to hope the opponent will miss. So maybe next week I'll be luckier.

Meanwhile, we are watching Season 3 of Lost with The Princess, who was too young for the show when it first appeared in 2004. Tonight we saw a favorite episode, Catch-22, a flashback episode for the amazing Desmond, played by Henry Ian Cusick.

If you're not a Lost fan, you may know him better as Jesus.

I think it's safe to say he is our favorite guy on the show.

(Because we are reluctant to publicly admit how much we like Sawyer, okay?)

At any rate, he is part of my favorite couple on the show, and I love his story, and his accent. Catch-22 shows Desmond at a younger age trying to make it as a monk.

No, I'm not kidding.

Here he is with the first guy to call him "Bruthah."

And in a moment of deep connection with this past Sunday's text, the monks Desmond joins (temporarily, he washes out by drinking the expensive wine himself) have a vineyard called Moriah.

Desmond asks why they call it that? He offers a critique of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Why would God ask such a thing only to leap in at the end and solve it all?

Brother Campbell points out that otherwise it wouldn't be much of a test, would it?

And so they call the vineyard Moriah, that place where testing occurs, where last-minute reprieves do occur, where the angel of the Lord speaks to you clearly in your own darn language and you don't turn the other way thinking you are being tempted by Satan or, worse, your own weakness.

Yes, this story is still on my mind.

I'm approaching chronic illness from all sorts of angles, trying to maintain my sense of humor, employing a little denial when necessary to have some fun, yet also asking, why the heck did this happen now? Why a course of appetite-encouraging prednisone after losing so much weight? Why joint pain and stiffness when I was working so hard to get in shape?

Abraham, up on the mountain with the boy he waited for, must have wondered, too.

Desmond has to make a choice about saving one person at the risk of sacrificing another, but because it's Lost, the basis on which he makes the decision turns out to be faulty. Still, he makes the choice that is obviously right and risks having something else bad happen.

(He hardly ever buttons up a shirt, but that's another matter entirely.)

Of course, I've watched season 4, and I know that the real lesson of Desmond's story is that love is more powerful than time and separation and the efforts of bad people and the exigencies of weather and geography and crazy magic Craphole Island.

Abraham, despite having his child nearly snatched away, does indeed become the patriarch of not one, but two, peoples, so I guess that's a happy ending, too, in a broad sort of way.

Me? I'm on Moriah, wondering when in the world that ram is going to appear in the thicket, turning the story over and over in my mind and heart, because it will not let me go.

Scorching Ray

Today I took the third dose of methotrexate to treat my Rheumatoid Arthritis.

I guess there are a number of ways it's dosed, but I'm taking one dose per week, 7 little salmon colored pills, all at once, with food. They're little, and they're easy enough to swallow, not like the big fish oil capsules and lysine tablets I'm taking, too.

They're little, and they're easy to swallow, and they represent hope, hope that I will feel better soon, that I will avoid deformities, that I will be "myself" again, at least approximately.

They also come with possible side effects: mouth sores (that's what the Lysine helps prevent, for the most part so far I've just had prickling, except when I eat something spicy, which is easy enough to stop doing, so I have), thinning hair (not so far, and fortunately I have a lot of hair) and nausea.

Nausea is not my best event. I have a morbid fear of vomiting. So I wondered what would happen on the day after taking the medicine, which was predicted to be the worst day.

And I got an unpleasant feeling in my stomach, but it wasn't the sort of queasy I expected. At dinner last night, our first meal with #1 Son since he returned from an out-of-town job, I tried to explain it.

I turned to that great source of metaphors, Dungeons and Dragons, casting my mind back to the day when I was Trillium Giantsbane, a 5th level Druid with a full complement of fascinating spells.

"I think it's like Fireball," I said, "sort of a feeling of hot metal in my stomach."

"Fireball is more of a dispersal spell that affects a general area," #1 Son said, and our resident Dungeon Master, Pure Luck, concurred.

"Well, I don't know what else to call it," I said.

"It sounds more like Scorching Ray," my son told me helpfully.

Scorching Ray: Blasts a target with fiery rays, doing 4d6 fire damage on impact.

THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!

I guess the real question is, is there a Saving Throw against it?

And if so, can I make it?

Overheard at Dog Dinner Time

Pure Luck (engaged in the alchemical preparations for feedings the dogs, opens a can): It's Duck tonight. I'll have to add cheese to it.

Songbird (puzzled): Why? Doesn't Molly like the duck?

Pure Luck: No, she likes it. But it's traditional.

Songbird (now perplexed): I don't understand.

Pure Luck: How else could you have Cheese and Quackers?

Mail Call

At the top of my list of things to do this Monday is go to the Post Office. I need to mail several packages.

1. The famous socks won in the Auction at Main Street Church last fall, finally finished AND blocked. It's hard to air dry socks in a week where there are thunderstorms every single day, so they are delayed even a bit more than I had hoped. (pattern "Monkey" as found at Knitty, with an adjustment to the heel; Artyarns Ultramerino 4, Colorway 144)
2. A little envelope of goodies for Zorra, long overdue from a swap organized by Mindy. I am grateful that she understood my tardiness.
3. A pretty bracelet I purchased from an Etsy store that broke on first wearing; the creator has offered to repair it, so I am shipping it back across country to her. I love it because it's purple and has a songbird charm. The designer calls the bracelet "Winter Troubador." It was a bummer to have it crack up! I fully believe I did something wrong and am giving her wares another try, having ordered some earrings more recently. (I must add that a pair of earring ordered from another Etsy store at the same time never arrived. I'm reconsidering my use of Etsy except for stores owned by people I know.)
4. Like Mindy!! I have a beautiful pair of earrings from her store, and another on the way, the latter picture here. Go
5. A surprise for St. Casserole. (No pictures: it's a SURPRISE!) In addition to the surprise are two sweaters to add to her felting pile, long-promised and never sent, because life has been like that. One is a cashmere sweater with a moth hole in a pretty light blue. The other is the remains of a failed knitting project in a gorgeous alpaca yarn. I hope they will make happy stuffies or charming pouches.
6. Two skeins of ArtYarns Ultramerino4 in a gorgeous purple and black colorway (138), going out to redzils, who left comment #1000!!!
7. An actual letter to Snowman at camp. I signed up for BunkNotes, but I have a goal to send real mail, too. I realize this is not actually a package, but it's on my list. He is only allowed to receive one package the whole six weeks, and it cannot contain food. We are waiting for a book a friend is sending him, hoping it will arrive here in time to have at camp. But the book is coming from Korea, so it may not get here soon enough.

Are you mailing things today?

On the Job

Overcast and cool this morning--
sidewalks slick from rain last night--
wipers on my new car working,

working, working, working, working--
Don't know how to turn them off--
working, working, working, working.

So we giggle while we're driving,
check the manual at the church,
line up arrows, change positions.

Church begins, the organ playing,
and the rumble starts out low:
working, working, working, working.

As I step up to the pulpit,
text before me, I hear more.
Heaven loosens, speaks its own word

So I step down, draw them closer,
tell the story where they are --
working, working, working, working --

Father, son and, Lord knows, angel
gather on the mountainside.
Ram in thicket, sudden savior?

I say, "It's a horror story,"
and I see the people nod,
and the thunder answers, louder.

After: coffee, conversation,
greetings, meetings planned ahead.
Sunday morning now is over.

Rain is falling, wipers working--
how to turn them off again?
Working, working, working, working...

Seven Things You Can't Say in Church

(Sixth Sunday after Pentecost    June 29, 2008     Genesis 22:1-14; Matthew 10:40-42)

This past week the comedian George Carlin died, and for several days, cable news played and re-played clips of two of his best-known routines: “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” and “Religion is”—well, that one goes on to use a word I cannot say in church! The first posed a question about community standards and whether we really have or should have any at all as a public culture. He provoked a conversation about whether certain words really mattered, at a time when every other word out of other comedians’ mouths did NOT begin with F.

Is it his fault my kids have grown up in a world where those words do? Or were we headed that way so clearly that he was simply naming the truth?

I think it’s probably more likely the latter. His social commentary pointed out a gap between generations that has become more profound in some ways. Younger people, and I include my own age-group and younger, tend to use more casual language, more often and in more situations. The old rules about what you can say where no longer seem to apply.

Except, perhaps in church.

But more importantly, in his later routine about religion, George Carlin raised questions that many other people share, probably most of them not sitting in churches this morning, and because they are not here to talk with us, it feels all the more important to give some thought to what they are thinking.

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
 
…But I want you to know something, this is sincere, I want you to know, when it comes to believing in God, I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in His own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is f___ed up.
 
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being.  (George Carlin, 1999)

As a lifelong church-going girl, I feel sad when I read this, but at the same time I understand how it’s perfectly possible to reach such a conclusion, particularly if we’ve had a negative experience, or no experience, of the love and care of a church community. When we have a good basis, a firm foundation, we can take the time to talk about what the scriptures might mean. And if they really trouble us, we can put our fingers in our ears, perhaps just metaphorically, and say “Lalalala” until next week comes and with it another fragment of the gospel, hopefully bringing better or more understandable “good news.”

But the truth is that not everyone has that context. And a person coming in off the street today to hear this story, in Freeport or anywhere else, may not understand the longer arc of the story. If you’ve been here the past few weeks, you know that Abraham and Sarah waited many long years for a son, and suffered disappointments and dramas together. You know that Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, son of Hagar, Sarah’s maid, had been sent out into the wild, so this boy, Isaac, was the only remaining manifestation of God’s promise that Abraham would be the father of nations. Many chapters of the book of Genesis trace the journey of this would-be patriarch, and it is intended to be a shock, I do believe it, when God lays out the terms of the test and perhaps even more of a shock when Abraham goes along with it.

And then there’s Isaac, only son and heir, traveling up the mountain with his elderly father, wondering where the animal for sacrifice could be?

“Daddy, where is the lamb?”

“Never  mind, son, God will provide.”

“Daddy, where is the lamb?”

“I told you, son, God will provide.”

It’s a horror story.

It repulses, even though it features that great moment of relief when the voice of the angel calls out and the ram is found trapped in the thicket, a ready substitute, a sacrificial lamb of the most literal sort. 

I’ve heard this story dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and it is just one story among many that I admire as storytelling but dislike as theology. I especially dislike what it has to say about God.

That may be one of the seven things some people would think we can’t say in church. They might include:

•    What kind of God is that?
•    I think that time, God was wrong.
•    God asks too much.
•    I don’t know the answer.
•    This story makes no sense.
•    Or, simply, “Holy crap!”

Now, this story makes many preachers decide to pass Genesis and go directly to Matthew. Here we get no story of child sacrifice. Instead we get three short verses that turn in and around on themselves and leave us wondering about the deep meanings of words as ordinary as “welcome” and “reward” and even “water.”

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." (Matthew 10:40-42, NRSV)

I think the author’s style, very appropriate rhetorically for the first century, creates confusion. I’m going to take a chance and say the reward of being a disciple, whatever that may be, comes when you show welcome and care for others. Being a disciple, a follower faithful to Jesus and his way, means going out and welcoming in, having a real openness both to the love of Jesus and to the one who sent him. It means noticing the little ones, the people on the margins of the church and the town and the world. It means sharing the water that quenches all thirst, sometimes by literally sharing a cup of cold water.

I wonder what George Carlin might think of that?

You see, his impression of church came from the way a lot of churches are: groups of people bound together not just by faith, but by practices that may be obscure to people who do not belong. When we are on the inside, we can’t see how hard it is to understand us from the outside.

On that climb up the mountain, even a child knew that you needed a lamb to take to a sacrifice. Abraham knew well that he had to leave his servants down the hill, because his new religion, this religion of one God, had moved past the sacrifice of children. Even the servants would have known that, would have thought the old man had gone a little crazy, might even have stepped in to save the boy. They had to be wondering, too, what was going on.

“Daddy, where is the lamb?”

“God will provide.”

Well, God did provide, but I can tell you, whether or not we like to say this in church, I don’t like God’s choice to test Abraham.  It makes no sense to me, or it makes too much sense in a hard, unpleasant way. Yet I cannot simply sweep this God aside and skip over this story.  Here’s another thing we may hesitate to say in church, but we all need to say it sometimes: “Maybe I was wrong.”

I ask myself, and this is a question we might all ponder, how many times do I think I know what God wants and prepare to make the sacrifice *I* believe is needed, only to discover I had it all wrong? How many times do we think we comprehend the big picture, only to recognize that we really needed to be looking at a different section of the puzzle of life, that we need to put back that piece of sky and try another one in its place?

Perhaps we need to let Abraham and Isaac and their encounter with the angel of the Lord on Mount Moriah dwell alongside other ancient stories encounters between people and the gods or the God they worshiped.  Perhaps we need to let these larger-than-life figures hint at something about the way people understood the One God in that time and place long ago and far away and not hold this tale to such a strict standard of comparison with our modern lives.

Abraham and Isaac came down the mountain again, together, no doubt relieved, and we may feel the same way as we draw the curtain closed on their story, letting it rest until it comes around in the lectionary again three years from now to provoke us again.

And, curtain closed, it’s time to turn and look at one another, to return to the present and look around this church on this day. Abraham’s story reminds us how difficult it can be to share, with those we meet outside and those we greet within, an explanation of our faith and practice that does not sound ridiculous. It reminds us how difficult it can be to communicate some essence of our belief in the reality of God, the one who sent Jesus. It reminds us how hard it can be to express the truth of our own questions and our own humanity and our own faith. 

Maybe it will be simplest to start by opening the door in welcome and offering that cold cup of water. We can tell the other stories later. Amen.

Swift Winding

In my ongoing effort to reduce certain kinds of activity to accommodate my diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis, I am looking for a ball-winder, to turn skeins of yarn into tidy balls, ready for knitting. I seem to be able to knit as long as I don't do it for too long a stretch, and I currently have three (or maybe four, if I can find that Gryffindor hat) projects going on different size needles.

A stubborn person who also enjoys touching yarn, I have for many years tormented members of my family, forcing them to help me wind balls of yarn by hand. I have used chairs, too, but they cannot talk back and apparently I like that part of the process, too.

Pure Luck would have willingly given me a ball winder for Christmas last year or the year before, but I really couldn't tell him exactly what I wanted or where to find this vague item. I foresaw this as another kind of family activity, since I am technically less-than-ept. This may just be a new way to torture family members, not sure, but I really need one. At this point, anything that will facilitate my knitting obsession practice is welcome. Knitting is calming at a time when I've basically been prescribed stress reduction. But winding balls of yarn by hand? Not so calming.

On the Internet I see everything from $25 plastic versions to $200 umbrella swifts. Knitters, can you help me? Any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations? All input appreciated!

P.S. If you read this far...

I am nearing comment #1000 on this blog. It's not very many compared to the vast number I received at Set Free, but it's a milestone and I like to mark them. If you are Commenter #1000, there will be a little prize in it for you!

Friday Five: Summer Reading

As posted by yours truly at RevGalBlogPals:

Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.

This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.

1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?

Well, clearly, since I said it up above, I do. I usually pile up the books in a particular place, though this year I have books on my Kindle as well.

This year will be different, since I won't be taking a big block of vacation in the summer as I did in my last interim and as a settled pastor. But things definitely slow down at church, and my limitations on knitting at the moment mean I'm spending more time reading. (Though I am doing a little knitting, which is a happy thing.)

2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?

Yes and had the sunburn to show for it. I can read sitting up, but lie down on my stomach for five minutes, and I am right out like a light and fried up the back of my legs. It's inevitable. This may be one of the reasons I stopped lying on the beach with a book.

 3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?

I was 11, and it was "Gone With the Wind." I stayed up most of one night reading it by the nightlight in my room, book jammed between the bed and the wall.

4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?

I've always enjoyed mysteries as popcorn reading.

5) What is the next book on your reading list?

I have the first two Julia Spencer-Fleming titles on my Kindle. They were a free download to promote her new book! That is exciting. As soon as I finish the books in progress now, I'll be entering the world of her priest-detective. I also expect to read the sequels to Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" this summer.

Over at the RevGals' blog, in the sidebar, I've updated our RevGalBookPals schedule through October, so if you are looking for summer reading, look there!

Book #27: Beginning Ministry Together

Just quickly: Beginning Ministry Together is a book I needed to read before going to Interim Ministry Network's training next month. Lots of good, practical short chapters cover useful ministry territory in a thoughtful manner, providing context not only for the interim time but for the beginning and ending of ministries. This is an Alban Institute publication and up to their usual standards, I think.

Of Margins and Edges

(Proper 8   Genesis 22:1-14)

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."

My Southern Baptist grandmother was quite a character.  Full of drive and optimism, she wielded a powerful charm that made you want to do things her way.  After she was widowed in her late fifties, she undertook a search.  What was she meant to do with the rest of her life?  Following a brief foray into spiritualism, Grandmother Galliford returned to her more traditional roots. She went to India on a mission trip with a friend, then spent several years in Japan, as a Laubach Literacy volunteer.  I have a number of her books on my shelves: novels, devotional books, even a self-published account of her trip to India. 

But the book I treasured most, now so worn that pages fall out when it is opened, was a copy of “Good News for Modern Man.”  I remember seeing it for the first time in her apartment and wondering how part of the Bible had ended up in paperback, with a cover that looked like a newspaper! Because it showed the names of newspapers from around the world, “The Times of India” and “The Times of Japan,” it seemed to be especially hers, my world-traveling grandmother.

Grandma Galli explained that the word gospel meant Good News.  When I got to have her copy years later, I was excited to find that she had made notes in the margins.  It has always intrigued me to find her handwriting beside passages that have a special meaning for me, and even more so when her notes are found in the margins of passages that are hard to understand, words that take me to the edge of my relationship with scripture and with God.

This week I’m working on a sermon about the story of Abraham and Isaac going up the mountain together, and as that father and son step toward the summit, they take me to the edge, to the tiger mother place in me eager to refute a God who would ask such a parent to sacrifice a child, ready to take on all comers who want to insist on the inerrancy or inspiration or literal acceptance of scripture. Clearly there is more to it. Clearly, I say! Clearly there are cultural contexts we are missing, or human hand-prints all over the text. I become vehement, and that usually results in a note in the margin of the page, perhaps a word, perhaps a string of exclamation points, or even a lopsided question mark.

Somewhere I need to leave a note for my children saying I would never sacrifice you! Or perhaps I need to think about what I have worshiped along the way that might have led me to do just that, and make a note to myself.

What do we find at the edges of ourselves, of our faith, of the pages we write with our lives?  At the edges we find the margins, of course: the place where we might make a note for ourselves or leave a message for someone else to find. And perhaps it is in those edgy margins that we find out how to be God’s people, here and now.

12 Pictures = 12,000 words

Because the coolest of cool kids did it, the Flickr mosaic meme:

1. Birds016_songbird_, 2. tarts 'a popping., 3. IMG_4873, 4. Purple and Blue, 5. Robert Downey jr., 6. thirsty?, 7. Mt. Chocorua and Chocorua Lake, NH, 8. mmmummm..mummm...mmmmummmmumumum, 9. the observing queen... ♫♫, 10. sweet family, 11. he loves me/he loves me not., 12. She naps!

The Rules:

• Answer each of the questions below.
• Surf over to Flickr (set up an account if you don’t have one–it’s quick and easy) and type your answers (one at a time) into the search bar.
• From the choice of pictures shown only on the front page, click on the one that moves you.
• Once the page with your picture opens, copy the URL.
• Surf over to the Mosaic Maker, set up your mosaic, and paste your URLs.
• Click “Create!”

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color? (the picture I really loved, of lilacs with some effects, was not available for the mosaic, but go see it over here anyway)
   
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. Where would you go on your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert? (Subject to change hourly.)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. Choose one word to describe you?
12. Your Flickr name? (My flicker account is revsongbird, and that last picture is woolyheaded's Wooly Babe under the blanket I made for her!)

Feel free to tag yourself.

Book #26: Home

She starred in the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, "Mary Poppins."

When I was five, I had my hair cut just like hers in "The Sound of Music."

I spent many of my elementary school years in a fantasy world based on the Von Trapp family.

I learned to sing listening over and over again to the original Broadway cast recording of "My Fair Lady," and it is so thoroughly burned into my brain that the London cast recording I purchased on CD ten years ago still sounds "wrong" to me (though she prefers it).

So you won't be surprised to hear that I love Julie Andrews. I sat through the Princess Diary movies mostly to see her. She is one of my favorite things about Shrek the Third. And because I knew nothing about her childhood, I was excited to read her memoir, "Home: A Memoir of My Early Years." It was one of the first books I downloaded to my new Kindly, and I read it over the past week.

It's ironic that a woman who came to represent the essence of home, getting the Banks and Von Trapp families to retract themselves from the brink of destruction, actually had a screwy homelife herself. I won't go into detail. But that tendency to be the organizing force came naturally to her.

I found the childhood parts painful to read, the Broadway and London stage parts irresistible, so for me the pace of the book picked up later. This book ends just before she began filming Mary Poppins. I think the voice sounds very much hers, influenced by years of being theatrical. This is not a world-changing book, but it was worth reading if you are a fan.

KINDLE UPDATE: Reading on the Kindle was great. I'm still figuring out the ratio of font to eyeballs and font to page turn (more text takes longer to rearrange, so it may be faster to read in larger font, even though that means more page "turns"--still experimenting). I am really grateful to have it as holding a book continues to be an issue with my stiff fingers; although they are better than a month ago, the persistent exertion needed to hold a book is just not a good thing at the moment.

These Little Ones

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." (Matthew 10:40-42, NRSV)

This was the church's week to provide a meal for the homeless shelter in nearby College Town. It may be one of the activities of the church that a reduced membership will curtail. How far can we spread ourselves? I wonder if simply driving the food on the round trip will become a hardship as gas gets more and more expensive? Will we mail a check instead of delivering a crock pot?

For it's not like the meals at the soup kitchen in City By the Sea. College Town's shelter is providing meals to residents who sit down together for a meal provided for the community to share. It's not a cafeteria event, 175 people served by dozens of volunteers. It's beautifully personal. It shows caring at a simple and uncomplicated level.

Unless of course you're the person fixing the meal! I am pretty hopeless at meals for big groups, with the possible exception of Thanksgiving, which I have mastered. I can come up with something for 4th of July, too, but Thanksgiving is my best meal, the various side dishes around the big bird in the roasting pan, the pies that can be made a day ahead. I find myself wondering, is there some other solution to providing the meal, because I worry that the person who organizes our efforts ends up paying for store-bought meals out of her own pocket when her work schedule prevents her from cooking and no one else signs up to help.

Somehow we must remember why we do these things, and I guess this brings us to the question of what Jesus meant by a reward in verse 42. We'll get our reward in heaven, right? These acts will bring us through the gates safely? Saying the right things to the right people, even though those people are not the "right" people socially, will get us that reward?

But I am less interested in heaven than I am in the kingdom of God, here and now. It's as tangible as the cup of cool water sitting beside me as I type this, if we will live into it. What is the reward? The reward is being part of something happening now, of a realization of the commonwealth of God's love. The reward is in the feeling of joy, the same feeling you get when you're very hot and very dry and only water can quench your thirst, the feeling you get when you raise that glass or that bottle to your lips and vitality returns. Oh! It feels good.

I don't mean to suggest that doing things for others, that providing hospitality or assistance or even love and care will always feel as sharp and clear and necessary as a cold drink of water on a hot day. Sometimes those things feel like the ultimate in slogging, like walking through a swamp. But Jesus is putting us in touch with something simple, reminding us that, yes, there are rituals we observe that mean something and practices we employ that mean something, but that we are making it too complicated. Share the dipper with the thirsty child or the Good News with the lonely person. Share the love of God in the simplest of gestures, even the little ones.

Working Things Through

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
and my enemy will say, "I have prevailed"; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psalm 13, NRSV)

Here's what I like.

I like a story with a happy ending.

I like knowing the right people ended up together.

I like justice.

I like good things happening to good people.

I like the idea that it all works out in the end.

But.

But.

But.

I know life is not like that, yet I love the psalms that work things through, as if it were. It tells me that people have been trying, basically forever, to figure out a way to get God to meet them in their pain, trying to work superstitiously though the process that will get them the result they want: their healing, their relief, their release from captivity, their vengeance over their foes.

It's what we all want, isn't it?

This morning I will take Dose Two of the heavy duty medicine, methotrexate, the first full-sized dose, since they start you on less than half. I will take it and hope that I am one of the people who doesn't suffer the various possible side effects (nausea, mouth sores, thinning hair), that the warnings are just there because it could happen, but not because it must happen. And even if the side effects occur, I'll try to work things through in my mind, telling myself it's better than pain, better than incapacity, better than deformities down the road.

I must confess I am afraid. And my answer to anxiety and fear is, as it has always been, to try and master the material of my life, to know exactly where and when and how much, to research and uncover and try to make the connections, to be a girl detective and try to understand how it all hangs together.

Also today I will go to the hospital for pulmonary function tests, because one of the things RA can mess with is your lungs, and I have shortness of breath that is not related to anything else they can find.

I don't expect a magic cure for all this, if I say the right prayer with adequate sincerity. I don't believe that ritual prayers will make this all go away.

But oddly, I find myself thinking, as I cross the street or wash the dishes or look at my daughter, as I wrap my arms around my husband's waist because reaching up hurts my shoulders, as I take the doggoned Vicodin that I wish I didn't need at bedtime, or as I pet the cats and dogs, I find myself thinking, I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to be alive.

And when I consider that in my 30s I didn't feel that way, when I consider that I never imagined I could be happy again and worried that my lengthy recovery from a severe and suicidal postpartum depression might be ruining my children's lives, when I thought I would never love or be loved, never do work that had meaning, and then I look at where I am today, I am so glad to be alive, so grateful for everything I have, even if my darned toe joints hurt.

Even if.

Details, details

This is the day, I hope.

After much backing and forthing on what sort of car might replace my well-worn and over-repaired Volvo wagon, I decided last week to go with a newer (but not new) version of the same thing. I was close to going with the Prius, but decided it was too great an outlay and that someone in our family needs a vehicle that will hold both dogs along with more than two people.

The car is ready to be picked up, but there is one last impediment.

I cannot find the title to my current car.

I paid cash for it in 2001. Well, not cash, a check, but in other words, they gave me the title--or the application for it--on the spot.

I guess that means the actual title came later in the mail, but I cannot remember clearly.

Where in the world did I imagine was a safe place for an important piece of paper circa my 40th birthday?

It occurs to me that I used the upstairs computer room as my workspace in those days--or did I? Wait, no. I had a computer desk in the corner of my bedroom, for this was pre-Pure Luck, or at least pre-residential Pure Luck. He was the interesting, and perhaps significant, other.

Oh, wow.

Seven years is a long time. I lived here with three children, aged 15, 10 and 5. Can that be right? I bought a wagon because I had all those kids. I had no dogs. I had FOUR cats. Four. Lord. I wanted a wagon with a sunroof and a third seat. Pure Luck had watched me pressing on the roof of my car, wishing for one, and thought I was an odd creature. He was probably right about that.

The computer desk is long gone. The children are all taller than I am. The car is coated with dog hair. One of the dogs chewed on something related to the third seat latch, so it doesn't work anymore.

I want to trade it in before some part that needs repairing/replacing simply falls off in the driveway.

Who is that saint one prays to for lost things?

Family Values

(A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost        June 22, 2008        Genesis 21:1-21)

I was born in 1961, at the back edge of the baby boom, and I spent my childhood watching reruns of those classic 1950’s TV shows, with the perfectly coiffed mothers running vacuum cleaners in high heels, and the fathers who came home from the office in time for dinner, praising the smells of good cooking and disciplining and guiding the children with kindness and fairness and just the occasional burst of righteous anger when they did something *really* wrong.

In that TV version of the 1950’s, everyone was white and middle-class, with the occasional rich family thrown in as a point of tension. Where were the people of color? Where were the poor? The gay and lesbian people? Where were the families broken by divorce, disease or death? They were there, just not on TV. Television portrayed a fantasy land of intact nuclear families, freezes in our memories an economy so robust that it was sufficient for one person to work outside the home and the associated limitations for women, a time when children played outside until they were called for supper and no one worried about where they had gone because nothing bad happened to anyone.

 And I think we are all a little brainwashed about those times, because they are the first times in our human history for which there is a video record of the mundane aspects of life: going to school, cleaning the house, disagreeing with a friend, ordering things through the mail. Even the problems were only just so bad: when Beaver and Wally hid the alligator in the bathroom, you knew Ward and June would eventually get things straightened out for them.

The story of Hagar and Ishmael and Sarah and Isaac and Abraham is more like a soap opera than “Leave it to Beaver.” It’s the story of a family in distress. And this is just the concluding act of the marriage drama of Sarah and Abraham. In obedience to God’s commands, Abraham, then known as Abram, uprooted his wife and his household and wandered in the wilderness with his herds and flocks, seeking the land God promised him. At that time they were still called Abram and Sarai; they would later change their names as part of a covenant with God. During a famine, they went into Egypt, and there Abraham passed off his beautiful wife as his sister in order to stay out of trouble himself. In Genesis 12 we read:

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is his wife”; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.’ When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.
(Genesis 12:11-16)

Sarai became a concubine in Pharoah’s household in order to protect her husband. It was Pharoah who returned her after learning she was really Abram’s wife, Pharoah the polytheist polygamist who did the right thing.

Sarai’s life did not improve. She continued to wander with a husband who received promise after promise from God, talk of descendants who would inherit the earth, and yet they remained childless, and they were aging, and it seemed impossible that this could ever happen. Have you ever been in a position so uncomfortable that you felt you had to do something, anything, just to change the situation? Sarai wanted to make things happen; probably she blamed herself for her infertility. She did something that would have been common among the wives of her time, based on the stories that are passed down to us.

She sent her slave into her husband’s tent.

If I were Sarai, I might have done the same thing. It was a culturally acceptable practice, a family value that placed creating new life above her own pride.  She considered the possibilities and took matters into her own hands. I imagine her contemplating this possibility over and over, perhaps imagining the smile on Abram’s face as he dandled the baby on his knee. I imagine her envisioning a relationship with her slave, who would give the child physical care but regard Sarai as its mother. It seemed like a pretty picture, one in which everyone could be content, and surely a scenario that would be pleasing to God.

Hagar was an Egyptian slave, part of the bounty of their time under Pharoah’s protection.  She went because she had no choice; her life depended on pleasing her mistress, not just the quality of her life but the continuation of it. She was dependent on Sarah for her survival, so she obeyed.

In Genesis 16, we have the story surrounding the conception of Ishmael, and in verse 4 we get the key to the rest of this dysfunctional family drama:

He slept with Hagar and she got pregnant. When she learned she was pregnant, she looked down on her mistress.

That was Hagar’s big mistake. Even though Sarai had engineered the encounter, she was wounded by it. What wife wouldn’t be? And Hagar had now added insult to injury, glorying in what she must have assumed would be her new-found status as mother to the master’s son.

But just as in this morning’s passage, Abram goes along to get along. When Sarai complains, he capitulates.