A Memory

I have watched this speech every year for as long as I can remember. Now that we do not have cable I picked it up on youtube.

Thanksgiving Prayer

Thanks to Thee, O God, that I have risen today,
to the rising of this life itself;
may it be to Thine own glory,
O God of every gift, and to the glory, aid Thou my soul.
With the aiding of Thine own mercy,
even as I clothe my body with wool,
cover Thou my soul with the shadow of Thy wing.
Help me to avoid every sin,
And the source of every sin to forsake,
and as the mist scatters on the crest of the hills,
may each ill haze clear from my soul, O God.
~Thanksgiving Prayer - Irish
n

Illumination

My work day usually starts at 7:00am. We do this to get a couple of hours in before the sun gets really hot. I work with some fellows building custom home in the Florida Keys. Also the workday ends at 3:00pm and there is still a lot of day left for other activities.

So I am often sitting on the front porch tying up my boots. (Insert favorite Billy Madison quote: “I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight.” I actually think that on a regular basis.) Back to the front porch, sometimes I am a little early so I sit there and finish my second cup of coffee.

And lately the sun has slowly illuminated the world as I sit looking at the trees. Amazing thing about the morning sun, it is not like switching on the light in a house. The light comes softly, on tiptoes. One doesn’t really notice unless you are actually paying attention to it. Several times this past week, I realized that when I sat down it was dark and then as I got up it was light.

For several mornings now I have paid attention to the slow, steady illumination. Try as I might I can not perceive the light only notice the change by comparing it to the previous minute. Now this may be due to my lack of focus, but I really think it is the nature of morning light.

It has also struck me that this is how God has operated in my life. Time after time, I observe that I recognize more of his light but can not really elaborate upon the process of change it just happens. As the Sun’s morning light appears almost inconceivably thus has God revealed himself to me.

Today is my birthday. I am officially 54 years old.

Lord, let this feast of my birth be a reminder to me of all the gifts and blessings I have received from You this day and all the days of my life. On this my day of birth, I thank you for my life and all of my blessings and ask for another year filled with Your presence in my life that I may continue to grow in your love and grace.

Some thoughts:

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
- Tom Stoppard

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized
for a crime you have not committed.
- Anthony Powell

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
William Shakespeare

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents ... and only one for birthday presents, you know.
~Lewis Carroll

The best birthdays of all are those that haven't arrived yet.
~Robert Orben

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
~Jonathan Swift

Old age has always been 15 years older than I am.

Age doesn't matter, unless your cheese, wine, or something left in Tupperware at the back of the fridge

And in closing:

"So you see, old age is really not so bad. May you come to know the condition! "
-- Cicero

Church of the Open No Doors

At the end of his life, Van Gogh painted a church without a door. I believe this is a apt representation of the struggle and frustration many of my friends are experiencing. They cannot find a way into the faith in God they once had. They are no longer welcome with the faith God has given them.

(Van Gogh was a minister for a while, known for his compassion for Belgian miners.)

Church At Auvers

Remembrance

In Flanderes Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place, and in the sky
The lark, still bravely singing flies,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow;
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Field.

Take up the quarrel with the Foe.
To you, from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, tho' poppies grow
In Flanders Field.

How Could I have Been So Wrong

Peter Rollins author of How (Not) to Speak of God tells a joke to describe the predicament of the church caught in modernity.

“There is an old anecdote in which a mystic and evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and awake to find themselves by the pearly gates. Upon reaching the gates they are promptly greeted by Peter, who informs them that before entering heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus concerning the state of their doctrine.
The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Five hours later the mystic reappears with a smile, saying, ‘I thought I had got it all wrong.’
Then Peter signals to the evangelical pastor, who stands up and enters the room. After a full day had passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’
Finally Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-worn Bible and walks into the room. A few days pass with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door swings open and Jesus himself appears, exclaiming, ‘How could I have got it all so wrong!’

Taking into consideration the presupposition that there are many followers of Jesus – more than we might realize, why insist that everyone be as we/you are, at the same place on the journey, having had the same experiences, responding in the same style. This insistence escorts one to become a Christian Pharisee.

Exclusiveness and excluding arise from a desire for purity; a false sense, I might add. Christian Phariseism, as I would characterize it, is a consequence of a distorted passion for theological purity. The corollary follows similar logic as using ethnic cleansing to achieve racial purity.

Does our journey of faith bring us to wholeness through Jesus and his atonement or by acknowledging theological formulas (or non- --formulas.

In cycles, it seems circles are drawn, boundaries established and edits are issued revealing who is and who isn’t a “true” follower/teacher/leader of Jesus. The circle drawers – whoever they are, remind me of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor.

Fyodor Dostoevsky in his chapter entitled "The Grand Inquisitor” envisions Jesus returning to sixteenth century Spain. Jesus is not only unwelcome by church authorities but arrested and imprisoned.

The Grand Inquisitor, representing the voice of this misguided church, interrogates Jesus in his prison cell. He speaks to Christ with superiority referring to theological creeds and moral codes concludes: “We have corrected Your work.”

Though no one might be so bold to speak these words; actions of excluding those who think, dress, associate with the wrong people, question, enjoy and generally disrupt the status quo are either programmed into this corrected work or pushed outside of the circle.