2021.01.17 The Acceptable Year of the Lord?

When I watch all the rioting and attacks on our national leadership, I can almost feel the fright oozing or leaking out from the inanimate television screen. It would be easy to turn it off and go to bed, a favored option. But that would be, what? A cop-out? Being like a head-in-the-sand ostrich? Do they really do that out of cowardice?  I am trembling, not inert or inept, but deserted. I feel caught in the middle of a feud without a leader.

Feud is a funny word, of Germanic origin loosely related to hostility or ill will or foe. Definitionally, it means prolonged mutual hostility.When I say FEUD over and over my lips curl and pout and my teeth roll over onto my lower lip, expectorating if I try hard enough. This little-used word has power, somewhat like another famous F-word made powerful for its verboten status. Feud is not the same as conflict or disagreement or out-and-out war demanding a winner. In a feud there is no winner.

The word feud evokes for me the image of a pot of boiling water arrested in a simmer.

Famous feuds include families such as the Hatfields and the McCoys, or the Montagues and the Capulets as portrayed in Romeo and Juliet, or more modernly, the Puerto Ricans and the New York elite in NYC as portrayed in West Side Story. Jesus of Nazareth was born into a feud culture—many tribes vying for territory, investing, or wasting, energy in futile feudal feuds over which tribe was God’s favorite. Jesus was murdered/executed for his efforts at feud- reconciliation. Only fools try to resolve feuds, because feuds are by nature insoluble, emotionally transmissible like a virus, and deeply, unconsciously rooted from generation to generation.   

All feuds have tragic consequences. The original dispute festers, buried deep in the flesh and blood of feuders, generation to generation. Even when the original dispute is forgotten and irrelevant, feuds live on. When my parents, afraid of those Puerto Ricans invading their safe white space, fled the city, my dearly beloved hometown, for the suburbs, I was twelve. I felt like a teenage tragedy all by myself and caught in a feuding culture not of my own making—as impotent as Juliet, María or Jesus or a hapless Pharisee or Hebrew, caught in a feud response not of my making. What I needed were friends to walk with. I found love and knowledge in books, good words, also experiences of loss, humiliation, and deep sorrow.

What a feud need is leaders. Leaders whose power is one of mutual and prolonged self-respect and other-respect—both. This kind of leader comes out of tragedy, grief, faith in God, and that mysterious quality of interior life we call Soul. This kind of leader has qualities that can reassure followers who are attracted out of their need to follow and their ability to intuit spiritual intellectual, emotional, and mental dignity within and without, in self and in others. Such leaders do not feud or succumb to its lies.

MLK Jr. was such a leader. There is much written about him and we all know it or can look it up. He, like all victims of feuding, in this case north/south, died for his efforts, but is never forgotten. It was his birthday on January 15 and his national holy day Jan 18. I offer you his preaching, based on the prayer of the psalmist who in Psalm 90  recognizes that God’s time is now and yesterday and tomorrow, every day newly acceptable. May we make it so. MLK the preacher still lives on. 

Excerpted and paraphrased sermon, delivered  by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 5 June 1966. “Guidelines for a Constructive Church”


The acceptable year of the Lord is any year (Amen) when we decide to do right.
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when we will stop lying and cheating. (Amen, Make it plain)
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is any year is when we will stop throwing away the precious lives that God has given us. (Make it plain)
 

The acceptable year of the Lord (Yes) is that year when people the world over will elect governance that will act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with each other.
 

The acceptable year of the Lord (Yes) is that year when we will keep our theology abreast with our technology, our morality abreast with our mentality.
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when we will keep the ends for which we live abreast with the means by which we live. (Yes)
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is that year (Yes) when all of the leaders of the world will sit down at the conference table (Make it plain) and realize that unless humankind puts an end to war, war will put an end to humankind. (Yes)
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is when we discover that out of one blood Creator God made all people who dwell on the face of the earth.
 

The acceptable year of the Lord is God’s year.

2021.01.10 Blue Jays I See

Blue flashes on grey skies
blackboard mist
   
swoop
   swing
      swish
         slash
    
Swatches of blue
    now streak the sky
             now flash among trees

My eyes pursue

  dart
     dash
        dip
           dive

Just like my eye doctor instructs:
  look up for me
     look up right
         up left
           down right
              down left
All the way up. All the way down.
   So I follow until her light
     stops
       settles
         sets
            sits
See

Two blue flashes at rest
    large and small
        squat and tall

Having blue fun
    Father and Son. 

 

                                         

 

 

 

 

 

                                                *  *  *  *

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Epiphany in Christian churches. According to ancient story and biblical tradition, the Messiah has been born and recognized as the anointed One. It’s a very exciting day, often honored as Holy Family Sunday, a time to celebrate the big three—Jesus, Mary and Joseph—lovingly, or in a cuss phrase after you’ve mistakenly, bashed your finger with the hammer and called out: JMJ.  Often we have Baptisms on this Sunday to celebrate in solidarity with the Baptism of Jesus in the Temple. On this day he will begin his spiritual life as a human being.

None of this of course is literal history, but all of it has profound meaning in terms of the Christian understanding of values like family, children, parents, and the sacrament of Baptism by which, with water and the Spirit and promises made in their name, little ones become Christians. They join the fold, the flock, the following. Dramatically, each usually-howling, infant is “sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever” with blessed oils. The whole congregation says AMEN. Often there’s applause as the priest holds the infant up, sometimes, depending on the volume of protest the infant exerts, even walking up and down the aisle with her or him. Hey kid, you’re one of us now. We try to follow the ways of Jesus the Christ who walked, talked, and loved as Jesus of Galilee did.  

I can think of worse gangs to join. 

                                                 *  *  *  *

Back to the swooshing Jays. They are passerine birds, which means they are distinguished by feet adapted for perching. They know how to grasp onto a branch quickly and sturdily. They are also noisy, preachy, excitable birds, songbirds intent on making their mark on wintry skies in the northeast where I live. 

The biblical meaning of seeing the Blue Jay is that the birder will communicate well, be persistent, and plan for the future. I try to do that—without being too annoying or preachy as some Christians can be. The male Jay has a reputation for being aggressive and downright disagreeable as he asserts himself perch to perch. Still, the Jay symbolizes protection and fearlessness, also monogamy. Blue Jays often chase off large red Cardinals, rivals at feeders. Politically telling in 2021, eh?

I have a bright blue shirt on today.

I could be an aging, failed monogamist, still perching like the Blue Jay, full of vision and blue passion for the lost—also for those newly found or found out.  

Some of this of course is human projection, yet I do think that it could be true as I listen and watch the little masculine duo dart about taking possession of the territory. 

The females, less flashy, contrary to human females, are I presume at home in nests resting and brooding and pondering about avian life in general just as Mary might have: Whose son will my baby boy be? Some say Father God’s. Some say Father Joseph’s. I say mine.

 

2021.01.03 A STORY. AN IMAGE. A SONG.

The Christmas season lasts for a mere twelve days, but that’s silly really, because Christmas is whenever, however, wherever there is awe, splendor and wonder.

A STORY
    Once a man told me a Christmas story I never forget. His father had told him and he told me. It was Christmas Eve and my friend’s father was a boy of about eight in bed very sick with chronic bronchitis. The doctor had been giving him Sulpha. It was the 1940s and the miracle of Penicillin had not yet hit the market. The doctor told the parents that he didn’t think he could pull the boy through this bout.
    The boy’s parents felt helpless and frantic. Suddenly the boy’s father couldn’t stand sitting idle. He jumped up, put on his heavy overcoat, hat, and a muffler against the winter cold, then left their small New York City apartment, being careful not to slam the door. This father had a plan.      

He trudged along the snow-filled city streets where he knew he’d find what he was looking for a few city blocks off on the corner. Yes, there was the scruffy old Santa Claus, all dressed in red, with the scraggly white beard covered with bits of the soup he’d slurped earlier, liquor on his breath, and a bell in his hand. He stood next to a pot on a tripod with a sign on it reading Salvation Army. Santa rang his little bell and called out, Merry Christmas—over and over. People passed by and popped coins into his pot.
    The father approached this Santa, pulled out a small wad of cash, pressed it into Santa’s mitten, whispered something in his ear, turned and walked off the way he’d come. Santa followed. The dad led Santa back to the apartment and into the bedroom of his sick little son. The parents propped their son up a bit. Santa stood at the foot of the bed, rang his little bell and said Merry Christmas. HO. HO. HO.
    The son got well soon. The parents were jubilant. This Santa Claus belched and rang his bell.

Who knows what Christmas really is? Who knows what salvation really is? Who know what a miracle is?
 

AN IMAGE

    The image above is of the little Christmas array we have outside our apartment door.  Ollie the Otter has hopped down from his usual perch to make room for the manger scene, the creche. If you look closely to the left on the floor you will see a three-humped camel (a dromedary) carrying three “Royals” one on each hump, their crowns askew. It’s been a rough desert journey eastward through many nights with only the light of one bright star, seeming to be close but always elusive. Luckily, these three, one a female, are gifted astrologers.
    They will arrive on January 6 to place luxury gifts at the foot of this newborn babe whom they believe offers hope for a just new kingdom, one free of tyranny and deception, one that promises peace, PEACE.

A SONG.

Everyone everywhere always needs a theme song. Here's mine. The lyrics are by songwriter, author, and comedian, Katie Goodman, daughter of Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and a favorite of mine. This song has been and will continue to be my theme song—including that old unexcised "u".  It is very base, maybe a little arch, and not traditionally christmassy. But it’s Christmas!
    I didn’t fuck this up.
    You probably didn’t fuck this up.
    We didn’t fuck this up.
    So let’s all un-fuck this up.

We can together unscramble our world, our politics, our economy, our social compact, our spirituality and more for the sake of our planet and all living things.

Will we?
   

    

2020.12.27 Grace-To-Go

Many people wonder what exactly grace is. It's a verb. Spiritual grace, the kind that comes out of nowhere and stuns one awake, is often confused with forgiveness, which is more transactional. Grace is a verb.

I have a dear friend who adopted/rescued a small female puppy in the wake of her beloved husband’s death.The puppy was named Minnie, but my friend rechristened as Grace. Grace came into her life at just the right moment when she needed the most comfort and courage to help her with her intense grief. I imagine that the dog represented the soul of her dead spouse coming into her life in the flesh of this tiny pup called Grace. She told me: "I named her “Grace” because I somehow KNEW deep down that she would be a grace to and for me following my husband's death earlier in 2018. And she has been just that, a grace, a blessing in so many ways. Gift of Godde… that’s my Grace."

There is enough sour in the sweet of Love to make it a VERB. So it is also with the Grace of Godde—also a verb.

Here is my alphabet:

A  aerate, amaze, activate
B   burst, bother, bellow
C   clap, cherish, create
D   drop-kick, delve, dazzle, deify, DO
E   eulogize, effervesce, erase, eulogize
F   fly, fix, forgive
G   God/Godde, grace, GO
H   hallow
I    irrigate, itch
J   jolt
K  know, kiss
L   lift, love, lavish
M  mourn, marry, mortify
N   notarize, navigate, nourish
O   own, overwhelm
P   potentiate
Q   query, quake
R   reconstitute, re-open
S   sanitize, suffer, sanitize, STOP
T   thank, terrify, tenderize
U   undergird, ullulate
V   vivify, verify, verbalize
W   wonder, water, WAIT
X   xylophonize
Y   yearn
Z   zest, zip

GODDE = GO ORDER DEIFY DIVINIZE EARTH

2020.12.20 My "Racism". Part Fourteen. Words Alive.

Scene XXXIX. Potentiation

I am an inveterate note-taker—a regular nerd. But who do people ask when there’s uncertainty about what happened at a meeting? Or, what did that professor say again?  

Here I sat, ready, poised, pen in hand, spiral notebook open, my arm resting on the little pop-up writing desk in the huge lecture hall full of upturned faces. The professor of Old Testament (required course for all of us first-year seminarians) entered, mounted the podium, slapped a swath of notes onto the awaiting lectern, put on his large dark-rimmed glasses, looked down, then up. A hush fell. Inhaled breath held. He began: “In the beginning God . . .”  God what?  

Potentiated.  That wasn’t right. Genesis said created, didn’t it? Nope, it said: In the beginning, Earth was an empty nest. . .

Empty like a womb? Waiting? Barren? Divorced?  

No, I was wrong. What was I hoping for? Genesis said: “In the beginning when God began creating, or God created.” Obviously, God came first, took action first. I exhaled. Also, there was nothing written in Genesis about potentiation. Wrong again. Then, who said potentiate? I know that’s what I heard, but who said it? Never mind. I loved that word, fell quickly in thrall to its potency.

Potentiation.

I was at God-school in the lats 70s. Would I too be potentiated? I glanced around, looked up from my obsessive note-taking. The students were mostly white, but not all white. They were mostly male, but not all male. They were mostly young, but not all young. (I was forty!) They were mostly Protestant, I surmised, because I didn’t see a lot of quickie self-blessings with the sign of the cross. Everyone looked bright-eyed. I felt good. I felt as if I belonged. The first day. Potentiated.  

Later we streamed into the refectory for lunch. I found my “group”—my pod without the peas. We were older mid-life women, most of us commuters, some with children, all of different Christian denominations—Lutheran, United Church of Christ, one Catholic, and three Episcopalians. We were chatty and excited about jumping into potentiation, which word they loved, even though I was the only one who heard it. I swear I did.

I headed for my car at dusk to drive home, lugging the biggest, newest brand new Bible I’d ever seen or owned. I felt scared. By the time I got home it was dark. I hugged my children, threw some supper together, and sat down with my notes and my outsized holy text. I would study for this potentiation till I dropped.
 

I’d craved independence and called it freedom. What I began to see as I plunged into the Old Testament was that God created freedom of choice, not paradise. Biblical people were all mixed up and messed up, yet somehow they kept getting re-potentiated—back in sync with God who, for no sane reason, went on potentiating. Anything could happen. Risky business this kind of spiritual freedom. I felt just like these ancients—completely fascinated and and equally fearful.

What if I chose wrong, and what if God really did exile me, or I rejected God?  

Despite my mixed feelings, I dove in—too much, because once when a child came begging for one more cookie or something, I’m ashamed to say, I said: “Leave me alone, I’m reading my Bible.”

Scene XL. Inerrancy

The big required hot-shot basic courses had one lecture and three section meetings a week. To my surprise, Jim Echols, a young black man, a student in the doctoral program, was the teaching assistant of my section. I don’t know why his skin color surprised me, but of course a God-school could never be racially segregated.

Jim was tall and lean with a lavish but neatly trimmed afro. We were invited to call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument. Jim believed in and taught us biblical inerrancy, the idea that there were no errors or faults in the Holy Bible.

Inerrancy?

What? That’s nuts? What about God’s telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac as proof of Abe’s great faith? What about God’s having created, even invited, sin in the first place in Genesis? What about God’s holy wrath—wholly unjust? I argued ferociously against this inerrancy idea. Jim listened with kindness. I thought he was completely wrong. I mean he was a black man. What about racial injustice in the Bible? How about women? Errant and still holy?

What I noticed as I pored over the Hebrew Scriptures, however, was how easily I assumed that all those people were white. I also noticed in story after story that God seemed quite content to include the whole messy array of Creation in the divine plan to keep this creation thing going—all of it. If not why did God refrain from blasting Eve out of Eden, divorced, after her brilliant grab for freedom?  And why had Sarah survived divine wrath after laughing at the absurdity of God’s promise that she’d get pregnant in old—very old—age? There were countless examples (Ruth, Miriam, Hagar, Job’s wife who cursed God, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, and more).

Why was all this sin and deceit and acting out, obviously all wrong and errant as hell, so visible in people God chose as collaborators, the ones who got written up in the HOLY book?  

Jim stuck with his inerrancy platform while I struggled mightily with my confusion and my effort to make this Holy Bible literal, factual, historical, infallible. How could something called holy—and taught in a God school—not be thus? I’d read the whole thing in 7th grade. But now I was a mature woman of forty—seeking only comfort and answers. Where was my God?

I kept going to lectures and listening to Jim anyway.  After a time I found my consistency, the inerrant God Jim proclaimed. It turned out to be in the compassion of Jim Echols, a young black man with chutzpah and intellect—both. 

Thank you, Jim, for not evading all the academic material of scripture, yet  always saying: “Remember there is a story here, too.” I felt alive. Stories. My story. I wrote in my little blue final exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. You gave me a new word. You expanded my little white world, my little Christian world.

PS. Today in twenty-first century America, there is confusion over facts, so much that we’re losing the founding vision of our nation. What is a fact and what is fake news? How do we evaluate the news of the day? It seems to depend on who says it. Some call this era post-truth  We need leaders like you, Jim, to help us see both facts and truth in context, the larger vision within well-examined, well-articulated facts. We need to remember there’s a story.

By the way, here’s an inerrant truth, obviously not a fact: There are no white people in the Bible.

2020.12.13 I FLESH.

Dear God
    I’m here
I flesh
    tired, blurred, blessed

Dear God
    I love you
    I need you
    
    I’m sorry
    I thank you

For the beauty of Earth
For gleam and glower
For dirt and long-gone flower.

So?

Is there any chocolate in this house?

For the pain and for its power
For today and for its morrow

So?

For clouds and shrouds
    and silence loud

I hear
    I listen
        I here

I flesh

    You?

Son. Sun.

2020.12.06 HOLY

Where is John the Baptist when you need him? His is the voice of alarm, the clarion call to wake up. It is the screeching of the fire engine racing to help. It is the scream of a police car siren racing to help. It is the cry of a hungry baby, the agonized why? of the crucified, the whimper of those alone and dying, the near-silent mutter of a street beggar, the rage of the able and of the helpless, the sigh of the contented writing out a check which is too small to matter, the groan of a planet in peril, the blast of a shofar in early morning—calling, calling, calling.  

What voice do you need to hear? What voice is strong enough to break open your heart? To wake you up to the naked need that surrounds us even when we neither heed, nor hear, nor need. It’s there. What voice moves you to stop running and start listening? Who is your prophet?

In every call, there is Godde. In every need, there is Soul. In every despair, there is Hope. In every wound, there is healing. I know this by faith and by glimmers, glimpses, glows, and guesses.

A glow: December 6th is St. Nicholas day. In life he was a bishop in the early Christian church who died in 343 CE. Nicholas was of Greek origin. At 5’6” he was small in stature but giantesque in heart. Sometimes called the Wonderworker, Nicholas instructed children to leave their empty shoes out by night, and by morning the shoes were filled with goodies and surprise treats. From this small holy activity emerged Saint Nic’las and then/now Santa Claus.

 

 

 

 

 

 I am reminded that the generosity of Godde —in Creation and through all life of all beings—is extravagant and eternal.

 

 

 

 

 

A shimmering story. One of my granddaughters asked for a cross on a chain for her 21st birthday. She specified :“Not one with that body on it.” I remembered a time when this young woman was in her teens and had a fight with a classmate about religion. What middle-schooler fights over that? She’d angrily insulted her friend’s religion, calling it stupid. The dispute was arbitrated by the principal, an apology was made, and my girl did further penance on her own. She went to church with her friend, jumped up for the altar call, and got “saved.” She came home, announced her salvation, and told her older sister that she should get “saved”—it would help her a lot. By the next weekend she decided against church and for the mall.

All of this is not exactly what one might call divine salvation—or is it? Something happened that this girl never forgot. Something to do with Christ, she told me, and wrote me a note, with this salutation: “To my Holy Grandmother.”  It is a beautiful articulation of her spiritual experience, her gropings and her raw and innocent wonderings as she tries to discern what Christ means to her. Salvation is a process. This kid’s a pretty topnotch theologian already!

I wondered about myself being called “holy” refraining from sophisticated definitions of holy.  She wrote me this: “In terms of your holiness, I think I meant it in the way I have always seen you. The only person in my family growing up that was spiritual and religious. I remember being young, exploring at St. John's, and finding peace there. I also remember always asking my parents if we could go to church (I mean, what kid does that??). There's always been a yearning in me for spiritual knowledge. I think for me growing up, you embodied that for me. So thank YOU!! :)”

I say the same to her!