The Day After Valentine's Day

Yesterday, several friends and relatives received this card from me and Brandy. Below is my poem for "The Day After Valentine's Day" (a.k.a. "Singles Awareness Day") from 2023 copied from my poetry blog First Verse.

Single on Singles Awareness Day and un-
aware, I scrolled through meme after meme
of loners at parties and tables for two with one,
but never the acronym.

It's SAD, they don't have to say to say, a disease:
My clinic offered S INGLES SHOTS.
At church we're listed with shut-ins and refugees
as Those Kept In Our Thoughts.

But what commuter in February rain
is not a refugee, alone,
and straining through frosted glass to see the lane
that's theirs but not their own?

In warmth at home through every page I read
and write exploring in aloneness,
God's restoring me. I've all I need --
the dog in my lap, a bonus.

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Nov & Dec 2024, Jan 2025

Every morning I read the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on the reading offered by the quarterly Forward Day by Day. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

November 2024 - Reflections by Jazzy BostockLove the name! She's a kanaka maoli in Hawaii, an Episcopal priest, farmer, wife, and foster mom.

The story of the rich young man prompts her to tell us that her congregation, far from affluent, sings a song based on that story. They have "wealth" in generosity. She asks us, "Where is your wealth?"

About the measure of yeast, she's amazed how one measure of yeast affects 60 pounds of flour, and how nonviolent resistance by just 3.5% of a population spurs political change.

Seeing Jesus moving forward despite the surety that he will be killed, she thinks of kuleana, the Hawaiian word for responsibility, combining ku for "standing tall and strong," and le'a, "joy." That's a beautiful way to see our prosaic concept of response.

The parables of lost things all end in parties. Jazzy observes that sharing joy multiplies joy for others.

December 2024 - Reflections by Deon K. JohnsonBorn and raised in Barbados, he's the first openly gay, first black, and first immigrant bishop to lead the Diocese of Missouri.

He tells of his parish's monthly community supper made special at Advent when the volunteers brought out the church's china and silverware. A guest told Johnson, "This is the first meal I have had since I lost my home where I didn't feel disposable." They'd always served disposable ware. Johnson realized, "We stumbled upon the gift of dignity in offering our best to Christ in disguise."

He derives some lessons from other writers. Theologian Karl Barth, asked for "his most significant theological insight," said, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." An ancient rabbi said you can know when the New Day dawns when you can see others as brothers and sisters -- till then, the world is in darkness. Someone said the opposite of faith isn't doubt; it's absolute certainty.

He draws on experiences in rural places. "Let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Is. 2.5) reminds him of the neighborhood children playing to the last bit of sunlight in summer, until the lights came on. He still remembers his grandmother's voice, and he assures us, we all know God's voice -- just listen. He owns chickens, he writes, each with her own distinct personality (one likes to climb on him when he brings out food), and they are "communal in the best and worst ways." They're not what comes to mind when he thinks of God, but that's the image in Mt 23.37. Johnson concludes, "there's deep wisdom in a chicken."

He may have been a witness to what he describes among the Bemba tribe in Zambia, where villagers ring an offender and one by one offer stories of his kindness and goodness to them. When all have spoken, the circle breaks and the offender goes free. This came to mind when Jesus says to the woman taken in adultery, "Neither do I condemn you" -- his attention and mercy having (we imagine) a life-changing effect.

He enunciates a core belief for me: "We want an extraordinary God and instead, we get a God who calls the ordinary to do extraordinary things."

January 2025 - Reflections by Jackie Fulop A Montessori elementary teacher, Jackie Fulop lives in Danville VA with her husband, priest-in-charge at Christ Church. And she's a self-confessed "word nerd" who delights me with her discovery that "trust" and "tree" share the same root. "I become like a tree -- supported, sustained, and standing firm -- grounded by my faith in God, despite any turmoil that threatens to uproot me."

She opens up the "gate" image, too. I think of it as an entrance where one may be barred; she looks at "gates" as "places of transition," as when Jacob saw the gates of heaven open. Jesus says, "I am the gate," and he's there "between what my life was and what I hope it will be."

"The pilgrim's way" in Psalm 84 calls to her mind a cross-country drive she made without a plan, veering off-course for beautiful sights and some desolate places, always confident in the eventual arrival. Wherever our path wanders, we will arrive at God, says the psalm.

Psalm 118 is one of those psalms of revenge on your enemies, off-putting for the author, until she thinks that your worst enemies may be internal ones. She observes that the psalm is bookended by gratitude, an effective defense against anxiety.

She always reads blame into the question Jesus asks of the lame man who doesn't make his way to the healing fountain: "Do you WANT to be made well?" But suppose it's "Do YOU want to be made well?" Then it's Jesus scanning the crowd to find one who can't push his way there. Jesus takes the healing to him. I like that - and it's something I can emulate. (As a teacher, I certainly tried to notice the ones who were afraid to ask for what they wanted.)

Another hard-nosed and domineering Biblical expression about putting all things under Christ's feet is softened by the translator Eugene Paterson, who reads this as, "Christ is not peripheral in the world, but central." Really? Fulop asks, when the church faces "diminishing membership, loss of influence," and highly negative perceptions among 90% of adults under 60. We don't have to dominate, but we should be working with God to put Christ in the center.

"But who do YOU say I am?" Jesus asks Peter. Good question for each of us, today.

Fulop was always bothered by the passage about the unforgivable "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" in Mark 3.29 until she paired it with Isaiah 44, about those woodworkers who bow down to idols they've carved, then cook dinner on the ashes of the wood leftover. They call the good evil and the evil, good. Fulop says that the unforgivable sin is "moral obtuseness."

Paul's conversion brings to her mind something by Paula D'Arcy: "God comes to you disguised as your life."

Fulop reminds us that the Hebrew word chesed is different from the words we use to translate it (mercy, compassion, goodness, steadfast love) because all of those are emotions, or emotion-adjacent. But chesed is an inherent quality of God, something she affirms with her favorite punctuation --!

Keeping the Christmas Story Alive after Christmas

It's only the second day of Christmas, and already the air's gone out of the inflatable Santa Claus next door, and songs about the birth in Bethlehem "that seers foretold" are no longer in (and on) the air.

But we Episcopalians have ways to keep that story going as the soundtrack of our lives. When we do daily devotions from the prayer book and we re-tell that story with other disciples at church, we heighten our awareness that we, too, are a part of the much-longer story of God's dream for our world.

At St. James, we now offer services some nights at 6:30, perfect for someone on their way home from work, or on their way out to dinner on the Square.

Three evening prayer services are offered this week, each with a special collect -- a prayer that our church created to connect our stories and the world we live in to the stories of those we honor.

Dec 26 St. Stephen
We give thanks for the example of Stephen who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors. (Book of Common Prayer p. 237)

Dec 27 St. John
We pray that, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, [we may] walk in the light of your truth... (BCP 238)

Dec 28 the Holy Innocents
Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims... and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace... (BCP 238)

[Note: My posts to this blog have fallen off considerably since I took a position writing the newsletter for my church. This is one piece for this week's issue.]

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Aug-Sept-Oct 2024

Every morning I read the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by the quarterly Forward Day by Day. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

I must confess what I have left undone: I didn't start reviewing my notes from August until Christmas Eve. I'll just hit what I remember, the highest of highlights.

August 2024: Chrys Meador
A retired lawyer who now works with food ministries, Meador knows something about scarcity -- of food, of resources, of time. She refers to the numerous Scripture passages where we hear Be not afraid and reminds us to make time to be attentive to [the prophets] as to a lamp shining in a dark place (2 Pet 1.19). She seems to have been in the same Vestry meetings that I have, as she imagines the apostles brainstorming how to feed the 5000 -- it's too costly... there are too many... there's not enough.... She writes, "Remember the possibility of unimaginable solutions."

When the Apostles are stymied by a "hard saying" about eating the flesh of Jesus, Meador sympathizes. Haven't you ever heard something explained so clearly that you can't wait to tell others, but later, you can't make any sense of it? Yes! (I take notes to remember remarkable insights in sermons by our interim rector Mother Pat Miller but recall only unremarkable snippets.)

Responding to Job, she wonders why God would even care about our lives and our sins? Then she thinks of her infant son. "The love I have for my children cannot be explained, and yet it explains everything. And so it is with God." Amen.

September 2024: Colleen Thomas
A leader of workshops on centering prayer, Thomas identifies the phrase "I got this" as a source of great anxiety in our culture. Better, like Jesus, to accept I can do nothing on my own (John 5.20). Writing on Psalm 49 for the reading on September 11th, she ties it to other readings for the day: Job's lament that his generosity to the poor hasn't kept him from suffering, and Paul's return to the city where they stoned him (Acts 14.22), and the death of Lazarus. The dead man did not participate in his own renewal. "Sometimes we need God to be our light when there's none in us."

Thomas points out something I'd never thought about in the story in Acts 16 of the servant girl who has the gift of prophecy. Paul removes her power because she's so annoying, following him around and proclaiming her visions. Thomas doesn't deny the annoyance, but she observes that the serving girl is being exploited by her owners. "Paul's holy annoyance ends an injustice."

Thomas admits to being uncomfortable with Psalms, so "prone to exaggerated emotions." But their anger can be a comfort for us when we feel anger out of proportion to the cause. Recognition of that disproportion can bring healing to us. She relays an acronym for times when we are most at risk for Satan's temptations: HALT when you're Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.

October 2024: Joseph Yoo
Another confession: this youngish vicar of a "plant" church in Texas, formerly a Methodist minister, connected with me right away. I wrote three times the usual number of notes, visited his web site, and bought his memoir. I'll respond to that book later. For now, a list of his insights as concise as I can make them:

• The sick whom Jesus healed got sick again, those he raised from the dead died; but touching and asking questions of those like the leper and the "unclean" woman and the demoniac, he gives these people their dignity. That lasts! Maya Angelou: "People will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
• Yoo says the best ability is availability. Illustrated by the call of Levi, the tax collector.
• Pharisees fuss over the sabbath. Yoo observes that the Sabbath reminds us that our worth isn't based on what we produce; we are free.
• "Following Jesus is simple, but it's not easy." His radical plan to eliminate enemies is to love them. (Cf. Thurman, MLK Jr) BTW God loves those who reject him and disobey him in the day's reading from Hosea 11.9
• "Suffer the little children" reminds Yoo of very young siblings who sang "Jesus Loves Me" during communion, then "Baby Shark." Yoo writes that you might be horrified if you think of communion as a performance, but for a communal celebration, the tots' offering was joyous. He asks, "What changes could you make to honor and celebrate the gifts of everyone in your congregation?"
• "Names will never hurt me" is a lie, Yoo writes, recalling hurtful words hurled at him decades ago. But Jesus heals two people in Luke 7 by words alone. Words have power to hurt and to heal.
• Jesus tells John's disciples, "Go tell John what you have seen and what you have heard." Yoo says, "Jesus invites us not only to tell a good story, but to live a good story."
• A woman crashes a high society dinner party and anoints Jesus's feet, scandalizing the host and others. Jesus asks them, "Can you see this woman?" (Luke 7.44). Odd question: of course they see her. Yoo thinks Jesus was asking, "Can you see beyond stereotypes and status to her?" Following Jesus means changing how we see.
• In the parable of the sower, the God-figure doesn't assess the worthiness of the ground. He is indiscriminate.
• "Let us go to the other side of the lake." Yoo sees this line as significant because that's the Gentile side of the lake. He relates this to the dove, adored as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, despised and called a "pigeon" when it gets up in our spaces at sidewalk cafes and park benches, ignoring our boundaries. Jesus and the Spirit do the same.
• "We don't know what the future holds, but we know who holds it." The rich young man focuses on what he must give up, not on what he could gain with Jesus.
• Farmers don't give names to animals that won't be around much longer. By the same logic, Yoo writes, perhaps we prefer for some people in our vicinity and in our world to remain nameless so that we can continue to hate or mistrust them. Jesus asked the demoniac his name (cf. dignity in the first item of this list).
• Compassion v. Justice is the difference between serving at a soup kitchen v. asking why so many people need this help. Jesus didn't just stop a woman's hemorrhage, but called the woman "daughter" and responded without disgust to her touching him. Yoo writes, "Jesus brings her from the margins and places her right in the middle of the community." (cf. dignity in the first item of this list.)
• Re: God's sparing of Nineveh in the story of Jonah. "God isn't fair, but generous. What great news for everyone!"
• Ha! Moses seems surprised to see God, yet he's on Mt. Horeb, "the mountain of God." Yoo asks if we expect to encounter God at church -- or anywhere?
• Ha. The son of man has no place to rest his head prompts Yoo to point out that many of us will drive past homeless people on our ways to church to hear the words of an itinerant teacher.
• Luke 10.42 (re: Martha and Mary), There is only one thing needed. Yoo quotes someone, "If Satan can't make you bad, then he makes you busy doing things that don't matter." He quotes Richard Rohr: "Thy Kingdom come means my kingdom go."
• Jesus asks the blind man what he wants. Seems insensitive? But Jesus is pushing us to ask ourselves, Yoo believes. [Our interim rector Mother Pat picked up on the same question, and paused for an uncomfortably long time for us to ask ourselves, What do I want?]

Yoo's last word to us regards God's close attention to sparrows: Jesus says, You have more worth than sparrows. Yoo says, our worth does not depend on what we bring to the table.

Dementia Diary: Thanksgiving at Christmas

This year I sent out a Christmas card with this picture:

The caption was Season’s Greetings from Scott, Frances, and Kim, pictured here at Thanksgiving dinner provided by Mom’s memory care staff, with poinsettias provided by Photo Shop ®

Mom enjoyed our visit. Asked if she knew who I was, she smiled and said, "He's my friend."

For our Christmas dinner, she seemed very happy until suddenly she said, "Let's get out of here." I suspect that the chatter at the table had been too much about her without involving her. Will make mental note of that.

More than belief: a story we live in

An adult in the Education for Ministry program that I mentor said she noticed that Moses presents the laws differently in Deuteronomy than in Exodus, and she wondered, "Do you think Moses changed his mind?"

She comes from a background of literalist Sunday school teachers and college professors for whom any inconsistency in Scripture must be explained away, lest the whole faith be vulnerable to scientific attack.

I replied that the difference she'd noticed could show that the community that revered Moses had developed new understanding with experience. The simplest explanation for inconsistencies in the scriptures is that the Bible is a scrapbook collected and edited over 1000 years. "So we're reading more than the story of God's people," I said. "We're also seeing the story of the story, as the idea of what it means to be the people of God changed over the centuries."

She brightened. "And we're still living it!" I told her that she can now forego the other three - and - a - half years of the program, ha ha.

An Episcopal Priest named Joseph Yoo wrote about the same idea in the introduction to his book When the Saints Go Flying In (Precocity Press, 2023):

Stories are powerful tools. LIves can be transformed when stories are shared. THe most effective way to transform someone's mind isn't to bombard them with facts and figures but to tell them a story. Jesus absolutely knew this. It's why he told stories. He connected things that were familiar, things that were ordinary, to God's truth. People listened and were transformed. We still listen and lives are still being transformed because these stories aren't just about what happened centuries ago. They are still happening to you and me today. - Joseph Yoo

Subtitled Stories About Faith, Life, and Everything in between, the book is the story of Yoo's path from Methodist boyhood to Episcopal priesthood wrapped around the stories of numerous saints. In that one paragraph about stories, he pretty much sums up what we do in EfM, where we put our own experiences into dialogue with our studies of scripture, 3000 years of Judeo-Christian history, and theology.

With both of these encounters in my head this past week, I've been trying to remember the source of a rhymed couplet equating faith with living a story. Then I remembered: it's from my own self-portrait as an introverted writer inside his own shell:

We love, we hurt, we forgive, and we're forgiven.
My faith's not just a creed; it's a story I live in.
(from Interview with Box Turtle)

[Photo: Print of my alter ego purchased by my friend Susan at Marietta Square's annual arts fair, for a gift. It's been up on my kitchen wall ever since.]

These past several months, I've felt swamped by the competing narratives of dire consequences if the other political party wins. Now that the election's over, I feel, not happy, but relieved. I've turned the radio to classical music programming, I've quit scrolling the news feed on my phone, and I've concentrated on the story of God's people. I've re-read Joseph Yoo's book, and yesterday I bought poems from Mary Oliver's long career selected in a best seller called Devotions. I feel much calmer about the national story, financial anxieties, and my own aging when I remember God's story wrapping around all of it.

Of related interest:

• My post about Mary Oliver's 2006 collection Thirst, written when it was new, is one of my most-read. See Poetry as Prayer.
• For EfM, I created a worship service made from her verse: Liturgy Adapted from Mary Oliver's Thirst (mostly).
• Joseph Yoo's daily devotions for October 2024 in Forward Day by Day connected with me, and I may post a digest of that work, soon. He maintains a blog, josephyoo.com, with a page about Joseph Yoo's writings.
• I maintain a blog for our EfM cohort. See EfM at St. James Marietta

Theology for Breakfast: The Holy Irritant in Forward Day by Day May-June-July 2024

Every morning I read the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by the quarterly Forward Day by Day. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

May Reflections for May are by Reverend Kira Austin-Young, currently serving in San Francisco, where she and her dog pass by homeless encampments every day. She's reminded by Psalm 102.17 that "God favors the prayers of the homeless." While institutions provide short-term care and devise long-term solutions, she imagines her small part to be the answer to "the prayer of my neighbor."

Having read her piece, I myself walked my dog in a parking lot where we repeatedly encountered a homeless woman named Brenda. Three Sunday mornings in a row, she had politely rebuffed offers to buy her sandals, coffee, food -- but she brightened up considerably on Mothers Day when I asked if she was a mother. She wanted to tell me about her children and grand-children.

The writer struggles with Matthew 7.18, "Everyone who asks receives." How does that sound to families in the youth hospice where she was chaplain? She thinks, "There is not a one-to-one correspondence between what we ask in prayer and what we receive." (That, I'd say, would be magic -- harnessing God's power to do our will.) Pray specific prayers, anyway, she says, to make yourself aware of God's presence. "The victims are in our thoughts and prayers" has come to mean "We're not going to do anything," but she admits prayers at least prepare us for action and open us to God's will.

She "gets worked up" over public figures who won't deal with important issues. Responding to Psalm 37.7 ("Be still ... wait patiently for the Lord") she admits that getting worked up "is unhelpful at best, and at most, leads to evil." Besides, as Jesus asked in Mt. 6.27, "Can anyone by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"

Public figures who disgust her need prayers more than anyone, she admits, and she needs to be the one to pray for them. She gets "likes" for snide comments about those leaders, but she hasn't "built up" anyone or anything by writing insults (Ephesians 4.29 "Let no evil come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up.")

There's humor and joy in some of her observations. Jesus is like a stand-up comic when he points out, "when John and his disciples ate nothing, the Pharisees said he had a demon in him, but when I and my disciples have dinner, they say we're drunkards and gluttons." The great line about "Leviathan that God made for the sport of it" (Psalms 104.27) reminds her how we know more about outer space than about the oceans that occupy most of our planet, and how much more there is to "the strangeness and untouchability of God."

July For July, we had essays by Philip Beyer, retired businessman and archdeacon of a diocese in Florida.

In Beyer's stories, the Holy Spirit manifests as a Holy Irritant.

• Beyer sought time alone in a chapel, but ended up listening to someone already there in great need. "The hidden treasure I found was at hand, not in solitude, not in my agenda, but fully immersed in human sorrow."
• During an outdoor service, he was annoyed by homeless people wandering by - until the priest invited them to join in.
• He remembers his newspaper delivery route, how angry he was at those who didn't pay up - but then the baker paid him in donuts, with the side effect of opening his eyes to the fact that his bag got lighter with each delivery, and his hardness softened to forgiveness.
• As an executive traveling with elderly tourists in Jerusalem, he impatiently took over the soft-serv ice cream machine to hurry the tour along, and discovered fun and friendship in serving them.
• Hassled by a man at a homeless shelter who kept demanding "more tea," he slammed a full pitcher down on the table. The man's disappointment opened Beyer up to realize, the man hadn't needed or wanted tea; he needed the attention (cf. Jesus and the blind man, Mt. 20.29-34).

The pharisees seem to have irritated Jesus. Their demand for a sign reminds Beyer of a sign he received during a morning run when he was feeling low. The voice of a cardinal caught his attention, then the bird suddenly appeared, lifting Beyer's spirits. He asks us if we've had such an experience.

Indeed: Riding my bike on the Silver Comet trail, I approached a couple from behind as they walked side by side. The woman was talking, gesturing, re-enacting some big confrontation. At something she said, the man turned his head towards her so quickly that his dred locks shook, and I saw his eyes open wide on her, his broad smile, his admiration and delight. I caught that spirit of love vicariously and I carry it with me to this day, as often as I recall that moment.

Beyer's experience in Haiti after the earthquake could be a parable. Beyers despaired of finding building materials for the parish church, but the priest didn't seem to be doing anything about that. As they toured the parish, the priest just hugged people and smiled and listened to their problems. Again, Beyers was irritated. But the next day, people showed up with materials enough to rebuild.

The Red Sea Parts: What Retirement Feels Like

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Scott Smoot on his bike in the Red Sea, virtually. Of course, Moses is going north, and I'm going south.

On my virtual bike tour of the world, I pause for a selfie wherever I have lived or have felt a connection. God's parting the Red Sea for the Hebrews' escape from slavery is certainly a great story, but I struggled to find a personal connection.

When I studied the photo of the iconic scene from the film The Ten Commandments, suddenly it resonated with the most recent period of my life. Those last years of teaching seemed so relentless, a couple of classes were so contentious, and the pandemic upended so much of what I had relied on for 39 years of my teaching career, that retirement is very much like what we see in Cecille B. DeMille's film. Oh, I do feel a clearing of my path to my end.

Enough said.

Miles YTD 1931 || 2nd World Tour Total 18,549 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: TBA

←← | ← || Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the start.