The Joy of Spider-man: Poet's second take on Miles Morales

In 2023, poet / author Jason Reynolds published his second Spider-man novel Miles Morales: SUSPENDED and I didn't wait to buy and read it. But I've waited until now to write about it. I've re-read it, and have decided to accentuate what I love and to keep my reservations in reserve.

As a boomer, I was surprised this century to learn that the Marvel Universe had expanded. The Spider-man I grew up with was a white teen named Peter Parker who gained super-powers from a radioactive spider's bite. Now we learn about parallel universes where other young men and women have that same experience. In 2016, I read the YA novel by Jason Reynolds, Miles Morales: Spider-man about a 15-year-old boy in Harlem whose father is African-American and whose mother is Puerto Rican. He's a scholarship student in a mostly-white private academy in Manhattan. The novel, which I read in ten-minute intervals during my 7th graders' "drop everything and read" period, inspired one of my best blogposts ever.

In Miles Morales Suspended, Reynolds continues the story. Miles is suspended from class for participating with friends in a protest against white supremacist history being taught at the school. With an assortment of classmates, including his crush and a nerdy library assistant (secretly possessed by a supernatural entity), he's stuck in a room with two proctors and a pile of work to do. Each teacher has sent him an assignment to make the young man reflect on his own character through subject-appropriate metaphor. For example, reminding Miles how brown bananas emit ethylene that turns nearby yellow bananas brown, the Chemistry teacher asks Miles to reflect on times he may have been a yellow banana or a brown one.

While this set-up locks the action into one classroom and one school day broken into one-hour periods, it also gives Miles (and Reynolds) lots of opportunities to take flight in verse. Miles discovered poetry in that first novel. In this one, most of the action is interior, and a lot of the lines in this book don't reach the right-hand margin.

Still, my favorite part of the book takes place during the night before the day of his punishment. When his jovial roommate Ganke is fast asleep, Miles suits up and goes to the window. Pausing to look at the lights of the skyline, he imagines "all the stars that were supposed to be there had fallen, and now sparkled much closer to the ground" (44). A deep breath, and then he jumps -- into some of my favorite poetry in the book:

AIR begins "When I'm in / the air / I feel // free. Like something / someone / has // let go of." By the end of the poem, the lines have led Miles to wonder at himself: "I feel / like I can / let go."

In the next moment, he literally lets go, free-falling before he shoots a web. For an exhilarating paragraph, we experience Spider-man's web-slinging from the inside, as he leaps from building to building, soon landing at the top cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. He sees the lights of Times Square from a distance, and there follow some memories of that place, including an incident when he chased down a pickpocket to retrieve an old man's wallet -- and left the desperate thief with money from Miles's own pocket.

That section is so vivid and joyful that I've remembered all its details since the book was new.

I reopened the book this week because I heard Jason Reynolds on NPR. The format of the interview show is to ask famous people a personal question drawn from a deck of cards. I didn't catch the question, but he gave an endearing answer. He's taking care of his elderly mother these days, "bathing the only Creator I have ever touched, the vessel who gave me everything I have become." Determined to "maintain her dignity and comfort," he says to her, "I'm going to help you transition ... after you taught me to be bold."

His Miles Morales, too, expresses love and gratitude for family as he struggles to be as good as they want him to be.

There's probably a psalm for that

(This article appeared in this week's issue of The Bells of St. James, the newsletter that I edit for my church St. James Episcopal, Marietta.)

We appreciate a note that Betty Berry sent this week about the 10:30 service Sunday. She writes, "The choir sang of murmuring doves. Meanwhile in a bush near our sanctuary window, a nest full of doves rejoiced in their own way: lively and loudly. Quite special." (For the words, see #513 in the 1982 hymnal.)

A verse that we sang on Sunday also connected to a member of our parish choir, Dr. Walter Ligon. We sang Psalm 16, which contains this line, from verse 6: Indeed, I have a goodly heritage. That verse is inscribed in Latin on a medallion that Walter obtained during a visit to the chapel of St. Leonard in his ancestral place of origin, Newland in the district of Malvern, Worcestershire, England. He polished the medallion Monday and brought it by the office. His ancestors left there during the Civil War -- not the American one, but the one with Cromwell in the 1640s. He would love to sit and tell you the story!

Lanie Baxter shared this photo she took during her recent travels of an ancient replica of the still more ancient Book of Kells. The replica is preserved under glass.

The "illumination" of the gospels by the beautiful images calls to mind Psalm 119.30, The unfolding of your words gives light.

Sue Hannan, away visiting family, sent photos from where she's staying in the Finger Lakes region of central New York state. One scene calls to mind Psalm 65.8, You make the dawn appear on the earth and the sunset shout for joy.

Another book of songs in the Hebrew scriptures gives an apt response to Sue's second photo (inset), Flowers appear on the earth and the season of singing has begun (Song of Songs, 2.12).

Mother Mariclair took the selfie below when she visited the Altar Guild's coffee last Saturday. Showing up hours and even days before a service, they prepare for regular Sunday worship and special occasions, such as Wednesday's funeral for Billy Akins. Psalm 122.1 comes to mind, I was glad when they said to me "Let us go to the house of the Lord."

Did you know that your phone can play all of Psalms in a 30-day cycle at the Forward Day by Day website? The magazine's director says that he has been listening to the whole collection every month for a couple of years, now, and it's made a big difference in his life. I'm giving it a try, listening to psalms and the other readings for the day while I go about my morning routine.

Pray like Wolves

Right now, in time zones around the world, there are Episcopalians with prayer books open to morning prayer, or to services for noonday and evening. They're in church, or they may be in small groups, or they may be at home alone, perhaps, like me as I write this, with a dog at their feet.

Prayers from a book aren't valued in some Christian traditions. Many believe that prayer should be spontaneous.

But I'm comforted, even awed, by the thought that fellow Episcopalians, in all their circumstances, pray the same words, silently or aloud. At communion, I sometimes think how my kneeling, my holding up of my hands, and my sipping the wine, join me to churches across the country, across the sea, and even across centuries.

Can prayer be spontaneous and come from within? We know that it can. Can such prayer meander and become a kind of personal performance? We know that it can. Our church leaves room for spontaneity within a frame of carefully prepared prayers.

For me, our ritual prayers call to mind, not a flock of sheep and a shepherd (root meanings of congregation and episcopal), but wolves.

In the Bible, wolves are vicious and fearsome, except for that wolf in Isaiah that lies down with the lamb. Jesus warns his disciples that they go into the world as sheep among wolves, and he says to beware false prophets who are "wolves in sheep's clothing."

Our culture has a different outlook on wolves. Because we hunted wolves almost to extinction, they have official protection. Except where they prey on domesticated animals, wolves have our sympathy, too. They've become symbols of strength, self-reliance, and pack solidarity. We've made wolves into team mascots and namesakes for super-heroes.

Wolves' baying at night may sound mournful to us, but no study has conclusive answers to why they do it. The wolves may be expressing belonging or may be psyching themselves up for the hunt. Maybe they're expressing hunger. Whatever they express, they're like my little terrier mix when she barks with the neighbor's Pomeranian at twilight, having a great time.

It's remarkable that wolves match each other's pitch and rhythm. Whether they're with the pack or alone far away, they're on the same page.

The nightly ritual of the wolves came to mind during a theological reflection in my Education for Ministry seminar (EfM). A participant shared her story from her teenage years of how a beloved member of her close-knit summer camp cohort had committed suicide during the winter. The young woman relating the story told us that the old friends gathered in silence, finding no words for their feelings. Without a word, they rose and began to walk up the hill. It just felt right, she said, to hike to the camp's waterfall, as they had done many times before. Arriving at the place, they still said nothing. Then, spontaneously, they re-enacted a ritual familiar to Episcopalians from Holy Week: They washed each other's feet.

Like wolves, they were each alone inside their own thoughts and feelings, and yet together in this ritual.

The young woman, looking back, says there was mournfulness in this, and loss, but also a shared knowledge that they were serving each other in a way that goes back 2000 years. This shared action, though wordless, was instructive, and transformative.

Church should be more than a place to learn lessons, a place to meet like-minded people, or even a place to ensure our own salvation. Whatever the wolves are doing, raising their voices as one from their distant places, we also are doing as we kneel, hold hands up in supplication, confess together, and pray together -- from the same page.

Prayer - to - Square: Moving Church back to the center of town

Sunday, Jan Wilsden celebrated her 90th birthday with her family. She and husband Derek grew up in a place and time when the village church was literally at the center of everyday life. The church spire could be seen from everywhere (inspiring!) and bells rang for prayer morning, noon, and night. Would we all be more mindful of what Mo Mariclair called the abundance of God's love if we could all put St. James at the center of our lives that way?

Actually, St. James does still stand at the center, at least on Saturdays. Like the village markets of olden times, the Marietta Farmers Market sets up every Saturday morning where the sounds of our tower bells reach the stalls. Parishioner Susan Rouse has done the bulk of her shopping there for many years. It's a community, she says, where farmers, chefs, and discerning consumers all know each other. And it's all blessed by the bells of St. James.

After worship services, parishioners who don't go home right away can sample an abundance of good things, many of them family-friendly. This past week, as I came out of the Polk Street gate, I saw Jessica Reynolds and Matilda returning from an excursion via the Mountain-to-River Trail (M2R). They were passing by the striking works by professional artists and art students, all local. Some of the works are beautiful, some are surprising, all are intriguing.

If it's history that interests you, go down hill from the railroad tracks to the home of our church's founder William Root. Keep going, and you'll find our St. James Cemetery, where Root is NOT buried, because his wife disapproved of Episcopalians. To find where he's buried, go to the Marietta Cemetery located along the M2R trail not far from where the Reynolds ladies are standing. (I've walked my little dog that way many times.)

Mid-way there's the Marietta Museum, where grandparents might enjoy showing grandkids the toys and record players of the remote 1960s, and the 1940s-vintage kitchen that's just like their grandma's.

Then, there are opportunities for exercise. One Sunday, I saw a parishioner in track clothes running from our Polk Street lot towards Kennesaw Mountain on the M2R. I had just seen him dressed in his Sunday best at the hospitality hour. With a change of clothes, he used St. James as a base for his run. Inspired by his example, this past Sunday I brought my road bike and cycling shorts for a thirty minute round trip to the battlefield park. (See photo below) Another time, I'll leave from church to explore the way to the Chattahoochee River. (Call it Narthex-2-Spandex)

When we start our new series of Wednesday Family Game nights, consider coming to our regular Evening Prayer service, 20-30 minutes long, playing games until 8, and then strolling altogether to Marietta Square for ice cream at Sarah Jean's, a couple of doors away from the space where William Root ran his pharmacy, now housing a bakery.

And think of how you might invite neighbors or co-workers for worship and a stroll into town. Call it Prayer-2-Square.

This article was written for The Bells of St. James, the newsletter that I send out every week.

It's a Wrap

The bucks that stopped here are moving on. ("Dear Buck," said Lanie Baxter, "we will miss you!")

All the portraits of shady-looking lawyers have disappeared.

With them go the 2019-vintage desktop computers, boxes of fake legal documents, South Carolina lawbooks with the shelves that bore them, and heavy ornate furniture. Also gone are yard upon yard of thick cables, the trucks and cranes that filled our parking lots, and sheets of plastic wrap that protected our carpets when filming crews came in.

In other words, the filming of The Murdaugh Murders has finished. This week, the post-op crew removes the set pieces and restores our walls and halls to their ante-Murdaugh condition.

The Last Day I was at church before 7a on Friday for the last day of filming. Jim Chester relieved me around 10a. Bill Eubanks was here that evening from around 4p to 8:39p when the director yelled, "It's a wrap!" Bill wrote in an email that there was "much applause and hooting."

The end came not a moment too soon, according to Bill, since the thermostat had been re-set to cool the actors and crew who were crammed into our conference room with hot lights. "I won't say it was cold," Bill wrote, "but we pulled everything out of the kitchen freezers and huddled inside to warm up!"

The production wrapped early despite an unwelcome interruption. All work suspended when the fire alarm went off. Only later did Bill discover why: the Fire Safety Officer had unwittingly set off the system himself. Andrea Keener, member of both our church and the studio team, was relieved to hear it: "At least we know none of the crew was trying to get to recess early!"

The very next morning, a crew that Bill re-named "Tony and the Divine Dustbusters" came in to prepare the church for services. They cleared walkways, vacuumed, mopped, and wiped surfaces.

The Sequel Wednesday, film crew, actors, costumers, and even caterers came back for a single shot. All they needed was a train to blow past "Alex Murdaugh" at the crossing.

Marietta police closed a lane on Polk Street, crew kept their equipment ready, and the actor waited in a vehicle with the appropriate 2019 South Carolina license plate.

(Photo: At noon, Angel was optimistic that a train might show up before dark. It didn't happen.)

But our train, having delayed or interrupted numerous scenes throughout this project, didn't make an appearance.

Angel, the site manager, explains that Homeland Security regulations prevent the studio from seeing the schedule for trains.

L-R, Jim, Erik, Bill, Lia and Andrea. The studio awarded Jim a badge for his stunt work, for the film day in March when he took a dive out of a doorway.

On Thursday this week, Jim, Bill, Building Superintendent Erik Linso, the studio's site manager Lia Towers, and location scout Andrea Keener met for a walkthrough of our campus inside and out. They know each other well after sharing many 16-hour days. They compared church furniture and decor to photographs made in January. They also checked on floors, ceilings, walls, doors, walkways, landscaping etc. to list items for repair, cleaning, and painting.

Then this adventure will be over for good. "Unless," Sue Hannan wondered. "What if Murdaugh wins an appeal?" Stay tuned. Know any good news items about goings-on in the parish? Share them with me at the communications desk.

[This is this week's "Pulse of the Parish" column for the Bells newsletter of St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta GA]

Life on a Movie Set

Every day this week, from as early as 5:30a to as late as 11p, the Parish Hall was crowded with actors donning costumes and getting made up. Both parking lots were full of trucks and cranes. Dozens of men and women hauled things up and down the halls. [This is from the newsletter I edit at St. James Church, issued April 24 in the week following Easter Sunday]

The Marietta Daily Journal staked out St. James, reporting when "a dark van" left the premises, but no one on the crew would open up about what exactly was happening inside.

PHOTO: Life on a movie set: your Communications Director on Tuesday took a selfie near the elevator. The air was thick with smoke -- and drama!

Our Lawrence Chapel made a great setting for the funeral scene. That's artificial sunlight: the sky was dark. When the double doors open during a dramatic confrontation, it's not a parking lot you see on screen, but green hills and blue sky.

For parishes less accustomed to the film industry, all this activity might be very exciting. For the people of St. James, it's just another movie week.

But it was the film crew who got excited when a bird flew in the double doors by the parish hall. He took a tour of the halls before resting in the parlor, which had been set up for a scene.

Work was suspended for this emergency. The little guy bumped his head and left a little smudge of blood on the ceiling tile. He was dizzy awhile, but recovered and flew off to the nave. Someone played bird calls on their phone, hoping to entice him out the double red doors.

The story is picked up there by Lucia Bird (no relation), who was in the nave with Flower Guild cleaning up after Easter services:

He/she seemed to enjoy flying back and forth from the loft to the wall behind the altar. Several times he lighted on the children’s cross. Finally, with the back and side doors open, he flew to the pews and hopped one by one to the last row and flew out the double doors.

Do you remember a few years ago, the bird that explored the nave during services for Pentecost? We wondered if it was a sign from the Holy Spirit. Sign or not, we are blessed by birds, as we read in Psalms 84:3-7, "The sparrow has found a home where she can raise her young, even by your altar, O Lord."

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Feb - Mar - Apr 2025 + Breaking News!

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.

Breaking News: Today, the author from Forward's January 2021 issue becomes the Rector of St. James, Marietta, the Church where I worship and work. She's The Rev. Mariclair Partee Carlsen, and I wrote an appreciation of her daily meditations years before I knew she would one day be my priest and my boss. See Comfort Food from Forward Day by Day.

February 2025 - Reflections by Nikki Mathis The writer is rector of her Episcopal church, "wife and mother to 4-legged and 2-legged kids." She often finds an angle on Bible stories that I've missed before, particularly in regard to helping people to feel their own value.

• Gal 3.28 is the famous phrase about how in Christ "there is no longer slave or free, male or female," but Mathis cautions that "everyone is equal" is different from "everyone is the same," and we all need to appreciate the differences.
• Jesus listens to the Syrophoenician woman after he initially rebuffs her, listening with respect, and is moved to act on her behalf.
• Mathis asks if we ever strike out in irritation when we're overwhelmed by personal crises and world news. Exasperated with the disciples, Jesus asks, "do you not yet understand?" With "yet," he implies that he's sticking with them even if they don't get it.
• He called Peter and Andrew from their fishing boat, without first interviewing them. He could imagine what they would become in his relationship with them. Us, too.
• Mathis sees that James and John aren't looking for power so much as reassurance that they will be okay in the time of trial to come. Jesus gives them a chance to commit to "rise to the challenge" and assures them, they will. We, too, should hear how people are often asking, indirectly, for reassurance that they're okay.
• Seeing how the crowd is annoyed by the blind man who calls to Jesus for help, Jesus stays put and tells those same people to bring the man forward, thereby enlisting them as partners in the cure that follows. Us, too.

Mathis's takes on these stories illustrate Maya Angelou's observation, "People will forget what you said, they will even forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

Reading Mathis in February prepared me for a chance meeting that month with a former student at a local food court. He called out, "Mr. Smoot???" I didn't know his name, how many years had passed since I'd taught him, or what subject that might have been. But I could (and did) say, "I've lost all the details, but I have a lot of strong positive feelings -- that you are courteous, curious, kind, and funny." He took a selfie with me "because no one will believe I saw you." I hope that means I made him feel valued, too.

Some other passages stand out in Mathis's writings.

"Blessed are those who mourn," Mathis quotes, for they have experienced love. Their mourning is a blessing. Mathis adds, "don't think" you win if you're the "one who mourns fastest" and "gets over it."

Mathis recalls being enthralled by the language of the Episcopal liturgy, so like the Arthurian fantasy books she read as a little girl. Yet the sonorous "prayer of humble access" also brought her close to God. "My little girl self still catches her breath at the thought."

The story of the widow brings the observation that she's giving her all, while everyone else is giving God a 10% tip.

In childhood, Mathis memorized Psalm 134, all two verses. Telling us of occasions when those words spoke to her, she observes, "What we pray when we pray together as a community forms us... I'm anchored... not only by the words said... but also by the power and presence of God experienced each time they are prayed."

March 2025 - Reflections by Tyler RichardsHe's an Episcopal priest at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in DePere, Wisconsin. Also, he's a birder, vocalist, and gardener, with wife and daughters.

When Hebrews tells us to pay attention, Richards notes the average adult's attention span is now only 8.53 seconds, so "Some of you will have stopped reading by now." I can relate to how the Sanctus bell brings his wandering mind back "to attend the mystery."

About humility, Richards says, "It's one thing to be zealous for God. It is quite another to inflict that zealotry on others." When you take God into "the marketplace," he writes, don't forget "God is God, and we are not." Also about witnessing, he remembers how the TV lawyer Matlock used to "crack" witness testimonies. Every day, Christians are on the stand about Jesus. He warns that, while we're not taken to court for our beliefs, we still are being scrutinized.

Richards tells about the first time he left his daughter at Preschool, how he could think of nothing else but her all day. Like the father of the prodigal son, like God. (And, I'll add, like me last month when I was in NYC away from Brandy.)

April 2025 - Reflections by Owene Weber Courtney The director of Christian Formation at St. John's in Jacksonville, Courtney has an educator's knack for clarifying the text with another story or image.

When Jesus says he's the shepherd who stands at the gate, I've always pictured a "gatekeeper," i.e., one who excludes the wrong kinds of sheep, people, whatever. Courtney says that the shepherd would lie down across the narrow gate so that any predator had to cross him first. Jesus is not excluding, but offering protection.

Responding to Acts 2.36 ("They were cut to the heart" with regret for killing Jesus), Courtney illustrates repentance with a familiar anecdote about the priest in a French village who excluded the body of a Protestant soldier from the church's graveyard. His comrades buried their friend as close as possible to the cemetery wall. But when they came to pay their last respects the next morning, they couldn't locate the site. The priest, who had been unable to sleep, repented his ban, rose in the night and moved the wall to include their friend. "Repentance," Weber quotes another source, "is moving beyond the mind you have."

A couple of meditations stand out because they don't offer answers to distressing questions. Isaiah's poetry imagines restoration, good news for the poor, sight to the blind, prisoners released from dungeons. "We struggle more to believe that God's plan for this hurting world will be enacted." Then, she responds to a bit of the letter 1 John 2.14, addressing "young people" who are "strong." Courtney observes that young people are missing from the churches nationwide. She hears from them, "They are tired of being lectured or sung to all the while not having a chance to ask questions, disagree, and engage" She has no easy answers, but holds on to John's statement that young people "are strong and the love of God abides in them."

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.

The Witch and I

Levitation, huge dances, big voices and high notes aside, the most magical moments of Wicked are wordless, voiceless, and accomplished without special effects.

Wicked is the backstory to the witch Elphaba was first imagined by novelist Gregory Maguire, and adapted by Maguire with playwright Winnie Holzman, enriched by the music and lyrics of Stephen Shwartz. Jonathan Chu directed the film.

The movie Wicked

While I've loved the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz from early childhood, my deepest interest was in the witch of the West. I coveted her ability to disappear in a puff of black smoke and flame: take that, you playground detractors!

But it was more than her power that fascinated. Margaret Hamilton as the witch seemed to have some kind of inner dialogue going on. When I would imitate her moves, I knew what she was thinking. One hand draws close to her chin and she squints as she takes stock of a problem. She calculates that her chance of success will improve down the road, though she doesn't know exactly how, but she leaves Dorothy with a threat, "I'll get you-- and your little dog, too." When a notion hits her -- as with the line, "Poppies!" -- her eyes widen and she smiles. She takes energy and delight from decisions -- as when she sends her flying monkeys into action. Before the movie, as a middle school drama teacher, I knew Wicked through middle school girls' eyes, all about being Popular and changed by friendship For Good. I went to the movie with friends Suzanne and Dimitri expecting Grease with witches. That it was, but with unexpected bits of Carrie, The Birds, and a strong shot of Schindler's List.

I mentioned this to a friend who said, "I hate it when they inject moral lessons in something that's supposed to be just entertainment."

Well, entertain originally meant imprison, and I've been caught in the world of Wicked ever since I saw the movie. Mostly I'm with Elphaba (her name a pronunciation of the initials of her creator, L. Frank Baum) in her disbelief and horror during a single scene when a kind and serious professor who happens to be a goat is carried away by Oz police.

I read many of the Oz books as a little boy, including the ones that Baum didn't write. I was just into magic. I recall little, being left only with the impression that the author(s) relied on novelty to keep interest going.

Morality emerges organically in this work. It makes sense that "Oz," a wayward balloonist from middle America, would be sick to see farm animals teaching college, nursing children, and doctoring grownups. The Wizard's use of his authority to squash the rights of talking animals makes sense, historically. There's no moral lesson being "injected" here; it's just taking the characters seriously.

I've read that the germ of the story for the novelist Gregory Maguire was a line from the adored 1939 movie, Margaret Hamilton as the Witch of the West calling the Witch of the North by her name "Glinda." Maguire wondered, were they old acquaintances? Could they once have been friends?

Wicked "entertains" because it's real. Sure, I enjoy the "meta" elements, as when we see a bit of the 1939 movie in the mix, and when we see connections to characters of The Wizard of Oz (Woodsman with a heart = Tin Man, brainless prince = Scarecrow, frightened lion cub = cowardly lion) But none of that is what made me cry and exult.

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

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Stars that Rise over The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

A good crime novel needs lots of good characters. Victims, witnesses, suspects, detective sidekicks, all have their function. If they're well-drawn, we feel sympathy or antipathy, maybe amusement, as the story moves forward. So it is in William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember, except that his characters matter apart from their relationship to the crime.

There's Jimmy Quinn, wealthiest man in the county and most hated. He's already food for catfish in the Alabaster River when the novel begins, but we get to know him by how he bent his family's lives to his. There's also Jack Creasy, a man like used motor oil: "If you tried to get a grip on him, he slipped through your fingers, leaving you with the feel of grit and dirt and a desire to wash yourself clean" (214). Creasy whips up the town with his theory that Quinn's killer was Noah Bluestone, because Quinn recently fired him, and because Bluestone is "an uppity Indian."

Bluestone is admirable and fascinating. He lives away from town with Kyoko, the wife he brought home from the war in Japan. Before the war, he had played football with many of the other characters, including Sheriff Brody. He admits to a confrontation with Quinn just before the murder took place. "He was a big man," Noah tells Brody, "but he had a small spirit. He fired me instead" (95). We wonder why Bluestone won't say a word in his own defense, even when Sheriff Brody Dern arrests him for circumstantial evidence.

Brody lives with his dog Hector in quarters above the jail, where a print of Hopper's Night Hawks is his only decoration. Though the investigation takes Brody to dark places, there's a romantic comedy current to his story: while he continues to see his first love, married to his brother, he's growing to appreciate Angie Madison, proprietor of the diner next door. Around her, he's shy as a middle-school boy.

Angie's 14-year-old son Scott is an especially appealing character. He delivers meals to the jail for Brody and anyone in the jail. Born with a hole in his heart, Scott can't be as active as he would like to be. Scott has no father -- his mother's back-story makes an engrossing novelette-within-the-novel -- but in Brody, Scott finds a surrogate. If he can understand Brody, he thinks "maybe, even with a hole in his heart, he might feel like he was finally a man complete" (192).

All the currents of the story run through a a scene in the jail. Bluestone is being held for murder. His accuser Creasy is there, jailed for disorderly conduct. It's a week after Scott risked his own life to rescue a girl drowning in rapids of the Alabaster River. Now he has brought dinner to the jail. At Bluestone's request, Scott has also brought a branch from a cottonwood tree. Bluestone asks for the branch, then asks Sheriff Brody for a sharp knife.

Brody considered the request, the man who’d made it, and the boy. He said, “Step away from the cell, Scott.”

The boy took a step back. Brody reached into his pocket and brought out a folded barlow knife. He handed it to Bluestone through the bars. Creasy gave a snort of disbelief but said nothing. Bluestone drew out the blade and carefully cut the thin cottonwood branch in two. He folded the blade and handed the knife back to Brody.

“Take a look at this,” Bluestone said. He turned the cut end of the branch toward the boy. “See the star?”

There it was, inside the branch, dead center. A dark, five-pointed star. Brody could see it, too.

Scott’s eyes grew large with wonder.

Bluestone says that his people say that stars are born in earth, are absorbed into the roots of the cottonwood, and are all waiting for the time when the Great Spirit will release them by wind that shakes the branches.

"They fly up and settle in the heavens, where they shine and sparkle and become the luminous creations they were always meant to be.” Bluestone looked seriously at the boy. “Do you know why I wanted to tell you this story?”

Scott said, “No.”

“When you saved that girl, I told you that you’d received a gift. The gift is like this star at the center of the cottonwood. It’s inside you now. Someday, when you need it, it will come out, like the stars when the wind shakes the cottonwood trees, and it will shine for you, well and truly.”

The boy seemed to think about that.

“What a load of horseshit,” Creasy said.

The story moves on to an action-packed conclusion. Before it's over, Scott has had cause to be ashamed of himself, and an opportunity for redemption. All the characters' stories have their own finish apart from the denoument of the mystery.

Links to all of my responses to William Kent Krueger's novels, including his Cork O'Connor series, are listed with short descriptions at my Crime Fiction page.

Pedaling through Petra

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Scott Smoot at Petra, virtually, holding Susan's Kodak print

 

In the land now called Jordan, Petra is what remains of an ancient city that was carved into sandstone cliffs. Wikipedia says Petra's heyday was 2000 years ago, but I know nothing more than that. It lies on the line that I'm tracing on a map of the world, mile by mile, as I ride bike trails around Atlanta. My rule for this virtual world tour is to aim for places to which I have strong connections.

My connection to Petra is the snapshot I'm holding in my virtual photo. My friend Susan took that snapshot in March of 1999 during a tour of the Holy Land. Susan actually enjoys touring extraordinary places to see extraordinary things in person.

For me, these virtual visits are enough. I prefer my round of visits to the store, to the church, to Susan's house, to the restaurant we visit each week, to my sister's home, to my Mom's room, to the bike trail. "Same old same old" sounds to me like a good thing.

Besides, there's room for the extraordinary in that routine. For my recent birthday, Susan treated me to our annual dinner at Spring, a restaurant we can walk to from her house, where each course is a special experience. Dessert this year was the apotheosis of humble rice pudding, a mix of textures and flavors I'll not forget.

She also presented me with her painting of my dog Brandy that captures the eyes alive with interest, the ears cocked in curiosity, and a single white hair that rises from the tip of Brandy's copper-brown tail.

In an ordinary week, we'll cover an extraordinary range of topics in conversation over take-out dinners and homemade pizza and walks with the dog.

So let my visit to Petra be dedicated to Susan in gratitude for her extraordinary friendship.

Miles YTD 1543 || 2nd World Tour Total 18,161 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: The Red Sea

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Jerusalem on My Mind

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Scott Smoot joins a bike tour of Jerusalem, virtually.

As I've pedaled 17,987 miles on trails around Atlanta these past four years, I've traced those miles on the globe, making virtual stops at "places I've lived or loved." My goal this year was to reach Jerusalem on my 65th birthday. A thunderstorm nixed that, so it's one day later.

Though I've never actually been to Jerusalem, it's a place I've lived or loved because I've been there in my mind before sunrise every day for at least 10 years. The morning service of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer opens with a choice of Psalm 95 or 100, which both tell us to enter Jerusalem's gates with thanksgiving. Then the BCP assigns readings in other Psalms, the prophets, and New Testament scriptures. Then I read the day's meditation from the quarterly Forward Day by Day.

Just last week, Jerusalem was subject of a meditation in Forward. The writer, Rev. Erin Morey, commented on God's instructions in Exodus for building a worship space. The Tabernacle is modeled on the future Jerusalem temple. Minute details include the patterns on curtains. Morey reminds us, "Those texts were compiled during the period of exile in Babylon. [The editors] far from home, were describing a physical space that no longer existed in this world." So, "the words became a worship space for God's people" [italics mine].

That's the Jerusalem I enter every morning. If it's not a story of Jesus or a prophet in Jerusalem, then it's one of the psalms. In some of those, Jerusalem sounds a lot like middle school, with judges at the gates, the bullies from the "popular" clique, and former friends spreading rumors behind your back.

But I love the Jerusalem of God's promises, where nations will stream to your light, where the gates will always be open. See my blogpost about the inspiring vision of Jerusalem in Isaiah, and how it in turn underlies America's origin story, City on a Hill: Vision for America (06/2018).

One of my favorite lines about Jerusalem comes at the end of Psalm 87. It tells how people from all over the world will want to claim Jerusalem as their birthplace, concluding, the singers and the dancers will say [to Jerusalem], "All my fresh springs are in you." The editor of the Oxford Study Bible speculates that a line may be missing, but the verse makes complete sense to me, as I've practiced arts all my life. The psalm says that the city has the drama, the beauty, the lamentations, and the promise of glory, to make Jerusalem an endless inspiration.

Miles YTD 1369 || 2nd World Tour Total 17,987 miles since June 2020 || Next Stop: TBA

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NOTE: Later, add →

My Dinner with poet Clint Smith

I owe Clint Smith a blogpost. He brought a lot of attention to my blog when I wrote about his first collection of poetry. When his second collection came out last year, I wanted to return the favor, a.s.a.p.

Yet I felt funny preparing to write about Clint's Above Ground. His voice is so engaging in these poems, and he tells so much of his daily life, hopes, and memories that reading him is like listening to a particularly entertaining friend over cocktails and a good dinner. To pull out a legal pad and make notes felt wrong.

So I'm looking back over his poems the way I look back over a satisfying conversation.

[Clint Smith, photo from The Daily Stoic podcast page. Join nearly 4000 others who've read my post "Poetry of Clint Smith in Counting Descent" (07/2021).]

First, he shares snapshots of the kids -- lots of them -- mementoes of joy, wonder, laughter, exhaustion. Kids at bed time, at bath time, a baby in the womb no bigger than a fingernail, a baby strapped to Clint's chest as he dances in the grocery store -- before the manager asks him to stop alarming the customers. His boy wonders about space and the ocean. "Prehistoric Questions" about what killed the dinosaurs lead to the boy's asking, will he die, too (94). The father gives an inspired honest answer that's one of the biggest laughs of our time together. Ok, there was one bigger laugh in "You Ask Me What Sounds a Giraffe Makes" (78), but I won't spoil it by repeating his son's hypothesis.

Smith gets wistful when he sees reflections of earlier generations in his children. Setting his infant daughter into her grandfather's arms, he writes I saw the way your brows / furrowed just like his, how your eyes carry the same pools of wonder ("Roots" 25). He tries without success to explain to his son how we see stars as they were millions of years ago, but he does explain that he can see the "stardust" of his grandmother in this child she never met ("The Andromeda Galaxy is the Closest Galaxy to Our Milky Way" 92). He marks the day when he was no longer able to recall her voice (69).

He keeps coming back to his family tree - literally. It's in a park in New Orleans where his mother brought him to climb as a child, where she climbed as a little girl. In "Tree Rings" (40) he remembers how its branches bent down to the soil as if it had long been waiting to scoop us up. He shares what sounds like a memory about that tree, Two people in New Orleans fall in love under an oak tree whose branches bend like sorrow ("All at Once" 3). His grandmother's voice, he tells his daughter, was the shade under an oak tree / and her laugh was the branch that / stretched down to let you climb it ("Legacy" 51). The tree also brings up bitter reflections about Katrina and its aftermath.

He tells how he's carrying on "Tradition" making French toast with his kids, as his father and his father's father did, though he doesn't remember the recipe so much as the feel of his father's hands wrapped around his (26-7). When he hears a tone of anger creep into his voice in "Across Generations," it's the echo of men attempting / to unlearn the anger on their father's / tongues.

So his conversation sometimes turns towards anger, but Smith keeps cool. He finds indirect ways to express what's bothering him. He lets us figure for ourselves that the customers alarmed by his dancing were white. He doesn't cite studies that show that doctors are likely to discount the concerns of black women when his wife's pregnancy goes awry. He detaches himself from the story, focused on her determination to save herself and their child while the professionals tell her "It's All in Your Head" (9). He gets a "Gold Star" from onlookers for being such a good dad, leaving unspoken the stereotype of the absentee black father (72). (For a white man's perspective on a black father, see my poem Behind Prejudice, written before I saw Smith's book.)

Smith channels anger at the way things are into his anxiety for the way things will be for his children. In line at the grocery store, he hears a white woman denounce a black athlete who knelt during the national anthem, blatant disrespect that would get him killed in some places, she says, approval implied, before she tells Smith how cute his infant son is. Thanking her, Smith silently asks his son, will she or someone like her, encountering you years from now, forget you were ever this boy and make you into something you aren't ("Your National Anthem" p.22-3)? Dispassionate lists of medical history "For the Doctor's Records" morph into spiritual anxieties: I run four times a week / but usually it's away from something and another black boy was killed by police, and, I haven't cried in a long time (66). Teaching his kids to marvel at the 17-year cicadas, he's suddenly disturbed to think about the society his adult children will live in the next time the cicadas come "Above Ground" (84).

Telling about his visit to a Confederate memorial (research for his book How the Word is Passed), he imagines what it would feel like to fall asleep in my home, to wake up, and to find my children gone, "When Standing in a Cabin at the Whitney Plantation" (102). The story draws extra power from all we've heard about the delight, hopes, and fears poured into his children.

Maybe it's just my love of language, but Smith's best moments of our time together were his dissections of language itself. In "Nomenclature," he explores his mother-in-law's native language Igbo, in which subtle changes of inflection turn sight into love (34). Putting a child to bed in "Ars Poetica" he explains that poems can be about anything -- a lamp, a door, Pluto. POEMS ARE INSIDE OF ME? the child asks, lifting his shirt to see the poetry in himself. They are, his father says (82), which seems to me like a huge blessing. Most of all, I love what Smith does with "Punctuation," demonstrations of how a little mark can change a meaning,

There is something in your eyes I can't get out.
There is something in your eyes; I can't get out.

 I am trying to help
  or
 I am trying to run away

each example better, deeper, more sorrowful than the last (96).

I enjoyed our time together, and I revisit it often. Can't wait for the next time.