With Feathers April 13, 2007

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul
Emily Dickinson

“Blog” – an abbreviation for web-log. It also reminds me of the sound someone makes losing their lunch, and the internet has become a great place for people to spew out the contents of their minds. Some of what we read is worth the time it takes to find it and some isn’t. Why add to what’s already out there?

Maybe I have something to say that’s both worth saying and reading. I hope so - - - and this whole endeavor is an exercise in hope. The Scriptures of my faith encourage people to be ready to give an account of the hope that is within them (I Peter 3:15). Wow – referring to the Bible, that’s pretty pious and with that I’ve probably lost some of you, but I hope you hang on (there’s that word “hope” again).

I am a person of faith, Christian faith. In fact, I am ordained in The United Methodist Church and am pastor of a congregation in Duluth, Minnesota. Here’s another check out point for some of you.

Still reading? Thanks. While I am a Christian and a pastor I think I may have some unique ways of looking at life and faith. This past summer, for instance, I read The Dhammapada and E.A. Burtt (ed.), Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha after reading Marcus Borg’s Jesus and Buddha: the parallel sayings. Currently I facilitate an interfaith book group in Duluth. We are reading together works of fiction that have an interfaith or intercultural dimension. We recently finished Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I thoroughly enjoyed that book. My church graciously gives me time to teach a class in bioethics at a local college (I have a Ph.D. in religious ethics) and I recently worked The Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen and a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a lecture. Maybe I have something different to say, something worth taking time to read, a fresh angle, a different perspective.

This will be an exercise in hope. My friend, author Brent Olson, entitled one of his books Still Whistling. In it he writes, “every now and then, unreasonable optimism and irrational defiance is the only sane response to a situation completely out of our control.” Whistling is an act of defiance and optimism. In With Feathers I am whistling my own hopeful tune. Maybe a dance will break out.

By the way, my favorite definition of hope, along with Emily Dickinson’s, is Anne Lamott’s. Hope is “about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is stronger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us” (Plan B). I love this, but it is difficult to share in a sermon – at least unedited. I believe Anne and hope that our conversation sheds a little light and creates a little love. The grim, bleak stuff seems to arrive of its own accord.

I’m taking my title from Emily Dickinson and perhaps it is only fitting that I give her the last word (or next to last word).

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.

I guess I really am a hopeful person, feathers and all.

David