tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6511842004150321592024-02-07T16:11:47.008-05:00With Faith and With FeathersDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.comBlogger274125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-9893036502098261182021-11-05T17:45:00.001-05:002021-11-09T14:26:35.811-05:00Council of Bishops Devotion for November 4, 2021<p>Psalm 127 (NIV)</p><p>1 Unless the Lord builds the house,</p><p> the builders labor in vain.</p><p>Unless the Lord watches over the city,</p><p> the guards stand watch in vain.</p><p>2 In vain you rise early</p><p> and stay up late,</p><p>toiling for food to eat—</p><p> for he grants sleep to[a] those he loves.</p><p>3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,</p><p> offspring a reward from him.</p><p>4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior</p><p> are children born in one’s youth.</p><p>5 Blessed is the man</p><p> whose quiver is full of them.</p><p>They will not be put to shame</p><p> when they contend with their opponents in court.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Again, good morning, or good day, or good evening friends. It is good to be together. Psalm 127 upon which I was asked to reflect this morning contains wisdom and beauty. And the Psalmist, let’s call him David, for it is to David that many of the psalms have been traditionally attributed, and, besides I kind of like the name, the psalmist David, seemed to know something about the cadences of preaching.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can’t you just hear the opening verse of the psalm? Unless the Lord builds the house… Unless the Lord builds the house… Unless the Lord builds the house - - - the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city… Unless the Lord watches over the city… Unless the Lord watches over the city - - - the guards stand watch in vain. Yes, David knew something of the cadences of preaching.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Psalm 127, wise and beautiful, also has its challenges. Verse 3 is often translated “sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord.” As the father of one son and two daughters, all strong adults, my two strong daughters would not resonate with the privileging of sons. And even the sense that children are a reward comes across as painful and callous to couples who though deeply desiring children are not able to conceive. One of my strong adult daughters is a physician who specializes in women’s medicine and she hears such pain in her work. If we must not ignore the pain of the childless, neither should we ignore our concern for a “more is better” theology related to children when, in our world, we struggle to feed people, and the impact of human related climate change is enormous. Every child is a gift, and more is not necessarily better.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That brings us to the doorstep of what may be the deepest challenge in this psalm, a theological and spiritual challenge. “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.” The latter part can also be translated, “he provides for those he loves while they sleep.”</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The theological and spiritual challenge is this, distinguishing between fatalism and providential grace. How do we traverse the razor’s edge , walk the fine line here?</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the course of my pastoral ministry I met a young woman who was wondering if perhaps God was calling her into ordained ministry. She explored schooling options, discussed possibilities frequently, but was so afraid that she might make a misstep, so concerned that this might not be God’s will, that she was essentially paralyzed. No applications were ever completed. No campus visits made. No letters of inquiry sent. Years later, I ran into her and she had gone into education. That may have been the best place for her, and I hope she felt that she was living out a calling of God in her life, but there remained a certain sad regret. Had she missed something?</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We are also aware of friends for whom the Wesleyan encouragement to do all the good you can means to jump from action to action to action with barely time to breathe. There is always another Bible study to organize, another food drive to lead, another consciousness-raising event to attend, another march for justice in which to participate.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unless the Lord builds the house. So do we wait until we have blueprints signed by the architect God, and duly notarized, before we ever act? I don’t think so. Nor should we be so busy with all the good that can be done, that we never stop to ask if this is the good I can best be involved with right now. There is always more good to do than any of us can do.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In posing a theological and spiritual challenge to us, the psalmist, let’s continue to call him David, challenges us to grapple with the need to balance deep prayer and thinking with action. Unless the Lord builds the house, yes, but sometimes we are not sure just what the floor plan is, and it makes sense to start to build. Unless the Lord watches over the city, but we don’t necessarily have the watchlist from Sinai, and we still need to post the guards. Thought, prayer, discernment, action, tentative steps and further reflection – this is the dance of following Jesus.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And if something fails, do we simply say, “God must not have built it”? I don’t think so. Perhaps we missed a step in our building process, or perhaps the time has come to build something new. If in the coming years the streams of Wesleyan Christianity that came together in 1968 to form The United Methodist Church diverge in some way, do we say, “God must not have built it?” No! We praise God for the good we have done, the lives transformed, the justice done, the hungry fed, the lost redeemed, the lonely welcomed, and we ask about what God might be doing next. And we ask how we can join God in God’s creative building work. You see, even when we may misstep, God is a God who is always beginning again. We are encouraged to live with a deep humility knowing that sometimes we had the blueprint upside down. We are encouraged to live with a deep trust that what we do matters.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The theologian Nicholas Wolterstroff once wrote these marvelous lines: “in the eschatological image of the city we have the assurance that our efforts to make these present cities of ours humane places in which to live… will, by the way of the mysterious patterns of history, eventually provide tiles and timbers for a city of delight” (<u>Until Justice and Peace Embrace</u>, 140). We have work to do, tiles to lay, timbers to cut and stack, and when we place the tiles in the wrong place, we trust that God might still use them in some way we cannot yet imagine in God’s creative building work.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That brings me to the heart of this psalm. The heart of this psalm is not setting before us the quandary of the relationship between the action of God in providential grace and our human action, though it is part of the psalm, the heart of this psalm is grace. “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for God grants sleep to those God loves.” It is a tricky business, this dance with God praying, thinking, discerning, acting, reflecting. Don’t be anxious. It seems to me Jesus says that more than once. Don’t be anxious, don’t be afraid, don’t let your hearts be troubled. This doesn’t mean we don’t let ourselves get uncomfortable, as our anti-racism work demands, and in sermons I preached at my annual conferences this past year I said, “God’s grace is found in increasing our capacity for discomfort.” The discomfort of grace is always surrounded by the grace that says “you can do this hard thing” and “there is always the room for refreshment.”</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Stephen Mitchell is a poet who often works to translate or render poems into English that were not originally written in English. He has worked with the psalms, and in his introduction to his work<u> A Book of Psalms</u>, Mitchell writes that the dominant theme of the greatest psalms is “a rapturous praise, a deep, exuberant gratitude for being here.” Grace and gratitude. Turn Psalm 127 just a bit. Unless the Lord builds a house the builders labor in vain - - - Why should I then work? Turn: Unless the Lord builds a house the builders labor in vain - - - I have meaningful work to do, but it is not all up to me. We have meaningful work to do, but the fate of God’s work in the world is not all up to us. We can be less anxious. Mitchell renders Psalm 127:2b this way: “he gives joy to those who love him and blesses them with peace.” Grace.</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Friends, this is an anxious time, in our church, in our world, in our lives, in our work. In this time may we know that God’s grace in Jesus Christ surrounds our action, and that we, in grace, continue to be invited into this dance of prayer, thought, action, reflection, next steps, missteps, recalibrations, and that God uses our efforts to provide tiles and timbers for a city of delight. May such grace surround us, overflow us, flow through us, and give us a measure of joy and peace. Let us pray.</p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-33632559235501737092017-04-21T16:01:00.003-05:002017-04-21T16:01:18.308-05:00A New Song<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“Confronting
Michigan’s Climate Change”</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>15<sup>th</sup>
Annual Keep Making Peace Conference<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Saturday April 1,
2017</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
I
am pleased to be here with you today.
Thank you for this invitation.
This is your 15<sup>th</sup> annual “Keep Making Peace” conference, and
we know that the call to be peacemakers is deeply rooted in our Christian
faith, as it is in many other religious traditions. We are people who carry with us the image of beating
swords into plowshares, and who hear the echo of the words of Jesus, “blessed
are the peacemakers.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
As
a United Methodist bishop, I am deeply rooted and grounded in my faith. I am also someone who grew up in the popular
culture of my day. I know movies and
television and music, and sometimes find that as I am preparing to speak, the
jukebox of my brain reminds me of songs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Here
are some songs that might fit today’s topic, “Confronting Michigan’s Climate
Change”: “Heatwave” (a good Motown song), “Too Hot,” or if you want to reach
back long ago, and among the music I love is jazz, there is the Fletcher
Henderson song, “Hotter Than ‘Ell.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
With
only a slight pun intended, climate change remains a hot topic. Just this week the president signed executive
orders rolling back portions of the previous administration’s clean energy
plan. Exxon-Mobile issued a statement in
favor of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Climate change has become deeply politicized in the United States. In her recent and highly-regarded book about
the political landscape in the United States <u>Strangers in Their Own Land</u>,
sociologist Arlie Hochschild writes, “politics is the single biggest factor in
determining views on climate change” (7).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
I
have been asked to provide a United Methodist Church perspective on climate
change. While I will be referring to a
number of our denominational statements, I want you to know that some of what I
am going to say is simply this United Methodist’s perspective on climate
change. My perspectives are rooted in my
denominational tradition, but also in the wider Christian tradition – making
use of Scripture and reason and experience.
Though this is a hot political topic, I want to focus on the spiritual
dimension. To be sure, the spiritual,
the moral and the political overlap. My
Ph.D. dissertation in Christian ethics focused on theology, ethics and
democratic political theory. The
spiritual, the moral and the political overlap, and my focus is on the
spiritual and moral, though the political cannot be simply bracketed off.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
In
Psalm 134, the writer poses the question, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in
a foreign land?” (7). It is a heart-cry
from a people in exile. How do we sing
the songs of God in a strange place, or perhaps in a strange time? I desire to speak of the spiritual and moral
dimensions of climate change when speaking about climate change and the
environment have become embroiled in partisan politics. I am 57, and I remember a time when the
environment was not a partisan issue. Ad
campaigns ran on television raising awareness of pollution and of the human
impact on the environment. Richard Nixon
was president when the Environmental Protection Agency was formed. The times have changed and become
strange. How might we sing the songs of
God in this strange time? How do we move
the songs currently be sung about climate change in a different direction? The prevailing songs have become songs about
jobs versus the environment, about human economic well-being above the
well-being of owls. Arlie Hochschild
writes poignantly about the people of Louisiana whose livelihoods seem to
depend upon the very industries that have polluted the bayous that the people
love.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
We
need a new song, rooted in spirituality.
For the rest of my time I want to develop two themes that I think are an
important part of a spirituality as we confront climate change, two themes that
are an important part of the song of God for our time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
The
first is probably quite uncontroversial among we who have gathered here
today. Care for creation is an important
element in our spiritual lives. If an
important indicator of one’s spiritual condition is the fruit one’s life
produces, one important such fruit is caring for creation. As United Methodists we know the mission of
the Church: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the
world. We have not spent enough time on
digging deeper into what we mean by disciples, or what disciples look
like. I think creation care is integral
to discipleship. Being a disciple is
about growing in God’s love, about enlarging our hearts, widening the circles
of compassion to include more people and to include creation itself. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The theme of
caring for creation can be found throughout the Christian Scriptures, from the
first book to the last. The beautiful
image from Genesis 2 is that of the human put in the garden to “till it and
keep it.” In Revelation 11 there is an
image of warning, those who destroy the earth will themselves be
destroyed. Years later the image of St.
Francis inspired Christians to care for the good of creation, of “all creature
of our God and King.” Caring for
creation is a prominent theme within The United Methodist Church. Here I am going to regale you with quotations
from United Methodist documents that remind us that care for creation is an
integral part of Christian spirituality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
In
2009, The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church issued a pastoral
letter and accompanying document entitled, “God’s Renewed Creation: Call to
Hope and Action” in which the bishops stated: <i>We believe personal and social holiness must never be separated…. We practice social holiness by caring for
God’s people and God’s planet and by challenging those whose policies and
practices neglect the poor, exploit the weak, hasten global warming, and produce
more weapons.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Our
United Methodist Social Principles state: <i>All
creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and
abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals,
energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved
because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human
beings. God has granted us stewardship
of creation.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Elaborating
upon the UMC Social Principles, are resolutions which continue to emphasize the
importance of care for creation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
“Caring
for Creation: A Call to Stewardship and Justice”: <i>Our covenant with God calls us to steward, protect, and defend God’s
creation…. The story of the garden
(Genesis 2) reveals the complete and harmonious interrelatedness of creation,
with humankind designed to relate to God, one another, and the rest of the
created order.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
“Environmental
Health”: <i>God gave us a good and complete
earth. We must care for that which is
around us in order that life can flourish.
We are meant to live in a way that acknowledges the interdependence of
human beings not just on one another but the world around us, the mountains and
lilies, the sparrows and the tall pines which all speaks of the nature of God.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i> </i>One final statement – “Climate
Change and the Church’s Response”: <i>The
natural world is a loving gift from God, the creator and sustainer, who has
entrusted it in all its fullness to the care of all people for God’s glory and
to the good of all life on earth now and in generations to come.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
One
has to turn a bit of a spiritual blind eye to not see how important the theme
of caring for creation is in Christian faith and spirituality. One task of the church in our time, as we
confront climate change here in Michigan and around the world, is to remind
each other of a shared concern within the Christian tradition of caring for
creation. Perhaps such conversations can
help move us beyond thinking of climate change and environmental care in
narrowly partisan terms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
One
has to turn a bit of a spiritual blind eye to not see how important the theme
of caring for creation is in Christian faith and spirituality – and that brings
me to my second theme that is an important part of the spirituality of
confronting climate change, vision. How
often in our Scriptures is the metaphor of vision used to describe the
spiritual journey – blindness as missing the mark and sight as God’s healing
grace made real. If we are to sing a new
song, God’s song in this strange time, we need new sight, new vision. I am sorry for mixing my sensory metaphors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Part
of our spiritual problem in confronting climate change is not simply a lack of
care, but it is a lack of sight, and often even a willful blindness. Part of the reason some may not care as
deeply about the environment is that they fail to see the interrelatedness of
creation, the interdependence of human beings not just on one another but the
world around us, the mountains and lilies, the sparrows and the tall pines
which all speaks of the nature of God.
Certainly part of the reason some may not care about climate change is
the failure to see – to see its reality, though study after study confirms that
something is happening to our climate, and our own experience tells us the same
– three years in a row of record average warm temperatures. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Let’s admit that
seeing something as abstract as climate change can be difficult. Let’s admit that a part of the reason some
don’t want to see is that this is a difficult truth. So much of our economy, our “way of life” is
intertwined with the use of fossil fuels, and we are concerned for what change
might mean. Might we even admit, among
those of us gathered here at a conference on climate change, that there is a
part of us, something inside of us, that wishes it were not true, that climate
change isn’t happening and isn’t the result of our activity?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In the recently
published book, <u>Days of Awe and Wonder</u>, a collection of writings,
speeches and interviews of Marcus Borg, Borg reminds us of the rich roots of
the Christian concept of repentance.
Looking at the roots of the Greek word translated “repentance” Borg
asserts that <i>“to repent” means “to go
beyond the mind that you have” </i>(129).
A Christian spirituality confronting climate change is a spirituality
that encourages us all to go beyond the mind that we have. It seeks to sing a new song in this strange
and difficult time, a song that celebrates the interconnectedness of all
creation and roots our care for it in that celebration. We need a new song that acknowledges our
connections with each other as human beings and our willingness to do the
difficult work of persuasion, not from the heights of our own
self-righteousness but in recognition that we are all in the process of going
beyond the minds that we have in some way or another. Persuasion is not all the work we have to
do. There is political work, for
instance, but the work of persuasion is vitally important. We need a new song that always sings us
forward to God’s new creation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
One form of song
is poetry, and as part of the work of helping us go beyond the minds that we
have, I would like to share with you, in closing, a poem by Denise Levertov –
“Tragic Error.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The earth is the
Lord’s, </i>we gabbled,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>and the fullness
thereof – <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
while we looted and pillaged, claiming indemnity:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>the fullness thereof<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>given over to us, to
our use – <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
while we preened ourselves, sure of our power,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
willful or ignorant, through the centuries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Miswritten, misread, that charge:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>subdue</i> was the
false, the misplaced word in the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Surely we were to have been<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Surely our task<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
was to have been<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to love the earth,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to <i>dress and keep it</i>
like Eden’s garden.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>That </i>would have
been our <i>dominion:</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to be those cells of earth’s body that could<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
perceive and imagine, could bring the planet<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
into the haven it is to be known,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(as the eye blesses the hand, perceiving<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
its form and the work it can do).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Can
we sing a song that helps us see ourselves as those cells of the earth’s body
that perceive and imagine, that dresses and keeps created by God for just such tasks,
and out of this new mind work to confront climate change? May it be so.<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-91658527483250474772017-04-21T15:52:00.002-05:002017-04-21T16:04:27.194-05:00And a Rock Feels No Pain<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<b>Ann Arbor District
Leadership Training</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>February 25, 2017<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
I
am really pleased to be here with you today.
I think this is my first official visit to the Ann Arbor District as
your bishop, though I have been in the district for a couple of events – a
chicken dinner, and a Trustees meeting at Adrian College. I am grateful to your district
superintendent, Mark Spaw, for inviting me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
In
issuing this invitation, Mark did not give me a specific topic to speak about,
except to tell me that the day was about relationships - building relationships
that build churches. You have a
wonderful selection of workshops to follow.
In this keynote address I want to speak about relationships, focusing on
the capacities important for building relationships of all kinds – within our
congregations, with those who are unchurched or de-churched, with those whose
backgrounds are different from ours. Not
knowing what is to follow, I may repeat some of what my fellow presenters are
also sharing, but that is o.k.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
I
like to find titles for sermons and presentations, and this is more a presentation
than a sermon, by creatively appropriate phrases from popular culture. Now that I am in my later fifties (57) I have
come to realize that many of my popular culture references are dated, and
partly that’s just because I’ve lived with some songs or movies or television
shows longer than I have with others. I
remember “Book ‘em Danno” from Hawaii Five-O from the 1970s. I have not seen its recent incarnation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
All
that is a long way of getting to the title of my remarks today: “And a rock
feels no pain.” Anyone know where that
comes from? It is a Paul Simon song, recorded
by Simon and Garfunkel, “I Am a Rock.”
It is a wonderful song that you can probably find on Spotify, Pandora,
Amazon Prime, Apple Music, etc. I still
have a vinyl copy! The song gets me
thinking about emotions, about feelings.
The singer suggests that we can avoid painful feelings by walling
ourselves off from emotions. It
highlights an important truth, working with emotions can be difficult. I want to acknowledge that. I also want to say that working with emotions
is critical to building the kind of relationships that build churches. We call it emotional intelligence and that’s
what I want to speak about this morning, emotional intelligence for church
leaders who want to build relationships that build churches.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
When
I was elected a bishop last summer I had just begun my twelfth year as pastor
of First United Methodist Church in Duluth, Minnesota. I began my ministry there like most of us
United Methodist pastors do in the middle of the summer. When I arrived at First UMC, Duluth they had
a summer worship schedule, 10 a.m. Sunday morning worship. The pattern, though, was that come September,
the church would return to two worship services – one more traditional and one
more contemporary. Within my first few
days at the church I was asked what our fall worship schedule would be
like. Would we return to two worship
services or have only one? There were people with opinions on both sides. After speaking with staff and some key
leaders, thinking and praying, it seemed to me that the wise decision was to
continue with two worship services come September. I wrote a newsletter piece explaining my
reasoning. The Sunday following the
publication of that newsletter, a woman named Dorothy, since deceased but then
a long-time member of the congregation approached me in the greeting line
following worship, shook my hand, looked me straight in the eye, and shared her
disappointment about my decision. She
ended by saying “I thought you were going to unite us.” I can still feel the mixture of sadness and
anxiety I felt that morning as I tell the story. I listened and thanked Dorothy for sharing
her view.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Hear
this story: <b><i><sup>2 </sup></i></b><i>Early in the morning he came again to the
temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach
them. <b><sup>3 </sup></b>The scribes and the Pharisees brought a
woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of
them, <b><sup>4 </sup></b>they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was
caught in the very act of committing adultery. <b><sup>5 </sup></b>Now
in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” <b><sup>6 </sup></b>They
said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against
him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. <b><sup>7 </sup></b>When
they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone
among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” <b><sup>8 </sup></b>And
once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. <b><sup>9 </sup></b>When
they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus
was left alone with the woman standing before him. <b><sup>10 </sup></b>Jesus
straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?” <b><sup>11 </sup></b>She said, “No one, sir.”<sup> </sup> And
Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin
again.” (John 8)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Jesus’
dilemma is more fraught than mine. I may
have felt like a rock had been thrown at me that August Sunday morning as
Dorothy left church, but no one was going to lose their life. Jesus is put in an anxious situation. He takes time, bending to write on the
ground. He reads some of the
undercurrent, that some folks want to put him in a corner. He responds non-anxiously and defuses the
situation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A
rock feels no pain, but human beings do, and if we are to be fully human, and
if we are to build relationships that build churches, we need to care for our
emotions with intelligence. Emotional
intelligence is crucial for building relationships that build churches. I want to say a word about that
connection between relationships and mission. Sometimes I hear voices in
the church speak as if there is a dichotomy between relationships and
mission. We hear people say that the
problem with the church is that we are too inwardly focused and the answer is
to be more missionally focused. There is
truth in that critique, but we need to take great care. In some work I did a few years ago on
conflict style, I was given an inventory to help me understand my own conflict
style in terms of task and relationship.
Was I a more task-oriented person, we might say “mission-focused,” or a
more relationship-oriented person? I was
smack dab in the middle, and I happen to think that’s not a bad place to be.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
mission of the church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world. In their
book <u>The Emotional Intelligence of Jesus</u>, Roy Oswald and Arland
Jacobson, with whom it has been my privilege to be in workshops with over the
years, write, “the end product needs to remain the spiritual transformation of
members” (126). We must never lose sight
of our mission, and it is true that sometimes we do just that. It is also true that sometimes that focus on
mission will mean letting some people go, wishing them well as they look for
another faith community that helps them along better. That is often painful. Yet mission is also about relationships,
about people. Making disciples of Jesus
Christ is about creating the kind of community with its web of relationships
that fosters deep transformation of persons in the love of God and by the power
of the Spirit. Oswald and Jacobson are
right when they say: <i>Transformed people
naturally seek justice, mercy and peace in the world. They live by forgiveness and are able to
forgive others. They continually work at
loving their enemies. </i>(126-127) I
think they are also right when they say: <i>Without
a positive relational climate within a congregation, a superior theology or
dynamic vision will produce few results.
Once members of a congregation create a warm, supportive, and caring
climate, however, they can effectively develop a common understanding of who
they are as Christians and embrace an exciting vision of where they ought to go
next </i>(105). I would only caution
that all three of these things need to be worked on simultaneously – relational
climate, theology, vision.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Relationships
matter, and they matter to the mission of the church. Emotional intelligence is critical for
creating healthy relationships. I want
to spend the next few minutes exploring in more depth some of the dimensions of
emotional intelligence as crucial for relationships. I will do that by linking stories, Scriptures
and citations. Allow me, though, just a
couple of words about bringing the idea of emotional intelligence into the
conversation about the church. I first
encountered the concept of emotional intelligence through the work of Harvard
psychologist and author Daniel Goleman.
He was not writing for a church context, but what he wrote about
emotional intelligence has implications not only for leadership, but for
spirituality. While a district
superintendent, I attended a workshop lead by Roy Oswald on emotional intelligence
and church leadership. Again, I was
impressed by the spiritual dimensions.
Oswald and Jacobson make a strong case in their book <u>The Emotional
Intelligence of Jesus: relational smarts for religious leaders</u> that Jesus’
teaching and ministry resonates with this more recent work on emotional intelligence. Jesus responds non-anxiously to critics. Jesus evokes faith in people, leading to
their healing. Jesus reads emotionally
fraught situations well. Jesus is able
to manage his own inner feelings and makes time for retreat. Jesus’ teaching on caring, forgiveness, and
loving even one’s enemies have deep dimensions of emotional intelligence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So
what’s emotional intelligence about?
Among other things it is about self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness, and relationship management.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Self
–Awareness. <b><i>7 </i></b><i>“Do not judge, so
that you may not be judged. <b><sup>2 </sup></b>For with the judgment
you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you
get. <b><sup>3 </sup></b>Why do you see the speck in your
neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? <b><sup>4 </sup></b>Or
how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’
while the log is in your own eye? <b><sup>5 </sup></b>You hypocrite,
first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take
the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
</i>(Matthew 7) This is a strong
call for self-awareness, the core of emotional intelligence. If we are not aware of our own inner lives,
our own emotional lives, how can we manage them? How can we be wisely aware of the emotions
around us?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
When
Dorothy said to me, ‘I thought you came to unite us,” it felt pretty awful. Often, defense responses kick in pretty
quickly, and I know how to “defend” myself.
At that moment, though, I was able to feel what was going on inside of
me, and simply stay connected. There
were others in the congregation who had really been connected with my
predecessor. They had developed a warm
relationship with him. He was someone
who was good at preaching about contemporary issues in light of the
Gospel. I often make those same
connections, as you may have seen if you read my essay on immigration and
refugees. I come at things in my own
way. I am a trained ethicist with a
Ph.D. My dissertation was on Christian
social ethics. My way was different, and
some of the folks at First UMC Duluth were disappointed, and I sometimes heard
about that through the grapevine. It did
not feel very good.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A
rock feels no pain, but if we are to be more fully human, we not only feel, but
we are aware of those feelings, even when they are painful. The cornerstone of emotional intelligence is
self-awareness, being aware of the ache, the sorrow, the grief, the joy, the
delight that is in our hearts and souls.
There are many spiritual disciplines in our faith tradition that
encourage such self-awareness: contemplative prayer, lectio divina, spiritual
journaling. Often we affirm that as we
are clearer about listening within, we are also better able to discern the
movement of God’s Spirit within.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Emotional
intelligence begins with self-awareness, but it does not end there. Knowing what we are feeling does not
automatically tell us what to do with our feelings. Working with those feelings is also a part of
emotional intelligence – self-management.
When Dorothy offered her criticism, I was able to hang in there, even
though I was feeling anxious and hurt, and just listen. Over time, Dorothy, who could be a rather
difficult woman, Dorothy and I developed a caring relationship. Dorothy eventually lost her sight, a
tremendous blow to a very bright woman who loved to read and think and
discuss. We were able to have some deep
conversations about why she was still around, because she wondered that. When Dorothy died, I officiated at her
funeral and told the story of our early encounter and of how we had worked
through that initial bump in our relationship.
With others at First UMC, Duluth who may not have always been delighted
with how I was their pastor, at least at first, I was able, though hurt by what
I heard, to hang in there with them.
Sometimes issues were addressed directly, and sometimes I just kept on
caring and relating and the relationships grew.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Self-management
has to do with adaptability, positivity, assertiveness, and self-control. I
think it is about being able to be non-anxious, to be self-differentiated while
staying connected, to use the words of family systems theory. I am sharing some helpful stories with
you. You need to know that I continue to
grow here. I have my moments of
reactivity. In responding rather than reacting, there is a
spirituality here. Jesus, put in a
difficult situation where a woman has been caught in adultery, manages whatever
is going on inside, pauses before responding.
One of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is “self-control.” Such self-control is a spiritual discipline
all its own, strengthened as it is practiced.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A
favorite author of mine is Parker Palmer, and one of my favorite essays of his
is “Leading from Within” (<u>Let Your Life Speak</u>). <i>We have
places of fear inside of us, but we have other places as well – places with
names like trust and hope and faith. We
can choose to lead from one of </i>those <i>places,
to stand on ground that is not riddled with the fault lines of fear, to move
toward others from a place of promise instead of anxiety </i>(94). That speaks to me about self-management as part
of emotional intelligence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Self-awareness
as the critical dimension of emotional intelligence, is also meant to help us
be more socially aware, to read the emotions in a group or in a room. Social awareness has to do with empathy and
also with awareness of group dynamics. I
know that the leadership author Edwin Friedman cautions against being too
empathetic as a leader. He would even
have us get rid of the word. His point
is well-taken, if exaggerated. As
leaders we need to understand the feelings of others, even when we know that
decisions that need to be made for the sake of the mission of the church will
be painful for some.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Social
awareness is gained through practice, through listening and reflecting with
others. Elements of it are also
strengthened through the discipline of reading.
A few months ago I was reading an essay in <i>The New Yorker</i> about leadership.
It mentioned all the kinds of workshops and books that were out there,
and how many trendy leadership ideas were not always helpful. Then the essay introduced a book by a woman
named Elizabeth Samet. She is a
professor of English at West Point, and her book is an anthology of writing on
leadership. Most of the essays or pieces
come not from the social sciences but from the humanities – essays, poems,
stories. John Wesley was a believer in
reading, and I think we have underestimated the power of literature to deepen
our capacities for empathy and understanding.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A
final dimension of emotional intelligence I want to touch on before wrapping up
is relationship management, which has to do with conflict transformation,
understanding influence, with team building and with developing resilience. Relationship management builds on the other
dimensions of emotional intelligence.
Let’s take conflict transformation.
We ask who am I and what am I feeling in this situation? What other feelings are present and what are
some of the dynamics? How can I best
work with my own feelings in this situation to move it forward, to build up the
relationships, to increase relational resiliency?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Over
the years, I have had the privilege to read about and reflect on leadership in
the church, even as I have practiced it.
I continue to be impressed by the overlap between various ideas about leadership,
the work that has been done on emotional intelligence, and Christian faith –
spirituality and theology. I want to
make some of those connections here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
There
is a great deal of discussion about adaptive leadership coming out of the work
of Ron Heifetz at Harvard. Adaptive
problems are issues that require learning both to help us understand the
problem and then respond to it. Heifetz
writes about the need to be learning leaders and the need for us, as leaders,
to create a holding environment where organizational learning can take
place. A helpful holding environment is
one in which we monitor the temperature, doing what we can to facilitate
learning, while not overwhelming people in the process. It seems to me that adaptive leadership
requires emotional intelligence – self-awareness, self-control,
social awareness, relationship management.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Other
works on leadership build directly on emotional intelligence research: primal
leadership and resonant leadership.
Moving organizations forward has much to do with the emotional
environment of the organization and the relational webs created.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There
are, for me, deep resonances between work on emotional intelligence,
relationships, leadership and Christian theology. The God we know in Jesus Christ is often
described in relational terms – as a God who loves, forgives, is compassionate,
merciful. We can engage in wonderful
theological debates about how such terms apply to God, but there is an important
core truth here about the God we worship and in whose service we find perfect
freedom. As human beings, created in the
image of God, we are created for relationship with God and with others. We have capacities for emotional
intelligence, and we can grow in those capacities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let
me conclude with a final quote from Oswald and Jacobson, and then we should
have time for some questions. <i>While everyone wants churches to grow,
increase giving, and function more smoothly, the real goal of the church
experience is an on-going process of conversion toward a more deeply
interiorized, lived-out, compassionate, generous, grateful, and grace-filled
Christian life. When this is realized,
pastors are energized and congregations are energized. Such congregations matter in the lives of
their communities.</i> (159)<o:p></o:p></div>
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When
we do the kind of spiritual work to build emotional intelligence and through
that deepen relationships, we can become more compassionate, generous, grateful
and grace-filled followers of Jesus Christ, disciples who transform the world
and who with joy invite others to this transformational journey.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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Thank you.<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-46933964285032620022016-11-05T13:58:00.002-05:002016-11-05T13:58:55.065-05:00Faith StoryAt the recent meeting of the Council of Bishops, my first, those of us newly elected to the episcopacy were invited to share a brief version of our faith story. This is what I shared.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Bishop David Alan
Bard<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Faith Story for
Council of Bishops<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Tell me, what is it
you plan to do<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>with your one wild and
precious life? <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mary
Oliver, “The Summer Day”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The words belong
to Mary Oliver, but I have heard the question as a whisper of God’s love, the
voice of God’s Spirit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I heard them
first, I think, as a thirteen year old boy at Lester Park United Methodist
Church in Duluth, Minnesota – a thirteen year-old struggling with all those
lovely junior high school issues, but also with a family with parents whose
relationship was tense, and who disagreed, among other things, about
church. My father was not a church
person, and never would be. My mother
walked us to church when she could. My
eighth grade Sunday School teacher talked about God’s love for me in Jesus
Christ, and her own care and compassion made her speech more real. <i>Tell
me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?</i> I gave my life to Jesus. I accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior. I was born again. I was saved.
I said “yes” to the God who was saying “yes” to me in Jesus Christ.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The road from that
moment into ordained ministry was not a straight one. I went from a passionate intensity of a Jesus
People church and street witnessing to wanderings, wonderings, questions,
doubts, ponderings in my college years as I was discovering philosophers,
psychologists, poets, novelists and musicians – William James and Abraham
Maslow, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Bob
Dylan and John Coltrane. The Gospel of
John tells us that the Word became flesh, and for me the Word also became words
and notes and an important part of the story of my life and faith is the story
of who I have read and what I have listened to.
I was discovering a wider world – a world that was both beautiful and brutal,
marked by tenderness and marred by tragedy.
<i>Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?</i>
I needed a faith that was thoughtful – engaging a developing mind,
compassionate – engaging a broken world, and passionate – engaging a developing
heart and soul. Through it all, my
United Methodist Church provided space for grace.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I went to seminary
not following a call to ordained ministry, but instead in response to that
whispered word <i>Tell me, what is it you
plan to do with your one wild and precious life?</i> I went in search of a thoughtful,
compassionate, and passionate faith.
Julie and I met in college and were married after my first year in
seminary. I remember the version of the <i>Prepare</i> inventory we took. “In my love for my partner, I understand more
deeply the phrase, ‘God is love.’”
Yes. The Word became flesh, and
became flesh again in that relationship, and with the birth of our three
children David, Beth and Sarah. Seminary
also added new conversation partners: Tillich and Niebuhr and Hartshorne and
Cobb and Wesley among many others.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
At seminary, the
question came again, <i>Tell me, what is it
you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?</i> Only this time, there was a direction to it,
a call to ordained ministry. I said
“yes.” I have continued to say “yes.” I said “yes” to my first appointment by
Bishop Emerson Colaw at the edge of the United States in Roseau,
Minnesota. I said “yes” to moving to
Dallas, Texas from Roseau to pursue a Ph.D. in religious studies, with a focus
on Christian ethics at Southern Methodist University. I said “yes” to the Central Mesabi Parish on
Minnesota’s Iron Range, an appointment made by Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher
when I returned to Minnesota, new Ph.D. in hand and new conversation partners
in my mind and soul – Schubert Ogden, Joe Allen, William May, Stanley Hauerwas,
Cornel West, Wallace Stevens. I said
“yes” to Bishop John Hopkins when he asked me to be a district
superintendent. I said “yes” to Bishop
Sally Dyck when she asked me to be pastor at First United Methodist Church in
Duluth, and have continued to say “yes” as Bishop Sally and Bishop Bruce Ough
appointed me there every year thereafter.
I said “yes” to the inkling that I should offer myself for consideration
as a candidate for bishop in 2004, 2008 and now this year, though I was pretty
sure this year was going to be the last time.
I am grateful that the North Central Jurisdiction said “yes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I once wrote that
identifying my favorite poem is like identifying my favorite breath. The same could be said of my favorite
Scripture. I have come to choose I
Corinthians 16:14 – <i>Let all the you do be
done in love.</i> But then the verse
preceding has grabbed my attention. <i>Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be
courageous, be strong. Let all that you
do be done in love.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
To the whisper of
the Spirit, embracing me in love and wooing me into the future with the question:
<i>Tell me, what is it you plan to do with
your one wild and precious life?</i> that
same Spirit of God in Jesus Christ gives me the grace to respond: <i>Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be
courageous, be strong. Let all that you
do be done in love. </i>Letting all that
I do be done in love, a love with which I am loved, means acting with justice,
loving tenderly, serving others, and walking humbly with the God whose nature
and name are love.<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-67938863547646848072016-08-05T12:02:00.001-05:002016-08-05T12:29:44.475-05:00My Final "Love Letter" to First UMC, Duluth<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I thank my God every
time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for
all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until
now. I am confident of this, that the one
who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus
Christ. It is right for me to think this
way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart </i>[the last phrase can also be translated: <i>because I hold you in my heart</i>]. <b>Philippians 1:3-7a<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In his
wonderful, lovely and delightful poem “The Lanyard” former U. S. poet laureate
Billy Collins writes of himself as a boy making a lanyard for his mother at
summer camp. He compares his gifts with
what his mother has given. Here is one
comparison from the poem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Here is a breathing body and a beating
heart,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> strong legs, bones and teeth,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> and two clear eyes to read the
world, she whispered,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> and here, I said, is the lanyard I
made at camp.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then Collins ends the poem powerfully, speaking as his adult
self.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>And here, I wish to say to her now,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> is a smaller gift – not the archaic
truth<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> that you can never repay your
mother,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> but the rueful admission that when
she took<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> the two-tone lanyard from my hands,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> I was sure as a boy could be<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> that this useless, worthless thing I
wove<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> out of boredom would be enough to
make us even.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I write
these words I realize how inadequate they are for all you have given me in our
eleven years together – your time, your attention, your energy, your prayers, your
gifts in service. You have given me your
children to hold and bless and baptize.
You have given me the lives of loved ones and offered me the last word
in gratitude to God for them. You have listened as I proclaimed and
puzzled. You have given me trust. You’ve surrounded me with a community of love
and forgiveness. You have been a gift of
God’s grace to me and I have grown tremendously from such gifts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope I
have given you some things – new ways to think about faith in Jesus Christ and
some inspiration for living out that faith with joy and courage. I hope I have helped you think more
creatively, dream more imaginatively and daringly, pray more honestly and
deeply. I hope I have helped you
cultivate a Christian faith that is thoughtful, passionate and
compassionate. I hope I have painted a
compelling picture of a life of discipleship as a life of joy, genuineness,
gentleness, generosity and concern for justice.
I hope in some ways I have been a gift of God’s grace to you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet as I
reflect this time is not simply about what you have given me, though it is
significant, or what I have given you, but about how God’s grace has been made
more evident and real in what we have done together. Together we have formed a community committed
to cultivating a thoughtful, passionate and compassionate faith in Jesus
Christ. Together we have sought to live
into joy, genuineness, gentleness, generosity and justice. Together as a community we have welcomed
babies, families in all configurations, people in all their blessed diversity,
and said good-bye to good and cherished friends. We have laughed together, sang together,
prayed together, wept together, and together we have sought to be a community
of love and forgiveness for each other and for the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I will
continue to thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in
every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel
from the first day until now, and going forward. I am confident of this, that the one who began
a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus
Christ. It is right for me to think this
way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart and you hold me in your
heart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In nearly
every funeral I conduct, I share these words from May Sarton, “the people we
love are built into us.” We don’t have
to wait for someone to die to remember that.
You are a part of my life and always will be. You are built into who I am. From the bottom of my heart and the depth of
my soul, thank you.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grace and Peace,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This appeared in <u>First Family</u>, the newsletter of First United Methodist Church Duluth</div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-39434439519783840772016-06-05T18:23:00.001-05:002016-06-05T18:23:25.911-05:00Remarks for the Minnesota Conference Clergy Gathering It has been my privilege for the past couple of years to be part of a small advisory group that has met with Bishop Bruce Ough, United Methodist Bishop of the Dakotas-Minnesota Area to discuss how the Minnesota Conference could continue to discuss issues around human sexuality, inclusion and church unity in a healthy and helpful way. Bishop Ough proposed to this group that it might be helpful to schedule a special clergy session for the Minnesota Conference between General Conference and our scheduled Annual Conference meeting. Our clergy met on June 1, and while much of the day was for discussion among ourselves as a clergy community, there were times of worship and times of sharing.<div>
I was asked, prior to our open space conversations to help set the table by providing a few remarks about General Conference. I was asked not to share my opinions on what occurred so much as my experience of what happened as the General Conference worked with human sexuality, inclusion and church unity. I was honored to be asked to do this as the head of our delegation to General Conference, and the following words are what I shared:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
It was thirty
years ago this year that I was ordained an elder and became a full member of
the Minnesota Conference. We have known
each other for a long time, and been through a lot together. I really appreciate this opportunity to share
a few words with you about General Conference.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
So how did we get
to today? I have been a voting delegate
to General Conference since 2000, and I am genuinely grateful that you have
given me that opportunity. In 2000, I was one of six clergy delegates from the
Minnesota Conference among 1,000 voting delegates, the strong majority of whom
were from the United States. There were
delegates from Central Conferences, and there was translation happening, but
this was a distinct growth area.
Together those 1,000 people worked at the challenging task of
considering changes to <u>The Book of Discipline</u>, which can be submitted by
any person within The United Methodist Church, and considering changes to our <u>Book
of Resolutions</u>. It was a daunting
and time-consuming and complex task.
Many committees met late into the evening.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Fast-forward to
Portland, 2016. I was one of two clergy
voting delegates from the Minnesota Conference, now among 864 voting delegates,
about 40% of whom are from Central Conferences outside the United States. There is now simultaneous translation, though
the <i>Daily Christian Advocate</i> which
tracks daily proceedings and legislative progress is not translated. In addition to that complexity, these 864
delegates are working with parliamentary rules and procedures that sometimes
require English to English translation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Make no mistake
about it, at General Conference, as at no other place, we celebrate the
wonderful and rich diversity of our United Methodist Church, and that was true
again this year. I was moved by many
moments, times when we paid attention to the best of who we are. It was also at General Conference that we see
that our current decision-making structures are not serving us particularly
well, <b>and </b>we are reluctant to change
them. We spent more time on the Rules of
General Conference this year than in any of the previous General Conferences
I’ve attended, particularly on “Rule 44” which provided an alternative
decision-making structure, something like what we have used here when we have
structured “holy conferencing,” except that it also had a legislative
component. Rule 44 failed to pass, and it took a long time to do so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Week two, Monday
night, rumors were swirling that members of the Council of Bishops had been
meeting with persons from the “progressive” and “evangelical” “wings” of our
denomination and that there was going to be a proposal about separation coming
to General Conference. With the defeat
of Rule 44, and with the election results from the Judicial Council and
University Senate on Monday , it was clear that there would be no new space
created within our denomination around same-sex marriage or the consideration
of LGBTQ persons for ordination. Tuesday morning, Bishop Ough, newly installed
President of the Council of Bishops, stood to address the body, and began by acknowledging
our deep divisions. I began to tear up
as I anticipated he was going to say that for the rest of General Conference we
would be working on some kind of plan of separation. Instead, he ended with a call for unity and
said that the bishops were there to preside and pray. The General Conference, in a historic
gesture, called upon the bishops to do more, to lead. The next day the bishops came back with a
document asking General Conference to postpone discussion of human sexuality
legislation and proposing the formation of a commission to study the issue,
along with church unity, and offered the possibility of a special session of
General Conference. You have seen the
document that was circulated the Wednesday of General Conference, - “An
Offering For a Way Forward.” You have
seen the follow-up press release and letter from the Council of Bishops.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Whether you have
an initially favorable opinion or negative opinion, space has been created –
open space that I also pray will be Spirit space.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-12085027362979604222016-04-26T23:04:00.000-05:002016-04-26T23:04:24.949-05:00Rock 'n' Roll Heaven, II<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>If there’s a rock ‘n’
roll heaven, well you know they’ve got a hell of a band.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
Righteous Brothers<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just a
couple of days ago, I posted my reflections on some of the wonderful musicians
we have lost this year. The morning
after that post, and my linking it to Facebook and Twitter, my friend Dan
Doughty “liked” my tweet. The moment I
read Dan’s name, I knew I had forgotten to write about Glenn Frey who died
January 18. Dan is a huge <i>Eagles</i> fan, and Glenn was one of the
founding members of that group. Glenn’s
death occurred just near the death of David Bowie, so was not given all that
much media attention, but his music also touched many.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t
think you could have been a teenager in the 1970s without hearing <i>Eagles </i>music, whether you liked it or not,
and I really liked it. <i>The Eagles Their</i> <i>Greatest Hits </i>album, which I still have in vinyl, became the
highest selling album of the twentieth century when it was released in
1976. Every song was a gem – “Take It
Easy,” “Witchy Woman,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “Already Gone,” “Desperado,” “One of These
Nights,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Take It to the Limit,” “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,”
and “Best of My Love.” In high school
and college you could put this album on and sing to every last song.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Late that same
year, the group released their biggest
album, “Hotel California,” with that remarkable title track and “New Kid in
Town.” The album was an important part
of the soundtrack to my senior year in high school. Driving my old Buick LeSabre to and from work
or school, I loved hearing an <i>Eagles </i>song
play on WAKX, big wax.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Glenn Frey
wrote many of the songs, with other members of the group and was lead singer on
“Take It Easy,” “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Already Gone,” “Lyin’
Eyes,” and “New Kid in Town.” The songs
ranged from a celebration of freedom, to finding a quiet center, to feeling
alienation as the new kid in town.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So the rock
‘n’ roll heaven’s band is even richer because Glenn Frey is already gone. Yet we can be grateful for the peaceful easy
feeling his music leaves with us. Take
it easy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-47366297306360834422016-04-24T23:29:00.001-05:002016-04-26T22:39:27.648-05:00Rock 'n' Roll Heaven<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>If there’s a rock ‘n’
roll heaven, well you know they’ve got a hell of a band.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
Righteous Brothers<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2016 has
been a tough year for music lovers like me.
It’s not a dearth of good music.
There has been some wonderful new music released, among my favorites:
Lucinda Williams, <i>Ghosts of Highway 20</i>;
Bonnie Raitt, <i>Dig In Deep; </i>Mavis
Staples, <i>Livin’ On a High Note; </i> and P. J. Harvey, <i>The Hope Six Demolition Project.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> </i>What has saddened me are the
deaths of so many whose musical work has touched our lives and our world,
people whose music has been an important part of the soundtrack of our lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Beatles
disbanded before I was even a teenager, but their music was legendary. I remember hearing “I Saw Her Standing There”
on a 45 rpm belonging to an older second cousin. While singing “She was just seventeen” is a
little creepy for a man in his fifties, I still sing along at home or in the
car. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Lucy
In the Sky With Diamonds” spark creativity.
“In My Life” inspires wistful recollections of years gone by. Who worked with John, Paul, George and Ringo
to bring their musical vision to reality – producer George Martin, who died
March 8.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My feelings
about the music of David Bowie are not as ebullient as others I’ve heard speak
since his death in January.
Nevertheless, I appreciated his music a great deal. “Space Oddity,” the song about lonely space
travel made me feel less alone as a young man who sometimes felt distant from
mundane realities. “Changes” is a wonderful song about
self-transformation. “Suffragette City”
was an air guitar gem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I came
later to an appreciation of the music of Merle Haggard, died April 9. When I was in high school and college, liking
country music was anathema. Yet, you
cannot appreciate the wide spectrum of American music without appreciating a
range of country music, and Merle Haggard was a giant who had a unique way with
songs about heartbreak and living on the edge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will also
admit that I was not a follower of the music of Prince in the 1980s. As his star was rising, I was becoming a
parent, and did not have MTV – which actually played music videos back
then. It was probably about ten years
later that I really came to delight in his celebratory music and admire and
appreciate his extraordinary musicianship along with his creative contributions. I can’t sit still, unless I am driving, when
I hear “1999,” Raspberry Beret,” or “Let’s Go Crazy.” Nothing compares 2 U, Prince.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another musician
whose music is delightfully danceable is Maurice White, founding member of Earth,
Wind and Fire. The rhythms of “September”
and “Serpentine Fire” still bring a smile to my face and a bounce to my
step. EWF could also spin a wonderful
slow song for dancing close, like “That’s the Way of the World.” Maurice White also died in February.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was
in college, they were Jefferson Starship singing about “Miracles”. In the 1960s they were Jefferson Airplane,
singing with urgency – “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy
within you dies, don’t you want somebody to love?” Who didn’t?
Jefferson Airplane guitarist and co-founder Paul Kanter died in January.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People die –
that’s the way of the world, and if there’s a rock ‘n’ roll heaven you know
they’ve got a hell of a band. Yet that
music remains with us. When people in their
lives create beauty their lives echo on and we are grateful for that. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is also
good to remember that while we are not all wonderful musicians, we all have
some capacity to create goodness and beauty, we all have an ability to bring a
smile to others and to help them dance.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-33822231626022034392016-03-21T19:18:00.000-05:002016-03-21T19:18:28.662-05:00A Prayer for General Conference General Conference is the every four-year gathering of United Methodists from around the world. Persons are elected as voting delegates from their respective annual or central conferences. It is my privilege to be an elected clergy delegate from the Minnesota Conference, and the head of the Minnesota delegation.<br />
<br />
In preparation for General Conference annual and central conferences from around the globe have covenanted for twenty-four hour prayer for General Conference. This Wednesday, March 23, the Minnesota Conference will be praying for General Conference. I was asked to compose a prayer that could be used as part of that prayer vigil. Here it is:<br />
<br />
Creative Spirit who broods over chaos to bring order and who initiates constructive chaos when order becomes stilted, Incarnate Love who continues to draw near in the Spirit of Jesus the Christ, Empowering Spirit ever-present, come. Our prayer for General Conference is simple and direct – Come, Spirit, come. Be again for us a creative presence. Draw near to us again in love, opening wide your arms that we might open wide our arms and hearts to others. Empower us again to be your people, sharing good news, creating community, building bridges of reconciliation, doing justice. Grow our hearts. Enliven our minds. Expand our dreams. As General Conference gathers in Portland, may we gather not simply in the name of Wesley, but in a Wesleyan spirit – committed to having our conversations seasoned with salt, committed to loving alike, even when we don’t think alike. Come, Spirit, come. In Christ. Amen.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-72235420845576609312016-02-26T18:27:00.002-05:002016-02-26T18:27:52.209-05:00MLK Day 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnq6eOH3iI-byEFRSmPU4iZxNgIdhvtBTjIJMcjsbO5Ib6OHp0FUTiellKI2iiLa_pwwP3h6VImEz_d6t6mWr70zjxMiORAeTARxCbUj3jMkLwyVlXd2USlskahlBVJcYPhmiT8CI0egZ/s1600/kingMLK0119c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnq6eOH3iI-byEFRSmPU4iZxNgIdhvtBTjIJMcjsbO5Ib6OHp0FUTiellKI2iiLa_pwwP3h6VImEz_d6t6mWr70zjxMiORAeTARxCbUj3jMkLwyVlXd2USlskahlBVJcYPhmiT8CI0egZ/s320/kingMLK0119c1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I have a dream.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Martin Luther King, Jr.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Hold fast to dreams<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>For if dreams die<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Life is a
broken-winged bird<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>That cannot fly.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Langston
Hughes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Every year since coming back to
Duluth in 2005, I have walked in the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day march,
unless I have been out of town. It isn’t
always easy. It is January in Duluth,
after all. I was thinking this year
might be mild as January was pretty mild this year, until the week of January
18. January cold returned, though it was
not as brutally cold this year as some. However,
though it is cold, we don’t have to walk as high-pressure fire hoses are being
sprayed at us, or dogs barking and biting at us. There are no jeering crowds shouting racial epithets,
only a number of people giving thumbs up or cheering from office building
windows or the skywalk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One of the serendipitous delights
of this year’s march was that I had the privilege of walking while sharing a
banner with Sha’rya. I had not met Sha’rya
before. She was at the march with her
aunt and sister.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As I walked with Sha’rya and our
banner, which read “Do To Us What You Will, We Will Still Love You,” I was
thinking about the United States and race.
In my lifetime, progress has been made.
Laws segregating blacks and whites have fallen. Banking practices which segregated neighborhoods
have been changed. Racial epithets,
though they have not disappeared, are frequently held in disdain. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is a
national holiday, and his “I Have a Dream” speech is considered one of the landmark
oratories in American history.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Progress has been made, but
problems persist, and at times we digress rather than progress. Voting rights which people struggled for are
being eroded in some places. Poverty
remains persistently high among people of color. Incarceration rates for African-Americans are
significantly higher than among other populations. The relationship between law enforcement and people
of color is often strained and in need of repair. King’s dream is held up as a wonderful
ideal. His accompanying social critique,
including his analysis of the damage done by our failures to live up to the
dream, is not often grappled with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Let America be the
dream the dreamers dreamed – <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Let it be that great
strong land of love<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Where never kings
connive nor tyrants scheme<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>That any man be
crushed by one above.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>(It never was America
to me.)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Langston
Hughes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is
work to do, so we continue to march. I
want the world to be a different place for Sha’rya as she grows. I want it to be a better place, a safe place,
a place where she can flourish, a place with no artificial barriers are put in
her way because of her heritage. I think
of the words of a spiritual: <i>Ain’t gonna
let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around. Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. Keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’ gonna build
a brand new world.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-38850155463555528732016-01-08T17:47:00.000-05:002016-01-08T17:47:25.295-05:00Old Friends<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I can feel friendly,
in a very personal and affectionate way, with Spinoza, Abraham Lincoln,
Jefferson, William James, Whitehead, etc., as if they still lived. Which is to say that in specific ways they </i>do
<i>still live.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Abraham
Maslow, <u>The Farthest Reaches of Human Nature</u><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I first encountered the work of Abraham
Maslow in a psychology class in my senior year in high school. I was intrigued. There was much in his work that I found
insightful and helpful. Maslow’s work
was one reason I majored in psychology, along with philosophy, in college.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
From time to time, I find myself
going back to his work, and often find new insights. Maslow’s comment on being friendly with
persons from the past comes from an essay on “Various Meanings of
Transcendence.” In this section of his
essay he was writing about the transcendence of time. We can reach through time to connect with others
through their writings, developing a friendship of a kind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I know this kind of
friendship. I treasure my friends, the
flesh and blood people with whom I can talk, in whom I can confide, with whom I
can enjoy a conversation, an event, a meal.
I also treasure the friends I have made through their writings or their
music. They have challenged me to think
more deeply, and to feel more deeply.
They have invited me see my life in new ways, and opened up new vistas
in my relationship to God.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I am grateful for these friends,
too, among whom I count Abraham Maslow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-2642010563783330712015-12-11T15:03:00.000-05:002015-12-11T15:03:00.553-05:00Love and Mercy<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brian Wilson, “Love and Mercy” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PISkFEzC5XE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PISkFEzC5XE</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
No surprise to anyone who knows me
even a little bit, I love music, a wide variety of music. On the day following Thanksgiving Day I
posted a link to Charles Ives, “The Unanswered Question” on Facebook and
Twitter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One of the bands I listened to
quite a bit when in college was The Beach Boys.
At the time, the band was seen as primarily a sixties group with good
time tunes about surfing and dating. They
had made a bit of a comeback with the release of a compilation called “Endless
Summer” – released June 24, 1974, my fifteenth birthday. Even with that, The Beach Boys were not
really considered a “cool” group to listen to in my college years
(1977-1981). I remember going with some
of my friends to Florida for a spring break trip, and one friend was determined
that we were not going to play any Beach Boys music. We did not want to come off as a bunch of
rubes from Minnesota.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Though I enjoyed The Beach Boys
music, I have to admit I considered them little more than a feel good band,
with all the depth of cotton candy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One of the graces of aging is that
you can change your mind. To be sure,
much of the music on “Endless Summer” is pretty simple and the lyrics are none
too deep. Yet over time, I have come to
appreciate opportunities for simple joy.
In a complex, difficult and often hurtful world, we ought not to
overlook simple joys. I also came to
appreciate the creativity of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys as they explored
adding new layers of sound to their music.
“Pet Sounds” is considered a rock music classic. “Good Vibrations” is a complex piece of
music, even as it celebrates the simple feeling of a good vibe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Recently I was given a new
opportunity for renewed appreciation of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. I watched the bio-pic “Love and Mercy.” At the end of the movie we are treated to a
video of Brian Wilson singing the song from which the movie takes its title. The song comes from his first solo album
(released in 1988), and it was a song I was not familiar with.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Listen to “Love and Mercy.” The lyrics aren’t cryptic, but they touch me. In our difficult, complicated and often
hurtful world, I appreciate this simple good hope and good wish.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Love and mercy that's
what you need tonight<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>So, love and mercy to
you and your friends tonight <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-67080876865654294762015-11-06T13:48:00.000-05:002015-11-06T13:48:07.426-05:00Beauty and Grace<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I am large, I contain
multitudes.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Walt
Whitman, “Song of Myself”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Beauty and grace are
performed whether or not we will or sense them.
The least we can do is try to be there.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Annie
Dillard, <u>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</u><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the
summer of 2014 I was in New York City twice.
The first time was with our church youth group for a seminar on poverty
and hunger sponsored by the United Methodist Women. One of the pastors who accompanied our group
from Minnesota had gone to seminary in New York so knew the city well. Later that summer, my wife, Julie, our
daughter Sarah, and I returned to the city as visitors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was quite
taken by the city. I was exhilarated by
the activity, the people, the energy.
Waiting in lines we could hear people from all over the world who were
also there to see the Empire State Building or the Rockefeller Center. I loved walking over the Brooklyn Bridge with
my family.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This past
summer, our family traveled west on vacation.
Being in Yellowstone National Park, seeing the Rocky Mountains, standing
on the quiet prairie in Theodore Roosevelt, were all awe-inspiring. When traveling through the plains, I cannot
help but think of the people who roamed there so freely until clashes with the
European-Americans of the expanding United States led to their being confined
to reservations. It is almost as if
there are “voices” in the silent winds of the prairies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know
people for whom New York City would be their greatest nightmare. They like wide open spaces, or the quiet of
the forest, or the pace of small towns.
I know others who would find the quiet of the prairies maddening. I feel wonderfully fortunate that I find
beauty and grace in such diverse places.
Beauty and grace can be found in the multiple faces on the streets of
New York, in the wonderfully diverse voices heard, in the human energy
generated in the city. Beauty and grace
can be found in majestic mountain views, in the silent whispers of the
prairies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The least I
can do is try to be there, wherever the “there” is. When I am so present, I contain multitudes,
and am grateful for that wonderful flow of beauty and grace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-74731351687612813282015-10-09T17:48:00.003-05:002015-10-09T17:48:20.165-05:00Eigen<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>One cannot read any
his [Wilfred Bion’s] works without at least one sentence that strikes an alarm,
touches a nerve, makes you wince, gives permission to think and feel. His work can intrigue, and evoke wonder.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Michael Eigen, <u>Faith</u>,
59<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
He had come into my office in the
small church where I was then a pastor. He
was ordained in another denomination, but was working in the social service
field. I had heard very nice things
about him, and was pleased to meet him.
He was there just to meet me and to let me know what he was doing in the
area. As he shared something about his
life’s journey, he made a statement I’ve heard before and since, something that
always makes me cringe a little inside. “That’s
not something you can learn from a book!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
For those of us who love reading,
books or essays function as conversation partners. The words we read open up avenues for
exploring both the world and our inner lives.
Of course there are things to be learned outside of books, things that cannot
be learned from books alone. When I
read, though, it opens up vistas for my thinking through and feeling through my
experience outside of books. Words
provide tools that help me see the world differently. Words help me dig deeper into my own
experiences. There are things that
cannot be learned from books, but when I hear someone say “That’s not something
you can learn from books,” it is often in tones dismissive of the kinds of
conversations and learning that happen with books.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One of my more recently discovered conversation
partners is the psychotherapist Michael Eigen.
Eigen writes movingly about his own encounters with other writers, as he
does above. What Eigen says about Bion,
I would say about Eigen. When I read him,
there are always sentences that strike an alarm, that touch a nerve, the make
me wince, the give me permission to think and feel. His work intrigues and evokes wonder.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Here are a few sentences from his
most recent work <u>Faith</u> that intrigue and evoke wonder:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>At
times it takes faith to express oneself.
At times, it takes even more faith to wait and let further processes
develop. </i>(xiv)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>Without
work in the trenches of our nature, we may wreck what we try to create. </i>(7)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>In
psychoanalysis, we learn a little more about destruction. We learn, or think we learn, that feelings
matter, that we are sensitive beings who need to sense how sensitivity works,
that ethics has roots in sensitivity to ourselves and others. </i>(7)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>We
are partly defined by a capacity to wish the impossible. To wish the impossible and somewhere feel it
might be possible. </i>(41)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>I
think our big job is to work with ourselves, on every level – socially,
psychically, familially. </i>(95)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>I
don’t think that religious or spiritual people are immune to inflicting their
personalities on others. </i>(95)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>You
can’t just work on institutional injustices without the actual people who are
involved working on themselves, and you can’t just work on yourself without
working on the injustices in society. </i>(96)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>An
attitude that has perhaps done more harm in human history than any other is the
sense of being right. </i>(97)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>We
have to cut each other slack in order to be with each other at all. </i>(116)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>Faith
is a vehicle that radically opens experiencing and plays a role in building
tolerance for experience. </i>(124)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-57679415231852930872015-09-05T18:40:00.004-05:002015-09-05T18:40:53.339-05:00Why I Love My ipod<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another summer is winding down. We were fortunate to take two summer trips
this year. The first, in June, was a
visit to our daughter Beth who is an OB/GYN resident in Rochester, New
York. She was moving from one apartment
to another and so we went to help her move and enjoy some time with her. Having an extra car when moving is helpful so
we drove. I enjoy the experience of
seeing the country. We also enjoyed a Rochester
Red Wings baseball game. For those who
may not know this, the Red Wings are the Minnesota Twins Triple A farm team.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In August
we traveled the exact opposite direction, heading to Montana for a family wedding. Rick and Maggie were married at a family
cabin near Big Fork, not too far south of Glacier National Park. On our way back home, we spent a day plus in
Yellowstone and a few hours at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I have long enjoyed the haunting, austere
beauty of the plains and the majestic beauty of the mountains. I find it fascinating that I am both
captivated by New York City, which we visited last year, and by the plains and
mountains, but that is another posting.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On our trip
West we listened to a long book on CD, Ken Follett’s <u>The Pillars of the Earth</u>. It was 32 discs long! For those of you who know the book, you will
find it amusing that my wife and I listened to it along with our 23 year-old
daughter, Sarah. Some of the scenes are
not typical parent-child conversation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We also had
along my trusty ipod classic – over 8,000 songs. Our car allows us to plug the ipod into the
sound system and shuffle songs. This
summer I was reminded of why I love my ipod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One
sequence of songs: Lucinda Williams, “Passionate Kisses;” Charles Mingus, “Got
To Get It;” Waylon Jennings, “Honky Tonk Heroes;” Prince, “I Wanna Be Your
Lover.” Where else could I go from
progressive country to jazz to classic renegade country to the rock/soul/funk
of Prince?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At another
moment Derek and the Dominoes, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” was
followed immediately by the Taize song, “Veni, Sancte, Spiritus.” It was like the theologian Paul Tillich’s
method of correlation in action – existential situation/faith response.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On final
ipod serendipity: George Jones followed by George Harrison followed by “Rock
and Roll Heaven.” You know they’ve got a
hell of a band!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love my
ipod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-29378918531120628792015-07-30T11:29:00.004-05:002015-07-30T11:29:38.625-05:00The Church in Fifty Words<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Awhile back,
a person who has been regularly attending the church where I am pastor, and is
also taking some seminary classes, shared with me one of her assignments. Provide your definition of the church in
fifty words or less. She asked me if I would
be willing to share my definition with her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As someone
who has done doctoral work in religion, my gut-level initial response to the
question would be to do some research before offering a response. There would be value in that, but I have
thought enough about this and try to work out of some understanding of the
church every day. Instead of doing any
research, I thought for a while and typed.
Here is the definition I came up with, and when I had finished it and
checked for the number of words, it was exactly fifty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The church is a community of people who have
been touched by God’s grace and love in Jesus Christ and who are seeking to
live in such a way, individually and together, that they grow in love of God
and others, and witness to the grace of God in Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> So
as someone who has a Ph.D. in religious studies, though ecclesiology was not my
emphasis, I recognize that there are some things that could be added to this
definition, some questions that are not answered in it. At the same time, both theologically and
pastorally, I think this definition has a lot to offer. The church is about being touched and
transformed by God as we know God in Jesus the Christ. It is about living together in such a way that
we grow in love and thereby witness, in word and deed, to the transforming power
of God’s love in Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> There
are more well-rounded and beautiful statements about the church. I am glad to be working to help the church be
more like the simple definition I offered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">David<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-17599834075850726842015-06-22T15:18:00.001-05:002015-06-22T15:18:24.298-05:00Remarks at a Prayer Vigil for the Charleston Shooting<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
These are the
remarks I shared earlier today at St. Mark AME Church here in Duluth at a
community prayer vigil. I was honored to
share the podium with other clergy: Rev Michael Gonzales (St. Mark AME), Rev.
Kathy Nelson (Peace UCC), Rabbi David Steinberg (Temple Israel), as well as
with others from the community.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I am pleased and
honored to be here today at St. Mark.
Thank you, Pastor Gonzales, for welcoming us. I have had the privilege of preaching and
speaking from this pulpit before, and those were always joyous occasions. Today
when my heart is heavy, and all our hearts are heavy, it is important to be
here again. Part of the poignancy of
being here is that our churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and The
United Methodist Church share some history, but it is filled with sadness. We both have Methodist in our name, but the
AME was created in 1816 because the larger Methodist tradition did not treat
African-Americans well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In Genesis 9,
God’s covenant with humanity is symbolized by a rainbow. A rainbow – not monochrome but Kodachrome,
brilliantly colored. It is our task as
human persons to weave a beautiful tapestry, a multi-colored tapestry in the
human community. It is an on-going task.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Last Wednesday
night at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC the fabric of our
tapestry, of our community was violently ripped apart. It was torn by hatred and violence – lethal
hatred, weaponized violence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We are here together
to feel – to feel the tear in the fabric of our community, to feel grief, to
feel sorrow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
I also hope that
over time we will let sorrow do its work, let it seep deeply into our hearts
and our souls to create tenderness and gentleness, a tenderness and gentleness
that lead to action.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In tenderness and
gentleness, let us find a way beyond racial hatred. The rainbow needs every
hue, every cultural stitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
In tenderness and
gentleness, let us find a way to untie the knot between hatred and gun
violence. The struggle against hatred is
a long, long struggle, but at least along the way perhaps we can avoid
weaponizing hatred.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
For today, though,
perhaps feeling together, feeling together the tear in our community, feeling
together our grief, feeling together our sorrow, perhaps for today that is task
enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-85056311824803162902015-05-22T15:43:00.003-05:002015-05-22T15:43:46.385-05:00Not Quite Eugene Peterson<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Where can I go from
your Spirit, O God, or where can I flee from your presence? If I head for my cabin every weekend from now
until September, you are there. When I
leave for vacation, going near or far, you accompany me; your guidance I
treasure, though I am still taking my GPS.
If I am on the golf course, even looking for my golf ball in the woods,
you can find me (though the whereabouts of the golf ball may remain a
mystery). Even when I sneak away to my
favorite secret fishing hole, I cannot escape you, though I trust you will keep
the location a secret.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Psalm 139, CNMV </b>(Contemporary Northern
Minnesota Version)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just a little something that will be part of my upcoming church newsletter article.</div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-69536649996778478522015-04-10T21:43:00.002-05:002015-04-10T21:43:35.026-05:00Baseball<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Baseball season began this week,
and I look forward to that. I enjoy
baseball, and I like the game for a lot of reasons. Many of these are rooted in my younger days. I played baseball as a kid. I played Little League ball for a number of
years, though I was never that great. In
our neighborhood, we often put together pick-up games in open fields. I listened to baseball games on an old
transistor radio. Baseball is a great
radio game. I remember one year bringing
that radio to school one year on opening day to try and listen to the game if I
had the chance. I collected baseball
cards. I can still smell that hard pink
gum that came with every ten cards. I
can still feel some of the joy those simple cardboard pictures brought to
me. I played games with those cards,
creating an entire world in some ways.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I admit that I went through a few
years when my interest in baseball waned.
I was more interested in music on the radio, and thinking deep
thoughts. The cardboard cards became
just cardboard. I was trying to figure
out some things about life. I was
exploring literature, psychology, philosophy, and theology. I was reading things like, “Does time itself
manifest itself as the horizon of Being?” (Martin Heidegger, <u>Being and Time</u>,
final line).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I have made my way back to
baseball, without leaving these others behind.
Baseball writing is not without its own profundities. I can’t really imagine where a comparison
between Martin Heidegger and Roger Angell would be helpful, but Angell can also
write profoundly about time, with reference to baseball. <i>Baseball’s
time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly
the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our
youth and in our fathers’ youth, and even back then – back in the country days
– there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. </i>(“The
Interior Stadium”)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In fact, one of the reasons I
really enjoy baseball is that besides all the simple pleasures of the game
itself, so much writing about the game is quite exceptional.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>No
other sport, I think, conveys anything like this sense of cool depth and
fluvial steadiness, and when you stop for a minute and think about the game it
is easy to see why this should be so.
The slow, inexorable progression of baseball events – balls and strikes,
outs and innings, batters stepping up and batters being retired, pitchers and
sides changing on the field, innings turning into games and games into series,
and all these merging and continuing, in turn, in the box scores and the averages
and the slowly fluctuous standings – are what make the game quietly and
uniquely satisfying. Baseball flows past
us all through the summer – it is one of the reasons that summer exists – and wherever
we happen to stand on its green banks we can sense with only a glance across
its shiny expanse that the long, unhurrying swirl and down-flowing have their
own purpose and direction, that the river is headed, in its own sweet time,
toward a downsummer broadaneing and debouchment and to its end in the estuary
of October. </i>(Roger Angell in <u>Late Innings</u>)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>It
breaks your heart. It is designed to
break your heart. The game begins in the
spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer,
filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come,
it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the
memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all
twilight, when you need it most, it stops….
Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the
wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These
are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without
even the hope of illusion. I am not that
grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler
creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and
it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be
that, in a green field, in the sun. </i>(A. Bartlett Giamatti, “The Green
Fields of the Mind”)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
How can I resist a game that people
write so movingly about? Play ball.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-15251447621464166992015-03-27T14:54:00.002-05:002015-03-27T14:54:39.510-05:00Victor Frankl<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My younger
daughter was home this past week for her spring break from graduate
school. She brought with her a stack of
books that she thought that my wife perhaps might enjoy reading. Included in that stack was a copy of Victor
Frankl’s classic work <u>Man’s Search for Meaning</u>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have read
different parts of Frankl’s work over the years and find him engaging and
insightful. I was delighted, then, that
during the first year of my Ph.D. program at Southern Methodist University,
Frankl came there to lecture. I still
have the ticket stub and the page of notes I took from the lecture. I also discovered the a clip from the
lecture on the web: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.viktorfrankl.org/e/clipgallery.html">http://www.viktorfrankl.org/e/clipgallery.html</a> (see SMU 1987)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here Frankl
discusses our need for both a depth psychology and a height psychology, and for
both freedom and responsibility. I agree
that we need both a depth psychology and a height psychology, an ability to dig
deep within to examine the fears, anxieties, traumas and triumphs that are
there, and a recognition that we are symbolic, meaning-seeking,
meaning-creating beings. I agree with
Frankl when he argues that in our society we need to balance freedom and
responsibility. Asking questions about
the common good has become too rare, and we desperately need to find our way
back to them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-82471765674926895072015-02-14T17:55:00.000-05:002015-02-14T17:55:00.279-05:00Santayana<div class="MsoNormal">
I am not
well-read in the philosophy of George Santayana (1863-1952), who was educated at
Harvard and later taught there, from1888-1912.
I have a couple of his books and am familiar with the name, familiar enough
to be interested in learning more. So
awhile back, in a used book store, when I discovered <u>The Philosophy of
Santayana</u>, excerpts from his writings, I bought it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the
joys of being a book lover is to stumble upon wonderfully penned words in such
discovered books.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here are some
beautiful lines from Santayana, lines which ring true to me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The world is not
respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded for ever; but it is
shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and
in these the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light among the
thorns.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I may
choose some words differently, but the basic idea makes sense to me. The world is not an easy place. There is poverty, cruelty, destruction,
terror. Families, meant to be places of
love and care and nurture are sometimes, instead, places of great hurt and
damage. Religions intended to foster the
spirit are used, instead, to justify horrific behavior. The world is often a tormented, confused and deluded
place. It is also shot through with
beauty, with love, with courage, with laughter.
In the end, we choose how we will let the spirit bloom, even if
timidly. We choose how we will let it
struggle to come to light among the thorns.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-46310394438134430832015-02-06T15:13:00.001-05:002015-02-06T15:13:40.070-05:00Faith, Church and 2015<div class="MsoNormal">
Last fall
in a post on sojo.net (the <i>Sojourners </i>web
page), Tom Ehrich, an Episcopal priest, wrote about eight things he thought the
church needed to say. It was an
intriguing list. It included saying the
name “Jesus,” knowing that Christians may mean some different things in evoking
his name. Also acknowledging our diversity,
he thought we should be willing to share why we believe in God, and tell
stories about the difference God makes in our lives. The church should not only speak, it should
listen. We should connect our faith with
how we are leading our lives. We should
talk about what we see going on in the world.
Finally, Ehrich wrote that we should speak of hope and of joy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I like this
list a lot. Though the new year is
already a month old, we might resolve to speak of such things this year and
beyond.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would add
some items to the conversation. Ehrich
framed many of the items he identified in terms of Christians talking to other
Christians. He was not precluding wider
conversations, particularly as he discussed speaking of hope and of joy. There were a couple of other things I read
last year that also say something to me about what the church needs to discuss,
particularly with those in the wider culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>For me, faith supports experimental
exploration, imaginative conjecture, experiential probes </i>(Michael Eigen, <u>Faith
and Transformation</u>, vii). How does
Christian faith support that kind of openness and adventure in living, and why
is it that for so long the church has given the impression that faith closes us
off rather than opens us up?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>We need a religious view that embraces
nature and does not fear science </i>(Gary Snyder, <u>Back on the Fire</u>,
70). How does our Christian faith
embrace nature and work with the findings of science? Far too many people equate faith with a
rejection of science, and it is often those speaking for Christian faith that
perpetuate that view. The church needs
voices that embrace faith and science.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my
hopes for this new year is that such important conversations will deepen and
widen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-69908329552817544622015-01-30T15:06:00.001-06:002015-01-30T15:06:06.838-06:00Coltrane<div class="MsoNormal">
The class
was “Arts in America.” The professor
looked like he could have come from central casting – coat and tie, balding
with glasses, a goatee. The class was
held in a large lecture hall, no doubt to accommodate all the students who were
fulfilling their liberal education requirements. And when did liberal education requirements
morph into “generals,” as in “I am attending the local community college to
complete my generals”? I rather prefer “liberal
education requirements.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We looked
at paintings, discussed literature, listened to some music. I remember appreciating a great deal of it. I
think it was in this class that I first heard the music of Charles Ives, and it
is music I return to from time to time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The music
played in one class session, however, penetrated more deeply. In the darkened lecture hall that day, the
record needle (yes, a vinyl record) went down on a recording of a small group
jazz combo played a song that was absolutely beautiful. The small group was led by its saxophonist,
John Coltrane. After the song ended, the
professor moved on to a discussion of jazz as an improvisational art. It is a uniquely American art form.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was
one of my first encounters with jazz, and I spent some time exploring it. I built a small collection of records,
including some John Coltrane. I came to
a deep and abiding appreciation of Coltrane’s music, from his ballads, like the
one I heard that day in Arts in America, to his more experimental pieces. Listening to Coltrane has provided me
wonderful pleasures over the years, even been the occasion for experiences that
some might call mystical. However, none
of the Coltrane records I bought at the time had that song I heard that day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over the
years, my jazz listening waxed and waned, burning more brightly since watching
the delightful Ken Burns series, “Jazz.”
Along the way, I found that song that opened the door to the music of
Coltrane, “Central Park West.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-UDGjgyRPI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-UDGjgyRPI</a>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-60405877653498271032014-12-26T18:47:00.000-06:002014-12-26T18:47:06.853-06:00A Song for All Seasons <div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the
past couple of weeks I have been listening to Christmas music. I listen to classical songs and classic
songs, songs with a rock beat, a jazz swing, a pop tunefulness, songs sacred
and secular. Some of the songs evoke
warm childhood memories, some remind me of concerts attended (I heard Bruce
Springsteen play “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” live in St. Paul November 29,
1978). I enjoy the music of this season,
but I am also ready to move on, or move back to other music.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I listen to
a fair variety of music, mostly jazz and rock and pop. I sprinkle classical music in there as
well. When listening to rock or pop
music, I probably listen to more older material than newer stuff, either new
music from familiar bands like Bruce Springsteen or U2 or Tom Petty, or older
music from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I
still enjoy discovering a new band. The
Hold Steady, a band whose music I discovered in 2009, though they had been
around for a while, is still a favorite.
I am enjoying TV on the Radio, “Seeds.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing I
find particularly enjoyable, though, is finding what I consider a lost classic
– some song on an album that has been around for a long time, but something I
had simply not paid much attention to. A
recent such discovery for me is the Simon and Garfunkel song “7 O’Clock
News/Silent Night.” The song consists of
an overdubbing of Simon and Garfunkel singing "Silent Night", and a
simulated "7 O'Clock News" bulletin of the actual events of 3 August
1966 – the death of Lenny Bruce, a controversial Martin Luther King, Jr. march,
the war in Vietnam, killings of student nurses by Richard Speck. Here is a link to the song:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgYFXCUEL4Y">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgYFXCUEL4Y</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In many
ways it is a seasonal song, a song I should put away until next year. But it is also a song that transcends the
season. If the message of “Silent Night”
cannot find its way into a still broken world, a world where there remains
violence, war, political strife, drug overdoses, racial tension, then Silent
Night is little more than pure sentimentality.
I don’t think it is. I treasured
this Simon and Garfunkel song this season because it reminded me of my need for
a strong, courageous, compassionate and tender faith amid a difficult world, a
faith not just for a few weeks at Christmas but a faith for every day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was my
discovered classic this fall, a little treasure that was hidden in a field, and
I found it with joy, and I intend to keep it close to my heart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next year,
when I take out my Christmas music again, I will burn this song onto a new
holiday cd. I expect I will take it out
for a listen a number of times between now and then.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-651184200415032159.post-83783293183663077592014-11-28T13:47:00.002-06:002014-11-28T13:47:57.363-06:00Ferguson and an Act of Hope<div class="MsoNormal">
Late last
week, as the country was waiting for and wondering about the Grand Jury decision
that was going to be coming from Ferguson, Missouri, I was contacted by a
coalition within the Duluth community who were working on some responses to
whatever the decision might be. Would
officer Wilson be charged with a crime in the shooting death of Michael Brown,
an unarmed African-American teenager, our would Wilson’s narrative of the events,
wherein he felt threatened by Michael, and thus used appropriate force, lead to
end to the legal process?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Duluth,
community responses began to be organized before we knew what the Grand Jury
would decide. The church I pastor, First
United Methodist Church would be a place for prayer, counsel and
reflection. The verdict came
Monday. My church was offered for prayer
from noon to four p.m. on Wednesday.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not many
came that afternoon. Perhaps other
events had provided sufficient opportunity for their reflection. In any event,
I had determined that I wanted to do something during that afternoon. Once an hour, beginning at noon, I went
either into the chapel or the sanctuary and rang my prayer bowl. Earlier in the day, I had also decided that I
would offer a brief prayer service at 4 p.m. if anyone was present. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Four p.m. came and no one was
there. I offered the prayer service
anyway. I rang the bowl. I used the United Methodist morning prayer,
slightly revised. <i>New every day is your love great God of light great God of light, and
all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up in us desire to serve you, to live
peacefully with our neighbors and to devote each day to your work in the world –
the work of justice, peace, compassion, beauty, reconciliation, creating the
beloved community, and love. </i>I read
“The Magnificat” from Luke 1, Mary’s powerful words about the horizon of hope
in which we live, about a God who works for justice. I prayed a body prayer. Then I sang.
I was a little self-conscious about this, but I did it. I sang “We Shall Overcome” and the last first
of “We Are Called” – <i>Sing, sing a new
song. Sing of that great day when all
will be one. God will reign, and we’ll
walk with each other and sisters and brothers united in love. We are called to act with justice. We are called to love tenderly. We are called to serve one another, to walk
humbly with God.</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It was, for me, an act of hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Faith and With Feathers,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
David<o:p></o:p></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18030060801474883699noreply@blogger.com0