So That's the Thanks I Give

I live in a world of self-entitlement. I expect to receive anything I want at the flick of a switch, the swipe of a card. I like to eat bananas from Honduras, ride a bicycle from Japan, drink beer from Canada and fish with little fake minnows from Ireland. Nuclear fission and Niagara Falls light my reading lamp. My automobile engine runs on the blood of soldiers and harbor seals.

There's a whole lot of faceless people and far-flung materials supporting my lifestyle. There's no such thing as a self-made man.

And so it is that I come to you in this week which contains the day on which we are all supposed to stop, take stock and give thanks. I've decided to do so all this week, in hopes that, after seven straight days of extending the proper attitude of gratitude, perhaps it will become a daily habit I can carry throughout the coming year.

I have much to be grateful for:

1. God - slippery, elusive, wonderous mysterious joy that She is.
2. wife and kids - I am stunned at how much I haven't screwed them up. They're the best part of my really wonderful life.
3. family/friends/faith community - I am surrounded by an eclectic mix of characters who routinely amaze me with their grace, imagination and love.
4. freedom - I'm fortunate to live in a society of laws and latitude. I've grown up safe, been HANDED a great education, have found encouragement to speak up at almost every turn, and get to routinely stir the pot.
5. music - Oh, sweet nectar for the ears. And to not only have the privilege of listening, but to also be able to CREATE music of my own, by myself or with talented friends and family.
6. food - I really enjoy it.
7. green grass, blue sky, yellow sun - Seriously, what a breath-taking combination.
8. puppy jumps and arching-cat-shin-rubs - I'm usually the first human to come home in the evening, and I'm always greeted with love and enthusiasm.
9. a really great fort - Sure, I never had to hold a mortgage on the ones I built 40 years ago out of couch cushions, but the house Teresa and I have built feels every bit as cool.
10. my body - It is beginning to creak, bald and settle, but I can still do most of what I was doing 20 years ago.
11. my mind - Good things come in small packages, I guess.
12. good books - I just finished Steinbeck's "The Winter of Our Discontent." How cool is it that we can turn words into worlds?

How about you? What are you thankful for right now? Please, make a list to share with us...

What's in a Name?

The Mayberry-esque exclamation "what in God's name..." is something beyond quaint for me these days. I've been thinking a lot about God/G-d/Yahweh/Elohim/Adonai/Jehovah/Allah/... What is in a name? More particularly, what is in "God's name?"

Names are given to distinguish an individual from others of its own kind. A thingy is a plant is a flower is a rose is a white rose is a... Names lend specificity, distinction.

But what about this God character we keep prattling on about? I am of the belief that there is one good, living, loving, intentional, creative reality that IS within, without and all around us. Our best impulses, thoughts and actions are seeped in this reality. Our "sins" are attempts at blocking, violating or turning away from its omnipresent flow. I believe Christ to be a brilliant manifestation of this reality in flesh. We, too, are called to be brilliant manifestations of this IS. That's my best current understanding of that which is far beyond my ability to communicate or even comprehend.

So how can we come to name it God? Do we really need to distinguish it from others of its own kind? What others?

No, the names we give to the reality -- the foundation and energy and impulse of all that is Shalom and beyond -- don't serve so much to distinguish the One from other gods. It serves to distinguish us from each other, making us peculiar. Separate. Rivals. Our various names for the good, living, loving, creative reality are so many team jerseys or - worse - military uniforms. How myopic. How misguided. How tragic. How mortally flawed.

For some who read this, it may seem I am breaking the rules of being a Christian pastor. The Christian pastor I am becoming is less and less about fences, more and more about open fields. I guess the pastor has been led out to wide pasture. Where are you flocking these days?

Parenting without Annette

I used to write articles for City newspaper. I'm tossing a few back out there to spur discussion without actually writing something new...

Knowing the constant gives perspective. – Tao Te Ching

As a parent, I love the commercial media. Every nasty, morally bankrupt minute is a Godsend. Cable is even better.

My folks started a family with Donna Reed and Father Knows Best as their standard. Wally and the Beaver were good, wholesome kids, and mouse-eared Annette had that marvelous, innocent twinkle in her eye. Marsha was hot, but modest. Shucks, even Otis the town drunk never gave Sheriff Taylor any real trouble. The television intoned what family and community life must be. Who could possibly measure up to such cruelly high standards?

Today’s media culture is far less sanctimonious. Our heroes are thrown up and torn down at breakneck speed. Motivation is almost always questioned. “Reality” show idols eventually stick a knife in whatever back they’re scratching. Dads tend to be inept. Moms are often shrews. Kids are conniving little manipulators. Who could possibly fall beneath such crass, low standards?

With the help of HDTV, my children see clearly that perfection is myth. As the digital screens get flatter and thinner, the current generation can see behind what we cathode-ray-tubers considered rock-solid. Cynical? Perhaps. But our children are also becoming far harder marks for the hucksters to hit.

Corporate media’s gradual abandonment of broadcast standards means we set our own. Every time my kids and I dodge a mass-murder commercial we say brutality is to be avoided, not celebrated. Whenever we channel-surf past people half out of their minds and their underwear, we affirm sexuality as a gift, not a ploy. Appear in public without Gameboy pacifiers and we join a human race already in progress.

So God bless our corporate media conglomerate. Thanks to them, any fool can create life lessons simply by turning off and finding something better to do.

The Fear Monster

A few years back I used to write articles for Rochester, NY's City newspaper. I thought I'd republish a few here and see what gronks...

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. – John 14:27

When I was a child I marveled at the prospect of someday being big – courageous, strong and free of all fear, like Mom and Dad. The dark depths under the bed, the eerie silence behind the closet door, even the twisted shadows reaching through the window held no power over them. Life without fear held such promise!

At age 42, I’m still hoping to someday be bigger than my fears. Like most of us, I merely traded my childhood fears for mortgage monsters and well-being ghouls that sometimes overwhelm, robbing me of sleep far more aggressively than did any imagined threat of my youth. I haven’t learned my lesson: It is not a monster I fear; my fear IS the monster.

Fear is the opponent of peace. It constricts the flow of blood to our brains and narrows our thinking. It is the basis of all anger, crime and conflict.

Peace as the world gives – usually defined as the mere absence of war – is fearfully inadequate. Instead, let us with our children embrace a higher personal standard: peace as the absence of fear. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let them be afraid, that wonderful man said. Examine and understand. Cast enlightenment on your darkest fears. It is what fear does to us in the darkest recesses of our hearts that leads to all that goes terribly wrong on this beautiful planet among these beautiful people.

Work through your nightmares and our world sleeps better tonight.

The Do-Nothing Parent

I used to write short articles for Rochester, NY's City newspaper. Thought I'd revisit a few and see what discussion results...

The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing. – Babylonian Proverb

I feel both gratified and somewhat guilty that you are taking the time to read these 300 words. It is my hope that you will gain nothing from them.

Your days are moving faster. This is no illusion. Your perception is accurate. Mathematically, a child experiences her second birthday as 0.13% of her life; her tenth, 0.027%; her thirtieth, 0.0091%. A sunny afternoon in the park does last longer for a five year-old than a twenty-five year-old because our days become ever-smaller portions of our lives. I believe this also explains why it takes so much more strength of will for children to wait for something eagerly anticipated or to endure something unpleasant or non-stimulating. Think of it from their perspective and understand.

When I was a child and summer was just shy of eternal, nothing was a perfectly wonderful thing to do. I had few obligations, and life came to me in giant blocks of time. As an adult, there are too many tasks to squeeze into the ever-shrinking hours. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and another day has blown by.

As I write this, there is a child in the next room waiting for me as patiently as he can. He wants to spend whatever time I will spare for him doing little or nothing in particular with me. He wants to feel my presence and know he’s loved. Sure, for me this will mean adding three more tasks to some other, already tightly packed hour. But for him it will mean so much more.

The less time we have to spare, the more critical our choice of how we spend it. What’s more important than your work? Nothing.

Ask the Pastor 2 - "Mo' Worthy Scripture?"

My last Ask the Pastor question, as submitted on a recent Sunday morning for my particular take... and hopefully as a discussion starter:

"Are any books of the Bible considered more worthy or more important than others?"

Great question. Lots of possible answers. Here's what strikes me right out of the blocks.

YES. Throughout history some books of the Bible have been considered more worthy or more important than others. First, that's how we came to have our Christian Bible in the first place. Through use, discussion and discernment the ancient Jewish leaders winnowed down possible texts into what became something of a canon of Hebrew Scriptures. Also, several "Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical" books are included in some Christian Bibles, but not others (Tobit, Judith, additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, additions to Daniel [Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon], 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Maccabees, 1 and 2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151).

In the New Testament, there was a centuries-long fight over what to include. Revelation was highly disputed, as were some others. Some sects wanted to eliminate most or all of what we now call the Old Testament. Some wanted only one Gospel.

Martin Luther once called the book of Jude "an epistle of straw." Thomas Jefferson edited his own version of the Gospels to save the ethical teachings of Jesus from the "artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms as instruments of riches and power for themselves."

This is simply to suggest that the Bible is a LIBRARY (Greek: Biblios) of books of multiple eras, outlooks and intentions. It is meant to be studied, prayed over, discussed, weighed and lived in.

When I first entered seminary, my main Bible was a New Internation Version pew Bible given to me by a Lutheran pastor. I highlighted verses that particularly resonated with me. When I picked it up years later I was astounded at some of my choices, as I missed entire pericopes that were suddenly vital to me. Go figure. At different times, different verses jump off the page for us.

Right now I am working on a book on Moses, so the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, attributed to Moses) and especially Exodus are most important to me now. With that, I would mix in Isaiah (m' favorite Prophet), John's Gospel, Acts and Romans. Philippians and Jonah are regular stops for me, too. Ask me again next month, and I'll probably have a different list for you.

In short, I think every section of the library we call the Bible is worthy of extended, repeated visits. But, hey, Hosea and Revelation aren't really speaking to me at the moment. What's speaking to you right now? That's what's most important...

We Are Stardust

An extension of the Mom's Day sermon, here is the cogent quote from the great Alan Watts that I mentioned yesterday.

Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body -- a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must FACE reality." "The conquest of nature."

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come OUT of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," so the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin. -- Alan Watts, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, (c) 1966.

We spend precious little time reflecting on the fact that we are built of stuff that was present at some Big Bang/Let-There-Be-Light moment millions of millenia ago. All that material substance is just passing through, and will one day be residing in blades of grass, garden dirt, rain drops and, perhaps, some other sentient beings. Parts of us will no doubt sail into space to land who knows where...

Right now at this "point" in "history," matter has manifested in your shape, size and sentience. The universe has temporarily brought forth YOU. How should you spend your l'il blip of existence?

(Hint: The least you could do is call your mother...)