Birthday Seeds

I've claimed that it is hard to buy presents for my husband - not because he isn't appreciative, but because he tends to get things that he needs as they arise. But I think I may be harder. I too buy things that I need, or want, throughout the year. I wear the same pair of earrings 98% of the time, I don't wear cologne, I don't get massages, I don't enjoy shopping that much so gift certificates are not hardly an option. What's a guy supposed to do??? He listens! He listens to the verbal clues from weeks earlier: "I bought my own birthday present this year, a Nintendo DS, so don't get anything else." And he listens to the non-verbal clues. He gave me seeds! Not because I have a green thumb, but after reading the entry about the Angel charm that can carry seeds.



My prayer for the congregation?


Dear God, May we have ears to listen attentively, and to find small meaningful ways to let others know we heard and understood their concerns. I pray that families listen to each other; that our congregation listens to each others hopes and joys; that we listen as a whole to our community and hear their distress and needs; and that we listen to the earth's sounds of vitality and the call for replenishment. May we listen for the call in our lives and the call for our congregation. Let us be mindful of the obvious, and alert for the quieter undercurrents of your presence. Let us know of the love of others in our lives and give the gift of love to our families and to our enemies. Amen.

The New Colossus

We talked about the elephant in the room at our Friday night service. You know, the familiar idiom that describes an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. It is based on the idea that an elephant in a small room would be impossible to overlook. It's obvious, it's present, but everyone acts as if the elephant is not in the room. In church, that elephant is often our doubts. You can't voice them for fear of being seen as unfaithful or wandering from the community, but they are there. For some reason I was reminded of the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus whose last lines are usually associated with the Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Worship Team invited us to bring our tired souls, weary of keeping pretense and a stiff upper chin; to bring our huddled masses yearning to voice freely our doubts and our fears; and to bring our homeless thoughts of not belonging to the community if we owned those doubts. The lamp was lit, the doors were held wide. Bring your doubts! We are a faith tradition that welcomes questions! God is big enough to handle what concerns you have! And if you just can't set aside your doubts, then the community is there to encourage, and hold you until you can find peace with your prayers and questions. Just now I'm taken aback by the poet's name - Lazarus! We are raised from our doubts!

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, It is natural for us to question and doubt, especially when we experience change and suffering. Our congregation has questions about our mission and our process of transforming through the new millennium. How do we face our fears? How do we release the stifling bondage of worry? How are we raised anew from a huddled mass yearning to breathe the fresh air of new life? Only through your grace is it possible, O God, only through your wisdom and patience and love for your people. I pray that the imposing colossus in our faith journey will not be a statue devoted to worry and doubts, but that we become heroic in our growth and our faith in your mission, and that we light a beacon for those who are seeking safe passage home. The new colossus - life with Christ! Amen

Seeds of Life

One of the cool things about having a name like "Angel Band" is that there are plenty of opportunities to find little "thank you gifts" for each other with angels as the theme. "Thanks for sharing this experience! Thanks for being my friend! Thanks for being you!" At Jane's great weekend escape, Deb reached into her pocket and pulled out four silver angel charms as soon as we were all together. Each one was a little different and the angel with the star was selected just for me. (I have a history with stars.)The really cool thing about the charm is that it has a hinge and can open up. I thought that maybe it was a variation of the prayer box charms that open and you can place a prayer on a small piece of paper inside the charm and close it to hold your prayer. But Deb had found them at a garden store. She thought it was more probable that they were designed to store seeds in the compartment. If you went for a walk and found a particularly lovely flower that you wanted to transport closer to your house, you could harvest some seeds and stow them in the handy inner cubby. Or if you had great success with a flower in your own garden and wanted to share the good seeds along your path, just as Johnny Appleseed did, then you could open up the compartment and sprinkle a little beauty all along your journeys. You may not pass that road again nor see the fulfillment of your plantings, but the evidence of your generosity partnered with the grace of rain will be witnessed by those who happen upon your trails. They will know that something significant was planted and nurtured where there used to be colorless, untended fields.

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, May we be a part of your design to transform the plain, unyielding ground into a rich, fertile bed of beauty and blessings. We don't have to know what will grow from our seeds of faith, but we ask that many people will witness and know they are in the presence of something holy that will change their lives and ours. Amen.

Johnny Appleseed (public domain)

Oh, the Lord's been good to me.
And so I thank the Lord
For giving me the things I need:
The sun, the rain
and the appleseed;
Oh, the Lord's been good to me.

Oh, and every seed I sow
Will grow into a tree.
And someday there'll be apples there
For everyone in the world to share.
Oh, the Lord is good to me.

Oh, the Lord is good to us
And so we thank the Lord
For giving us the best of friends
The kind of love that never ends
The Lord is good to us.

What's in a Name?

When the girls and I started singing together, and then started to get requests to sing again, we decided we needed a name to put in the bulletin and on our tour t-shirts. We spent an entire weekend at Jane's house practicing songs and tossing around names for our little group. Usually I'm pretty agreeable, but I was finding exception with almost any name tossed out. I was no help! There were several disagreeable factions arguing in my brain:

1. Naming ourselves seemed so official and implied that we were really a group - which meant I was part of singing group! Still unfathomable!
2. Proper names are instrumental in the process of forming first impressions and once printed become a piece of history. It's what people call you and that to which you answer.

Even though we considered other names, we could never find consensus on anything else and we stayed with the name of "Angel Band" which was the first song that we all sang together. The Angel Band tour shirts have never actually been ordered, but we're still packing in the crowds :-) and racking up the towns: Garland, Gilmer, Longview, and Mabank! There are a few more Texas towns I'd love to list on the back: Utopia, Friendship, Poetry, Loving, Welcom, Temple, Earlywine, Burning Bush, Blessing, Paradise, Unity, Mission, Hope, Weeping Mary, and Harmony. What's in a name? We usually don't get to name ourselves - what would you name yourself?

My prayer for the congregation?

O God, you named your prophets and you name us as your children. If we name ourselves Christian, we must do more than wear a name badge to let people know who we are and to whom we belong. We must live our faith and follow the teachings of Christ to be called Christians. If we name ourselves friend, we must listen, be present, and share to become a true friend. If we name ourselves evangelists, we must open doors, talk to neighbors and share the good news before we can claim to be evangelists. Blessed is the name of Jesus; "God is Salvation." Amen.

"Neither is there salvation in any other:
for there is none other name
under heaven given among men,
whereby we must be saved."
(Acts 4:12)

Epilogue

I pulled a book that has over 12 post-it notes tabs sticking out around the edges marking passages to which I can easily refer back because as I read the book the words resonated and seemed to speak directly to me. The book is "Life of the Beloved" by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Reviewing the book tonight reminded me that Fred, a friend of Nouwen, wanted help finding the spiritual connection that he knew Nouwen possessed. Fred was not participating in any religious practices and asked Nouwen to write a book that would speak to him, along with his friends, in the secular world.

The chapters that follow are earmarked and underlined and I remember telling people that this book had made me feel as if I had been hugged. I bought extra copies of the book for graduation gifts.

In the epilogue, ten years of friendship and writing have passed. Fred gently shares the news that the writings had not been able to bridge the gap between his own secular world and Nouwen's life as the beloved. "Although it is clear that you try to write for me and my friends from your own center... you do not realize how far we are from where you are. You speak from a context and tradition that is alien to us, and your words are based on many presuppositions that we don't share with you. You are not aware how truly secular we are. Many, many questions need to be answered before we are able to be fully open to what you say... Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I get faith? When you do not help us to answer these questions, your beautiful meditations on being and becoming the Beloved remain dreamlike for us." (p 115-116)

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, Let us be aware that the words spoken to each other in our church community that bring comfort and counsel may sound as drivel and meaningless to our neighbors and acquaintances that do not have our religious heritage. Before we can have conversations about a shared spiritual life, they may need help addressing you, or express questions about you. Let us find these circumstances not as an epilogue to our conversation, but as a prologue to bridge a relationship with those whom we seek to share a common table. Help us find new words to honor the fundamental quest that drive men's search for meaning in their lives. They recognize the faint cry, "You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests," and long not to strain to hear their blessings. Give us a heart for those whose faint of hearing has left them in a muffled world. Amen.

Bear Witness

To use Memorial Day as a starting point, I thought I would review some Christian martyrs who gave their lives to further the Christian message. In Greek, the word martyr means "witness" and the verb form, martyred, means to "bear witness" or "give evidence." I focused on Apollonius who was a Roman senator, renowned for his learning and wisdom. When one of Apollonius' slaves publicly denounced him as a Christian the case was remanded to the Senate where a remarkable debate took place between the prefect and Apollonius. "Are you bent on dying?" asked Perennis? "No," said Apllonius, "I enjoy life; but love of life does not make me afraid to die." Apollonius went on to give an eloquent apologia that clearly outlines the beauty and the value of Christianity. He argued that Christianity is superior by its concepts of death and life: death is a natural necessity which has nothing frightening about it, while the true life is the life of the soul. Above all, Christianity surpasses paganism through the work of Christ, the revealing Word of God and teacher of moral life, who became man to destroy sin by his death. Despite his eloquent defense, Apollonius was condemned to death in 186 A.D.



My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, May we be ready to bear witness and give evidence of your teachings and our salvation through Jesus Christ. In this country, where men and women have died to protect our freedoms, we may be challenged socially and economically because of our religious convictions, but we do not have to risk torture or fear that our lives are in jeopardy. Let us not take for granted our freedom to meet and worship, but instead greedily take advantage of our opportunities to meet as regularly as possible and to share openly our faith. Let us hear the words of Apollonius as he gave evidence to his faith:

O Lord Jesus Christ,
give us a measure of Thy Spirit
that we may be enabled to obey
Thy teaching to pacify anger,
to take part in pity,
to moderate desire,
to increase love,
to put away sorrow,
to cast away vain-glory,
not to be vindictive,
not to fear death,
ever entrusting our spirit to immortal God,
who with Thee and the Holy Ghost
liveth and reigneth world without end."
-Apollonius (from part of his defense before Perennis)

http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0418.shtml
http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0418.shtml

Joy to the World

All of a sudden, summer has arrived in Dallas. It's the sticky, humid, oppressing kind of heat that makes people grumpy, and because it only generates more heat, you don't particularly want to sit close to others. So when we sang "Joy to the World" this morning it definitely did not synch with Christmas. It's one of our Parish Associate's favorite songs and he refuses to let it sit idle for a few weeks in December and January. When you sing the hymn out of the Christmas season you can look at the words with different expectations. Some sections particularly stand out with a sense of urgency and call to mission.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come
Let earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare Him room

Joy to the world! The saviour reigns.
Let us our songs employ...

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness
And wonders of His love
And wonders of His love
And wonders, wonders of His love.
Issac Watts, 1719

My prayer for the congregation?

Dear God, Let us prepare our hearts and receive the King regardless of the season or the conditions. We have words to employ and mercies to share; let us sing out rather than hum quietly to ourselves. Let our congregation find ways that mirror the glories of righteousness, that will rule the life of our church with truth, and exhibit grace towards others. Let the wonders of your love figure prominently in the mission of our church and within our own lives. There is joy in the world! Thanks be to God! Amen.