Monday, October 10, 2016

Natural Wonders

When you spend time in such a remote place as we do in Canada, you get to see some amazing natural wonders.  I post many pictures of the sunsets because they are often spectacular, but there are many other things that are wondrous and strikingly beautiful.

Phil and I both wanted to see the Northern Lights.  If the evening had clear skies we would go down to the beach and look out at the sky and the water.  Any time either of us got up in the middle of the night we would take a look outside to see if anything was happening.  A couple of times we got up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and went out to see the astronomical show.

My 1:00 A.M. visit to the lake is my favorite moment of my trip to Canada.  There was no moon so it was very dark.  The stars were brilliant and the Milky Way made a dusty streak above my head.  As I took my place on the dock I looked at the sky and saw the Big Dipper in its position not far above the horizon.  The night was so soft and still; there was no wind.  As I looked to the north I could see the perfect reflection of the constellation in the water.  It was such a beautiful thing to behold, and I sat there for quite a while just taking it all in.

Although I wasn't able to take my own picture of the night sky,
I found this picture online that is a pretty good representation of
what I saw.  However, without the 360 degree view you
don't get the full impact.


Seeing the Northern Lights is always a great experience.  We had three or four nights that we were able to see the Lights.  Besides the eerie green glow on the horizon, we observed beams of light and ripples moving across the sky.  The first night we saw the Lights they looked like the giant swirl of a galaxy.  So amazing!

**************************************

Recently, Phil and I heard someone describing the different ways that worship can look.  Worship might include standing, raising hands, clapping, shouting, silence, bowing prostrate or kneeling.  It can remind you of what you see and hear at a football game.


This past weekend I experienced worship like this at Catalyst.  Singing, shouting, dancing.  Ovations for people whose words stirred our hearts.  It was such a blessing.

But I'm also glad for the worship I experienced in Canada.  The silence and awe I felt at the beautiful scene my Creator allowed me to experience was even more powerful and yet another blessing.

In one week I was able to experience both of these extremes.  We all need to have more of both of these kinds of experiences in our lives.











Sunday, October 9, 2016

Uncommon Fellowship




spent Thursday and Friday in Atlanta attending the Catalyst Conference which is geared for Christian leaders.  This year’s theme was Uncommon Fellowship, which focused on building unity between churches and diversity in our congregations.  My friend Bea Ward attended with me, and it was great to be there with someone who loved it as much as I did. I came away full to the brim.

Here are a few of the best thoughts I collected from Catalyst.

Andy Stanley
"Jesus believed that our unity is our message to the world."

"People who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus and Jesus liked them back."

"What if people were skeptical of what we believe but envious of how we treat one another."

"Unity preempts personal preference."

"Jesus gave his life so that we could have uncommon fellowship.  The relationship between humans and God is the most uncommon fellowship there can be."

Mike Foster
"I want to be a grace-flavored snow cone on a hot, judgmental day."

Craig Groeschel

"People are sick and tired of hearing about the love of Jesus.  They need to see the love of Jesus."

"Unity is not the same as uniformity.  There is strength in diversity."

"We need to err on the side of being for things, not against them."

"We need to give everything we can to strengthen others.  We will lead the way with irrational generosity."

Travis Boersma, owner of Dutch Brothers Coffee

"Our motto is 'Love all -- Serve all'."

"We are not in the coffee business.  We are in the relationship business.  Our product is love."

Father Edwin Leahy

Father Leahy got the biggest ovation from the crowd.  He comes across as such a genuine person.  He has spent his whole career at St. Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, NJ, educating African-American and Latino young men.

"Our credo is 'What hurts my brother hurts me.'"

"Someone asked me what our preparatory school was preparing our young men for.  The obvious answer is college but the reality is that we are really preparing them for heaven."

His advice to the leaders in the room:  "Give up what you want for what we need."

Judah Smith

Preaching on Matthew 9 about Jesus calling Matthew the tax collector:

"Jesus has plans to take me to Matthew's house."

"Jesus intends to include those who have been excluded."

"At the end of the story, Matthew's table had changed."

My thought;  How should my table change?

Brian Houston, pastor of Hillsong in Australia

"We build up our ceilings and they become the floors for the next generation."

"We must push out of the past.  The hope of the church is our sons and daughters."


Brenda Salter-McNeil

I loved this woman!  She described her trip to Ferguson and work in racial justice.

"God is breaking up our holy huddles."




Scott Sauls led a panel discussion that I wish would have gone on a lot longer.  It was very rich and thought-provoking.

"The closer you get to 'the other' the closer you get to Jesus."-- Scott Sauls

"The race issue is really a power issue." -- Jenny Yang

"Christ gave up power, privilege and position." [implying we should too] -- Mark DeYmaz

"Charity is giving someone crumbs from the table.  Justice is giving them a seat at the table." Jenny Yang quoting Bill Moyers
Yang went on to apply this to the church... "a seat in the sanctuary vs a voice at the microphone"

"Violence is the language of the unheard."  Propaganda, hip-hop and spoken-word artist

Rachel Cruze

"Money is a tool that can help create unity."

"Debt kills generosity.  Debt enslaves and slaves don't get to make decisions."

Simon Sineck
Another one of my favorites, he gave a phenomenal presentation.

Speaking on the need to sacrifice:  "Giving money is not a sacrifice because you can always make more.  Giving time and energy is a sacrifice because you can never get it back."

He talked about understanding our work in the church (and life) in terms of playing a game.  Some games are finite and the object is to win.  Other games are infinite; the object is to outlast and stay in the game.  The church should realize that we are like the infinite game.















Sunday, October 2, 2016

Madeleine L'Engle



Many years ago when I first started teaching my room was next to a man named Kris Riber. He and I were in the habit of reading aloud daily to our students, one of my favorite times of the day just as it was for several of my colleagues.  We would talk about what we were reading and get ideas from each other about books we liked.  One of my favorite books to read aloud was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.  One of his favorites was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

We both decided to give the other's book a try.  Neither of us were satisfied.  Although I like a good fantasy story, science fiction, the genre of A Wrinkle in Time, was not my favorite.  When Kris read Red Fern he told me each chapter was just another hunt, and he was always thinking, "Here we go again."  

That was my introduction to Madeleine L'Engle, and I had not revisited her until I came across a couple of her memoirs in the Christianity section at McKays. I had seen quotes from her works in several other books I had read, and my curiosity was piqued.

There is something so satisfying to me about reading from an author who is so adept at their craft.  L'Engle had a way of saying things that spoke to me in many ways.  Although I seldom struggle with doubts of faith in God, it was certainly enlightening to hear her talk about them and to see the things that brought her back from the darkness she felt was trying to enfold her.




These books were written in 1970's but remain extremely relevant to the struggles we face today.  Here are a few of my favorites quotes from the books:


On creativity:

The creative impulse, like love, can be killed, but it cannot be taught.  What a teacher or librarian or parent can do, in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn.  As far as I’m concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.

On evil in the world (This is so relevant to us today.):

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up in a peaceful, secure, and civilized world.  We’ve come to the point where it’s irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up.  The children themselves haven’t yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups.  Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don’t look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against.

On marriage vs living together (I could substitute "Phil and I" in this quote.):

I’m quite sure that Hugh and I would never have reached the relationship we have today if we hadn’t made promises.  Perhaps we made them youthful, and blindly, not knowing all that was implied; but the very promises have been a saving grace.

On talking to a friend about the popularity of the occult:
  
I started gong to in high philosophical vein about what a snare and a delusion this is, and could see that he thought I wasn’t very bright.  
Suddenly I said, “Hey, I think I know why astrology has such tremendous appeal.  The year and month and day you are born matters.  The very moment you are born matters.  This gives people a sense of their own value as persons that the church hasn’t been giving them.”
“Now you’re cooking with gas,” he said.
To matter in the scheme of the cosmos: this is better theology than all our sociology.  It is, in fact, all that God has promised to us: that we matter.  That he cares.

On the need for community:

The Establishment [funny to see this very dated term once again] is not, thank God, the Pentagon, or corruption in the White House or governors’ palaces or small-town halls.  It is not church buildings of any denomination.  It is not organized groups, political parties, hierarchies, synods, councils, or whatever.  It is simply the company of people who acknowledge that we cannot live in isolation, or by our own virtue, but need community and mystery, expressed in the small family, and then the larger families of village, church, city, country, globe. 

On the comfort of the status quo and the need for revolution (change):

Because we are human, these communities tend to become rigid.  They stop evolving, revolving, which is essential to their life, as is the revolution of the earth about the sun essential to the life of our planet, our full family and basic establishment.  Hence, we must constantly be in a state of revolution, or we die.  But revolution does not mean that the earth flings away from the sun into structureless chaos.  As I understand the beauty of the earth’s dance around the sun, so also do I understand the constant revolution of the community of the Son.  
But we forget, and our revolutions run down and die, like an old, windup phonograph.
My own forgetfulness, the gap between the real, revolutionary me and the less alive creature who pulls me back, is usually only too apparent.
(Oh, how I identify with this last sentence.)

On going to a museum and coming home to paint:  

A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn’t diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe.  This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent…When I hear a superb pianist, I can’t wait to get to my own piano, and I play about as well now as I did when I was ten.  A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write.  This response on the part of any artist is the need to make incarnate the new awareness we have been granted through the genius of someone else.
I used the word “arrogant” about those verses.  I take it back.  I don’t think it’s arrogance at all.  It is beauty crying out for more beauty.

On not remembering the name of a teacher who caused her great pain as a little girl (I think this whole section is so powerful and true.):  

When she decided that I was neither bright nor attractive nor worth her attention, she excluded me, and this is the most terrible thing one human being can do to another.  She ended up annihilating herself.
To annihilate.  That is murder.
We kill each other in small ways all the time.
At O.S.U. we discussed dividing grades into sections according to so-called ability.  Every teacher there was against it.  Every teacher there believed that a student in the lowest group is rendered incapable of achieving simply by being placed in that group.  “So I’m in the dumb group.  That’s what they think of me.  There’s no use trying, because they know I can’t do it.”
Murder.
I didn’t try to learn anything for the annihilating teacher for just these reasons.
I worry about this.  I worry about it in myself.  When I am angry or hurt, do I tend to exclude that person who has hurt me?
I said that a photograph could not be an icon. In one strange, austere way there are photographs of two people in my prayer book which are icons for me.  I keep them there for that precise reason.  They are people I would rather forget.  They have brought into my life such bitterness and pain that my instinct is to wipe them out of my memory and my life.
And that is murder.
I had, through some miracle, already managed to understand this, when I came across these words of George MacDonald’s:
It may be infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him.  The former may be a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice.  It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.


On truth:

…a great work of the imagination is one of the highest forms of communication of the truth that mankind has reached.  But a great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or to agree with it.  A great piece of literature simply is.
It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint.


On seeking forgiveness:

We haven’t done a very good job of righting the wrongs of our parents or our peers, my generation.  We can’t say to our children, here is a green and peaceful world we have prepared for you and your children: enjoy it.  We can offer them only war and pollution and senility.  And this is the time we decide, in our churches, that we’re so virtuous we don’t need to be forgiven: symbolically, iconically forgiven. 
(She was struggling with changes in the Book of Common Prayer in her church liturgy which made confession before receiving communion optional.)
If the Lord’s table is the prototype of the family table, then, if I think in terms of the family table, I know that I cannot sit down to bread and wine until I’ve said I’m sorry, until reparations have been made, relations restored.  When one of our children had done something particularly unworthy, if it had come out into the open before dinner, if there had been an “I’m sorry,” and there had been acceptance, and love, then would follow the happiest dinner possible, full of laughter and fun.  If there was something still hidden, if one child, or as sometimes happens, one parent, was out of joint with the family and the world, that would destroy the atmosphere of the whole meal.
Only a human being can say I’m sorry. Forgive me. This is part of our particularity.  It is part of what makes us capable of tears, capable of laughter.