Words 10.24

 Words Twice a Week        10.24

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

So we are back at it, but we are st camp – no real internet access – so not too much for this week.  I guess I don’t really know what days the church takes note of this week, but here are some days we might want to be aware of -

And first off, today, well, yesterday by the time this gets posted – Oct 24

+ Harry Houdini’s last performance in 1926.

+ it is the birthday of Sara J Hale in 1788.  She pushed for Thanksgiving to be a holiday and she wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb.

+ Denise Levertov was born in 1923.  She said “I’m not very good at praying, but what I experience when I‘m writing a poem is close to prayer.”

Oct 25

+ Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400.  He wrote The Canterbury Tales, which “did much to establish the English language as a viable vehicle for literature.

+ Anne Tyler was born in 1941.  She wrote several books that I have really enjoyed – Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Vinegar Girl (a retelling of Taming of the Shrew), and another where the wife and mother just walks off into another life for a few years.  She wrote Saint Maybe, which I am getting ready to read again. I read it years ago, and saw the movie (not as good!), and am thinking that as we get into January, it might be fun to get folks to read on zoom, a chapter a night.  More about that as January gets closer.  I think what I like about Anne Tyler is that in her stories things don’t work out the way they kind of “should”, or you would like them to, but still life is good.

Oct 26

+ the Erie Canal opened in 1825.  It created eastern markets for agricultural products of the Great Lakes region, and gave Pete Seeger a couple of good songs to sing!  As we were on the Mississippi learning about river transport, and again reading about Lewis and Clark, until the railroads and then the interstates, water was how things where transported (“shipped”!).

Oct 27

+ Rex Stout died in 1975.  He wrote Nero Wolfe mysteries.  I really liked the way he created a whole world in the four story brownstone complete with rituals and routines and wonderful characters – and of course, a smart-alack secretary/detective Archy Goodwin.

Oct 28

+ Constantine’s victory at Milvian Bridge in 312.  Before the battle, he saw a cross in the sky, and after his victory he championed Christianity, granting it toleration and extending imperial favor.  “On the one hand, this marked the end of persecution.  On the other, by uniting church and state, there began a diminution of the gospel’s radicalness, a dilemma that haunts the church to this day.”  - W Paul Jones

Oct 29

+ Clarence Jordan died in 1969.  He wrote The Cotton Patch Gospel.  He helped establish Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, a forerunner to Habitat for Humanity.

+ Stock market crash in 1929

+ first ball-point pen sold in 1945 – changes the way people wrote, and helped foster “throw-away” products.  I still enjoy getting out the fountain pen now and then.

+ NOW – the National Organization for Women was organized in Chicago in 1966.

Oct 31

+ Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the chapel door.

+ Harry Houdini died in 1929.  He had been hit in the stomach (as a result of a challenge) before he was ready, and possibly suffered damage to internal organs.

+ it’s the birthday of John Keats – sorry, don’t know the year.

+ I have it written down that in 2011 this was “the day of seven billion”.  I assume that means that according to some tally, the world population hit seven billion.

+ and of course, it’s Halloween – kind of an odd holiday, according to W Paul Jones, it’s the second most lucrative US commercial holiday.

Seems like we ought to write a poem about all this, following Denise’s thought -

So, no links to help you with this – you’ll have to look stuff up on your own.  But that’s what I got for now…..

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Words 10.21

 Words Twice a Week        10.21

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

Ok – we are back, after a week on the Mississippi River.  Saw a couple of churches – one United Methodist, one Episcopal – that had one or more Tiffany windows.  One had an edible garden next to the sidewalk with an invitation for passers-by to take something and eat it.  One that had a little sidewalk-side food pantry.  Hiked in Pere Marquette State Park (in Illinois) and ate a Marquette Burger (not as good as our local burgers, in my humble opinion) and a cup of Marquette French Onion soup (unfortunately the “croutons” on top was just a hamburger bun.)  Good to be home.

Here’s a few thoughts on some of the scripture lessons for this week – Proper 25

Job 42.1-6, 10-17

+ vs 3-4 – Job is quoting God’s response from the whirlwind last week.  

+ “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” – How have you learned about God?  How have you experienced God?  How did you respond – Job repented in dust and ashes!

+ vs 11 still talks about “all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.”  Is that how we think about what happened?

+ over the course of the book, Job has come to see (not unlike Bartimaeus!) that he and God are in fact in different spheres and that the idea of bringing God to court doesn’t make any sense.  He has learned (by experiencing God for himself) that God is capable of creating creatures that are beyond God’s control, but who can thus be adequate/appropriate/”fit” companions for God.  Is that enough for Job to love God/goodness for his own sake, not simply because God has been good to him?  (The question from 3 weeks ago - Satan suggests Job is good because his life is comfortable, God has been good to him. God claims Job is good because God’s goodness has given rise in Job to a love of goodness for it’s own sake.)

+ So then God restored Job’s wealth.  I got really irritated in a bible study once when everyone said “Job got 10 new children to replace the ones who were killed, so that’s ok.”  You don’t “replace” children who have died!

+ Job’s Daughters – we were not a “Masonic family” until my mom married my step-father, so I joined DeMolay but my biological sisters, older than me and out of the house by that time, were not in Job’s daughters, my step-sisters were. One thing that impressed me about Job’s Daughters was the family support.  When someone was getting installed as Honored Queen, people - parents, grand-parents, aunts and uncles, came from all over and brought presents!

+ Job gave his daughters an inheritance, along with his sons!  Forward thinking.

+ overall thoughts on Job?

+ a Trivia note – I believe that the first public event in the “new” community room in the “old” library – ie., before this last renovation – was our reading of the Stephen Mitchell translation of Job.  We had Job and the friends lined up on the stage, and the voice of God on a tape recording in the audience.  Seemed like a good idea at the time – probably got a bit long for those listening, although it is a pretty accessible translation..  

Ps 34.1-8

+ “I will bless the Lord…..Let us exalt God’s name together.

    “God answered me and delivered me….you will not be ashamed.”   

    -  A strong invitation to join in the psalmist’s faith experience.

+ “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  What comes to mind – the communion? The coffee-hour? The good food we have to eat? The beauty of God’s Creation?

+ “God redeems the life of God’s servants – they will not be condemned.”  I was reading a fantasy novel from the ship’s library about two young people that end up going back 250 years in time – being condemned was presented graphically!  How do we think about it?

Jeremiah 31.7-9

+ a grand home-coming from the Exile!  Everyone is included.

+ Has the pandemic put us into a kind of exile?  We are not able to be together; we have not been able to go to church; we look forward to returning with the same joy and excitement as Jeremiah pictures and the psalm celebrates.

Psalm 126

+ what are other folks saying about “us” – “us” as a country? “us” as a church/congregation? “us” as a family?  If other folks are saying “The Lord has done great things for them” – does that imply a certain responsibility on our part to share those “great things”?  What “great things” has God done for us, for you?

+ Those who go out bearing the seed for sowing shall come home rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.  What seed are we bearing and sowing?

+ There was a thought at one time the behind this verse was the reality that in cultures that live close to the land, there comes a time in spring where a family has to choose between eating the seeds and sowing them.  The tears the psalmist mentions could be tears of hunger, or the pain of watching a child go hungry.  We take it for granted that we’ll be able to buy new seed next spring.  What if we had to live on plants we grew from seeds we saved?  Time to make a deposit in the local seed library?

+ if we think in terms of the pandemic, the tears could be for those many ones who have serious consequences or who have died.

Mark 10.46-52

+ bookends nicely with Mark 8.22-26 about the healing of another blind man.  In between Jesus teaches what it means to follow him (note Bartimaeus calls Jesus “My Teacher”) and the disciples pretty consistently “fail to see”!

+ also, it’s the last story before the entry parade.  

+ “Son of David” – it has political/national overtones.  It’s an inadequate name for Jesus that a “blind” (or uninformed) person or the fickle crowds might use.

+ note there is no call to keep quiet about it as there has been in earlier healings.  Already Mark is leaning into the Jerusalem experience where it is all out in the open.

+ a nice comparison to the Rich Man in Mk 10.17-22.  “Though sincere, respectable, and religious, the rich man, when the chips are down, cannot break with his many possessions. He resists the invitation of Jesus and winds up a grieving nondisicple.  In contrast, the beggar abandons the one possession mentioned (his coat) and gladly becomes a follower.”  The minimalist guys say when you get rid of the things that absorb your attention, you can live by intention!

+ Bartimaeus is an outsider, but contrasts nicely with insiders James and John.  When Jesus asks “What do you want me to do for you?”, James and John ask for seats of power and honor; Bartimaeus asks for vision.  Those who think they see are in fact blind; those who are blind come to see.

+ so – with all of that, who are we in this story?

And a prayer for this week -

God of all peoples, 

in this time when we are so pushed to think in political or national terms,

open our eyes to see all your children among us here and even to the ends of the earth.

As you gather us together,

help us make each other welcome

as we follow Jesus on the Path of Peace.

That’s what I got for now…..

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Words 10.7

 Ok - I'm taking a couple of weeks off - back sometime around Oct 21.

Words 10.3

 Words Twice a Week        10.3

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

Some days from the church calendar -

Oct 4 Francis of Assisi – he was the son of a wealthy merchant, but after having a vision of Christ asking him to rebuild his church, and several other experiences, he renounced his patrimony, some accounts saying he stripped himself naked as a sign.  He lived a life of poverty, was close to nature, and arranged the first live nativity scene.  His Canticle of the Sun is well known and loved, but - spoiler alert – The “Lord Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace” prayer, often attributed to St Francis, is not actually found in his writing, and in fact cannot be traced back farther than 1912!  He founded the Order of Friars Minor – the Franciscans – and The Order of St Claire (The Poor Claires) and a Third Order for married men and women.

Oct 6  William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale were both involved in translating the bible into English and getting it printed.  The scholars involved in translating the King James Bible drew heavily from Tyndale’s work.

Oct 7  Henry Melchior Muhlenberg – He was a German Lutheran pastor sent to North America as a missionary, requested by Pennsylvania colonists.  Integral to the founding of the first Lutheran church body or denomination in North America, Muhlenberg is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States.  Now, just a little side journey, Muhlenberg County of the John Prine song, which has been covered by just about everyone from John Denver to The Everly Brothers (Don was born there), Lynn Anderson, Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Buffett, and you and me and more, was not named after this Muhlenberg but after General Peter Muhlenberg, who was a colonial general during the American Revolutionary War.  Just thought you would want to know.  And, now we all know what we are going to be singing for the rest of the day – Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County….

Also on Oct 7 – Bridgit of Sweden  She was a lady in waiting to the Queen Blanche od Sweden.  When Bridgit’s husband died, she joined the Third Order of the Franscians, and began to establish an order called the Brigittines.  She went to Rome, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, and sent back “precise instructions for the construction of a monastery" now known as Blue Church, insisting that an "abbess, signifying the Virgin Mary, should preside over both nuns and monks.”  Saint Bridget prayed for a long time to know how many blows Jesus Christ suffered during His terrible Passion. Rewarding her patience, one day He appeared to her and said, "I received 5480 blows upon My Body. If you wish to honor them in some way, recite fifteen Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys with the following Prayers, which I Myself shall teach you, for an entire year. When the year is finished, you will have honored each of My Wounds."  The prayers became known as the "Fifteen O's" because in the original Latin, each prayer began with the words O Jesu, O Rex, or O Domine Jesu Christe.  She had visions of the Nativity, which helped shape the way Jesus’ birth was depicted in art.

Oct 8 Thais – ok, she may or may not have been a real person.  If she was, she was a courtier who repented, lived for three years in a convent cell and then 15 days before she died among the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt.  She’s kind of interesting, because there are a couple of novels, an opera, a ballet, a play, a movie and more about her life.

And some days from the world/earth calendar -

And we’ll sneak in a couple notes about today, Oct 3 – 

+ Woody Guthrie died on this day in 1967.  He wrote This Land is Your Land and a bunch of other songs.  Have a favorite?  Roll on, Columbia is one of my favorites, but really, he wrote so many it is had to choose.  His autobiography is Bound for Glory.  Anyway, it’s a day for singing.

+ In 1849 Edgar Allen Poe was seen in public for the last time, sick and disoriented, in the streets of Baltimore.  Still pining for the lost Lenore?  Finally driven nuts by The Raven?  He died a few days later.  His house in Philadelphia is a National Historic Site.  We’ve been there.  So read/watch something by Poe tonight?  With a bottle of cognac and three red roses?

You ought to be able to come up with a poem -

    Once upon an autumn evening, channel surfing, not believing

    all the news and sports and stuff that the station sends my way.

    And I hunted for some snacks through the cupboards that were empty.

    Suddenly there came a ringing, on the porch a woman bringing -

     DoorDash! GrubHub! Pizza delivery, and as she turned away

    Set the table, three red roses and a cognac -

    the Poe Toaster Take Out Snack Food Buffet!

Best I could do – you could do better!

Oct 4

+ Rembrandt died in 1669.  He painted a variety of biblical scenes – here’s a link to Judas Repentant, Returning the Thirty Pieces of silver, 

+ Henrietta Lacks died in 1951.  Her cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. An immortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day.  She was not aware of this use of her cells, nor was her family until 1975 – raising concerns about medical consent and privacy.  The film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was released in 2017

Oct 5

+ James Bond debuted in Dr No in 1962, Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted in 1969.

+ in 1947, Pres Truman gave the first televised presidential speech.  He asked people to skip meat on Tues, eggs and poultry on Thursday, and to eat one less slice of bread each day, in order to aid Europe.

Oct 6

+ Alfred Lord Tennyson died in 1892.  He wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Crossing The Bar.  “Sunset and Evening Star, and one clear call for me…..”  A little different from Booth Led Boldly With His Big, Bass Drum (Are You Washed in the Blood of The Lamb), but both nice!  

Oct 8

+ Yankee Don Larson pitched the first and only perfect game in the World Series.  They beat the Brooklyn Dodgers

+ the Chicago and Peshtigo fires in 1871.  As we heard on the radio this week, numerous parts of Michigan also burned that summer.

+ Frank Herbert was born in 1920.  He wrote Dune and the sequels.  Here’s a link to the 2021 movie, US release set for Oct 22.

Oct 9

+ John Lennon was born in 1940.  Does it seem like anyone today is really trying to “Give Peace A Chance”?

+ Phantom of the Opera made it’s theatrical debut in 1986.

+ Che Guevara was murdered in 1967, after being lured by the CIA to Bolivia.

Oct 10

+ Brett Favre was born in 1969.  Arron Rogers is really good.  Brett Farve was more exciting – in my humble opinion.

+ John Prine was born in 1946.  Just to nail it down – he wrote “Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County….”  Now just try to go the whole day without singing it!

That’s what I got for now…..

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