Words 11.7

 Words Twice a Week        11.7

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

Some days from the church calendar -

Nov 9    Elizabeth of the Trinity – She was a French mystic, a member of the Discalced Carmelites.  She said: "I find Him everywhere while doing the wash as well as while praying."

Nov 10  Pope Leo the Great – he was one of the  negotiators who convinced Attila the Hun not to attack Rome.  He is regarded as the “founder of the papacy, establishing the bishop of Rome as the vicar of the Roman Catholic Church.

Nov 11   Liliʻuokalani   She was the last Queen of the Hawaiian Kingdom, from 1891 to 1893 when it was overthrown, “bolstered by the landing of US Marines to protect American interests.”  She wrote Aloha Oe – sung by Elvis in Blue Hawaii.  And by a bunch of other people and cartoon characters – Bugs Bunny to Popeye.

Nov 14 – Samuel Seabury He was the first American Episcopal Bishop.  He was a loyalist during the Revolutionary War.  Interestingly, he wrote that “liberty is a very good thing and slavery is a very bad thing”, although his father owned at least one slave, and he himself received several slaves through his marriage, and owned at least one when he died.  So -

(The terminology is worth reflecting on – slaves, enslaved persons, received, owned, the wikipedia article says “Hicks transferred the ownership of four slaves to Samuel Seabury” – I really need to stop and think about which words are most accurate and respectful.  This [the 14th] might be a day to do that.)

And some days from the earth/world calendar

Nov 8

+ John Milton died in 1674.  Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained.

+ In 1793 the Louvre opened in Paris.  Originally a fortress, Napoleon turned it into a national museum and home for it’s most famous resident - Mona Lisa.

+ HBO was launched in 1972.

+ Doc Holliday (I love it – he was an American gambler, gunfighter, …….and dentist!) died in 1887; Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900.  She wrote only one novel that was published during her lifetime.

Nov 9

+ Dylan Thomas died on this day in 1953.  He wrote and recited poetry, including Under Milk Wood, a play for voices.  He wrote A Child’s Christmas in Wales – a staple of the West family seasonal celebration.  He died in New York, possibly of bronchitis and pneumonia, as well as emphysema, all aggravated by heavy drinking and the air pollution in the city, shortly after arriving from London for a tour of the US.  About himself and his life as a poet he wrote “I should say I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes and before I could read them for myself I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance ... I fell in love, that is the only expression I can think of….”  

+ Kristallnacht occurred in 1938.  In Germany, Jewish stores, businesses, synagogues, and homes were ransacked by paramilitary troops and civilians.  “It changed the nature of Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews from economic, political, and social exclusion to physical violence, including beatings, incarceration, and murder; the event is often referred to as the beginning of the Holocaust.”

+ the Berlin Wall started coming down.

Nov 10

+ Martin Luther was born in 1483; Neil Gaiman in 1960

+ Longfellow published Hiawatha in 1855.  There’s a Song of Hiawatha Garden in Minneapolis in the Minnehaha Falls Park.  It has some of the verses engraved in the rocks, but they are kind of worn and you can’t always read all of them.  It helps if you already know the poem!  A good day to read some of it?  A good day to think about Native American life and experience?  And to note that we are living in the ancestral home of the Anishinaabeg!  Here’s the wikipedia site about Hiawatha himself; here’s the site for The Song of Hiawatha.

+ Area codes were introduced, and 906 became another name for the UP.  Another number to remember.  Here is more than you want to know about national and international codes!

+ Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.

Nov 11

+ well, Armistice Day, of course.

+ the odd and even numbering system for US highways was adopted in 1926.  North/south roads were given odd numbers, East/west roads were even.  So US 41 goes from Copper Harbor to Florida, Route 66, one of the original highways in the system goes/went from Chicago to Santa Monica, CA.

Nov 13

+ Karen Silkwood was killed in a “suspicious car crash” in 1974.  She had been gathering data suggesting negligence in a plutonium production plant in Oklahoma.  She was on the way to meet with a reporter from The New York Times.

+ the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982.  We saw the traveling one in Mqt several years ago.

+ Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland in 1850.  He wrote all kinds of stuff, from Treasure Island to Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Kidnapped to A Child's Garden of Verses.  He moved to Samoa in 1880 and died there in 1894.

Nov 14

+ Claude Monet was born in 1840.  He was a founder of the Impressionist style of painting.  Didn’t we have a task last year of coming up with a haiku that could caption a Monet painting of haystacks or something like that?  I’ll have to check.

+ Coventry (city and cathedral) was bombed in 1940 during WW2.

That’s what I got for now…..

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Words 11.4

 Words Twice a Week        11.4

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

Some thoughts on some of the lessons for this Sunday – Proper 27  (These are thoughts on proper 27 – many churches will be observing All Saints Sunday which would be a different set of lessons.  We’ll have a prayer for All Saints at the end.)

Ruth 3.1-5, 4.13-17

+ on a quick, surface read, this story is kind of dicey.  First we note that this was a strictly patriarchal society in which women needed men for security, for sustenance, for identification. And secondly, we note that there was a legal process to all of this – Ruth, Naomi, and even Boaz were to some extent caught up in it.  Much of the material between the two sections of the lesson goes into what was required.  And finally, we note that the issue behind the whole book of Ruth is the continuing of Elimelech’s (I always want to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight – wa-wi-me-weh) line, somehow finding another son for him.  The “punchline” so to speak, is that the son who arrives, whom God has manipulated life towards(?), is in fact the grandfather of David!

+ a note before we move on, Ruth, a Moabite, a foreigner, is in fact the great grandmother of David.

+ 4.15 – “your daughter-in-law who is more than 7 sons to you” – recognizing the special gift of friendship between women?

+ note that in the material between the two sections, Ruth does not just wait for Boaz to take the lead (as Naomi had suggested), but actually prompts him about his responsibilities according to his (and now her) faith.

+ two immediate legal issues – the land that would belong to Elimelech’s descendants, and the responsibility for the women.  When another closer relative to Ruth would buy the land, he backs off when Ruth is thrown into the deal.  So – Boaz gets her after all, and gets to be Great Grandpa to David!

+ so in this case, anyway, all the legal and religious requirements work out for the best.

Psalm 127

+ a line from Walter Brueggemann – “I can think of no direct way to avoid the embarrassment of this psalm in its preoccupation with sons.”  First, it values sons over daughters; second, it values many sons – troubling to adults who are childless (by choice or by chance), and also troubling to folks who are concerned about over-population.

+ all that said, it’s a nice little piece.  Vs 1-2 note that effort outside of God’s vision is vain, is useless.  “Unless the Lord builds the house….” - it just has a nice sound.  Is “house” a metaphor for “family”?

+ how do you feel like you are working with God today?  

+ and then the joy, and usefulness, of sons (and daughters).  How are your children a joy (or sorrow) to you?  How are they useful?  Garrison Keillor once said the decision to have children is to decide to have your heart walking around outside your body for the rest of your life.

1 Kings 17.8-16

+ note that Elijah asks something from the poor widow.  What might we receive from the poor, if we asked?

+ have you ever found yourself in a situation like either Elijah or the widow?  If we think more than just financially?

Psalm 146

+ again, a few nice lines – “Put not your trust in princes…”  There was a book by leadership guru Margaret Wheatley – she said in the context of a community in difficulty, “No one is coming to save you – but, you have within you the power to save yourself.”  Not sure how that works with our understanding of God and faith, but it’s worth thinking about.

+ the Lord gives food to the hungry….  How do today’s hungry people hear that?

+ humans are temporary (transitory!), God is permanent.

Mark 12.38-44

+ This is the end of Jesus’ public teaching.

+ Beware of Scribes/rich/powerful.  Fred Craddock notes that being a scribe was a necessary and honored position, but “places of honor tend to attract persons who are not honorable.”  

+ who would be these people today?  Where do we draw the line about faith and appearance – wearing a four inch wooden cross around your neck (I did that at one time)? Having a religious bumpersticker? Wearing a religious t-shirt? Wearing your choir robe to Sunday brunch?  Wearing your pulpit robe to the mall?

+ they say long prayers for appearance sake.  Brian Wren, one of my heroes, said that you should be able to write a one issue prayer (like a collect) in 50 words or less.  Not always that easy.

+ and the woman – perhaps her poverty is a result of scribes taking advantage of her sorrow and financial unfamiliarity.  Again, Craddock notes “she doesn’t whine or complain, she takes the small remainder and acts, taking responsibility for her life.”

+ will the aforementioned scribes take care of her, now that she has (financially) nothing?  Or what does she really have?

+ Joseph Donders helps me see this story afresh – he retells it until he gets to where she put in her two coins, and he says Jesus stood up in astonishment and said “Wow – she gave everything she had.”  I was used to thinking of Jesus commenting on the scene, not so much his being astonished by it.  Donders goes on to suggest that at the last supper, when Jesus put the bread and wine, everything he had/was/is, on the table, possibly he was thinking of the woman in the temple.

So – a prayer for All Saints, in 50 words or less!

Eternally Creating God,

you made heaven and earth and all that is in them,

and you keep faith forever.

Thank you for the witness of those who have gone before us

and those who walk with us today. 

   (Pause to remember?)

May their examples inspire us towards a life of faith

and encourage us in times of trouble.

We ask it in the name of Jesus, who goes before, behind, and alongside us all.

   (Well, 72 words – maybe a little “showy”!)

That’s what I got for now…..

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Words 10.31

 Words Twice a Week        10.31

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.

Two days late and a couple dollars short – but that’s the camp life!

Some days from the church calendar -

Nov 2 – Day of the Dead/Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

Nov 3  Martin de Porres  He was a lay brother of the Dominicans in Peru, born in 1579, he died on this day in 1639.  He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed slave of African and Native descent.  As such his participation in the religious life was severely limited.  He joined a monastery as servant, and finally became a lay brother.  Once when the monastery was in debt, he said “I am only a poor mulatto, sell me.”  When an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Martin took him to his own bed. One of his brethren reproved him. Martin replied: "Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness."  He is the patron saint of among others, mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, lottery winners, public health workers, and all those seeking racial harmony.

Some days from the earth/world calendar -

Nov 2

+ George Bernard Shaw died in 1950 after falling off a ladder in his orchard.  He was 94.  He wrote a variety of plays, including Pygmalion, on which My Fair Lady is based.  He was a controversial figure - he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organized religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican, castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period.

+ Daniel Boone was born in 1734

Nov 3

+ In 1884 the US Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans were aliens and not citizens of the US.  (In 1924 the Indian citizenship Act gave Native Americans full citizenship.)

+ Godzilla was released in 1954.  First of many “Zillas”!

Nov 4

+ Felix Mendelssohn died in 1847.  Among other things, he wrote the music for Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  53 days till Christmas!  He also wrote incidental music for as production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which includes The Wedding March!

+ Will Rogers was born in 1879; Walter Cronkite in 1916.  We toured Mark Twain’s boyhood home in Hannibal.  It all makes you wonder – in 50 years what names will be part of the common culture.  

Nov 5

+ Art Garfunkel was born in 1941

+ Al Capp died in 1979.  He wrote and drew the Li’l Abner comic strip - Pappy and Mammy Yokum, Daisy Mae, Dogpatch, USA,  and Sadie Hawkins Day, along with a variety of outlandish characters which according to M Thomas Inge “had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South.”  Again, in 50 years….?

Nov 6

+ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovski died in 1893.  He wrote The `1812 Overture, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker. Again – 53 days….

+ Adolph Sax (yes, he invented the saxophone) was born in 1814; John Philip Sousa in 1854

Nov 7

+ Leo Tolstoy died in 1910.  (or on Nov 20, depending on which calendar you are using!)  We could have spent the pandemic reading War and Peace (there was an online support group that read so many pages each day) but we didn’t.  Now we’ve got to do it on our own.

+ Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962.

+ In 1916, Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress.  She was from Montana.

That’s what I got for now…..

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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…..

Comments are moderated – by me – and may take a day to appear.

Words 10.7

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