Words 11.14

 Words Twice a Week        11.14

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

Some days from the church calendar -

Nov 15 - Francis Asbury and George Whitefield.  They were Methodists – Whitefield in England, Asbury in the United States (while they were still colonies!)  Whitefield was one of the ones who convinced John Wesley to go outside the church building and preach in the open, where the people were.  Asbury was one of the first bishops sent by Wesley to the colonies.  He spent most of his life riding on horseback or in carriages to visit Methodist churches throughout the colonies, states, territories.  Apparently, at one time he was the most recognized person in America.

Nov 16 - Margaret of Scotland, of Wessex, sometimes called “The Pearl of Scotland”

Nov 22 - CS Lewis  -  He wrote a variety of books - Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia 

Nov 24 -  Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara of Nicomedia, and Margaret of Antioch.  They were martyrs.  Santa Barbara CA, is named after Barbara.  They were the first of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

Some days from the world/earth calendar -

Nov 15

+ Opening Day.  If you are from Upper Michigan, you know what that means!

+ Someone named Emile Durkheim died on this day in 1917.  This is from W. Paul Jones – “Along with Weber and Marx, Durkheim is one of the premier sociologists of all time.  His central thesis is that both religion and morality arise from our collective unconsciousness, giving to society the sacredness necessary to inhibit the human tendencies toward undue selfishness and violence.”  I don’t know.  Doesn’t seem to be happening, to me.

+ Georgia O’Keefe was born in 1887.

+ Elvis premiered in his first movie (1956) – Love Me Tender.  I remember the song – don’t know if I ever saw the movie or not!

Nov 16

+ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (movie) was released in 2001.  It grossed $90 million in the US the first weekend.

+ Shigeru Miyamoto was born in 1952.  Don’t recognize the name – he designed/developed video games such as Mario, Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, and others.

Nov 17

+ Historian and author Shelby Foote was born in 1916.  The Ken Burns Civil War Documentary featured a lot of him.  He once wrote to William Faulkner, “I have every right to be a better writer than you.  Your literary idols were Joseph Conrad and Sherwood Anderson. Mine were Marcel Proust and you.  My writers are better than yours!”

+ Auguste Rodin died in 1917.

Nov 18

+ Marcel Proust died in 1922.  Obsessed with time and memory, her wrote 16 volumes of Remembrance of Things Past.  And I guess he inspired some other writers!

+ Railroads in the US adopted standardized time zones in 1883.  Before that many towns had their own times!

+ Margaret Atwood CC OOnt CH FRSC was born in 1939.  (Check the website to see what those letters mean.)  Anyway, she’s written poetry, novels, non-fiction, short fiction, children’s books, and graphic novels.  She lived part of her childhood in Sault Ste Marie (CA – though I suppose she came over the bridge now and then to buy fudge or tee-shirts!).  She wrote The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood.

Nov 19

+ Lincoln gave an address in Gettysburg.  It became rather well known, read, and recited!

+ Joe Hill was executed in Utah in 1915.  He was an organizer for working-class causes, in particular a song-writer and singer.  In one of his songs he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”.  He was framed on a murder charge and executed by firing squad.  There are several songs about Joe Hill, including “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” by Alfred Hayes.

Nov 20

+ World Children’s Day established by the United Nations in 1954.  In 1959 the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It is also the date in 1989 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  W Paul Jones notes that “interestingly, while Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are widely celebrated, Children’s Day has fallen into neglect.”  For Every Child is a wonderful picture book that summarized some of the rights of every child.

+ Windows 1.0 was released in 1985.  A couple of relevant haiku’s (not mine) -

        Yesterday it worked.                          Three things are certain -

        Today it is not working.                      Death, taxes and lost data.

        Windows is like that.                          Guess which has occurred. 

+ Joe Biden was born in 1942.  Happy Birthday, Joe!  RFK was born in 1925.

Nov 21

+ Tweety Bird made his debut in 1941 in a cartoon called A Tale of Two Kitties.

So – seems like we need a prayer for all children – check back by the 20th and see if I come up with anything. Ok - here's what I got. Write a haiku that starts with "From..." or "To..." and ends with "Let the children come." Examples -

From refugee camps, cold, sick, scared, hungry, lonely - let the children come. To families and schools, with food to eat, clothes to wear - let the children come.

But that’s what I got for now…..

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Words 11.11

 Words Twice a Week        11.11

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 introductory thoughts on some of the lessons for this Sunday – Proper 28

1 Samuel 1.4-20

+ interesting that in these weeks leading up to Advent, we read about two or three women who are significant in the lineage of Jesus, Naomi and Ruth, who ended up being great grandmothers of David, and Hannah, mother of Samuel who would go on to anoint David as king.  In our Bible, 1 Samuel (Hannah) follows directly after Ruth so we get the stories of the two women one after another.  In the Jewish Canon, Ruth is part of the Writings, so 1 Samuel follows immediately after Judges, so we get the development of that story, with Samuel being the  the transition between the judges or priests and the monarchy.

+ Elkana has two wives – one of whom has several children and one of whom is barren. That’s a harsh word – particularly in that time it was the woman who was barren, no matter what the cause, and it was seen as her being somehow less than other women.  We could use this as an opportunity to think about how our lives are fruitful or barren – as individuals, as a congregation, as a people or species even.

+ Peninnah lords it over Hannah – we’ve heard this story before!  Elkana seems to care for Hannah – he gives her a double portion of the sacrifice remainders – but does he really respect Hannah’s sadness when he says “Am I not enough for you?”

+ Hannah goes to pray, and Eli thinks she is drunk – is this meant to show Eli’s cluelessness or ineffectiveness?  Eli is certainly incapable of dealing with his own sons.

+ Finally Eli tells Hannah God has heard her prayer, or maybe that God will answer he prayer – it’s could be either - and when Elkana and Hannah come together, she conceives Samuel.

+ note that Samuel is dedicated to the Lord even before he is conceived.  Hannah makes a vow – she will fulfill it in the second reading.

+ Hannah no sooner has a son than she “gives him away.”  What is more important to her – actually having a son, or being a woman who has had a son.  I wonder if she had other children?

+ so where in your life do you feel like Hannnah?  

1 Samuel 2.1-10

+ so now we get the second half of the story.  Hannah had promised Samuel to the Lord, but she skipped the first opportunity to do that – she did not go to Shiloh until Samuel was weaned.  Bit of a cliffhanger?

+ and this passage is Hannah’s song of praise, not when Samuel is born but when she fulfills her vow and takes him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh.  So the two passages are petition and praise.

+ in the first verse of her song, Hannah rejoices in herself and her life.  Then she moves on to exult the Lord and lists off some of the things the Lord does, will do.  We note the remarkable similarity to The Magnificat in Luke.

+ and she notes that God is “holy” – refusing our efforts to harness God for our purposes.  One writer puts it “God is unrivaled in power and unbridled in freedom.”

+ interesting note in vs 10 Hannah mentions a “king”.  Where did that come from?

+ The Lord will defeat those who oppose, will judge the whole world, will raise up God’s anointed.  How is that working?

+ a psalm of personal thanksgiving has two themes – first to praise God for what God has done, and second to teach others about God.  What if we tried to write a psalm of thanksgiving for something in our life?

Daniel 12.1-3

+ a few verses from Daniel, interesting because they give a vision of the resurrection of the faithful at the end of time.  Jesus is going to talk more about the time before the end.  How do we think about it?  Time before we die? Time before the world somehow comes to an end?  Time when God brings Creation to some kind of fulfillment?

Mark 13.1-8

+ Chapter 13 is different from the rest of the book.  Mark has been pretty much telling stories – now Jesus goes off into apocalyptic comments on the endtimes.  Craddock says it is an unveiling, a revealing, a vision, a glimpse beyond what is going on to what is really going on.”

+ Chapter 13 could be left out and the story would move smoothly from ch 12 to 14.  Some people suggest chapter 13 is a second ending to Mark.  Ch 14-16 are a kind of discouraging ending with the crucifixion and the women afraid and saying nothing to anyone.  But ch 13 is an ending that says the story is not over yet.

+ Jesus comes out of the Temple, and in fact sits down “opposite the Temple” – geographically, historically, thematically – and says that buildings, the Temple, the Church building, will all come down, through wars or earthquakes or just decay.  The four disciples ask “when”, and first Jesus goes through all the things that will happen, and finally (in vs32) says “I don’t know when.”

+ Jesus says instead of worrying about when the end will come, pay attention to life in the meantime.  Carolyn Baker is/was(?) a professor of history and psychology who wrote a couple of books about the collapse of civilization.  Basically she comes to the conclusion that the thing to do is to live with love and integrity in the time we have left.

+ three things Jesus says the community needs to do – 1) develop a spirit of discernment, 2) the churches precarious situation demands patience, taking the long view, and 3) the church can be hopeful.

So – we need a prayer about Hannah’s faith or about the end of things or something like that.  I’ll sleep on it and see what I come up with tomorrow.  Or you can suggest something -

But that’s what I got for now…..

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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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