Walk a Mile in Her Shoes

This morning I walked with some others from Park church and the Brainerd/Baxter community as we participated in a walk to raise awareness about rape and abuse issues and also financial support for the women's shelter. With these shoes I am glad it was only a mile.

Next week its the CROP walk!

Parker and Nick, above

From Spirituality and Practice

A devout man came to the Baal Shem Tov with a complaint: "I've made an enormous effort to serve the Lord sincerely and honestly, but I haven't noticed any change or improvement. I'm still the same ordinary, ignorant person as before."
The Baal Shem Tov answered: "You've realized you are ordinary and ignorant, and that in itself is a great accomplishment."— Rabbi Nilton Bonder in Yiddishe Kop


(Today I might accomplish more of this!....Rambling on)

Desert Wisdom Link

Instead of going over to Jeff Reed's blog to click on his Wisdom of the Desert Link, I have decided to make it easier for myself, and for you. The Link is on the side. Check out and ponder this ancient Christian wisdom. Thanks Jeff, for the lead on that one.

Aggravation of Faith

The confirmations students are asked to prepare a statement or affirmation of faith as part of their confirmation preparation. They have copies of the traditional creeds plus some more contemporary creeds to consider, and a whole list of questions to prime their thinking. I always point out that this is more snap shot for today and that I hope this picture of faith for them will continue to grow.

The confirmation creeds are due about now and one of the students told me this week ,with great satisfaction, that he wrote his "Aggravation of Faith." I kept a straight face and said, That's good but I think you are talking about your affirmation of faith. "Oh Yeh" he said.. But I said that Aggravation of Faith sounded pretty good too and it might make a good sermon idea. I could preach on that!
So, blog reader! How are we doing with our Aggravations of Faith? It does seem like that too. Read the prophets. Or a gospel lesson that tells me I must forgive! Or any of this incessant Jesus language about self denial, dying and rising. And the very idea of God' presence, with us!
I did some dictionary work and found that aggravation is not just something irritating or annoying...it is from the Latin word that means "to make heavy. "
We have made light of creeds, of our beliefs, far too often . Affirmations of faith are heavy.....aggravating.

Trees

Yesterday I walked out to the "end of the world"...the place a couple blocks from here where our street lights end and the gravel road begins and the red winged black birds live (to scream at us as we intrude!) and the cat tails grow. It really should be called the "start of the world" but in our house it became the destination for starry night walks. Anyway, yesterday while I was there .I heard the sounds poplar leaves make - flapping and rusting as they do best (you do know that different trees make different sounds?) And then later in the day (in computer world) I happened upon Herman Hesse and his work called "Trees."
Not a bad meditation for a walk and day off.

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the forces of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals it’s death wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk, in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal tress grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought. I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."
(H. Hesse 1918)

Who is first?

This is an excerpt from a recent Jim Wallis post on God's Politics. He is commenting on the political party conventions. Can you hear the point he is trying to make?

But one other thing bothered me last night, and it did also at the Democratic Convention. It was all those signs that read "Country First" and all those chants of "USA, USA, USA!!" The high-powered and, frankly, militaristic rhetoric kept telling us that "country" should be put above everything else -- including family and friendship. But what about faith? Should country be put ahead of faith, too? I kept wanting to yell back at the people yelling at me about putting the country first and say, "No, not me, I'm a Christian." Because we as Christians simply can't put our country first, ahead of God, ahead of Jesus Christ, ahead of the body of Christ (remember the worldwide body of Christ), and even family and friendship. Especially when our country is wrong, and when most of the rest of the body of Christ around the world thinks so.
"Country First" was the theme of John McCain's speech and night, and he asked us to "fight with him." Barack Obama also said in Denver that all Americans must put country first -- to counter the Republican exclusive claim on patriotism. Well, again, not all of us. I suppose people running for president have to say that, but Christian voters shouldn't go along with that. Can anybody imagine Jesus leading cheers shouting "USA!"?
This morning I spoke to the annual Wheaton, Illinois, prayer breakfast. I was driven there by a local Christian leader who spends his days serving poor women and children along with troubled teenagers. When he told me he was Canadian, even though he had lived in the U.S. for years, I asked him if Canadian Christians would respond to the call to put country first. "No," he said, we are "world Christians." What a good thought and what a clear sense of Christian identity. It was a great way to begin the day after two weeks of political conventions. So let the fact-checking and the radical assertion of "faith first" begin in this political campaign.

For the full article go to http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics

Need a break from political news?

I realize that humor can get touchy but if you can go easy on some religious satire..this web site is worth a visit!
http://www.larknews.com

Devotional /reflection tools

As part of the trip to Rosebud SD I put together some reflection guides for the group members to use. Its the sort of thing that you get when you let an introvert plan the devotions...you get devotions for introverts! Most of the reflection guides will be over on my sermon blog


Awareness
As you go throughout this day and review this day; be open to some personal sign of God’s presence.
Look for some thing that reminds you of God or some characteristic or action of God.. If it is something that you can pick up and take with you, do so, otherwise write about it or draw a picture etc.

In your evening devotions read this poem By Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,found again after two hundred years….
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper….
When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me….
I am food on the prisoner’s plate….
I am water rushing to the wellhead,filling the pitcher until it spills….
I am the patient gardener of the dry and weedy garden….
I am the stone step,the latch, and the working hinge….
I am the heart contracted by joy…the longest hair, white before the rest….
I am there in the basket of fruit presented to the widow….
I am the musk rose opening unattended, the fern on the boggy summit….
I am the one whose love overcomes you, already with you when you think to call my name.
Source: "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks" in Jane Kenyon, Collected Poems

Do you believe that God is present in the smile of a child, in the tears of a parent's grief over a suffering adolescent, in the sudden breakthrough of understanding between quarreling spouses? Eternal truths can be learned by observing the most common elements of life: nursing an infant may be a window into God's nurturing care for each of us; bandaging a cut can help us know the healing desire of God; playing games may speak of the divine playfulness that knows our need for recreation; tending a garden may teach us the dynamics of growth. Families learn that they are sacred communities when they begin to name and claim the many forms of God's grace in their daily life.
- Marjorie J. Thompson
from "Family: The Forming Center

By E. B. White Source: Notes and Comment, the New Yorker
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

AT SOME moment in the day, deliberately gaze at a tree, a shrub, a flower, a bird, a cloud, sunlight, rain, and greet it as a loving partner. Look at it fully and lovingly. Touch it if you can or open your palms to its presence. Let God’s love speak, reach out to you through it. Move gently deeper than the outward appearance and greet the hidden, living mystery.
- Flora Slosson Wuellner Prayer, Stress and our Inner Wounds
From p. 73
Possible group sharing...what were your God sightings today or the signs that you saw? How will this influence the way you live tomorrow?

Back to school?

From today's inward/outward entry:

By Elton Trueblood
The Christian life is presented by Christ, not as the sentimental belief in natural goodness, but as a hard and dangerous road, which involves both severe temptations and continual dangers. It may be necessary to endure sacrifices in order to avoid fatal temptations. Though the love of God is always available, … life, especially for the Christian, is not one of easy choices, but often a school of struggle, in which some things have to be given up if others are to be obtained.
(Source: Confronting Christ)

Do we get recess?