Snow can never emit flame.
Water can never issue fire.
A thorn bush can never produce a fig.
Just so, your heart can never be free
from oppressive thoughts, words, and actions
until it has purified itself internally.

Be eager to walk this path.
Watch your heart always.
Constantly say the prayer
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”
Be humble.
Set your soul in quietness.

The more the rain falls on the earth,
the softer it makes it;
similarly, Christ’s holy name
gladdens the earth of our heart
the more we call upon it.

— Hesychius of Sinai

copied fromThe Way Of A Pilgrim » Hesychius

A Couple of Quotes , and Remembering your Baptism

A couple of qoutes to keep in mind as you reflect on the lessons for this Sunday and the images of baptism with the call to live in the transformative process of dying and rising in Christ; as we hear Christ in todays Gospel lesson being called the "beloved", by God, and as we too, hear that word spoken to us in Christ:

WE ARE CONVERTED one aspect of the self at a time. That phenomenon explains why some parts of us can be approaching holiness while others remain locked in resistance and rebellion. Because different parts of our soul proceed at different rates, the invitation to love with our “whole heart” is the work of a lifetime and beyond.

- Robert Corin Morris
Provocative Grace: The Challenge in Jesus’ Words

From p. 109 of Provocative Grace: The Challenge in Jesus’ Words by Robert Corin Morris. Copyright © 2006 by the author. Published by Upper Room Books
(From Upper Room Website)

and the following from the Henri Nouwen Daily Meditation email-
The Still, Small Voice of Love

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, "Prove that you are a good person." Another voice says, "You'd better be ashamed of yourself." There also is a voice that says, "Nobody really cares about you," and one that says, "Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful." But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you." That's the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us "my Beloved."

Remember your baptism , again and again, day by day, and be thankful!
Rory

Thanks , Sara, for the Guest "Celebrity"Blog!

Looking for another daily devotional e-mail?
Check out the one from the Henri Nouwen site at http://www.henrinouwen.org

One of the fun things to do with this blog is watch the site meter and see who stops in. Often its from someone just passing through on a Google search but the hits come from Brazil or Ireland, South Africa, London UK (and London KY); or Grove City OH, Sheboygan WI....and Detroit, Scottsdale , Deerwood, Royalton, Motley, Cottonwood, Alexandria; of course Brainerd and Baxter.
Feel free to leave a comment or send an e-mail with who you are if you are one of the "regulars" who stop by! If you're a reader from Park church, let me know when you see me. I try to put up something at least once a week; but will do more if I can. Thanks for the visit.
Rory

Celebrity Guest Blog: Topics in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Hello Papa's Readers!

This is Rory's favorite daughter, Sara Swenson. He's been asking me for quite some time now to "pop on and do a guest blog." So I'm popping. He said I could write about New Year's Resolutions, or a review of 2007, or even talk about my Christmas vacation (that just goes to show you how far behind I am on my "To-Do" List); I could ramble on about college or writing or, really, just anything in general.

So I think I'll write about all of it. In that order. And Color Coded for your convenience.
Wish me luck.

My New Year's Resolutions have been recorded as follows:
1.) I will publish my novel.
2.) I will find a job somewhere. Sometime. This year.
3.) I will finish my first year of college. At Hamline. In the Spring.
4.) I will finish reading the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut Junior.
5.) I will attend at least ten yoga sessions.
6.) I will attempt vegetarianism but forgive myself upon failure. Again.
7.) I will seek out three Poetry Readings.
8.) I will accomplish something completely unexpected.
9.) I will do something strange.
10.) I will grow up a little and continue to enjoy life.
11.) I will try to write a poem every day and a short story every two weeks. For fluidity. If I opt out of the poem, I may journal.

In Review of 2007 and College, I would have to say I wish I'd done things differently. I wish I'd chosen a different University to attend right away, being as that would have saved my family and I a lot of time and money in my transferring. That's right, folks. I am without a doubt transferring Universities in Fall 2008. Hamline is definitely not the right school for me and I knew that going in. Still, if I had told myself that a year ago, stubborn little me never would have listened. So this has been a valuable learning experience.

Let's see... I remember early in 2007 being terrified of turning 18. I felt so old. I realize now that it is not so old. I realize now that I am still very much my very young self and not much has changed in my theological, astronomical, or meteorological positions in this world. My major realization was that birthdays are just dates. No matter how old you are, it doesn't mean that the floor is going to suddenly fall out beneath you or you're going to be struck by lightning. Another year has passed, that's all. And that's nothing to be so nervous about. I have a feeling that I will maintain this realization even after I turn 81. Birthdays can never be so scary anymore.

What else?

I remember graduation, and the fear, the excitement surrounding that adventure.

I remember the following summer - lazy summer of pancake-style unemployment (flat as a pancake but sweet as syrup). I remember adopting the oldest tree at Gregory Park for my friends and I to picnic under, and playing hours of chess on our screen porch with Dain Hanson. A very good summer: 2007. A very good summer, indeed.

I remember walking with my Dad and my brother last August - out to a place we call the end of the world, where all of the streetlights end. It was my last night at home before I headed out to college. And we laughed and we counted stars and everything smelled like summer and the moon was so bright it cast shadows. Just beautiful.

I remember the thrill of making new friends at college - all of us a doe-eyed, enthusiastic bunch with everything to expect from the world. I remember the cold unfamiliarity of our dorm. Slowly settling in. I remember frustration with classmates and boredom and anger. The feeling of being cheated after all the hard work of high school - the classes were so slow and so easy. I remember feeling trapped and then... letting go. Realizing that this was life. That I could transfer. That this wasn't the end of the world.

I remember Thanksgiving break and finals week and snowy evenings and French horn lessons and free desserts in the dining hall and coming home for Christmas and Thornton Wilder plays and reading good books.

I remember 2007.

My Christmas Vacation was fun. My dog got two new hedgehogs and my brother made me a skirt, which was awesome. I'm not taking a January class at Hamline, so I don't go back until the 30th. I am using my time to help out with the high school's One Act Play. It's fun. My dad keeps giving me a hard time for oversleeping! Ah, La vita bella. This is the good life.

I was extremely excited to hear back from a literary agent just five days after declaring my first New Year's Resolution. (In an active memory practice, I am going to make you go back and look that up yourself.)

While the agent has not accepted my novel and I do not know whether or not he is serious about representing me - it was fun to have even gotten this much. I never expected to have a literary agent look so far into my work, and it has been quite encouraging to my publishing endeavors. Again, wish me luck.

Well, I hope that was good, for a guest blog. I have given myself, here, Celebrity Status, as only an 18 year old daughter can!

I suppose for lack of a better conclusion, and in promise of a "just anything in general," I will leave you off with one of my favorite poems.

This is "A Noiseless Patient Spider," by Walt Whitman.

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to
connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

I think that describes, very much, human relations in this world. Flinging strands, flinging strands, flinging strands of gossamer filaments out to one another, hoping, some days, that they will catch.

Let this be my gossamer filament to all of you. I certainly hope that it has caught.
Take care, everybody.
Back to you, Dad.


Rambling over,
-Sara Ann

Ramblings on life themes and being kosher

It’s been a busy week. Besides the funeral for Mabel Bell on Monday morning, the chaplain called sometime before 8 AM to let me know that I had three people in ICU. I already knew about two others in the local hospital, plus 3 in St Cloud. Other than a couple of pastoral contacts, a Finance Meeting and getting to part of Nicks swim meet, Tuesday revolved around moving in a desk and credenza that had been donated to the church for my office. I was looking forward to the new office look but wasn’t quite prepared to deal with 9 years of “stuff” that had been stuffed in corners and drawers I was now emptying.

But now I'm stopping to think and blog. Back to Mabel’s service. She was 96 years old....you can’t possibly summarize a person’s life. But I spoke of three great themes that seem to emerge: faith, family and music. And they were intertwined. They really weren’t separated from each other. The prominent family memory was being together, singing songs with Mabel usually on piano, singing the faith. We played a couple tape recordings of them doing exactly that. It made me wonder what themes my life might be sorted into. Most of us would probably want family and faith in there, but what else. My wife, Beth, would certainly have education, kids and learning in there as a larger life theme with the first two. How about you? Or me?

Then, another thought in this morning ramble: I enjoy Jeff Reed's blog that I have linked. He points me to what I would called environmental spirituality or holistic stewardship and does it with an informed science mind. Obviously from his recent post, I need to learn more about corn in our economy... My ministry context with farmers in past years has mostly just been reports about crop yield, moisture content and prices.
But Jeff Reed's insights makes me think we should reconsider the Jewish kosher concepts. What we eat, what we use, and how we do it does matter; as a matter of faith. Holiness does have implications for kitchens and clothing. Can you imagine if we looked at every object that we are involved with, every bit of food, and stopped to consider what it is, where it has been, and how it came to us? What sense of awareness and appreciation or alertness might be involved? To take nothing for granted! Gratitude, purposefulness, and holiness! Think of the special effort Jewish kosher practices involve: separate stores and cafes; reading labels! My first impression is that it must be so complicated, but another view might say that life is simpler when some options are just "off the table"
I had a small taste of kosher living when I traveled to Israel with a Jewish based tour group in 2001. Could it be done without that kind of determination and dedication? Maybe we need a larger , shared Christian kosher discipline that guides us with more eco-friendly food practices and more directly brings our spiritual values into our daily consumption. Of course all kinds of economic justice issues would come to light as well. You can't talk about food and clothing without taking about people and politics! I know Barbara Kingsolver wrote about her family’s experience of trying to grow their own foods and purchase more local goods. I think we are hungry for this kind of living . And I am not saying anything new here. Just trying to remind my self again. And remembering that with the kosher practices there was an insight that I best not abandon. I may not practice the same set of kosher rules prescribed in Jewish practices but I should probably listen to Peter's dream -vision in the book of Acts that everything of God's creation is holy, and am called to treat it, use it and love it as such!
The Bishop has a blog post going on now about the "Year of Living Biblically” and maybe we could take a tip from that on living “Biblically”...”ethically” in consumer practices. it wouldn't be a bad life theme to be remembered for; but where to begin, and more importantly will I?

Bird Watching

I finally did something on New Year's day that I had wanted to do for a few years now. I got in on some of the winter bird count. Mike North, who coordinates the event, put me in his car along with some other experienced birders from the local Audubon society and we drove around our assigned section, north of Pillager.
We especially looked for houses with bird feeders. We would get out our binoculars and see what we could see. But the less obvious bird locations were more fun. It was a cold day (about 9 degrees) so we weren’t driving with the car windows full open, but Mike would drive with his window down a crack and in spite of the sounds that cars make with engines running and tires rolling, Mike would occasionally say, “I heard a chickadee.” He would slow down, stop or maybe back up. We would open more windows; and ears that were trained and alert would pick out one or two of the chickadee sounds. I wouldn’t hear a thing. How could they? Unfailingly they would eventually spot the little bird or two. I usually found the birds only after some very direct pointing.
Other times one of them would spot something flying up in the sky. I would look up and see nothing. By the time I saw the fleeting specks the rest in the car knew what kind of birds we had, simply by noting the way they flew. Then they would tell us to look for some other kind of birds that sometimes mingled and mixed into that particular flock.
One time a large flock of snow buntings flew past us and then landed in some trees. Mike noted that it was strange because snow buntings didn’t usually do that. It looked normal to me. Don’t all birds just land in trees? I did my homework later and found that they preferred northern wind swept prairies, tundra and barren places.
The afternoon went on like that and I was impressed by what trained eyes could see - while I missed, most of the time, what there was to see. Granted, I do have some hearing loss for high pitches, and my glasses are about 3 or 4 years old, but I think there is another reason. We see what we are prepared to see, trained to see, experienced to see.
I was getting better at it by the end of the day. What would years of that watching be able to perceive?
Now make a leap of faith, or to the topic of faith. My spiritual alertness and ability to see and seek God’s presence probably needs that same kind of desire and attention, training and preparation. What would be it be like to get with others and go out for a winter epiphany count, searching for signs of God!
I have a book by a theologian named Patrick Henry: on pages 16 and 17 in The Ironic Christian’s Companion: Finding the Mark’s of God’s Grace in the World, he talks about what some people would call “God Sightings” but relates it to another bird watcher's term. A lot of birds are just identified as L.B.J. "Little brown jobs." Its used for when we are looking at something but beyond that we aren’t too sure. That fits my theology and ornithology!
I hope to do better with my bird watching and my God watching. Even the L.B.J.’s are good for now. I'll keep looking, learning from others and checking the field guide books.
I can't imagine how much is out there to see. As one of the bird watchers said, “Winter would be pretty dull without the Chickadees.”

ALL OF HUMAN LIFE is a precinct of epiphany. But the gift half understood, the hint half guessed, is that it is ours to receive amidst the most mundane of human realities — the daily round of life’s ordinary experiences. God is there — and here.

Yes, especially here, if only we could see.

- Michael Downey
“Gift’s Constant Coming”
Weavings Journal

From Weavings Journal, November/December 1999

I BELIEVE that all our vague, unsatisfied, and unsatisfiable yearnings are in some way at their root the yearning to know God, to be put right with God, and to see the world put right with God. Just as our physical hunger and thirst remind us that we are made to eat and drink, our hunger for meaning and direction in life reminds us that we are created to need and want God — continually, even if we have not yet put a name on the yearning — and to serve God.

- Mary Lou Redding
The Power of a Focused Heart: 8 Life Lessons from the Beatitudes

From p. 55 of The Power of a Focused Heart: 8 Life Lessons from the Beatitudes by Mary Lou Redding. Copyright © 2006 by the author