The Transfiguration

Last week was an amazing, wondrous time for me, I was able to be in San Diego for the birth of my granddaughter, Olivia Gracie…. on Saturday July 26^th to be precise.   As she emerged into the world I felt as if I was in a sacred place, an observer of a miracle.  Over the next 2 days I spent as much time as I could sitting in a rocking chair, holding this baby, who looked just as her mother did when she was born,………… wanting to sit in that chair forever, looking at her, marveling at this miracle of life. ……. and   I wonder if that was how Peter felt being on that mountain, in the presence of Elijah, Moses and Jesus.  Did he want to stay there forever, holding onto a wonderful, miraculous moment in time?  “Lord it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, for Moses, and one for Elijah”.  But they couldn’t stay up on that mountain; anymore than I could stay in San Diego, they needed to come down, following Jesus as he continued on his journey to Jerusalem.

It would be much easier and safer to stay in those moments, or on that mountain, no risk, no pain, no chance of loss, but we can’t we need to go back into the world, a world that at times is a very scary place.

63 years ago today, an Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  Over 50,000 people died immediately with more than 200,000 dead by the end of the year from the effects of radiation poison. Human beings closest to the epicenter ,  of the bomb were instantly vaporized, the only indication of their previous existence were shadows caused by the radiation.  3 days later on August 9 another Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.   We live everyday with the knowledge that we have the capability to destroy much of God’s creation. 

For those of us who grew up with bomb drills in school, huddled under school desks for dubious protection and signs for fall out shelters everywhere, it is frightening to see the world race to build bigger and badder bombs that we can use to kill each other with.   And the use of nuclear weapons is becoming more of a possibility each day, when world leaders talk blithely about the potential use of these weapons in the endless cycle of violence around the world.  . .  We will not turn away from this path unless we let go of violence and intolerance toward the “other”, those of different religions, ethnicities, or whatever labels we attach to our brothers and sisters.  Until we stand up and say “enough”………….., no more, ……….., we will not tolerate leaders who talk about “obliterating” entire nations or groups, or stand idly by in the face of bigotry and hatred toward our fellow human beings.    William Sloan Coffin tells us  “ For men and women in a nuclear world, when the human race has outgrown war but hardly knows it yet, Jesus more than ever is the best way to liberation, freedom and peace.  The hostility than churned up Cain,……….  and  others throughout the centuries have sought to perpetuate,……… Jesus seeks to ground.  That makes it our calling to ground, not to perpetuate hostility.  The violence stops here, with each one of us who claims Christ’s holy name.  The gossip, the false witness borne against a neighbor, the cold unconcern for warm human beings------ all forms of violence, everything that violates human nature-------stops with us”.

On this day 63 years after a mushroom shaped cloud rose over Hiroshima, as people of faith we know that God always has the last word.   In the birth of a child, born with the promise and hope for the future, and in the voice of God in the cloud on that mountaintop that trumps the mushroom clouds of violence and death, We are reminded to listen to God’s chosen one and follow him down that mountain into a fuller life…………..  “Then from the cloud came a voice that said, This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”-----------Listen to him.             Amen

  

A Fantasy

I am a weaver.  I weave the practical cloth used in practical clothing and household items.  The cloth is sturdy and in practical colors, grays, browns, blacks.  All day long I weave, the shuttle and loom going at a steady pace, whoomp, whoomp, my hands and feet working the loom to produce the textiles that will go to sturdy, practical use.  Year after year I wove, slowly, steadily, piles of practical sturdy cloth in the practical colors. 

One day, sunlight streamed in the room as I wove, the sun warm on my face and making feel me feel warmer and peaceful.  I felt compelled to add one strand of a pale color to my weaving.  It was barely noticeable to anyone else, but I knew I had done it.  I didn’t tell anyone I had done it, and I continued to weave, with that one strand of pale color.  It subtlety changed the look of the cloth; it didn’t look quite so practical anymore. 

Over time I kept adding one more strand of different pale colors, the cloth was beginning to have a warmer look, still practical, still sturdy, but with a richer look to the grays, blacks and browns.  Those practical colors had subtle accents of pale greens, golds and blues.  I continued to weave the cloth piling up at my feet, but the shuttle and loom moved at slightly faster pace, there was anticipation in the weaving. 

One morning, as I started to set up my loom to begin a new piece of cloth, I noticed several balls of yarn that I didn’t remember having.  The yarn looked different than what I was used to using.  It had what I took to be imperfections, different texture, different appearance and they were bright colors that I had never worked with.  My hand hovered over the basket with the “imperfect” yarn for a moment, but practicality won out, and the gray and the black yarn, with one strand of a pale color was used for the cloth.  As I wove my eyes kept looking at the basket of “imperfect” yarn, the colors were bright, almost garish in comparison to the practical colors I always used. 

As the days went by, other weavers began to set up their looms by me.  At first, it was one weaver, than other weavers began to join us.  No longer was I weaving in solitude, with only the sound of loom at its steady pace…….now it was many looms, each going at a different pace, weaving different types of cloth.  Some were weaving practical cloth, with blacks, browns and shades of gray.  Others were weaving cloth that seemed to have no practical purpose at all, just yards of color and pattern.  Others were weaving a mixture of the practical and the impractical, depending on the season and purpose.   As I watched the other weavers, and talked with them the basket of yarn with the bright colors and textures began to look more and more appealing.  I set up my loom in preparation to weave my practical cloth.  My hand hesitated over the baskets of yarn and pulled out a strong blue shade, the blue was of varying width, tightly woven at some points and with loose open look at other points of the strand.  It would be the backdrop of my weaving, provide the strength and the foundation of the cloth. 

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother’s day in case you didn’t remember or hadn’t noticed all the advertising to buy Mom something......anything... jewelry, appliances, cards, books, flowers.

 I have to confess.... I don’t really like Mother’s Day all that much.  My own Mother died shortly before Mother’s Day when I was in my early twenties and my oldest daughter was just 5 years old... we went to Disneyland that year for Mother’s Day ......... and avoidance of this holiday has been my pattern ever since....   

And there’s the thing, talking about Mothers or Mothers day isn’t always as a easy as it sounds anyway.....  When you mention Mother’s day people will start to tell their stories about abusive relationships, or non-existent relationships...….or the mother whose son was doing drugs again and she is so angry at him and feeling guilty because she is so angry...  these women were not looking forward to Mother’s Day either.  

So I decided I needed to adjust my attitude a little bit by finding out about what Mother's Day is all about.  After a bit of research I found out that the practice of honoring mothers’ has been around for a very long time and typically was a celebration of mythological deities and other symbols of motherhood…...mother nature, mother earth….  With the rise of Christianity in Europe and England the focus of celebrating mothers became a day to honor the Virgin Mary…the Mother of Jesus…… over time, all mothers came to be included …….And that celebration became known as Mothering Sunday………..  a compassionate holiday that was focused on the working classes of England. 

Here in the US, mothering Sunday was never  celebrated and Mother’s Day as we know it did not become an official holiday until 1914 when Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance, declaring the 2^nd Sunday in May as Mother’s day. 

And we have embraced Mother’s Day ever since… this year alone we will spend 18.6 billion dollars on our Mothers and those who have been mother’s to us…… 671 million dollars will be spent on Mother’s Day cards and over 1.9 billion dollars on flowers.  

But before Hallmark, bouquets of flowers and mother’s day brunches…this day was to have be a day of peace, to honor and support mothers’ who had lost husbands and sons in the carnage of the Civil War.  Julia Ward Howe who was an abolitionist, feminist, poet, and the author of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, nursed and tended the wounded and the dying during the Civil War… the devastation that she witnessed inspired her to call out to women to “rise up through the ashes of devastation” urging a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace and justice.  

“Arise then women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears … say firmly, we will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies…..Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession…….  As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel…... Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. …. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace…… each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar……………but of God”.

Her basic conviction was that though the world may be divided by war and conflict, there is something in the experience of childbirth that binds the mothers of the world together into one family.

The struggle to gain voting rights for women, the cause of peace among the nations of the world, the fight against poverty and the abuse of children, these were the central concerns of those who established Mother's Day. Mothers’ day was a day not simply to remember one's own mother, but to find lessons that apply to all, lessons about the essential meaning of life for us all.

Julia Ward Howe and the others who called for a “mother’s day” recognized that we are all bound together by our common humanity. That it’s not enough to just recognize our own mother’s, Mother's Day is also about justice and peace for Mother's everywhere, wherever they may live; whether it is right here in Phoenix, or in the Sudan, Afghanistan or Nigeria.  

"Let [us] then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace…… each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar……………but of God”.

Holy Saturday

It is odd to stand in the church this morning…  empty, the altar cleared, the lights dim, everything so silent and still… its as if the very building itself is holding it’s breath… waiting.

There is very little written about this day… it’s a day most skip over… a day to get ready for what is coming…. Good Friday to Easter Day with no stop in between… wrenching loss to joyous alleluias……

but every one of us who has ever walked the earth has experienced the emptiness of Holy Saturday. We cannot pretend it doesn’t exist, or just skip over it……..The profound silence of God…… The power and the pain of fear……. Loss….. or when hope is exhausted…

This is the day we all must deal with the darkness…. This day of terrifying emptiness, it is a time between time, a time of waiting, waiting for the pain to end, waiting for someone to tell you that everything will be alright, waiting for the phone to ring, that all will be well…..

My daughter, Chris is a corpsman in the Navy…. She was with the Marines in Fallujah at the height of the war in Iraq…. She would call when she could, the calls routed through different area codes, from all over the country… you never knew when she would be able to call… that was when I began to carry my cell phone everywhere, answering any phone call wherever I was, afraid I would miss her call.  There would be long stretches of time when I would hear nothing…….the only information the news with their stories of death and numbers killed or wounded…… then the phone would ring and I would be able to talk to her and know she was safe for that moment in time, and I could breath again and my heart could keep beating.

Today is not easy… it’s never easy……it never will be easy

Today we wait, in silence and darkness and fear….

Today we experience the pain of emptiness and silence….

Today we wait in hope that everything will be all right, the phone will ring and all will be well…

Then the flame of a new day is kindled, the sun rises, and the tomb will be empty and we can breath again, and our hearts keep beating……

But for today the only thing we can do is wait……….

Whats Up With God?

Wednesday, 1st Week of Lent

Jonah 3:1-10

Luke 11:29-32

Poor Jonah, here he was summoned by God to go to Nineveh a city of great wickedness and evil, where he was to warn the citizens that in “forty more days, Nineveh shall be overthrown” and the King and the citizens immediately covered themselves in sackcloth and ashes and renounced their evil ways.  That seemed to have been the last thing Jonah was expecting.  God changed his mind about the calamity he had planned to bring upon them… Jonah went out and sat under a bush and sulked.

Jonah was seriously annoyed.  He had come a long way; he wanted to see Ninevites get what they deserved…. Nineveh should have been destroyed!

 If we are really honest we know at some level exactly how Jonah felt, that part of us that judges and condemns, desires “revenge rather than justice- vengeance instead of mercy”.  We all know people that we don’t agree with, who are different, don’t deserve to be saved.  We categorize people in terms of their differences, real or perceived- Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, gay or straight, Christian or Non-Christian.  We know exactly who God should save… and it’s only those who are the same as us. 

Like Jonah we sit outside sulking, angry and hurting.   We keep trying to create God in our own image, a God that feels the same way we do about “those people” whoever those people are for us.  Black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor, sinners and churchgoers….  the crowds gathered around Jesus wanting a miraculous sign, but none would given except the sign of Jonah.  The Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, but now one greater than Jonah was here. 

Whenever I am feeling a bit out of sorts with God for not sending a few bolts of lighting to scorch a TV preacher I disagree with or at the very least a mild plague of boils on a do nothing legislature…  I try to remember God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to me, and to you, and to us and to them, and even to “those people” whoever they are.  He sent His Son Jesus who showed us that God’s love is bigger than you or I can even imagine.