February and Winter 2025

• December 2024 Overview

• January 2025 Summary

• Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project for February

• Black History Month 2025

• We've been enjoying fellowship and snack time every Sunday after worship. I had a lot of food pics this month—burger, skillet meals, breakfast for supper-dinner-tea, a lot of subway, and had to curate what I blogged. This group is a bit funky, but I pictured most of the table at an angle, and our conversation's unconventional, too.

• Valentine's Day 2025

• First California Golden Poppy of 2025

Five Minute Friday :: Original

• Five Minute Friday :: Original Linkup

As a creative, I frequently say – I love to observe – nothing is original, everything is derivative, though we may not remember the source that in itself wasn't original, either. But how could the "source" of our project or initiative not be original? "Original" implies at the beginning, the very start of when the idea or product origin(!)ated or began. Was there even a first?

Over my lifetime I've produced a fair amount of art and design. Other people consider me a creative, and I identify as one. However, with about half of the art and design I do, I remember where I first saw a similar layout I wanted to try. A particular color palette that sang to me. A new to me style of sketching. I may or may not have taken a snapshot or saved a hard copy of the menu or flyer, or even done my own quick drawing onsite, but I know mine isn't original. Yet what I've done with that nascent concept does belong to me, so in a limited sense my finished expression is original.

An example like the one Kate gave us of intended scheduled conference plans being changed in some way is a common real-life example of original and an update. In that case, when attendees found out what was going on, they were fine no longer having that part of the original. Are there any or many of those in my everyday journey?

Yes. My breakfast plans happily change if someone offers me something different or asks if I want to go our for breakfast. Ditto lunch. Tasks I needed to do today? Upon revision, all of them don't need to be done for another two or three days. Etc. Many times we discover everything and every way that originally felt so urgent isn't as set in stone as we originally thought.

My header photo is books in what was supposed to be the dining room in the parsonage I lived in for a while in City of History: Someone else took the original that wasn't well focused, and the colors weren't too great. This is one of a couple dozen versions I've made; what you see combines an original picture and some creative photoshopping. The shelves were at least a little lean-to, and the room had no other furniture. All in all, this is one of my all-time favorite edits.

PS There's some of my original art on the two top right hand shelves.

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Five Minute Friday :: Worship

My header is a [large] banner I designed from the opening of George Herbert's poem, King of Glory King of Peace. The actual banner is tall, but when I realized rotating it clockwise still would read well, look good, and be more compatible wirh this format, that's what I did.

• Here's the entire poem on hymnary

• Five Minute Friday :: Worship Linkup

After Nathan accused David and predicted the death of David's child, and the child born to David and Bathsheba died. This was before the birth of Solomon:

Then David arose from the earth, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. Then he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped. And then he came to his own house, and when he asked, they sat bread before him, and he ate.
2 Samuel 12:20

Reverend Herbert's poetry announces, "Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise Thee."

In the wake of such extreme loss, David explained he'd fasted during the boy's illness, but since he couldn't bring the dead child back to life, it was time for worship.

Losses and disappointments of different dimensions are an ongoing part of earthbound existence. Sometimes we can change the outcome after a loss; many times we cannot. Why did Israel and why does the church set aside one day every week for worship—and for rest? To know life is a gift before it is a task? To acknowledge God as creator, giver, redeemer, renewer? To admit and rejoice in our dependence on God's mercy and love?

Cornel West reminds us, "We are people of hope. Why do we party on Friday night? Why do we go to church on Sunday?" God forgives, heals, mends, forgets, and resurrects.

"Loss is real." But new life from the dead is every bit a given – a gift! – in the reign of heaven on earth.

Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise Thee.

Amen? Amen!

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Five Minute Friday :: But

• Five Minute Friday :: But Linkup

Happy Valentine's Day!

But… I can't move into my "own place" right now because housing costs too much and I earn too little.

But… I can't find opportunities to do the ministries I prepared to do because doors only can be opened from the other side.

Those are indisputable current realities. But… can I find a way to change:

• I earn too little into I earn enough?

• Doors only can be opened from the other side to… finding people willing and in a position to open some of those doors?

Those both are tough asks with the sorry state of my résumé/CV, in the current economy, and in the world of post-Covid-Covid-isn't-over. Besides, individuals, groups, nearby not-for-profit and government agencies all are focused on fallout from the recent fires.

But… this isn't a hunter-gatherer society and this is the second largest city in the country.

So… now what?

Wednesday, 19 February: Edited to remind myself and to tell everyone Possibility is my Star Word for 2025! Halfway into February and I'd forgotten. Thanks for the lovely comments and reminders God can do this!

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Five Minute Friday :: Noise

• Five Minute Friday :: Noise Linkup

Noise, sound, music, speech, (silence) or not your ears can detect, that your brain, body, and emotions can react to. Even if an individual is very hard of hearing or deaf, their person's body often picks up and reacts to noises in the vicinity.

I appreciated our host Kate's contrasting her spouse growing up surrounded with layers of sound, whereas relative quiet or silence remains her preference. I'm one that definitely prefers not silence. I often try to explain how traffic, a nearby radio or TV, conversation next door, and similar help me concentrate. Is it because I grew up in the inner city? I don't know. And I do know that when I've gone camping or on retreat to a more rural or countrified (bucolic, maybe?) location, it takes about a day to get beyond my anxiety over the lack of external aural stimulation and begin to appreciate not necessarily complete silence, but sounds of a different quality and caliber.

To find illustrations I searched my computer with keywords noise, sound, and music. My header turned out to be from the church in San Luis Obispo we visited during July 2017 as one of the almost a dozen stops in the Reformation Roadtrip the ELCA judicatory sponsored to celebrate Reformation 500. What a day! I won't mention how early we got up on that Saturday morning to drive 200 miles up the coast from Los Angeles to SLO (because I don't remember. Otherwise I would).

My original snapshot was full color sRGB. Technically, the gradient map overlay added some noise to the photograph. Speaking of gradients, I'm still stuck in the era when printing gradients was risky because even with high end mechanical presses (think Heidelberg, but not the catechism), they'd often end up banded. Adding some noise such as 15% Gaussian blur often solved that. Besides, sometimes adding the noise of a Photoshop filter changes an image just enough to make it more interesting. Then there's shadows and highlights that I'd describe as a sophisticated, nondestructive subtly noisy version of brightness and contrast.

These image editing-enhancement digressions closely pair with our human desire – sometimes it's a real need – for some amount of ambient music, sound, noise or related to help settle our senses, often to help focus if we're doing a thoughtful activity that requires intellect and brain power.

What's your own home, work, recreational, or outdoors noise preference? Is it consistent, or does it vary?
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Holy Holy Holy

Talk about synchronicity! Yesterday I just happened to watch and listen to a Trinity Sunday sermon I'd bookmarked a couple months ago. The Old Testament reading for this coming Sunday, Epiphany 5, also is the Trinity Sunday passage of Isaiah's call from Isaiah 6.

Although this is one of the scripture texts for Trinity Sunday (and relates to that favorite majestic Trinitarian hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy") Holy, holy, holy in this passage is not a trinitarian proclamation—it's an artifact of Hebrew and other semitic languages that unlike English, don't have comparative and superlative adjectives, so you repeat the word once or twice. Instead of good, better, best, you'd say good, good, good.

Ligonier Ministries name came from its original location in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. The organization is an independent ministry and broadly Reformed; everything I've seen from them is on the conservative side. Scripture quotations in this book come from KJV, NKJV, NIV, ESV, and NASB. Their website explains:

Ligonier Ministries adheres to the ancient statements of faith (the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Chalcedon) and affirms the historic Christian faith as expressed in the five solas of the Reformation and the consensus of the historic Reformed confessions (Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, and 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith).

For comparison, regarding the Three Forms of Unity, the PCUSA's Book of Confessions includes the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism but omits Canons of Dort. For another comparison, of the four church bodies / denominations (ELCA, PC(USA), RCA, UCC) that covenanted together in A Formula of Agreement, Canons of Dort are constitutive for only one—the Reformed Church in America.

You can find Proclaiming the Perfections of God on Powell's:

• Holy Holy Holy…

on Amazon:

• Holy Holy Holy…

The ten chapters originated as lectures at the 2009 Ligonier Ministries National Conference in Orlando, with "The Holiness of God" the conference theme. Chapter titles and subtitles are helpful for any Christian from any tradition to consider (I know, all the authors just happened to be guys), and make reasonable categories for a systematic theology class:

1. "I Am the Lord": The Only God by R. C. Sproul

2. "Hallowed Be Your Name": The Holiness of the Father by Sinclair B. Ferguson

3. "The Holy One of God": The Holiness of Jesus by Steven J. Lawson

4. "The Breath of the Almighty": The Holiness of the Spirit by Alistair Begg

5. "Cosmic Treason": Sin and the Holiness of God by Thabiti Anyabwile

6. "A Holy Nation": The Church’s High Calling by D. A. Carson

7. "Wounded for Our Transgressions": The Holiness of God and the Cross by W. Robert Godfrey

8. "You Shall Be Holy": The Necessity of Sanctification by Derek W. H. Thomas

9. "Train Up a Child": Walking Together with the Holy God by R. C. Sproul Jr.

10. "A Consuming Fire": Holiness, Wrath, and Justice by R. C. Sproul

The articles are well-written and very very serious. With many quotes and references from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, the authors feel stuck in a different era. Chapter 10, Holiness, Wrath, and Justice?

But if there is a God (and there is), and if He is holy (and He is), and if He is just (and He is), He could not possibly be without wrath. If you have not been reconciled to Him through the blood of His Son, the only thing you have to look forward to is His wrath, which is a divine wrath, a furious wrath, and an eternal wrath.

That quote is just plain sad. God is a holy God who calls a holy people (see chapter 6, "A Holy Nation," and chapter 8, "You Shall Be Holy"), but wrath of god is a human construct that Jesus Christ obliterates. The mainline world in which I live is welcoming and grace-filled, but I'm glad I glanced through this book to view a different perspective. There's a helpful index of scripture references at the end.

• My Amazon Review :: Trinitarian and Incarnate Holiness