June 2025 :: Around Town

• My almost daily patch of California Golden Poppies along the sidewalk has been blooming since mid-February!

• Urban Wilderness City Paradise Lectionary Project for June

• This month marks ten years in LA. I arrived in Westwood Sunday evening of the third Sunday in June (the 21st). But this year the closest day, Sunday June 22nd, is the fourth Sunday in June! Can I live with that?

• Although I didn't start a monthly summary blog until one for September 2015 that I posted in early October, this note is close enough, though its optimism and excitement grieves me.

• Tuesday 24 June and I got pictures of the new LAX Transit Center! It's new and beautiful. It makes the old one look like a wide spot in the road—because it was a wide spot in the road. The same six transit agencies come and go, but it has access to Metro Rail plus a wide variety of succulents to enhance everything. The only drawback is plane spotting isn't as convenient as it was at the old location.

• Watermelon from the Santa Monica Fourth Tuesday Lunch Brunch

• I like to end with yellow flowers, but how's this group of my local spring flowers arranged by google AI? No yellow cassia around here, but everything else is glorious. Clockwise from upper left: bougainvillea; common milkweed; golden california poppy; jacaranda; star jasmine.

Five Minute Friday :: Face

Facing the Pacific Ocean and unknown vistas
at Hermosa Beach, California, late December 2020.

• Five Minute Friday :: Face Linkup

When I teach, read, write (or consider in any sense) the Apostle Paul's epistles – maybe especially the ones scholars consider genuine or undisputed – I almost always remind myself and everyone else that as we read words printed on the page, "we don't have the voice; we don't have the face."

When we read a text or an email, even one from someone we know well, possibly a friend or colleague we just had lunch or another meeting with a couple of hours ago, we still "don't have the voice or the face" that well may have changed since we last saw each other face-to-face. Besides, the topic may be different.

And that means? A spoken word carries meaning and inflection far beyond the letters that form words that make sentences that sometimes create paragraphs that attempt to communicate to some degree. Or sometimes attempt to obscure communication with different kinds of double-speak, triple-speak, with unspoken subtext or subtexts.

Beyond a voice and enhancing communication even more, there's a person's face with all kinds of possible expressions that interpret the words they're saying. Sad. Happy. Angry. Puzzled. Hopeful. Aggressive.

When you're face-to-face or even side-by-side, you get the best opportunity to understand and comprehend and act upon what's being said.

I love that our host Kate admitted this was almost a random prompt and she didn't have any idea what she'd write, but then she talked about wondering how she could face some situations or circumstances. Just as with words spoken alive and aloud, when you and the problem or situation face each other so you clearly can see each other, you then have a chance to know and understand and act upon or resolve the challenge. Or live with it unresolved a while longer, just as we do with some passages in Romans.

# # #

Five Minute Friday :: Circle

• Five Minute Friday :: Circle Linkup

Talk about the circle of life is common. Because it's part of the way God has ordered creation, it's naturally part of our understanding. But the circle of life is only one way God orders and arranges creation and the times of our lives.

Nature religions and individuals with no religious or spiritual practice often claim that circular reality, but they leave out a huge part of scripture's witness to God's activity in creation, in history, in our daily walkabouts—resurrection from death.

During his public ministry, Jesus invited everyone to become part of his insider circle. In my baptism, God calls me to live as an outsider to most polite, tamed, predictable structures. God calls us to live as insiders to the way of Jesus.

Life in Jesus' circle is an identity shaped by the contours, demands, and relentless grace of the gospel that seeks justice, freedom, and shalom for all creation. Living in Jesus' circle is life sourced from Word and Sacrament, modeled by the order of creation, the actions and words of the prophets, and especially the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ.

How many times have I quoted Cornel West:

We are people of hope. Why do we party on Friday nights? Why do we go to church on Sundays?

Because it's often the surprise of resurrection from the dead. The feast of fat things for all comers, even late comers. The full day's pay for everyone, even if you signed up at the last hour. The community of shalom sufficiency for friends, enemies, strangers, insiders, outsiders.

The worldview of the bible is open-ended, no longer the endless, predictable recycling of the same thing, yet there is a sense of constancy, of divine design and purpose to the order of nature and creation. Similar to my editing an image in Photoshop, the Holy Spirit edits, styles, filters, re-colors, and reformats people, communities, and institutions. The Spirit of Pentecost brings prophetic promises and broken hopes to life.

It's life-giving, world-changing, society-transforming, creation-renewing death and resurrection stuff!

It's no longer an endless circle of the same thing, so why do you still seek the living among the dead? Right here and right now, we live on the other side of death.

# # #

Five Minute Friday :: Panic

• Five Minute Friday :: Panic Linkup

Intro

Did you know? Most people have had or will have a panic attach or something very close to it. It's diagnostic that the person thinks they're dying when the symptoms engulf them.

When in the course of everyday human activity someone becomes so overwhelmed, anxious, unsure, or insecure about the outcome of everything or a something, they may not quite achieve the heart rate, blood pressure, high anxiety, hyperventilation, chills or sweats of an actual panic event, but it's extremely uncomfortable and it may escalate.

Why did I write that intro?


Then and There – Here and Now

A friend mentioned that a mutual friend was very establishment, and that they are. We weren't making a value call on the person, who's a great friend and accomplishes a lot in the community. We simply were saying.

But then I said I'm still very Y2K. Am I really? And if so, why? Is that a value call? Does it affirm anything other than my love for mid-1990 through early aughts fashion? Maybe it does.

I spent more than a few minutes rifling through pictures of the place I lived the last year of my last sojourn on the east coast, specifically in Boston. Do I really want to return to that place? Probably not because I finally admitted I can't do the weather. Then there's what I describe as love-hate regarding the general area. But that's about place, about geography, and relates to overall culture.

Do I want to return to that time? I flew out of Logan into Lindbergh on Saturday 02 September 2000, one day after the earliest expected ambient temperatures allowed us to fly with with dogs or cats. A quarter century ago? Do I want to go back?

I've gotten fond of observing how the twenty-first century, southern California, and the wake of a global pandemic haven't helped my overall situation and my ongoing search for opportunities at all. I have a lot of intense anxieties about right now and about the unseen, unknown future. Panic? There have been a few times my body reacted so intensely I thought I might be dying and I was just fine with that fact.

Short answer is yes, in some ways I want to return to a quarter century ago. I get nostalgic about it. I remember my landlord and housemate Nick. Good meals, good though guarded conversations. Saturday evening Scrabble. Having a former boss and colleague over for lunch a few times.

Since then the world has experienced a long string of literal assaults on what used to be a normal way of living and being. No need to list them all because everyone knows them. I want to return to simpler times, to what feels like innocence from here, though I know it didn't feel innocent or naïve at the time.

I'm still very Y2K. I'm not making a value call. I'm just sayin'.

# # #

World Oceans Day 2025

Although I really like my Santa Monica photograph, it didn't translate well enough into a WOD design. Here's a better one using one of my previous pictures.

• UN World Oceans Day

• World Ocean Day

A day late, here's a poster design for United Nations World Oceans Day 2025; I'll let it cover World Ocean Day, as well. World Water Day on March 22nd emphasizes water with less saline content; WOD is about saltier water.

As much as I often admire my own design, this one disappoints me. For the past few years I'd used the same group of pictures, but I really wanted to incorporate my Santa Monica beach scene this time, so here it is.

Wonder: Sustaining what sustains us is this year's theme.

Five Minute Friday :: Honor

• Five Minute Friday :: Honor Linkup

• I'm picking up on this old one about towels and service—honor, as well.

Yesterday I asked a guest who was checking in at the hostel where I've been staying and working if he needed a towel. He said no, he didn't; he had a couple of towels with him. I replied I always travel with a towel, too. I started that habit when I stayed in European hostels, and continued it traveling cross-country USA, occasionally lodging in a motel or hotel, but often in a hostel or with a classmate or friend who had limited linens with limited or no laundry facilities.

To receive, claim, or possess an honor is a privilege. It's a charge. It's a responsibility. It's often a trust from other humans. It's often a sacred trust from God.

Revelation 7:9,10,12

⁹ After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!"
¹² "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

Consider honors we have in our families, cities, towns, and workplaces. Honors the church gives us on occasion. The privilege of preaching law and gospel to bring a word of grace; breaking bread and pouring wine, making sure the eschatological feast has flavor and substance. Counseling and consoling. Calls for justice and righteousness.

In order to receive thanksgiving, honor, and glorious blessing, God in Christ Jesus has been responsible – fully responded – to our human needs.

But I started out with towels and time is limited, so where's the honor there?

I observed that to receive, claim, or possess an honor is a privilege. It's a charge. It's a responsibility. It's often a trust from other humans. Often it's a sacred trust from God.

Part of privilege is following Jesus to help make a person or a community more whole. Like a surfer's towel, if you carry one all the time as I generally do (when I travel, not usually round about town) and like that guest does, it can mean warmth and compassion. It can soak up tears, blood, rain, sweat, or water after a refreshing shower. Honoring that other person's needs is a high honor for us. Amen? Amen!

# # #