September 2025

Clockwise from upper left:

• St Mark's Los Angeles God's Work Our Hands shirt
• Parking lot graffiti at Saint Mary's Mariposa
• Late September Birthday Cake for a guest in our usually all girls dormitory
• Bright flowers in flower boxes along Mariposa Street

• With the many updates to Season of Creation observances and the lack of updates to my own existence, I haven't been designing for each Creation Sunday, but I did create a banner using a favorite Isaiah design as the backdrop to illustrate a flourishing world.

• On Sunday 07 September I went back to Saint Mark's LA. Happily it was their God's Work/Our Hands work day and I bought a Saint Mark's shirt. Serendipitous, because my other two GWOH shirts had expired. (Not really. They'd gotten faded and worn so I recycled rather than donating them.) Google AI made this collage. As I've observed, they use templates not available for us to use, though we get a good variety of collage layout options. I especially like the angular ones they started about a year ago.

• Thursday 11 September 911 Twenty-four years. I blogged a reflection similar to those I wrote several previous years because I still couldn't say it better.

• Sunday 14 September I planned to attend the liturgy at Saint Mary's Mariposa that's about a two minute walk from where I'm staying, but the website had the service time wrong. That means I arrived too late for worship, yet in time for snacks and conversation.

• I have a long ago history with Saint Mary's. A few previous lives ago, I was organist there for Patti and Gordon's wedding, and I designed the wedding invitation. There's also some recent anecdotal stuff that's too complicated to write here.

• You may know my (now previous, maybe?) stance on reserving the sacrament? When I told the priest in charge how sad I was to miss the eucharist, she replied they had it reserved in the tabernacle, so I was able to receive (in one kind only), after all.

• Wonderful graffiti decorates the parking lot walls.

• Thursday 23 September Flowers along Mariposa Street preceded fourth Tuesday lunch in Santa Monica.

• Google AI made outstanding collages of our tasty lunch.

Five Minute Friday :: Spark

A fire burns out of control along a ridge
during the California wildfires in Rough and Ready,
California, October 12, 2017.
California National Guard photo

• Five Minute Friday :: Spark Linkup

Related to fire and related to sparks, I originally wrote most of this about desert spirit's fire! for the worship bulletin I designed for the Day of Pentecost a while ago.

Since the dawn of creation, God's Spirit has been active throughout the history of planet earth. Humans once intended for God to reside in the Jerusalem Temple, but that space was too limited and confining. Forty days after the first Day of Resurrection, on the Day of Pentecost the indwelling Spirit of Life came to us with spectacular signs of fire and wind. Now God's Holy Spirit the Temple could not contain lives in each of us and has free range in the Church.

This is wildfire country. Southern California fire season now is year round. You probably know a spark sometimes grows into a multi-acre fire. The experts have gotten really skilled at uncovering and discovering the source of an initial spark that's resulted in devastatingly destructive conflagrations. I've lost track of how many named fires there typically are at any time in these here parts.

In summer 2002 as I explored a few dozen possible names for this blog, from the start I suspected desert would be a winner; fire was likely, too. I've written about there being no scriptural narrative or saga about the creation of fire, yet the Holy Spirit in an individual Christian's life and in the life of a Christian community often functions in ways similar to how fire works in nature and in industry.

This is fire country. In writing and teaching theology, I often mention how prescribed or controlled burns long have served to maintain overall forest health and to deter larger, more destructive blazes that otherwise would happen. You easily can make analogies to your own situation!

This is fire country. Finding plants growing from seeds that wouldn't have sprouted unless fire first seared them always moves and amazes me.

It starts with a spark.

The Holy Spirit often nudges us to do something, whether it's visiting a friend, beginning a new spiritual practice, participating in a particular ministry, doing something life-enhancing for friends or family. Those times usually start with only a small spark from the Spirit, because a wind-driven fire would overwhelm us.

"Sparks from the Spirit of Life" would make good journaling. Sometimes those sparks seem to come unbidden from nowhere. Many times we receive an inspired spark from a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. What's your most recent experience?

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Gardenias Original

Gardenias Two

Gardenias One

Five Minute Friday :: Affection

• Five Minute Friday :: Affection Linkup

Only this evening I told someone else I'm everyone's Best Friend Forever, exactly like my late uncle. Is it genetic? Probably not, because quite a few people have that characteristic, but I like to identify with him.

What is affection? We think of it as emotional longing, a desire to be present with and for them, a trait that doesn't depend upon their good behavior but happens just because they are. We want to stay connected and we feel affection for them even when we're far away from them. That yearning tends to draw us back to them, so we find ways to be close to them again.

Like my uncle, I'm always for the underdog and undercat. I have so much affection for those who haven't won a chance for the spotlight that when a baseball team I don't follow and that's overall not doing well this season wins a game against one of my teams, I'm happy and excited. (My main teams are the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox with a frequent side of San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays.)

As recorded in John's gospel 15:15 Jesus says we're no longer his servants but now we're his friends. Is that good news? I hope it is! Because we know Jesus as the ultimate BFF. As we read all the gospel accounts, we observe Jesus and his companions demonstrating immense affection for one another.

Following Jesus, Paul of Tarsus had deep concern, gratitude, joy, and affection for the churches he planted and served. The church at Philippi that I've written a fair amount about seems to have captured Paul to an extreme extent, although he prayed constantly for all of them. Like Paul, most pastors feel both affection and frustration for their congregations. Like Paul, most pastors pray a whole lot for the churches they serve.

In Hebrew biology and therefore in scripture we know the heart is mostly the seat of will and intention, yet it encompasses the tenderness and affection we post-enlightenment westerners identify with our hearts. Jesus and Paul showed us all of that to perfection!

How about you? What are some objects of your affection? Notice the peaches picture? Food gets a lot of my affection.

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Five Minute Friday :: Pick

• Five Minute Friday :: Pick Linkup

When given a live choice, which option do you pick? When you have no real choice does it feel as if discouragement and disappointment have picked you? In other situations, though maybe you can't pick because there's only one option, does if feel as if providence has smiled on you and serendipity is your companion?

Food is my love language. Because food is my love language my most careful, most fraught, least carefree, most emotionally charged picks are culinary and gastronomical.

But I'll backtrack and mention Kate wrote about a university and a scholarship fund picking her son. For sure he had an element of sorting through, choosing, discarding, and picking, although in his case a whole lot of the picking came from outside, and not from her son or his family.

For all of us, some life changing picking and choosing comes from outside ourselves, yet it endures with us:

"You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit, and that your fruit will abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name he will give you." John 15:16

Does if feel as if Providence has smiled on you and you walk alongside serendipity?

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911 Twenty Four Years

Yet my soul,
keep thou silence unto God:
for mine hope is in God.
Psalm 62:5

This is my reflection from two years ago with a few minor revisions.

The saga of un-creation in Jeremiah 4 feels like the reality of World Trade Center Ground Zero.

Jeremiah 4

¹¹ At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, ¹² a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.

²² "For my people are foolish; they do not know me; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil but do not know how to do good."

²³ I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos, and to the heavens, and they had no light.
²⁴ I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.
²⁵ I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.
²⁶ I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

²⁷ For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end. ²⁸ Because of this the earth shall mourn and the heavens above grow black, for I have spoken; I have purposed; I have not relented, nor will I turn back.

Twenty-Four Years

9/11/2001 + 24 = 2025

Where has the grief gone? Where have the memorial services gone? At least a few people on social media still ask where we were when we heard the news, although it's mostly for those of us who are so old we were chronologically mature adults in September 2001. We're still ready to revisit our experience, to retell the horror.

Monday evening 9/10/2001 I'd gotten back late from a seminar for the year-long Community Economic Development Certificate (mini-MBA in entrepreneurship) I'd just started at San Diego State. Tireder than usual, I'd gotten up an hour later than usual. By the time I turned on the morning news it had gone live. I watched the second plane hit the second tower.

And I can't ever forget the hope of two and a half days later.

Thursday evening September 13, 2001, my Presbyterian Church (USA), the large Evangelical Lutheran Church in America across the street and the smaller ELCA around the corner, a nearby Roman Catholic, that big United Methodist, and the United Church of Christ that bordered this neighborhood and the adjacent one gathered at the ELCA across the street and celebrated Eucharist. In the wake of unprecedented destruction on USA soil we offered thanksgiving! A glance into all creation healed and whole. A moment in the future God dreams of and calls us to help create.

Where were you? What words or communities or actions or realities sustained your hope? Still hold you in hope?


• Pentecost 14 Lectionary blog for Sunday, September 11, 2022 with more about God's presence, more on Jeremiah, and another retelling of when I saw the news. This coming Sunday September 14th will feature the same scriptures. As I mentioned about the counsel to preach the text and not the day, the appointed scripture often feels custom picked for the day in history or in our own local family, individual, ecclesiastical, or political lives.

Season of Creation 2025

Justice will dwell in the wilderness
righteousness will abide in the fruitful field.
Isaiah 32:16

Five Minute Friday :: Legacy

• Five Minute Friday :: Legacy Linkup

³ Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Romans 6


²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11

The sacraments and the liturgy are our heritage and our legacy as God’s people in Jesus Christ. The liturgy is the privilege of the baptized; the liturgy is the obligation of the baptized! As we reenact and reappropriate the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life in the Christ event, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the proclamation reminds me Who God is, Who Jesus is, what the Spirit is doing.

That heritage reminds us we are baptized, called, and accountable, yet we live and flourish under a reign of mercy and grace.

This is our legacy. # # #

Summer in America :: City Left Behind

• Delights USA 5

• The City As Left Behind

• Summer in America 3