15 March • Image

14 March • Down

Here we are in the church, months or years or decades down river of our baptism. Down river is a location of variable quality. As a river runs, it gathers almost everything along its course: the good, the bad, the sweet, the toxic.

How can humans renew a riparian zone that has been depleted? With care, knowledge, and wisdom. Water was my March 4^th Lenten Snapshot; I pictured the famous example of the Los Angeles River that's named after my city, the river that has been called the world's largest storm drain. I more than suggested, "...getting baptized in your local river and then claiming ongoing care and stewardship of that river and its watersheds. If you've already been baptized, why not renew your baptismal covenant at the riverside?"

How can humans bring their nearby down river back to life? By claiming stewardship of it. The LA River hosts several cleanup days throughout the year; maybe your river or other waterway does, too? It takes experts to determine how to restore a healthy biome; if you're not one of those, you still can join in the restoration effort by offering your time and energy.

13 March • Carry

Carry typically implies porting something around with you as you go:

• The band Kansas: "Carry on, wayward son"
• Carry out / takeaway food
• Carry on bags
• Stay Calm and Carry On

What's carry in my current life and world? All the hopes I haven't really felt, yet have trusted as I've kept on preparing for the next chapter, that next open door. What else do I carry around with me? An ongoing awareness that much of the time – most of the time? – we live suspended in Saturday rather than visibly triumphant at Easter daybreak. Didn't someone describe Saturday as "the day nothing happens but the day everything happens?

That's my Lenten Snapshot for today, Friday the Thirteenth.

Five Minute Friday :: Table

• Five Minute Friday Linkup Page—Table

For close to six months, half a year, most weeks I've started FMF to the extent of pasting the linkup into a new TextEdit page, to the extent of saving the lovely small word prompt illustration FMF host Kate provides. I played a few weeks ago on February 18th; Previous time was 15 February 2019. Because the linkup remains live for a week, one doesn't necessarily need to play Thursday evening or some time Friday, so day of the week's no big deal. I used to play almost "all the time." Trying again this week... I can do this, I know I can do this.

This photograph of open air, open – all comers equal and equally welcomed – seating for a couple dozen people with tables finely dressed and beautifully set is my example, my icon of a bountiful welcome home. Previously I've mentioned food is my love language, even though it's not one of those famous five official ones. Nothing distresses me more than exclusion from a meal or from a snack, being barred from any eating event.

The gospels show us many instance of Jesus eating with friends, strangers, outcasts, and assorted others. We sometimes call one of our sacraments the Lord's Supper—basic elements of nutritious bread, served with a cup of fruit of the vine, ground-zero agricultural gifts of a land of promise farmed and stewarded well. We can call the feast Jesus invites us to the table of "go and do likewise" because the Lord of that Supper calls, enables, and sends us out to invite and dine with friends, strangers, outcasts, assorted others—maybe even with enemies?!

"...eat and drink at my table in my realm and be strengthened as you take up responsibilities among the assemblies of God's people!" Luke 22:30. MSG, alt.

12 March • Reconcile

Taking advantage of an opportunity to showcase some of my scripture-related art that otherwise gets onto this blog only sporadically. I probably have at least one design for each Sunday in all three lectionary years (I need to organize and publicize those!). Here's one of a half-dozen versions of 2 Corinthians 5:18.

11 March • Death

Melchior's song from Gian-Carlo Menotti's Ahmal and the Night Visitors:

The child we seek holds the seas and the winds on his palm.
The child we seek has the moon and the stars at his feet.
Before him, the eagle is gentle the lion is meek.

On love, on love alone will he build his kingdom...
His might will not be built on your toil.
Swifter than lightning he will soon walk among us.
He will bring us new life and receive our death.
And the keys to his city belong to the poor.

Image by OpenClipart-vectors on Pixabay

10 March • Foolishness

With "foolishness" the word for today, what other than the Apostle Paul's words about the cross? I'm expanding it to include Lesslie Newbegin's Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, one of quite a few books we discussed on an ancient – vintage? – iteration of the UCC online forums. I conveniently converted my comments into several blog posts.

1 Corinthians 1

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

• Aggregate link for my FTTG posts

09 March • Look

Luke 21

²⁵"There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁸Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

07 March • Body

From Nederlandtsch Gedenckclanck (1626) the tune is Kömt nu met Zang, with Huub Oosterhuis' text translated by David Smith.

What Is this Place?

What is this place where we are meeting? Only a house, the earth its floor.
Walls and a roof sheltering people, windows for light, an open door.
Yet it becomes a body that lives when we are gathered here,
and know our God is near.

05 March • Loaves

In Saxon English, the lord provided the loaf – the sustenance – for the people. Hebrew bible scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us justice is important—food is essential. Throughout the gospels we find accounts of Jesus feeding other people and feasting with his friends; Jesus repeatedly talks about those who will banquet in the Kingdom. Poet Pablo Neruda knows Eating alone is a disappointment. But not eating matters more...

In Saxon England, the lord provided the sustenance. Eating alone or in community sustains our bodies; enjoying a meal together replenishes our spirits. Throughout the gospels we hear about Jesus feasting with friends. Scripture tells us on the evening of the day of resurrection, "when Jesus was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him." Luke 24:30

In the same way God called Jesus of Nazareth, God calls us to be visible, tangible signs of God-with-us, God-for-us, God-among-us. Will the world recognize us as the presence of Christ when we bless, break, and share bread? When we supply sustenance for each other's bodies and spirits?

Eating alone is a disappointment...

04 March • Water

Water is one of this blog's main topics—Water Is Life!

Acts 8:36 "Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized!"

In her article in the anthology she edited – Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril – Lisa Dahill suggests getting baptized in your local river and then claiming ongoing care and stewardship of that river and its watersheds. If you've already been baptized, why not renew your baptismal covenant at the riverside?

03 March • Crumbs

You may know about the 5 Languages of Love?

Food isn't officially one of them, but food is my official Love Language! Even a symbolic few small crumbs will do. Please always invite me! Don't exclude me! Don't do those evils I've experienced with upstairs tenants offering to bring me "a plate of thanksgiving dinner." Or the host family with plenty of dining table and kitchen space, who informed me I could eat alone after they did? Only a pair of happenings from long long ago, and no time now for an endless rant, but you get the idea.

02 March • Heaven

• Don Henley's book title reminds us Heaven Is Under Our Feet.

• God's Word tells us heaven is under our feet:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land,
a land with flowing streams,
with springs and underground waters, valleys and hills,
a land of wheat and barley, of vines
and fig trees and pomegranates,
a land of olive trees and honey.

Deuteronomy 8

01 March • Daily

"But everyday I say I'll try to make my heart be still"

Phil Collins