Armand Hammer Museum

This week I went to the Hammer Museum again on my Tuesday day off. Made in LA 2025 still was current, but Five Centuries of Works on Paper had opened since my visit on Tuesday 21 October, so going especially to see it sounded like a good plan.

I started with lunch in Westwood at Sweet Fin. My Chicken Bowl included forbidden rice, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, carrots, asparagus, tomatoes, jicama, avocado, mango, cabbage, two different creamy dressings… So good with a glass of Guava Lemonade!

My October Hammer blog didn't picture the paintings Alonzo Davis created for the 1984 Summer Olympics. You need to read the Wikipedia article about Davis. He believed, he knew, almost everyone has a heart for art, but his heart was especially in public art because not many often even think of going to a museum or taking an art appreciation class.

Five Centuries of Works on Paper was artfully curated and displayed, but I didn't take any pictures. It deserves another visit before the exhibit ends.

• The bookstore! Picture 1

• The bookstore! Picture 2

• Greenery and succulents. Hammer plants are so special!

• At the end of the day I got a Hazelnut frappe at Boba Time on Olympic Blvd that originally was Tenth / 10th Street. I ordered a regular, but for some reason I got a supersize.

Pentecost 3B :: Good News

Mark 3:16-35

¹⁶ So Jesus appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), ¹⁷ James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder), ¹⁸ and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, ¹⁹ and Judas Iscariot, who handed him over.

²⁰ Then he went home, and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. ²¹ When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." ²² And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons."

²³ And he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. ²⁶ And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. ²⁷ But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

²⁸ "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin"— ³⁰ for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

³¹ Then his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. ³² A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you." ³³ And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" ³⁴ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

* * *
What's good news to you?
What's good news to you?

We're in Mark's gospel year!

Mark has been our main gospel since a new year of grace began on the first Sunday of Advent. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we heard from John's gospel; now we're back in Mark as we start the six month long season of the Spirit. This is the green and growing season of Pentecost, when the church comes into its own with the Acts of the twenty-first century apostles. That's us!

First, Mark opens with "the beginning of the Good News, the gospel, of Jesus Christ, Son of God."

What's good news to you?

• Mark is the earliest gospel and the shortest one. It has no birth account. No genealogy. No resurrection in the earliest sources.

• Mark includes a lot of miracles, healings, and exorcisms.

• Mark is about the end of the world as we've known it!

• In Mark's gospel, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is incessant and focused. For Mark, his passion, cross, and death by imperial powers that be provides the best understanding of Jesus of Nazareth's purpose and identity.

• Our baptism into Jesus death and resurrection provides the best understanding of the church's mission and identity.

• We are the people who continue this written-down "beginning of the Good News."

What's good news to you?

* * *
According to the evangelist Mark, we don't find God in the Jerusalem Temple. God is not far away and unreachable. We cannot find God in any religious, social, cultural, political, or economic establishment.

Mark tells us we find God:

• in the cross
• in the wilderness
• outside the city limits
• in the stranger
• in the unexpected

Mark's Jesus brings the end of the world as we've known it.
Mark brings us the great good news of the Reign of Life.

* * *
Where are we now?

Two weeks ago on the Day of Pentecost and the fiftieth day of Easter we celebrated the Holy Spirit symbolized with wind and fire. We anticipated full diversity and inclusion. The first Christian Pentecost happened when some early Jesus followers were in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost, the annual celebration of God giving the ten words of the Sinai covenant through Moses. The commandments that shape our life together. And they were in Jerusalem to celebrate the wheat harvest that fed and sustained their physical lives.

The fiftieth day of Easter, the Festival of the Spirit gets us ready for the green and growing season of the church…

…baptized into the HS of Pentecost, we follow Jesus into the world abounding with the good news of the end of the dysfunctional parts of the world

We follow Jesus to the edges, the margins, the wild places, and we continue to minister right here in this space, in our homes, in our workplaces, in this neighborhood. We help create the end of the world as everyone has known it.

* * *
Back to today's reading. We're near the start of Jesus' public ministry and we hear,

"THEN" Jesus went home. Then? After what?

• after John's baptism by John in the Jordan River
• after forty days in the wilderness–an even more remote location than the Jordan
• after teachings and miracles
• after interactions with powers that be

Most important for us, then Jesus went home "AFTER" he called disciples and sent them out.

Today's cast of characters that we know about includes:
• A packed crowd
• Jesus' family of origin
• Religious leaders from Jerusalem

all of these people followed disruptive provocative Jesus home to Nazareth!

We could write a book about Jesus and the people who crowded him
About Jesus and his biological family in this reading and elsewhere


People have written books about the religious leaders' reaction to Jesus' home invasion robbery parable that we heard today.

Because tying up and immobilizing dysfunctional aspects of economic, religious, political, educational institutions is central to Jesus' ministry. Those actions are especially vital to the cross of Good Friday and the empty grave of Easter. They helped create the end of the world as everyone had known it and expected it to continue? Were Jesus' actions blasphemy against the HS? Some onlookers thought so.

* * *
But we're at the start of the second half of the church's year of grace, so let's consider Jesus' words and actions. He wondered:

33 Who are my mother and my brothers?
34 Looking at those around him he said, "here are my mother and my brothers."
35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Did you noticed Jesus never excludes his biological family?

"Church as family" sometimes doesn't sit well, especially given traits of some biological and adoptive families. But we are Jesus' family, joined to him and to each other in our second birth by water and word; filled with the HS in baptism.

Mark's gospel opens by announcing the beginning of the good news

What's good news to you?

• a new family arrangement?
• a new family?

How about the end of the bad, dysfunctional parts of our economic, religious, political, educational systems?

Something different from the disappointments of your last half dozen years?

What's good news to you?

Those early Jesus people gathered on the Jewish Pentecost. Pentecost celebrated the ten words or commands of the Sinai Covenant that still bind us to our God and to one another and charge us:

• to do justice
• to act with mercy
• to love God by loving our neighbors

Whether the neighbor is human, plant, animal, or water. We're still caring for the LA River, right?

To love the immigrant and the refugee and that annoying person at work

When we love creation, the ground, the waters, the cities and the outskirts, a bountiful harvest will help feed us and our neighbors.

* * *

What's good news to you?

Today Jesus invites us to the table of grace for the good news of a taste of heaven on earth.

In the Lord's Supper

• all are forgiven
• all is healed

This Holy Communion, this Eucharist is good news.

Amen? Amen!

To God alone be glory.
Amen.

Pentecost 4B Creation Care

Sometimes people want to hear what they already know.

Scriptures

• Ezekiel 47:9

Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes.

• Ezekiel 47:12

On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.

• 2 Corinthians 5:17

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, everything has become new!

• Mark 4:26-34

²⁶ Jesus also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground ²⁷ and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸ The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come."

³⁰ He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

³³ With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; ³⁴ he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Creation Care Outline

Where are we now in the church's year of grace? One month ago we celebrated the Day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter. We recollected when a large group of Jesus' first followers gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost. They remembered and affirmed God giving the Ten Words or Commandments through Moses, that way of obedience you could call the Working Papers for our lives together. And they celebrated the wheat harvest, God's gift from the ground that sustains our bodies every day.

Here in the church we recently started the six month long green and growing season of Pentecost; during this stretch of time we emphasize all creation as God's planting,. You know the story of God and God's people and the land from Genesis through Revelation.

Today's scriptures offer agricultural images. We hear from the prophet Ezekiel, and we hear two parables from Mark's gospel: scattered seeds and the famous mustard seed! The gospels of Luke and Matthew also include the mustard seed parable, so that may mean it's especially important.

A month ago we celebrated the Christian Day of Pentecost, or the fiftieth day of Easter. Christians have been celebrating Easter for two thousand years! Our formal theology tells us Jesus Christ's death and resurrection ended endless cycles of death, violence, and everything contrary to God's intention, but we look around and still see war, climate chaos, sorrow, sickness, death—none of that is over and done with yet.

Even though Jesus Christ has died, is risen from the grave, and ascended to reign from the right hand of God, even though we identify as Easter people… what's going on?

Jesus' original followers wondered, too.

After Jesus' resurrection and before his Ascension, in Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles, his friends and followers asked if now he finally would "restore the kingdom" to the world. Jesus informed them the question was wrong. He told them to stay and wait right there in Jerusalem. and they would be his witnesses, they would testify to new life. In the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, they would be Jesus' presence in the world.

In Romans 8:19-21 the Apostle Paul tells us all creation waits, hopes, and longs to discover us as God's authentic offspring, as people who embody, reflect, and act in God's image to help redeem all creation. Like Jesus!

The agricultural parables in the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God, according to Mark, align well with today's song, "God, Whose Farm Is All Creation." All creation. Not only prairie and heartland. But also crowded, overbuilt cities and suburbs. Remote rural wide spots in the road. Deserts. All creation is God's garden. God's land. God's farm.

God whose farm is all Creation,
take the gratitude we give,
take the finest of our harvest,
crops we grow that all may live.

Take our ploughing, seeding, reaping,
hopes and fears of sun and rain,
all our thinking, planning, waiting,
ripening into fruit and grain.

All our labor, all our watching,
all our calendar of care,
in these crops of your creation,
take, O God; they are our prayer.

Author: John Arlott

Romans reminds us creation hopes to discover that we'll treat oceans, wetlands, savannas, and cities in ways that help them heal. Creation watches us and waits for us to become good caretakers of waterways, trees, animals, insects. Of our own backyards and window boxes!

The new creation began 2000 years ago. That eighth day of the week, was the first day of a new reality. The new creation is not finished. The old creation still waits and hopes for us to be green people.

What's a biblical creation care model? We need to learn about plants, about seeds and soils, climates and seasons. It's also a great idea to act locally!

In the bible's promised land we see:

Crops watered by cascades down mountains into valleys and not by water shipped thousands of miles Gardens warmed by the great light of the sun and not by plugged in grids

Scripture shows us act locally. You know some of the ways:

• farmers markets
• street vendors
• community gardens
• backyard plots
• kitchen windowsill herb gardens
• composts

School and community gardens can help cancel food deserts
Besides, living local adds savor and flavor
Although we lose some long term keeper food
When that happens?!
Share the extras!
Trust the mystery!

In Ezekiel we hear about rivers flowing from the temple and healing everything the waters touch. Because everything those waters reach becomes healthy and well, the name of the city then becomes The Lord Is Here.

Today Jesus invites us to his table of grace. This eucharistic festival of thanksgiving is a taste, a token, a sign, a promise of creation completely redeemed.

Christ is raised and dies no more.
By water and the word
we share his death
his Eastered life

The new creation comes to life and grows
Everywhere we go!
Alleluia.
Amen!

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Five Minute Friday :: Longing

dreams from Summer 2000

The days and the summer nights
Berries from the brambles and the vines
Yearning for a future still not yet
Recalling how to dream…

• Five Minute Friday :: Longing Linkup and major congrats to Kate on another book!


From about a year ago, here's one place I wrote about:

• Home is Always the Place You Just Left: A Memoir of Restless Longing and Persistent Grace

Home, yearning, longing, belonging form a familiar and familial group. What can I say about longing today?

A person feels longing in their gut, in their heart, throughout their body. It's visceral. It's organic. It's powerful and it's often noticeable to outsiders.

As I explained:

Home is a spacious place. Space to breathe, to reach out, to grow, and to dream. A location and a people who take away my lostness, who help deliver me, because they delight in me.

My scripture reference was, "God brought me out into a spacious place; God delivered me because God delighted in me." Psalm 18:19

Finally I wondered,

Can home be in a place of blight, broken glass, fragile dreams, when there were any dreams at all? What name would we give that place? Is that the kind of situation we need to be rescued from? God would rescue us from?

Longing for Home is a buzz phrase—if ever there was one. Other longings and yearnings include hankering after lost connections with people, objects, experiences, and broader, larger places. Yet those individuals, those experiences and artifacts, that wider broader city or countryside all are components of home.

Longing is for something or someone you've had in the past but that's missing now. You can't long for what you haven't known or experienced. Or can you?

Longing and yearning can be visceral. Sometimes they're vascular. What happens if the longing ends because the object of our yearning has arrived? It's in the house!

As the phrase goes, "I'm so old" I remember everything about Tuesday 11 September 2001, a.k.a. 911. Even before then, I remember the hope many of us felt with the arrival of a new century called Y2K. My header collage illustrates the summer of 2000. I still love Y2K fashion. I remember the excitement of my first internet endeavor—an urban space in the old MSN groups. You can look back. I can reminisce. But yesterday's gone.

I remind myself, "Pray – remember – dream." Pray about now. Remember then. Dream about the future God is preparing to bring your longings home.

# # #

California African American Museum

Another Tuesday outing, this time to the museum complex for my first ever visit to the California African American Museum for some art, history, and culture.

Colorful collages line the walls.

Albert Chong, Aunt Winnie

Dominique Moody, Reunion, 1996. Collage front and back

Henri Paul Broyard, born 1989, Los Angeles. UGDA, 2021.
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas

I didn't get the title or the subject

Doyle Lane, born 1923 New Orleans, died 2002 Los Angeles. untitled, 1980-1989
Nine earthenware glazed fish

Dinosaur ironing board and irons

MLK Boulevard

Power to the people!

Engraved placard

How about this United Airlines DC-8?

Five Minute Friday :: Cold

Detroit city photograph by Ken Lund

• Five Minute Friday :: Cold Linkup

How many times have i announced, "I'd be in Detroit now, expect for the weather?" When is the last time I said that? Probably a week or ten days ago. Kate's serendipitous cold photo reminds us every kind of weather has its own kind of beauty, although her description of West Michigan sounds chillier than my memories of Boston… however, the North Atlantic adds a special grace to New England winters. What's that, you ask? Learning how to properly dress in layers, to knit cozy hats and mittens, to try old or new recipes and keep the fireplace lit because you'll have snow days that require you to stay indoors.

Although I currently reside in Los Angeles city and county, it's probably no surprise that I usually associate the word "cold" with the temperature inside the house or outside in the weather. More often than not, I pair snow and cold; Andrew recently had us write about snow.

Most years on this blog I've mentioned Lessons and Carols that some venues offer early in Advent, some close to the Feast of the Nativity, others on the first Sunday of Christmas because everyone still wants to sing carols. Do those lovely songs moderate or even mitigate the discomfort of cold days and nights? In my experience yes, if only for the duration of the event.

Because I mainly connect cold with the ambient temp, I also connect cold with the winter months. As much as I enjoy wearing shorts and sundresses during warm weather, winter clothes always feel as if they're better quality, more durable, and more style forward—for a taste of redemption for the cold!

I'll conclude by quoting Valley Winter Song again:

You know the summer's coming soon

Though the interstate chokes under salt and dirty sand
And it seems the sun is hiding from the moon
And late December can drag a person down

While the snow is falling down
In our New England town
What else is new?
What could I do?

I wrote a Valley Winter Song
To play for you.

You know the summer's coming soon

by Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger

The warm winter hat and hot winter drink are courtesy of Creative Market

# # #

Five Minute Friday :: Unusual

• Five Minute Friday :: Unusual Linkup

Intro

I'll start by saying I have no idea what Kate meant about Gatlinburg Tennessee being so unusual. Long ago late in Bright Week, I spent a few days in Gatlinburg and made memories so unforgettable I still review them every so often. Those memories include a stack of randomly shaped diner pancakes smothered with butter, and the best vanilla soft serve on the planet.

I did the tourist thing over to northern North Carolina and had a lunch so wonderful the menu has become one of my standards. Gatlinburg is a gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and for sure it's been developed with tourism in mind, but so has almost every Cape Cod town, so has the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Boston's Freedom Trail, and countless attractions worldwide.


Unusual

Given that Gatlinburg isn't in my unusual category, what does belong? Although I don't consider my art and design unusual because most of it is natural to me, other people often wonder about it. Outside of the design industry and classroom, where everyone takes it in stride because they expect the creative and the unusual, real-life mixed responses have ranged from, "That's dumb" to "What are you trying to prove?" to "This is brilliant!"

One of my saddest experiences happened when a classmate who evidently didn't know me as artistic was visiting. She looked at the few dozen pieces of my original art I'd posted on the wall and asked, "Where did you get these?" I replied, "I did them" (well, yes, of course) and she said, "No you didn't! Don't lie to me."

• My header for today: January afternoon
• Top footer is my interpretation of a piece of kettle cloth
• Next one is a favorite pair of summer sandals in their original color
• A fun frog

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