September 2020 :: Pandemic Blues

• Most of the world has gotten caught up in a serious case of existential blues from social isolation and other COVID-19 related realities; doubtless circumstances have led to many cases of clinical depression. Friend who pastors Church on the HIll in Previous City calls the current season Covidtide.

• I've now completed seven months of Reflections on Scripture During a Worldwide Pandemic, once known as early the following week Sunday School notes on my Urban Wilderness blog; here are my four for September.



• Again this year I designed for the Four Sundays plus One of Season of Creation. The past two years I updated old designs and had planned to again, but the organizers changed themes and scripture readings. Nevertheless, despite pandemic blues, I created a group with Facebook cover photo dimensions and even got a major shoutout on the judicatory's FB page and on their website, giving me another pin on the map. Jubilee for the Earth is the overall theme for 2020.



• Only very rarely (almost never) do I blog a monthly summary without berries when they're in season. Although blacks and blues have been around, for September it's red strawberries.



• Best guess is this was the last moon flower this year. Noticing one on the way and watching it unfold is such a pleasure.



• This general area is so good for succulents and other desert flora.



• Sooooo… I got invited to real life indoors church! On the last Sunday of September, and only a few of us, very well distanced—and masked, of course. The outside window boxes have new flowers; I don't know if or when milkweed for monarchs will be back. I also don't know when more people will be back inside church and what on earth will all of us be doing for Thanksgiving Day?



• After I announced I wanted to design a new autumn-themed header for my twitter and crowd sourced a quote to add, someone suggested "The Season of Soul." Despite late spring through mid-summer being my fave time of year, I love the full, ripe feeling of early fall days. I truly love how they remind me of the year-round magic of late afternoon's visual and psychological glow (yes, that's a photographic golden hour), of a day that has reached a certain stage so we need to rest and sleep into the next one's sunrise. Autumn makes souls and voices sing differently from any other season, and the overall style of autumn soul relates well to pandemic blues. They make a nice pair that travels well together!

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Five Minute Friday • Church

• Five Minute Friday Linkup: Church

• Five MInute Friday is a Christian gathering, yet welcomes anyone who wants to practice writing and meet new people. Most prompts are generic, but this time it's—church.

Taking 5 to type

In the beginning I encountered the church as Corita Kent's art and Dietrich Buxtehude's music. I wrote that right: "as" art and music, not "in" art and music. Many people go on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Wittenberg, or Geneva; I've made them to Corita's studio in Los Angeles, to Buxtehude's Marienkirche in Lübeck. I knew nothing of law or gospel, scripture or sacrament.

Before long I discovered everyone gathered at Central Church to get the news, to shop at the markets. The tower clock rang hours, quarters, halves of secular time, called the baptized into the building to celebrate sacred liturgical time.

Slowly I learned about Christianity's long history of justice, advocacy, compassion, and care. And prayer. Theological distinctions and differences. I *even* learned to read and interpret scripture and finally started to get how Being Church was about following Jesus to the cross (to Jesus' cross, not out own) and to the empty grave.

These days? I sometimes reflect on sin and grace, mercy and healing, scripture and sacrament. Creating as a liturgical artist somewhat in the tradition of Corita is a major part of my participation in being church…

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The Hard Side of the River :: Johnny Payne

The Hard Side of the River: A Novel of Abolition by Johnny Payne on Amazon

Novelist, poet, playwright, librettist Johnny Payne directs the MFA in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles.

I ducked my head to get under the doorframe, as if I'd arrived home after a long day's work.

And isn't homecoming the ultimate redemption?

You know about timely! Johnny Payne started The Hard Side of The River long before its 2019 publication date and before this exceptional year 2020, but receiving my copy from the author when I did gave me broader perspective than I could have had earlier.

For a while the USA as a whole imagined it had moved past days when some humans bought and sold other humans like chattel; most probably considered their town of residence and place of work (relatively) safe for all comers.

Thoroughly researched with characters that change and adapt as the plot progresses, this historical novel begins south of the freedom line of the Ohio River in 1831, concludes in 1834—three decades before the Battle of Fort Sumter, Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth… close to two centuries before a renewed civil rights endeavor across the United States and other parts of the world in the wake of continued unjust treatment of Blacks and other Persons of Color. Each chapter provides first-person narration related to currents of one of four main characters: slave tracker Dan Baskin; escaped slave Jacob Pingram; abolitionist school teacher Dana Curbstone, or abolitionist parson Cal Fenton. The story includes three other important persons: Dan's partner Leora who later becomes his wife; a young girl named Rae who's designated step-daughter by Leora and Dan; Jacob's partner Esmerelda whom he marries.

Water is the womb of this planet's birth, the matrix of our own beginnings. Throughout the history of humanity, water has equaled life. Waterways have carried necessary cargo to distant destinations; ships have transported humans to lives of freedom, and sometimes into slavery. Just north of Kentucky that belonged to the antebellum South, Ohio was free territory. For Jacob and others like him, the Ohio River bordering both those states symbolized the relative freedom he could own if he could reach the Ohio side. On foot at a shallow location? By swimming? In a vessel? The river's width, its torrents, and its openness to spying eyes of slave trackers all could be serious barriers.

Almost two centuries after Payne's historical novel, southern California has become the most ethnically and linguistically diverse settlement in the history of humanity. Beyond life-generating waters, humans must create a world safe for differences, as people finally did for Jacob and for each other on the safe side (the soft side, maybe?) of the Ohio. Making different safe is a beginning. Next? To create a world that welcomes, celebrates, and revels in diversity, where people no longer feel strange, where they know they have arrived home.

Because no one is free until every one is free, everyone still resides south of the freedom line. Preachers and others seeking justice and freedom for all humanity – and for planet earth – might enjoy Johnny Payne's version of when and how it happened at least once.

I ducked my head to get under the doorframe, as if I'd arrived home after a long day's work.

Doesn't everyone long for a place to belong? Isn't homecoming the ultimate redemption for the one who gets welcomed and for the ones who do the welcoming?


Notice of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book from the author without any expectation I'd write a positive review. As always, opinions are my own.

911 nineteen years

we will always remember…

celebrating hope
911 2001
911 2020
19 years

Where were you?

WTC image by GLady on pixabay