• Urban Wilderness – City Paradise February
Thursday, February 29, 2024
February & Winter 2024
• Urban Wilderness – City Paradise February
Friday, February 23, 2024
Five Minute Friday :: Respite
and observe them faithfully,
4 I will send you rains in their seasons,
and the ground shall yield its crops,
and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
11 I will place my dwelling in your midst
12 I will be your God and your shall be my people
13 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt…
Leviticus 26
• Five Minute Friday :: Respite Linkup
Respite from the storm. From that noise. From whatever bothers you, any overwhelm, including the (actually satisfying) tiredness Kate wrote about. My header photo illustrates rain on a window.
Here in the desert – albeit a coastal one – waking up to rain on the window often means relief because now we have at least brief respite from ongoing drought. Rain on the window and slick roads (remember to Turn Around – Don't Drown when you're out there) signal respite and restored life for crops, for the Los Angeles River with its wildlife, aquatic animals and organisms, with its verdant, recently restored banks.
Weather peeps measure rainfall from October through September, and by grace we've recently had enough water from the sky. But with even the River that carved the Canyon in crisis, we need to continue practicing the careful stewardship God calls us to. God promises rain, yet God's promises usually carry the condition of human obedience.
It feels as if most scripture passages about rain are about water as gift because after all, water is life! However, too much water in the wrong place can flood can destroy. Hurricanes can wreck crops, economies, hopes, and futures. Earlier in the oughts I blogged several times about Katrina. Yet scripture mostly does speak about rain as respite, a refreshment from parched earth, a life-restoring gift. I started by mentioning respite "from any overwhelm" and isn't historical drought overwhelming all creation?
The opening Leviticus passage promises rain that's essential for the land to yield, for trees to bud, blossom, and fruit. God sends rain to give us respite from hunger.
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. The God of liberation is a fertility God!
Friday, February 16, 2024
Five Minute Friday :: Spoil
Our host Kate focused on "spoil" as unearned privilege, a something or a circumstance that offers an advantage many don't have. She talked about a longing – probably even a kind of envy – because she yearned to attend a writing conference yet her situation made it impossible for many years.
Not quite like lost to the loser and sweet to the winner spoils of war, our best human advantages and privileges are those that can be shared to enhance someone else's life and well-being, sometimes to better a whole lot of lives.
As sons and daughters of the King of Kings, offspring of the Most High, we can claim privilege others can't, yet God calls us to pay it forward in service that privileges everyone we meet, to offer love and consideration that literally spoils them, too.
Given that we write for only about five minutes each week, I'll pick up on one aspect of my life that feels spoiled compared to many others—spoiled compared to where I used to be.
Kate told us how participating in a writing conference was out of range for her for a long time, yet finally she found herself not only attending several, but sometimes even part of the leadership. I could blog about being a little kid who wanted to beautify the city; I could cite long intervening years, and then near-countless design awards, invitations to present at different venues, along with my experiences as an invited professional to multiple student portfolio days. That's being spoiled! It's high privilege many never will have!
But related to this theology blog, I'll mention how wowed I was long ago when our bible study leader had to step away and the person who came to facilitate asked, "What are you studying now?" After we told him, he proceeded to lead our discussion as if he'd prepared to. In real life he was ready because his life journey had prepared him for that day.
Fast forward a few years, as they say. Back in Previous City, the person who regularly led a particular scripture study group suddenly had to leave and they asked me to take their place. I went into the room, introduced myself, and asked what they were studying. They told me, and I then facilitated a well-informed interactive discussion that felt as if I'd carefully prepared for that day, because over the years, in the power of the Holy Spirit who's the true facilitator of our scriptural interpretation, I had.
Similar to glancing back on the little kid who wanted to beautify the inner city, I often remember my high level of overwhelm during bible studies and book discussions way back when. I had no particular aspiration to become anything like a scriptorian, but by grace it happened.
Just as a fruit tree goes from apparently bare branches, to buds, to blossoms, to fruit, so do our abilities—and often our opportunities. That's the privilege of being spoiled for service, of being spoiled in order to spoil others.
Friday, February 09, 2024
Five Minute Friday :: Consume
Our FMF host Kate wrote beautifully about some scriptural instances of consume; I'm starting with a more mundane spin to consider what we consume, why, and the outcome. I haven't checked out the word for technicalities, but in the popular sense, if you consume something it's no longer out there because it's now inside you or maybe inside your home, your office, in your yard or a related space. You've basically eaten it up! And to what avail?
There's an ever-expanding range of "consumer movements" in professionalized and licensed areas such as law, mental health, nutrition, and education. Is something for a consumer necessarily something that's for sale in a retail outlet or as fee-for-service?
Retail for sale. We shop for food, clothing, home furnishings, or repairs because we need to consume them in order to survive—in order to have better lives. Related to consumption, food first comes to mind as it reaches for your appetite, your senses, your belly, and that satisfied feeling of being full; consuming food is a physical necessity. But beyond fueling your body and nourishing your mind, the very best happens when family, friends – sometimes strangers – join to create at least temporary community around that essential.
Dinner's ready! Y'all come and get some now, hear?!
We sometimes consume something in order to attain a greater good for all, especially when by-products of consuming include deeper understanding, more radical community, and a hope-filled future. You've eaten it up. And to what avail?
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Acts 2:42
Friday, February 02, 2024
Five Minute Friday :: Waste
trash receptacle from Y2K (or whenever)
• Five Minute Friday :: Waste Linkup
Even at our most insecure, most humans have learned some things must go into the wastebasket and into the landfill. Sometimes they're worn out and we need space for new necessities, other times because that "stuff" literally is detritus, trash, garbage, and not remotely useful any more. In fact, some of that "stuff" maybe never had real purpose or usefulness.
I love to remind myself that God never wastes anything. Not a single smidgen of our experiences, including mistakes, missteps, wrong way streets. Including disappointments, devastations, and disasters. Both ours and everyone else's! (Talk about reassuring.)
God eventually reclaims every fragment of what even in retrospect still look like blank years. They still feel like zeros to me because … I have't yet gotten a reassuring "aha!" moment that those were productive times with incubating ideas and ripening resolves getting ready to express themselves and help change the world. The theological reality is those months and years simply looked blank, and now I'll be filling them in with content that otherwise never could have been. Or is it?
Partly yes. Partly not yet.
God's death-resurrection dynamic promises days and years of endless kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. Those golden veins form a new, more subtle, surprisingly beautiful creation the original couldn't have imagined.
• But the Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9
• Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a flute to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel. Isaiah 30:29
for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9
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