October 2024

• Header is an Inglewood evergreen (well named) trio from Tuesday 01 October.

• I'm still adding some of my art and design favorites to this page.

• Urban Wilderness / City Paradise for October

• Sunday 06 October, Saint Francis Day, concluded the formal Season of Creation. I worshiped at Christ the King in Torrance that has a huge labyrinth in the worship area.

• This collage by google AI showcases both interior and exterior. They use different templates than the ones we can use, and generally choose great arrangement of pictures, though sometimes what parts of the pictures display is a bit funky.

• After worship I facilitated a season of creation art workshop.

• Monday 07 October, Chrysanthemum breakfast bouquet

• My first ever trip to IKEA LA (in Carson, not far from Cal State Dominguez Hills), where I bought a few fun things.

• That same Monday evening, 07 October

Home is the place where when you have to go there,
they have to take you in
(and a cup of Americone Dream Ice Cream).
…Robert Frost

• First picture is the actual ice cream I enjoyed

• Google AI made this ice cream collage. They use different templates than what's available to us. I love the angles and surprises on this! Of the dozens I've collected from my google photos, this layout is unique.

• Saturday 12 October – A wonderful Journaling and Prayer workshop at Christ the King. Joelle, the facilitator, helped immensely with my journaling roadblocks. Having a single focus (prayer, gardening, sightseeing, travel, etc.) is a good idea. And she has a twice monthly substack newsletter!

• Friday 18 October – Donuts and Celestial Seasonings Berry Tea

• Sunday 27 October – West Los Angeles for Reformation Day Worship, farewell to Pastor Peg, and an alfresco potluck. I actually forget to take pictures of the brunch and dessert tables, but happily realized the sun would have been too bright.

• But I captured the Autumn Centerpiece at our table!

• Thursday 31 October Halloween / All Hallows and actual Reformation Day

• I have enough pictures this month so I didn't make new ones for Halloween or Reformation.

Five Minute Friday :: Weight

• Five Minute Friday :: Weight Linkup

A heavy conversation, a heavy heart. They weigh upon our entire beings unless someone will pick up some of the burden. Unlike fruits and veggies whose weight a scale will tell you, unlike your own avoirdupois digitally or mechanically measured; losses, decisions, memories, and hope can't be hefted in ordinary ways.

Kate's one word prompt this week was particularly apt for her son's need to purchase a serious suit because he'd be speaking publicly about the heavy loss of a close friend in a car crash. Weight is right-on for me this time, too. Recently I've finally been admitting the impact and import of where I currently find myself. Find myself is too optimistic right now, but let's say where I need to discover, re-wild, and find myself again.

Some of you know though southern-born, I grew up mostly in New England in a family whose origins were Southern and Midwestern, a geographical trio that has given me a lot of reserve when it comes to talking about myself. In addition, having a fair amount of chronology behind me means I've encountered hundreds of people whose only topic of talk (I wouldn't call it conversation!) is… themselves. That makes me quadruply reluctant to open up my heart or my life.

I'm at a watershed. You've probably heard in order to predict the future, create the future, and I've been doing just that. But something got scrambled, misdirected, or maybe I wrote the code wrong? In any case, everything about my life, everything that's still not happening in my life is an immense weight I can't lift, roll away, or budge even a bit.

Eleven plus years ago during Lent 2013 I quoted from one of my rethink church posts with the additional, "I fear more months, years, decades of aimless drifting."

Out of time! Now what? Thanks for visiting!

Postscript: my header image is a delicious sandwich because I intended to write about Food Is My Love Language, and how heavy everything is when people don't bring me snacks or invite me, how light everything feels when they do. "I brought you a boba!" "I brought you a bagel!" "Do you want to got to lunch soon?" "Party time!!"

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Interim Connections

an update from the very old original

The Connections

So… this afternoon I played organ and piano for new settled pastor's installation and I had a great talk with former interim pastor, who under the Formula of Agreement's provision for interchangeability ("orderly exchange") of ministers of Word and Sacrament currently is serving as interim at Holyland ELCA—in another FoA denomination. That's happening all over the place all across this country, but the crazy thing is, that church is on Flat Mesa Blvd., the same street as this church he recently left after a long called interim pastorate, so I'm wondering if his next interim position won't be at the local Taco Bell, since he's been gravitating to – or it could be that entities only located on – Flat Mesa Blvd. have been grabbing him?

Does Taco Bell have any kind of formal agreement with other (food) denominations? Oh, yes—KFC, and Pizza Hut, and The Habit Burger, all sheltered by the YUM umbrella. But if they're all YUM-affiliated, that doesn't make them different denominations, and besides, they all serve very different and distinctive types of food. Speaking of Taco Bell, I *think* the PCUSA, UCC, DoC (etc.) Taco Bell boycott has been over for some time now. Somewhat related, a while back Taco Bell launched an interesting fourth meal concept.


The Serious

Oh, how many times have I exclaimed to anyone who'd listen "sometimes I think I loved the Church more than I loved Jesus." This afternoon part of former interim's charge to new settled was to not love the church more than he loved Jesus, Lord of the Church.

Yesterday I was considering how somehow I'd become marginalized in a ton of ways from society's main streams (though not from the mainline church, since for the most part I still attend one or another), and yesterday evening I finally realized the Spirit of the Church had chased me outside the city gates, outside the assumed shelter of the walls of the city=civilization, to where I'd find Jesus, to where Jesus died—outside the city.

Am I therefore suggesting it's harder to find Jesus in the church structure, in Word and Sacrament, than to encounter Jesus outside the church? That's been suggested before. Theologian Darrell Guder accurately insists God does not limit Godself to the means of grace, and I've blogged and spoken my logical rejoinder. Nonetheless, God does bind Godself to the means of grace, and I'll add whether or not we recognize, acknowledge, or act upon that fact.

Like many others I've been thinking, writing, and blogging about liminality, betwixt, betweenness neither here nor thereness and some of the meanings, dangers, and freedoms of life as exodus people—exodus people? Better make that baptized people.

Five Minute Friday :: Undecided

• Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California
with legal reuse rights from pxhere

• Five Minute Friday :: Undecided Linkup

As an opinionated person, almost too often I sandwich myself between two or more choices. I usually do that list of pros and cons; I usually get hung up for a while because the total rank of everything usually feels identical.

Some history—ancient and modern:

I can't count the times my offers to participate in church or elsewhere have been refused, often with a rude remark or two or three. I perceive myself as very able; at the same time I'm fully aware how far I still have to go, though I'm exquisitely aware knowing my background could intimidate people… yes, but how many times have I even hinted at much of what I've done in school, at work, in the church? A person (you, me, anyone) can't exit a setting the moment someone looks askance at them, and I've become expert at persisting.

However, as soon as I reflect on yet another rebuff, rejection, or refusal, I always remind myself, "My experience would have been very different in a place like Cambridge or Berkeley." But not once did I ever consider relocating to "a place like Cambridge or Berkeley." Not until a little less than a year ago. As an acquaintance suggested when I told him that particular history, it probably was the Holy Spirit suggesting Cambridge, Berkeley, or related all along. Slow learner, right?

Soooo…knowing I couldn't simply transport myself up north, find housing and opportunities, and settle in, late last fall I finally contacted several San Francisco Bay area entities I hoped would become real connections. Both the responses I got and the lack of responses disappointed me; for several reasons I haven't tried since then. Am I still undecided? No, I am not! I have decided! But practically and financially, my only option for relocating to the north is to have a worship space, working place, and a dwelling waiting to welcome me.

Still undecided? I just told you, no! But I am excited!

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Magical Windstorm

Nahant Watercolor :: Tall

Nahant Watercolor :: Wide

Peaches

February Tree

Autumn Tree Two

Autumn Tree One

Sky • Sun • Sunflowers

Daisies!

Five Minute Friday :: Flee

Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
Psalm 139:7
• Five Minute Friday :: Flee Linkup

Psalm 139:7-10

⁷ Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
⁸ If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
¹⁰ Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

Almost every translation of verse 7b says "flee!" That sounds fast—probably desperate and frightened. We claim to know God best in the loving, compassionate Savior Jesus Christ. After all, he lived a human life like ours (though in a very different place and time), so he "gets" pressure, temptation, disappointment, anger, sorrow, and joy. But even so, don't we often look askance on our own shortcomings and try to hide from God as well as from other humans?

This week I've been studying the book of Hebrews in preparation for my weekly scripture reflection. The assigned passage is a study in law and gospel.

Hebrews 4:12-16

¹² Indeed, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

¹⁴ Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested [or tempted] as we are, yet without sin.

¹⁶ Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Exodus 25 instructs, "you shall make a cover of pure gold; two cubits and a half shall be its length and a cubit and a half its width." (verse 17) and continues, "there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat... verse 22

Scholars who know Hebrew explain the root of kapporet that Martin Luther translated as Gnadenstuhl or "mercy seat" is a place of covering that logically would extend from the physical gold covering of the ark to covering for sin, made especially clear as every year they sprinkled blood on it.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say Luther perceived Jesus Christ in [almost] every passage in the Hebrew Bible. For Luther the Gnadenstuhl, the definitive mercy seat, the place of grace, was the cross of Jesus Christ.

After explaining that Jesus as high priest, as mediator between heaven and earth in his resurrection and ascension, knows us and sympathizes – resonates! – with us, Hebrews 4:16 advises us to "approach the throne of grace with boldness in order to receive mercy."

Do we still want to flee from God?
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Five Minute Friday :: Two

• Five Minute Friday :: Two

• We Two Form a Multitude
• Nos duo turba sumus – Ovid, Metamorphoses
Two is more than one.

And the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." Genesis 2:18

Several translations say "companion." I love the implication in that word of breaking bread together.

"Ezer" is the Hebrew word for helper, help meet. Scriptorians tell us sixteen of the twenty-one occurrences of ezer in the Old Testament refer to God. Although servant God, servant people, is a persistent biblical current, "ezer" implies overall equality rather than the status of a slave or a servant.

Two is more than one. Two is the start of community; the beginning of shared life and the start of the end of loneliness. Two initiates living the way God intended for humanity.

Eating alone is a disappointment. But not eating matters more … Let us sit down soon to eat with all those who haven't eaten; let us spread great tablecloths, put salt in lakes of the world, set up planetary bakeries, tables with strawberries in snow, and a plate like the moon itself from which we can all eat. For now I ask no more than the justice of eating. Pablo Neruda, from The Great Tablecloth / El Gran Mantel

Eating together is equalizing and leveling; it often makes class and economic distinctions irrelevant. A shared meal or snack sometimes becomes a cross-cultural experience!

From "Please come to Boston" by Dave Loggins (RIP)
Please come to L.A. to live forever
California life alone is just too hard to build.

• 1x1=1 1²=1
• Two starts something greater than itself:
• 2x2=4 2²=4

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