Porch Story :: September 2019

• End of most months I link my story to Porch Stories host Kristin's. I know you'll enjoy reading about her September 2019.

• Where am I? How am I?

• In City of Angels.

• Wondering. Waiting. Worrying. Wishing. Excited to move into cooler weather, wearing sweaters, and interesting activities.




• As I've done for about a dozen years, I created a design for each Sunday in the Season of Creation. The liturgical emphasis originated in Australia and has spread worldwide, traditionally for the month of September; Blessing of the Animals/Blessings upon all Creation on the October Saturday or Sunday closest to St Francis of Assisi day on 04 October concludes the hope-filled celebration. Watch this space for my October summary Porch Story that will include our local Critter Blessing! By the way, each of the three Revised Common Lectionary years features a different theme—for Luke's lectionary year C, it's wisdom.



• The still free world again remembered the 18-year anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attack on NYC's World Trade Center. Let's never forget. My 18-years memorial design (simply updated from 2012 and from 2014) quotes Lamentations 3:

• Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

• Background image by Michael Connor of Morguefile comes from before they'd finished the memorial; I still love the reflective graphic style I added.



• I didn't get any bloggable pictures for the September 17^th God's Work, Our Hands Day when we assembled snack and hygiene kits in the church backyard to help lighten the burden of nearby transient (homeless, unhoused, unsheltered) street people that are among the approximately 50,000 who sleep rough nightly in this town. The LA NBC affiliate has been airing an exceptional semi-documentary, fully-human interest series called Streets of Shame.

• The choir sang contemporary composer David Haas' Christ Among Us, with text inspired by Teresa of Avila. I frequently remind everyone we're God's hands, feet, eyes, ears, voice, and the anthem took it further with thoughts, words, song, heart, touch, care, love, light, hope, strength, joy!



• The 29 September Feast of St Michael and All Angels / Michaelmas fell on a Sunday this year. The choir sang one of my all-time favorites, Handel's Hallelujah, Amen!



• Society of Friends friend Brent Bill is assembling a formal, official, launch team for his upcoming Beauty, Truth, Life, and Love; it already has an Amazon page!

• While you wait for the early November release, you can visit Brent's Amazon page so you can start to discover his other books. I even have a "Brent Bill" tag for this blog so why not check out my blog posts?

Season of Creation 4C • Cosmos

Season of Creation 3C • Storm

Season of Creation 2C • Fauna & Flora

Season of Creation 1C • Ocean

Five Minute Friday: Worth

For this week's Five Minute Friday free write – worth – Kate suggests the subtopic, "Is the Christian writing life really worth it?"


• Sagittarius •
Five Minutes' Worth of Reflecting:

I started desert spirit's fire, my first theology blog of several, during July 2002, but I'd started writing long before that. In third or fourth grade I taught myself to type because I'd began writing papers on the economy and I knew you need to type those. They really can't be hand-written in either manuscript or cursive! (Then I decided I might become a securities analyst or stockbroker when I attained some schooling and chronology, and despite my later desire to become famous, a financial services career came very close to happening.) I've been enjoying FMF for at least a year, and not too long ago I picked up on Kristin Hill Taylor's Three Word Wednesday that's now her Porch Stories. Those linkups give me a valuable opportunity to write to a prompt: FMF without editing other than checking for extra spaces and to be sure autocorrect didn't do anything too outta line; Porch Stories for a little more editing and formatting, despite the fact I don't take much time on each topic and I usually post by that Wednesday evening. Aside from those linkups, I try to blog every month or two or three with my "life stuff" and/or "telling the story" label. But more that anything, I love writing for worship – collects, eucharistic prayers, occasional prayers, liturgy portions and pieces. You can find a few of them along with some of my liturgical art and design on one of my other theology blogs, Liturgy Legacy.

# # #
PS Over a decade ago on an iteration of the United Church of Christ forums, one of the participants who moderated some of our book discussions said to me, "Leah, I think you're the kind of poet-theologian Pastor [Alan, author of The Missionary Congregation: Leadership and Liminality – check topics wordcloud at bottom of this page to read more about the book] Roxburgh referred to; the church so needs your leadership at this time; thanks for sharing some of it with us!" Despite this and my other theology blogs, I don't do quite the conventional Christian writing life Kate referred to, but yes, the one I have is very much worthwhile, worthy of the time I spend with it, and altogether "worth it."

PPS I'm also a liturgical artist; header and footer of this post are from my designs for Season of Creation 2016. Some years I've also written prayers for the yearly Season of Creation lectionary and liturgical emphasis that began in Australia.

Season of Creation 4C: Cosmos Sunday

• Sagittarius •

Season of Creation 3C: Storm Sunday

Season of Creation 2C: Fauna & Flora Sunday

season of creation 1C: ocean sunday

Season of Creation 4C: Cosmos Sunday

26 September 2010

• Proverbs 8:22-31
• Psalm 148
• Colossians 1:15-20
• John 6:41-51

Cosmos Sunday! Liturgy brings cosmic time and chronological time to an intersection where all times everywhere – past, present and future ≠ meet in this present now. The person presiding at eucharist holds the totality, entirety and completeness of the redeemed and restored cosmos in their hands as the risen, ascended One also is now descended, once again incarnate among and within the gathered and transformed Eucharistic community and within all creation. Martin Luther speaks about the ubiquity of the Risen and Ascended Christ...

Cosmos Sunday!

"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden."
Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell

Michin Kaku tells us "...we are children of the stars; the atoms in our bodies were forged on the anvil of nucleo-synthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of stardust." Hyperspace, 1994

from Madeleine L'Engle: "If we look at the makeup of the word disaster, dis-aster, we see dis, which means separation, and aster, which means star. So dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated from God." A Stone for a Pillow, 1986

We Bow Down

by Twila Paris

You are Lord of the Heavens and Lord of my life
Lord of the land and the sea
You were Lord of Creation before there was time
And Lord of all Lords You will be

We bow down and we worship You, Lord
We bow down and we worship You, Lord
We bow down and we worship You, Lord
Lord of all Lords You will be

You are King of the Heavens and King of my life
King of the land and the sea
You were King of Creation before there was time
And King of all Kings You will be

We bow down and we crown You the King
We bow down and we crown You the King
We bow down and we crown You the King
King of all Kings You will be

Season of Creation 3c: Storm Sunday

19 September 2010

• Job 28:20-27
• Psalm 29
• 1 Corinthians 1:21-31
• Luke 8:22-25

Today is Storm Sunday, the third for this year's Season of Creation liturgical emphasis. With Ocean Sunday, we pondered and celebrated the earth's circulatory system. Fauna Sunday was a time to consider critters of all kinds that depend on humans for their sustenance and health, just as trees, rivers, forests and prairies do—animals are a major aspect of our interdependent world! Next Sunday, the twelfth and last will be Cosmos Sunday. Paralleling the Revised Common Lectionary, the Season of Creation includes a year for Matthew, one for Mark, and then Luke.

It feels as if especially during the five years since Katrina turned the world's eyes and hearts to the city of New Orleans and to the ineptitude of the federal government's response, every time there's a natural disaster media outlets overwhelm us with constant updates about the most recent hurricane, earthquake, oil spill, tornado or assorted "other" weather phenomena that disrupt the sometimes routine days of our lives.

In the reading from the Hebrew Bible, Job [28:21-22] inquires about wisdom, responding with words about some not readily apparent ways of being wise: “Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air."

Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Church forms the second pericope or scripture selection for Storm Sunday. At first glance its relevance may seem a stretch, since Paul again is all about the cross of Calvary and again Paul recognizes the paradoxical power of weakness, vulnerability and death, along with servant wisdom found in the cross. Paul trusts the invincibility of life in the overwhelming power of resurrection. In fact, you could say that for Paul the Gospel is death and resurrection!

²³we 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.

Major seismic and atmospheric events can cause widespread destruction of all kinds, more often than not disproportionately impacting lives and surroundings of folks with fewer financial and other resources. It's well-known that people living in neighborhoods with more up-to-date infrastructure have better schools and get better coverage from police, fire and politicians. At 7.2 the Easter Day Sierra El Mayor geological event that shook, rattled and rolled Northern Mexico and Southern California was higher on the Richter scale than the 7.0 Haiti quake on 12 January. Alta and Baja California regions still are getting substantial aftershocks, but they warrant no more than a "did you feel that one?" while Haiti remains in chaotic disrepair and there probably never will be an accurate death count or reckoning of total costs. According to today's famous passage from Luke, the disciples "...were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?'

"Who is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him." Hebrew and Christian worldviews emerged from God's self-revelation within religious contexts in which people believed that far away, distant, unapproachable gods caused natural disasters and disturbances out of their anger and displeasure with humans, along with more-or-less predictably cycles and recycles of the same events. The experience of God's nascent people Israel and later those of the early Church – I'd hope our experience as 21^st century Christians, too – with the God who is Creator and Lord of the waves and the winds (the desert, the savanna and the outback, and Lord of history, too...) was distinctly different! This was not a remote deity requiring sacrifice and placation, but a God so in love with creation that in Jesus of Nazareth God chose to live as a human creature. Not only has the endless recurrence of the very same thing stopped in its tracks, this God promises and provides a hope, a future and the reality of resurrection from the dead.

Job asks about wisdom; the apostle Paul tells us about God's wisdom. When the very young John Calvin pondered compiling a systematic theology, he wondered whether to begin with Divinity or with Humanity but finally decided it made no difference, since the outcome of either would be identical. Back in the days of Jesus the Nazarene it was not unusual to be talking with someone who was half mortal, half divine—the offspring of a human and a god. In Jesus Christ we find something more: a Savior, a Lord both completely mortal and completely divine; in Christ Jesus we discover that the fullness of humanity and the fullness of divinity are one and the same! Baptized into his death and resurrection and walking with Jesus in trust, we participate in his humanity and claim his divinity. Martin Franzmann's poetry sings, "Thy strong Word bespeaks us righteous, bright with Thine Own Holiness."

A blizzard or flood, tsunami or environmental accident originating oceans and continents away from where we live or a block away from home will affect all of us wherever we are. Because of our intertwined lives, last January's earthquake in Haiti wounded and broke all of us. Each of us can be counted among Deepwater Horizon's victims and survivors.

Will major meteorological events keep on happening? Without a doubt they will. "Who is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him."

Who are we, the people of God? We live baptized into Jesus Christ, so do the oceans and the breakers obey us? God calls us to be co-creators and faithful stewards of all creation, to live as agents of justice, renewal, restoration and mercy for all, in those ways and probably many others, also, to be the presence of Jesus Christ...

season of creation 2c: Fauna Sunday

12 September 2010

• Job 39:1-8, 26-30
• Psalm 104:14-23
• 1 Corinthians 1:10-23
• Luke 12:22-31

litany

leader: In celebration we bring our hopes, our sorrows, our confusions and our futures before God Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier on this Fauna Sunday!

response: From the rising of the sun, until the moon shines down, horses, eagles, mountain goats, hawks and sparrows all rejoice in your gracious love.

leader: You have given humanity a place in the order of creation and have called us to keep your covenant of loving care and provision with birds of the air, fish of the sea, with insects, marsupials, felines and bovines…

response: That we would help preserve natural habitats so hummingbirds, lions, camels, leopards and all safely may flourish and raise their young without fear.

leader: We give thanks for our companion animals

response: For cats, dogs, gerbils, parakeets, hedgehogs and goldfish.

leader: We admit that humanity has abused animal life for utility, experimentation and entertainment rather than living with them as covenant partners.

response: We repent of ways society has injured and exploited innocence.

leader: We resolve to allow the wild to run free and not invade their spaces;

response: We promise to keep wilderness a place holy sanctuary and safe shelter.

leader: Your Spirit of life fills all creatures!

response: Let everything that flies and all the crawling creepers

leader: From arctic to savanna to mountaintop

response: From rivers to prairies, from micro critters to mammoth animals

leader: With howling wolves, braying donkeys and swarming bees

all: Let all praise the name of the Lord and glorify the Christ in the Spirit!

season of creation 1c: Ocean Sunday

The Season of Creation is a recent emphasis for liturgical observation as late summer cycles into fall in the northern hemisphere, winter into spring in the southern. The site explains

What Is the Season of Creation?

For four Sundays in September, prior to St Francis of Assisi Day, we join in celebrating with Christ the wonders of creation. In the liturgy, we follow the lead of the psalm writers and celebrate with creation — with the forests, the rivers and the fields, which praise the Creator in their own way. Bible readings focus especially on the story of Earth, which complements the story of God and the story of humanity in the Scriptures. We commit ourselves to a ministry of healing Earth, with Christ and creation as our partners.

Norman Habel gives us part of the history; here's an excerpt:

The season of Creation begins as an Australian story. I, like many in our Lutheran Church in Australia, grew up in the bush. I climbed every tree within miles. I felt close to creation: the soil, the streams and the sounds of the bush. Celebrating the creation I love has long been one of my dreams.

season of creation 1c: Ocean Sunday

• Job 38:1-18
• Psalm 104:1-9, 24-26
• Ephesians 1:3-10
• Luke 5:1-11

Needless to say, this is very in process and well may be different within a couple days; if you use these prayers, please make your own changes and additions as freely as you like.

Call to Worship

leader: As we gather for worship today in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let us bless the Lord for the bounty of creation, the mercy of redemption and the hope of a new creation.

response: We bless you Lord God, for the wonder and majesty of sun, moon, stars and seas, for all of earth's abundance, for the love of Jesus Christ and for the gift of the Spirit in our midst.

leader: Today on Ocean Sunday we especially remember your provision of water ranging from deeps of the primal creation, to rivers that flowed from Eden, through streets of the new Jerusalem. On this Ocean Sunday we also acknowledge and repent of ways we have squandered and spoiled gifts you called us to care for.

response: We admit our sin and wrongfulness in behaviors that have harmed the waters, that have hurt creatures who live in the oceans and rivers and have broken the lives of humans who depend on water for income, nutrition, sustenance and health. We especially repent of the complicity, ignorance and greed that led to the recent disaster in the Gulf Coast region of the United States of America. We ask for your forgiveness as we resolve to start over with new awareness and sensitivity, that we might live as bringers of the new creation.

leader: In gratitude and in hope we remember, retell and reappropriate stories of gifts of water that carried Noah's ark to salvation, that splashed from the rock in the exodus desert, that became the boundary of promised land freedom, that in baptism is the tomb of our death and womb of our new life in Jesus Christ.

Collect

God of glorious love, your Word calls forth the mystery and magnificence of creation! We ask that you would make us faithful stewards and caretakers of your gifts, especially brooks, creeks, seas, and glaciers, that all might be redeemed, live and thrive to give life to others, through Jesus Christ, who was baptized in the waters of the River Jordan, became living water to the world and sends us forth to baptize by water, Word and Spirit. Amen!

Eucharistic Prayer

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to God.
It is joy to offer thanks and praise!

This is a day of hope! This is a time to celebrate the gift of water, to recall and reclaim the redemption of everything there is!

Lord God, you laid the foundation of the earth and set firm its cornerstone;
You were there when the morning stars sang together;
You commanded the morning, and showed dawn its time of awakening;
Your word formed the springs of the seas and spread out the expanse of the earth with all that grows from it.
You gave a portion of your Spirit to all creation,
and charged humanity with stewardship of the works of your hands.

By water and Word you claimed and baptized us as your people;
You have given us water and bread and fruit of the vine as signs of your presence among us;
You call us and send us to proclaim your gospel of love and justice to all the world.

And so with the company of heaven and with all creation in every time and every place we sing:

Holy are you, God of mercy, glory and love, and blessed is Jesus your son, who lived among us in a body made from stuff of the earth.
Jesus died for the redemption of all creation,
and was raised from death for the life of the world.
He ascended to reign in justice and righteousness over everything his Word had created.

With the Church in all the ages we proclaim the mystery of faith:

Dying you destroyed our death;
Rising you restored our life;
Lord Jesus, come in glory!

On the night of betrayal and desertion, our Lord Jesus took bread; when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,

"This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way after supper, he also took the cup, saying,

"This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again in glory.

Come, Spirit of Holiness; come upon all creation everywhere and upon this assembly of saints;
Come, Holy Spirit; sanctify these gifts of grain and grape uniting us with all creation in every time and every place;
Come, Spirit of Life and bless our feasting at this table of reconciliation and renewal,
That baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
in the power of the Spirit we may daily live as the gracious presence of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

Glory and thanks
wisdom, acclaim
dominion and righteousness be to God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
endlessly throughout eternity,
Amen!


© leah chang 2010