Gardenias Two

Gardenias One

Five Minute Friday :: Affection

• Five Minute Friday :: Affection Linkup

Only this evening I told someone else I'm everyone's Best Friend Forever, exactly like my late uncle. Is it genetic? Probably not, because quite a few people have that characteristic, but I like to identify with him.

What is affection? We think of it as emotional longing, a desire to be present with and for them, a trait that doesn't depend upon their good behavior but happens just because they are. We want to stay connected and we feel affection for them even when we're far away from them. That yearning tends to draw us back to them, so we find ways to be close to them again.

Like my uncle, I'm always for the underdog and undercat. I have so much affection for those who haven't won a chance for the spotlight that when a baseball team I don't follow and that's overall not doing well this season wins a game against one of my teams, I'm happy and excited. (My main teams are the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox with a frequent side of San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays.)

As recorded in John's gospel 15:15 Jesus says we're no longer his servants but now we're his friends. Is that good news? I hope it is! Because we know Jesus as the ultimate BFF. As we read all the gospel accounts, we observe Jesus and his companions demonstrating immense affection for one another.

Following Jesus, Paul of Tarsus had deep concern, gratitude, joy, and affection for the churches he planted and served. The church at Philippi that I've written a fair amount about seems to have captured Paul to an extreme extent, although he prayed constantly for all of them. Like Paul, most pastors feel both affection and frustration for their congregations. Like Paul, most pastors pray a whole lot for the churches they serve.

In Hebrew biology and therefore in scripture we know the heart is mostly the seat of will and intention, yet it encompasses the tenderness and affection we post-enlightenment westerners identify with our hearts. Jesus and Paul showed us all of that to perfection!

How about you? What are some objects of your affection? Notice the peaches picture? Food gets a lot of my affection.

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Five Minute Friday :: Pick

• Five Minute Friday :: Pick Linkup

When given a live choice, which option do you pick? When you have no real choice does it feel as if discouragement and disappointment have picked you? In other situations, though maybe you can't pick because there's only one option, does if feel as if providence has smiled on you and serendipity is your companion?

Food is my love language. Because food is my love language my most careful, most fraught, least carefree, most emotionally charged picks are culinary and gastronomical.

But I'll backtrack and mention Kate wrote about a university and a scholarship fund picking her son. For sure he had an element of sorting through, choosing, discarding, and picking, although in his case a whole lot of the picking came from outside, and not from her son or his family.

For all of us, some life changing picking and choosing comes from outside ourselves, yet it endures with us:

"You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit, and that your fruit will abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name he will give you." John 15:16

Does if feel as if Providence has smiled on you and you walk alongside serendipity?

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911 Twenty Four Years

Yet my soul,
keep thou silence unto God:
for mine hope is in God.
Psalm 62:5

This is my reflection from two years ago with a few minor revisions.

The saga of un-creation in Jeremiah 4 feels like the reality of World Trade Center Ground Zero.

Jeremiah 4

¹¹ At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward the daughter of my people, not to winnow or cleanse, ¹² a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them.

²² "For my people are foolish; they do not know me; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil but do not know how to do good."

²³ I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos, and to the heavens, and they had no light.
²⁴ I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.
²⁵ I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.
²⁶ I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

²⁷ For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end. ²⁸ Because of this the earth shall mourn and the heavens above grow black, for I have spoken; I have purposed; I have not relented, nor will I turn back.

Twenty-Four Years

9/11/2001 + 24 = 2025

Where has the grief gone? Where have the memorial services gone? At least a few people on social media still ask where we were when we heard the news, although it's mostly for those of us who are so old we were chronologically mature adults in September 2001. We're still ready to revisit our experience, to retell the horror.

Monday evening 9/10/2001 I'd gotten back late from a seminar for the year-long Community Economic Development Certificate (mini-MBA in entrepreneurship) I'd just started at San Diego State. Tireder than usual, I'd gotten up an hour later than usual. By the time I turned on the morning news it had gone live. I watched the second plane hit the second tower.

And I can't ever forget the hope of two and a half days later.

Thursday evening September 13, 2001, my Presbyterian Church (USA), the large Evangelical Lutheran Church in America across the street and the smaller ELCA around the corner, a nearby Roman Catholic, that big United Methodist, and the United Church of Christ that bordered this neighborhood and the adjacent one gathered at the ELCA across the street and celebrated Eucharist. In the wake of unprecedented destruction on USA soil we offered thanksgiving! A glance into all creation healed and whole. A moment in the future God dreams of and calls us to help create.

Where were you? What words or communities or actions or realities sustained your hope? Still hold you in hope?


• Pentecost 14 Lectionary blog for Sunday, September 11, 2022 with more about God's presence, more on Jeremiah, and another retelling of when I saw the news. This coming Sunday September 14th will feature the same scriptures. As I mentioned about the counsel to preach the text and not the day, the appointed scripture often feels custom picked for the day in history or in our own local family, individual, ecclesiastical, or political lives.

Season of Creation 2025

Justice will dwell in the wilderness
righteousness will abide in the fruitful field.
Isaiah 32:16

Five Minute Friday :: Legacy

• Five Minute Friday :: Legacy Linkup

³ Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Romans 6


²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11

The sacraments and the liturgy are our heritage and our legacy as God’s people in Jesus Christ. The liturgy is the privilege of the baptized; the liturgy is the obligation of the baptized! As we reenact and reappropriate the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life in the Christ event, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the proclamation reminds me Who God is, Who Jesus is, what the Spirit is doing.

That heritage reminds us we are baptized, called, and accountable, yet we live and flourish under a reign of mercy and grace.

This is our legacy. # # #

Summer in America :: City Left Behind

• Delights USA 5

• The City As Left Behind

• Summer in America 3

August and Summer 2025

• June2025 :: Around Town

• July 2025 :: Back in Koreatown

• Tuesday 12 August :: Wilshire & Vermont

• Sunday 17 August :: Saint Mark’s ELCA

• Tuesday 26 August Santa Monica Brunch Again :: Google AI made this fun collage

Snapdragon

Five Minute Friday :: Behind

• Five Minute friday :: Behind Linkup

Behind can be left back there instead of taking or bringing it with me.

Behind is not up to date.
Not here and now.
Not at work, at the appointment, or where I'm supposed to be because I'm behind in time. I'm late.

Behind in achievement. Staying a grade behind in school so I can catch up and won't be behind any more.

Behind is in back of something else and often hidden from sight.

My header is tangelos in Carla's Tucson yard. Carla left us behind when she went on to glory not long ago.That means I've left Tucson and Arizona behind for now. The Sonoran desert claimed my heart long ago, so you know I'll go back because I can't let it stay behind forever.

Which aspect of Behind will I write to today? One of loss, of what's become past, of what's not with me any more. For a long time that was a common feature in this blog, but at some point I sort of gave up. I stopped the questions and the laments. The left behind past was an ongoing topic; part of my consternation was the many new stories starting to be written and then erased. How many times did I say, "this next thing will work," and then it didn't?

I never intended to leave those people, jobs, ministries, activities, pleasures and delights behind in the past. I trusted I was taking them with me to the next place that would add to them and enhance them. Those losses happened at the core of my identity, at the foundation of my expectations. Does that sound like an entry in a middle school journal? Somewhat. But those middle school kids often are at a happy point in which they haven't left visceral emotions and opinions behind. They don't know that adulting means not expressing themselves in such graphic dramatic terms.

What's your take on "behind" today?

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Five Minute Friday :; Opposite

• Five Minute Friday :: Opposite Linkup

I love how Kate's two kids who intuitively know each other so well have opposite habits and living styles.

Opposite sometimes connotes different in almost every way. Can't be reconciled. Opposing political parties. Your baseball team and mine (if they're different ones).

Hot dry days. Cold snowy nights.

My celebrate header and sprouts footer show opposites in art and design.

Opposites are essential to good design.

Light colors. Dark colors.

Tiny elements. Huge ones.

Smooth edges. Ragged edges.

Calm and dynamic colors.

Bold slab serif type. Elegant script fonts.

A call to action. A suggestion of repose.

When you combine them well, opposites join together into a splendid whole.

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Five Minute Friday :: Accumulate

• Five Minute Friday:: Accumulate Linkup

what's an apt illustration for accumulate? Clutter piled high? Stacks of cartons and crates ready to go from one dwelling place to the next one? Books in every inch of a bookcase? A series of diplomas and certificates from kindergarten to post-doc?

And Jesus said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Luke 12:15

This comes after he warns about coveting "stuff" or possessions; a grass is greener, keeping up with what you think other people own or have. Covetousness and greed are far different from desiring basic comfort.

life doesn't consist in the abundance of things. Stuff. Possessions. Or maybe that's belongings?

Psychologist Erik Erikson said to lose the sum of one's possessions is to lose evidence of who one is. Identity crisis! Ever had one? Of course we need physical objects. Many people delight in their collections. But the recent spate of decluttering and organizing articles and books reminds us how collections and collecting can accumulate to such an extent they impede life rather than enhance it.

We hear about the wisdom of accumulating memories rather than stacking up material objects we may not have space for and may not need on any level. That wise advice to grandparents also applies to parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and unrelated family friends. To everyone.

Give your grands, your own kids, your nieces and nephews, coworkers' kids, your Little Brothers—Little Sisters experiences rather than things. It's a perfect time for a shout-out to the Big Brothers–Big Sisters program because being a Big Sister or Big Brother will create incomparable experiences and endless memories for everyone.

A trip to the park or a nearby beach. An afternoon downtown with lunch and a museum. Bake cookies or bread together. Plant a garden and harvest the veggies, pick the flowers. Make dinner and serve it proudly. Take pictures of everything, of course. Accumulate experiences. Accumulate memories of your experiences.

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July 2025 :: Back in Koreatown

• Urban Wilderbess Lectionary Blog for July

• Google made a couple of impressive collages of the food pics I took at the monthly Santa Monica Tuesday Brunch.

• With an interesting turn of events and employment in late July, I've come back to Koreatown.

• Street view my first morning back in Koreatown

• One of three presentations of succulents and assorted posies at the entrance

• It's been since South Central, so I was ecstatic to see yellow cassia trees. I got several good pics; this one won a spot here because of the Metro Bus sign.

• RIP, Walter Brueggemann. I'm reading his Sabbath as Resistance and wanted to show off the Vanille Ice Cream Cone desk cup I serendipitously bought.