A Glad Obedience

• A Glad Obedience: Why and What We Sing by Walter Brueggemann on Amazon

Inspired by the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Glory to God hymnal, "A Glad Obedience" by Hebrew bible scholar Walter Brueggemann with a foreword by renowned liturgical scholar John Witvliet, what we sing in church is not only the Genevan Psalter (as it used to invariably be in John Calvin's Geneva Reform and in some of the American colonies)—singing in church covers many different styles, meters, rhythms, and modalities from continental Europe and from the British Isles, those places where American protestantism began.

If you've been attending church during this century, you've experienced hymns from African, Caribbean, Asian, and other cultures. (However, We Are Marching in the Light of God that originated in South Africa is the only non-traditional church song the author considers.) Alongside the kind of old favorites Brueggemann focuses on, If you've attended church even sporadically during the twenty-first century, in a more non-denominational setting you may have been surrounded by or sung what's sometimes called contemporary worship music, usually led by a band; in a mainline protestant or Roman Catholic church of any size, hymnody – and liturgy settings – almost definitely have included pieces by Marty Haugen, David Haas and cohorts.

Book is in two main sections:

• Why We Sing – an overview of four psalms explicating God's gracious, redemptive acts throughout history;

and

• What We Sing – an overview of 15 standard-issue hymns (and a chapter about sparrows) that respond to God acting in our lives. They're mostly British Isles/North American, ending with the aforementioned "We Are Marching" …no Lutheran chorales. Absence of chorales is a bit surprising, given how much of the history of new world immigration and the history of American Lutheranism run parallel, and given WB's Evangelical Reformed roots. The book concludes by considering The Covenantal Fidelity of the Psalms. After all, Walter Brueggemann is the author!

Despite finding A Glad Obedience relatively underwhelming – probably because I tend to rely on WB for biblical scholarship and incisive theology – I'm happy to have discovered this approach that could be exceptionally helpful in a small group or bible study gathering. The facilitator or another individual could choose a hymn or a stanza from a hymn to explore in terms of history, imagery, scriptural sources, and daily application. Of course, everyone present would sing together, either a cappella or with keyboard or instrumental accompaniment.

• My Amazon Review: underwhelming yet helpful overall

Better Together

• Better Together: Life is Best with a Friend Like You on Amazon.

This board-bound small size coffee table type book comes from Christian publisher Zondervan and follows the general concept of gift books and flip cards that have scripture quotes to help jump start your day or catapult a person out of a funk.

In seven inspirational categories that include Friendship, Respect, and Diversity, each spread features a full-color photo of a cute cat, dog, bunny, or other furry creature on one side, a memorable quote on the other. I especially like how they visually emphasize a single word within each quote, so you can ponder the whole and then consider possibilities like oneness, difference, immersion, compassion, love, peace, purpose.

Better Together: Life Is Best with a Friend Like You would be a nice standalone or tuck-in gift, though I plan to keep my copy. Endnotes provide sources for the quotes and copyright information.

• My Amazon Review: Life *IS* Better Together

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

From an Idea to Nike

• From an Idea to Nike: How Marketing Made Nike a Global Success written by Lowey Bundy Sichol; illustrated by C.S. Jennings on Amazon

Turning an idea into a physical or virtual product, generating demand, and figuring out distribution? At least part of the answer relates to "How Marketing Made Nike a Global Success." Yes, marketing. Strategies regarding what styles and functions consumers prefer, what media and other advertising outlets they frequent and trust, maybe especially developing unique and distinctive branding that moves and evolves with the times to stay trendy.

Line drawings and easy reader text help an interested elementary school reader (or anyone) follow idea to product events over the seventy-nine years from 1938 (who knew? I didn't) to 2017. You then can double-check your newly acquired Nike knowledge with the 4-page "Timeline of Nike" at the back.

The legendary account of Carolyn Davidson and the Nike swoosh logo is major design school lore. I haven't checked the stats, but I'd guess it's one of the top ten most recognizable logos anywhere at any time. No need to worry, because design school instructors reassured us Carolyn eventually got compensated as she deserved.

This very short, large-print, easy reader book can't be comprehensive, but I'd like more information on how Nike became a global brand, a household buzzword, but there may not have been space or incentive. However, I appreciate the list of top ten endorsement deals, a ten item bibliography plus two pages of chapter-by-chapter (yes, this is a chapter book) notes that include print and digital sources used in writing From an Idea to Nike.

What's next? "From an Idea to Google," so you know I'm staying tuned to this series.

• My Amazon Review: marketing the brand

Season of Creation 3C • Storm

Season of Creation 2C • Fauna & Flora

Brian J Dixon :: Start with Your People

Start with Your People: The Daily Decision that Changes Everything by Brian J Dixon on Amazon

Like the composer author Brian Dixon described as a guy who'd done everything you're supposed to do to get noticed so you'd get opportunities you prepared for and couldn't be truly alive without, I've worked all the traditional options correctly and compulsively, with close to no return. I've even done it knowing my own light shines brightest when I help other people discover and develop their gifts, therefore trusting God would respond to my awareness and to the world's needs.

But first, about Start with Your People book. Did you know your people include "everyone you interact with, not just your family, friends, and coworkers"? That's every single person. Good beginning. However, you still need your own tribe, which often means "asking for help. No one succeeds on their own. Everyone has a team. ... When you're inside the bottle, it's impossible to read the label. That's why we need other people. ... Allow these people to speak into your life and be honest with you." (page 129, launch team pdf book version)

Again, that validated what I've known almost forever, but that's where the book title and concept becomes powerful. You start with the people by serving them, by placing them first, as Jesus would.

When my social and professional networks both crashed, I knew I needed to rebuild, but that's the subject of several earlier blogs and not a topic for today. Brian includes a dozen examples of people who've reclaimed their dreams after failure or brought their dreams to life for the first time ever. If they could do it, so can you. Me, too!

Although Brian clearly is a highly committed Christian – follower of The Way of Jesus, as the early church would say – and Start with Your People is firmly grounded in service, you would not need to be Christian, religious, or even acknowledge some kind of spirit of life in order to benefit and change from reading the book, from asking, "What are you working through?" and – if that's your jam – doing the exercises at the end of the book.

Brian J Dixon's Start with Your People offers a practical, life-giving way to make your own particular gifts, passions, and skills matter to the world as you engage in community building that validates everyone's worth. Like very very many people these days, I found myself suddenly in the gig economy (sometimes ironically called the precariat), trying to find a way in a world where internet expansion and a major financial recession had moved a ton of work to third world countries where the cost of living is minuscule compared to North America and Western Europe. Still, Brian's ideas give me hope for a future when again I'll wake up excited about my work for that day. BTW, distinct and discrete projects never have stopped exciting me; I'm waiting for that next level that will happen because Brian Dixon's experience and insight has lit a new fire for me!

Notice of Material Connection: As a member of the launch team, I received a free pre-publication copy with no requirement or expectation I'd write a positive review. As always, the opinions expressed are mine alone.

my Amazon review: Validating, Igniting, Practical!

Season of Creation 1C • Ocean

Porch Story :: Summer 2019

• Porch Stories host Kristin writes about an August that sounds almost enviable.

• With August concluding meteorological summer, Emily P Freeman hosts her quarterly linkup.

June

• Day Camp in the San Fernando Valley easily was the high point of June, possibly of the summer so far. Check out pictures here!

July

• Reading and reviewing I See You by Terence Lester qualifies as a highlight of this year.

• For the first month in a long time, I didn't blog about July—no interesting outing or activities or pictures, but I did accomplish the amazement of retrieving my belongings, all of those everythings, out of South Central where they'd spent four years in storage. Despite downsizing and donating a lot of mostly furniture along with some other effects before leaving Previous City, like many or most, I couldn't Marie Kondo as thoroughly as might have been ideal. Almost everyone knows about items that don't necessarily occupy a whole lot of space, items you have three or four or more of that are similar but deciding which one to hang onto is too major at the moment, etc.

August

• No August pictures at this time, though I may add a few later. Continuing the sorting and donating theme because most of it has happened this month, everyone knows about donation regrets that frequently happen because sorting and unloading generates such an emotional high... Chances are I'll schedule a few more pickups (with Vietnam Vets of America) and waiting until I better could assess what to keep and what not has been freeing and satisfying. Due to different box sizes ranging from standard small through medium to quite a few large, blogging a number doesn't say much, but twenty five (25) is the current count.

Watch This Space!

1. For a review of another launch team book, Start With Your People, about gathering your tribe and being a supporter;

2. For a serious blog about Previous City friend Markus Watson's fabulous Spirit Life and Leadership podcast. It's not only for pastors, teachers, deacons, elders, and seminary types (professors and students). It's for everyone because if we are alive, we are spiritual so we have a spiritual life!

Sacred Resistance

• Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent by Ginger Gaines-Cirelli on Amazon

Sacred Resistance the book is a biblically-grounded resource for engaging political, social, economic, and corporate powers that be while keeping yourself sourced in prayer, scripture, and community. Sacred Resistance touches upon possibilities for future transformation while remembering God's mighty actions and ongoing presence in the life of the people of God and in all creation. Short, practical, and easy to read without high-falutin' theological terminology that might require a second layer of interpretation, the book won't overwhelm your church's session, vestry, council, or consistory; it also won't underwhelm pastors or others with more extensive theological backgrounds.

Author Ginger Gaines-Cirelli pastors Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.; the large congregation is involved in a wide range of ministries. Small or medium-sized churches simply cannot do it all and need to choose their specialties. Sacred Resistance could be a conversational starting point for discerning options that best enlist members' gifts, passions—and limited time.

I appreciate Pastor Ginger's desire to avoid masculine Kingdom (of God, of heaven) language, but kinships isn't an adequate stand-in. God does create close kinship with all creation, particularly with those baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection, but we need to retain a sense of the sovereignty, of the unique authority, of the reign of heaven on earth in Christ Jesus.

End notes for each chapter offer an additional rich resource individuals or committees might explore after studying the book. All in all, I highly recommend Sacred Resistance for the real-life ideas it suggests.

• My Amazon Review: engaging and resisting powers and principalities

Terence Lester :: I See You

Equal parts testimony, analysis, and exhortation, at first glance Terence Lester's soon to be released I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People is about the growing population of homeless individuals along with assorted "others than us" we don't perceive as part of mainstream society. However, as the late, highly admired and regarded Henri Nouwen observed, everyone is impoverished in some way, and surprisingly, "that’s the place where God wants to dwell! 'How blessed are the poor,' Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty. ... Let’s dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden." from Bread for the Journey

So I See You is about all of us.

Terence tells us poverty of any kind is about lack of access, but that's only a starter. And yes, much of this book does focus on the economic and material impoverishment that often leads to individuals and families finding themselves without physical shelter, the poverty that happens because of lack of human connections, lack of a community of support and participation.

Have you noticed how homelessness and poverty tend to be systemic and multi-generational? Lester dreams of eradicating (especially) systemic injustice. I see You chronicles the author's own experiences and his observations of others who've been poor; it particularly testifies to Terence's – and other's – experiences of being seen clearly enough to have their needs acted upon and met by people acting as God's agents—as God's eyes.

¹³Hagar answered God by name, praying to the God who spoke to her, "You're the God who sees me! "Yes! He saw me; and then I saw him!"

¹⁴That's how that desert spring got named "God-Alive-Sees-Me Spring." That spring is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. Genesis 16, The Message

The author reminds us scripture has over two thousand references to poverty and justice; we need to recognize aspects of justice include distributive, retributive, restorative, and procedural. Possibly others, as well, though they may be sub-sets of these primary types. Quite a while ago senior pastor asked what classes I was taking and I mentioned one called "Poverty and Justice." Senior pastor responded with a longish speech about the criminal (retributive) justice system and the highly disproportionate number of persons of color and others without economic means who remain incarcerated. I replied, "No! You're thinking of retributive justice! This course is about distributive justice! Who gets what, how, when, and why!" Most poverty seems to happen because of disconnects in distributive justice that often cascade into other injustices.

Hagar's God who sees me is a God who sees each of us as we really are. That includes individuals with massive financial resources it's easy to stereotype as having everything; it includes people in ragged clothes holding a Please Help! sign at the freeway entrance. What stereotypes do you need to start breaking down? What ones do I still hold onto?

Scripture tells us, Jesus shows us how God created humanity in the image of the divine. In the power of the Holy Spirit of life, God calls and enables us to claim that divine nature and live as God's presence on earth, to act as God's voices, hands, feet, and eyes everywhere we go.

Almost everyone underestimates what a "regular" person can accomplish. Terence advises each of us, "Do something, anything for the [solitary] one." I like to remind my adult Sunday School class everything we do is synergistic and adds up to far more than the sum of our small, individual actions and prayers. "Prayers"? Yes. Read the gospels! Jesus always prayed before taking any significant action, before making any response to human need.

"Where will you start after reading this book?"

With God's blessings to us concealed in our own poverties, with God's blessings and presence in those we see and encounter hidden in their own unmet needs, in the power and the grace of the Holy Spirit, each of us can be the spring named God-Alive-Sees-Me as previously invisible people become visible to us.

Some link love:

• Terence Lester online

• Terence on Facebook

• Terence Lester's Instagram

• Terence Lester on twitter

• Love Beyond Walls, an organization Terence and his spouse Cecilia started to draw attention to homelessness and poverty and to help mobilize people in situations of poverty into a full future.

Notice of Material Connection: As a member of the launch team, I received a complimentary pre-publication copy of this book with no requirement or expectation I'd write a positive review. As always, my opinions are my very own, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

my amazon review: vision and hope

Porch Story :: June 2019

• Summer's been in session with the fun and randomness that come with the season, so I'm linking my June summary to Porch Stories host Kristin's July.

• My end of the month summary blog for June 2019 covers less than a week, but those five days were good ones. Sometimes I sit on my actual porch, at other times it's a virtual veranda in a different time and clime, yet everywhere I'm still doing whatever I can to imagine my next move. Months became years became decades, and now?

• And now? I spent the last week of June helping with summer day camp in the San Fernando Valley. Besides mostly doing line chef-type dicing, slicing, chopping, and mincing in the kitchen, I enjoyed good conversations and glorious gardens. Snacks were yummy—one day we even had ice cream cones with our choice among five or six flavors of award-winning Thrifty Ice Cream! Dinner menus were varied and well-prepared. As usual, I've tried to be selective about the pictures I blog, so I chose color-filled ones to represent the venue well.



• With Day Camp sessions from 3 to 9, on Tuesday I got there just as all volunteer, LA-based The Rescue Train wrapped up a day of feline Trap-Neuter-Release, partly sponsored by the church that sponsored the onsite day camp. I have the impression Feral Fix LA also welcomed household pets who needed neutering.

World Oceans Day 2019

WOD Theme for 2019: "Gender and Oceans"
World Water Day mostly emphasizes fresh waterways; World Oceans Day concentrates on waters that contain easily measurable saline. Since it's a day of celebration and collaboration leading to a better future for oceans and for all creation, this year's WOD hashtag is a perfect #TogetherWeCan!

For 2011 I wrote about some of the numerous ocean bays that have been in my life. I currently reside in the South Bay of the placid Pacific Ocean, so I could add to my bay chronicle. But won't.

Creating a word panorama as I did for 2016 seemed a repeatable choice. Given WOD's focus on salty water, why not begin with the poignant fact whether it's ocean, tears, or sweat, salt water heals? I'm one of those many many individuals who don't necessarily go to the beach, stroll along the sand, even drive up or down the shore very often, but who really really want to know the ocean is there.

A light breeze –  fog rolling in from the ocean or out to the sea – shells for memories – shells for décor – seagrass in driftwood—pluses of a nearby ocean. With oceans and rivers gifting us as planet earth's lungs and with half the oxygen our human lungs breathe, we wouldn't be "here" if oceans weren't there.

This year's panorama includes memories of jogs alongside Pacific Beach North, along La Jolla Shores what feels like eons ago. Of early evening potluck picnics at La Jolla Cove while getting acquainted with new friends. If not for oceans, music lovers wouldn't have Bruce Hornsby's Eastern Shore of the Atlantic musical fusion sound (no, not a double meaning this time). That observation reveals my latest YT listens, but to continue, there wouldn't be any Atlantic, Caribbean (recently I've also been loving a lot of Steve Winwood and his predecessor bands), Pacific, or any music at all. Anywhere.

So for the sake of the music, the breezes, the picnics, jogs, the strolls and the shoreside drives, the lives of creatures who make seashells and seagrass their homes—for the sake of memories because no more oceans? No new memories. Let's all love the oceans by doing everything possible to redeem them, because #TogetherWeCan.

Amen? I hope so!