Being a priest, I'm privileged to be with people in times of joy and sorrow and everything in between.
Yesterday, I visited a friend after the Sunday services. I took with me the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood.
My friend's fighting a serious illness, which has limited his access to the world. Every time, we talk, I'm impressed by his courage, his positive spirit, and his faith in God.
I'm also moved by the love of his family and friends for him. They were gathered around him in the family living room yesterday. His friends included three college classmates. They'd heard he was ill, and they travelled from long distances to be with him, encouraging him with their presence, their jokes and banter, memories of life in college some thirty years ago.
I began the home Communion service, asking for a few moments of silence in which to remember God's presence and to give God thanks for the gift of friendship--both the friendship of others and the friendship of God for us. Friendships sustain us.
We said the prayers, and then I distributed the consecrated bread and wine--Christ's real presence for every person there.
The blessed bread and wine communicated Christ's grace or favor to each person amid his or her particular needs and struggles. I know my friend's needs, some of them anyway, but not those of the others who were there. But God knows those needs and meets them through the gift of his love in the sacrament.
We joined in a final prayer. I asked God for a miracle of healing for my friend and the destruction of the disease in his body. I prayed earnestly in faith for his full healing and for God's victory in his life.
As I said goodbye, I told my friend that I'd be back to visit. And I shall, for this is what I'm ordained to do--to be the physical and spiritual expression of God's healing presence to others. To be with God's beloved children in times of joy, sorrow, and everything in between.
Perhaps these visits are holy moments for others, even healing ones. They certainly are for me.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
The real story behind Winter's Bone
When I read the novel, Winter's Bone, a couple years ago, I found its southern realism hard to take.
There was something painful, like the throb of an abscessed tooth, in reading about the fictional lives of the Dolly family. They are a family caught up in poverty, meth cooking and selling, lawlessness, and death in the hollows of the Missouri Ozarks.
And when the film came out, I resisted going. Reading the novel was like pushing a plow through a rocky, stumpy field; and surely, I thought, seeing the film wouldn't be any easier.
But I went to see Winter's Bone the other day. And I'm glad I did.
It's superbly crafted: well-written, directed, acted, and filmed. (Local actress Beth Doman has a role in it.)
The film concentrates novelist Daniel Woodrell's story in a way the novel strings it out, as novels do, and delivers it to the viewer with the force of both barrels of the shotgun that 17 year-old heroine Ree totes to the door when a stranger knocks.
Winter's Bone shows the power of love--Ree's for her mentally impaired mother and her brother and sister. She sacrifices, suffers, and risks her life for the survival of her little family. She's all they have, in the absence of her father, a meth cook and seller who's jumped bail, disappeared into the hills, and imperiled the family home and property.
Ree fears she and her family will be living in the woods. So she goes in search of her father, resolved to produce the man himself to the bail bondsman or the evidence that he's dead.
At first I thought Winter's Bone, which made it to the screen with help from the Missouri Film Commission, didn't do justice to Missouri and the Ozarks, which I love.
But it does. It's not really a film about poverty, drugs, and lawlessness, but about the morality, the courage, the love of family embodied in young Ree Dolly.
It showed the true spirit and soul of the Ozarks.
There was something painful, like the throb of an abscessed tooth, in reading about the fictional lives of the Dolly family. They are a family caught up in poverty, meth cooking and selling, lawlessness, and death in the hollows of the Missouri Ozarks.
And when the film came out, I resisted going. Reading the novel was like pushing a plow through a rocky, stumpy field; and surely, I thought, seeing the film wouldn't be any easier.
But I went to see Winter's Bone the other day. And I'm glad I did.
It's superbly crafted: well-written, directed, acted, and filmed. (Local actress Beth Doman has a role in it.)
The film concentrates novelist Daniel Woodrell's story in a way the novel strings it out, as novels do, and delivers it to the viewer with the force of both barrels of the shotgun that 17 year-old heroine Ree totes to the door when a stranger knocks.
Winter's Bone shows the power of love--Ree's for her mentally impaired mother and her brother and sister. She sacrifices, suffers, and risks her life for the survival of her little family. She's all they have, in the absence of her father, a meth cook and seller who's jumped bail, disappeared into the hills, and imperiled the family home and property.
Ree fears she and her family will be living in the woods. So she goes in search of her father, resolved to produce the man himself to the bail bondsman or the evidence that he's dead.
At first I thought Winter's Bone, which made it to the screen with help from the Missouri Film Commission, didn't do justice to Missouri and the Ozarks, which I love.
But it does. It's not really a film about poverty, drugs, and lawlessness, but about the morality, the courage, the love of family embodied in young Ree Dolly.
It showed the true spirit and soul of the Ozarks.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Which way are you facing?
In the film, "Please Give," Rebecca and her boyfriend Eugene take their grandmothers from their Mahnattan homes to the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York to see the changing leaves. By all accounts, the leaves are stunning this season.
After a few hours on the road, they find a spot and pull over. Everyone piles out of the car, including the two hobbling grandmothers, to look at the trees.
Rebecca, Eugene, and his grandmother stand by the roadside, in silence, enraptured by the mountains and the trees--a rainbow of reds, golds, yellows, and greens.
Meanwhile, Rebecca's grandmother is turned in the opposite direction, looking at a patch of trees whose skinny limbs stretch forth empty and gray. It looks like winter, not autumn. But it's all the woman can see.
Or will allow herself to see. Rebecca's grandmother is alone and bitter. Her only child, a daughter, had killed herself when Rebecca and her sister were young, and the gradmother reared the girls herself.
This tragic loss possessed the woman and robbed her of a life of joy, love, and beauty.
Rebecca's grandmother focuses only on death, her daughter's and her own one day soon. It's all she sees.
In the metaphor of the film, she looks on the empty trees, which presage the coming winter, not on the vivid fall colors of an upstate autumn.
In life, we're looking either toward the barren or the beautiful, toward the tragic and painful or the good and redemptive, toward death or life. We're either looking toward Christ, who is life, or away from him.
And the way we're facing makes all the difference in what our lives will be.
After a few hours on the road, they find a spot and pull over. Everyone piles out of the car, including the two hobbling grandmothers, to look at the trees.
Rebecca, Eugene, and his grandmother stand by the roadside, in silence, enraptured by the mountains and the trees--a rainbow of reds, golds, yellows, and greens.
Meanwhile, Rebecca's grandmother is turned in the opposite direction, looking at a patch of trees whose skinny limbs stretch forth empty and gray. It looks like winter, not autumn. But it's all the woman can see.
Or will allow herself to see. Rebecca's grandmother is alone and bitter. Her only child, a daughter, had killed herself when Rebecca and her sister were young, and the gradmother reared the girls herself.
This tragic loss possessed the woman and robbed her of a life of joy, love, and beauty.
Rebecca's grandmother focuses only on death, her daughter's and her own one day soon. It's all she sees.
In the metaphor of the film, she looks on the empty trees, which presage the coming winter, not on the vivid fall colors of an upstate autumn.
In life, we're looking either toward the barren or the beautiful, toward the tragic and painful or the good and redemptive, toward death or life. We're either looking toward Christ, who is life, or away from him.
And the way we're facing makes all the difference in what our lives will be.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
It's time to wash the oil off our hands
President Obama didn't say it in his speech last night, but he should have:
We all have oil on our hands.
All of us who drive vehicles, fly on airplanes, use petroleum-based produces are responsible for the catastrophic oil leak and spread in the Gulf of Mexico, and the consequent environmental and economic damage, because we're all dependent on seemingly unlimited and relatively cheap oil.
Because we're responsible for the devastation of the gulf, if only indirectly, we're also responsible for the prevention of future disasters. We must become more faithful in our stewardship of creation and insist upon greater supervision of and, where warranted, punishment of corporations that act so cavalierly with respect to our environment.
Not all damage can be contained or repaired. Once an oil-feathered pelican dies, it stays dead.
We also must take other action, including: supporting a gas tax, the revenue from which will help fund research into and development of alternative, clean forms of energy; reducing our driving, hopping on bicycles instead of into the front seats of our cars to run those errands; and trading in our monster SUVs for energy-efficient vehicles. Both Penny and I enjoy our hybrid cars, especially the savings on gas and the satisfaction of knowing we're doing a small part to care for creation.
And we must pressure our elected officials, urging them to shift funds from road and highway repair, improvement, and expansion to the laying of light rails for trains (Kansas City, I'm told, is doing just this; St. Louis already has.); expanding bus service, including to outlying areas, and building more bike lanes and trails.
No, the president didn't say it in his 18-minute address to the nation last night, but he should have said it:
We all have oil on our hands, and it's time we wash it off by acting in new, bold ,and even sacrificial ways for the preservation of God's gift of creation.
We all have oil on our hands.
All of us who drive vehicles, fly on airplanes, use petroleum-based produces are responsible for the catastrophic oil leak and spread in the Gulf of Mexico, and the consequent environmental and economic damage, because we're all dependent on seemingly unlimited and relatively cheap oil.
Because we're responsible for the devastation of the gulf, if only indirectly, we're also responsible for the prevention of future disasters. We must become more faithful in our stewardship of creation and insist upon greater supervision of and, where warranted, punishment of corporations that act so cavalierly with respect to our environment.
Not all damage can be contained or repaired. Once an oil-feathered pelican dies, it stays dead.
We also must take other action, including: supporting a gas tax, the revenue from which will help fund research into and development of alternative, clean forms of energy; reducing our driving, hopping on bicycles instead of into the front seats of our cars to run those errands; and trading in our monster SUVs for energy-efficient vehicles. Both Penny and I enjoy our hybrid cars, especially the savings on gas and the satisfaction of knowing we're doing a small part to care for creation.
And we must pressure our elected officials, urging them to shift funds from road and highway repair, improvement, and expansion to the laying of light rails for trains (Kansas City, I'm told, is doing just this; St. Louis already has.); expanding bus service, including to outlying areas, and building more bike lanes and trails.
No, the president didn't say it in his 18-minute address to the nation last night, but he should have said it:
We all have oil on our hands, and it's time we wash it off by acting in new, bold ,and even sacrificial ways for the preservation of God's gift of creation.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
What if?
Reading Matthew 14.13-21 during Morning Prayer today, I wondered:
What if the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurates is a radically new consciousness and experience?
Jesus' life and ministry reveal this kingdom, which is unlike any of the world's kingdoms.
Today, in the feeding of the multitude, he shows that this new consciousness and experience are not about scarcity, but about plenitude. Jesus takes virtually nothing--just a small bit of food--and turns it into a feast, with ample leftovers.
This feeding miracle reveals a larger and deeper reality, one that is hitherto hidden and which is discovered only by those who live that life that Jesus lives as God's son.
We enter this new kingdom consciousness and experience only by faith; and in doing so, we find what's always been there: the fullness of life, God's gift to us.
By faith alone, what if becomes what is.
What if the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurates is a radically new consciousness and experience?
Jesus' life and ministry reveal this kingdom, which is unlike any of the world's kingdoms.
Today, in the feeding of the multitude, he shows that this new consciousness and experience are not about scarcity, but about plenitude. Jesus takes virtually nothing--just a small bit of food--and turns it into a feast, with ample leftovers.
This feeding miracle reveals a larger and deeper reality, one that is hitherto hidden and which is discovered only by those who live that life that Jesus lives as God's son.
We enter this new kingdom consciousness and experience only by faith; and in doing so, we find what's always been there: the fullness of life, God's gift to us.
By faith alone, what if becomes what is.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
A different Memorial Day
At church today, we prayed for those lost in war, this being Memorial Day weekend.
And the Sunday New York Times reports that 1,000 young American men and women have been killed in the war in Afghanistan thus far. Tens of thousands of civilians have also died in that war.
Meanwhile, we're still at war in Iraq.
Despite the administration's setting dates for withdrawals from both wars, I fear that we're locked in endless wars, with more to follow, perhaps the next one being on the Korean Peninsula.
God must surely get weary of my our prayers for those lost in war, whose number rises every year.
And God must surely wonder why we humans disobey his law of love and fail to outlaw war and violence and work together to eliminate the conditions that lead to war; namely, injustice, poverty, oppression.
It's good that we pray for the war dead, hold memorial events to them, decorate their graves.
Best of all, however, would be national and international resolve to say: No more war ever. No more war dead. Ever. And to mean it and act upon it.
Now that would be a fitting memorial to the dead.
And the Sunday New York Times reports that 1,000 young American men and women have been killed in the war in Afghanistan thus far. Tens of thousands of civilians have also died in that war.
Meanwhile, we're still at war in Iraq.
Despite the administration's setting dates for withdrawals from both wars, I fear that we're locked in endless wars, with more to follow, perhaps the next one being on the Korean Peninsula.
God must surely get weary of my our prayers for those lost in war, whose number rises every year.
And God must surely wonder why we humans disobey his law of love and fail to outlaw war and violence and work together to eliminate the conditions that lead to war; namely, injustice, poverty, oppression.
It's good that we pray for the war dead, hold memorial events to them, decorate their graves.
Best of all, however, would be national and international resolve to say: No more war ever. No more war dead. Ever. And to mean it and act upon it.
Now that would be a fitting memorial to the dead.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
That new thing
It's easy to become discouraged about the daunting challenges we face as the church: scarce resources for ministry, conflict among members, lack of direction sometimes, the obsession with survival.
And yet, I find hope in a fresh movement of God the Holy Spirit, who is renewing the church, Christ's body at work in service to the world.
That movement is called Emergent Christianity, which was the subject of a recent clergy continuing education conference in the Diocese of West Missouri.
Phyllis Tickle, a nationally known writer and speaker, described Emergent Christianity, which has arisen in response to rapid changes in the world and cultures.
In response to dizzying and disorienting change, many people are returning to the ancient traditions and worship of the church. They're deep connections with God, which enable them to live with faith, hope, joy, and purpose in the present.
Emergent Christianity is one of the works of Holy Spirit, who is God at work in the church and the world today.
I want to learn more about Emergent Christianity and how it might inform Christ Church and our proclamation of the Good News of God's love in Christ to young people. Many 18 to 25 year-olds are seeking the Divine, looking for community, and longing for lives of significance.
This summer, I plan to look carefully at Emergent Christianity.
Penny and I will again spend time at the Iona Community, which is located on an island off the west coast of Scotland.
Even before that first sociologist of religion coined the term Emergent Christianity, Iona was such a community.
It was started during the 1930s by Church of Scotland minister and WWI war hero George MacLeod.
MacLeod, who trained in law at Oxford University, had had a profound conversion experience to Christ during WWI. As a renewed Christian (he had been baptised an Anglican), he was deeply influenced by the ancient traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy.
After and war, he went to theological college and then served traditional Presbyterian congregations in Scotland for a time.
He later went to Iona and, with other ministers and lay people, began to repair the ancient Benedictine abbey. Slowly, they created a new and dynamic Christian community there.
MacLeod was controversial in his day because of his radical vision of the church and stands on social and political issues. During WW II, for instance, he was an ardent pacifist, which brought the wrath of his countrymen.
George MacLeod is now with the saints in heaven.
And here on earth, the Iona Community is still thriving. With communities in Glasgow and elsewhere, Iona is expressing the life of the Spirit in stirring worship, including beautiful music, prayer and study, loving fellowship, youth work, and the vigorous pursuit of social justice locally and globally.
The Spirit is alive in the church, which gives me hope. More and more people are coming to the Lord, finding new life in him, and sharing his life and love in ministry and mission.
Thanks be to God for those fresh expressions of God among us, including Emergent Christianity.
And yet, I find hope in a fresh movement of God the Holy Spirit, who is renewing the church, Christ's body at work in service to the world.
That movement is called Emergent Christianity, which was the subject of a recent clergy continuing education conference in the Diocese of West Missouri.
Phyllis Tickle, a nationally known writer and speaker, described Emergent Christianity, which has arisen in response to rapid changes in the world and cultures.
In response to dizzying and disorienting change, many people are returning to the ancient traditions and worship of the church. They're deep connections with God, which enable them to live with faith, hope, joy, and purpose in the present.
Emergent Christianity is one of the works of Holy Spirit, who is God at work in the church and the world today.
I want to learn more about Emergent Christianity and how it might inform Christ Church and our proclamation of the Good News of God's love in Christ to young people. Many 18 to 25 year-olds are seeking the Divine, looking for community, and longing for lives of significance.
This summer, I plan to look carefully at Emergent Christianity.
Penny and I will again spend time at the Iona Community, which is located on an island off the west coast of Scotland.
Even before that first sociologist of religion coined the term Emergent Christianity, Iona was such a community.
It was started during the 1930s by Church of Scotland minister and WWI war hero George MacLeod.
MacLeod, who trained in law at Oxford University, had had a profound conversion experience to Christ during WWI. As a renewed Christian (he had been baptised an Anglican), he was deeply influenced by the ancient traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy.
After and war, he went to theological college and then served traditional Presbyterian congregations in Scotland for a time.
He later went to Iona and, with other ministers and lay people, began to repair the ancient Benedictine abbey. Slowly, they created a new and dynamic Christian community there.
MacLeod was controversial in his day because of his radical vision of the church and stands on social and political issues. During WW II, for instance, he was an ardent pacifist, which brought the wrath of his countrymen.
George MacLeod is now with the saints in heaven.
And here on earth, the Iona Community is still thriving. With communities in Glasgow and elsewhere, Iona is expressing the life of the Spirit in stirring worship, including beautiful music, prayer and study, loving fellowship, youth work, and the vigorous pursuit of social justice locally and globally.
The Spirit is alive in the church, which gives me hope. More and more people are coming to the Lord, finding new life in him, and sharing his life and love in ministry and mission.
Thanks be to God for those fresh expressions of God among us, including Emergent Christianity.
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