Vermont Journal - the Crabapple Tree

July 23
I opened the door and the two us, our dog Annie at my feet, looked out onto the yard at the crack of dawn. The sun had not yet risen to burn off the morning mist. Still on the threshold, both of us stared at two wood peckers on the crabapple trunk, tapping to the heart of the wood. Annie and the birds were thinking food, but my fantasy was the wonderment of what fine-pearled treasure the wood might yield if we could peck to the heart of it, for which one might be willing to sell all?

July 25
Phoebes. Phoebes nest under the eaves of the doorway to our common room. This morning the nestlings flew. I watched a little phoebe drop from the branch of the crabapple tree. She went straight down about five feet like a stone. After several hops on the grass, she flew up into the tree again.
For several months while the phoebes hatch and grow we do not use the doorway where they nest. We only cross that threshold after the young birds have crossed their own threshold into a new airbourne way of life. As can be seen it is not a transition without a few drops and hops.
I have thought of those transitional times when I too have plummeted like a stone. I hop, even get hopping mad. But it is true that God is never elsewhere than right where we are. Jesus reminds us that not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Then he adds, "you are of more value than many sparrows." So after a few hops, I learn to open myself to the wind of the Spirit so I can be lifted up, and become airbourne, or shall we say, Spirit-borne.

Fishers of Men, and Terror

No sooner had we heard of the terrorist strike on Bombay, than Hezbollah terrorists kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with two days of bombing, the heaviest air strikes against Lebanon in twenty-four years. Hamas in Gaza kidnapped a third Israeli soldier leading to a forceful response there as well. The question is whether force is a deterrent for future acts of terror, or does it merely rachet up the violence? I suspect the latter. As to another sufficient response? Let me know your thoughts. The outcome, of course, is a heightening of chaos and instability, that I suppose is the point. Poet Susan Kiguli from Uganda, which is no stranger to violence, wrote this poem called "Fishers of Men."

The nets are out in the depths
Doing the job
The silver grey moon floats
On the surface of the waters.
Fishermen pull their nets
With big hearts waiting for fish!
Out come the meshes

Full of the moonlit harvest!
The fishermen flee
As the silver wonder
Turns into bullet riddled chests
And water logged eyes!

It is a terrible poem, in the meaning of terrifying and terror, and yet it describes the catch that is being pulled up in this sea of chaos. Jesus called Peter to be a fisher of people, but not in this way. We too are called to fish for people. It is a mark of the evil in the world and sinful domination of one over another that we pull up the dead instead of draw the living to life indeed.

Suffering and God

The headlines this week brought news that terrorists in a Bombay rail blast killed 190. As I thought of the victims and their families a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1942 came to mind. He said in a letter to his twin sister “that suffering and God are not a contradiction but rather a unity.” God suffers over Bombay. God is near to suffering and loss. “To find God in this way,” Bonhoeffer said, “gives peace and rest and a strong and courageous heart.”

Giving that makes a Difference

Leveraging a “foundational” difference in our country, surprisingly, most effectively takes place at the local church. By foundational I am not referring to foundations, but to a secure social and spiritual grounding that enables a community to have greater relatedness, tolerance, awareness, generosity, and hope, a better future. Several congressional representatives, Republican and Democrat, have admitted that government cannot do this. Especially today, the emphasis on divisive wedge issues and adversarialness do little for community. The media has been characterized as enthralled to the motto, “No fight, no news.” It won’t do to look there to leave a legacy of fundamental community. A new book by Chicago Marketing Executive David Goetz entitled Death by Suburb speaks eloquently of the pressures that families face and how hard it is for them to stand up to the juggernaut of social and commercial expectation. Families by themselves may be poorly suited to leverage a stronger society. Goetz next looks at how schools are also caught up in “our twenty-four-hour streaming advertising culture.”
"Today corporations hire agencies to sponsor field trips for elementary students – but not to visit Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium or kick over rocks for nymphs in the local stream. Kids ‘study retail’ at high-end sports stores. Students leave with a tote bag branded with the company logo. The school district gets cheap field trips. And no one gets hurt, right?"
Legacy gifts to schools may not contend well for a healthier world. What is left, then, is the local church. If you really want to leave a legacy for stronger community on a truly foundational level then the local church is where to turn.

Toni Morrison

I was re-reading Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. There Baby Suggs describes her "call" to ministry: "slave life had 'busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue,' she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart - which she had put to work at once.... she became an unchurched preacher.... She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.'" Later in the novel Baby Suggs grows blind to that grace, but for now it burns brightly. As a church we need to imagine the grace spoken of by this unchurched preacher. This grace enfolds a woman, oceanographer bishop to preside over our church. Paul said, "there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3: 28). This grace guides us to an open place where all find shelter, Christians of every sexual orientation - God rescues us all because God delights in us all (Psalm 18: 20). If only we can imagine such grace.

Praise Poem

Praise is my aspiration,
A high tide unebbing,
A salt sea lapping.
I laugh at my openness
Born of an openness That has no shore -
Being -
Stable, steady, oceanic.

A hopeful wind stirs the whitecaps
Of my moments
That turn sunlight to joyful flashes like some lighthouse
That saves a vessel passing by -
Praising,
Laughing,
Eye-opening,
Stable-being,
Hoping,
Saving -
A morning's ocean view.