Is.11:1-10 First cut.

 

1) Sometimes, even when a tree seems dead, a new shoot can spring from what seems to be a lifeless, useless stump. This is not resurrection, but it is close. Of course, why would the writer pick such an image if the monarchy were strong? It could be a branch out fo the trunk, as the same word, gaza

The Davidic emphasis explains the concern for Davidic background in the gospel listings of Mt. and Lk.

One could also look to fit this more directly into an Advent theme that matches the meaning assigned to candle 2.

One could also speak of Advent 1 and 2 as where this is fulfilled by Christ and where we yet wait for its completion.

 

 2) We use the gifts of the spirit here in baptism. Realizing its source, how does this affect your reading of baptism? Notice that the wisdom and understanding trun back the star tof the book's accusations.

 

3) Some folks differ, but I see this text as envisioning an end to violence in the human and natural world, maybe even the threat of violence, as the predators lie with the former prey.

 

 4) Again look at the social dimension of governance and it direction here. Notice the clothing metaphor in v. 5.

 5)The Peaceable Kingdom series is worth a look at how the animals change over Hicks Quaker painter's lifetime.Notice that some of this is repeated and amplified in the new creation of Is. 65:17-25. This is a good example of an interweaving of material throughout the book.

 

6)Would v. 9 mean some sort of communication with God and the natural world? Everything gets to share in Israel's knowledge of God. Fretheim in God and Creation (265) looks toward a day when nature will only praise.Think of Julian of Norwich all will be well and all will be well. We just read this verse at Is. 65:25. It is also at Hab.2:14.

7) How I yearn for signs of peace with the Middle East and now Korea baring claws again. We look at wildlife drama but don;t focus on the red in tooth and claw portions all of the time. In the face of the new Know Nothing Tea Party, how I yearn for leaders liek that of Is. 11:1-5.

Is.11:1-10 First cut.

 

1) Sometimes, even when a tree seems dead, a new shoot can spring from what seems to be a lifeless, useless stump. This is not resurrection, but it is close. Of course, why would the writer pick such an image if the monarchy were strong? It could be a branch out fo the trunk, as the same word, gaza

The Davidic emphasis explains the concern for Davidic background in the gospel listings of Mt. and Lk.

One could also look to fit this more directly into an Advent theme that matches the meaning assigned to candle 2.

One could also speak of Advent 1 and 2 as where this is fulfilled by Christ and where we yet wait for its completion.

 

 2) We use the gifts of the spirit here in baptism. Realizing its source, how does this affect your reading of baptism? Notice that the wisdom and understanding trun back the star tof the book's accusations.

 

3) Some folks differ, but I see this text as envisioning an end to violence in the human and natural world, maybe even the threat of violence, as the predators lie with the former prey.

 

 4) Again look at the social dimension of governance and it direction here. Notice the clothing metaphor in v. 5.

 5)The Peaceable Kingdom series is worth a look at how the animals change over Hicks Quaker painter's lifetime.Notice that some of this is repeated and amplified in the new creation of Is. 65:17-25. This is a good example of an interweaving of material throughout the book.

 

6)Would v. 9 mean some sort of communication with God and the natural world? Everything gets to share in Israel's knowledge of God. Fretheim in God and Creation (265) looks toward a day when nature will only praise.Think of Julian of Norwich all will be well and all will be well. We just read this verse at Is. 65:25. It is also at Hab.2:14.

7) How I yearn for signs of peace with the Middle East and now Korea baring claws again. We look at wildlife drama but don;t focus on the red in tooth and claw portions all of the time. In the face of the new Know Nothing Tea Party, how I yearn for leaders liek that of Is. 11:1-5.

I am sick of war. I am sick of hearing about war and seeing its dreadful effects. Benjamin Franklin said  we've never had a good war or a bad peace. I grabbed coffee this week at MDL on the south side of the  square and about lost it when I saw Rep. Pence's picture on the front page praising our alleged progress in Afghanistan when the very same day it seems that the government there has been negotiating with an impostor alleging connection to the Taliban. I am sick and tired of giving gold-plated weapon systems to the Pentagon but acting like that is not a part of government spending. Isaiah is working off the same page as Micah 4, and Joel flips the image (3:10). Helen Keller said that she wanted the understanding that leads to peace more than the peace that passes understanding. the Internet cites Jimi Hendrix but it was Gladstone who said the world would find peace when the power of love would replace the love of power. I love the sentiment, but the practical, realistic side of me asks what do we do in the interim? I'd love to see us put as much energy into a Peace College as we do the War College. I'd love us to put the energy in rebuilding some of our industrial base with the same attention we give to making new generations of sophisticated killing hardware.

 

I always say that shalom is a greeting but in Hebrew includes peace, health, prosperity, well-being, wholeness. Often, we translate peace into a sense of inner peace. I'll gladly settle for the basic meaning of peace as war being shut down. Ps. 122 offers a wonderful blessing on all facets of the life of Jerusalem, all playing on different strands of meaning of shalom. the psalmist is much more spiritually advanced than I. where I see frustration, the psalmists sees room for a blessing. It's listed as a psalm of ascent, it may have been read or recited for all the pilgrims on their way up the Temple mount. Maybe even one stair at a time, the Pilgrims would stop and recite a prayer.  Prayer transforms  a thirst for peace, even frustration for  peace, into a blessing that touches all. In a time when the threat of terror has us being treated like cattle for inspection at airports, it is a great prayer for our own security and well-being.
 

 

God's advent of peace is a new, different transformed future. Advent marks a new church year. Advent is about us living into god's way and time. the future is noticing the trends of past and present and charting a path. History has been called one damned thing after another. God is not locked into our past; God is not locked in trend lines. God's Advent, God's movement toward us is a unpredictable sea change. Sometimes I think that God's way is hurtling toward us, and we are backpedaling as fast as we can to avoid contact with it. Advent is about us keeping alert to the contacts made between God's looming advent and our future. One day the world will resemble a Communion service. People will be able to share with each other,Yes, they we will share the necessities of life: food and drink,but they will share the deeper necessities of of their thoughts and feelings. Instead of leaders crawling over themselves to attain martial glory, they will sit up front, to be able to serve and then be served last.One day we will have no new wars to study at West Point, no flags folded for the grieving family. Life will be Eucharistic, an endless thanksgiving, a thanksgiving for the blessings of peace.

Sunday Nov.28 Isaiah is featured in Advent Sundays this cycle of the lectionary (the 3 year cycle of church readings).the readings are Is. 2:1-5, 11:1-10, 35:1-10, 7:10-16. How I crave the vision of peace in the first reading. Where in your life should swords be turned into plowshares? We know 11 from Handel as much as Scripture itself.We use v. 2 for baptism. Why? Notice the emphasis on justice. Ch. 35 uses natural restoration as an image then as befits the move toward Christmas. Where do you need to get more strength (v.3)? Look at a birth in the royal family that Christians read as a far-off promise that points to Jesus, that a child will be born to a young woman (virgin in Greek translation). Reflect on a child being the womb of hope.

 

Monday-Recently we spoke in church about not reading enough end times material from the the hopeful side. Let's use  these:Zeph.3:14-20, including these verses 17) "God will take great delight in you/he will quiet you in his love/he will rejoice over you with singing."Amos 9:11-15 with (13) "new wine will flow from the mountains and flow from all the hills." Joel 3:17-19 with (18) "the hills will flow with milk/all the ravines will run with water/a fountain will flow out of the Lord's house/to water a valley of acacias."

 

Tuesday Not long ago, I was asked about the animals at the manger of Jesus. The gospel answer is that we have no idea, as none are mentioned in Luke or Matthew. The church's imagination is a Biblically formed one, though. Following a rabbinic principle of looking for the same word in different places, an ancient  student found Is.1:3 mentioning the manger, with an ox and donkey.

 

Wednesday-We can make better endings, as we move through phases in our lives. Forgiveness is important for endings. We can admit regrets to ourselves and others. When we can, it is a good spiritual practice to try to mend fences. Some folks are unwilling to do that, but at least you tried. We should look back and take note of the good things done, not just harp on the failures. Do you believe people who say that if they had their whole lives to do over again, they would do them exactly the same way? Good endings, as the church year closes, can open the door to a better, brighter future.

 

Thursday-The administration talked of hitting the reset button in our relations with different countries. I don't know if we can do the same, but that is part of the promise of a new year, no? We say we learn from mistakes, but we often repeat patterns more than change them. We enter a new situation and try to recreate the old one. I ran across a great piece of advice"don;t let the urgent crowd out the important."

 

Friday-Ann Weems writes liturgical poems from "Christmas spirit"Christmas spirit is that hope/ which tenaciously clings to the hearts of the faithful/ and announces in the face of any Herods of the world can produce/ and all the inn doors slammed in our faces/ and all the dark nights of our souls/ that with God all things are possible/ that even now unto us a child is born.

 

Saturday-Our daughters gave me a birthday gift certificate, and I bought O'Donohue's Beauty book. No it's not on grooming or fashion, but the  source of wonder in our lives. Here he is on the heart (219) "through the heart beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us....we sometimes let the prism to become dull and darkened....Prayer of course us as the supreme way we lift our limited selves toward the light, and ask it to shine into us."

 
I don't want to sound as if I am laying another burden on you. on top of everything else, now I'm supposed to be grateful? Like so many virtues, we have gratitude already in us, but we ignore it so much that we hide its light under a bushel. In its way, Thanksgiving is the secular world giving the gospel to the church. I continue to be so impressed that the sessions of the churches continue to offer a thanksgiving service year after year.

Patrick Miller speaks of worship as creating a circle of thanksgiving. This weekend many people will say grace around a table and may even mention something or someone for whom they are grateful. That too is a circle of thanksgiving, a circle of worship.

 

Robert MacAfee Brown was asked to give sermons in strange places during his long career. He said that in preparing liturgies he though that Now Thank We was the best all purpose hymn every written, that is was good for almost every occasion. The Christian faith does emphasize this virtue. indeed, religious people do score higher on measures of gratitude than others.

 

Dt. pushes us to ask if we really should get what we deserve. Just because we worked hard, does that mean that we automatically deserve a masterpiece? When we speak of what we deserve we often mean in comparison to others whom we regard as inferior. Think of Salieri in Amadeus who feels that his virtue deserves musical genius. Hard work alone does not mean we deserve something does it? Do we really only deserve praise and good raining down on us? This passage reminds us that we are born into  all sorts of things we need, as a present from birth. We inherit the legacy of so many people laboring so many years. For thousands of years, the gift of Scripture enables us to live into that passage, with those people as our people.

 

In John, Jesus did indeed feed hungry people, but that points to the larger spiritual issue of his life itself as manna from heaven. Jesus speaks of the gift himself to us as a new bread from heaven. We inherit the spiritual legacy of Christ through the church. Jesus feeds our deepest hungers. It is good to take a step back and notice that offered spiritual abundance.

 

Gratitude is a virtue honored by many faith traditions. For all of his bitter crabbed tendencies, Calvin had a generous view of God, or may be better put an attitude of gratitude toward god. His great American follower Jonathan Edwards, known for the fear of the revival sermon, Sinners  in the Hands of an Angry God,  noted grateful affections as a sing of religious deepening.In some ways the opposite of these Reformed Christians, Wesley saw gratitude for the benevolence of god as critical to the Christina life. A rabbi said that we were made to enjoy life, but we should always pray a blessing for each enjoyment of it. E.A. Robinson wrote of two types of gratitude:for what we take, and a deeper, higher gratitude for what we are able to give. 

 

On Saturday, I went to a good program on grief during the holidays at CTS. We talked of oft-repeated stories heard during the holidays. Even if they are annoying year after year, we find we miss them when their teller is no longer with us. We continue to make the corn pudding that only grandpa liked as a gift of memory. I am grateful for the gift of memory. Religious people tend to prize gatherings more highly than those with a created belief system or none at all, I suppose. I hope and pray that we can not only appreciate this holiday but to make some good memories again this year.

I flicked on the Today show on a dark foggy  Tuesday and found out that Prince William is engaged. then one of the networks ran a prime time special on the blessed event. Be still my heart. An early 20th century Pope started this day, Christ the King, to claim the church's place in the world when it saw its secular power slipping away and being challenged on so many fronts, including non-Catholic Christians movements such as our own.The celebration or acclamation of Christ the King is an act of hope and defiance. Against appearances to the contrary, the world is in the hands of God.

 

Colossians speaks of Christ as the head of the universe. The fullness of god dwelled in Jesus.It elevates Jesus of Nazareth to be lifted above all human attributes. This divine king was born not with Herod but in a manger. The one we call Christ the King was under the thumb of religious and secular power to plot his early death. This divine king received acclaim on Palm Sunday but instead of a royal ascension to the throne, he was mocked with the ersatz royal trappings of robe and scepter, most viciously, a crown not of gold but of thorns. I don't think Pilate ever grasps what Jesus is saying, but the bandit, the terrorist on the cross does.Pilate condemns an innocent man to death, but the bandit proclaims his innocence on the hill of the skull. The kingdom's origin not of this world as its origin with the logos of God, but it is in this world. Jesus speaks of his regime, no force, no coercion, no violence. The thief at the cross knew a truth that eluded the religious leaders and Pilate and asks to enter into his kingdom, obviously outside the world.

 

Some of us resist the king phrase as it seems that God works in a more democratic, bottom up way.God works to empower more than control. As Jesus says, I no longer call you disciples (students) but friends. Kings have subjects, but Jesus has co-workers. God inspires more than directs Political life is a high calling; it may have conflict, but it needn't descend to lies, bumper sticker thoughts,propaganda,  and general vulgarity of late Heartbreak of church leadership. We import model form other areas and apply them to the church. Should we? I recall a church that decided that they wanted a dictator as the pastor. They found one. The heartbreak came in they realized that they did not want a dictator, but it was never made clear to the pastor. then he was kicked out for doing what he thought they agreed to.

 

Christ the King Sunday compels us to look at issues of power and control within the lesser powers of our lives here. From what we see of Jesus, he preferred not to control but to love, to help people discover power within themselves. He wanted to  empower others to live better lives. The activity of the Incarnation was about relinquishing power. Jesus's power was not of egotism or selfishness but of selflessness. God works through people. Years ago, people compared Ike  less favorably than the Machiavellian power games of FDR. Fred Greenstein wrote that Ike was not about demonstrating command; he possessed it. He termed the administration a hidden hand presidency, where the work was behind the scenes. Instead of flashy miracles God seems  to work behind the scenes.

 

Prayer connects us to power maybe even sharing with the angels, but it is no flight from work, but engages us to work with God toward

reconciliation. When things seem to fall apart, we recall all things hold together in Christ.To speak of Christ as the head could mean the source or ruling principle of God's way, God's kingdom, God's regime. the  Christ of Colossians looks toward restoration of all things.

.  

Is.2:1-5 First Sunday in Advent

 

OK, one could apply new year hopes to this passage. Also, after Christ the King, God is not referred to as king in the OT passage.

 

1) A fun intertextual exercise is to compare and contrast this to Micah 4. See also Psalm 46

2) The mountain probably means the temple Mt, Zion. see Ps. 46,48,122, for instance, among a number of others. This does again push us to consider church/state relations. In this case, are we being propelled into a notion that agreement on a faith is a requirement for peaceful resolutions of conflicts?

3) God sounds like the UN or the World Court here.

4) I crave this vision. Where did it appear with Christ, and where do we wait for it still? (Note Advent waiting, but days to come is the better reader, an indefinite future, rather than the NIVs annoying insistence on the last days to push a particular reading) I like learn war better than train, but that is a rhetorical preference. I'm not sure about the actual translation, at this point.. Instruction is better than law in v. 3.

5) Please pay some attention to Moltmann's distinction between advent and future in the Coming of God. Christopher Morse makes use of it in an excellent new book (I am only partway through it) The Difference Heaven makes.

6) Where does worship enact this vision?

7)In personal terms what aspects of personal life need to be transformed into peaceful implements, such as one's tongue, fist, attitude? (see Serendipity Bible on these)
8) In political terms, when have you seen swords into plowshares? Look to some of Sen. Lugar's initiatives

Is.2:1-5 First Sunday in Advent

 

OK, one could apply new year hopes to this passage. Also, after Christ the King, God is not referred to as king in the OT passage.

 

1) A fun intertextual exercise is to compare and contrast this to Micah 4. See also Psalm 46

2) The mountain probably means the temple Mt, Zion. see Ps. 46,48,122, for instance, among a number of others. This does again push us to consider church/state relations. In this case, are we being propelled into a notion that agreement on a faith is a requirement for peaceful resolutions of conflicts?

3) God sounds like the UN or the World Court here.

4) I crave this vision. Where did it appear with Christ, and where do we wait for it still? (Note Advent waiting, but days to come is the better reader, an indefinite future, rather than the NIVs annoying insistence on the last days to push a particular reading) I like learn war better than train, but that is a rhetorical preference. I'm not sure about the actual translation, at this point.. Instruction is better than law in v. 3.

5) Please pay some attention to Moltmann's distinction between advent and future in the Coming of God. Christopher Morse makes use of it in an excellent new book (I am only partway through it) The Difference Heaven makes.

6) Where does worship enact this vision?

7)In personal terms what aspects of personal life need to be transformed into peaceful implements, such as one's tongue, fist, attitude? (see Serendipity Bible on these)
8) In political terms, when have you seen swords into plowshares? Look to some of Sen. Lugar's initiatives

Second cut

Jer. 23:1-6-Again we may have done this previously, so maybe I will fight laziness and look up previous posts. Anyway, here is the effort for Christ the King Sunday. right away, this puts us in a difficult place, as many churches in the reformed tradition don't recognize Christ the King Sunday.

 

Note: This could be a good time to discuss power as control or empowering others, when to relinquish power and when to use it ruthlessly, when to cede power- what is its source- should the business model of power be used in church? what sort of leadership qualities and actions should the church have? what should be the church's involvement in politics? should it receive state sanctions? when can one speak truth to power? when is power as ocntrol weak in the end? is the pen mightier than the sword? how about the gospel?

How are the little guys faring in 2010?:What are examples of governmental officials living too well or imperiously?

 

1)This concludes a series of thoughts on kingship in Jeremiah. Apparently the shepherd/king connection was common in the ancient Near East. Jeremiah inveighs against the kingship as it did not serve and protect, did not help the hurt. Again, the more radical Tea Party types would declare this wrong, but that is a discussion for the role of government.

2) NIB's Miller notes the heavy relational language god uses (744) with the pronoun, my.

3) the big turn is God moving in to do what the shepherds failed to do. That will get expanded in apocalyptic imagery over the years.

4) We look forward to a time where fear and dismay will be gone. That too gets picked up in apocalyptic material.

5) We then move into messianic territory with the new Davidic ruler to arise.

6) the basic program is clear(righteousness right relation) and equity, justice and safety. see royal psalms such as 72,82.

7) The king's name has to be a play on Zedekiah.

8) the last word is not trouble but hope for  a better world.

9) Brown in his excellent Ethos of the Cosmos notices that organic language is applied to the monarchy, including here where David (v.5) is a righteous sprout, semah tzaddik.

10) Breuggemann in TOT 615-17 sees Jeremiah as relentless against the monarchy, or at least a failed one of "royal failure and public demise."..power cannot survive unless administered justly. He argues that the public failure was kept alive in liturgy (616).

 

 

 

Lk.21:5-19, Is. 65:17-25 November 14, 2010

Here as the church year closes, we usually move to readings of the close of this age and the opening of a new one. Luke gives a prediction of the destruction of the temple. It happened about forty years after the death of Jesus in 70, but some time before Luke's gospel may have been committed to writing. Already in the time of Luke, people were growing concerned about a seeming delay in the return of Christ. Notice how Luke arranges the material. He has the typical apocalyptic natural disorder, but after that, he moves to foreshadowing about the struggles of the disciples that we will soon see in his second volume, the book of Acts in normal history and time. Luke seems to understand that the new age is inaugurated in Jesus Christ, but we will live with feet in both ages.

Luke warns to have his readers alert. One warning  made contemporary for them and us is being led astray could be false messiahs? We may not see false messiahs but we certainly live in a period of false claims about the end times. Another striking thing about Luke is his push for virtues, resources,  needed for times of religious pressure. Personal trials and tribulations will come before the cosmic trials of the end. Maybe that is another way of reading the end times, of linking our personal trials with the great drama of death and rebirth that is off in a distant future. Before the end, they will meet their end. Before the end, we will most likely reach our own, yes even the young here now who may well live to the age that Isaiah saw as a dream, not an expectation that may well be actual.This does not envision a rapture where we are lifted away from troubles. Instead, the troubles we face could well be a part of the end times experience. We require God-given resources to even cope with the troubles everyone faces, including Christians. In a way think of apocalyptic material as graduation exercises that signal the end of one phase of life and the commencement of another. 

Compared to Luke, we get a much brighter image in Isaiah. It is one of transformation, an almost heavenly account before people believed in an afterlife.It is a vision of all sorts of abundance and fertility,long life, of security and peace, a new Eden, but better. Not only will the troubles of human life be lessened but even the threat of the serpent would be removed. In God's hands, the end is not the conclusion. Indeed the end is a new beginning. what looks to be finality from our point of view is a chapter in the divine time frame.  In terms of medical science we are nearing what must have seemed to be a far off dream to the prophet. Sadly we are still far away from a sense of fairness and security.So often, the end times are pictured only with the disturbances and destruction, but it is more in God's nature to embrace than to cast off (see this week's blog notes on TOT) In a way it may be the difference between a nightmare and waking. Indeed apocalyptic material has a companion less in social life than in our own natural course of life. All of us have apocalyptic moments of the death of the old and the birth of the new, in love, in career, in family. All of us are moving toward the fateful day when we are now more in this zone of being, when we die. That won;t be the conclusion either, as then we move into god's time and place.

1) We have worked with these texts before. I don;t know if the blog has search features, or if I can recover older material. At any rate, I'll try to present some new thoughts and citations. At this point,I don;t have access to the Brevard Childs commentary on Isaiah but would recommend a look. I also would commend the work of Moltmann in the Coming of God for an emphasis on transformation and not annihilation. I continue to insist that the older churches have remained silent on apocalyptic texts, so we have left the field to nuttier interpretations as undergirding the thought forms of congregations. I do not think that Darby's 1829 work determines interpretation.

2) In God and creation Fretheim seeds redemption and creation as linked. In Isaiah indeed the new creation is the working out of redemption. At 193 he cites Bruckner with approval that all of creation is in need of redemption. He further argues that the dispirited exilic/post-exilic group needed to hear a new fresh word on creation to stand behind the promises of renewal.

3) At 194 he underscores his contention that  human salvation will be fully realized only when the natural order has been healed.

4)Brueggemann in TOT(482) notes the hope for abundant fertility. ""Human hope that awaits God's generosity and extravagance...flies in the face of every theology of scarcity." At 549, he calls it a poem, his word for surprise. "god will overcome all that is amiss."  All will come under the life-giving aegis of God...even the most deep distortions m9serpent??) He quotes Julian "all will be well and all will be well." at 551-'the world will begin again in blessedness...it is in God's character not to abandon but to embrace." He asserts that chaos follows God's abandonment.

5) Note that violence, in all forms, even perhaps the threat of violence disappears in this section, that replays Is. 11.

6) Note joy and delight that replays Ps. 104 and Wisdom in Prov. 8

7)the former things will not be remembered...by whom, God?

8) on prayer-before they call I will answer-Seitz in NIB sees this as possibly a reversal of the fall hiding in Gen.3, the lack of labor pain may refer to Gen. 3:16

9) Seitz sees this section as the vindication of the servant (544).

 

Is. 12

1) Tucker NIB 147 sees this as a deliberate liturgical conclusion to chs. 1-11.

2 he also notes that we have calls to both individual and corporate thanksgiving.

3)We have allusions/echoes of the psalter and the song of Moses of Ex. 15. See alos Jdg. 5:11, Zech. 2:10

4) G. Ernest Wright would like this praise of the 'god who acts."

5)At 148 Tucker sees this as imagining a world with Zion at the center and God's acts radiate and ramify through the whole world.

6) Talk about how you see god's anger. when and how does anger turn to comfort? How would that fit with the historical events of israel?

7) What would be a more contemporary way of stating v. 3?

8)What do you see god has done lately?

9) What specific acts of thanksgiving would it be helpful to note as a spiritual exercise. how about for the community and Nation?

10) Gratitude has enjoyed social scientific experiments of late. See the work of Emmons, for instance.

11) consider the word joy and describe it.

The Women's Thank Offering gives us a head start on our own thanksgiving spiritual exercises. It started as a small gesture that has now lasted well over a century to live out the words of Mt. 25 to make this world more livable, more human.

First, most of us think in terms of losses or liabilities when we look at life. We work with half of a balance sheet. We look at the minus end, but don;t tote up the credit side of the ledger nearly enough. An alternative way is to pay attention to our assets. It is good to list them out. What are your personal assets? What virtues do you have, what physical, emotional, spiritual assets are at your disposal? Emerson said that what lies behind and what lies ahead cannot compare to what lies within us." If we pay more attention to what encourages and heartens us, we tend to make better decisions. When we let go of our alarms and instead replace them with triggers for releasing for engaging our assets, we tamp down feelings of anger and anxiety that inhibit us from working well, alone or together. (Cramer, Changing the Way You See Yourself). G.K. Chesterton said that "all tings look better when they look like gifts."

We do well to give thanks for virtues that come to us as gifts more than through hard won practice. We do not do everything on our own, but we are caught up in a world on which we depend. When Barbara and I did an asset exercise in Columbus some time ago, the idea for the talent sharing came through that exercise, a joyous expression of gratitude for gifts we have to share and gifts we would like to share.

Robert Emmons is making a career in examining gratitude as a virtue in our day to day lives. He writes that " ingratitude leads ...to a confining, restrictive, shrinking sense of self" (2007:10). The practice of gratitude, such as keeping a gratitude journal, is correlated with all sorts of good and healthy attitudes and habits. He writes of embodied gratitude of expressing it in ways beyond words. surely the thank Offering is such a gesture. Private gifts are rendered public actions; personal priorities become public property. It does not have to be a large-scale effort. Asset thinking emphasizes things that are doable with the resources available to us. As I am getting older, my concern for the environment grows, so I am planting trees in the names of our daughters in places that need them. with the increasing amount of CO(2) we are pouring into the air, that would be everywhere. I have a friend who gets tree seedlings from the nearby state park and distributes them for free. It embodies our gratitude for water by providing for clean, safe water in villages in Africa. For creative people who can make quilts and clothes, it provides sewing machines for people to clothe families but even start small businesses. For those of us with dentists, it provides dental care to children. for those who farm, we provide a tractor to Ghana. For those who go to CVS we provide money for medicines. For those of us with markets, we are providing a mill to grind corn.

  

One intriguing gratitude study was an assignment to write a nice letter of about 300 words that details how important someone has been in your life. Make an appointment to see them if you think you could read it to them or send it if you think you cant'/ I would take that experiment and put it in the explicitly spiritual realm of writing a nice letter to god of 300 words or so of gratitude. Consider a prayer list of thanksgiving for the upcoming week? Know that the contributions to the thank Offering is an enactd prayer, one that tells god of our best hopes for each other.