Sunday June 16-Ps.51 I have not forgotten it is father’s day, as I asked for my present from our daughters long in advance. It is with some shame that I note that the psalm for today is a penitential one over sin. Lord knows that fathers are imperfect creatures, but this seems over the top to me. So, I will shift gears. Please consider forgiving your father for imperfections. Fathers, consider forgiving the disappointments of children. After all, we are all human beings, all imperfect, all in need of forgiveness.
Monday-I got to see an old friend at Yale. Inevitable, it seems we go back to common memories. It’s striking how much we forget, recall, and slightly alter over time.Who are some of your oldest friends? Who are some that you send the christmas letter to, but that you rarely see. Why is that? what permits friendship to continue over the years, and what are its primary obstacles? Have you been able to re-ignite a friendship that seemed lost? One of the better things I have done is to tell lost friends how much they meant to me voer the years of absence.
Tuesday- Our class at Yale was what I hoped. we used a variety of art forms to illustrate a religious idea. So often Christian devotional literature seems sappy to me, so I get more rleigious influence from a secular piece that moves me in a religious direction. What works of art o are meaningful to you? Are they overtly or more covertly religious for you? Do you have osme sort of spiriutal shrine or center in your home, or even your heart?
Wednesday-I saw a lot of art this week. One painting has stayed with me, the Veteran, by eakins. It was painted around 20 years after the civil War, and it is a portrait of a handsome, now middle aged man, with the scars of war on his face. His haunted eyes bespeak emotional scars. You look closer and see a medal of honor on his lapel. Compare it to Homer’s the Veteran In a New Field.
Thursday-Last week, exactly, I saw one of the oldest printed Bibles by Gutenberg and the frist book printed in English.It came off his printing press fairly early. I love the idea that a bible was among the early printed works. It was a revolution to put it in the hands of everyday people. What do you think that the new media will offer in the way of religious growth and change?
Friday-Absence works in strange ways. We miss someone terribly, or we easily forget about someone in the spate of introductions and new places to explore. With our unseen God how do we react to a visual absence? How do we respond when God seems distant in our dry prayers? How and when does God seem closer to you? When do we prefer god to seem absent?
Saturday-It was pouring one day during my stay in Yale, so lunch became an issue. Being a semi-glutton, I am rarely ever hungry, but no lunch meant real hunger pangs. How rarely do I hunger so for the presence of God. Maybe it’s OK, as I picture God always in the scene, always involved in the activity of creation, of life. Maybe it is not, as it shows the surface nature of my relationship with God, so i have to make analogies of human yearning and realize how insincere and weak my feelings toward God often are.
No comments:
Post a Comment