Sermon Notes Feb. 28

Feb 28 Isaiah 55

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

The issue of theodicy God and human suffering haunts most Christians. How do we work through the tension of a god of power and justice  and a god of love? in Lk-don;t lose the fig tree in the midst of the terrors Jesus sees both natural evil and human evil. He knows that they befall us.No they are not due us. They are not signs of a specific judgement. Put differently don't congratulate yourself that you think you deserve blessings and others s deserve curse. What follows is an illustration not of a punishing God, a God who uses the evils of nature and human cruelty to make points. The fig tree story is a patient God, one who doesn't give up on working with us. It is the stable confident faith that knows that the tree will produce just give it TLC and the great gift of time.this is wisdom offer of a banquet. It is a direct assault on our consumer, materialist society in v. 2

God is a giver of gifts.water image of celebration  God as Bernie Sanders-Do these verses refer to material provision or spiritual provision? The answer seems to be "yes."  Earlier in Isaiah (8:7; 12:15), the joy of Israel is said to be eating and drinking before the LORD--basking in the fullness of God. (Tucker) my thoughts are not your thoughts The bold exhortation embedded in verse one’s thrice-repeated imperative verb “come … come … come” is to choose well. . In other words, don’t take what has value and waste it on nothing. Don’t settle for what doesn’t feed; take only what is good.. Soon the food imagery recedes, and returning to the land is merged with returning to God (verses 6-7). Clear distinction between seeking God’s ways and failing to seek them is made in verses 8-9. Because God’s ways are so radically different from human ways, because God’s thoughts are not human thoughts, they won’t be found by any other means than through this Godward journey.Tull.With all of the romantic talk of finding the god within, of erasing distinction between the human and divine-this is of huge spiritual value for humility-god is god and we are not.

I have heard this ( I Cor. 10) chanted at far too many funeral homes and hospital rooms.Paul’s often misattributed words Why claim Christ as the spiritual Rock, the source of sustenance? The church is at no advantage over the Israelite ancestors. The same Spirit that sustained the people of God in the wilderness period is the Spirit that sustains the church. If some of the Israelite ancestors, who experienced God’s blessings, God’s deliverance, and God’s covenant, could be overcome in the wilderness by their unfaithfulness; it is also true that the Corinthian believers could rouse God’s jealousy with their participation in ceremonies at an idol’s temple (10:22). Furthermore, the “knowledgeable ones” could inadvertently lead their weaker brothers and sisters down the path of idolatry and destruction.(weeks) H too, will have consequences.Again far better to read this as trial or testing than temptation.The critical assumption is what does God give directly? What is a consequence of my decision? What is the consequence of social decisions as they have an effect on me? Can accidents be included in this? In the end, as we move toward Holy Week, we recall that God’s own suffered. God worked that evil toward good, made good out of a senseless act.God may well be a God of punishments, especially in having us face consequences of our actions. God is also a generous God of uncounted gifts with all the time in the world for us

devotional Pts for Week of Feb. 28

Sunday-Ps,63:1-8 is difficult for me to read as the writer is so much more of a spiritual adept than I. It seems to  me to be on the far horizon of faith. I can see it as an aspiration for my own spiritual life and a marker for har far I need to journey.

Monday-"Nature is the cathedral of God's glory," says John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.  is the "cathedral of God's glory" lifting our sights to beauty, hovering over humanity like divine arms to protect and embrace.(Ira Kent Groff)

Tuesday-Gen 15. We can imagine all of Abram's anxious thoughts. Despite assurance from God not to be afraid, not to worry, Abram is the former and doing the latter. In spite of the separation of 4,000 years, we aren't that far removed emotionally from Abram. Anxiety is always ready and willing to rule the roost, just like it was with our father in faith. Yet, in this lovely scene, God figuratively puts God's arm around Abram's shoulder and ushers him outside the security, but also the restricted view, of his tent. See all those stars in the sky. They aren't going anywhere, and neither am I. And Abram trusted that what God promised, God would do. And God replied to Abram, "That's what I'm talking about! Well done!" Bruce Eldevik

Wednesday-Psalm 27 This psalm is an interesting mixture of supreme confidence tinged with moments of uncertainty and fear. Perhaps this is why it has connected so well over the ages with scripture readers--because we see our lives mirrored in these verses. Verse one boldly proclaims that because of God we have nothing to fear. Verse five states that, when times of trouble come, God will be there for us. But soon after, anxiety creeps in, reflected in a string of pleading "do nots:" do not hide your face, turn me away, cast me off, forsake me, give me up. Things are so bad the psalmist even seems to question the permanence of parental love and protection, as if to say "I can't be sure of anything I have relied upon previously. You, God, are my only possible source of help or else I'm sunk."God Pause? Thursday-"When your practice falters or slips through the cracks of busyness, remember St. Benedict’s wise words: “always we begin again.” We come again and again to the practice and to ourselves with the heart and mind of a beginner, of meeting life in new ways freed of our expectations. And instead of belittling ourselves when we lose the rhythm of our commitment, we smile at ourselves, and commit again in that moment."Abbey of the Arts

Friday-"Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . " - Frederick Buechner

Saturday-Forgiveness is, first of all, giving to those who have hurt us, those who have no right to expect any good from us. The gift we offer is an invitation to the other to see himself or herself as someone worth redeeming, someone more important than the hurt done to us.

Review of the new movie Risen

I love movies. How I wish that movies that are targeted at a “Christian” audience were better than they usually are. It is as if Hollywood thinks that Christians are so desperate to have a belief validated in a movie that they will applaud almost anything.

The Coen Brothers just released a film lampooning movies such as the Robe or the Silver Chalice of the 1950s. By some serendipity a new movie, Risen, has been released in time for Lent 2016. It seems designed to try to offer the physical proof that Thomas famously sought when told of the resurrection.

It is an imaginative creation of a Roman Empire police procedural that follows a military tribune trying to uncover facts of a reported resurrection. Joseph Fiennes plays Clavius as an ambitious soldier who desires wealth and power so that “he can know just one day of peace.” Clavius is present at the death of Jesus but is given the charge of dealing with a rumor of resurrection. He is caught trying to reconcile his knowledge of the realities of life and death and human nature with the experiences he sees. He demonstrates this by furrowing his brow and saying that he is puzzled. Eventually he gets to tag along with the disciples on the road to Galilee and the ascension. In this way the film tries to supply an “objective” viewpoint to add credence to the gospel accounts.

The figure of Pilate is portrayed as a world weary bureaucrat, anxious about a visit from the emperor Tiberius. Pilate goes along with the crucifixion as a way to decrease political pressure. He is annoyed that the death has not ended the pressure, and now a slogan, Jesus still lives seems to be spreading.

Of course, Mary Magdalene represents the tired trope and misreading of the Bible that she was a prostitute. The disciples are giddy with the resurrection and its promise of eternal life. The Judas theme continues with a disciple who leads the Romans toward discovery of the hiding place of the close inner circle of Jesus.

It is a pastiche of some gospel material, notably the crucifixion account in Matthew and the post-resurrection chapters in John 20-21. Unsatisfied with the gospel sightings, the movie has the risen Jesus heal a leper. It includes the shroud of Turin image, not as a medieval forgery, but an immediate discovery there in the tomb, notwithstanding that no gospel in the Bible, or other later gospel material, reports it. It goes beyond Scripture in having a non-believer catch sight of Jesus, when we have no reports of that experience.

The resurrected Jesus is portrayed in a decidedly physical form, although he does appear and vanish. We do not see the resurrection but have it reported. The film has an ascension scene not of a slow rising in the heavens but in a blinding flash of light similar to that reported by the Roman guards for the resurrection itself.

The great theologian Karl Barth tried to play both side of Easter by claiming it to be beyond history’s analysis but an event nonetheless. Paul struggles to come to grips with it by using his image of a spiritual body. Indeed, I admire the way the bible refused to describe the resurrection and the reticence of the Risen One in appearing only to disciples, instead of Pilate or the Pharisees. Part of the reason we have Lent is for us to face the horrors of the death of Jesus couple with the Easter experience without a shred of empirical evidence. As Josh Groban sings in To where You Are: “isn’t faith believing/all power can’t be seen?” Some events resist being filmed

Sermon Notes Feb. 21 Lk. 13, Ps. 27, Gen. 15

Tonight we are doing a workshop and worship on prayer.Prayer is our basic communication with god. We are often dissatisfied about its quality.Worship is our weekly prayer service, the fundamental honoring of the Sabbath Commandment. Usually, we ask God for help and stumble about. Sometimes we may draw on inspirational sources throughout the long history of the faith to find some words, or at least a form for our prayers.The psalms give us 150 sets of instruction in prayer. We read them and sing them.Our hope is that they become part of one’s spiritual structure. -light and salvation and fear-Limburg--why pray when you can worry--God gives us just a pottery lamp’s worth of light, just enough to take a few more steps. You have to trust God with that kind of light.“The Lord is my light; whom shall I fear?” We fear the future -- but with God as our light, that small flicker banishes the darkness, and we are not alone.“I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” (verse 13) -- that faith is not merely about the pledge of eternal life in another world, but it is in this world, not merely some spiritual realm,.Presence of god is pervasive(Howell) The psalm is not a one-note prayer-it has an internal narrative that moves from state to state. It reflects what we often go through when confronted with dangers. It moves in a pattern. I wonder if the first part is a bit of whistling in the dark.The psalm’s emphasis on trust allows the confidence, the security, the stable place in dizzying change. It anchors our lives.

The bible introduces us to enacted prayer, prayer as action. BOO mentions: cutting of a covenant/cut a deal -meaning they find wholeness only in the relationship-symbol of inner self?-disloyalty will tear them apart-?Abram has amen faith-trust supported reliable faith as fidelity. I dislike the antiquated or Kentucky version of reckoned here-it seems here to have a sense of intention matched by outcome-this is in a vision as it moves beyond the reality of the senses to the radical grasp that a change is going to occur in spite of evidence to the contrary-this is the way the world is moving. The trouble is that we are time-bound and waiting is hard for us as the clock ticks away One of prayer’s tensions is .Maybe only the relationship itself holds the parts together. It feels both primitive and very deep this image, as if in the vision we are descending into the deep wellsprings of human interaction and the very roots of religion.

Jesus rejected a guarantee of protection last week. Now his usual opponents try to keep him safe. Jesus seems to regard this as another example of the testing, a she has set his face to Jerusalem and death. lament over Jerusalem and the mother hen image.Jesus sees the looming destruction, maybe the 40 year in the future levelling of the temple and laments.Other avian images are one of powerful protection, but this one is one of anxiety and fluttering.Lament is a vital form of prayer. the plurality of psalms reflect it. Lament is an especially intimate form of prayer as it trust god to show not a positive self but a needy one.As citizens of heaven, we live in a foreign land where self-aggrandizement and self-satisfaction are prized. enemies of the cross as enemies of transformation??If you will prayer is the connection we make with heaven and earth.

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Week of Feb. 21 Devotional points

Sunday-Ps. 27 is a favorite for many. Today read it carefully. Then consider one of two options. Rewrite it in language with which you are comfortable, but using it as a template.Pay attention to the images it uses. Alternately, consider taking its basic structure and write a new prayer, but take care to apply it to your life situation right now.

Monday-"The genius of the biblical revelation is that we will come to God through 'the actual,' the here and now, or quite simply what is. As Paula D’Arcy says, 'God comes to us disguised as our life.'" —Richard Rohr in his meditation "Negative Capability"

Tuesday-Hope is the opposite of cynicism, and hope is a theological act, far more enduring than mere optimism.Hope is the confidence that we indeed,the whole wide world, belong to God. "Into thy hands," is a prayer of pure hope, and it is the prayer a leader can pray throughout the day without ceasing. Not glorified gold-plated nonsense, by the way, but real hope... hope resides in the confidence that God will take the best we can do and do with it more than we could ever have imagined. This hope lives in the confidence that God is up to bigger and better things than we can ask or imagine.Michael Jinkins

Wednesday-"God tries to first create a joyous yes inside you, far more than any kind of no. Then you have become God's full work of art, and for you, love is now stronger than death..." - Richard Rohr

Thursday-Many of us feel divided, in internal conflict between what we most desire and how we live our lives. The ancient monks described the "cave of the heart" as that inner place where we encounter God and wrestle with our inner voices. Instead of resisting these voices, and dividing ourselves, the desert mothers and fathers invite us to be fully present to them, to create a welcoming space within.

Friday-Henri Nouwen-”In praying for others, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love which hold the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.”

Saturday-Evil isn’t just out there somewhere, far away, across the ocean, incarnate in foreign governments and alien religions and people with strange names. Evil is as close as my own thoughts, my own longings, my own insecurity and insularity and fears and dreads and desperation.(Ronald Byars)

Other source

Note: if I forget to add pages here you can go to facebook first Presbyterian Alton and find notes there as well

notes on Young George Wahsington

Presidents Day includes Washington’s birthday on the 22nd, and I feel a need to touch on his life. His father died when he was young, and he was not afforded the chance to get as sophisticated education as his brothers. One of his last assignments was to copy rule of civility, and he sought to honor them. His skill at math allowed him entry into surveying, and he worked an expedition when he was but 16. I grew up in Southwestern Pennsylvania, but the school system there did little to emphasize local history where young Washington spent important time throughout his life.

He demonstrated courage. In 1753 21 year old George Washington was sent by the governor of Virginia on a military and diplomatic mission. It was hazardous indeed as he hacked through the wooded and marshy landscape, dealt with snow and slett in the mountains, and was nearly shot by a guide and almost drowned in an icy river near Pittsburgh.A large monument, Jumonville Cross, graces a mountain in sight of our high school. It is named for a French commander. Washington’s small detachment met with Jumonville’s force and killed him in an exchange of fire. A 22 year old George Washington started what we call the French and Indian War and initiated what Europe called the Seven Years War.

Washington had a powerful belief in what he termed Providence. In his youth, he did face death a number of times. Here in Washington’s printed journal is his description of trying to ford the half-frozen river-”but before we were Half Way over, we were jammed in the Ice in such a Manner that we expected every Moment our Raft to sink, and ourselves to perish ...the Rapidity of the Stream threw it with so much Violence against the Pole, that it jirked me out into ten Feet Water.” That night the frontiersman Christopher Gist suffered frostbite, but somehow Washington emerged unscathed.

Washington learned of defeat in his youth.After the skirmish Washington constructed an outpost, Fort Necessity.Half King, a Native American leader, called it that little thing. It was surrounded, and Washington surrendered. He learned to fight another day. In a letter to his brother he demonstrates martial virtue: “The right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and received all the enemy's fire ... I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound."

Washington was a volunteer for the British Army’s General Braddock to try to take what would be Pittsburgh. The british Army did not fare well against guerilla tactics and Braddock was mortally wounded. Washington led the retreat and buried the General.In a letter to his mother he wrote: “I luckily escaped without a wound, though I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me... I was the only person then left to distribute the General's orders, which I was scarcely able to do, as I was not half recovered from a violent illness, that had confined me to my bed and a wagon for above ten days. I am still in a weak and feeble condition, which induces me to halt here two or three days in the hope of recovering a little strength, to enable me to proceed homewards”. Before he died Braddock left Washington his ceremonial sash that he wore with his battle uniform and muttered some of his last words, which were 'Who would have thought?' Reportedly, Washington never went anywhere without this sash for the rest of his life, be it as the commander of the Continental Army or with his presidential duties. It is on display today at Washington's home on the Potomac River, Mount Vernon.

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Column on Lenten Practices

Lent’s name comes from the lengthening of days that marks the emergence of spring from the cold and dark of winter. It draws its religious meaning from the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness in fasting (Mt. 4:2) before moving into his ministry. Christians are called to be especially mindful of spiritual practices to help us prepare for the climatic days of Holy Week. For many of us, it came to be identified with self-sacrifice in the sense of “giving up something for Lent.”

I grow so tired of the disjunction that “spiritual but not religious” folks make that religious acts are not “from the heart.” Without realizing it, they adopted criticism of spiritual practices as ritualistic and apply them to all religious people. The idea of Lenten spiritual practice is character formation, to work on a bit of spiritual discipline. (I do wonder what it says about my spiritual life that I so often mistype the word spiritual).

All religions have distinctive practices. In some ways religious practices, or rituals, help to define a religion. Without practices, then religious life evanesces into some amorphous mist.

We do not see as rituals as salvific or even important in and of themselves. We perform rituals because they move us out of a our determined to be self-made, to make up faith as we go along, instead of becoming connected to a tradition and a set of beliefs that go far beyond our own precious self. All religions have distinctive practices. In some ways religious practices, or rituals, help to define a religion. Without practices, then religious life evanesces into some amorphous mist. I rather suspect that is precisely that folks who prefer the word spiritual may indeed conceive of faith. Being connected nothing but one’s own feeling state loses the meaning of religion as binding us together in common purpose.

In our time, we do all sorts of diet fasts and abstinence and do juice cleanses. Oh, but a religiously oriented fast as a sign of cleansing and willingness to undergo some deprivations cannot even get a hearing. In other words, we are willing to believe untested, unproven claims for the need to “detoxify” our physical being, but we are unwilling to even consider a regimen of cleaning the deep-seated poisons that we carry within our hearts and minds daily.

Lent stands against the optimistic fiction about our natural goodness. All of us commit acts for which we should, should, feel guilt and shame. Sin and evil are not correlative with mistakes or good intentions gone awry. Repentance here is not a call solely for contrition for sins. It is a call of return, or turning back, but to what or whom: a return to God, our source. Yes, it does include turning one’s life around: in the direction of god. Repentance has an ancient sign of ashes: we are mortal; we are vulnerable to limitations; we are prone to succumbing to temptations. We are imperfect, mistake-prone, and sin-prone. We are not good enough as we are. God loves us for who we are, but we are called to aspire to much more. We can change. God will help us change.

Pope Francis: “whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.” At its core, religion moves us beyond self-interest and toward an awareness of transcendence and our frailty. In a country that worships the disciplines of athletes, why can we not devote just a bit of time to improving our character?

Sermon Notes -Ist Sunday Lent-Lk. 4, Rom. 8b-13, Ps. 91, Dt. 26

Lent 1 2016-Lk,4:1-13 Dt.26

The journey of Jesus starts in the wilderness, just as it did for Israel over  a thousand years prior.  the road to salvation is open to all as well-better put as being put to the test, a time of testing, an initiation??

Success can become a trial. Dt. words of bounty and offering, land flowing with milk and honey, recitation of affirmation of faith- -We also remember that we often have Eden in our hands, or a land flowing with milk and honey and we cannot leave well enough alone and start to tinker or even despoil it..One tests metals to see if they are the genuine article. Archimedes used the notion of specific gravity to check for gold in a crown.

Notice that the word word tempt is the same as the word to try or test. Testing can become temptation.Lead us not into temptation is better put dave us from the time of trial.  What would Jesus have become if he failed the testing in the wilderness?The tests do not sound like the typical temptations of sex, intoxicants, and greed of our time.Put differently, life itself beings trials, tests, and temptations depending on our angle of vision and capacity to see the world with different eyes.Living with blessings poses real spiriutal challenges as well as deprivations.For Jesus a sense of being tried and tested, or a sort of spiritual battle as a contest of the two great opposing forces in the world.the tempter/tester/adversary uses the conditional.Memory and Scripture are aids to Jesus in his trials. All of his answers come from a book designed to teach, to re-iterate the faith, the book of Deuteronomy (second law/instruction)Remember where you come from, remember origins, remember who and whose you are.Will his power be self-serving or to help others? Will God’s way be the center of his awareness?Will personal ease become a goal to displace others? Jesus is not only weakened physically from the fast, perhaps his spiritual resources are depleted as well.Ps. 91 was a chaplain favorite in the gulf war-danger is the time of trial and testing and temptation-we cry out for a shield of protection Satan quotes the Scripture in his battle of wits with Jesus.Scripture itself can be a trial or misuse and test even temptation toward certainty and coercion. Notice how the tempter/rester/trier uses even Scripture as a tool to derail Jesus from his understanding of his mission.

shiveley romans 10:8- demonstrate by means of the law/teaching  itself that it had its goal in Christ all along.  Jesus Christ is  God’s redemptive work near and accessible to human beings Anticipates the day when the people and their descendants will return to God, to  “love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live” (30:6) This language and order are dictated by the quotation of Deuteronomy 30:14 in Romans 10:8a: “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.

Robert Pirsig said,”trials never end of course.Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.” Lent reminds  us that we continue to try to walk in a christian path. We need constant checking and consulting spiritual GPS.We walk it together. We walk those paths with Christ.

Feb. 14th Week Devotional Pts.

Sunday-These days we use hearts for emoticons to sign text messages. I ♥ soccer! In a dream God offered the youthful King Solomon anything he wanted: "Give your servant a hearing heart"--Lev Shomea in Hebrew--"a discerning mind" (I Kings 3:9). What if for Valentine's Day you asked for a "listening heart?"--for practical work and political leadership as well as for family relationships and friendships?

Monday-"My continuing passion would be...to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight." (Eudora Welty)

Tuesday- If it does nothing else, reverence produces humility.As Augustine writes at the opening of his Confessions:"Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and thy wisdom infinite. And thee would a human praise, a human, but a particle of thy creation, a human, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that thou resists the proud, yet would this human praise thee, he, but a particle of thy creation."

Wednesday-Don Saliers preaching on the Transfiguration, then celebrating communion: blessing on blessing. "He (Jesus) told so many parables he became one; he ate so many meals with the poor and the outcast, that he became a meal for us." ‪

Thursday-God is … the Seer and the Seeing and the Seen. God seeks Himself in us, and the aridity and sorrow of our heart is the sorrow of God who is not known in us, who cannot yet find Himself in us because we do not dare to believe or to trust the incredible truth that He could live in us, and live there out of choice, out of preference.… We exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany. But we make all this dark and inglorious because we fail to believe it, we refuse to believe it." - Thomas Merton

Friday-“God is present in the details of the everyday but is also visible when we pull back and take a wider gaze upon our lives and pay attention to the patterns and ways things have been woven together." Christine Valters Painter

Saturday-In Christian faith, the accent shifts back and forth between what God does and what people have to do. When the accent falls too heavily on people’s obligations, it can contribute to a sense of overwhelming difficulty—a sense of futility, desperation, and despair. But when the accent falls too heavily on what God does, it can contribute to a sense of passivity, of indifference; to a lethargy that refuses responsibility. . .The Bible itself keeps moving the accent, shifting first this way and then that. God’s action and my responsibility are held together in a delicate balance. The New Testament is like a fugue, with two musical lines moving towards each other: meeting, interweaving, each distinct line contributing to the richness of the whole.Ron Byars

week of Jan. 31 Spiriutal Pts.

Sunday-Ps.71 is written from the perspective of growing old, so I love it. It has the sense that our ties to God and others fray with age, so it clings to the presence of god as refuge and source of help.As you look over the course of life, where do you perceive the hand of god, the protection of God?

Monday-Martin Luther describes our "dull sloth" and what to do about it in his Small Catechism:"Our sinful self with all its evil deeds and desires should be drowned through daily repentance (so that) day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever." And again, "In baptism God forgives sin, delivers from death and the devil, and gives everlasting salvation to all who believe what he has promised."God Pause

Tuesday-Don't just stand there, do something." Turn the saying on its head: "Don't just do something, stand there." Often we equate believing with doing, when in fact non-action might become the creed--and even the deed. Ask:Contemplate a time when by not racing into action but by pulling back your presence became a gift to yourself or another?

Wednesday-"Stability is the solid anchor which helps us to avoid falling into the shadow side of seeking where we are always looking beyond the horizon for the next thing to save us, never savoring our current experience and recognizing the grace and sacredness already present."--- Christine Valters Painter

Thursday -I do not remember an elderly woman’s name. What she said that I do remember was simple but profound: at every stage of our lives, there are things that we cannot do. And the corollary is that at every stage there are things that we can do. Now that I am no longer so young, I take courage from this woman's observation and Jeremiah's (1:4-10)example.From God Pause

Friday-"We thirst and we hunger after God, but we are not filled because we refuse to be filled. We go only far enough, take only enough of a drink or a taste to say, 'Ah, that is good. Thank you.' But we do not drink to fill or eat the feast provided. In a solitary place God waits for each of us, to show us ourselves in radiant, direct honesty, to show us our abject hunger, our spiritual dehydration. God waits in the desert, in the wilderness of trials for us. And if we want God we must go there alone. This is the painful news: Our need is great, absolute. Without [God] we will die. This is the good news: [God] waits for us in the solitude of transformation. [God] promises to fill us and to send us on changed."

Saturday-“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams

Sermon Notes Jan. 31-Ps. 71

On aging:Ps. 71 January 31

A long time ago, I started using the Psalms quite seriously as a way to organize my prayer life. At the same time, I started reading the bible differently as I did a weekly study at a local nursing home. this psalm jumped out at me as one of the few examples of something in Scripture clearly written by someone who had grown old. Aging is threatening, but it is in the order of things. As the Irish will wish, may you be old enough to comb grey hair.I love the sheer psychological realism of the Psalms. We do lack energy as we age.

When is the time right. Sometimes we have bucket lists in our old age as we failed to act when younger.As we age we see what we call blessing fade away into memory and distnace..Erikson spoke of age as a time where we fight despair with integrity.Trust-The second stage of life, which begins in early childhood with learning control over one's own body, builds the sense of will on the one hand, or shame and doubt on the other. In old age, one's experience is almost a mirror image of what it was earlier as the body deteriorates and one needs to learn to accept it. Identity issues surface in both youth and age.

Two lessons for old age from that stage of life are empathy and resilience,''The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others,'' Mrs. Erikson said. ''You don't have to accept what people do, but understand what leads them to do it. The stance this leads to is to forgive even though you still oppose.''

The child's playfulness becomes, too, a sense of humor about life. ''I can't imagine a wise old person who can't laugh.” In old age, as one's physical and sensory abilities wane, a lifelong sense of effectiveness is a critical resource. Reflections in old age - foster humility. Thus, humility in old age is a realistic appreciation of one's limits and competencies.

At the last stage of life, this takes the form of coming to terms with love expressed and unexpressed during one's entire life; the understanding of the complexity of relationships is a facet of wisdom.''You have to live intimacy out over many years, with all the complications of a long-range relationship, really to understand it,'' commitment- passion when you're young-tenderness when you grow old. You also learn in late life not to hold, to give without hanging on; to love freely, in the sense of wanting nothing in return.''. Generativity expresses itself, as Mrs. Erikson put it, in ''taking care to pass on to the next generation what you've contributed to life.''-As an attribute of wisdom in old age, generativity has two faces. One is ''caritas,'' a Latin word for charity, which the Eriksons take in the broad sense of caring for others. The other is ''agape,'' a Greek word for love, which they define as a kind of empathy.

The final phase of life, in which integrity battles despair, culminates in a full wisdom to the degree each earlier phase of life has had a positive everything has gone well, one achieves a sense of integrity, a sense of completeness, of personal wholeness that is strong enough to offset the downward psychological pull of the inevitable physical disintegration..''

The Eriksons contend that wisdom has little to do with formal learning. ''What is real wisdom?''  ''It comes from life experience, well digested. It's not what comes from reading great books. When it comes to understanding life, experiential learning is the only worthwhile kind;