Column on the Post movie

I saw the movie, The Post recently in Edwardsville. Even though you need to be met by a loan officer at the concession stand, it is well worth the trip for the movie.

First we may need  some background. Robert McNamara the Secretary of Defense saw the war consuming lives and treasure and ordered a multi volume study of the history of our involvement in Vietnam. It was a harrowing tale of fairly consistent U.S. government deception  over our shifting goals in dealing with a Communist government in Hanoi. Daniel Ellsberg, a Marine, a PhD and analyst, could no longer countenance the years of deceptions, so he released material that he took from a locked cabinet to the fine reporter Neil Sheehan of the New York Times. The Nixon administration began a series of actions that led to Watergate, especially the creation of a “plumbers” unit to stop leak, an attempt at humor, I suppose from that buttoned-up group. They would illegally burglarize the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find incriminating evidence against him. Recall that he was facing an enormous prison term for the release of the Papers.

This is directed by the masterful Spielberg, so keep an eye out for interesting camera shots, how it is placed in crucial moments.. Look at the lighting in the newsroom as opposed to homes, and the set where the documents were being copied. Look at the first long unbroken scene at breakfast between Mrs. Graham and her editor, Ben Bradlee. Watch the close-up as she announces her decision as to whether the newspaper should publish, at the last possible moment. It is filled with moments of the not so distant past  that our technology has hurtled by: dial telephones, pay telephones that required change to operate, giant copying machines, typewriters with clacking sound that could rouse the dead, even amid the clouds of smoke from the cigarettes everywhere..

For me the most involving story in it is the growth of the Post’s publisher Katherine Graham. She was a doyenne of Washington society. Her father handed over operation of the Post Company to her brilliant but unstable and alcoholic  husband Phil. He committed suicide in the summer of 1963. So, she was left with the operation of the company, but struggling to deal with her new role eight year later, not yet board chair. Not only was she under that pressure, but the company was becoming a publically held company at the very time the massive leaks occurred. The movie oscillates between the public import of a newspaper and the private struggles within public decision. We learn that McNamara’s wife is undergoing cancer treatments as the papers are revealing what we started to call a “credibility gap.” (She would succumb to the disease a decade later).

In 2018, I realize that it may be difficult for many of us to even imagine a White House at odds with a free press. For the first time in American history, the Nixon administration sought and won, at first, prior restraint of printing material by a newspaper. In a 6-3 decision Black’s opinion: Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government…In revealing the workings of government…In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.” Dismissing the claimed threat to national security, the Court continued, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” In the years that have passed, we have lost trust in both government pronouncements and the  accuracy of a free press, even arguing over facts themselves. 

Sermon Notes on Being Judgmental 1/28 I Cor. 8

1/28 Judgmental and hypocritical-In I Corinthians Paul is dealing with a church that seems capable of fighting about almost anything.. Earlier, I would see him saying that we scarcely understand ourselves, but claim to know God?  Yet,  the very gift of the spirit, the mind of Christ is formed within and among us.  

Kosher food was and is an identity marker in Jewish communities, along with sabbath observance and circumcision. In our time, people make ethical statements as vegans, or in slow foods, or in locally grown foods, foods organically produced, or food without chemical additives. This was a trigger issue for a boundary, who is in and who is out.  After all, in our present ethos, we consistently raise up matters of personal preference and raise them to the matter of principle. Paul regards the conflict around the issue as an example of being judgmental. We live for the glory of God, not our personal preferences.. To so live includes looking out for the benefits of others more than ourselves.

Paul begins by stipulating that some of the arguments are indeed correct to him. Yes, God is one. Yes, we pay no heed to idols.  Paul makes his concern the formation and maintenance of Christian community. Paul is looking for ties of cohesion instead of the splintering nature of dissent. Unlike our time, he is less concerned with exit strategies and protest resignations and spinning off new groups. All Christians have knowledge, not just the in-group. A sense of superior knowledge causes arrogance, but love upbuilds.Let the weak ones get built up. No, love builds up, not puffs up. So, should love take on a mantle of being supercilious toward those with whom we disagree?  Can we look down on anyone when we are gazing through the eyes of love? Love  is extended to the weak ones as the norm. After all, these could have been recent Gentile converts who grew up with idols. Granted that they have spiritual power/liberty/freedom in regard to eating the meat, but the deeper issue is the effect of their action on others in the community.  Further, it is less a matter of knowing than being known by God, to lessen the sense of being in the right.. For Americans, to say that it's my right tends to stop any discussion. Does failing to assert a right make one too passive? (see Hays 156-9)  Paul uses family language to get at basic equality and respect. As Bruce Springsteen sings, "we take care of our own."  Paul goes to the point of saying that he would forgo meat, period, if it caused one person to stumble. Paul is becoming an example of foregoing his personal liberty and knowledge to accommodate the perceived needs of others in the community.

Granted, all things are lawful for the Christina, but not everything is beneficial to the individual Christian or the community. v. 29 why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? He uses an ethical maxim that we should look out to the well-being of the other, that we should not seek our advantage but that of the other (v.25).

Paul is trying to hold communities together. As new communities their common bonds have not had much time to solidify. Divisive points to threaten community spirit. They seem to possess all sort of centrifugal forces for blowing apart. They seem to lose sight of Christ as the glue that binds them together, of the baptismal bonds that bring us together. Being judgmental adds impetus to those forces.it undercuts values of loyalty and fidelity to something larger than ourselves. Better to be kind than in the right.

Sermon Notes 1/21 Jonah 3

1/21Jonah 3, see Trible-tanner-How willing are we to let God be God? Salvation is pure gift and grace and Jonah's story reminds us that we do not own that grace, nor is it ours to dole out as we wish. God will be forgiving because that is the very heart of God.

Never worry if we have  the God of second chances. When the word of the Lord comes a second time, will Jonah pay heed? Notice we are told that God speaks a second time, but alteration occurs in that we are not given explicit reason for him to go to Nineveh. Does the first reason carry over or not? Is the narrator unwilling to repeat the first message?

So here is Jonah, marching into Nineveh, near Mosul in Iraq in our time. He tells the people in this capital of empire that change was coming. . This was the empire that despoiled Israel and was at the gates of Jerusalem. They do. It would be like preaching to the Taliban or the mullahs in Iran and seeing an immediate mass conversion to become Mennonites.He has the most successful short sermon imaginable. I picture him halfway hoping that Nineveh will be overthrown and punished. He may have hoped it was a look into the future, not an opportunity for repentance. Instead, it stops everyone in their tracks, and all of these pagans repent. In Hebrew, we read : Nineveh, a city great to God. Great could be size but it could point to other interpretations, obviously such as import and power .The response of the city is a mass conversion of everyone to this short sermon that puts preachers in  a spasm of envy. . So, unbelievers teach the people about the quality of their own worship perhaps and their response to the call of the liturgy and the prophets.The word overturn is ambiguous as it can mean destruction or deliverance.(hpek/nehapek). Everybody repents when the king says repent. I love the image of poodles in sackcloth and ashes.

In the end, Jonah does not run from his call to Nineveh as much as he runs from the prospect of a God who will forgive enemies of Israel. Does Jonah suspect that God’s steadfast love and compassion, God’s hesed, could be directed to other peoples?Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, the seat of the dreaded Assyrian empire that had destroyed the Northern kingdom, depopulated it and imported with alien cultures.Sometimes, people speak of the angry God of the Old Testament. Here is a good example of a merciful God whose character is set in Exodus. God’s inclusive love moves toward the enemies. Jonah runs, not out of fear, not out of stubbornness, but in his realization that God could have mercy on the Assyrians, and he can’t live with that. If they listen, if the enemies repent-what about us? In many ways, the tale of Jonah is designed to have us look around with a new perspective. If the enemy can change, so could we. It is a perspective shift o see that the enemy can indeed change. Jonah was slow to respond to God; Israel was often slow to respond to God;we are slow to respond to God, but the Assyrians moved fast.is a perspective that tells us that we are capable of evil ourselves. For us, revenge tastes sweeter than forgiveness.

Enemies do not have to remain enemies forever. We have moved a long way from the deadly days of World War II to a Honda plant in Greensburg, IN. Tourists visits Vietnam and cruise   ships enter Cuban waters.We never relinquished out alliance with the Saudis after 9/11.

Reflections for Week of Jan. 21

Sunday-Ps.62:5-12 is an invitation to meditation, to silence. Trust in god (v.8) is so complete that one can pour out the heart before god. What would those look like for you?

Monday-As we move toward a new year, notice if your mind is drawn toward making resolutions. Resolutions are usually based in a sense of lack about ourselves, something we need to “fix” so I try to be aware of how I talk to myself. And if there was ever a time of year for advertising to make us question the beauty of our bodies, now would be it. All the promises of a “new you” are seductive. But what if you gave yourself a gift instead? What if you made a commitment to fall in love with your body instead, just as it is? Even in the midst of illness? Even in the midst of its limitations? What if you approached it through trust rather than dissatisfaction? Offered tenderness rather than harsh criticism?Abbey of the Arts

Tuesday-"Conversion is essentially an acknowledgement that we are on a lifelong journey of awakening. We never arrive in this lifetime, but always return and awaken to our call again and again."--- Christine Valters Paintner,

Wednesday-Mother Teresa-We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad; everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.

Thursday-"The spiritual journey is not about growing more certain about the world, but embracing more and more the mystery at the heart of everything. In a world where so many people are so very certain about the nature of things, especially in religious circles about who God includes and excludes, I believe unknowing calls us to a radical humility."--- Christine Valters Paintner,

Friday-Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” ― Parker J. Palmer

Saturday- In Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love, Lonni Collins Pratt and Fr. Daniel Homan, OSB, say that:Benedictine spirituality insists that if you want to be whole, you have to let the ‘other’ in…  [Furthermore, Benedictine] hospitality requires not grand gestures but opened hearts.  When I let a ‘stranger’ into my heart, I let a new possibility approach me.”

Column on Aging

Pastors spend time in nursing home and assisted living centers. As a baby boomer, I am part of a generation that loathed and loathes growing older, as that was assigned to our parents’ generation. (Recall the motto, don’t trust anyone over 30?) To my sneering delight, the oldest baby boomers turn 72 this year. For me, aging is a daily reminder, and I took my first mental acuity test  this week to provide a baseline for the future. To use continuing education money frugally, I am in the process of an on-line course on spirituality and aging through the Oates Institute in Louisville.

Reengagement Theory points us to a great failing in our work with the aging. To the  extent is a time of wisdom, we do not provide nearly enough opportunities for that to be shared with younger people. It helps to mitigate one of the primary losses in aging, the gradual  diminution of independence and the rise of dependence.

Activity Theory may reflect a cultural assumption that everyone needs to be frenetically busy. It is obviously not good to allow people to settle into age with having an opportunity to engage in activities they enjoy or to discover new ones, but a state of placidity also accompanies aging at times, where people don’t need to be checking their calendar for the next three upcoming appointments. At the same time, we do start to disengage form some attachments and concerns. That is how the elderly have a healthier, long-term perspective than younger people often do.

Wisdom as a function of age helps us put together different strands of our life into some sort of coherent whole. Wisdom allows us to call old age  golden. Making meaning of one’s situation is part of that wisdom. When events are seen as utterly random or chaotic they inhibit a sense of hope in dealing with them.  If we are able to place them into an appropriate framework for our character and thoughts, then we “make sense” of our situation.

The limitations of age are rarely golden. Accepting limitation and renegotiating identity is a critical facet. Baby boomers struggle to appear younger, but find aging to be an assault to their identity as youthful. Already evidence is developing that baby boomers are being difficult residents in assisted living and health care situations. I do not wish to minimize the courage it takes to grow old and face such an accumulation of losses.

I want to lift up music. It seems that the music of our youth has real impact on us through the years, so music from that time brings us back to that time in our lives. In some ways, it remains our favorite music, and we tend to like contemporary artists who remind us of the music of our youth. Locally, Dave Foraker gives a great gift to  residents of facilities by sharing his “bluesified” approach to old songs. In the recent animated film Coco, music provides the key to unlock the grandmother’s fading memory at a critical juncture of the film.

Religious or “spiritual” beliefs and practices have demonstrable impact on us as we age. They are correlated o positively with many measures of health and well-being. For instance some of the fear of death is lessened by anticipating one “: beautiful reward.” Negative, difficult, stressful life events can be reframed in light of one’s religious perspective as a trial, a test, an opportunity for growth and depth in prayer. If the culture insists that aging makes us less in comparison to our fixation on youth, then standing firm on being a child of a God who can easily look through physical changes to the self within is a real power.

Reflections week of Jan. 14

Sunday-Ps.139 is paraphrased in the Pres. Hymnal, #248.It reminds me of children’s book, where the love of parent will go to any lengths for the child such as the Runaway Bunny. How would you continue to work with the phrase toward God that darkness is not dark to you?


Monday-Herodotus again tells the story of a fantastic creature, the Phoenix. He explains that once every five centuries a phoenix buries its dead inside an egg of myrrh (The Histories, 2.73).As with gold and frankincense, there is something otherworldly about myrrh. As in the passage from John, there is something ominous about its presence—something that points beyond Epiphany to Holy Week and hints at Easter to come.


Tuesday-Holy Father, We thank you that because of Christ we can draw near to you. Thank you that you choose to dialogue with us. When this world or dire circumstance tempt us to look down or grow discouraged, lift our face to You, O Lord, and help us to live by faith, to stand on our watchtower like Habakkuk and wait for You to answer.Amen Suzanne Welty


Wednesday-Scott Cairns-Your petitions—though they continue to bear/just the one signature—have been duly recorded. Your anxieties—despite their constant,relatively narrow scope and inadvertent entertainment value—nonetheless serve to bring your person vividly to mind.


Thursday-Opening or closing, deliberate or faltering,Perhaps a glorious homecoming ; a fresh start/ But equally a bittersweet departure; or permanent ending.Standing on a threshold, I reach my hand toward the knob, the ring, the handle, the latch...In the fleeting space of neutrality comes an echo of re-membering. A door I so surely had opened and reluctantly shut ,Can, and will be, opened again By my hand or..... Yours! Something About a Door


Friday-“The soul holds expectations loosely and is not attached to the outcome. The soul takes her time, embraces the slow ripening of things, and savors what is to be learned from the process.”--- Christine Valters Paintner,


Saturday- David Mitchell -"Our lives are not our own, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."

Jan. 14 sermon notes, I Sam. 3, John 1:43, Ps. 139 I Cor. on imperfect people

I Sam. 3 Henri Nouwen states, “We live absurd lives.” Then he talked about the meaning of that word “absurd.” Surd, Nouwen says is from the Latin word for “deaf.” When you look the word up in the dictionary you will find, “not to be heard, dull, deaf, insensible, laughably inconsistent with what is judged as true or reasonable.” It is our inability to hear, to listen, that creates the conditions for an absurd life. Nouwen goes on: “A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance.” Absurd living is simply not hearing and not listening to God.eli, is nearly blind as well.Eli as failed priest-sons and Hannah-he did not grasp what she was praying for-and it is Samuel. (see Graham Greene or diary of a country Priest)“But I shall give less thought to the future, I shall work in the present. I feel such work is within my power. For I only succeed in small things, and when I am tried by anxiety, I am bound to say it is the small joys that release me.” Whiskey priest it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”


-this is before the temple-what sort of shrine?


(2)The narrator then adds a brief description of the state of Eli, noting that his "eyesight had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see" (verse 2). As if all of these things were not sufficient impediments to the coming of God to Samuel, the narrator adds one more. All of this happens before "the lamp of God had...gone out" and so establishes that this calling occurred during the night. (The lamp of God burned from evening until morning in the sanctuary, see Exodus 27:20-21.) discernment models???
All of our readings point to the imperfections of God’s gathered people. Samuel is a failed priest and parent. The Corinthian church was marred by conflict, pettiness, and fissures. Jesus called very ordinary local people to his core group, including people who made fun of his home town.
When the church was threatened with persecution in the late 4th century, the Donatist controversy arose. One group argued for clergy perfection for the sacraments to be valid. Augustine understood that the wheat and chaff are mixed together in the church, including clergy. God uses imperfect people toward god’s ends. (Here use new Pauw book throughout.)Variously she calls the church a down to earth creation, an earthen vessel, a place where we make do in the face of the impinging new. The church is yet the interface between heaven and earth where mistakes, false starts, new hopes and risks emerge from very human beings. Yet, “it is not the splendor of the vessel but the treasure it holds.” It is an affront to God to see only the imperfections and be willfully bond to the treasure of faith we hold together.






Ps. 139 Martin Buber, an early twentieth-century Jewish philosopher, offered these words concerning the relationship between God and humankind:Where I wander - You!Where I ponder - You!Only You, You again, always You!You! You! You!When I am gladdened - You! When I am saddened - You! Only You, You again, always You! You! You! You! Sky is You, Earth is You! You above! You below! In every trend, at every end, Only You, You again, always You! You! You! You! In other words, worship is the opposite of our me, me, me culture.

MLK Column '18

I talked to a young teen recently who had no idea why we celebrate Martin Luther King with a holiday. When I was a good deal younger than that teen, I thought the two smartest people on earth were Adlai Stevenson and martin Luther King because I could not understand either of them.

 How often do we hear the word integration in our time?  We have shifted gears to the  specific social identification where cleavage lines are  again pushed on race, class and gender, but this time from the left. “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.” Mark Lilla’s recent book on citizenship is in the same ball park. Lilla suggests that we try to re-introduce the language of citizens as possessing rights and duties as a way to energize political results for the entire nation. In his views, citizens work together for common purposes. Equal protection is his lodestar for assessing the reality or appearance of privilege. Again, look at the global reach of King’s dream: “This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

King did not speak to race solely, even as he noted the struggles of integration. “I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation.” In other words, he realized how race and class are intertwined. “It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” 

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ” Here MLK captures the divide between charity and justice. Both are important. One is person to person compassion for basic human needs, but the other is a structural issue. In other words, charity is an unending series of band aids on an open wound. Put in biblical terms, the Good Samaritan went over and beyond a notion of charity, but justice would urge a safe road for travelers in the first place.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” that education was for all of us, the privileged and the underprivileged. It was a clarion call to find the best in each of us. He trained so many people in the practice of non-violence. At the same time, he would not countenance demeaning those of other races, but he asked us to aspire and achieve a closer walk to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

King spoke often of “the beloved community.” Remember that not only was he a pastor, he was a superbly educated one, with a doctorate from Boston University with an emphasis on social ethics. I think it was an attempt to translate the gospel message of the kingdom of heaven/ of God into more contemporary language. At the same time, he would not permit that gospel vision to be pointed to the afterlife alone, nor be permitted to be such a lofty, abstract goal that it became safe. No, he believed that we are called, all of us, to treat each other under the banner of wisdom, love, and justice step by difficult step.

Reflections for Week of Jan. 7

Sunday-Ps. 72 is for epiphany. I tis the source along with Is. 60, of how the Magi transformed into kings. It provides a partial source for the variety of ethnicities of the Magi in many depictions. For us in 2018, we do well to pay close attention to its expectations of government.





Monday-Eberhard Arnold-The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts.





Tuesday-Frederick Buechner writes, “The incarnation means that all ground is holy ground because God not only made it but walked on it, ate and slept and worked and died on it.” We are to live out our ordinary, everyday lives in the awareness that we are on holy ground in the presence of God. Elizabeth Barrett Browning beautifully expressed it: Earth’s crammed with heaven/ And every common bush afire with God:/But only he who sees takes off his shoes.





Wednesday-A Pueblo friend tells me it's the same in her Native culture: Listen for the truth by attending to our silences. -Kent Ira Groff Reflection: Prayer for Silence How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given, So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of God's heaven. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" --Philips Brooks -I would be silent, now, and expectant,That I might receive the gift that I need That I might become the gift that others need.





Thursday-Lord, teach us to wait like your faithful servants. When our days are full of freedom and space, guard us from sowing hope in temporal things, which have no permanence and make us hollow. When our days are full of strife and pain, guard us from despairing of your love. Teach us to wait like Simeon, who lived only to see the Son of God. Teach us to wait like Anna, who made her home in the house of the Lord. Teach us, the church, to say with one voice, ‘mine eyes will see the salvation of the Lord.”Amen.Jessamy Delling





Friday-To go in the dark with a light is to know the light./To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,/and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,/and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.Wendell Berry





Saturday-The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.The Hungering Dark