Devotional thoughts for week of May 15

Ps.104 is a hymn to the spirit of Creation.It links the spirit as breath of lfie to all living things. It sees God as a giver of many gifts for life, in its many forms, to exist. The Kepler telescope has discovered a number of planets where life could exist. They too share in the praise of god.Sunday-

Monday-"There is much emphasis on silence and listening closely, on only speaking when we have something to say, rather than trying to fill the quiet. Benedict knew we can hear things in the silence that otherwise gets drowned out with the daily hum. This was an issue even back in the sixth century long before our endless connectivity online."

Tuesday-To stand in, feel, and hold the tension of our opposites is the practice of becoming one. The oppositions within us will teach us and show us the way if we will let them. That means facing up to ourselves. It is a lifelong process. Wholeness is a practice not a completion. Every time we hold the opposites in tension we are offering God all that we are and all that we have. We give God something to work with. To the degree we eliminate the opposition within us we withhold ourselves from God. We deny God our life. Michael Marsh

Wednesday-Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

thursday-"The kingdom of God is found not in some other world beyond but in our midst. It seeks our obedience despite contradictory appearances, and then it constantly seeks, through our obedience, the miracle, like lightening allowed to flash from the perfect, blessed world of the final promise. On Earth, God seeks to be honored by us in the other, and nowhere else. God plants his kingdom in the cursed ground. We must open our eyes, become sober, obey God here."***Bonhoeffer

Friday-Fear challenges our faith. It constantly makes us uneasy and takes away our inward peace.   What have we to fear? Jesus is about freedom, about being unstuck and set free in a world that would like us to crawl into a shell. Luther often spoke of the fear of the wrath of God. What a gracious word that we are "children of God." Do not be afraid! Take away, O God, our slavery to fear and mistrust. Renew us with your Spirit to trust and hope in the promise that we are adopted and safe as your children. Amen.Ken Knutson

Saturday- Many pretend to know more about God than God knows about God. It has always been difficult for me to discuss God with someone who is so certain about God. Jesus shows us who God is. God is love and "Jesus loves me" is our simple but profound mantra. God accepts the whole world and Jesus accepts you and me. God is a compassionate God and in Jesus we see that compassion for the poor and the outcast, the unloved and the unaccepted. The challenge for us is to ask a lot of questions of ourselves and have deep discussions in community about Jesus and the work he was about. We don't always get the answers we want. Ken Knutson

Sermon Notes, Babel, Technology, and Pentecost

John 14:8-17, 27 Ps. 104, Gen. 11 Rom 8:14

   The story of Babel is simultaneously one of the power of technology and a confusion resulting from its use. The ancients tried to reach the very gate of God with their tower, with the sense that God was upstairs in a 3 story cosmos ( as in the russian cosmonaut sneering that he did not see god in space). In our time, I think that one of the reasons we see religion is dire straits is technology becoming a religion in itself and it has pushed God to the margins. Technology has attributes we applied to God: ubiquity, enormous power. The great ancient story tells  of the desire to reach the very gates of heaven. God confuses balal language so Babel/Babylon’s quest falls into confusion. In our time technology and the march of science may feel the same way.The many languages lead to confusion and misunderstanding. The primeval  prologue of Genesis starts with creation and moves to eden and ends up with a dispersed confused wandering humanity.Pentecost offers a reversal of Babel. Pentecost signals a new community, not divided by language, aiming toward a goal not wandering aimlessly.The tongues  as of fire, allow them to speak in their language but to be heard and understood by others in their own. -

   Late technology technological optimism, priesthood, imperative.For many of us technology threats to make a us more machine like and less human. some of us feel that technology drains life out of the world as it soaks up power, time, and attention. (see sweet piece on new book on cyber world) We carry around cell phones like wireless umbilical cords. People having a romantic dinner have their faces planted on the little screen stealing the light from the eyes of the loved one across the table.People talk about facebook friends having more reality and importance than flesh and blood. Jacques Ellul famously said that we were so concerned about doing things quickly and efficiently, so concerned about standard operating procedure, the operating system in computer terms, but we lack resources for what we are to do. I would say that we can find spirit driven technology v. engines of death-It is not all clear to me that technolog is neutral, as a gun’s purpose is to kill.Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices—TV, jets, freeways and so on—but Ray Kurzweil CAT scans Hounsfield,  and MRI.Raymond Damadian-invention is often a collaborative process and the spirit resides there as well.Spirit resides in inspiration and creativity.Spirit v. ;letter of the law-

I don't wish to speak of the spirit as anti-technology, but perhaps as giving life, giving purpose to our inventions and use of them.spirit of understanding each in own language Joel’s words come to life years later the Spirit goes to all ages and conditions without regard for using twitter accounts.After all peace is fruit of the spirit.Ellul says, "The innermost being of one person has reached the innermost of another through the mediation and ambassadorship of this language go-between." That's the miracle of Pentecost. It isn't about "ourselves." It is about recognizing the other, seeing and hearing them, being seen and heard, through the power of the Holy Spirit.We can use the machine as an analogy to the operation of our bodies and even minds. Yet, the more technology advances, the more we realize the depths of human nature and relationships. When we plumb those depths, we are in the realm of the spirit.

column on technology and the spiritual

Sometimes clergy get to be inspectors for cultural trends. One of the readings for churches this sunday recalls the story of the tower of Babel. The thought was to build a ramp to the very living space of god.Technology  would be the gateway to the knowledge of the fruit in the garden of Eden. The great ancient story tells  of the desire to reach the very gates of heaven.  God confuses language so Babel/Babylon’s quest falls into confusion. In our time technology and the march of science may feel the same way.The many languages lead to confusion and misunderstanding. The primeval  prologue of Genesis starts with creation and moves to eden and ends up with a dispersed confused wandering humanity.Pentecost offers a reversal of Babel. Pentecost signals a new community, not divided by language, aiming toward a goal,  not wandering aimlessly.. As a religious person, I wonder if technology is not replacing the role of God in a number of areas, or at a lesser level, occupying territory formerly held in the divine realm.

Our younger daughter call me a late adapter to any technology. When she makes a presentation on the cyber world, her first question is: would Dad understand any of this?For many of us technology threats to make a us more machine like and less human. some of us feel that technology drains life out of the world as it soaks up power, time, and attention. (see sweet piece on new book on cyber world) We carry around cell phones like wireless umbilical cords. People having a romantic dinner have their faces planted on the little screen stealing the light from the eyes of the loved one across the table.People talk about facebook friends having more reality and importance than flesh and blood.

Jacques Ellul, the French writer, looked at technology with a practiced eye. Ellul saw technology as the driving force in modern life. He famously said that we were so concerned about doing things quickly and efficiently, so concerned about standard operating procedure, the operating system in computer terms but we lack resources for what we are to do. Mathematical standards of efficiency start to dominate;  the process of technical advances multiply at a growing and build on each other, while the number of technicians also increases. Technology is imperialistic, as it seeks to expand to a global scale and gobbles up other methods in its path.  Technology has created a “priesthood”-it sometimes   seems as strange to us as magical incantations and esoteric rites of a secret society. It seems understood only by an elite chosen few.We are so optimistic about it, as it will be the savior for many ills in society, without considering if it causes ills or losses for us. Technology can become closed, “a reality in itself ... with its special laws and its own determinations (think virtual reality).” Its  autonomy implies that much of what goes on in  society is dominated by technique, whether we know it or not, and we lack the resources to judge it well. To go a  step further, technical mastery raises  morality and spiritual issues. Technique tolerates no judgment from without and accepts no limitation.  

 

I do not wish to come off as anti-technology. It has changed our world for the better; it offers a richer fuller life for many. We could speak of  spirit- driven technology v. engines of death- I think of  Ray Kurzweil and giving sight to the blind with reading devices.I wonder why we don’t immediately know the names  Hounsfield and CAT scans,  and Hounsfield and Raymond Damadian and MRI devices that peer into our bodies without exploratory surgery..Invention is often a collaborative process and the spirit resides there as well in inspiration.Is the world fading into the sahow of the machine, or we capable of harnessing technical prowess for moral ends and development of humanity?

Mother's Day Prayer 2016

Mother’s Day 2016

God of all, we acknowledge that mothers are near and dear to your heart. Why else would Scripture use maternal images to try to even approach the heights and depths of your love for us? As the givers of life, as those charged with the upbringing of children, they are central to our lives.   In deep ways, we carry the image of motherly love into our conception of divine love. “The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

Mother’s Day arrives with expectation and trepidation.  May the former be met and the latter unrealized. May mothers feel recognized, applauded, and appreciated.No mother can be perfect, but mothers certainly aspire toward perfection.

Mothers carry too many burdens. Some are imposed by social role demands. Some are self-imposed.Guilt emerges when we sense we have broken a rule. Where is the rule book for parents?Shame has a sense of being unworthy, of wanting to hide from the inspecting eyes of others. May those feelings be washed away when they intrude on living freely and fully.

Mothers worry. If they raise an infant, or a teenager, or are grandparents themselves,

Mothers worry.Mothers care beyond their own needs and pour themselves into their children. Sometimes that worry turns toxic into being controlling. Sometimes that worry stays within and harms their healthy perspectives. May their worries be eased, and may their worries be few.

When to say yes and no continues to bedevil mothers. They have particular difficulty in saying no. It doesn't seem to matter if the child is a newborn or an adult.The boundary between self and offspring is too porous.May mothers be given the discernment on when to say yes or no. May they have the strength to carry out that decision.

Forgive us for the expectations we place on mothers that cannot be attained.

Help us to forgive our own mothers for the resentments we may still hold.

In so doing, may mothers and their offspring come to acceptance of each other.

We measure our lives with a maternal yardstick. May we realize that mothers, at their best, do love unconditionally. “A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.” (Honore de Balzac)

Sermon Notes May 8 John 17, Rev. 22

May 8 Acts 16, John 17, Rev. 22

Campaign season is full or perhaps should be of visions of the future.I was  surprised by the downbeat tone of the Republican primary candidates.we are a long way from Reagan’s morning in America. Their vision for the future is bleak unless we see the radical changes many proposed.When I was young Star Trek painted a vision of an united earth exploring the universe. Now instead of the hope for utopia, dystopian visions and images of the living dead such as zombies predominate in popular culture.I fear that life is too big a burden for many of us. We project a bleak perspective on the present on to the future. too many of us merely exist; one could dare to call it a living death.Prayer gives us a vision of a better future.

Recall that Revelation is a worship, prayerful vision;.In Revelation we come to its conclusion.Some of its striking images are pulled into use one more time. Its urgency sounds misplaced as 2000 years have passed without a climax or conclusion or proper ending to God’s working with humanity It seems to me to be a new Eden, with a crucial difference. the Edenic paradise could be marred by evil. .The horizon seems as distant now as it must have then, maybe farther off.The forces of evil are kept out or disappear like the power of Sauron in the end of Lord of the Rings,or a  black hole beyond the event horizon It is an expansive vision of continual morning and the symbols of evil and night no longer there-Alpha and omega pt-morning star, the bright star of morning- water of life and thirst-coming soon-don’t seal it, but we do it by ignoring it or by twisting it to some rigid design as in Left behind-It concludes with this vision of wonder not the Armageddon focus of so many American Christians. On the other hand, how we yearn for the world to look the way God envisions it. Especially when we feel ineffective or impotent we yearn for divine aid.

Jesus has an unanswered prayer at the end of the his long goodbye to the disciples. In John’s gospel, Jesus is in unity with the Sending One, the Father,. That unity si demonstrated in prayer.In the closing prayer Jesus has a focus on unity as a sign of the new age in the church itself. the visions are not competing as one follows another but one is more intimate and Revelations soars into a universal view of a new and better future.not uniformity but Acts is not story of pluralism is it? Here Jesus breaks the narrative enclosure and moves to speak directly to us as those in the future. He prays that the close relation of Jesus and the Father would be ours as well.this is our community being brought into the scripture.“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”  “Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way”  Barth-  “What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”the most we can do through genuine prayer, is to make as much room as possible, in ourselves and in the world, for the kingdom of God, .” t“firstly, prayer is a conversation between God and the soul, and secondly, a particular language is spoken: God’s language. Prayer is dialogue, not man’s monologue before God.” ― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

Mother's Day Column '16

Mother’s Day poses some challenges in the church service. Some folks expect that the entire service should be designated for mothers. For some of us, this undercuts the focus of the worship service: God. Some on the religious left use the occasion to speak about maternal imagery for God as In Is. 66. Some of us are sensitive about emphasizing the role of mothers for those who have lost children to death or who have not delivered children into the world.I usually try to write a prayer poem and distribute it. Perhaps one of our earliest intimations of the divine is seeing the face of the mother when we are infants. After all, “the love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

I had a church member who left the congregation due to a Mother’s Day prayer. His parents had  sent him to an orphanage, and he could not find the capacity for forgiveness. I have heard a number of people dislike the day, as their own mothers were not adequate to the task of being a parent, as their mental illness left them ill-equipped to try to raise a child. A few men have told me that they dislike m the holiday as they feel that their marital life deteriorated after bringing children into the world.A number of people avoided church that day as it reminded them of the passing of their own mother or grandmother.

Family relations forge the crucible of our lives. It’s been said that we carry around 25,000 hours of family tapes in our memories. I think that the soundtrack of the memory is often of a mother’s admonition and advice. Take a moment and I bet you can hear her voice. When we become parents we have a choice:what to continue form our family pattern, or what to alter a bit, or what to bury, not to see the light of day again.My mother was always either vaguely or openly disappointed with her Mother’s Day present. She poured her life, even her identity, into raising children. No present could ever hope to touch such a complete offering of self. So, she also felt unrecognized and underappreciated. Sometimes, a card would hit her well, especially ones that spoke of all of the variety of work and roles a mother shouldered.

Even if mothers are critical, we usually have the sense that they think the world of us. So, our sense of self-worth emerges from the cocoon of regard that they create. “A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.” (Honore de Balzac)

No one is fully prepared to be a parent. Since mothers are often the emotional center of households, the pressure on them is enormous. In a recent study, around ⅔ of new mothers are miserable as they face the astounding amount of demands a child places upon them.I’ve said before that  being a parent is like living in a time tunnel. Simultaneously, we see a grown child and an infant blur together in memory. Mothers may have good boundaries, but they find it difficult to say t no to children, even as adults. So mothers continue to be on call for their chidlren as grandmothers, babysitting, doing errands, handing out cash grants.At some level this constant attention emerges from a fear of failure, of a looming sense of guilt or shame for not having the capacity or skills to be perfect, an unattainable goal for anyone.

May God bless mothers fully this and every day. May they allow themselves to celebrate and to be celebrated this Mother’s day.

Thoughts for Week of May 8

Sunday-Ps.97. Mother’s Day is a day of praise for those who bore us, those who helped to raise us. Today’s psalm is one of exultant praise to God for the heavens and for God’s help for those in right relation with god. When your thoughts and prayers turn to praise-what aspects of the Divine One come to mind?

Monday-If healing includes the ability to let go and forgive and have our relationships restored and all the brokenness mended--if healing is really about wholeness--then if we were asked if we wanted to be healed, we would have to say, "well, not quite yet." Do we want to be healed? Do we want to forgive everyone who has hurt us? Are we ready to humble ourselves and admit our own faults and ask for forgiveness from others? Are we ready to be healed in this way too? And if not, what do we still want to hang on to and what's our excuse?

Tuesday-It’s taken me years to realize that God loves us stones. Us stones, whom others ignore because we aren’t happy Christians on high holy days. Us stones, who judge ourselves harshly for not being who and what we wish we could be but can’t. Us stones, who still feed the children and get up and go to work even when we feel worthless. Us stones, who neglect the things we love and need. Us stones, who render cries of anguish rather than shouts of joy. Us stones, who survive sleepless nights and suicidal depths.Jesus saw the rocks that others ignored. In those times when I can’t move, when I am a stone, God is the earth upon which I rest. I believe that Jesus sees my immobile, non-palm-waving, stone life as a testimony.

Wednesday-"David was a multi-faceted character. Unlike the hagiographies of saints that tend to leave out the darker aspects of their personalities, the Hebrew scriptures offer us a wide array of figures with their shadows and struggles, as well as triumphs and victories. I appreciate reading about the full spectrum of human experience in these scripture stories." --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD How does it make you feel when you realize that many, if not all, scriptural figures, along with the saints and mystics, together form a communion of saints and sinners, each one a human being just like you and me?

Thursday-“The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.” ― Stanley Hauerwas,

Friday-“I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

Saturday-Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!Here in thy harbors for a while/ We lower our sails; a while we rest/ From the unending, endless quest.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow