Presby-Musings

I've shared the following confession here before, but it bears repeating today because I have some incredible revelations that speak directly to it.  For years, I've heard a voice in my head occasionally.   Most of the time, it tells me negative things about myself, like "You're an idiot," "You always do this," or "Story of your life..." When I've made a mistake, even a minor one, those phrases really ramp up.   But sometimes it will utter a soft, wistful question like "Don't you wish...?" or "Think of what might have been...?" The moments when I hear those phrases are heartbreaking and make me feel sad and sometimes hopeless.   There have been times when the voice got really dark.  I'm not going to share those messages, though.  Even from a vantage point of peace (which I feel right now), I don't want to give them any power.   Sometimes, the voice gets stuck on repeat, especially when things are not going we

No spiritual thinker, writer, or theologian has influenced me more in the past fifteen years than Fr. Richard Rohr.   I had the opportunity to meet him in person some years ago, and when he signed my copy of his book The Universal Christ,  he chuckled to see how many Post-It notes were sticking out from its pages.   "Well, I'm glad you read it thoroughly," he told me.   Fr. Richard has written and spoken a great deal on the idea of an eternal rhythm within the Universe---something he calls the Wisdom Pattern.   The pattern goes like this:  Order > Disorder > Re-order.   This is the pattern of all of Creation, us included.  As we journey through life, we experience almost everything within this pattern.   We begin with something orderly that makes sense to us, and then disorder inevitably arrives due to circumstances, trauma, new revelations, or dramatic change.  If we are patient and determined, we will find re-order on the other side of the disorder.  However, afte

The other day, I was reading through a collection of poems by the 13th-century poet Rumi and came across one that blew me away.   After reading it a half dozen times, I decided to write it down to think about it more until I felt like writing about it.  Well, today, I felt like writing about it.  It hit me suddenly, and I feel like sharing.  So first, here's the poem:  how sad that I am alone in this odd time sailing in the sea  seeing no shoreline moving the boat  in a grim dark night  in God's water  with God's grace  At first blush, you might think this poem to be a bit on the darker side. It reflects a lostness, a sense of melancholy and resignation.  There's almost a hopelessness in the first few lines.  But then it takes a turn with the last two.  In the last two lines, the speaker describes being alone on the sea with no shore in sight on a dark night.  But then the speaker declares that they are "in God's water" and "with God's grace."

After a conversation with a church member about the possibility of forming a grief support group at our church, I've been contemplating some things.  The first thing I have been mulling is that none of us get out of life alive.    There's no bonus round for good behavior, and no amount of riches can buy one for you.  When it's your time to depart from this earthly reality, you will go.   If you're lucky, the end will come at a ripe old age, and you'll get to drift away peacefully.   At one of my former churches, one of the members in his late 80s passed away on Christmas Day after eating a wonderful meal, surrounded by his family, and stretched out on the couch watching football.   Sign me up for that.  But there are times when we are struck by the fact that death can come for people much younger, some in the seeming prime of their lives.  It's a hard thing to fathom, but it's also part of the frailty of our very existence.   So there's that bit of morbi

Today, we are continuing a sermon series that will take us through September as we explore the Gospel lectionary texts from Matthew.   This sermon series will take us through some of the key teachings and lessons from the life of Jesus as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel—to hear the Good News directly from Jesus himself.  Many people in our current culture claim to speak for Jesus, yet when you hold up what they are saying next to the actual words of Jesus, it doesn't add up.   This is why it's important to go directly to the source and read Jesus's stories and teachings.  If we are going to call ourselves Jesus-followers, it makes sense to know what he wanted us to do to follow him more fully.  Today, we will read a story where Jesus took his disciples to the Gates of Hell to explain how big the Good News is.  And Peter makes an incredible claim about who Jesus is as well.   Intrigued?  I hope so.   Let’s dig deeper into Christianity's claims about Jesus—Who do we say he i

I've been working on trying to become a better version of myself.   Self-improvement is not an easy thing.  We all know this.  There are a hundred obstacles in our way every time we choose to go down the path toward inner peace, abundant living, and defiant hope.   Sometimes it feels like every time we determine that we will be better, do more, attend to our soul, learn to forgive, strive toward freedom, and generally try to discover our truest and best selves, we are almost inviting hardship.   For example, you decide that you will start going to the gym regularly, and suddenly, you seem to have a ton of scheduling conflicts that get in the way.  Or you keep hitting the snooze button on your alarm.   In my house, we simply say, "Alexa! Snooze!"  And our erstwhile Amazon device will comply without ever asking us, "Didn't you say you were going to the gym?"  Perhaps you discover great peace in meditation and decide to find a place and time to meditate during

"One day at a time" is possibly one of the most difficult propositions to live by.   While it may have origins in recovery programs, it's become a well-used phrase in the wider culture, so much so that I feel we don't give it the attention it deserves.  It's the sort of proposition that seems reasonable and wise when offered to us by a friend or a loved one as a possible way forward when we're struggling.  But living one day at a time is harder than it might seem.   Living daily, taking each one as it comes, requires tremendous trust, surrender, and defiant hope.  Each of those things is hard enough to come by in their own right, but all together... that really raises the bar.   I thought about a story in the Hebrew Scriptures where the concept of living one day at a time was first outlined.  It occurs in the book of Exodus, where God provides sustenance to the Hebrew people in a miraculous way.  Each morning, a layer of a bread-like substance would appear on

As I wrote here a few days ago, the world we live in is full of hard edges, and broken ground.  The terrain isn't always smooth for us in our life's journeys.   Even so, it's at those hard edges and fissures in the earth, so to speak, that we find God's presence and grace.  In fact, it's in those difficult places that we can feel God's presence more acutely if we are willing to open our hearts to Divine love.  This isn't easy for most of us.  To hold on to love and to be open to learning through our trials and tribulations is one of the most difficult challenges any of us will face.  So many of us feel our faith flagging in those moments.  We wonder why we are going through hard times.  We begin to doubt the goodness of God.  Maybe we even walk away from church because it starts to feel like an exercise in futility.   Because so many of us were taught at one point or another that God is the one who is putting us to the test.   We were instructed in our faith

My mom would have been 79 yesterday.  It's been nearly six years since she passed away, and I miss her more than usual on milestones like those.   It's funny what you think about when your grief over the loss of someone dear returns to you (as if it ever really left, right?).   Yesterday I remembered when we forgot my mom's birthday, probably twelve years ago or more.  We had stuff going on that day and were going a hundred miles an hour with our kids in tow, and the whole day passed before we realized it.   I felt like the worst son in the world.   Of course, she forgave me.  She always did.   I'm embracing my grief.  I want to feel it.  The pang of loss and the ache of missing her are welcome within me.  I'm discovering that those feelings help me remember her over time, so I let them in without question when they come knocking.   I spent about half an hour looking at her photos on her legacy Facebook page.  She always took photos at family events that no one else

William James (1842-1910)  was America's most influential philosopher.  He was also a psychologist and spiritual seeker whose work inspired Alcoholics Anonymous and established empirical psychology.   He also suffered from bouts of depression, suicidal thoughts, and restlessness that plagued him for much of his young adulthood.   But his belief that life was worth living and that there was truth and beauty in both pleasure and pain ultimately drove James to a fuller understanding of living abundantly.   In 1868, James wrote a letter to one of his close friends who was battling depression, and this quote from the letter perfectly sums up what he'd learned in his study and reflection:  Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon, for

Today we are continuing a sermon series that will take us through September as we explore the Gospel lectionary texts from Matthew.   This sermon series will take us through some of the key teachings and lessons from the life of Jesus as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel—to hear the Good News directly from Jesus himself.  Many people in our current culture claim to speak for Jesus, yet when you hold up what they are saying next to the actual words of Jesus, it doesn't add up.   This is why it's important to go directly to the source and read Jesus's stories and teachings.  If we are going to call ourselves Jesus-followers, it makes sense to know what he wanted us to do to follow him more fully.   Today we will be reading a story where it’s hard to believe that Jesus said what he said—to a poor, suffering woman, no less.  She asks him for help, and he responds with a dismissive insult.  As we're going to learn, Jesus acted appropriately to her according to traditions of 1st-c

The work of Cistercian monk and Christian mystic Fr. Thomas Keating on the contemplative life has changed the lives of millions of people.   Keating originated what is known as centering prayer---a form of contemplative practice that has spread worldwide.  Fr. Keating also wrote extensively on the "Purgative Way," which he defined as letting go of the ego to draw closer to God and others.  He believed that letting ourselves be "purged" of our false selves was integral to leading a more contemplative and congruent life.    One of the most profound things I've read from Keating about this includes the following quote:  The Purgative Way consists in becoming aware of how our unconscious needs affect ordinary daily life, including our service of God.  It is unsettling for us to realize that, mixed in with our good intentions are...infantile attitudes.  Keating says that even when we do good if it's done with the wrong motives, we're serving ourselves more th

Some folks might describe it as "having a bad day" or that they are "riding the struggle bus."  Others might say they are "feeling down" or "playing a bad hand."  There are still others that might refer to it as "a terrible season," a "stroke of bad luck," or say that it's "just something I'm going through."   Call it what you will; suffering is something that touches it all.  The culture within which we inhabit is suffering-averse, as I've mentioned here before.  It sells a pipe dream to most of us that we shouldn't suffer if we are willing to do what it takes or pay whatever it costs to feel better.  And we buy what it's selling.   Even if what we buy is merely one more thing to numb our pain.   Then there's the issue of everyone else's expectations which we also deal with.  When feeling gutted with grief, overcome with sadness and despair, we do everything we can to hide it from the res

The other day, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and saw a snippet of a sermon video from a well-known mega-church pastor preaching about being "successful" as a Christian.  If you didn't know it was a sermon, you might have thought the guy was addressing a corporate retreat or self-help gathering a la Tony Robbins.  His prosperity-Gospel-fueled litany of exhortation essentially stated that Christians not only should desire prosperity but deserve it more than most people.  And he didn't fail to mention that if a Christian isn't prospering, it's probably because they lack faith or need to be holy enough.  As I watched the video, I felt despair over what constitutes Christianity in America these days.   This mega-church pastor draws tens of thousands a week to attend one of his church's many satellite locations all over the South.  And there are scores more like him all over the country---all preaching a similar message.  Not once did he mention lovi

"Everyone makes mistakes."  This universal truth is one of the most underrated platitudes in the history of platitude-ness.  That last word isn't really a word.  I made it up.  It should be a word, though.   We all know it.  We have said it.  We've had it said to us.   And yet, even though this platitude is so widely known, used, and re-used from generation to generation, most of us feel it's true for other people... but not for us.  So many of us are quite willing to offer grace to others who make a mistake, a poor decision, or take a wrong path, but when it comes to ourselves, we aren't as grace-filled.  Now plenty of folks act oppositely, so there's that.  We've all met those people in our life, and there may have been seasons when we've been unable or unwilling to call ourselves out on our own junk.   But the fact is, there are far more of us who never give ourselves a break.   I know what it's like to regret past mistakes and wrong decisio

One of the most challenging things we face is when our faith takes a hit----when we find ourselves experiencing a "dark night of the soul." So many things in life can test our faith and send us spinning.  A loved one might pass away, or we experience the loss of a relationship.  We might experience the shock of a bad health diagnosis for ourselves or someone we love.   We might also go through the devastation of financial ruin, the loss of a career, or watch our kids or grandkids deal with suffering, anxiety, or addiction.    Any of these things can challenge our faith, but when we feel beset by more than one challenge, it can send us into doubt, uncertainty, and fear.   God knows, I have had more than my share of moments like that, which might seem odd for a pastor to admit.  Still, I know what it's like to wonder where God is amid life's challenges.   I recently read something by Otis Moss III, who addressed this idea after reflecting on a moment when he stood in th

Today we are continuing a sermon series that will take us through September as we explore the Gospel lectionary texts from Matthew.   This sermon series will take us through some of the key teachings and lessons from the life of Jesus as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel—to hear the Good News directly from Jesus himself.  Many people in our current culture claim to speak for Jesus, yet when you hold up what they are saying next to the actual words of Jesus, it doesn't add up.   This is why it's so important to go directly to the source and read Jesus's stories and teachings.  If we are going to call ourselves Jesus-followers, it makes sense to know what he wanted us to do to follow him more fully.   Today we will explore the story of the Apostle Peter and the time that he and the other eleven disciples were in a freak storm on the sea of Galilee, and Peter became only the second person ever to walk on water.  Jesus was the first, in case you were wondering.  But first, let me sh