Presby-Musings

It’s (Still)The Season of Pentecost!  We're in it for a while yet, all the way to Advent, my friends.  And we are on the fifth and final week of our sermon series, "Citizens of Heaven," which coins a phrase from the Apostle Paul.  “What did Paul mean when he said that “Our citizenship is in heaven?”  It simply means that it doesn't matter what empire, powers-that-be, nation, politics, or any other entity that is vying for or even demanding our loyalty; our first loyalty is to the kingdom of God.    This series has helped us learn what it means to live according to the values of God’s kingdom.   Today, we will read a story about how Jesus attended a dinner party and acted as the ultimate buzzkill with a simple truth.   But first, let me become Captain Obvious for a moment and offer a statement.  We live in a status-oriented world. As much as we don't like to admit it, we do.  Even those among us who tend to eschew such things ha...

I won a literary award in my senior year of undergraduate work, bestowed upon me by the English department for a paper I did on John Updike's "Rabbit" novels.   It came with a $ 1,500 check and a certificate, which was pretty sweet because I was struggling financially.  I had been studying that semester with one of the preeminent Updike experts in the world, and we read just about everything that Updike had written.  The "Rabbit" novels captured my imagination because they were filled with so much angst, melancholy, and despair.  But there was also a spark of hope within them, buried beneath the malaise, and that's what I wrote about.  The main character was an antihero of sorts, filled with dread, longing, and a resignation that nothing seemed to improve with every passing year of life.  And yet, there was something that kept him going, a glimmer of hope for the future that persisted.    There's a line from Updike that goes like this: “The ...

My late mother's birthday was last week, and I had many ideas about how I would commemorate the day to honor her memory.  A friend told me that I should make a dinner that she would have liked, and I thought that was a great idea.  I also wanted to spend some time in the evening looking at some of her many photo albums and reminiscing.  But the day got away from me.  Some tasks needed to be done, including emails that required attention and writing projects that had to be completed.  I also didn't have any of the ingredients to make the dinner I had planned.   I ended up going to bed without pulling out the photo albums.  I didn't have the emotional energy to do it.   Then, on Monday of this week, I was digging through a box for something I needed, and discovered a scrapbook that she had created many years ago with the words "Poems" painted on the cover (yes, painted).  She had also decorated it with painted flowers.  Inside, I...

When I was a kid, I used to endure church services, imagining them as a form of torture, administered by sadists who particularly had it in for adolescent boys.  To be fair, the church services of my youth were a particularly dry affair, and entirely devoid of joy. No one was having fun.   It wasn't allowed.  They were designed to evoke a sense of guilt and dread (I was certain), so that you would be compelled to go down the aisle during the altar call to have a sweaty usher put his arm around your shoulder as you knelt on the steps leading up to the chancel, to pray with you about rededicating your life to Jesus, or something. I realize that was oddly specific. You see, I did go to the altar a time or two, but only when I had done something particularly bad the week before and wanted to hedge my bets in case God was irked about it.  When I got older, I stopped going.  I had basically given up on any real belief in God, and I figured that if a God existed ...

We've all seen them before.  The people outside of concert venues, large community gatherings, college campuses, and street corners.  They might have a bullhorn or a portable microphone system and are railing away so that everyone can hear them.  They are the Christian protesters and street preachers who show up uninvited to places and spaces where they feel they can "reach the most people."  Or tick off and disgust the most people, as the case may be.  I can't tell you how many of these people I've seen over the years, doing their thing and waving or wearing their signs---signs with not-so-loving statements on them like "God hates f*gs" or "Repent all you Sinners!" among other things.  One sign that I have seen over and over again goes something like this: "God is angry at sinners every day."  That particular sign can tell you everything you know about what a person believes about God.  And it also makes me feel sorry for whoever is ...

When I was getting my undergraduate degree at Florida State University, I had an amazing American Literature professor, who was truly passionate about what he did, and who I became rather close to.  One day, we were meeting in his office (which looked exactly like you would imagine an old school literature professor's office to look), and I noticed amid the clutter on his desk a little sign that said "Love It All."  He noticed me looking at it and offered to tell me what it meant to him.  My professor then went on to share one of the most important lessons I would learn in life.   He shared that for him, the sign was a reminder to love every aspect of his life, no matter what it was. Loving the good parts was easy, he told me, but loving the parts that aren't good, or that cause you pain, is much more difficult, but absolutely necessary if you want to have peace.  Interestingly, I've learned over the years that you sometimes need some distance from the hard...

It’s (Still)The Season of Pentecost!  Yeah, I know it's still going.  And we are on the fourth week of our sermon series, "Citizens of Heaven," which coins a phrase from the Apostle Paul.  “What did Paul mean when he said that “Our citizenship is in heaven?”  It simply means that it doesn't matter what empire, powers-that-be, nation, politics, or any other entity that is vying for or even demanding our loyalty; our first loyalty is to the kingdom of God.    This series will help us live according to the values of God’s kingdom, which Jesus talked about more than he spoke of anything else.   Today, we will read a story about Jesus healing a woman on the Sabbath and how that went over with the overly religious folk.  First, I want to talk about what happens when our “rules and regulations” act as blinders to seeing others, and what happens when we let them.  Have you ever experienced a moment when you felt unseen and unknown?  It's on...

I've been reflecting a bit more lately on the concept of gratitude, mostly because I need to keep reminding myself that gratitude is foundational for a life of serenity, and I have been struggling to feel serene.  I've been waiting for my house to sell for over 250 days.  I started this journey with dreams of selling it quickly at full price and all of the things I'd be able to resolve afterward.  Over the past many months, I have lowered the price several times, and my dreams have had to be recalibrated to meet reality.  Finances aren't fantastic, to say the least.  There is often way "more month at the end of the money," to coin a phrase that seems to fit.  And yet, I'm realizing that there are so many other aspects of my life that are better than they've ever been.  While the temptation is great to dwell on the negative, I'm doing my best to focus on what is right and good, rather than what isn't, and also out of my control.   I don't a...

Most of us can recognize harmful behavior in others pretty quickly.  We can easily diagnose what everyone else should do to become a better version of themselves. But when it comes to the same sort of analysis of ourselves, we often balk at telling ourselves the truth about who we are and what we need to change to live more fully.   I remember when I was a young man, I took the first opportunity I  had to move out of my parents' house as soon as I was old enough to do so.  I spent several years doing everything I could to put my sheltered life behind me.   I developed some bad habits during those years, many of which followed me for quite some time.  And as I got older, I realized that there were a lot of things I  needed to change, but I didn't want to because I not-so-secretly still got a lot of enjoyment (albeit short-lived) out of the way I was living.  I could see the faults of others very clearly, but I refused to see where I was h...

  In downtown Louisville, KY at the corner of 4th and Walnut, Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton had a mystical vision in 1958 that’s one of the most famous revelations in the history of spirituality.  There is a historical marker at that spot commemorating the event, which would change Merton's life.  Merton suddenly saw all the people around him glowing with a strange light. He described it like this:  “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers."  This vision would change the direction of Merton's spiritual and theological beliefs, and he would go on to become one of the most beloved spiritual authors in the world.   What Merton saw on that day was that Christianity was bigger than he had previously imagined, ...

I've had more than my fair share of moments when I have felt like God doesn't seem to know I exist, or worse: God knows I exist and has for some reason decided to abandon me to an uncertain future and an almost certain demise.  There have been seasons of my life when I prayed so fervently for God to simply give me a sign that God at least gives a crap about what I'm going through, and there has been nothing but silence on the other end of those prayers.  What I've learned (and am still learning, truth be told) is that God rarely responds the way I want.  In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to remember a time when I was longing for a sign from God and whatever came (if it came at all) wasn't at all what I expected.   God's ways are most assuredly not our ways, which is a hard thing to internalize for most of us.  Understanding this and learning to surrender and trust God no matter what our circumstances might be is one of the hardest things for us to accept. ...

  I'm an only child, so I grew up having to entertain myself without siblings to play with, which meant that I grew to handle being alone fairly well.  In fact, I needed it from time to time.   As I grew older, I spent a lot of time reading and listening to music alone, and I only had a handful of close friends with whom I spent time on occasion.  I realized that even though I was considered by most people to be outgoing, I had an introverted side to me that needed to be acknowledged.  But I never lived completely alone until this past year.  For my whole life, there were other people in whatever place I lived; parents, then roommates, spouse, and children.  I was 55 years old when I began living by myself after my separation and divorce.  It was different.  For most of my life, I had to intentionally seek out solitude, and then suddenly, I was decidedly alone.  I discovered that being alone had its advantages (I could watch whateve...

I tried my hand at tie-dying shirts this summer, which was a first for me.  I'd always been interested in learning how, and I figured if my 14-year-old kid could do it (he's made at least one at camp every year for six years), I could as well.   As it turns out, it's not quite as easy as the instructions on the tie-dye kit I purchased at Walmart claimed.   Still, I ended up being pretty pleased at the outcomes, and I learned something in the process: No matter how hard I tried to make them exactly perfect, each shirt I dyed came out different than what I expected, but each one was beautiful.  There is something about the act of creation that is both exhilarating and unpredictable.   I have come to believe the desire to do so lives in all of us, a Divine spark that is a gift from God, who longs for us to join God in the joyful work of creating.  In fact, it's something we were made to do.   From the very first chapter of Scripture, G...

I often write about my religious upbringing in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement in a way that is less than complementary, and for good reason.   There was a lot to criticize about the way we were taught to view the world, the Bible, and what it meant to be a Christian in that movement; a movement that still persists today, albeit mostly dressed up in a more mainstream way.    But I also have a lot of fondness for some of the things that I learned in my formative years that I still hold on to today.   I learned my passion for studying the Bible, and came to know many kind, well-meaning, and loving people who took an interest in and took up time with me when I needed mentors.  I became enthralled by powerful preaching styles that I have learned to incorporate into my own.  While there were plenty of things I was taught that I happily left behind once I discovered a new way to practice my faith, I do, in fact, owe so much to the religi...

There is this old aphorism that I have heard more than once in my life, but it's becoming increasingly appropriate lately.  It goes something like this:  "The older I get, the less I know."  Now, for some of us, that might explain why we go into a room in our house and forget why we went into it.  That's happened to me exactly three times in the past week.   But what that phrase really seems to be saying is that we have a choice to make with every passing year: continue believing that we have everything figured out, and that we don't need to learn or change, or become more flexible with age (which seems impossible at times), and more open to the joy of new experiences.  The latter is, in essence, true wisdom.  It is the ability to understand that you don't know everything, and to become set in our ways can destroy the childlike imagination we once had, and our sense of wonder along with it.  There’s a paradox at the heart of wisdom: the more...

This past Sunday, I was slated to sing a song with our band before the worship service.  Our band plays cover songs ten minutes before the worship services they lead, which makes for a fun atmosphere, and also lets everyone milling around in the foyer know that church is starting soon.   I had practiced the song ("Hooked On A Feeling" by Blue Suede) on my own a dozen times.  I rehearsed with the band at least four times, and I knew the lyrics by heart.   Until I stood up to sing, and completely forgot the first stanza.   In that moment, I decided that instead of lamely trying to keep going, I just needed a restart.  It pained me to do it, and I was embarrassed, but I figured since everyone in the room knew I screwed up, I may as well own it.   We restarted the song, and I made it through without any further mistakes, thanks be to God.  But even so, I was silently beating myself up over the stumble.  What I realized later w...