Presby-Musings

Throughout Holy Week I'll be sharing some prayers from a book I've been using as a prayer guide through Lent: Prayer: Forty Days of Practice.  I hope that these prayers and the reflections that accompany them will be meaningful to you as we journey with Jesus through Holy Week.   Prayer for Tuesday of Holy Week:  May my awareness of faults in myself or others never open the door to spite but grant me a deep appreciation for grace.  Like the prayer from yesterday, this prayer has a two-fold focus for the one praying: Self & Others.  If we would enter fully into the power of this prayer, we would first need to recognize that our own faults are intimately connected to the faults we perceive in others.  A very kind and wise spiritual guide once taught me to repeat this phrase whenever I began to explore the faults I saw in other people--the kind of faults that cut me to the core, angered me beyond belief, or otherwise got my goat.  ...

Throughout Holy Week I'll be sharing some prayers from a book I've been using as a prayer guide through Lent: Prayer: Forty Days of Practice.  I hope that these prayers and the reflections that accompany them will be meaningful to you as we journey with Jesus through Holy Week.   Prayer for Monday of Holy Week:  May my disappointments in myself and others lead me to hope for and work for change rather than lead me to distance myself.  There's almost nothing worse than when someone lets us down, disappoints us or betrays us--especially when that person is close to us, a loved one or even someone we admire greatly. Perhaps the only kind of disappointment that can feel worse is when we let ourselves down. We've all been there.  It's when we make promises to ourselves we don't keep... or we stumble on our own pride and fall flat on our face... or we find ourselves in a situation where we've allowed our values to be compromised... These kinds disap...

Today is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. We need to read the story of how there were cheers and palm waving on Palm Sunday as Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and we also need to know that many of the same people who were shouting praises to God and lauding Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, were screaming "Crucify him!" five days later. And lest we get all superior from the sanctimony of our historical distance... we, too, are quick to turn from praise to jeers when God's plans don't coincide with our own.  Or when Jesus turns out to be the exact opposite of how we've constructed him. That's a good sermon.  I've preached that sermon, and I may preach the same kind of sermon again.  But this year I've decided to focus on something differe...

When I was a kid and just learning how to ride my bike, I foolishly decided that I was going to ride down what seemed to me like the steepest hill in all the world.  There was a moment before I pushed off and began my descent that I remember thinking, "I'm not sure this was a good idea." or whatever the equivalent of that thought would be for a six-year-old boy.  I'm sure it was more like, "Oh no! This is bad!  Mama!?  Dad!? Jesus!?  Anyone!?"   By now you can probably tell where this story is going.  Things got hinky fast as I picked up speed down that hill.  The front tire began to wobble, and instead of trying to use my brakes, I stuck out my legs.   The thing about falling on asphalt from a bike when you're wearing shorts and traveling at what feels like the speed of sound is that it doesn't hurt at first.  You feel it more intently, however, when you look down and see most of your leg and the palm of one hand skin...

Yesterday the story broke of an actual photo that has been taken of a black hole in space some 55 million light years away in a galaxy known as M87.   The photo shows some of what scientists have suspected for years based on Einstein's theory of relativity, which just goes to show you how freaking smart Einstein was.  But to a person, the scientists interviewed about the photo stated that despite all that was confirmed, there was still so much that wasn't.   One of the headlines read, "Stare Into the Unknown."   I love that.  I love the fact that there is even more uncertainty about the nature of black holes than there was a day ago.  I love the fact that sometimes even the smartest people on the planet have to shrug and say, "I dunno."   What I don't love is that it seems to be easier for scientists to do this than most of us who call ourselves Christians.  It occurs to me that if those of us who call ourselves Chri...

I look at broken things and all my eyes and heart can see are beautiful possibilities. - Tiffany Aurora My grandfather died when I was ten years old.  The only lasting, vivid memories I have of him are from a few impressionable moments that are embedded in my mind.  There was the gift of a book, an afternoon learning to tell time from his watch, watching him smoke his pipe and listen to polka records... And the day I spent with him in the junkyard of the old farm where my dad grew up in Eastern Colorado.  We dug in around the rusting parts of old cars that day, and he would tell me where each, disparate hunk of metal I dug up had once belonged.  He was never stumped.  There were times when he would have to hold a piece of rusty metal in his hands for a moment, but he would always recall what kind of car it had been a part of, once upon a time. Sometimes I see my own life like that small junkyard.  There are plenty of pieces and parts that I've bu...

A few years ago, there was a spate of uber-popular Christian books that made the rounds in Church-y circles, and like a number of my pastor friends, I decided I probably needed to read them in order to be able to speak to them properly. Truth be told, I did get a lot out of those books, and I'm glad I read them, but they did seem a lot like a lot of the popular "self-help" books on the non-fiction bestseller lists--only with Bible verses.  What has since struck me is that most of the authors of the aforementioned books all seemed to be addressing the same kind of issue within the Christian church: How to live the Christian life in a way that is more consistent with Jesus' teachings, and more winsome to people outside the church. Interestingly, in almost every case the propositions the authors put forward were grounded in the notion that its personal piety that is the key to a more authentic Christian life.   In other words, if you change your habits and g...