Presby-Musings

Yesterday I experienced something that I'm still thinking about deeply. It was one of those moments when you find yourself so emotional that you wonder where the emotions are coming from, and you don't quite know what to say about why you felt them.  I tried to chalk it up to the fact that I'm probably holding a lot of my emotions pretty close to the surface lately, and it doesn't take much to get to a place where they come rushing out, and sometimes all at once.  It's not been uncommon during this whole quarantine season that I've found myself feeling like I'm experiencing sadness, joy and anger all at the same time.  What caused this flood of emotions?  It was actually something I had written almost fifteen years ago, and then had reworked it into a longer piece about five years later for a blog post on a now defunct blog.  My dad was cleaning out some things, and found print copies of it that my mom had printed it up, and stored in a box. S...

One of the things I've noticed about myself as I've been sloughing my way through this coronavirus quarantine is that I haven't had the kind of discipline I hoped I would have.  When all of this started, I decided to look at it as a positive.  I would read more, write more, set up a makeshift gym in my garage and work out every day.  I wanted to eat healthy, go for more walks and maybe even dust off my bike and begin to ride again.   Instead, I find my days rushing by, and I feel like I'm working harder than I have in a long time.   I have a stack of books on my desk that I have wanted to read, but instead they sit there indicting me with their presence, accusing me of laziness.  I ate peanut butter, jelly and crackers last night while watching a movie---after a whole bowl of cereal.  All of my workout aspirations have been just that---aspirations.  My bike hasn't moved.   Based on the number of similar stories I'v...

Today was one of those days.   I'm feeling the weight of quarantining a bit more today.  Many of the people in my life that I care about are struggling.  I'm doing the best I can, but I'm struggling, too.   I haven't been taking as good care of myself as I should be either. I need to exercise more, and eat less.  But I'm stressed and I'm not doing well at either of those things.  In situations like this I tend to try to do more things, add more deadlines to my life, impose impossible expectations on myself and generally try to control everything I can.   I can safely report that this pattern is not working for me all that well right about now.  Mostly because I can't control almost everything around me, and even if I  could I'm not sure that I would make the right decisions.  I'm not telling you all this so that you will feel sorry for me--please don't.  I'm in a far better situation that so many others....

The other day I was reading a volume of Mary Oliver's collected poetry, and I ran across this bit of stanza from her poem "Blackwater Woods," and I jotted it down:  To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. If you have never read any Mary Oliver--you should.  This bit is particularly amazing to me.  I've been thinking about it for several weeks, as a matter of fact.  Sometimes it takes a while before I'm ready to reflect on something that speaks to me.   So here's what I'm thinking about this poem...  I love the way Oliver situates the life lesson that she's conveying here within the context of mortality, and the frailty that we experience as finite beings, only here on this earth for a breath it seems.   There's a fragility inherent in her words, the image that ...

When I was a kid I used to wish that God would speak to me like God spoke to all of those people in the Bible I would read about.   The Bible would say things like:  "The word of the Lord came to Moses..."  "God spoke to Abraham, and said..."  "And God said to Job..."    The list of people in the Bible who heard God speak to them is fairly extensive. Which made me wonder why God had stopped talking to people.  Because I always assumed that when God spoke to these people it was in an audible voice.  I was told by the people in my faith community that God no longer did those kinds of things because the time of "signs and wonders" had passed, and we were kind of stuck relying on faith... or the Bible... or some preacher who pontificated about what was right and wrong.  But then I would hear all of these people say things like:  "The Lord told me..."  "God said to me..."  "God just spoke to me, and..."...

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 The...

Todays lectionary text comes to us from Lamentations chapter 3:1-20, which reads:   3:1 I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of God's wrath; 3:2 he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; 3:3 against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long. 3:4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; 3:5 he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; 3:6 he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago. 3:7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me; 3:8 though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; 3:9 he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked. 3:19 The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! 3:20 My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me... It's Holy Saturday.  This is the day when Christians throughout the ages have spent imagining, wondering... and waiting. ...