Presby-Musings

I don't bounce back from strenuous activities, road trips, music festivals, or a few too many scotches as I used to do when I was younger.  I know more than a few people reading this are feeling me now.  I'd salute you, but my elbow is sore for some reason that I cannot fathom.  I recently went to an outdoor music festival just north of Austin on the hottest spring day, with a heat index of 107 degrees.  I was there all day, enjoying the music, trying to stay in the shade, and not drinking enough water.  The short version of this sad tale is that I got dehydrated. Despite attending scores of outdoor music festivals, I have never been dehydrated until now.  It was a sobering and humbling experience.  Of course, the obvious solution would be to drink enough water and not other things that have the opposite effect of water.  However, another solution would be to avoid attending day-long music festivals when the sun is hotter than the sun's surface....

The other day, I read this line from a Mary Oliver poem and then jotted it down in my notes to think about:  Did you know the ant has a tongue with which to gather in all that it can of sweetness?   That quote may seem odd with the whole ant tongue image.  If you think about it too long, it feels downright icky.  The idea of ants crawling on me with their tongues scraping along... ewww.  So, let's not think about that, shall we? Instead, let's consider the deeper meaning behind Oliver's observation about the ant and its desire to gather all that it can of sweetness.  First, can we say that life can occasionally be a bit sour?   Let's concede that for the moment because it is accurate. That sad fact can also dominate our thinking about life in general.  For many people, sourness seems to be the only thing they can taste.   They gravitate to it like my kid does to Sour Patch Kids candy.  And before long, they start to believ...

Today is Trinity Sunday in the historic church calendar.  Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday of the season of Pentecost. It was established in the 1300s as a feast day of holy observance, and then in the early 1900s, it was raised to a primary of the first-class high holy day in the Catholic Church.  Trinity Sunday, as you might imagine, is a Sunday to celebrate the Holy Trinity, the doctrine that God is one but that God is also three.  Essentially, God manifests God's self through Father, Son, and Spirit, or in another way, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  This doctrine is mysterious and sometimes complex, making it difficult to get our arms around.  And I'm not going into that at all today. This is a different kind of sermon.  If you want to hear what I say about the Trinity, look up "Three Is A Magic Number" in the sermons online at my church's website, or find it in my blog if you'd like to read it.  Instead, I want to start today's sermon by dis...

I reworked this one from the archives. It applies to me now at the beginning of summer, and I hope it resonates with you.  I've been tired lately---the kind of tired that you feel inside, but not in your bones, more like in your spirit, or in your head, or your heart... if that makes sense.   It's a deep tiredness because I have been daydreaming about taking naps--really long, satisfying naps.  And not just any naps anywhere, mind you. I am talking about the kind of naps that are ingrained in my memory, the naps I took in special places in the world—holy places where I rested my mind, body, and soul.  On the green summer grass of a garden next to Christ Church College in Oxford, England.  On a chair on a patio outside a cafe in the Vatican, overlooking one of the papal gardens.   On a warm, sun-drenched rock in neck-deep water near the shore of Lake Tahoe On my grandmother's living room couch, across from a window fan that hummed and gently blew c...

Yesterday was a good day.  I spent the day monitoring brisket and pork belly in my smoker, along with some sausage, and a smoked cauliflower for a vegetarian guest who was coming for dinner.  When everyone arrived, laughter filled the house, and then we all tucked in to eat; I had a sense that something special was happening.  All three of my boys were there, along with my dad and stepmom.  My middle son had invited some friends over, most of whom I've seen grow up from gangly high schoolers to young men.  The summer night was kind of perfect, and the cares and troubles of the world got pushed aside for a while.  I felt a sense of peace, and joy that I carried with me to bed last night.   Sometimes, you experience holy moments in the world, and you often don't realize just how incredible they are until you've had time to reflect on them.  You might feel something at the time they are happening for sure.   It could be a sense of time...

The other night, I was driving on a dark road in the Hill Country, and I had to use my high beams to see the turns in the road.  The problem was I had to keep turning them off because so many cars were coming in the other direction.  There was a moment when I forgot to turn them off when I encountered an oncoming car on a relatively sharp turn.  When it struck me that I had essentially blinded the person, I felt so bad about it that I wished I could have turned around to follow them to apologize.  Then I decided that might be a good way to get shot.   We've all had someone do that to us, though.  We've been on the receiving end of some ignoramus who just left his high beams on as we passed them.   Sometimes, we've responded by flashing our own high beams in a passive-aggressive way to show our displeasure.  And there have been plenty of times when we've been the one who forgot, and blinded the heck out of some other driver, who may have ...

One of the best college classes I ever took was one that I didn't really want to take.   Because of graduation requirements, I had to take either Art Appreciation or something so lame that I've forgotten it since then.  I do recall that I reluctantly signed up to take the art class, grumbling that I had to and that it was held at night.  It didn't take long before I realized that night class was the highlight of my week.  Now, I don't ever use the kind of math I had to learn in college to graduate, but I have gotten the most out of that Art Appreciation class and then some.  I'll need to explain how.  I love museums, particularly art museums.  I have been blessed to visit some of the world's most famous art museums, including the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Galleries in London and Edinburgh, and many more.  Because of the class, I took many years ago, I learned about the...