Presby-Musings

There have been so many times in my life when I said or did the wrong thing.  Somehow, by accident or an oversight on my part, but there have been plenty of moments when my shadow self took the controls, and I absolutely embraced the darkness.   We all know what this feels like.  When we let anger, unbridled passions, foolhardiness, and a host of other dark companions lead us down the primrose path to destruction, we know at some level that what we are doing is wrong, but we do it anyway.  And then comes the regret after the dust settles, and it seldom arrives gently.  For some of us, regrets can become lifelong burdens that we carry around with us, unwilling or unable to lay them down.   One of the hardest things we are ever asked to do is forgive ourselves. We replay old mistakes, revisit painful memories, and carry guilt long after the moment has passed. Even when we believe God forgives us, we often struggle to extend that same grace inward....

This past weekend, I gathered with my family in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for my middle son's graduation.  It was a sweet time with him, and we got the chance to celebrate him well.   We had made extensive plans for how the weekend would go, but most of them ended up getting thrown out the window because of extended flight delays for most of the crew, coordinating schedules that didn't always work, and a host of other complications.   In other words, it was a typical family gathering that most of us experience whenever we get together with loved ones for an activity.   I had some time to reflect on this, and I was surprised to discover that I have actually gotten much better at surrendering the outcomes when my plans go awry, which they often do.  At the very least, I am learning imperfectly.   In the end, fond memories were made, joy was felt, and my son was grateful and happy to be surrounded by his family as he marked a major milestone ...

Yesterday, as I was driving from Austin to Fayetteville, Arkansas, I felt really good about how I'd timed the trip to avoid traffic in Dallas and began to believe I might actually arrive a bit earlier than I'd expected.  And that's when I began to encounter what would be at least a dozen or more construction zones on my route.  There were at least seven of those that were lane closures that brought traffic to a standstill.   There were all kinds of signs at these construction zones about worker safety, but almost all of them were completely devoid of workers.  I felt my frustration begin to grow and then simmer into full-fledged anger, which then devolved into a ten-minute rant about contstruction zones in my car to no one in particular.   At some point, though, I felt a little sheepish about getting angry and decided to reflect theologically on the whole thing, which usually helps me see things differently.  Here's what I ended up thinking about ...

Today I am driving to Arkansas to celebrate my middle son Jackson's college graduation, which is tomorrow.  It seems as though it was only a short time ago that we were settling him in for his first semester.  A lot has happened in the past four years, and as I look back now, it all seems like a blur.  He was still a teenager when he began, and now he's a young man.  These next couple of months will be the last he spends "at home," and then he'll be on his own.   And so it goes, the passage of time.  It sneaks up on us, surprising us with what we already know in the core of our being: how brief yet beautiful life can be.   Author Lawrence Sanders summed it all up when he wrote, “It has all gone so fast... Like a dream. How is it the days crawl by and yet the years fly?”  Those words carry a truth that almost everyone feels sooner or later. In the middle of ordinary life, time can seem unbearably slow—appointments, responsibilities, sleep...

  It's not an easy thing to try to follow Jesus' example.  I mean, how do you even do that?  I've spent most of my life trying to figure that out.  The best thing I've come up with is to say that "I'm stumbling after Jesus."   And, boy, do I stumble sometimes.  I think, if we are all being honest, we would have to admit the same thing.  But I have discovered something over time that has given me some hope that I might one day figure a few things out.   There's this question that I have begun asking myself when I am confronted with difficult decisions, challenging people, issues that need resolved, and just about every difficult moment you could think of:  “What does love require of me?” It is a simple question, but if we are honest, it may also be one of the hardest questions a follower of Jesus can ask. Because love rarely calls us toward what is easiest. Love asks us to be patient when we are frustrated, compassionate when we are ...

Many years ago, I left the church of my youth as well as any faith I had in God, at least the faith that I was handed by the church I left.   For years, I never darkened the door of a church, and I thought I was doing just fine without it. But when my former wife began encouraging me to return to church, I eventually relented, and we found ourselves in a Presbyterian church just down the road.  There were things that I was uncomfortable with, but more than anything, I found myself crying every Sunday, as I came to realize that there were other ways to be Christian than how I'd been raised, that God is love, and that I was beloved.   It took years for that to sink in completely, and over time, I've had some great guides along my journey with the Church.  One of those was Rachel Held Evans, an author who had been raised in a similar background as mine.    In her book Looking  for Sunday,  the late Rachel Held Evans chronicled her search fo...

The poetry of Mary Oliver has been very important to me for some time.  For several years, I would read an Oliver poem every day as part of my personal devotional time.  There is one poem that stands out to me, "Wild Geese," and I want to share it in full:  You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” ― Mary Oliver I love ho...