Childhood charm

Ella’s round wide face with bright large eyes catches the elders’ gaze. They watch, her child life appeals to them. The sparkle in her eyes is reflected at the corners of each mouth. The softness of her glowing cheeks echoed in the smiling lines on each face. Youth and old age kiss silently, spiritually. Vicarious dreams inter the souls of the honored elders as they look on the child.

We have found our children to be a point of entry in to the solitary lives of many individuals. A new unfamiliar place, a new church, restaurant or doctors office is soon overtaken by their childish charm. To be sure they are sometimes embarrassing and misbehaved, but at their best they are ambassadors of our families love for each other to those around us. Ella is so good at making friends there have been times that she will adopt a new, strange, family at a restaurant and sit with them until our food arrives. We smile and watch her wearily, and somehow have a silent connection with the new members of our family.

The God Machine

Deus ex machina comes to the rescue again. In ancient Greek plays, when the plot was too thick, and a resolution too hard, a god was lowered in a machine and solved all the problems: the god from the machine. The Greeks had it right. Our critics today look and say that you can’t tie up loose ends so neatly, or you can’t introduce new information or characters at the end to solve everything.

I know better. Come what may, Ella breaking a brand new DVD trying to get it out of its case, or pouring juice on the computer, come cranky spouse or dark day, come cold blooded evangelicals with eyebrows of judgment, the god machine comes to my rescue. Either the sculpture of boiler, tubes and steam is more loving and powerful than the God of my heart, or dear machina is his own instrument. For nothing cures the attitudes of the heart or the maladies of the mind than a well-timed espresso.

Resurrection comes in two-ounce shots.

Later that day...

Though perhaps more responsive than the almighty (a shot of espresso is pulled in thirty seconds), machina is also a fickle friend who’s company is enjoyed only a little at a time. Manic days of too much caffeine and my concentration floats and flits like butterfly on the wing. The molecules in my body vibrate at the resonance of espresso. All else is empty – hollow. Food, I think, may fill the void and calm my vibration. My thoughts and humors are as flighty as my liver and pancreas. Heavy and substantive ideas are solid food, and I hunger, not out of need, but emptiness, want of fullness – of balance – of solidity – of depth. Enter the almighty upstage left.

Our Search for community

I recently attended a community Lenten service at Unionville Moravian church. As we wait for the service to start, I look around with warmth at the community I have been apart of for nearly three years. I think about how important that sense of community has become to me.
We sit in rows, mostly with our own churches. Some chat happily with a friend behind them. Normally, the walls of another church separate them. Others pray, or like me, look around absorbing the common spirit of community. Even before we say holy words in unison – even in the silence – we are one.
Elderly resting in pews of social activity, children defying coral, men and women worn from work – by the generation we come, enjoying and strengthening each other. Across the street and a few blocks down another group of people, enjoy community around the bingo table. In still another place, the sportsmen’s club feels the spirit of community.
We live in small towns, but it seems we are all searching for a place in our community. We are in a time when the hard work of a hard economy splits our communities and commuters find their living far from home. When downtowns dwindle and our sense of community could be splintered by a sense of depression and the hardships of making a living, the church fills up back to front with people from every congregation to enjoy each other and remember what living is really about – in community.
I share a smile and a wave with the pastor of another church across the isle from me. What we share is more, though, than a profession, a smile or a wave. We share the warmth of friendship, eyes of care knowing we are parts of the same whole. So even with out words the bond is sure. The spirit of community binds us.
Our somber reflection is broken as Father John disappears into his seat behind the pulpit saying, “I’ll be back here.”
As a community, we share a laugh. Together.

Lost memories

It is strange the things you remember. The kids got a matchbox car with a launcher in a box of cheerios today. It reminds me of my first moving day.

I was six. I remember the parsonage being empty, and walking through the bare basement, making sure I didn’t forget anything. Of particular concern was a matchbox car. I lost it months earlier. I carried the red plastic key that launched it with me. Even with every thing cleaned out, I never found it.

disapointment

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Why would he do that? Why? Are his gifts defective? He has given us three cars, all of them gifts made by his people. Why is it that all three do not run?

Why would he send loving visionary people to our church only to take them away? Why give the church momentum only to hit a wall? I am so disappointed today. Disappointed in what a few weeks ago were his marvelous blessings.

Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

A story about "The Works of Anton Chekhov (One Volume Edition) 1929"

The Works of Anton Chekhov (One Volume Edition) 1929

by anton chekhov

I just read The Fish. I have never read a more disturbing story in my life. What is most disturbing isn’t the slightly dark humor of the one that got away, but the really dark humor that the fish was an Eel-pout. Who would fish for that?! In my extensive experience with Eel-pout, as they are the fish I have caught most, I know them to be the Anti-Chris.

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Toddler Ministry

Aged three years Ella already knows some of the key differences and similarities between the great church traditions.  She can tell a Methodist church from a Moravian church and ours she calls, “My Church.”  The one thing she knows every church has is a nursery.  To her it is a playroom. The haven of toys to get about the real business of being at church: play.  

We had our community Lenten service at Trinity UMC tonight.  We don’t know where the nursery is there.  Lo and behold! Ella actually sat with us and was good!  I wonder if there is a connection.  

I have long wondered about nurseries.  I hold to ideals that long to have my children next to me in worship.  I want them to know that they too are valuable members of the community of faith.  They minister as well as receive ministry in each service.  Or at least that is what I imagine.  In reality the last couple of Lenten services in particular have been extremely difficult.  Ella and Foster would not sit with us, and our attempts to rein them in resulted in tantrums.  

Have I been wrong these last few years?  When I would tell people that I think kids should be in the service with the adults, I got looks and comments to the effect of “just wait when you have kids you’ll feel differently.”

I do… Now I don’t know what to do.  How do I instill in Ella and Foster that they are to participate in the service when Elaine (or me when I’m not up front) can’t participate because they distract her.  

My jouney with Che

The Motorcycle Diaries (Widescreen Edition)

by Walter Salles

Traveling with Ernesto Guevara through his America, seeing the injustice of the human experience through his eyes is enough to make a revolutionary out of any of us. I long to change… the world? Is that too pretentious? I ache to make the kingdom of God real on earth. Perhaps that is where Che and I depart. I hope that a change can be made without guns.

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Dualisms

Last night, after work, I had a great time of side splitting laughter with dear friends. We also had some interesting discussions before another strain of thought set in. Andrew condemns monotheists for their dualisms. I said, “I’m no dualist, I don’t want to be a dualist, I buck against dualism.” Orthodoxy claims no division between mater and spirit, heaven and earth, tangible and intangible, sacred and secular. Those are the distinctions of the heretics, Gnostics, Arians, Donatists, and Manachees.

May we never, sitting in our pews, living the lives of the Christian, compartmentalize our lives into dualisms of our own making. God is everything, in everything, and sustains all things through his will. What pantheist can claim such integration of the natural and divine?

A story about "BEST ERIC F RUSSELL"

BEST ERIC F RUSSELL

by Eric Frank Russell

I’ve been compelled to take a break from the dark comedy of Chekhov inticed away by the ingenious irony of Russell. We borrowed this book via inter-library loan because the forward was called “The Symbiote of Hooton, Alan Dean Foster.” I still don’t know why. But the si-fi is delightful and the irony satisfying.

I just read “Metamorphosite” and found the ending a feast for my longing soul. It echoed my feelings as I wrote the end to Anaximander’s Goggles Ah the Boundless! Ah eternity!

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