One small step at a time brings us forward into the unsee-able future.
Zechariah 8:21
The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Come, let us go to entreat the favour of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’
Mark 14:26
When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Words of Grace For Today
Maundy, from the Latin word mandatum (command),’ refers to Jesus’ command to ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’
Life moves forward in time, one step at a time, one event progressing into the next. Sometimes the most simple decision or movement by us precipitates things momentous.
Today we remember Jesus act of washing the disciples feet, the act of a servant, done by the master out of profound and unconditional love. Jesus also washed Judas’ feet with all the others’.
How can we, physically isolated for everyone’s health safety, gather together to seek the Lord? We no longer need to seek the Lord’s favour. In our baptisms we have received the promise and the ongoing reality of God’s favour giving us freedom through forgiveness as a gift (grace). We also received gifts of the Holy Spirit that equip us to be the Love of Jesus for one another. Therefore, our seeking is not God’s favour for ourselves. Rather we seek that the favour, blessing, and promises of God may become a daily reality in the lives of our neighbours, the foreigners and strangers in our midst, and all of God’s creatures, indeed all of creation.
How can we not be more creative every day in the manner we exercise Jesus’ love given to us to share with others?
Some of the best news broadcast these days are exactly the creative efforts of people to share the goodness of life with others outside the isolation bubbles we must maintain.
Share the good news. Share Jesus’ love. Make it real. Sing.
One small step at a time, we move forward. The next event may see us hiding in fear and/or showing ourselves more clearly, suffering and/or singing still, mourning and/or filled with Christ’ own joy. Today we ‘wash each others’ feet’, figuratively and perhaps literally, not knowing what will come next, yet always trusting that God’s promises are sure.
See all that is fallen, even rotting with only a shell of bark. Remember, this too shall pass.
Psalms 51:14
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
John 16:20
Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.
Words of Grace For Today
The horrors of bloodshed are not part of the pandemic. That would make things even worse., as if worse is needed. We still pray for deliverance from this microscopic enemy, or those two legged animals who mindlessly, ignorantly spread it about so easily. It would be so nice to find those culprits and isolate them to put this to an end. But there is no ‘we’ or ‘them’. It is us. The latest is that asymptomatic people, like you and me (if you have no symptoms … yet), can be contagious. Turns out all our very necessary efforts to stop the spread are pretty minimal defences. Like the disease of sin, we easily cannot recognize who is already ill, though they display no signs of illness. So we need pray that we be delivered.
There is in this a great amount of mourning and weeping. First, we weep for what our defence efforts have cost us all, which is no small loss. Second, when loved ones and acquaintances succumb to this enemy, our grief seems to have no bounds.
God’s promises, always and here again, that our weeping and mourning will be turned into joy. We hold on to that promise, and it carries us forward through these difficult days.
See the big picture. See it in detail. See through the fog.
Zephaniah 3:15
The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.
Mark 4:40
He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’
Words of Grace For Today
Jesus paid heavily that we might be forgiven, and know we are forgiven, so that we can forgive others. Jesus frees us from our sins. We can turn our enemies away, by forgiving them so that they become God’s creatures, fellow sojourners on this planet earth. Given God’s truth for all occasions we need fear no disaster.
That does not mean disasters will not come our way.
Only that we need not fear them.
Fear cripples us. Anxiety cripples us. We revert to fight, flight, or freeze instinctual responses that cut off our reasoning. Great when we face a charging hyena or lion. But facing most everyday challenges and many extraordinary ones, like Covid-19, our instinctual, fear and anxiety based responses make their own disasters quicker than we realize.
Covid-19 responses need to be carefully planned, habitually and in great detail carried out, and reviewed and revised in light of the latest real, truthful information about the virus’ transmission and ways of surviving the illness when we or others in our care come down with symptoms.
Literally, fear and panic will definitely kill us, if not physically then in every other manner.
Why are we still afraid? This is not any kind of fear Jesus asks about, this is the fear that will kill us. Have we still no faith that Jesus will save us, even if we die? When we no longer fear death or illness or anything, then we can act with considered, wise actions, which not only protect us from Covid-19 but give us and those around us life, even as we self-isolate and keep physical distance from others.
One
of God’s gift to us humans is our ability to understand stories, to
hear them and experience what is in them, and to write stories to
convey more than just the words describe, or as in movies, more than
what the images portray by themselves.
Imagination More Than We Could Know
Imagination More Than We Could Know
Stories have the key to communicate the
most hidden, the most complex, the most poignant, the most critical,
and the most beautiful aspects of life itself; and in that
communication to the reader, listener, or viewer to teach something
new, to connect at an un-imagined level, and to reveal something even
beyond what the author, reader and creator conceived possible.
Our Words and Images Reach The Pinnacle and Depth of Beauty
Our Words and Images Reach The
Pinnacle and Depth of Beauty
This Lent we embark on 40 days of
fasting, reflection, prayer and meditation which themselves reflect a
long tradition of the preparation to hear the story of Passion week
and Easter Sunday, and which in themselves each year are a new story
for each one of us.
What is your story, the one you are always part of?
What is your story, the one you are
always part of?
What new will you learn, imagine,
encounter on your 40 day journey this Lent?
Can you see something new?
Can you see something new?
Lent has it’s own stories, worthy of
hearing again and again: Shrove Tuesday: the yeast and oil used in
one last meal so the house has none in it during Lent. The ashes of
our origins and ends as organisms on this earth. Marked in the sign
of the cross, branding us as belonging to Christ. No meat. Fasting
severe or limited. Giving up something. Engaging in something.
Praying daily or even hourly, especially for one’s enemies.
Can we see through the fog?
Can we see through the fog?
All this to prepare
our hearts, mind and souls to hear, imagine, and celebrate Jesus’
sacrifice and victory over death and all our sin.
Christ’s story is filled with Light!
Christ’s story is
filled with Light!
All this to prepare
our hearts, mind and souls to hear, imagine, and celebrate Jesus’
story
lived out in our lives.
For the last seven years I have been gaslit by so many people. First at home and then it spread through the church as the lay pastor started in, by people in the community recruited by the RCMP, the RCMP themselves, by lawyers, the prosecutors and even my own lawyers, and most recently by the judges and justices who created their own lies in order to convict me, and to deny my applications.
This
may be difficult for many to believe.
It
used to be unimaginable to me.
But
no longer.
Now
it is the truth that impacts my daily life, as my ‘ex’, the lawyers,
and the courts have completely ruined me financially driving me into
debt so far I cannot see the light or the tunnel. I have left to my
name a huge debt, a bicycle, a tent, a sleeping bag and my clothes. I
live alone in the woods. I survive on money borrowed from family and
friends, using borrowed highly modified equipment to survive the
elements on next to no money.
It
appears that the lies told about me and those who have told them, and
the judges who have ruled using them, have completely determined my
life.
This
is not so. They have determined some of the external circumstances of
my life, and they seem to persist at determining more. But they
cannot determine who I am and what I have done (or not done).
The truth reflects the beauty God created in the world, which lies do not change.
I am still the same kind, gracious, man of faith that I have always been, with a good set of skills and knowledge, and abilities, and above all the assurance that, because God loves me, I am able to love, forgive (or not as it is), breathe, and extend Grace as it is extended to me.
Those who have gaslit me, those who have repeatedly and intentionally lied about me, in order to try to create a reality about me that simply is not so; these people have not created a reality about me. They have created a huge set of lies.
Their lies do not determine who I am. They do not define me.
The fog of lies cannot conceal that lies are lies, as weeds are weeds.
Their lies determine who they are. Their lies define them.
My ex and the children I have long since forgiven. They were, at my ex’s invitation, my life, my love, and God’s gifts to me.
But all the others, those who are given authority and responsibility to investigate and rule based on the truth. those whose positions are to be respected, they are not only guilty; they make a habit of gaslighting others, and some have laughed at their maniacal fun at hurting innocent people.
As I am ordained to extend grace and forgiveness to all people whom I meet, I am also ordained to bind the sins of those who should not be forgiven. This is a rare thing. But these lies are all too common, oft repeated, and engaged in as sport, as the record of innocent men convicted by the courts belies.
The damage their lies do to the innocent men and the children is incomprehensible. They leave children in the care of people who create lies about men who healthily love their children. They leave children with sole parents who suffer psychotic breaks, who project their own faults on to others near them including the children and their spouses. They leave the children without a healthy parent, and with a most unhealthy parent, who does the unspeakable to the children, and then adds those terrible things to the list of lies about which they gaslight their spouses.
The damage is also to the spouse (and children) who lie to create a false and terrible story about their innocent men. Being believed when one lies, and encouraged even to lie more, disrupts any trust even the liar could possibly have in the just and fairness of the world. At any moment someone else could start lying about them and they would be ruined based on those lies.
The damage is to everyone, for at any moment anyone can start lying about anyone else, and the person lied about will be ruined, even though they are innocent. This is the destruction of trust, without which society disintegrates into a morass of nothing being true or trustworthy or healthy, for anyone.
This is who the people who gaslight others are: they are those who dismantle everyone’s ability to trust the rule of law, the word of people, the basic justness of our country. Many peoples, against whom prejudice and bias has run rampant, have known this for generations.
Now
I known it, personally.
No matter what you expect or believe, that leaf is there. The truth is there. No lie can change the truth.
Whether
you believe me or not is immaterial, but it is vitally important. You
could easily be next.
This is what those who gaslight others do to our country. This is who they are. This is how they try to determine others to be worse than themselves, but that is a futile effort. This is who they determine themselves to be: corrupters and perverters of all that is good.
Thus their sins are bound, and they are told, so that they are as aware as they can be made to be. They have time to amend their lives, through telling the complete truth about their lies, openly, publicly, and through making restitution as it can be made.
Then
they can be reconciled with their victims.
Until
the day of them telling the full truth or
God judging them, this is not something
they can leave behind. It is what they have to look forward to, to
that day when the Light of Christ will shine.
May it shine soon, now on this earth, during our lives. But if not,
then soon enough.
When the Light of Christ shines on what they have done, and the truth I have always provided, no witnesses or rules of evidence will be needed. God knows everything. There is no statute of limitations or excuses of lack of resources to judge fairly according to the truth. God knows the truth, the absolute truth. God will judge their sins.
I
am not determined by their gaslighting. I do struggle to survive the
effects, but I am blessed each day. I live thankful and even joyful
at times. I will survive until God brings me home to the New
Jerusalem, the city of light, into the room prepared for me by
Christ.
I
know who I am. I am blessed to have lived a very self-aware life.
Lies do not determine or define the person whom they are told about; they determine and define the person who tells the lies.
The truth always leaves tracks. The truth will be known. The Light of Christ will shine. It is and will be beautiful!
The reality of Gaslighting is that it is destructive for everyone, but most of all for those who tell the lies.
The
passages for this Sunday’s lessons are profoundly problematic.
Malachi
4:1-2a
Malachi promises that the day will come when arrogant and evildoers will be burned up entirely, stem to root. That is of course only Those, them, the others. And on that day We, us, those who revere God’s name, upon us (not them) the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in it’s wings.
2
Thessalonians 3:6-13
2
Thessalonians, either written by Paul or more likely a disciple of
Paul writing in his name (as was common and acceptable then,)
commands the readers to work for their food, and not be idle. And he
also commands that those who do not work should not eat! This
prescription to allow some people to starve has been used as
justification for all sorts of injustices worked against the poor.
Luke
21:5-19
The
Lukan passage deals with the end times, cautioning the listeners to
not be taken in by false prophets claiming to be the returned Christ.
Admonishing calm patience and faithfulness the passage ends with “By
your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Blown in the dark cold wind of self-righteousness, what are we to do?
Blown
in the dark cold wind of self-righteousness, what are we to do?
Unfortunately
we do not use Psalm 98 this week.
Sing
a new song to the Lord,
who has done | marvelous things,
whose right hand and holy
arm have | won the victory. 2O
Lord,
you have made | known your victory, you
have revealed your righteousness in the sight | of the nations.
… 9The
Lord
will judge the | world with righteousness
and the peo- |
ples with equity.
Or
perhaps it is a good opportunity that we do not use the Psalm.
While
each text is filled with directions on what to do as Christians, even
prescribing what things we must do in order to receive Salvation, we
believe and hold firm the faith and tradition that is handed on to
us, namely: that we are saved by grace alone, not by the merit of our
works.
We
interpret all scripture and spiritual thought through this lens: That
we are saved only by God’s act upon us, that we remain totally
sinners throughout our lives and at the same time God makes us,
through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice for us, totally saints. This
is a gift imputed to us, not infused into us. This gift is effective
in us, yet does not overcome the sinner that we remain, until Christ
comes again, God reckons righteousness to us, and we become saints in
the light of Christ for ever. These precepts are paradoxical, and we
believe they hold the truth of God’s Grace for us that cannot
logically be expressed. Faith cannot be grasped and controlled. It
can only we experienced and enjoyed with awe, or rejected with
consequences unknowable.
So what are we to make of these scriptural judgments of others and promises that we are not them, of the command that if we or others do not work we are not to eat, or the admonishments to earn our salvation?
Our
choices are four:
We could preach the problematic parts as if they were the Gospel of Christ ignoring that they are destructive to faith and community.
We could ignore or pretend to ignore the problematic parts of the texts. Preaching on Psalm 98 alone would be an opportunity to take this route.
We could preach a reinterpretation of the passages so as to proclaim a faithful Word, a true witness to Christ, but not mention that we are interpreting the passages to bring Gospel out of them. OR
We can be clear about the need to re-interpret and proclaim that need along with a clear proclamation of the Gospel after we re-interpret these passages according to Luther’s Gospel within a Gospel: that we are saved by Grace through Faith and not by merit of our works.
Gone are the days of colour and calm.
Gone
are the days of colour and calm.
The
Cold Hard Facts of the Gospel have arrived with the cold and snow in
late fall.
Preach as you will, but as for me and my empty “household”, the woods, squirrels and the occasional deer, we will enjoy God’s grace and preach it clearly, honestly, and profoundly as, as much as God gives me opportunity and energy to do so.
Of course, the squirrels really do not listen very well, and the deer have no patience, anxious as they are from hunters pursuits.
What
is clear from the lessons for this Sunday is that true discipleship
is costly.
As
costly as those we remember today, the veterans who have sacrificed
to give us the possibility of the lives we now enjoy.
While we chafe under encouragements to tithe, giving 10% of the first fruits of all God gives us, our time, talents and resources, the call that claims us and the faith that is imputed to us demands not merely 10%. We chafe so brutally that we often demand no mention of tithing occur in our congregation, certainly not that we ask each other to work towards this small sacrifice, guilty as we are that we have never thought this possible for us ourselves. Always one hears how unjust this call is for those who are below the poverty line. Which is true sort of: 10% of an income of which 50% is spent on the bare necessities of life is challenging, but 10% of an income of which 110% or more is spent on the bare necessities of life is a challenge beyond respectable.
True
discipleship costs us 100%, and our avoiding a call for 10% gives
witness how weak our faith is practised in our lives.
Yet
the True Gospel is not that we must give 100%, or that we must give
even 10% for God’s grace to be effective in our lives and at the
end of time, effectively applied to us. What counts is still what God
does, not what we do.
Though it is problematic that we do not do what we readily could do, and instead we count on God’s Grace to save our neighbours from hunger, poverty, despair. Since Christ steps in for us sinners when we were lost (each day of our lives) why would we not strive with all our being to be Christ’s hands especially to our neighbours in desperate need!
But one can hardly preach that to people who refuse to be the hands of Christ, asking for the first 10% in good stewardship for their church. One does pray for them, and for one’s self: that we may all survive the winter, cold, hard, and brutal as it is … to be gracious with each other … soon, before it is too late.
Brought
me to the road towards the East and the rising sun.
Golden
light and a sound alerted me to a photo about to be.
Can you
see the sound?
Can you
tell what is different in each photo? (ignore that the position of
the camera moves slightly so that the view shifts, the edges are
different.)
What is a wonderful Saturday morning, -2⁰ with clear sky and waning gibbous moon, a touch of frost and a good warm fire keeping ‘home’ warm, and the water for coffee boiling,
if not a perfect opportunity to play and make a small riddle-puzzle, seek-and-find photo series?
As
the cool days of fall darken earlier and earlier, and the dark of
night stays with us longer and longer …
Dark comes early, closer to South
Dark comes early, closer to South
Leaves fall all
Leaves
fall all
The
wood pile is just high enough,
The
food sufficient for the coming days,
The
water enough and replenish-able,
And
the air is fresh,
My
clothing rather well prepared for the coming months,
The
shelter from the weather to come is mostly prepared,
My
labour is directed, consumedly so, towards writing what must be
written.
My
love grows and wanes, I am loved well and always.
And
God holds me safe.
What
more can one ask for from life, from God, from all that might be?
All that might be.
All
that might be.
How
many humans have had so much less, so much less, so much less.
So much less.
So
much less.
The
beauty of the world is at my fingertips, literally, as a cell phone
camera captures what can be seen and hoped for?
Cell camera photos: harvest moon, over three harvesters
Cell camera photos: harvest moon, over three harvesters
Wahrheit
Was
sonst?
God’s blessings
For
what more would anyone wish from life?
More
than the time each morning to celebrate that Christ is with us, in
body and blood?
More
than the ability to see beauty and share it with others?
Sharing beauty
Sharing
beauty
More
than the ability to know truth, without doubt, or hesitation?
More
than to live well?
Live Well
Live
Well
Legend:
73804
mitkommen! – from the movie Remembrance, Tomasc calls out to Hannah
to come with him, he dressed as a German soldier initiating their
escape, as he carries a canister of photos of the Nazi concentration
camp.
