Mysteries —

all kinds of
wonderful unknowables

There are so many things in life that remain a mystery.

As the sun rose after a bright moonlit night I kept working inside and missed the marvel of the sunrise through the trees.

Winter though provides little light above the trees, so even when I was able to emerge, this caught my eye. I moved easily to get my camera for this was far to complex a shot than possible with a simple cell camera which I also did not have on me.

Then as I mounted the steps to go inside I noticed the light change and with a panic that only a photographer can know too well, I ran to catch the light at play before it moved to something, somewhere else.

Back outside the light returned to play, and these two of the few I took surprised me nicely.

I went back to work after adding them to my desktop slideshow.

This evening they showed up for the first time, which brought me to decide to postpone sleep until they are up for others to enjoy.

The challenge is to find the right composition and play to show what caught my eye.

Here the lines are strong, though the mystery is less if at all.

.

.

.

Here the mystery lays fully in the frame.

There was no fog, as one can tell with a trained eye. This is smoke from the campfire burning up some junk wood and chainsaw chips, with the temperature just right that the smoke traversed quite a ways through the trees on its way to ‘freedom’ in the atmosphere.

Small mysteries include how people can possibly not understand what Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu demonstrated so diligently:

It is very difficult requiring great patience and diligence to throw off oppressive, racists, unjust rulers.

But if one simply replaces them with one’s own version of oppression, racism, and injustice
then one actually only takes a step deeper into greater difficulties for which one is then responsible:
Getting rid of one’s oppressors becomes a step deeper into oppression, from which one has less likelihood of getting free of, for one has deepened the cycle of revenge … and that can take more than generations to be free of.

Mandela and Tutu demonstrated that FRFEDOM from one’s oppressors only is possible if one finds a way free from being the oppressors first, last and all the way in between, which is so much more difficult than throwing off one’s oppressors!

Another small mystery is how it is that so many people think that their lies which ruin other people, are not seen as lies, and that there are terrible consequences, natural consequences and God wrought consequences for such injustice. Even people entrusted with great authority, or perhaps most of all, people entrusted with great authority seem to be oblivious to their own lie’s baldfaceness, and the unjust consequences to other people far beyond the persons they lie about, and the ruinous consequences to themselves. Lies rot a person from the inside until there is nothing left inside, until one is physically alive, but there is no soul left.

While God punishes people for their sins, or forgives them, But unless one repents (changes 180° the sin) the sinner suffers the sin more than anyone else.

Another small mystery of life is how people can think that doing nothing about lies and injustice are even options for life.

Bringing light to bear upon lies and injustice may seem to be costly, even one’s job, or peace, or reputation … but to do nothing in the face of lies leaves one rotting inside as badly as the liars and perpetrators of injustice.

One can look a far, or not so far, just south of the border, to see how destructive lies and ignoring them, can be. But one ought also to pay attention to what is happening in one’s own town: in the politics, the power plays, the wealth thrown around and cow towed to, the public officials, elected and appointed who are entrusted with maintaining good order and justice. Of course one also needs to start in one’s own family, and with one’s self.

The mystery of life for me has been how so many people whom I’ve met are so unaware of the themselves, as they hammer others down and about to make their way forward and upward through life. It’s as if kindness we completely unknown, honesty never heard of, and fairness and justice concepts that mean whatever gets me ahead at whatever cost.

The profound mystery is how light plays on all these self-deceptions, colouring the world ugly.

Except by Grace the colouring can be also a thing of beauty as one forgives and loves despite the cruelty focused at oneself and at others.

Forgiveness is not always possible: sometimes one needs to leave the judgement to God, and move on, not forgiving and fully remembering the sins, but not condemning. The sinners suffer their sins. God eventually judges them, no spin, no evidence hidden, no witnesses excluded — God knows all with or without evidence and witnesses. And since God exists beyond time the consequences of that judgement begins at one’s birth; thus sinners suffer their sins more than are punished for them.

As an ordained person, responsible and with authority to bring forgiveness to sinners, and also entrusted with the terrible authority to bind sins for God to judge, I have seldom done other than pronounce forgiveness, until the last few years. Now the injustice that I have been the brunt of, which is not limited to just me, but most men abused by women, falsely convicted in our courts … which forces me to estimate that more than 75% of men convicted of a crime against their spouse or partner are truly innocent; so pervasive is this turn. We used to hear that men without a thread of truth could bring their non-compliant wives to jail to be ruined or to mental institutions to be drugged out of their minds for decades. Now the system has changed: and it allows women, without truth, to bring their husbands and partners to jail and mental institutions.

These sins, that make this possible, that invite women to do this, as if this deals with the real abuse of women by men, and clearly ignores the real abuse of men by these women … these sins cannot be forgiven. They are bound for God to judge.

The rest of us need to work to bring light to these injustices, or we rot just like the perpetrators.

The small mystery, or not so small mystery, is why this takes so long for us to bring the light to bear upon such blatant sin?

Those are small to immense mysteries. They are dwarfed by the real mystery.

The real mystery is faith:

This coming Sunday we read: love your enemies.

How is that even possible?

The answer is simple and elusively complex.

Just do it!

But the prerequisite is that one knows two things at least:

That one does not deserve to be loved by God, not at all.

And that God still does love you, fully and without reserve or hesitation.

And the third thing to know is that God calls us to love our enemies as God has loved us.

They may not deserve it, but we are to love them anyway.

It’s a matter of faith.

Simple.

Simply impossible.

Simply possible for the Holy Spirit through us, since God makes us saints.

Blessings to Share, or Not

When he was a young adult Peter Kitundu met the missionary doctor in Kiomboi, TZ. With the help of that doctor Peter later travelled to MN for college and medical school. Peter met and married Mary and together they returned to Tanzania so Peter could fulfill his calling to serve as a medical doctor in his home country. Peter died a very old man having served his people ravaged by population explosion, droughts, famines, curable diseases and AIDS. Life expectancy in TZ was 46 years when Peter met the medical missionary. Now it is 67.

Today Paul reminds us that in Jesus’ resurrection God makes obvious that God loves us enough to give his only son, and that death does not have the last word. God’s Word is first and last.

With the first Word God created the world. God provided the necessities of life for all: clean air, clean fresh water, plenty of food, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient … and God said it all is good.

For generations we have perverted our unequal gifts from God into a measure of God’s blessing. We turned our having more than enough into an entitlement and a proof that God favours us and does not favour other people who do not have enough in order to survive.

While we can be that evil, God also provides for us the great wisdom that Jeremiah points us to. Like trees planted next to streams of flowing water God’s wisdom gives us endurance even through times of drought, times when around us all wisdom and truth evaporate.

In today’s Gospel Jesus provides some of this wisdom for us, a corrective to our perversion that our abundance is proof that we are blessed and the poor are not. Jesus proclaims that the poor are the ones who are blessed, that those who hunger are blessed, that those who mourn are blessed, that those who others revile are blessed.

Brian Rude receives guests in Central America, introducing them to Christians caught in desperate poverty. Even as the people who live there fear that they or their family members or their friends will be ‘disappeared’, these poor people worship with gratitude, these people celebrate exuberantly. Like the people in TZ, these Christians know how to love: more proof that God indeed blesses people who are poor, who are hungry, who mourn, who are reviled.

Still there are many times in history when we stubbornly refuse to accept what the Gospel teaches and Liberation Theology reminds us of: that God has a preferential option for the poor, that God blesses the poor more than the wealthy, who today are among the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

Instead we have turned Jesus’ blessing of the poor into an excuse not to work to provide justice also for them. We have said, mistakenly so, that the poor have earned their poverty and we have earned our wealth. That’s how God created us: we are privileged and they are lazy and deserve what they get, or rather they deserve that they do not get what they need to survive.

We have mistakenly said it in many and various ways: The poor will always be with us. Poverty and homelessness cannot be ended. There is not enough for everyone so some people will always go without. Life is a zero sum game.

We end it all by saying: we do not need to change how it is for them because God blesses them in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin.

As if knowing we would turn their blessings into our excuses not to love them Jesus adds a series of warnings for the rich people.

Woe to the rich, to the well fed, to the joyful, to those spoken well of, for they have received blessings, but in eternity God will not provide for them at all.

We like to forget these passages, or pretend that they do not apply to us. Yet in many and various ways there are those among us in every generation who remind us that our blessings are not ours to keep. They are meant to be shared with those who do not have enough.

Last week an amber alert garnered over 300 responses as they looked for a missing 11 year old girl. The calls were not about the girl. They were from people who felt entitled to use 911 to complain that the amber alert had been sent out after 11 pm and disturbed their sleep. These complaints almost kept the lines too busy for the helpful responses to get through; still the help was too late.

Dorothy Soelle, theologian d.2003 added 2 items to the list of the necessities of life. She added: meaningful labour, and love (both to be loved and the opportunity to love others.) We know that the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those reviled often have great capacity to love; to love their neighbours as themselves, and to love even their enemies; and to love God with all their hearts, minds and strength. Jesus pronounced this blessing for the common people on the plain.

By comparison this is what most rich, well fed, joyful, those spoken well of are missing. They seem too often incapable of accepting God’s gift’s as blessings to share. Something obstructs their knowing how to love their neighbours or themselves, and especially how to love their enemies. They love the security their abundance provides so much that they have no room left to love God with all their hearts, minds, and strength … and that is the greatest curse of all. Without love, we are nothing.

Love, so profound that one loves one’s enemies, is only possible when we recognize that God first loves us, though we do not deserve it.

When we accept God’s undeserved love and blessings with gratitude, then we are able to graciously love others with this same unbounded love. We are able to share not only the over-abundance we have. By God’s Grace and equipped by the Holy Spirit, we are able to share the necessities of life with others even when that means we will share in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin of reputation.

Peter Kitundu’s legacy did not end with his death in 2011. His widow, Mary, and that medical missionary and numerous other people joined together to rebuild some of the basics of health care in TZ. Peter’s brother eventually convinced this group, who call themselves IHP-TZ (ihptz.org), to take 30 acres he had north of Dar es Salaam and build the first hospital for children in TZ. With funds raised by that medical missionary now in his 90’s, the local crew and visiting medical, construction, and all kinds of volunteers from around the world make the next part of the hospital a reality.

There is another true story, originally about an Appalachian family in the US. It is perhaps truer for us if told set in the north of AB.

A social worker is assigned a family that she finally finds in the wilderness far from any other people or road. When she arrives on snowmobile they treat her with great respect and honour offering her tea from the wood stove in the two room drafty log cabin. The father arrives home with a freshly shot moose while she assesses whether the young children ought to be in school. It is obvious to her that they are on the edge of survival. Satisfied that these people are providing a good education for their children she prepares to leave. The father wraps up a piece of moose meat as a gift for her. She starts to refuse it, appalled that she would take anything away from the little they have. Seeing her resistance the father with wisdom, welling up from ancient streams of truth, insists she accept their gift saying, “I know it looks like we are poor, but we are not poor. You are only poor if you cannot give something to others.”

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Having received so much, we each have so much to give, or not! Amen

Blessed are we all?

Peter Kitundu was a young adult when I first met him. A young child, living in Tanganyika, I met him because he was interested in medicine and my father, a medical missionary, was the only doctor around for days of travel. Peter later travelled to MN for college and medical school. Peter met and married Mary and together they returned to Tanzania so Peter could fulfill his calling to serve as a medical doctor in his home country. Peter died a very old man having served his people ravaged by population explosion, droughts, famines, curable diseases and AIDS.

Today Paul reminds us that as Christians we must believe in the resurrection, for this is central to God’s story made obvious for us in the life of Jesus, the Christ. Jesus died, tortured to death on a cross; but three days later he rose from the dead. In Jesus’ resurrection God makes obvious that God loves us enough to give his only son, and that death does not have the last word. God’s Word is the first and the last.

With the first Word God created the world. God provided the necessities of life for us: clean air, clean fresh water, plenty food, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient … and God said it all is good.

God blessed us with the necessities of life. God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others, sharing all the gifts we receive.

For generation upon generation we have turned our unequal gifts into a measure of God’s unequal blessing. In an evil perversion that only humans are capable of, we turned our having more than enough into an entitlement and a proof that God favours us and does not favour people who do not have enough in order to live well or even to survive.

While we can be evil, God also provides for us great wisdom that Jeremiah points us to: God provides wisdom for us like trees planted next to streams of flowing water. This wisdom gives us endurance even through times of drought, times when around us all wisdom and truth seem to evaporate in the heat of the time.

In today’s Gospel Jesus provides some of this wisdom for us, a corrective to our perversion of God’s gifts, our abundance, as proof that we are blessed and the poor are not. Jesus proclaims that the poor are the ones who are blessed, that those who hunger are the blessed, that those who mourn are blessed, that those who others revile are blessed.

Travelling decades ago to Central America, with a group visiting Christians caught in desperate poverty, I came to know that even in these desperate circumstances, many caused by my home country’s CIA’s interference, even as they feared that they or their family members or their friends would be ‘disappeared’ without cause, these people knew how to worship gratefully, these people knew how to celebrate exuberantly. These people were as profoundly joyful, despite everything else, as those around me as I grew up in Kiomboi TZ. These people taught me again that those who are poor, those who are hungry, those who mourn, those who are reviled are indeed blessed by God; blessed in ways I did not encounter at home in MN, or in CT and DE where I had studied.

Still there are many times in history, even in the present, when we stubbornly refuse to accept what the Gospel for today teaches us, what Liberation Theology teaches us, that God has a preferential option for the poor, that God blesses the poor more than us, we who (by all standards in today’s world and even more so compared to all people through history) are among the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

Instead we have turned the blessing of the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, those who are reviled, into an excuse not to work to provide justice also for them. We have said, mistakenly so, that the poor have earned their poverty and we have earned our wealth. That’s how God created us: we are privileged and they are lazy and deserve what they get, or rather they deserve that they do not get what they need to survive.

We have said it in many and various ways: The poor will always be with us. Poverty and homelessness cannot be ended. There is not enough for everyone so some people will always go without. Life is a zero sum game.

And on top of all that, we do not need to change how it is for them because God blesses them in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin.

As if knowing we would turn their blessings into our excuses not to love them Jesus adds a series of warnings for us rich people.

Woe to the rich, to the well fed, to the joyful, to those spoken well of, for they have received blessings, but in eternity God will not provide for them at all.

We like to forget these passages, or pretend that they do not apply to us. Yet in many and various ways there are those among us in every generation who have reminded us that our blessings are not ours to keep. There are those among us today who remind us God blesses us so that we can be a blessing to others. We do not receive anything except what God graciously provides for us … and then this profound truth … God provides gifts of life to us only in order that we can share them equally with those who do not have the necessities of life.

There are those among us even today who remind us that our work is to provide justice, to provide care, to provide food, to end poverty. They remind us, with words and their actions, that God provides us with more than enough of the necessities of life only in order that we can and will share our abundance with those who do not have even the bare requirements to stay alive and live a full life.

Dorothy Soelle added to the list of the necessities of life. She added two things that everyone needs: meaningful labour, and love (both to be loved and the opportunity to love others.) We know that the poor, the hungry, those who mourn, and those reviled often have a wonderful capacity to love; to love their neighbours as themselves, and to love even their enemies; and to love God with all their hearts, minds and strength. This is part of the blessing that Jesus promised to the common people on the plain, which is recorded in today’s Gospel.

By comparison this is what most rich, well fed, joyful, those spoken well of are missing. They find it almost impossible to share their wealth with others equitably, to know how to love their neighbours or themselves, and especially to love their enemies. They love having the goodness of this world but seem incapable of accepting it as a gift from God for them to share. They love their abundance and the security it provides so much that they have no room left to love God with all their hearts, minds, and strength … and that is the greatest curse of all.

Without love, we are nothing.

This kind of love, so profound that one loves especially one’s enemies, is only possible when we recognize that God first loves us, even when we do not deserve it at all.

When we accept God’s undeserved love and blessings with gratitude, then we are able to graciously love others with this same unbounded love. We are able to share not only the over abundance we have. By God’s Grace and equipped by the Holy Spirit, we are able to share the necessities of life with others even when that means we will share in their poverty, hunger, grief, and ruin of reputation.

Peter Kitundu’s legacy did not end with his death. His widow, Mary, and my father and his wife, and numerous other people joined together to rebuild the basics of health care in TZ. Peter’s brother eventually convinced this group, who call themselves IHP-TZ to take 30 acres he had north of Dar es Salaam and build the first hospital for children in TZ. Six month of the year my father and Paula fund raise in the US. Six months they are in Zinga helping the crew there and the visiting volunteers from around the world make the next part of the hospital a reality. Life expectancy was 46 years when I met Peter. Now it is 67.

There is a true story, originally about a family in the mountains of the eastern US. It is perhaps truer for us if told set in the north of AB.

A social worker receives a file for a family that she finally finds in the wilderness far from any other people or road. When she arrives on snowmobile they treat her with great respect and honour offering her tea from the wood stove in the two room drafty log cabin. The father arrives home with a freshly shot moose while she assesses whether the young children ought to be in school. It is obvious to her that they are on the edge of survival. She becomes satisfied that though abjectly poor, these people are providing a good education for their children. As she prepares to leave, the father wraps up a piece of moose meat as a gift for her. She starts to refuse it, appalled that she would take anything away from the little they have. The father sees her resistance and with wisdom, welling up from ancient streams of truth, he insists she accept their gift to her, “I know it looks like we are poor, but we are not poor. You are only poor if you cannot give something to others.”

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Having received so much, we each have so much to give!

Amen

Necessities of Life

to be blessed

Poverty, Blessings, Afterlife

Notes, Outline, Sketch

Outline 3

  1. Blessing as bodily requirements, from Creation onward
    1. God created, provided blessing upon blessing: clean air, clean water, food aplenty, clothing as needed, shelter sufficient,
    2. In many and various ways through the generations, people of God understood that these necessities of life were blessings from God.
  2. Mistakenly turned blessings from gifts into evidence, that only those with abundance are blessed, others not.
    1. Justified injustices, ignoring suffering, entitlement
  3. Luke: Blessing to the common people:
    1. poor, hungry, weep, reviled on J account
    2. This is the corrective that Liberation Theology brought/brings to any theology, entitlement theology, prosperity theology … which claims that abundance in this life is a sign of blessing and lack is a curse.
    3. The poor, hungry, mourning, reviled will receive all they need.
  4. We make another Mistake: turned on it’s head:
    1. that only those who lack are blessed and
    2. either that the rich are completely lost and unwelcomed in the KoG or
    3. that nothing in this world matters
    4. This last leads off again to
      • God will provide, rich need only enjoy for they are obviously blessed
      • poor, hungry, homeless, mourning, reviled deserve their circumstance,
        • others need do nothing to provide for their want.
  5. Luke woes:
    1. should keep prosperity gospel for persisting or the rich finding an excuse not to share their blessings with those in need:
    2. Woes: rich, full, laughing, spoken well of
    3. Afterlife: eternity
      • those without will be provided for in abundance
      • those with over abundance now, will have nothing
      • Corrective of Liberation Theology, God has a preferential option for the poor
  6. Then a further mistake we too often make:
    1. Since again all on this earth is nothing, everything that counts will be in life after death.
      • We can either suffer injustice quietly
      • or We can allow others to suffer injustices quietly
  7. Rather for Jesus, No excuse for injustices, for not sharing what we have with those in need
    1. God created, said it was good.
      • Good includes air, water, food, clothing, shelter
    2. God intends for all people to enjoy the basic necessities of life
      • those with over abundance: an extra responsibility to provide for those without.
      • Luke: ‘Or else, woe to them’ very real!
  8. What then is the blessing that Jesus provides to the common, poor, hungry, mourning, reviled people gathered on the plain?
  9. Dorothy Soelle provides an addition to the necessities of life:
    1. meaningful labour
    2. love: an ability to love and the opportunity to be loved.
    3. Jesus’s blessings, for those without air, water, food, clothing, shelter, is for the afterlife:
  10. More pointedly Jesus does not just promise that they will receive abundance, their fill, and laughter in the afterlife: they will receive it here in this life.
    1. Theirs is the KoG, here and now
      • They are blessed in ways beyond the physical necessities of life:
      • They are blessed perhaps with meaningful labour
      • They are blessed perhaps with the ability to love and to be loved, and to know it
        • People do not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God
      • That Word: calls us to a vocation: a meaningful work for our lives
      • That Word calls us to a love: a love as God gives to us: a love for neighbour, self, and all others: especially our enemies; and to love God with all our heart mind and strength.
  11. Common, Poor people on the plain are blessed, not just with the physical necessities of life, but the living water of life, water that never runs dry:
    1. which is to love God with all our hearts, minds and strength, ourselves, our neighbours, and especially our enemies
  12. What does this mean for us?
    1. Promise: God is for us: poor or rich, hungry or fed, mourning or joyful, reviled or spoken well of
    2. A Call to rich, fed, joyful, well-spoken of:
      • to be good stewards of blessings given us, they are for us to be able to share them with others
      • to provide care for the hungry, mourning, reviled
      • warning: that being rich can bring us to reject God’s claim on us.
  13. As always: God claims us as God’s children, not based on the abundance of our blessings, gifts given by God to us;
    1. God claims us, poor or rich, hungry or fed, just or unjust, loving or not,
    2. God claims us by Grace
  14. Question is how can we respond:
  15. Wise to know the water that we are planted into: the living water of Jesus, that Jesus gave the Samaritan woman at the well
  16. While other waters can dry up, and we are drying up qualifiers the world over with our over consumption, Jesus’s love, grace, and wisdom never run dry.
    1. And it always keeps surprising us: with change we do not welcome, with challenges we may not want
    2. but also with rewards we could not imagine were possible
    3. For with God all things are possible.

Poverty, Blessings, Afterlife

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Psalm 1

I Corinthians 15:12-20

Luke 6:17-16

Notes, Outline, Sketch

1 Cor makes obvious that Christians believe in life after death, and the center of our faith depends on Christ being raised from the dead, raised to life eternal, which we all will follow.

So life after death is there, as an undeniable part of this Sunday’s preaching, if not in the use, then in the avoidance of it.

These lessons raise the age-old conundrum:

What do God’s blessings look like, and whether we need to care whether we have luxury while billions suffer in poverty each day.

This is even more pronounced when one compares

Jesus’ Beatitudes in Luke

“Blessed are the poor!”

with Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

What is this Blessed?

What is this Woe?

A pronounced reversal of what one expects.

The prosperity Gospel, in it’s many variations, would hold that those who are able to enjoy the best the world has to provide are blessed by God. Their wealth is a clear sign that God blesses them.

Then those that have now, are not blessed, but rather warned of having nothing in the afterlife; and those who have nothing now, will have everything, for the Kingdom of God is theirs. [That is not completely accurate to the text, but rather a common misunderstanding of it.]

False Understandings/ Interpretations/ Applications

Justice is not needed now. Since everything really important is put off until after death then there is no need for justice now, since it all washes out in eternity: the people most disadvantaged will reap rewards in heaven and those who live well now will suffer in the afterlife.

Thus these aphorisms could be true :

(they are decidedly not true, not without a great deal of modifying
context at least)

and they would, if true, provide us justification for NOT making any fundamental changes that will put our lifestyles at risk:

The poor will always be with us.

The homeless will always be a problem to solve.

Poverty cannot be ended.

Being rich does not cut us off from God.

What is now in this world does matter.

Being poor is good. Being homeless is OK (except in the harsh winter.)

There will always be people who starve to death, even millions each year. It need not bother us.

To God it does not matter whether we or you or they are poor/rich, hungry/well-fed, homeless/ land&home renters or owners. What matters between us, you, or them and God is a spiritual matter which has nothing to do with wealth, luxury, or ownership.

Correct Understandings/ Interpretations/ Applications

Being poor still is unjust.

No one need go hungry. It’s not a matter of sufficient food, but of the will to distribute it equitably.

Homelessness can be ended, with dedicated, coordinated effort, at less cost than providing the very basics to homeless people.

And the real blessings are not what we typically chase, the chase often being what separates us from God.

Add the Jeremiah and Psalm about Wisdom

and now there is the possibility of a lively discussion.

Wisdom, real wisdom, is like a tree planted along side a river, that even in drought still draws water from the under-earth stream that still flows.

Well and good until today’s world. Today we’ve pumped qualifiers dry!

Huge rivers flow with greatly reduced flow, and still we squander water.

Hard to appreciate here in Canada where we have the most fresh water of anywhere in the world. We can squander it and not even notice. We do squander it regularly without noticiing.

Berlin: rinse dish, just so the suds flow (not off)because water is so precious … and expensive. They’ve learned to live using so little water that the sewer has problems flowing.

Other places in the world have not yet seen water systems, yet alone sufficient water for all the people.

In Canada, even, many first nation communities do not have water systems, or systems that provide clean water; and it has been known, denied, avoided, promised, and ignored for decades.

Consider the theme in Jeremiah and Psalm 1, that wisdom can guide us to understand that God and/or God’s law provide us blessing.

We need not trust in mere mortals, or flesh, or in our hearts turned our own way.

How does true wisdom help us understand God’s Blessings, Wealth and Poverty, and the churches’ commitment (or lack there of) to do justice!

There is no simple path through all this.

The questions raised are significant for any healthy faith community, to consider, to ponder, to use to adjust their perspective of God’s creation and as a guide for their own actions in this world.

What Does -36°C Look Like

Simple question, simple answer.

It looks like an old photographer with camera in hand, bathrobe bare legs exposed, stepping outside to catch the morning photo(s) for the day.

(I will spare you that selfie … and pretty much all selfies. I’ve never thought much of selfies, being even a reluctant model for myself when I was working with lighting and had no other model to practice on.)

This morning having emerged from the 45°C plus shelter for the wood stove I stepped brashly without a jacket or anything more than my bathrobe to dump the ashes from the fire.

Now that tray, usually a bit toasty, was HOT, so much so that even though I ran (I usually do not) this time it seared through my gloves before I reached the fire pit. It has to be dumped not anywhere since the hot coals that hide in the ash are very alive, passionate red, like some people I’ve known well. As I started to flip the ash tray over the heat hit a nerve and the leprechauns grabbed it out of my hands and threw everything into the snow: hot metal hitting cold snow with sizzles and pops – the tray warped!

Cold has it’s impact.

I grabbed the tray, flipped it to empty it fully, and dashed lively back into the 45°C heat. I did manage to notice the light of the sunrise poking a few holes in the coldscape.

Since I survived that I grabbed my camera, and stepped outside, again.

About the time I caught the first photo I started to feel the deep hard bite of below frostbite warning levels. By the time I made the third photo the bite had eased. Comfortable, and alarmed at how quickly it felt OK, I stretched through the five steps to through the door and thawed my nerves back to yelling painfully alive next to that HOT fire.

Words convey the cold.

But how to say it with a photo?

The best addled thought I had, given the bite I knew was coming, was to contrast the cold with the smoke of the hot fire.

So this shot: Not much there? Looks the same as -3.6°C or even +3.6C.

Yes, that red used to be a deck table leg and support: garbaged, recycled with the cutting wheel of a grinder, and re-purposed to support, minus two legs and the table support arms, a chimney.

Inside my brain started to work again, once thawed. Since the window had cleared of the thick frost present at my wake-up an hour earlier (a nice side benefit of wood heat that it is DRY) I decided the blatant visual was going to have to be the best effort for this early hour. The long end of the needle points halfway between 30 and 40 on the left side, the negative side of zero.

A Little Light, a Little ‘Warmer’ -35°C

The rest of the world that is to be seen from ‘my’ window is as beautiful as always on a clear snow covered winter day. Fresh snow. Solitude.

Things are looking up; it’s warmed up a degree, to -35°C

Smoke Dark Moon

Smoke Dark Moon

It’s been an interesting day, cutting wood in the relative warmth of -15

and being able to turn off the generator,

warm enough not to have to worry about warming it up to start it.

So I turned on the 3000W inverter to recharge the computer battery, and it started, then hiccuped and burbed and popped and smoked a bit.

I pulled the empty cords out, pulled the solar generator, cut power to the batteries for the camper, but I do not have a cut off for the battery to the inverter line.

It just fried itself.

Already done and stinky electric fire …

Under warranty, but it took a while to get the replacement.

Home, it was already dark, and cold at -28°C and getting colder faster than forecast so I expect -30° will be well met, since it’s already now -29° and forecast to drop four more degrees before morning, of course the low was expected to be -28° and it’s already -29°. So -33° maybe?

Here it just dropped to -30°. By morning here -34 or so?

As I was out to start the generator, the moon shone a sliver over the trees, and the smoke from the chimney gave a back stop to the darkness broken by the moon.

?What will come next

Slivers of delight, in small ways, the glory of the solitude, all quiet except the generator going to stay warm and circulate the warm air in here.

Smokey Moonlight

Sleep and dream of a world where truth is valued most.

How Cold?

How Cold Can It Get?

Sometimes words make a difference.

What words do you have, that you can use to inspire life abundant

in a camper warm in the cold, soaked in solitude, and connected to the beauty of life by a thin thread of grace and a camera, a chainsaw and a pile of wood, an old furnace, old metal doors, old tarps added to 1x4s and pallets, garbage wood and metal, propane and gasoline …

and hope?

Is your heart warm, your music lively and loud, your thoughts connected to the universe made by God’s grace?

At -25°C that would be helpful, if a bit elfish.

It warmed up suddenly, mostly the cool on the floor dissipated, why,

?

A wonderful feeling after being cold most of today.

Church: I arrive and within minutes need to take my boots off to rub my feet that are painfully cold still. 10 minutes and they warm up … so it goes all day.

Until now. Toasty warm.

Great music, to volume, the selection of Good Lovelies, Cohen, and Beethoven so far, more to come.

Find a corner that is kind

of friendly and cozy.

A woman at the till behind me, said I was nice, for letting her put her milk jug on the belt sooner than otherwise there would have been room.

I told her my wife doesn’t say I am nice.

She says I am kind ….

Kind of this and kind of that.

‘Cute’

Back out into the cold … it is soooo cold.

Some people heat their homes with gas,

the heat that is put into my face to burn the light out of me

is darkness in action,

the throngs that have used Gaslighting to beat me into submission, death or exile, whichever works first,

is darkness with a goal,

the lies that others live by and for and with,

is the darkness resident.

the pain that everyone suffers for their part in Gas creating,

Gaslighting me

is sadness given place where life belongs.

My little corner is cozy,

in the cold, it is always good enough, with lots of work, to be warm enough.

How cold can their hearts become, so that the weather hardly compares?

How cold can it get?

It can be as cold as it possibly can get, even with climate change,

where yesterday’s extremes are now today’s normals,

because

God’s Grace

and Love are more powerfully Light

than the darkness that people wish on me,

and the furnace

has plenty of wood,

so that

the kindness of my heart is enough,

by God’s Grace,

to hand on what was first given me

faith,

hope,

and

love.

How Cold will you let your life become, before you step into the light of Grace?

Post Sermon 10 Feb

This is what I would have preached:

In our first lesson this morning, Isaiah reports his encounter with God: I saw the Lord full of his glory.

At the Synod Study Conference the main presenter encouraged us to think about how our images of God inform our faith, our thinking, our hearts, and our actions as God’s people.

Isaiah provides an awesomely frightful, wonderful image of God, on a throne, robes filling every room of the temple. Heavenly winged creatures protect themselves from seeing God so that they can survive. No one can see God and survive; except by God’s special grace, like Moses on the mountain who returns pure white and here Isaiah.

The real question for most of us today is not if we will survive seeing God, it is rather Do we see God at all? Do we have an understanding of God that is large enough? Or do we believe in a small god who is controlled and limited by our own whims?

It is no coincident that a TV series writers named their all powerful character Q, or source (source of all sorts of trouble.)

Imagine that you are sitting here in worship one minute, and the next in the company of this all powerful being you are circling the planet Saturn able to see the colours and particles of its rings splash across your face. Before your heart completely shuts down at the awesomeness of it all, you are hurling through space faster than light, able to see everything in detail as you go, until you are beyond the known universe in the delta quadrant. Then in an instant you are back, watching earth form and evolve, seeing every detail all at once as millions of years pass in minutes, until you see yourself born. Time slows and you experience everything about your life again, but with a much fuller context, until your brain protests the overload.

The all-powerful, capricious, selfish, and terribly destructive being Q, entices you to ‘fix’ your life by wiping out all your mistakes. All you have to do is give him everything of your life so that he can experience human existence through your eyes, heart, and mind.

Suddenly he is gone. His own kind have revoked his powers. You sit here with us singing a simple song of our faith.

This terribly destructive and capriciously self-absorbed being, from Star Trek, Q, is a collective of a single being who have unlimited power and knowledge.

But even this being is too small to be our God, or anyone’s, though Q would like to be. Q does not know empathy and love for others.

Were Q your god, you would have ample justification for all sorts of selfish, small minded, sociopathic thoughts and actions. Between people there would be a constant battle to see who could get the best of the other, in order to live a fuller life. … Which horrors of horrors sounds pretty typical of human life, and thus the image of Q chosen by the writers, a mimic of an all too common image of a far too small god.

By contrast fortunately our God is gracious and all-loving. God’s steadfast love endures forever!

Encounter with our God

How have you encountered God? What images of God do you use to interpret and make sense of the world? To make sense of what was handed down to you from previous generations? To make sense of what people around you experience? To make sense of what you have learned about this wonderfully complex world which is just a speck in God’s creation?

Isaiah finds himself in God’s presence. He is terrified at the awesome presence of God that flows everywhere throughout the temple, with a host of marvellous creatures. In an instant that holds all time, Isaiah sees he has unclean lips, lives with a people of unclean lips. He is awfully unworthy to be in God’s presence.

Peter, fishing all night without any luck, encounters Jesus, who borrows his boat to teach the crowds gathered, who hunger for Jesus’ words and healing truth. When Jesus tells Peter to let down his nets again, Peter, not ready to throw wasted effort after a futile night, decides however that, just for Jesus, he will toss his nets in the deep once again.

The abundant fish start to break his nets, overfills his boat and the second boat of his partners who come to help Peter with the catch. Peter realizes three things: Jesus is God, Peter is sinful, and he ought not stick around very long: encounters with God usually do not end well for sinners.

Isaiah and Peter both try to end their encounter with God. God has other plans for them, and for us.

God sends a seraph to purify Isaiah with a burning, live coal. Jesus quells Peter’s fear, and then calls Peter to follow him, to catch people, instead, for the Kingdom of God.

No matter how we imagine God, we, too, ought to be terribly afraid of God’s awesome power.

The biblical stories again and again call us to not be afraid, though we are. They remind us that above all God, all powerful and all righteous, all knowing, is also gracious and all-loving. God chooses to save us.

[Insert your own story of grace, new life and gratitude shared.]

Breathing clean fresh air I walked with grace, a spring in my step, a new found hope in my heart. Just minutes before: The van started to fish tale on unexpected black ice. I had held it in my lane delicately adding power and counter steering the slide as cars and a semi-truck passed me on the other side of the road. At the top of the hill on the corner it had one last wag and it was done dancing. Until on the bridge above the railroad tracks far below, the van slowly rotated a full 180° into the other lane, where no traffic was at the time, by inches missed the guard rail beyond the railroad track, hit the snow bank at the road’s edge and flipped once clean in the air, then rolled twice down the long embankment to stop upright against the trees at the bottom. Glass shards were everywhere, the van was totalled, but we, with only a few bruises and cuts, undid our seat belts and walked up the snow-covered embankment and down the hill to the inn by the lake. We breathed new life. We shared new life at worship that Sunday, at the funeral the next week, and with everyone we encountered over the next few months. Life was again a free gift from God. The van so easily could have danced into the oncoming traffic to take all our breath away; or flipped over the guard rail falling 75 feet (that might as well have been miles) to a dead stop. Yet we breathed … we breathed only by the Grace of God. So we shared with everyone who crossed our paths gratitude and love of life in every grace-filled way possible.

Responses to our God’s Grace

Purified by the searing heat of a live coal, made clean by God’s work, not Isaiah’s, when God asks who God should send, Isaiah is able to respond wholeheartedly, “Here I am, Send Me.” Because of what God has done for him, free, graceful, healing and life-giving, Isaiah knows who he is. Isaiah volunteers to be God’s voice for others, in order to give the same grace to others that God has given him.

Peter knows both Jesus to be God and himself to be a sinner, unworthy of being in God’s presence. After Jesus frees Peter from his overwhelming fear, Peter leaves everything behind: nets, boat, and two boatfuls of fish. Peter answers Jesus’ call to go and fish for people; to bring others to see Jesus as God’s own son, their saviour, and hope for tomorrow.

God makes both Isaiah and Peter into saints (God’s perfect people of light and grace). Both become perfect and yet remain sinners. This is what Martin Luther spoke about, and we now speak about, when we say we are all simultaneously saints and sinners.

The question each day is will we notice God’s presence every day?

Will we recognize God as God and be awe-fully afraid of God? Will we, by the grace of God, allow God to calm our fears and purify our lips, hearts, minds, and strength? Will we volunteer to bring grace to other people, all kinds of people, especially our enemies?!

Concluding Blessing

By the grace of God may we see God each day, present in our lives. May we recognize God and be fearful of God’s awesome power, but by God’s Grace and love allow ourselves to be transformed into people of the light. May we step into each moment filled with God’s grace for us and hand on to others that grace that is given to us.

May grace abound through us God-made saints, yet always sinners, for all people. Let there be light! So that we, and many people through us, may say: I saw the Lord full of his glory.

Amen

Solution or More Problem



The sun rises to colour pieces of the air.

What do we want to be?

Right and therefore probably terribly wrong and the perpetrator of worse: or humble and humorous?

Leaving the study conference, the presenter came to the door, with packed suitcase, leaving with someone else to catch a plane at the airport an hour away. It had been bitter cold, below -30°C. As we left the temperature was still a stiff -20°C with a windchill of -27°C, which does make a difference for what happened next.

I asked if she had a parka. She said it was packed in the suitcase. I continued with my real concern saying that at these temperatures one ought have it at least right handy in the vehicle so that if something happens one is prepared.

She returned a glazed look and said that she would be in the car and into the airport. She had no plans to be outside.

I shook my head in disbelief and said that was ok, but the concern was if an emergency came up, she would not be ready.

More non-commitment, and I departed.

Later I remembered this conversation and one of her comments in her presentation:

‘Mansplaining’ are those spouting off by men without qualifications or attention to the-woman-they-speak-to’s qualifications, as if all wisdom came only from men. And her learned and practiced response was to ignore the words as much as possible and move on.

Ahh, so that was what she did to my words at the door, as I bundled into my down parka on my 40 feet to the car, travelling that same hour to the airport, also never leaving the car.

Perhaps I was just a dumb Minnesotans (she’s from St. Paul MN) from the sticks (Brainerd), who was male and therefore mansplaining her. Perhaps in a different universe.

I have winter survival training, specifically for the weather we were suffering. As a commercial pilot I flew in northern (so it’s called, though it is really central) Alberta. The training was to help us as pilots know how to prepare and then ensure we and our passengers survived after a crash in the bush at extreme temperatures for at least 72 hours. During the training it went down to below -20°C each night as we made our shelters with only natural materials with the tools we normally flew with (or should have never flown without.) The last night it went well below -40°C.

In addition I have had the misfortune of being in a vehicle accident in the winter, and the difference made by having a parka on was critical for survival. Perhaps everything would have turned out ok had I had the parka near me. But then everything was tossed far and away during the pirouette and flips. So maybe not. But getting it out of a packed suitcase? Not a chance that would have gone well.

So maybe I was just mansplaining and her best response was to ignore my words with judgmental disdain and move on; which is good enough until there is an accident, and the parka could have made the difference between life and death, for her or for others in her car or others vehicles.

Maybe she is fully qualified to make the risk assessment, did so and chose comfort over the small likelihood of being in an accident on the way to the car or to the airport.

Or maybe she was not, and as a professor in St. Paul she may never have to work to survive in the outside below -20°C.

But to dismiss my good words, kind even, wise from training and experience, well that is just proof that mansplaining is hardly the problem. The problem is that she dismisses what men say.

NOT

The sun colouring book is actually the smoke of the fire that keeps me warm, or at least alive, when it dips below ‘Youch-It-BITES-to-be-Outside!)

I have no idea if she glazed over about my comment. Or if she actually had a parka to pull out, or was sheepishly covering for the fact she’d travelled, via California, without a parka this time, or she actually made the risk assessment fully informed and the best she wanted to.

Regardless: travelling with no parka at least on the seat beside oneself in the deep freeze of winter is not wise.

Maybe my commenting, with surprise and expecting a humorous exchange, was out of place: why care about how strangers deal with the elements. It’s just the extremes of yesteryear are now the norms, because of climate change. Besides if the stranger is a woman, then it is politically incorrect to try to assist in some normal way.

The best thing to do is let all women suffer, even if there are simple words of hard won wisdom that are worth sharing.

Besides, who cares if I was a stay at home parent, and listened to all the womansplaining that was directed at me at parent-teacher meetings, or other gatherings of parents. Now of course fathers as at home dads is more common. Back then I was singular in most every woman’s experience, and obviously I was stupid at it … because helping raise 7 younger siblings does not really give any man real child rearing experience. You have to be a girl to learn to raise children, practising on your younger siblings, right?!

And all of that is utter nonesense. How do I even know the speaker responded to me as if I were mansplaining her?

I do not.

And why does she ignore men who she thinks are mansplaining her? Because she needs to survive.

But ignoring men, is exactly what women are complaining about: they are ignored.

So the real fix is to blame men and ignore them, to shut them down and silence them, right?!

Wrong.

That kind of working hard to turn the tables on people who treat me/us as if I/we do not count is much more of the same injustice and it breeds injustice, until it has built enough to cause a war, or a personal fight … and then the number of people who are silenced grows out of hand.

Empathy, kindness, reaching into the unfamiliar to understand; These are a good start toward a real solution.

Blaming, dismissing others because they are xsplaining you is not an answer, it is a dodge that perpetuates and makes worse the situation. One could have solved it, but one chose instead to become like one’s enemies and wreak havoc on them as they have you.

No solution comes from diminishing the other, nor from making them one’s enemies.

Only grace truly works.

It’s cold outside. That does not mean one’s heart needs be ice hard.

Be safe, outside, travelling, and with the hearts given into one’s care.

Sometimes the treat is to see something up close, real, beautiful … and forget the rest.