So, we show up tonight for Cluster Council--or, at least, I show up first with a Chicago hot dog and a strawberry milkshake I bought at Sonic on the way. But there were cars in the parking lot. Instead of eating in the car, I go in to eat with the early arrivals.
But when I open the door to the room where we meet at Emmanuel, the room is dim and half-a-dozen folks are prone on the floor.
Confused I am. I retreat and Ted comes out to tell me there is a Yoga class in the parish hall. I am terrified I went to the wrong church for the meeting, but when the door opens and three other from the Council come in I am not only relieved, but intrigued.
You see, I love adversity, which is a not bad personality trait since the cosmos throws adversity at you so often. But what intrigues me is how the Cluster Council folks will deal with this alteration, this curve ball, this minor adversity.
You see, I like to find out how people adjust to the unexpected. That same cosmos is expert is giving us the unexpected.
By the time the 12 of us are in the church, it is clear to me that these are people I want to be around. A few murmurs about 'why wasn't it on their calendar?' but people then pile the food they brought on the piano--even pizza delivered to what is 'the wilderness' of Emmanuel Church--and people are finding chairs from all over to set up a meeting place in the back of the sanctuary in spite of the slight chill and the dim lighting. Someone even found a table for the clerk to take notes and we ate and had a great meeting.
These are the kinds of folks I want to surround myself with--folks who make the best of a bad situation, who are not cowered by the unexpected, who forge on into adversity.
I was blessed to be with them. Blessed.
Adversity, you don't have a chance with the folks of these three churches! They're up to it....
Maybe it's because of the 'night prayer' we always end with.
I refer you to the post before this to read that prayer--or 'pray' it, if you will. Gives the lie to the power of adversity, that prayer does.....
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Pray it again, Sam...
Tonight we had Cluster Council. We always end with a night prayer.
It is so good I needed to share it again, so I found where I did share it. Here it is.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
night prayer
There is a prayer that we use to end Cluster Council Meeting called
"night prayer" that is the most theologically and psychologically
healthy prayers I've ever prayed.
It starts out in stillness in the presence of God--which is the very nature of the Centering Prayer I do and teach.
It calls us to let go of what 'has been done' and what 'has not been done', which is what we need to do spiritually and psychologically. Just 'let go' and move on.
It is fully Jungian when it talks of letting go of our fears of the darkness within us--embracing the dark, shadow side of who we are.
It asks for peace for all, even those who 'have no peace'.
It calls us to look for 'possibility' in the midst of the brokenness of life.
I've been told it comes from the New Zealand Prayer Book of that Anglican island.
I'm not sure. But I am sure it is one of the most holistic and inclusive prayers I've ever prayed.
So I share it with you here.
NIGHT PRAYER
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done.
What has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of our world and
of our own lives
rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let t he quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and those who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray. Amen.
I invite you to ponder the complexities of 'Night Prayer'. And to pray it....
It starts out in stillness in the presence of God--which is the very nature of the Centering Prayer I do and teach.
It calls us to let go of what 'has been done' and what 'has not been done', which is what we need to do spiritually and psychologically. Just 'let go' and move on.
It is fully Jungian when it talks of letting go of our fears of the darkness within us--embracing the dark, shadow side of who we are.
It asks for peace for all, even those who 'have no peace'.
It calls us to look for 'possibility' in the midst of the brokenness of life.
I've been told it comes from the New Zealand Prayer Book of that Anglican island.
I'm not sure. But I am sure it is one of the most holistic and inclusive prayers I've ever prayed.
So I share it with you here.
NIGHT PRAYER
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done.
What has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of our world and
of our own lives
rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let t he quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and those who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray. Amen.
I invite you to ponder the complexities of 'Night Prayer'. And to pray it....
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Robins
Walking the dog yesterday morning I counted 25 robins along the way.
Today there were 20 in Clara's yard across the street and 7 in our yard.
Robins, robins, robins. Robins everywhere!
I don't remember ever seeing so many at one time, especially this time of year.
Bern told me maybe I have, but have forgotten. (The woman has a list of my forgettings....)
But I'm not complaining. Robins are good.
And it's 50 degrees today.
What could be better than when the red, red robins come bob, bob, bobin' along?
Today there were 20 in Clara's yard across the street and 7 in our yard.
Robins, robins, robins. Robins everywhere!
I don't remember ever seeing so many at one time, especially this time of year.
Bern told me maybe I have, but have forgotten. (The woman has a list of my forgettings....)
But I'm not complaining. Robins are good.
And it's 50 degrees today.
What could be better than when the red, red robins come bob, bob, bobin' along?
Friday, March 4, 2016
Scars
I've got a lot of them.
The oldest one has shrunk to a dot over my left eyebrow. I was six or so and playing baseball in my uncle Russel's yard with much older cousins. I slid head first into home plate and hit my head on the side of the sidewalk. Blood everywhere (head wounds are the worst!), carried by a cousin, a long ride in my mother's arm to a doctor 15 miles away, some stitches and a ride home, still in my mother's arms. Repercussions to cousins for sure for letting 'little Jimmie' get hurt.
Scars, it seems to me, are like the rings on a tree stump. Scars tell us something about how life has gone over time. Scars have, literally, marked the passage of life.
I'm not sure I can label them all. I have so many.
On my left arm: two ten inch scars from where I broke the two bones in 10 places and had them replaced or attached to titanium rods--the longest rods the surgeon had ever put in an arm. He was proud. I was just glad I broke the bones so badly that they were repaired two days later. No cast, just Physical Therapy. That was in 2008 or so when I hit a guard rail on an icy exit and the air bag broke my arm. If you break a bone, do it up right so it gets fixed fast....
Further up my arm, barely visible except no hair grows there, is when as a child a bat in my step-grandmother's house startled me and caused me to fall against a red hot pot belly stove on a cold winter night in Waiteville, WV. The scar,like the one over my eyebrow, has diminished over the decades, but I can still smell the burned skin and still remember the night in a feather bed with salve soaked rags wrapped around my arm.
My stomach is a topical map of scars--appendectomy on the Eve of the Millennium and prostrate cancer surgery in 2005. (Yes, I am a cancer survivor. Praise the Lord....)
On my right index finger--a 9 stitch scar from pulling open a drawer on Thanksgiving several years ago and having the glass knob break and slice open my finger. Mimi and our friend John and I went to get it sewed up while Tim and Bern and our friend Hanne tried to keep dinner eatable! Mimi sent Tim photos from her Smart Phone of the minor surgery. Hopefully long ago erased!
Cut my left thumb open after that. No sign of the stitches--4, I think, done in an urgent care office just down the road.
And my eyes--scars on both irises from over wearing contacts that should have been replaced. I never wore contacts again, but the pain came before the permanent damage (not the way it usually happens) so my vision is fine but I have these intriguing scars on my eyes that many people notice and find in some strange way, attractive.
Your scars are 'who you are'. Think about that. Ponder it. List your scars--relive the moments that caused them. Ponder how that shifted your life. Wonder who you would have been without your scars. Would that have been better or worse?
(Oh, I just remembered, I had bloodless surgery to remove a cyst on my left elbow years ago. I can't find the scar, but it's there, if only in my mind.)
We are our scars.
What a thought.
Ponder that, see where it leads you--and don't stop with the ones we can 'see'. There are other scars, not visible, to our hearts and souls and minds.
Those too have altered and shifted and changed and transformed and made us who we are now.
Scars are too profound to ignor.
Ponder your scars....It will help make you more whole, ironically....
The oldest one has shrunk to a dot over my left eyebrow. I was six or so and playing baseball in my uncle Russel's yard with much older cousins. I slid head first into home plate and hit my head on the side of the sidewalk. Blood everywhere (head wounds are the worst!), carried by a cousin, a long ride in my mother's arm to a doctor 15 miles away, some stitches and a ride home, still in my mother's arms. Repercussions to cousins for sure for letting 'little Jimmie' get hurt.
Scars, it seems to me, are like the rings on a tree stump. Scars tell us something about how life has gone over time. Scars have, literally, marked the passage of life.
I'm not sure I can label them all. I have so many.
On my left arm: two ten inch scars from where I broke the two bones in 10 places and had them replaced or attached to titanium rods--the longest rods the surgeon had ever put in an arm. He was proud. I was just glad I broke the bones so badly that they were repaired two days later. No cast, just Physical Therapy. That was in 2008 or so when I hit a guard rail on an icy exit and the air bag broke my arm. If you break a bone, do it up right so it gets fixed fast....
Further up my arm, barely visible except no hair grows there, is when as a child a bat in my step-grandmother's house startled me and caused me to fall against a red hot pot belly stove on a cold winter night in Waiteville, WV. The scar,like the one over my eyebrow, has diminished over the decades, but I can still smell the burned skin and still remember the night in a feather bed with salve soaked rags wrapped around my arm.
My stomach is a topical map of scars--appendectomy on the Eve of the Millennium and prostrate cancer surgery in 2005. (Yes, I am a cancer survivor. Praise the Lord....)
On my right index finger--a 9 stitch scar from pulling open a drawer on Thanksgiving several years ago and having the glass knob break and slice open my finger. Mimi and our friend John and I went to get it sewed up while Tim and Bern and our friend Hanne tried to keep dinner eatable! Mimi sent Tim photos from her Smart Phone of the minor surgery. Hopefully long ago erased!
Cut my left thumb open after that. No sign of the stitches--4, I think, done in an urgent care office just down the road.
And my eyes--scars on both irises from over wearing contacts that should have been replaced. I never wore contacts again, but the pain came before the permanent damage (not the way it usually happens) so my vision is fine but I have these intriguing scars on my eyes that many people notice and find in some strange way, attractive.
Your scars are 'who you are'. Think about that. Ponder it. List your scars--relive the moments that caused them. Ponder how that shifted your life. Wonder who you would have been without your scars. Would that have been better or worse?
(Oh, I just remembered, I had bloodless surgery to remove a cyst on my left elbow years ago. I can't find the scar, but it's there, if only in my mind.)
We are our scars.
What a thought.
Ponder that, see where it leads you--and don't stop with the ones we can 'see'. There are other scars, not visible, to our hearts and souls and minds.
Those too have altered and shifted and changed and transformed and made us who we are now.
Scars are too profound to ignor.
Ponder your scars....It will help make you more whole, ironically....
David Brooks is sitting Shiva
I always look forward to Friday because David Brooks (NY Times) and E.J. Dionne (Washington Post/Brookings Institute) are on "All Things Considered" to discuss the political landscape.
Brooks is a Conservative Republican I deeply respect and agree with more often than I'd ever tell my Leftist friends! He IS Conservative, no doubt about it. But he is a Conservative in the linage of President Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller and Everett Dirksen--men I all admired.
Brooks can hardly hold back tears that his Republican Party has gone so far off the rails in this Presidential Election cycle. Brooks is a Conservative of the Jeb Bush and John Kasich ilk. Which means that David is a man without a Party right now.
Today he even said that he fears a irreparable split in the Republican Party between free market/socially moderates and whoever it is Donald Trump is speaking for. He said that political parties 'realign' every half a century or so, and this might be the Republican's time.
He's devastated by all this, it's obvious in his voice and choice of words.
He's already sitting Shiva for the Party he loves so.
I like David Brooks so much, I must feel pain for him in my heart, though me mind is jumping for joy that the Republican Party may be self-destructing....
Brooks is a Conservative Republican I deeply respect and agree with more often than I'd ever tell my Leftist friends! He IS Conservative, no doubt about it. But he is a Conservative in the linage of President Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller and Everett Dirksen--men I all admired.
Brooks can hardly hold back tears that his Republican Party has gone so far off the rails in this Presidential Election cycle. Brooks is a Conservative of the Jeb Bush and John Kasich ilk. Which means that David is a man without a Party right now.
Today he even said that he fears a irreparable split in the Republican Party between free market/socially moderates and whoever it is Donald Trump is speaking for. He said that political parties 'realign' every half a century or so, and this might be the Republican's time.
He's devastated by all this, it's obvious in his voice and choice of words.
He's already sitting Shiva for the Party he loves so.
I like David Brooks so much, I must feel pain for him in my heart, though me mind is jumping for joy that the Republican Party may be self-destructing....
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Free and ABSOULTELY TRUE advice
I am going to give you some 'free advice', which I often do.
My free advice is almost always based on my left wing politics and theology.
It is always 'free' (have I ever asked you to pay for it? really?) but, even I must admit that my advice, though free, is not 'absolutely true' advice.
My advice is always filtered through my odd and very liberal lens. Did I say 'left-wing' above referring to my politics and theology? Correct that. (See how free stuff should be carefully scrutinized?) My politics and theology is VERY left-wing!
For example, this piece of advice: vote for Bernie Sanders in the Primary and then, in November, vote for Hillary for President. Every vote for Bernie (who can't be the nominee unless Hillary is in prison for her e-mails) drives Hillary further to the Left. See the method in my madness and the self-servingness in my advice?
But this advice is both "free" and "absolutely true". Believe you me....
If you are ever eating HAPPY YUMMIES 'Gourmet Cajun Mix'--peanuts, pretzels and sesame sticks in a Cajun style--(and you should, by the way--delicious and very spicy) don't ever wipe your eye with the hand you've been using to eat the Cajun Mix.
I did yesterday and it was a nightmare.
Water splashed in my left eye for five minutes and two different eye drops finally cleared it away enough to see again.
It was, for the first few minutes, equivalent to putting a white charcoal briquette in your eye.
So, don't do it.
Free and absolutely true.
Nothing much better than that.
(And the thing about voting Bernie for his proposals and Hillary because she can win by moving left toward Bernie--all that is 'free' as well. If you're a socialist at heart and a liberal in mind.)
My free advice is almost always based on my left wing politics and theology.
It is always 'free' (have I ever asked you to pay for it? really?) but, even I must admit that my advice, though free, is not 'absolutely true' advice.
My advice is always filtered through my odd and very liberal lens. Did I say 'left-wing' above referring to my politics and theology? Correct that. (See how free stuff should be carefully scrutinized?) My politics and theology is VERY left-wing!
For example, this piece of advice: vote for Bernie Sanders in the Primary and then, in November, vote for Hillary for President. Every vote for Bernie (who can't be the nominee unless Hillary is in prison for her e-mails) drives Hillary further to the Left. See the method in my madness and the self-servingness in my advice?
But this advice is both "free" and "absolutely true". Believe you me....
If you are ever eating HAPPY YUMMIES 'Gourmet Cajun Mix'--peanuts, pretzels and sesame sticks in a Cajun style--(and you should, by the way--delicious and very spicy) don't ever wipe your eye with the hand you've been using to eat the Cajun Mix.
I did yesterday and it was a nightmare.
Water splashed in my left eye for five minutes and two different eye drops finally cleared it away enough to see again.
It was, for the first few minutes, equivalent to putting a white charcoal briquette in your eye.
So, don't do it.
Free and absolutely true.
Nothing much better than that.
(And the thing about voting Bernie for his proposals and Hillary because she can win by moving left toward Bernie--all that is 'free' as well. If you're a socialist at heart and a liberal in mind.)
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
sometimes meetings are good
The Cluster Council officers--President, Vice-President, Treasurer and me (and Nathan) haven't met for a long time to plan the agenda for the Cluster Council meeting since the Cluster Council hasn't met since sometime last fall.
Things are simply perking along--which is what I like! I am a fan of positive ruts--so there wasn't really anything to meet about.
But the Executive Committee met tonight and the Council will meet next Tuesday.
(For those who find all I've written to be in Sanskrit: I'm the Interim Missioner of the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--three churches who share clergy and practice 'total common ministry', which means clergy are a necessary evil but not necessary for much of the life of the churches in the cluster!)
Meeting tonight was great. We all love each other and sharing a meal is a good thing to do any time and maybe we should meet from time to time (though I really don't like most meetings).
We meet at the Cozy Corner in Durham. The waitress there (only one for 12 tables!) is young and lovely with the slightest of Italian accents who is the greatest waitress I know).
I tell Bern about her. Bern has been a great waitress herself and actually waited tables while she was in New York acting when we were newly married and waited tables and acted while I was in Seminary in Virginia.
The young woman at Cozy Corner is amazing. I walk in after three months or so and she smiles, says hello and says, "ice-water and a Pinot Grigio?"
Amazing! And with people at all 12 tables she takes orders, serves and buses the tables all by herself while noticing (who knows how?) whether anyone needs coffee or wine refills.
A Pearl beyond price she is.
I tip her 35% and include something in cash.
That's how good she is.
Such competence and attention is seldom demonstrated and ever less appreciated.
I think the 5 of us should meet more often just to be served by her.
And, finally, to learn from her what 'service' and 'ministry' is all about and how to recognize it and appreciate it and emulate it.
Waiting tables is a lot like 'ministering'.
Knowing that should humble us 'ministers' enough to do the job and enlighten us enough to know what we do isn't 'special' unless we do it with the same competence and grace as that young waitress.
What a gift her service is to me.
Things are simply perking along--which is what I like! I am a fan of positive ruts--so there wasn't really anything to meet about.
But the Executive Committee met tonight and the Council will meet next Tuesday.
(For those who find all I've written to be in Sanskrit: I'm the Interim Missioner of the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--three churches who share clergy and practice 'total common ministry', which means clergy are a necessary evil but not necessary for much of the life of the churches in the cluster!)
Meeting tonight was great. We all love each other and sharing a meal is a good thing to do any time and maybe we should meet from time to time (though I really don't like most meetings).
We meet at the Cozy Corner in Durham. The waitress there (only one for 12 tables!) is young and lovely with the slightest of Italian accents who is the greatest waitress I know).
I tell Bern about her. Bern has been a great waitress herself and actually waited tables while she was in New York acting when we were newly married and waited tables and acted while I was in Seminary in Virginia.
The young woman at Cozy Corner is amazing. I walk in after three months or so and she smiles, says hello and says, "ice-water and a Pinot Grigio?"
Amazing! And with people at all 12 tables she takes orders, serves and buses the tables all by herself while noticing (who knows how?) whether anyone needs coffee or wine refills.
A Pearl beyond price she is.
I tip her 35% and include something in cash.
That's how good she is.
Such competence and attention is seldom demonstrated and ever less appreciated.
I think the 5 of us should meet more often just to be served by her.
And, finally, to learn from her what 'service' and 'ministry' is all about and how to recognize it and appreciate it and emulate it.
Waiting tables is a lot like 'ministering'.
Knowing that should humble us 'ministers' enough to do the job and enlighten us enough to know what we do isn't 'special' unless we do it with the same competence and grace as that young waitress.
What a gift her service is to me.
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