Musings Along Lifes Way: Facebook Connections

No man (person) is an island, entire of itself; every man (person) is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...any man's (person's) death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind (humankind).

Hello Everyone,
At the heart of human life is a basic truth; we are part of one another -- our isolation is but an illusion. So John Donne writes No man (person) is an island, entire of itself. Our human lives seem to hover around our connectedness -- its affirmation or its denial. We are trying to figure out, or better, realize how we are connected. So, we communicate, ask one another questions, worry about whether people like us or not. There are newspapers, books, Rotary Clubs and churches. We write letters, now emails and instant messages. We sit down over coffee and we share our lives. Sometimes we figure that we are not connected, can't be connnected, will never be connected. Then, we make enemies and fight. All of this seems to orbit around one primary question, "How are we related?"

When Ron Buford, the first coordinator of the United Church of Christ's "God is Still Speaking" initiative visited our church last Saturday to discuss the Northern California Nevada Conference's "Rhythm of Abundance" program for spirituality, church vitality and stewardship, he took some time to meet with some of us from the Sonoma County United Churches of Christ to help us discuss our forthcoming Christmas/Advent joint advertising campaign (another way to use our connections). Our discussion lead us to to acknowledge how quickly and how thoroughly the world is changing. In terms of publicity and advertising, newspapers are on the way out and the internet is still building up steam. We are realizing our connections in new ways. This got me interested in Facebook. So, this past Monday I dove in.

Working with Facebook is like going to a party. When you are by yourself and arrive at a party you look for someone you know, someone you can make a connection with and talk to. When meeting this person you see that she has some friends that you don't know. When you start talking with these people you have never met, you find that they know people who are also unknown to you. Soon everyone is talking with everyone else and new connections are made, new friendships are forged. Well, folks have figured out how to do this online. After about 24 hours I have 35 friends AND some of those folks are new to me. That's a wonder.

So, that's it: human beings doing what humans do -- making connections, realizing something about themselves in a new medium, the internet. As connections are made some of us move deeper into currents of grace, love and compassion. Here we find the true source of all our connections -- to paraphrase Donne, "we are all part of the main, we are part of one another." Come see me and all my friends on Facebook.

Blessings,
David

Musings Along Life's Way: The Summer Day

Here's a poem that I hope you will enjoy. The title is The Summer Day and it is by Mary Oliver. It is one of my favorite poems.

The Summer Day
Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

All summer we have been studying the parables of Jesus -- stories that Jesus told in order to lead us more deeply into an experience of presence, into what he referred to as the kingdom of Gold. A good poem can do that same thing. Take this one -- it starts off with the big question, "Who made the world?" It doesn't get any bigger than that. But like a distiller of fine spirits, Oliver boils it down to the very specific grasshopper eating her lunch out of the poet's hand. Oliver pays very close attention to this grasshopper and shifts the conversation -- for that is what this poem is -- to the act of paying attention itself and to its attendant graces. To pay attention is to knell down in the grass, to be idle (relaxed attention not strong fixed attention) and blessed. And she takes it out of the abstract once again -- she, Mary, has been strolling all day "through the fields." All this is Mary Oliver's answer to that initial question, "Who made the world," or put another way, what is the meaning of life?" "Tell me," she asks in the specific, "what else should I have done?" Then she throws it back, what about you, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Oliver calls us to our specific lives -- the grasshoppers, the plants, one step in front of another along life's way. It is here, she is suggesting that one finds the answers to life's big questions by just living. The parables do this too. Jesus talks of mustard seeds, pearls, and leaven as was to enter the Presence. Our task is to bring them to life.

It is summer time, and the living is easy -- enjoy your one wild and precious life.

Blessings,
David

Musings Along Life's Way: To discover God’s realm, even in great loss.

Jesus taught using parables. All summer we have been looking at the parables as we have tried to re-imagine the world that Jesus himself envisioned. As we study the parables we find that Jesus was addressing the very concerns that we long to have addressed in our world. Things like: how is it that one is accepted by God? Who is acceptable? How far do God’s blessings reach? What does one have to do? This week we will be looking at two parables concerning “losing things.” We all know what it is to lose things. In the Parable of the Lost Coin we have a story about a woman who loses a coin and goes to great lengths to find it. Jesus is saying that the realm of God is just like that.

In the gospel of Thomas there is an account of another type of loss ­ the loss that is permanent, the sort of loss where what is lost is not restored. A woman buys grain at the market. On her way home the grain runs out of the jar and she has no inkling that anything is happening. When she gets home, she finds that the grain has all leaked out. And that is the end of the parable! The question for us is: when we lose everything, what is left? What is there? How might the realm of God be perceived in emptiness, in absence?

In the parable of the empty jar we are confronted by a reality that we all must face: when someone we love dies; when we lose a job; when we ourselves suffer a permanent loss through illness or injury we ask ourselves what is there, what is left? In the face of such loss we might even ask ourselves, “without this thing that I have lost, who am I?” This is where Jesus leaves us in the parable of the empty jar, inviting us to discover God’s realm, even in great loss.

I will be in church this Sunday the 13th , out of the office for a bit of vacation the 14th to 19th and back in church on the 20th to send-off our youth for the National Youth Event. If there are any emergencies during my absence, please call the church office and Carmen will be able to reach me.

Blessings, David

Musings Along Lifes Way: The Best Things Cannot be Talked About

“You travel over sea and land to make a single convert, and once you have him (of her), you make him (or her) twice as fit for hell as you are.” Matthew 23:15 (as translated and paraphrased by Richard Rohr, in “Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality”)

Ouch! Is this Jesus speaking? You betcha. He is speaking this to the folks of his time who were “in the know.” They were the spiritual leaders, the ones who sought to teach others about God and God’s ways. Statements like the one above show us how radical Jesus was as he faced the religious authorities of his time. In Jesus’ time, as in ours, there are those who seek to explain the ways of God, who have definitive answers concerning the end times, morality, the spiritual observances of the faithful. These were the people who Jesus was addressing. Jesus spoke in the prophetic tradition that spoke not only of the known but also the unknown aspects of the Divine. At the heart of Jesus’ Jewish upbringing is the notion that God, in God’s totality, simply cannot be known. This is reflected in prophets like Isaiah when he says,

"For My thoughts are not (your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways

And My thoughts than your thoughts."

Richard Rohr quotes Heinrich Zimmer who says, “the best things cannot be talked about,” and the “second best things are almost always misunderstood.” Think about that which is very best in life: qualities such as love and joy. Such qualities elude words as does a definitive explanation of God’s essence and Way. No language is adequate, all words fail. So, you see the best things cannot be talked about. And, “the second best things are almost always misunderstood.” The second best things are those things which point to the best things, the second best things are the signs and metaphors that participate in what Teilhard de Chardin called the Divine Milieu. These second best things have the quality of poetry, not explaining but pointing to and participating in the reality of the Divine in life. The second best things are misunderstood when they are concretized and lowered to the function of explaining things that cannot be explained. In our modern times, for example, some “fundamentalists” take the poetry of the Bible and solidify it to the point that many are waiting for, “the holy city, new Jerusalem” to come down from God out of heaven. (Rev. 21)” Unable to grasp the unknowing quality of faith such folks lead others to a faith that becomes one of believing certain beliefs rather than trusting in the One who is beyond any capacity that we might have to comprehend, yet is trustworthy beyond any of our expectations. Enter the parable.

Jesus chose not to explain God and God’s ways in his teachings. Instead, he chose speak of God through use of the “second best things” properly understood. These he called parables. Parables are well-used metaphors that open the hearer to an experience of grace, divine love, rather than to a cognitive understanding. Parables allow the mystery to remain inviting the hearer to participate in the mystery as she hears the parable. Parables are an invitation into the divine thoughts that are not our thoughts, the ways that are not ours. Parables are understood then not in our minds, to say cognitively. Rather they are embodied. With our lives as parable, we participate in the grace that God gives – a love and a grace that is beyond all our understanding.

Over the summer, we will continue to focus on parable in Bible Study and Meditation on Wednesdays and in Adult Study and Worship on Sundays. Parables dare us to embrace that which cannot be known. Blessings, David