God's Own Heart

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I have no regular pulpit, because I am not an ordained pastor. But I sometimes do preach. And today I had a sermon. This is what I would have preached on Sunday, August 9, 2015.

The Beginning of a New Blog Cycle: Thoughts on Issues in the Theology of Scripture

Well, it has been a long time since I've blogged. Life became extremely crowded last semester, what with a 15-hour a week job, a 15-hour a week internship and three intense classes (oh, and living life and loving my wife as well). Right now I'm taking a month-long course on Issues in the Theology of Scripture, which meets for three hours in the morning, leaving a little bit more time on my schedule. I've decided that this class, which so far has been wonderfully thought-provoking, might provide some good fodder for blogging. What I'm proposing to do is to post thoughts on the course (which began on Monday and so far has involved writing a 1500 word essay) every day that I can. I've asked my professor -- who will be referred to as Shane in the posts -- if I can quote him, or refer to his ideas if they are the seeds of my thought for these posts, and he has agreed that I can refer to him as long as the references are not wholesale transcriptions of his lectures or audio files (which they won't be) and that I accurately represent his views.

I hope to ponder the theme of the course, which Shane put before us on Monday, of wandering around in the gap between theology and biblical studies. I will go more into detail of what this gap entails and why it exists as Shane explains it to us in class, but in brief, let's just say that in higher education there exists a separation of disciplines. In most higher ed institutions divisions are placed between the sciences and the arts and the humanities, and also within each of these between history and english or philosophy, for instance. In Seminary, you often see this division of disciplines into: Biblical Studies, Practical Theology, Theology and Church History. The difficulty that sometimes arises in pursuing these studies is that the folk in the Biblical Studies department take very seriously the questions that have come from a historical-critical way of looking at the Bible: reading texts in original languages, studying their cultural, historical and political contexts, trying to work out how the texts were written, formed, passed down, etc. This method is a product of the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the Theology department spends perhaps a class period on a theology of scripture, often avoiding questions that deal with the difficulties presented by the historical-critical method. These problems sometimes involve the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible, the contradictions that can be found in the Bible (or seeming contradictions, I'm sure we'll get into this later), the grammatical differences between different copies of the Bible, what it means for the Bible to be divinely inspired and how this bears out when the Bible gets into human hands or when it is translated into different languages. So, the Biblical Studies department takes these questions seriously, but they are often in the background and understanding why these questions are important and what they mean for the life of faith and everyday living is not considered. Or, on the other hand, the Theology department discusses briefly a theology of scripture but does not consider how this might come to bear in practice or what a theology of scripture that takes into account the questions might look. This course tries to put these background questions into the foreground and to address them in a thoughtful and sensitive way.

It also attempts to equip students with tools to read what Shane calls the "Barnes and Noble School of Theology and Ancient Scriptures." By this he means the popular books that are widely available in major bookstores and have entered the general culture and conversation: Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, or Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, for instance. While these books bring up interesting points that speak to the Historical-Critical method, the outcomes of their discussion can be misleading and they do not always speak to the theological or practical outcomes of the difficulties they mention. If you want a good introduction to this debate, check out Stephen Colbert's interview with Bart Ehrman, which Shane used as a catalyst for his initial lecture. The video is embedded below:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bart Ehrman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

So, now that you know a bit about the course, you can follow along on this blog for the next few weeks as I share with you what I'm learning and what I'm thinking. I'll begin with the essay that we had for the course, which answers the question: "What do we mean when we say that the Bible is true, and what methods of Biblical interpretation help us to appreciate its truthfulness." This essay will be revised at the end of the semester. I'll post it in a separate post from this.

Thanks, as always, for sticking with me faithful readers!

Confidence and Completion

"I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ." - Philippians 1:6

Last weekend, Sarah and I went back up to our Alma Mater, Alma College (somehow it seems redundant), to participate in the wedding of two wonderful friends. We laughed, some people cried, we played music, we danced, we talked with old friends. The weather was beautiful, the sky a bright blue, the temperature warm enough for sleeveless dresses and cool enough to forestall sweat. After the happy couple left for their honeymoon cruise, we helped the wedding party clean the reception hall. Then we went to chapel.

Alma's chapel service, if you haven't been, starts at 9:00 at night on Sundays. It's a rather odd affair: drums and guitars and piano blaring out the good news to old teens and young twenty-somethings dressed in everything from pajamas pants and slippers to khakis and nice shirts. Sometimes the soon-to-retire sixty-something-year-old president of the college attends with her husband, a professor at a seminary in Detroit. She smiles and shakes hands during the boisterous passing of the peace, where some people hug, others give high-fives and folk run around to greet each other with such energy that the worship leader always has to call them back with a shout. Chapel worship is robust and energetic, with clapping and singing at the top of lungs. The music ranges from spirituals, folk songs and old hymns to straight up rock. The preaching is done by students and professors and local ministers. It can also be reflective, with prayer and silence, and sometimes weeping. It is not an experience for the faint of heart. Or perhaps it is, because through it your heart might be strengthened. It certainly expands hearts and opens arms in fellowship.

It was not always this way. Ten years ago, long before I attended Alma, the Chapel program was dying. I heard, from Alums, that Chapel attendance once consisted of the chaplain and five students listening to hymns recorded on tape and played on a stereo. Two years before I landed a few students decided to change that. They formed a small band and started playing more upbeat music - live. To advertise the change, they played at the college's annual song competition. A few people took notice and attendance rose to fifteen or twenty people. The chaplain, who was supportive of this, was also nearing retirement. So, the year before I came to Alma, he retired.

I came to Alma at the same time as a new chaplain. Having lead worship at my church for a few years, I knew that I wanted to participate in any way I could. The band leader at that point, one of the founders of the chapel band, was in his senior year. The band needed a keyboardist, and he felt like he could train someone to replace him leading the band on guitar and vocals. I took up the charge and played every week. He bolstered my guitar skills, playing for hours after every service with me. Soon I became confident enough to sing and strum at the same time, if not often in rhythm. Sometimes I slowed down. Other times I sped up. The rest of the band at that time (all extremely competent musicians who either had separate bands of their own or who were part of our college's award winning percussion ensemble), dealt with the transition as well as could be expected and taught me a lot about how to lead a band and how to work with people. They also taught me rhythm (mostly). Other part-time folk were brought into the band as well, and we developed a rotating roster of singers and keyboardists and guitar players. We added occasional flute and violin and harmonica and tin whistle too.

The then out-going worship leader was also the chapel intern. He worked ten to twenty hours a week at the chapel, helping the chaplain with whatever she needed and developing the worship life. He knew that not every Alma student would want to take over the position of chapel intern, but the program was growing. They started an Alternative Break program that year, in conjunction with the college's Discovering Vocation office. Worship attendance had grown to an average of thirty people per week. And more and more students seemed interested in Christian leadership. So the chapel intern and the chaplain devised a plan. They divided the work of the intern into six areas with twelve positions: music and worship, technology, clerical, liturgical, worship and the arts, and hospitality. Then they hired twelve students, including myself, as test pilots for a new group: the Student Ministry Coordinators. Half of us were considering some type of graduate work in religion, the other half were very dedicated chapel goers, or people who had worked sound and other things with the chapel program.

Over the next three years the roster of SMCs changed, with a core of five or six of us. The chaplain broke her leg and was out for half a year, then moved on to a position at a Seminary. We went through a year with an interim chaplain, then found a new one for my senior year. Ever year seemed in flux. Sometimes we were barely keeping ourselves upright. We fought each other. Divisions flared up. Some people who came into the program were just looking for a campus job. Others had problems at home. We were all over-busy, over-stressed and sometimes over-worked. Sometimes all twelve of us (thirteen including the chaplain) came to meetings, sometimes less than half. We changed the order and style of worship over and over and over again. The only constant was the worship. Sunday after sunday. Rain or shine. Sometimes there were only ten people in the pews. Sometimes there were almost sixty. Somehow, in all of this turmoil, by the grace of God, the program grew. Three chaplains in three years. Twenty-or-so over-stressed students. Varying quality of music (often my fault, sometimes because no one came to practice). Yet, by my senior year, our average attendance had grown to over sixty people per week.

That senior year we realized that most of us SMCs were...well...seniors. We had grown up together, shared our lives together, cried and laughed and struggled together. But we were moving on. What would the future hold? Should we disband the SMCs? Should we pare it down to only six? How do you pass the torch? We put out a search for first and second year students to join us, to apprentice us. We left as much information as we could in their hands (I sent six CDs full of music back so the new band leaders could listen to most of the songs in our catalogue). Still, two of those we were training were going to be in semester over seas programs, and our chaplain was going to go on sabbatical for a year. It seemed that the program was going to be in flux even more than before. And the elusive stability that we had sought, the stability that we thought we could provide by being there, was going to be lost.

Would the chapel program survive us? (I admit this is a prideful and obviously stupid thought. I wish I could say I'm a better person than one who would think that, but I can't.) The six or seven students in whose hands we were leaving the SMCs had a huge mountain to overcome. Not only were they small in number and newly trained with another interim chaplain with whom they must deal, but the expectation of those who had come to chapel regularly and who would still be attending the next year was like a thick fog in the air. It's always hard not to compare. I could understand if the students buckled under the weight of it all. I could understand if many of them gave up. I almost had several times. Life is much easier without stress.

I paint a dire picture of course. But, in talking with several of the SMCs the year after I left, I discovered that they were having a difficult time. Attendance had dropped. The interim chaplain was sometimes hard to deal with. Some of them did end up quitting.

And yet.

And yet. It is a testimony to God's strength and grace that the Chapel program survived. And not just survived. Thrived. After the initial drop in attendance, a quiet revolution began. The SMCs knew what all good torch-bearers know, what all those running a relay know. When the torch is passed, you can only run as you can run. You can only breath as you can breath. If you think too much about imitating the previous runner, you're sunk. If you think too much about how desperate the situation is, you're sunk. If you dwell on the past instead of running into the future, the race is already over. You must run the race you've been given and set your eyes on the finish line. The SMCs made the program their own. They found their voice.

By the second year after I graduated, average chapel attendance was edging close to one hundred. I came back to preach in January, the first Sunday of the second semester. During my tenure as an SMC, first Sundays of second semester were notoriously low. Something about the winter cold and coming back from break and the rigors of the first semester that always depleted our attendance usually brought down the numbers to just between fifteen and twenty. Certainly not sixty. Certainly not eighty. Certainly not one hundred. But that January night I preached to one hundred people. On a low Sunday.

And now back to last weekend. Sarah and I walked into chapel early. She went downstairs and I stayed up in one of the pews to listen to the new chapel band. Only one of the members had even been a student at Alma when I had been an SMC. But they sounded good. Different. They had their own style. And yet there was something familiar about it. I even heard one of the worship leaders ask after a song: "Any questions, concerns, or problems?" which is a slight variation on something I used to say: "Questions, concerns, comments, queries?" I guess I'm more into alliteration. Slowly the chapel started to fill. Sarah and I were expecting low numbers. This was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, after all. Although many first year students were already on campus, upperclassfolks didn't have to start until Tuesday. Monday was a holiday. Labor Day Sundays were notoriously low. But the chapel filled. And filled. Eighty-nine people, not including the six or seven SMCs who were there (some of them hadn't come back to campus yet).

Worship was exhilarating. The music was uplifting and just as flawed as it had been when I was leading the band. I discovered during my four worship-leading years that the time when the band was the least prepared and when the music often sounded the worst was the time when I reached out to God the most and found that I was truly worshipping. So I rejoiced that some songs were too fast and that you couldn't always hear the singers. Worship is never about the band anyway. It's about God. Passing of the Peace was even more boisterous than I remembered; the fellowship more deep. The college president even gave me an informal hug and asked how I was doing with a bright, cheery smile. The SMCs had added a ministry to worship. Some of them stayed in the back afterward to offer anyone who needed it a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold in prayer.

And the message. The message was prayerful and heartfelt and chocked-full of scriptures and genuine. The student who preached gave a message about Growth. And she used the scripture passage at the head of this blogpost. She talked about how growth was hard, but how God was with us. And how God had a plan, even if we could not see it. And as I sat in that pew, some of the doubts about what I'd done in college faded away. Some of the tension and emptiness slipped back to the darkened corner of my mind from where, someday, they might creep back again. But for now, they were silenced and gone. And I got a glimpse of that elusive plan of God, that stretches all throughout history and is more like a woven blanket with an intricate pattern of warp and woof than a simple straight line. I saw that God had used me despite me, and that God was growing the chapel despite me too. I saw that it was true that the good work that God began at the Chapel among my generation, and even before us, was being carried on to completion. I saw that sometimes this means that God will complete something started in us, even when we are no longer there. The verse is ambiguous about this, of course. It doesn't say that we will complete the work, or that the work will be completed in us, but that God will complete the work that was begun in us. Nevertheless, this confidence that God was completing a work that I helped to inaugurate gave me confidence for my own life. If God could complete this, surely God can complete me.

Puddleglum Theology Launched

Today I spent over seven hours doing something I've wanted to do for a while. With the help of google sites, I've created a central website for what I'm lovingly calling Puddleglum Theology.

What is Puddleglum Theology? If you've ever read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and especially the fourth book in the series The Silver Chair, you might have a clue. If you're completely in the dark about all of this, here's an excerpt from The Silver Chair and the introduction to the Puddleglum Theology website to shed some light:

"I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

- Puddleglum, from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Welcome to Puddleglum Theology! The underlying ethos behind this website is contained in the above quote. I enjoy mystery and myth, beauty and brightness. I would rather take a stand for the world of story than suffer under the burden of mere fact. Not that facts are not useful, or reason an integral part of living and knowing. But, as Madeleine L'Engle expresses, "if we limit ourselves to the possible and provable...we render ourselves incapable of change and growth, and that is something that should never end." (The Rock That Is Higher, 100) She continues: "perhaps it is the child within us who is able to recognize the truth of story--the mysterious, the numinous, the unexplainable--and the grown-up within us who accepts these qualities with joy but understands that we also have responsibilities, that a promise is to be kept, homework is to be done, that we ow other people courtesy and consideration, and that we need help to care for our planet because it's the only one we've got." (TRTIH, 100) Perhaps my outlook on life can be more accurately portrayed by another quote from C.S. Lewis, this time from an essay on "Three Ways of Writing for Children," "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." (On Stories, 34)

I sincerely believe that there is more to life than we can accurately portray with mere facts, more to truth than statistics and analytical thinking can produce. I do not always live like a child, but I deeply desire that way of life. I want to wonder again, to be in awe more often, to wrestle with the unknown under a dark moon and somehow end up with both a blessing and a new name. I want to celebrate mystery, all the while seeking to understand. I want to be joyful, knowing full well how grim things truly are. I want to love indiscriminately, and fight injustice passionately. I hope that you'll join me.

On this website you'll find a page that reproduces my blog: There Is No Fear In Love, a growing compendium of quotes from my favorite authors and a discussion page where I'll post questions/thoughts for discussion. And, hopefully, more things in the future. So, again, welcome to Puddleglum Theology!

So, there you have it! Puddleglum Theology has been launched. If you are interested in Puddleglum Theology and would like to submit quotes relevant to the themes presented, e-mail them to me at marchon2884@google.com and I'll try to add them to our growing list of Wiggle Wisdom in the Wigwam Word Archive. Or, if you've written an article or blogpost relating to Puddleglum Theology, I can add that to Respectobiggle Research. Make sure to check out other quotes and articles on the Puddleglum Theology website. Here's the address:

http://sites.google.com/site/puddleglumtheology/

Or you can just click on any of the times I've listed Puddleglum Theology in this post.

Thanks for sticking with me, faithful reader!

Loving A Place

I have lived in and called home three places: Salt Lake City, UT; Alma, MI; and now Princeton, NJ. Until this afternoon, at 1:00PM, I had been reticent to call Princeton my home. For, you see, I need to fall in love with a place and hear it speak to me before I can call it home. I have fallen in love with the people in a particular place and, in so doing, have been able to be comfortable living there (Charlotte, NC, for instance, where my mother, father, sister and nephews live), but I have not yet been able to call a location HOME, unless I have fallen in love with it.

Falling in love with something on a map is not exactly like falling in love with people. I knew I loved my eldest nephew from the first minute I saw him, mere moments after he had been born, his small, rumpled form held in my sister’s tired arms. I cannot remember the transformative moment when wide-eyed dependency upon my parents for sustenance became affection for the lovingly imperfect humans that they are, but I can recall the moments in my young adulthood when I made a conscious decision to love them, disregarding the monstrous angst that threatened to overwhelm me. I can pinpoint each step in loving my wife so far, from acquaintance to interest to romantic possibility all the way to a still blossoming love. In each of these relationships are the seeds of loving a place, but with one great difference. In my experience, places don’t begin to speak to you until you love them.

Similar to my experience with my parents, my love of Salt Lake City, the home of my birth and my upbringing, is dim and hazy at the beginning, but full of decisions to love despite its flaws. Likewise, my love for Alma, my second home, parallels my love for my wife, a step-by-step process. But in the human relationships, while I was still learning about my love for them, the people spoke to me, gave me reasons, inspiration. I interacted with them, pondered them, held them. I do not do this with places until I already love them; they do not speak to me until I do.

Today, at 1:00PM, with no forewarning, I understood that I loved Princeton, NJ. I realized that I could love this place, this geographical oddity, this garden stop on the road between Philadelphia and New York City, and Princeton began to speak to me. It was as if scales dropped from my eyes, my ears popped and I shed my winter coat. Until this afternoon, I might have been watching a silent movie, but no longer. Princeton began to speak to me. As I walked out of our campus dining center, I was overcome by warm sun-glow on the flowers, birds softly weaving their melodies, and people walking by in conversation. Held back by the winds of a gentle affection, I stood on the cafeteria porch, unable to move, or perhaps unwilling, filling my senses with a new home. Princeton began to speak to me. Or perhaps I finally listened. And now I can call it home.

To Disobey One's Conscience Is Neither Just Nor Safe.

I'd like to talk about the following videos and articles.  If you want the post that follows to make full and complete sense, please watch them and read them before you read the rest of the post.

Battle Ground Virginia - Karen Tumults

McCain Condemns/Encourages Mentality - The Moderate Voice

McCain/Palin Supporters Gone Wild - The New York Times

Raw Anger and Ferocity-the Associated Press

Palin Unleashed - The Washington Post

The Sidewalk to Nowhere -Youtube

Keeping up the Attack - The New York Times

Good Guys and Bad Guys - CNN 

The Truth of the Lies - Factcheck.org

I'm sorry.  I'm sure that's a lot to digest.  I know it was a lot for me.  I've been haunted by these things for the past two days.  It's been hard for me to continue with homework, hard for me to work with all of this weighing on my mind.

I've resisted stating my opinions on this political race for a long time.  Here and there, I've scattered seeds of how it might relate to fear and love and how we ought to act.  But my conscience calls me to do more.  And, as Martin Luther (the monk-turned reformer) once said:  "To disobey one's conscience is neither just nor safe.  God help me.  Amen."

I am afraid.  I will tell you that truth right now.  I am afraid of our fear.  Fear can do horrible things, can cause horrible things.  And fear leading to hatred is even worse.  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said:

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.  Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity.  It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.  Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

-Strength to Love, 1963

What I read in these articles, what I see in these videos, is fear turned to hate.  I readily admit that many of the writers and videographers of these pieces are probably biased.  I readily admit that I might be biased.  But I cannot ignore the plain fact that the people in these articles and videos, yelling "terrorist," and "kill him," and "commie @3$*$#@" and a whole host of other things have been scared into hate.

It is the unfortunate nature of elections to divide us.  But when that division turns to hate, people get hurt.  I'm worried.

As a biracial child, the uncle of two beautiful quadri-racial boys (I think I just coined that term; their father is African American and Central American, their mother Chinese and Dutch) I am struggling against an overwhelming fear.

I cannot, in good conscience, support John McCain because of his lack of good judgment, and the rhetoric of his campaign.  Let me clarify that I am not starry-eyed over Barack Obama either.  He has made many mistakes, and told many half-lies and untruths and has said many partisan things.  But the tenor of his arguments and the driving force that I see in his campaign is one of hope and not anger, calm and not strife, unifying and not dividing.  Over the last few weeks, however, I have become more and more convinced that John McCain, a good man, a strong man, an honorable man, has been corrupted by his own campaign.  As much as he has a right to say that he has been a maverick (and he has truly reached across the aisles and bucked the system), I think that he is no longer.  The nasty politics of Washington have tainted him.  More than this, I think that he lacks foresight.

I question his judgment because of what has happened recently in his campaign.  Could he not have foreseen that relating Obama to a Terrorist, questioning if we know who Obama is, playing down his patriotism and calling him "that one," during the debate could lead to hate?  Could he not have foreseen that using a William Ayers line of attack on a presidential candidate who is mistakenly called a muslim and whose name is often linked to a known terrorist, simply by the changing of one letter, would lead to people wondering if Obama is a terrorist, fearing him, hating him, calling for his death?  Could he not have foreseen, or at least controlled the rhetoric of the people who surround him, who pray that God would protect God's honor by defeating Obama, who tangentially relate Obama to "bad guys," who "pal around with terrorists," who send smear after smear against Obama, who incite crowds by linking Obama to Osama with bombing the Pentagon?  McCain, in his ads, has called on the American people to question the judgment of his opponent.  It has only caused me to question McCain's.

And even though I applaud McCain for trying to tone down the rhetoric, it obviously hasn't worked, and he still, a day later, uses the same tactics.  His running mate uses the same tactics.  Other people in his party use the same tactics.  And McCain has the audacity to mention that he doesn't want to tone down his constituents' ferocity, just ask them for more respect?  It's the ferocity that scares me.

I worry for Obama and his family, and my family.  In a world where racism still lives, where some jump at any chance to condemn and fear and hate and kill, I fear.  I do not think that everyone is acting in fear.  I do not believe that most people would kill out of hate.  But it only takes a few people with a desire to kill to cause incomprehensible damage in this world.

For those of you reading this blog who are questioning who Barack Obama is, whether he is related to terrorists, whether he was actually born in the United States, whether he is secretly trying to ruin the U.S., I've collected some facts for you.  If you've received a chain e-mail linking Obama to any number of questionable people and questionable things, I've covered that for you too.  Here are a few links:

Does Barack Obama Have Kenyan Citizenship?

Did Barack Obama say "we are no longer a Christian nation?"

Was Barack Obama born in the United States?

Did Barack Obama replace the U.S. Flag on his campaign plane?

Did Barack Obama snub troops in Afghanistan?

Did Barack Obama write that he would stand with muslims and had animosity toward whites?

Did Barack Obama say that the National Anthem had a war-like message?

Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

How can I learn which chain e-mail to trust?

All of these links are to Factcheck.org, a wonderful website that has a whole host of articles that (as impartially as possible) seek to debunk lies about both candidates.  Believe me, there are a lot of things that Barack Obama has said that are misleading or downright false, and FactCheck.org calls him out on them.  As far as I can tell, this website (recommended by many magazines and websites, both liberal and conservative and everything in between) is trying to get to the real truth behind the half-truths and political meanderings.  

I'm not asking you to vote for Barack Obama.  This post is not a political endorsement of any kind.  Please, follow the issues, find out what qualities you respect in a leader, make sure you really know what's going on and then vote for the candidate in whom you believe.  But I am calling you to search out your own heart, to look at the rhetoric that you have been listening to, to re-read the e-mails you've probably been sent.  I'm asking you to consider what those e-mails do to you, whether they make you angry and afraid.  I'm asking you to try to conquer your fear, as I am trying, with love.  I'm asking you to make an effort, every day, to learn the truth, and more importantly, to spread the truth.  I'm asking you to stop others when they spew forth hate, about either candidate.  I'm asking you to start standing up for those who have been oppressed.  I'm asking you to put a stop to the downward moral and ethical spiral that seems to be taking over our nation and our world.  It stops with us.  It stops now.  Here I stand; I can do no other; I cannot and will not recant.  God Help me, Amen.

The End of the Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Life is strange.  Every moment is both an ending and a beginning, a completion and a new unfolding, a death and a rebirth.  Yet, physically and perhaps mentally, I will never again be able to begin my life.  That's an odd and uncomfortable thought.  Unless amnesia suddenly strikes me or I regress to a fetus somehow, I will never be able to begin my life over.  Remnants of deeds and feelings and experiences will always be with me, as will the ramifications of my choices.  

I think that the Bible is notable for its crazy, realistic characters, if for nothing else.  The Gospel According to John especially has struck me over the past year for the boldness and curiousness of its inhabitants.  One of them, an anonymous disciple of Jesus, seems to speak for me right now.  Jesus has just said that people who eat his flesh and blood will live forever and that people have no life in them if they do not eat his flesh and drink his blood.  John records that "On hearing it, many of his disciples said: 'This is a hard teaching.  Who can accept it?'" (John 6:60, New International Version).  I concur.  These are hard teachings.  Who can accept them? How can I accept the sadness of never beginning again?  Can hope be something that reaches into the past as well as the future?  Can I hope for my past?  I've made so many mistakes in my life that sometimes I am daunted by them and afraid to try new things.  

Elsewhere in John, a Pharisee named Nicodemus approaches Jesus seeking truth.   He compliments Jesus on his teaching and assures him that he believes that Jesus has God.  And Jesus, of course, says "Thank you, you are dressed quite nicely today.  That robe is nicely tailored with plenty of tassels."  Wait.  No.  Jesus answers as cryptically as he possibly can:

"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (or "born from above," or "born again from above"  -- the Greek is ambiguous)."  (3:3)

Nicodemus is, naturally, confused.  "How can a man be born when he is old?  Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born?" (3:4)

Amen to that, brother Nic!  That's scientifically impossible (at least at present).  Jesus answers: "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit....The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (3:5-8)

This passage comforts me.  My body can never be reborn and the damage from years of sprained ankles, drinking pop (or soda) and eating carbs can never be erased.  My mind cannot just be wiped clean of my memories.  But my spirit is another matter all together.  My spirit, my soul, is the deepest part of me.  And it is the part of me that has the truest second chance.  It is the part of me that can be truly transformed.  I may not be able to change my bad back or my acid reflux, I may not be able to erase the memories of my failures and defeats, but the spirit within me that reacts to these failures and weaknesses can be changed.  There is a mystery inside my very bones, something that no one can understand.  No one knows where it comes from or to where it goes.  It has no beginning or end.  Or, in another way, it has an infinite number of beginnings and endings.  Within it is the end of the beginning of the end of the beginning.  In my spirit I do not have to worry that all of my beginnings are gone.  

Lamentations (yes, that weepy book of the Bible about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile of the Israelites) contains within its great sadness a great hope, upon which is based one of the most famous hymns of all time (and one of my mom's favorites).  Chapter 3 begins with a catalogue of the ways that the writer has been afflicted, including having his heart pierced with arrows and his teeth broken with gravel.  He laments his loss of peace and wails:

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (3:19-23)

God's compassion is new every morning.  We are not consumed.  There is something that is new, newly born, brand-spankin'-right-out-of-the-box-still-in-its-protective-hermetically-sealed-cover-in-mint-condition new.  And we are not consumed.  Hallelu - jah!