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on nights like this

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I wish there were some way
to cut a small slit in the wall
and let the air, trapped since
first construction, spill into
the room and tell its stories.

I wonder who walked these
floors in those first days,
when the pin oak at the curb
was smaller than the house
and the street not so shaded.

I welcome those ghosts,
the spirits that have seeped
into the floors and sit next to us
at dinner, whose luminance
lights our house in the dark.

I remember I am only here
as one who has called this
house a home, worn the finish
off the floors, and left the
lights on in the kitchen.

Peace,
Milton

making change

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Over the summer, we have seen both the Chef de Cuisine and the Sous Chef at the restaurant leave for other places. Actually, the latter followed the former, which is not unusual in restaurant circles, but that’s a story for another time. Both guys were there when I joined the staff; they have been the bosses I knew, they have set the tone for the kitchen, they have been the ones who determined the routine.

And now, they are gone and we are left to deal with the change, and to change ourselves, for that matter.

Some years ago, Ginger and I were walking through Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts when a homeless man yelled out from his seat on the sidewalk, “Change!” Ginger turned and said, “I don’t have any money.”

I blurted back, “I’m trying, I’m trying.”

The two uses of the word aren’t that far apart, I suppose. Change, on the one hand, has to do with how you break down a dollar bill – or a five, or a ten – into smaller pieces: four quarters; ten dimes; two quarters, three dimes, three nickels, and five pennies. On the other hand, in places like our kitchen these days, change also has to do with how we break down the bigger picture and figure out the new formula to make things work, as familiar faces move away and new ones appear. For my part, I’m working different shifts, taking on different responsibilities, and learning the habits and hopes of my new coworkers. And the whole enterprise feels about as stable as the value of the dollar on the international market.

Stability, if not overrated, is certainly over-expected. Life is made of change. Our lives are dynamic, not static. There is no way to stand still, to stay the same. And we are dynamic creatures created to negotiate this changing thing called life. Some years ago, a friend gave me a book called Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories by Daniel Taylor. One of the key points early in the book has to do with learning to see ourselves as being a character, rather than having a personality. The latter leaves us looking at ourselves as somehow hardwired the way we are and unable to change much, but when we see ourselves as characters in our own life story, we create the possibility for change.

My days as an English teacher come roaring back here to remind me of all of the discussions I have had with students around “character development” and how a person grows and changes as he or she encounters the events in the story. A character is both recognizable and able to change, just as I can see myself in the pictures of me over the years and yet I am not who I was then. The point of our story – of The Story, if you will – is to grow and change. We fall out of wholeness and health when we try to stay the same and ask life to follow suit. We show our character when we use the change to make life add up in a new way.

Let me be specific. When the Chef de Cuisine left, it was hard for me. I like him, I trust him, and I liked working for him. I learned a lot about being a manager from him and he was someone I could bounce ideas off of. We also had shared interests in books and music and history. I really did wonder how well the kitchen would hold up without him. And I wondered what I would do. Last week a new Sous started. He is not the other guy and he brings some wonderful new things to the kitchen. Learning to work with him has challenged me to look at how I do things, to offer information about our restaurant, to intentionally listen to see what new things he has to bring and what his fresh eyes can see about us that we have either forgotten or ignored.

The nature of our business is that neither one of us will be in that kitchen forever. Some summer down the road, one of us, or one of the other guys who make up our team will begin their own new chapter without our daily involvement and we will all make change. Driving home from the memorial service of one of our beloved church members who has been a part of our congregation for a long time, it struck me that church works a great deal like a restaurant kitchen: the mission to feed others is ongoing, even as the characters change. We have the same mission, but the cast of characters calls us to rethink how we do things, why we do things, and what we can learn from and about each other.

One of the Bible verses that has given me pause for about as far back as I can remember is Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” because one of the things I love about Jesus is he is not the same – even in the Gospels. If the verse said, “Jesus Christ is Jesus yesterday, today, and forever,” then I’m in. But life isn’t the same because God isn’t the same. We were breathed into existence by a God whose very nature is full of imagination and dynamism. How can we say, “God is Love” and then think God stays the same? Love is change at it’s best. Love builds character, creates relationships, gives meaning: “now we see through a glass darkly, but someday we will see face to face.”

The very essence of love is to make change out of life: to take all of the elements and make them add up differently. We are finding new life in the kitchen because we are letting go and letting in at the same time. Perhaps the nature of a restaurant makes that easier than in church because our sense of a sacred institution causes something to rise up in us that makes us feel as though we must protect and defend the church (either big or little C) from change. We too easily become convinced that it is our stability that has sustained us and lose sight of the subversive, ever-changing love of God that will not let us go and calls us to practice the art of letting go and letting in, of character building, or see ourselves in story rather than stained glass.

“I love to tell the story,” we sang in church on Sunday, “for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”

I love that song because I trust it is true – and that we are characters in that same, still unfolding story.

Peace,
Milton

come, christians, join to sing

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Here is the manuscript of a sermon I preached this morning at our church.

Peace,
Milton

________________________

I would like to begin this morning with a sentence that I’m fairly sure has not been uttered by many people. Here it is: some of my favorite sermons have to do with punctuation and grammar.

Seriously. I’ll give you a couple of quick examples. In Matthew 6, many translations of the Lord’s Prayer read, thy kingdom come (comma), thy will be done (comma) on earth as it is in heaven. Listen to the way we say the prayer. We pause after thy will be done – and when we do, we miss something important in the prayer: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Take out the comma and the prayer becomes more powerful.

Ephesians 6:1-10 uses the metaphor of the armor of God to talk about how we prepare ourselves to live out our faith in the world. If we read the preposition as possessive – that is, as a list of things God has to hand out to us, the passage says one thing. If, however, we read the preposition as descriptive – that is, that God is the armor – then the metaphor deepens: we are called to wrap ourselves up in God.

I’m sharing this scintillating information because our passage from Ephesians 5 is another that turns on grammar and punctuation. Some translations make the final statement into a series of imperative sentences:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. Address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. Give thanks always and for everything to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

But the Greek is actually one long sentence, filled with participles helping to explain what it looks like to be a Spirit-filled congregation.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Hold that thought and let’s go back to the first part of our passage that sets up the whole idea:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Look carefully, live watchfully — watch where you’re going — is a call to live intentionally. I found a challenging word in what a commentator named John Martens wrote about this verse:

One of the most difficult aspects of living life for me is living life with watchfulness. It is easy to fall into patterns, to live life by rote, to find a comfort zone where watchfulness just drifts away, even if that comfort zone is filled with unreflective busyness. How I live is not always based on conscious decisions, which is precisely the issue. You begin to do things because that is the way you have always done them, or you simply plop on the couch after a busy day, unable to consider what would be the best way to live.

Look carefully and make the most of the time.

In our 24-7-365 world – informed by our Puritan work ethic – making the most of the time means getting more done, working harder, wearing ourselves out. In today’s verses, making the most of the time has to do with taking the time to listen and to connect our lives to God and to one another. The passage continues with an admonition not to get drunk (to do more than numb ourselves to the difficulties of daily life), but to participate in a different sort of intoxication, if you will: to be filled with the Holy Spirit – which brings us back to our parcel of participles and the call to sing together, with gratitude and deference.

Randy Cooper writes:

Singing is more than making a joyful noise. God has given us singing and worshipping to break down categories of gender and age and race and class. In singing and worshipping, we enter the life of God through the Holy Spirit. If God’s Triune life is indeed one of mutual submission and love among [Creator], [Christ], and Holy Spirit, then as we become one body in Christ we share in Christ’s eternal ‘singing.’

Here, then, is how the Spirit moves in our midst: in melody, in gratitude, and in intentional solidarity. We are called to sing together. James, I offer you your new favorite verse. I think it says God wants everyone to join the choir.

As soon as we start talking about singing together in worship, we are going to start talking about what we are going to sing and what one commentator called the “worship wars” break out. What was designed to bring us together sometimes pulls us apart. We all have our favorite songs, yet the meaningfulness of worship shouldn’t ride on whether or not we got to my hit parade this morning. Rather than thinking, “They finally sang my song,” I can choose the respond, “Hey, they’re singing your song,” and let that be when I sing loudest and listen best – when I get to be on something more than what matters to me. That’s how the Spirit helps us to grow and change.

Worship, fundamentally, is a team sport – as are both life and faith. Though it requires personal commitment and contribution, worship is about us, not me. Gathering together to sing is an act of faith and solidarity, and a subversive one, at that. It’s like the end of Arlo Guthrie’s song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” where he encourages his audience to walk into their psychiatrist’s office and sing, ” You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.” And walk out.

Then he imagines:

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both nuts and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

When they marched from Selma to Montgomery, they sang, “We shall overcome” in solidarity with the saints of God who have sung together in the face of oppression and persecution across the centuries. Though we are fortunate to not live under the same kinds of hardship, we are about the same important work when we gather for worship. We cannot afford to let what happens here become rote or mundane, or to allow the songs we sing to divide us over issues of taste rather than unite us in the mystery of the intoxicating Spirit of God. What we do here together can change us, change our city, change or world – or it can simply be another thing to check off of our list of meetings to attend this week.

The melody of faith is more complex than the tunes that meet our specific tastes. If our worship experience is going to make the most of the time, if it’s going to fill our minds with wisdom and our hearts with the gratitude that grows out of the presence God’s Spirit, if it’s going to be more than merely marking our calendars that we made it to church, then we will come to be more committed than comfortable, to be more faithful than forceful, ready to defer rather than demand.

Come, Christians, join to sing. Alleluia. Amen.

our country of marriage

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Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of Ginger’s and my engagement. We celebrated with a quick trip to Boston (my first since we moved), including a Sox game and a meal at the Hard Rock, which is where we ate on August 12, 1989 (except at the one in Dallas, which is no more). For our anniversary, Ginger gave me a “Story People” drawing that says,

“You’re the strangest person I ever met,” she said
and I said, “You, too,” and we decided to know each other a long time.

And we are having a great time together.


We are more together than we know,
how else could we keep discovering
we are more together than we thought?

Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage”

Our Country of Marriage

We walked the streets of Boston again –
the streets where we grew together,
grew up together, and found our
footprints still etched in the sidewalks,
even though we have moved away.

Here’s how I remember it:
We were new to the city and still
fairly new to one another.
I was standing on the inbound platform
at North Station, when it was still
an elevated track. When the train I
wasn’t waiting for pulled away, I saw
you standing on the outbound side,
my most familiar and favorite face
shining among the shadowed crowd.
You saw me at the same time and
you smiled the surprise that left
my heart both bright and breathless.

We have good reasons we no longer
live where we can walk across the
Common, or smell the sea salt
though summer’s open windows.
Still, the geography of the heart
holds our history in the mountains
of memories, the countless coffee
shops from Newbury to Ninth,
the string of sunsets and stories
that run like the Appalachian Trail
across our country of marriage
to where the light shines in different
windows and Schnauzers still woof
their welcome when we come home.

I’m proud to be a citizen of
our country of love and laughter,
this land we have discovered together
and, even now far from its frontier,
this land still full of the discovery
of what it means to love for a lifetime.

Peace,
Milton

cleaning off my desk

I guess tonight might be the blogging equivalent of clearing off my desk.

I have not written as regularly as I would like over the last couple of months for a variety of reasons, this week however, it was not for lack of ideas. Before the time gets away, I want to comment on a couple of things and then make a request.

First, John Hughes died this week. He was the director of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Uncle Buck, Wierd Science, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club, to name a few. As a youth minister in the 80’s, I leaned into his movies to help me understand the kids in my youth group. And, for that matter, to learn a bit about myself as well. He was not the greatest director ever, yet he made movies that mattered to me and that I still watch and quote extensively.

And I would still love to know the punch line to the joke Judd Nelson was telling when he fell through the roof.

Here is a tribute montage someone else put together that is worth passing along.

Second, and leading into third, we went to see Julie and Julia last night, which is a story about blogging as much as it is about cooking and finding out what matters most.

One of the things I found in the movie was a push to figure out why I am writing these days. What I mean by that is I know why I write (because I am a writer), and I want to do more with this blog than ramble this way and that. So, the “third” in this litany is a request. I am thinking about taking on some themes — a week, or perhaps longer for each — and writing in a particular vein for that time to see what sort of shape my writing might take beyond my fairly regular posts, and to see what I can learn and how I can grow. Though I know the days of regular commenting on blogs has passed, I am asking for suggestions of themes or ideas you think might be worth me tackling. And we will see where it goes.

Thanks for reading.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — Speaking of Julia Child, I couldn’t close without posting this favorite Saturday Night Live clip.

breathe on me

Sometimes, the way we look at the world swings on a sentence.

A small, well chosen collection of words can change not only what we are reading or hearing, but also how we see and hear everything around us. The Great Gatsby holds (at least) one of those sentences for me, as Fitzgerald describes Gatsby looking across the bay at the green light that has mystified him and that he now knows shines on the dock at Daisy Buchanan’s house.

Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to a moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock.

And then comes the sentence:

His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

In nine words he shows us Gatsby’s slide from the heights of romance to the edge of despair and reminds us enchanted objects are fragile and fleeting. There is a certain sadness in love, in dreams, in being human that we all know to well and he named it in a sentence. One of the draws to reading the Gospels is they offer several such sentences that give glimpses of Jesus beyond what is readily apparent. They are bends in the road where we have to stop and think about what we have read, where we have to let the story dig a little deeper into our hearts and minds. One is Jesus’ encounter with the man at the pool who had been there for thirty-odd years hoping for his turn to go first into the angel-stirred waters that he might be healed. His physical handicap meant he moved slower than the rest and, thus, was never first. Jesus came upon him and, before he healed him, asked one question:

“Do you want to get well?”

The very asking reveals the answer might not be so readily apparent. Another favorite of mine reads almost like a throwaway phrase. After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus goes off to pray and the disciples go fishing. Sometime in the middle of the night, a storm blows up on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples look up to see Jesus walking on the water in their direction, but the narrative reports:

He looked as if he would pass them by.

Yes, they called out to him and he climbed into the boat and calmed the waves. And I wonder if there isn’t something else to learn from this story that seems to say Jesus was out there walking for some other reason than saving his followers from a good soaking.

My favorite is in the foot washing scene John describes as part of the last night Jesus spent with his disciples before his crucifixion. He begins:

Knowing he had come from God and was going to God, he took a towel . . .

In eleven words, John articulates the context of all that we are and all that we do: we have come from God and we are going to God. That arc of life is what enabled Paul to claim nothing – absolutely nothing – can separate us from God’s love shown to us in Christ. As they gathered that night, Jesus knew he was a dead man walking. He knew what was coming next. He also knew from whence he had come and where he was going well enough to care for his friends and to rest in the Love that held them all.

Yesterday, my friend Terry preached at our church and showed me another sentence that I had not seen before, even though I had read the passage many times. He read from John 20 about one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances when he came through the locked door and found the frightened disciples in the Upper Room. Terry pointed to this sentence in the story:

And with that, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

He went on to wonder how to unpack the sentence, which he described as a “Christian Breathing Ceremony.” Did Jesus say the words as he breathed? Did he breathe on them one at a time, or as a group? Did he breathe, and then speak? He went on to challenge us to consider the possibility of instituting a Sacrament of Breathing, much in the same way we have imitated Jesus’ words and actions in Communion, or for some in foot washing. And then he smiled.

“A little too intimate for you?” he asked. “Are you scared of halitosis?”

For both the Hebrews and the Greeks, the word for breath was also the word for spirit: ruach and pneuma, respectively. (The parallel exists in many other languages and religious traditions, I’m learning.) God breathed the universe into existence, breathed life into the lungs of the first humans; Jesus breathed the Spirit into his disciples. Hear Henri Nouwen:

The Spirit of God is like our breath. God’s spirit is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. We might not often be aware of it, but without it we cannot live a “spiritual life.” It is the Holy Spirit of God who prays in us, who offers us the gifts of love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace, and joy. It is the Holy Spirit who offers us the life that death cannot destroy. Let us always pray: “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”

As Terry described the scene, I imagined Jesus blowing gently into the faces of his followers, each one closing his eyes and letting the breeze, if you will, fall across his face and into his heart. And I thought of a scene I had not recalled in many years from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where Aslan breathes on all the creatures the Snow Queen had turned to stone and they came back to life in Narnia as the endless winter began to thaw.

There is power, power, power in the breath.

In most every moment of our lives, we breathe without thinking. It is what gives us life. Were we to stop breathing, we would stop being, just as poets speak of those who “breathe their last.” Meditation practices passed down across the centuries teach us to focus on nothing but our breathing as a way of centering, of letting the distractions fall away, of finding ourselves and God. What is most mundane is also most profound. At our church, Ginger begins the service each week by asking us to get comfortable in our seats, to relax, and to breathe.

“Inhale slowly,” she says, “and then exhale. Breathe in the breath of God and breathe out the love of God.”

We inhale the Spirit and exhale Love; we are coming from God and we are going to God. Every breath we take, if you will, every move we make can be an act of the Spirit and a breath of fresh air. Or, not. As my mind often does, it has wandered back to a hymn of my Baptist days that comes on a fresh breeze today:

Holy Spirit, breathe on me until my heart is clean;
let sunshine fill its inmost part, with not a cloud between.

Holy Spirit, breathe on me, my stubborn will subdue;
teach me in words of living flame what Christ would have me do.

Breathe on me, breathe on me, Holy Spirit, breathe on me;
Take Thou my heart, cleanse every part, Holy Spirit, breathe on me.

Holy Spirit, breathe on me, fill me with pow’r divine;
kindle a flame of love and zeal within this heart of mine.

Holy Spirit, breathe on me till I am all Thine own,
until my will is lost in Thine, to live for Thee alone.

Breathe on me, breathe on me, Holy Spirit, breathe on me;
Take Thou my heart, cleanse every part, Holy Spirit, breathe on me.

(If you want to sing along, you can hear the tune here.)

Peace,
Milton

there are no stars tonight

There are no stars tonight.
We see only clouds and
hear the storm gathering
on the edge of town like
bandits in a Western.

There are no stars tonight,
so we say, waiting for rain,
listening to the thunder,
cosmic talking drummers
telling an old, old story.

There are no stars tonight,
but there will be stars –
stars outshine storms;
light beats clouds every time:
paper, rock, scissors.

Peace,
Milton

great love

Because of some wonderful happenings in the lives of our Associate Pastor and her partner, I was the substitute preacher today. Those of you who read the blog regularly will see a few references to some recent posts, though they are in a new context. The passage was Mark 6:30-52. Thanks, as always for reading.

______________________________

I’ve been trying to imagine what it must have been like to be a part of the crowd that day. Ginger and I stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and saw the gentle slopes of land that come down to the water. The little lake is just not that big, though the geography around it makes for some formidable storms. I imagine the crowd being about like a good turnout for a Bulls game, so I have a hard time picturing a crowd that big gathered along the shore of a sea that small. I know what it feels like to be as hot, as I imagine the people in the crowd were after having hiked around the lake to keep up with Jesus. And I know what it feels like to get hungry, and then to get frustrated, annoyed – well – surly.

And there are other things. Jesus was speaking to a crowd of thousands without the benefit of any amplification. He knew how to use the natural slope of the hillside by getting the people to sit on the hill while he stood at the water’s edge and let the wind off the water carry his voice farther than he could throw it on his own, but I keep thinking about the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the folks in the back of the crowd while Jesus was delivering the Beatitudes say to each other, “What did he say? Blessed are the Cheese makers?”

Palestine, in those days as now, was a land of incredible need and crippling poverty. The people in the crowd, by and large, were not rich; they did not spend many days feeling as though all the bills were paid, all the kids were fed, and everything was going to be OK. Jesus used metaphors of bread and water often because he was talking to people who lived hungry, thirsty lives. Though they had grown up hearing stories about manna from heaven, yet they had not seen it happen in their lifetimes.

I wonder if the crowd that day was getting restless and Jesus knew he needed to feed them if he wanted them to listen. I wonder what it felt like to be at the back of the crowd, away from any awareness of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples about how to feed everyone. Mark gives us some sense of the frustration of the disciples and of Jesus’ insistence that they come up with something other than Reasons Why This Won’t Work. I wonder how the story about what happened was passed through the crowd after everyone had had enough to eat. I wonder if the folks in the back ever knew there was a miracle, or they just thought Jesus and the disciples were gracious hosts. What began as an exercise in frustration and desperation ended with twelve basketfuls of leftovers. And a crowd that still wanted more.

But the story doesn’t stop with supper. The meal caused so much of a stir that Jesus had to flee into the hills to get away. The disciples did what they most often did: they got in a boat – and we’re not talking a yacht here, but a tiny little boat. Here, again, is the account of what happened as translated in The Message:

As soon as the meal was finished, Jesus insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead across to Bethsaida while he dismissed the congregation. After sending them off, he climbed a mountain to pray.

Late at night, the boat was far out at sea; Jesus was still by himself on land. He could see his men struggling with the oars, the wind having come up against them. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them, walking on the sea. He intended to go right by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and screamed, scared out of their wits.

Jesus was quick to comfort them: “Courage! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” As soon as he climbed into the boat, the wind died down. They were stunned, shaking their heads, wondering what was going on. They didn’t understand what he had done at the supper. None of this had yet penetrated their hearts. (Mark 6:47-52)

None of this had yet penetrated their hearts.

How can that be? They had been with him when he healed a woman who reached out in faith to touch the hem of his coat. They had seen him raise Jarius’ daughter from the dead. They had heard his parables and watched as he gave healing and hope to one after another. Now, even after watching him feed the crowd with a plate full of food, they still didn’t understand who he was.

None of this had yet penetrated their hearts.

I wonder, sometimes, if we aren’t in the same boat. We need help and we don’t always know what to do with the love of Christ when it finds us in need.

During my vacation last week, I reread one of my favorite novels, Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop that tells the story of two priests, Joseph Valliant and Jean Marie Latour, who are sent to New Mexico to lead the Catholic diocese in the new American West that had once been part of Mexico. Early in the book, Father Valliant says, “Where there is great love, there are great miracles.”

In Cather’s book, the Bishop’s words are prologue, rather than summary: he says the words as they are beginning their ministry together and then, as the story unfolds, nothing dramatic happens other than they spend their lives loving God, loving one another, and loving the people around them. Lives were transformed. People were saved from what they saw as the apparent inevitability of their lives because of the love of these two men in Jesus’ name.

Paul, who traveled the Mediterranean much like those two priests wandered through New Mexico and Arizona, prayed for the folks at Ephesus to come to their own deeper understanding of the deep, deep love of Jesus:

My response is to get down on my knees before our Creator, this magnificent God who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask God to strengthen you by the Holy Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask God that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-21)

And here is a glimpse into the fullness of God. A couple of Sundays ago, Brian Lord told me scientists have made a new discovery about our galaxy. They are expanding our vision of the universe by searching for amino acids in far away places, which would mean the possibility of life emerging on other planets. They found a molecule called ethyl formate in a gas cloud in the middle of the Milky Way. It is the molecule that gives raspberries their flavor; and it also smells of rum. The Milky Way is actually a raspberry daquiri.

The same creative imagination that put raspberries in space is the one who became incarnate in Jesus, who found a way to feed thousands with five loaves and two fishes, and who brings us together here to remember again that where there is great love there are great miracles.

When we look up and out and around, what do we see? Do we see beyond the daily needs and hungers of our lives? Are we blinded by the storms that trouble us? Or do we see food to share? Do we smell raspberries in the stars?

Do we see ourselves as people who are held by Great Love, who share Great Love, and who, then, will also be people of great miracles? Oh, I hope so – because that is who we are. We are people created in Love, who live in Love (even when we lose sight of it), who are called to Love as extravagantly as the Jesus we follow, and who, ultimately, will return to Love.

A friend wrote a song years ago that says it this way:

the depth of God’s love reaches down, down, down
to where we are until we’re found, found, found
a quiet word or none at all
pursues the heart behind the wall
and for those who wait with darkness all around
the depth of God’s love reaches down

Amen.

______________________________

Peace,
Milton

it’s just the way my mind works

Driving through Birmingham, I passed a Jewish Community Center whose billboard encouraged its members to take a “J-cation” by using their facilities. We are all now familiar with the concept of the stay-cation, now so over-used by our media. Here, in the closing moments of my week away from work, I began to wonder what other possibilities there might be:

a weekend by the water would be a bay-cation;
an equestrian adventure could be a bray-cation;
another way to think of a cruise would be a buffet-cation;
potters might take a clay-cation;
those who live with depression hope for a dismay-cation;
rappers might take a Dr. Dre-cation;
activists could step away for a fray-cation;
and farmers take a hay-cation;
another way to think of a week in Hawaii would be a lei-cation;
a gathering of poets could be called a millay-cation;
dogs must dream of an obey-cation;
a weekend at the spa could be called an olay-cation;
a minister’s get-a-way would be a pray-cation;
and the chef’s, a sauté-cation;
a slow down for a serial killer would be a slay-cation;
Santa takes the summers off for a sleigh-cation;
an adopted pet finally gets a stray-cation;
an old school Vegas trip would be a Mel Torme-cation;
a break from a diet could be a weigh-cation;
vegans, it seems, would look forward to a whey-cation;
and I, now that I’ve finished this piece, will take a word play-cation.

Peace,
Milton