Click HERE to listen to Devon Anderson’s Trinity Sunday Sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior, MN. If you think sermons are boring… and you’re willing to consider the thought that sometimes humor is the closest thing to faith, tune in!
Faith Ralston is walking the Camino n Spain, a pilgrimage she and her late husband Phil Brown had planned to walk together. When Phil died unexpectedly a year ago, Faith decided to move ahead with the walk by herself. She’s wonderful and her daily reflections along the Camino are worth a read.
An author once said, “Next to crawling, walking is the slowest way to transport our bodies from one place to another.”
Walking allows time to see things I’d otherwise miss. It’s a slow pace. There is time to watch snails crawl by and butterflies play in the flowers, see storks nesting and storm clouds forming.
We see the.busy highways from a distance and sometimes intersect with the modern world. But for the most part we are on snail time, slowly moving along ancient paths traveled by many before.
I relish this pace and the simplicity of life as a pilgrim. Unfortunately it also comes with a cold shower today.
This morning @7:30 a.m EST on Good Morning, America, Donald Trump announced he would not accept the Republican Party nomination after all.
Taking off his “Make America Great Again” cap, puckering his lips and brushing back his orange hair before putting on his NY Yankees hat, Mr. Trump declared,
“I’m a businessman! I never wanted to be president. I just wanted to shake things up. I’m a winner! I won! All politicians are liars and Losers! It could have been so great! Have a nice life, everybody!”
Steve is discussing with his family the following statement to be printed in his Memorial Service bulletin. He’s looking ahead. We hope far ahead, but he is accepting of death.
“The last few months of his life, Steve hired Rev. Rachel Bass-Guenneweg for weekly training in wheelchair Yoga. For the next 5 minutes, Steve’s gift to all present who will receive it, is a sample of this. You will not have to move from your pew, or touch anyone else. Simply follow the directions spoken by Rachel. Enjoy! (If you do not wish to try it, breathe slowly, and offer a silent prayer for others.)”
Click HERE for more about the good Reverend wheelchair trainer, Rachel Bass-Guenneweg.
Well yes, I’ve lost weight in a flash,
But I’ve spent all my cash–my skin has a rash,
My Mother won’t feed me,
My wife doesn’t need me,
I’ve lost hair (pubic), beard, and mustache.
Otis Moss III, successor to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Southside Chicago, is a rare national treasure. So is Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World: Finding Hope in an Age of Despair, his latest contribution to the discussion of religion in America.
Steeped in the African-American tradition of Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Cone, Howard Thurman, Gardner Taylor, his father, and other black preachers, Otis Moss invites his readers to “sing the Blues” as a way of moving through the blues to the beat of the good news of the Gospel of the crucified-risen Jesus. Only when the Blues are sung — named and spoken or sung aloud in the moans of suffering — does the Gospel shout make sense.
In a world where the “prosperity gospel” ( the con-job gospel which promises that, if you just believe, God will make your rich and happy) and the exclusivist myopic forms of religion that blame, train, and maim in the name of God, Blue Note Preaching offers a Balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.
As one who has preached primarily among the forlorn children of the Mayflower and former slave-owners, I find myself strangely envious of my African-American colleagues and the Blue Note communities among which they minister. Those who serve the congregations whose Christianity was born out of the degradation of slavery inherit something ready-made and ironically precious which the children of the Mayflower and the slave-blicks do not: a shared, conscious history of dehumanization to which the gospel speaks when it turns the blue history into the Blue Note gospel shout of joyful emancipation.
For the past two weeks an uninvited memory has surfaced during my sleep and during the early morning hours when I’m unsure whether I’m awake or still asleep, that twilight zone when the brain does whatever the brain does to move the soul toward healing the broken pieces of the past.
The memory is of Snoopy, the pet hamster who brought such joy to everyone in the family. He was a special creature — a lovely white tan, like a palomino horse, who very quickly learned to please us all. At dinner I’d bring Snoopy up from my bedroom in the basement and sit him on my shoulder, or my Dad’s, the way Twinkle the parakeet used to do in an earlier iteration of pets we humans thought we owned. Even my mother, who loved birds but was the first one up on a chair whenever a mouse appeared, fell in love with Snoopy and our love for him.
Until the week I moved from the basement bedroom to the one on the second floor after Jeanine moved out of our home. Snoopy stayed in the basement. I have no idea now why I forgot him — or why the family didn’t miss him — but the next time I saw Snoopy he had starved to death. I’d forgotten to feed him. The picture of Snoopy lying on his back with his mouth open has returned repeatedly, a message, perhaps, about paying attention to when and where I am.
I was maybe 14 at the time. The hormones were raging back then. Not so much anymore at 73, but I easily find distractions from responsibility toward the likes of Snoopy — family who in some way deserve or need the sustenance I’m still in position to provide: Kay, John, Doug, Kristin, Andrew, and Christopher, my brothers Don and Bob, and old dogs hanging on to the pack while the clock runs out on us one by one.
And then there is the need for confession, for repentance, and for forgiveness that will never come from those I’ve hurt, ignored, forgotten, betrayed, denied—and animals I’ve killed, like Snoopy.
Then, during the run-up to the week when six seminary friends will gather in Chicago to focus on the Hebrew prophets, I remember a poem of Yuli Daniel, written from a Soviet labor camp published in Rabbi Jonathan Magonet‘s Returning: Exercises in Repentance in the chapter CHESHBON HANEFESH — Self-Judgment.
When your life is tumbling downhill head over heels,
Thrashing and foaming like an epileptic,
Don’ pray and offer up repentance,
Don’t be afraid of jail or ruin.
Study your past with concentration,
Evaluate your days without self-flattery,
Grind the fag* ends of illusion underfoot,
But open up to all that’s bright and clear.
Don’t surrender to impotence and bitterness,
Don’t give in to disbelief and lies,
Not everyone’s a cringing bastard,
Not everyone’s a bigot who informs.
And while you walk along the alien roads
To lands that do not figure on your maps,
Count out the names of all your friends
As you would do with pearls on prayer-beads.
Be on the look-out, cheerful and ferocious
And you’ll manage to stand up, yes, stand up
Under your many-layered load of misery,
Under the burden of your being right.
*i.e., unwelcome work.
Yuli Markovich Daniel was a heroic figure who bore the burden of being right. I bear the burden of being wrong. Yuri stood up. I sat down, or stayed upstairs, ignoring the basement and the attic where the work needs to be done “without self-flattery” at age 73.
My mind isn’t what it used to be. The synapses are shrinking. The short-term memory is fading. But the longer-term memory of the likes of Snoopy is a call from Beyond to pay attention to and give thanks for this moment within the Eternal Now.
The New York Times published Austrian Election Is a Warning to the West drawing attention to the rising right-wing tide sweeping across Europe and the U.S.A. It’s chilling, and most of the time we don’t like to be chilled. But sometimes the truth is chilling, and only the truth will set us free from our worst selves.
The sunrise painter’s palette
Today has pink and blue
With touches of white,
And is that purple and orange?
No rhyme, of course,
For that last word,
But also no clash
Of colors in nature.
The white hot sun
Will soon be hidden
By the massing clouds,
But colorful may yet be the day.
Steve posted this today on his CaringBridge page:
Spent the last 4 days split between hospitals (prepped for chemo, but white blood cells too low, so sent home, echo-cardiogram test for heart irregularities), and being electronically in Chicago (via FaceTime) with 5 Seminary buddies having an emotional reunion. The latter was more fun. Caught up on everyone’s last year, read & discussed a current book on “Blue-Note Preaching” with the author, Rev. Otis Moss III, connected via Skype with Prof. Ted Campbell still sharp in his late 80s, and met Rev. Shannon Kirchner of Fourth Presbyterian Church. Wonderfull conversations!
I, Gordon, was among the five physically present in Chicago. Steve stayed with us the whole time by Skype Monday through Thursday.
The Rev. Otis Moss III succeeded Rev. Jeremiah Wright as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Southside Chicago, the home church of the Obamas. He’s the real deal in every way. What a privilege to spend these days together! We have a case of the blues but we’re hearing the blue note gospel.
Views from the Edge 
