Click After husband’s death, wife steps in as teen’s mentor for the story of Steve Shoemaker’s continuing legacy through Nadja, Steve’s life partner, and their mentee.
Well done, good and faithful servant. Your works do follow you. RIP.
Thank you, Nadja, for continuing the legacy.
Today’s New York Times Sunday Review op ed by Maureen Dowd’s includes this paragraph on the new president who’s captured the world’s full attention:
To Trump biographer Tim O’Brien, the new president conjured the image of “a guy on a pogo stick in the Rose Garden bouncing around with a TV remote control in his hand trying to decide what to respond to in the next 30 seconds on Twitter.”
He can’t watch as much television because he now has to get to work by 9:00.
Click Wild Child Takes Charge to read the piece.
The past week brings back memories of visiting inmates of state mental hospitals, including a state hospital for the criminally insane. I was their pastor.
As we sat together within these secure institutions, it was clear to them and to me which of us was free to leave. I was sane. They were not. I could leave. They could not.
On the way home I pondered the similarities between life outside the gates and inside the secured walls of these institutions, and the slim thread of difference that separates the outside from the inside.
During the last two weeks, it feels as though the thin thread line has disappeared.
We are all in the insane asylum now.
The difference between Ken Kesesy’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and America today is that Randle McMurphy, who organized the inmate revolt, is in charge, re-writing all the rules, ordering a lock-down that appalls the rest of the world.
The world looks on with horror. No visitors allowed. And we’re all inmates locked inside without a vote or effective voice.
Who will be our pastor now?
Richard Willmsen of Infinite Coincidence offers this reflection from a different angle worthy of a larger audience: “I … offer up this short account of my own personal emotional development, and then explain why I think it helps explain why Trump is heading for a breakdown very, very soon.
I believe that rather than smashing our own glass houses to pieces in the act of destroying Donald Trump’s Presidency, we need to be aware of our own inner Trump, to reflect on our own tendencies to think and behave in catastrophically immature, venal and insecure ways. I therefore offer up this short account of my own personal emotional development, and then explain why I think it helps explain why Trump is heading for a breakdown very, very soon.
I used to suffer from a quite disabling insecurity, particularly when it came to things like being creative and forming relationships with other people. I got better, partly by virtue of living in and studying Portugal, learning about its people’s tendency to swing between moments of self-aggrandisement and self-abnegation, from ‘we are great’ to ‘we are nothing’. I also learnt about my own habit of projecting my own feelings onto…
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Originally posted on Serendipity – Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth:
“Yesterday is another country, all borders are closed.” It was a wonderful piece of dialogue from “MidSomer Murders.” In the episode, Chief Inspector Barnaby is questioning a murder suspect about his…
Faith and hope come hard sometimes. Four days living next to the abyss brought the wisdom of Ecclesiastes came to mind:
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven . . . a time to weep, and the time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance . . . .” – Ecclesiastes 3:3-4
I’m not laughing or dancing. I’m weeping and mourning over what’s happening in America. This is the time, the season, for weeping and mourning. Maybe I’m sane after all?
Faith lives next to the abyss.
Those of you who live in the Twin Cities Area of Minnesota are invited to breathe deeply and celebrate the launch of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness. Books will be available at a friendly price! The evening begins with brief remarks and a short reading, followed by a lively Q and A, ending with refreshments and a author book signing.
Click HERE to view the invitation from Shepherd of the Hill Church and The Sower Gallery, and let them know you’re coming. Or . . . just come! at the last minute.
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30
Location: Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church is located at the southeast corner of State Highway 41 (Chestnut Street) and Engler Boulevard in Chaska.
The gracious people of Shepherd of the Hill, the Sower Gallery, and I would love to see you there!
Grace and Peace,
Today’s email from a respected friend calls attention to a British opinion piece on the American Inauguration.
Today I wish I could find a single line in this post-inaugural Guardian piece (God, even a phrase) that strikes me as false.
I can’t.
I can’t either.
Click to read The Observer view on bullying, aggressive, nationalist Donald Trump
Yesterday was at once heartening and frightening.
The Women’s March participants refused to Echo, the tragic nymph of the Greek myth who, enchanted with Narcissus’ charm, loses her own voice except to echo Narcissus’ words as Narcissus stares at his own reflection across the pond. Meanwhile, on the same day, Narcissus, despairing of Echo’s recovered independence, went across the river to visit the CIA – the intelligence community he had scorned – in hopes they might become the new reflecting pond and echo that would confirm his claims to singular greatness as the new Commander-in-Chief.
The President is disintegrating before our eyes. Mental health is about integration – the spiritual/psychic process by which a person brings together the disparate parts of the self and the various conflicting sorts of experience into a greater psychic wholeness. This process requires a center that does not depend upon the adulation or negation of others.
Yesterday we saw a lonely, frightened man with neither the Echo nor the reflecting pond into which he stares to be reassured of his real self. He is a sick man deserving of prayers and pity. But when a threatened narcissist has access to the nuclear codes no one else in the world has, prayers for this president become prayers for ourselves and the planet that reflect a greater glory than Narcissus’ reflection.
“The whole Earth is the theater of God’s glory.” – John Calvin.
As a member of the Confirmation Class at First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica in Queens, NY, a young Donald John Trump learned by heart the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Question: “What is the chief end (i.e. aim or purpose) of man?”
We have need to hope and pray the 70 year-old Donald remembers the antidote to the psychic integration and disintegration of Narcissus:
Answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.”
The Book of Common Worship (1946) in use at the time of the President’s confirmation includes this Election Day:
Almighty God, who dost hold us to account for the use of all our powers and privileges: Guide, we pray Thee, the people of these United States of their rulers and representatives; that by wise legislation and faithful administration of the rights of all may be protected, and our nation be enabled to fulfill Thy purposes. . . . Amen.
Views from the Edge 