the personal touch

I spend a small amount of time considering the question of “legacy.” Not in the presidential sense but rather in the sense that everything I do contains a little bit of me, my thoughts and habits and so simply by breathing in the air in a particular place (church) I tend to have an effect on the culture by a) being in a leadership role and b) by portraying to the world my own worldview.

Each end every day I am modeling something, concern, care, selfishness (hey, not every day is a good one) without any intention of doing so as all of us do and so there is the conundrum of being a role model and creating a culture in subtle ways while all the while trying to be intentional about actions and behaviors. There are limits to how much self-analysis I can manage in a given day and so, so much of this behavior is unconscious and unevaluated that is weirds me out to think what it is that might come about because of this fact of life; that we create reality by living in it.

The thing that brought this to mind is that I am feeling a bit nostalgic these days and have struck on the idea of casting back into memory and resurrecting habits and traditions of past years to make Christmas into a moment that we can inhabit not just for the season but also for the whole year. What would it be like to have that kind of child-like anticipation of graces and joys to come? Could we recapture that without turning it into something else, the typical impatience that we all suffer through with the help of the media constantly telling us that we deserve a break today, not tomorrow today!

It could be that since I was raised in a presents-on-Christmas-morning household, that I have simply learned to be patient about those kinds of things. There was no rush, the morning would come when it came and that was all there was to it. The morning could be bleary eyed for my parents, yet joyful exuberance for my brother and me.  Having never owned a cell-phone I was actually happy with new sweaters. Knowing that we were not wealthy (as much as we think that we didn’t know, we all did, we had wealthy classmates and they got different, better stuff) we knew that we got the things that we needed and we looked for that morning to dawn with eagerness.

simple  childlike  free

Did that just disappear with childhood?

Gracious Lord, giver of life and of love and of freedom in Christ have mercy on us. Show us the way to be at peace with our world instead of at war with it, constantly having to seek advantage. Let us know the sweetness of just family and just love and just hope, time spent in community, after all, “it is not good for people to be alone” and we’ve lost that a little bit. Show us the way.

Absolute suffering

The bagpipe played “Amazing Grace” and a family walked out of the church with the knowledge that their Son, husband, father, brother, friend, mentor had passed and the only thing visible to those of us gathered was the absolute suffering that was etched on their faces.

I for one am not a fan of Amazing Grace played on anything but a bagpipe. Something stirs the blood in such a case and there is nothing you can think about but the fragility of man and the eternal, patient grace of God.

We bid farewell to one good man today, but we got a glimpse at the redeeming power of faith in the eyes of those who wept, for their own losses to be sure, but in love for the family and friends of the departed, for the love of them who remain and must now try and make a life without . . . well, just without.

Why do we try and fill such times with happy thoughts? With too many words? Job’s friends had it just right when they showed up and simply sat with him, in company and sympathy. When they opened their mouths, nothing good came out. Sometimes all that is required of us is “Man, that sucks!” because that is the only truth sometimes, the pain here and now, blotting out even the promise for a moment, blotting out even the eternity the cusp of which we are riding every day.

The pain will ease. With or without us the pain will recede because life is a persistent force. Then the Word is a true comfort because we will no longer be screaming out our pain.

There is a time to just sit and cry. But that time will pass.

Probably not today.

the sounds of silence

maybe the reason that this song resonates so much is that the people who wrote it were New Yorkers.

There is no silence here. Instead of Oxygen bars there should be little places where for $5 you could just have 15 minutes of silence, pure and complete. Because there is no time at which this city even approaches silence, it’s never even quiet here.

How can you hear the Word? How can you listen for the spirit above the honking of horns and the rumbling of buses and those are just the ones that are obvious, the rumbling of the subway is so far to the background that you’d have to eliminate 90% of the other noise to even hear it, but it destroys the very possibility of quiet.

OTOH, there is a lot of cool stuff in this city. Caitlyn wants to see the statue of Liberty so we’re taking the Staten island ferry today, checking out the place where Debbie gets her flute work done and maybe have a reuben in this nice deli across the street, and then szechuan in Queens this evening with friends. All in all not bad, but this place really never sleeps . . .

garden update

so we’re going on vacation in a couple of weeks, apparently just as the garden begins producing in earnest. We’ve gotten some radishes and some sugar snap peas, but now we’re getting squash, and tomatoes will be ripening soon, and tomatillos will be coming along (Yayyyy! Salsa!) it is an amazing thing to walk into every day.

here’s a peek:

quite a bit of growth since the past picture, I’m actually cutting two tomato plants back so they don’t tip over.

and these cute little variegated eggplant, aren’t they adorable?

and little, tender Mediterranean cucumbers, so tender you don’t have to peel them.

It is a wonder and a blessing amidst my fatigue and everything else, to have this little patch of wonderful to retreat to, to fuss over, to feast from.

Last day of school

many pictures of the last day

I am going to miss showing up on Tuesdays and Fridays and watching her class. We’ll try and see as many friends over the summer as possible. Maybe some of the kids from her class can come too . . .

What is it that makes us love? Is it chemistry? Is it Kismet? Is it common cause, the knowledge that we’re all in this together, striving that our children will grow strong and sure. In You, Lord, we have that common cause with all who have heard your word. Make us joyful listeners.

Garden Update

so here are two pictures, before and after, the former being just after things were planted, the latter a week ago.

and by the time you read this, I have already harvested all of the radishes and planted some more

Lord, you give the sun and the rain. Today it is cloudy and cool and the earth rests. Tomorrow it may be hot and the ground may harden in the baking heat. Between these two you will find us.

Kids, Kids and the garden (again)

So we had the last day of Sunday School and as we have done in recent years, we brought the good folks from Macdonald Ranch out for the kids to experience, petting zoo fashion. It was a great time and some of the more jaded kids, the ones normally whinging about getting back home to their Wii even seemed to find it a worthwhile experience.

How is it that we end up doing this to kids? By trying to give them everything we can, we end up taking things from them. If we give them a Wii, or a spiffy cell-phone or a computer, and they stay indoors in their safe and sanitized home, haven’t we in truth robbed them of something else? How do we weigh the things that we give and take away and how do we judge which one is more important?

New families and old in an uneasy mix. When can we get to the point where we all just trust in faith that we’re members, one and all, in the family of God. If we have a hard time teaching it to the kids, will we ever be able to get it across to the adults?

Can I portray trust enough to model it to others?

Then there’s the garden which I came home to that evening. I thought I’d give you an updated look.

God is good, all the time, God is good

It was supposed to be really hot these next few days and I was NOT ready for it. I looked it up on the internet this morning and it said that instead of mid-80’s we’ll be having mid-70’s. I don’t have to run home and water the garden in the middle of the day, I can wear long pants and a cleric without dissolving.

Except for a staggeringly odd (and for me, totally out of character) lack of Garlic, the garden is pretty much ready to rock.

I’ve got all of the beds in place for this year (there’ll be a bit more next year) so we’re off to the races. My mother was in town this past weekend and she mentioned with just the faintest trace of bitterness, that it was exactly twice as hot here as in Anchorage and so her garden is still under a blanket of snow.

Part of the fun for me is actually spending time outdoors, either on the porch

yes, those are the irises from earlier posts

or out with Caitlyn on the porch of her playhouse

which will be easier when I get all of the garden stuff off of it. There’s just so many metaphors for a life in faith to be had outside, in the dirt and the world.

God is good and I find it so much easier to see that outside, even if its hot (but not too hot)

Amen

We have a new Bishop

It is an odd process, one fraught with questions and yet it seems to nurture a sense of the Holy Spirit working in and through the election and in the end we have a new Bishop Elected in the Sierra Pacific Synod, Mark Holmerud.

I’m not sure that it is a job I’d wish on a dog, let alone a pastor I like and have respect for. Necessarily, like the presidency, there is really no adequate training for the position, nothing is like being bishop and being bishop is like nothing else and so we have what we have and each is different.

And around here they are the victim of what I think of as tragically poor planning in and through the merger way back when which saddled the bishop with 204 congregations spread out over a quite large region, from northern Nevada across northern California and down into the central part, past Monterey. Beyond the geography there is the incredible diversity of the synod, from Humboldt county to Fresno, from San Francisco to Elko, Nevada the disparity in priorities and beliefs is staggering.

And so I find it odd that the thing that makes me feel as if I were truly a part of this synod is the fact that i have a more than nodding relationship with four of the six candidates who were running. It is odd to feel that connected, but I guess that the Lutheran world really isn’t all that big.

Back at home some of the peach Irises have bloomed and so I thought I’d send along a picture:

be well, more about living outside (yourself and your home) later I suppose

Tim

Newest Iris photos

This took longer to get out than I expected But I had to get to the Synod Assembly in order to help select our next bishop. On the way out of town, I paused in the driveway to snap a few pictures of the irises out there, to complement the irises out back. These are much more vividly purple, rich and deep and hopefully they’ll be joined by some white ones in early May.

How can such things exist alongside poverty and despair? Maybe that’s why they exist alongside poverty and despair.