tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70746012643212975912024-02-19T01:06:17.734-08:00Koine Community in Portland.Common folk. Common ground. Uncommon love.Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.comBlogger351125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-26620381850723546742015-01-17T11:05:00.000-08:002015-01-17T11:14:14.043-08:00Gut Level God<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meditations on the Good News of
Jesus </i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">according to St. John 1:1-18</i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> --by Pastor Roger </i></b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Several years ago, local performer Storm Large—yes,
that’s always been her real name—did a one woman show called “Crazy
Enough.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an autobiographical work
of storytelling and song with only Storm and three musicians onstage for the
occasional musical numbers that are all over the map.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve never seen anything quite like it and probably will
not again in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the story of a
family--Storm, her brother and her father--completely submerged in the mental
illness of her mother who was in and out of more psychiatric offices and psych
wards than anyone can name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the
story of knowing that she, Storm, has the genetic defect of her mother and
blood relatives, some of whom have developed the rare form of mental
illnesses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6BfSRQT7XS_TfmzLn4Oigv4NiL7OiUHYAZ4GO6qkcPpg-KW4USlh2Hokf2Ajte8I9ahQkjSdsaiHhsYcJz9voagoL0rIqlrHjf9qFm0muJwd12f-UkhhrsJv9E3Q1v2uf-6g5r3gwRPUZ/s1600/Blog+260.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6BfSRQT7XS_TfmzLn4Oigv4NiL7OiUHYAZ4GO6qkcPpg-KW4USlh2Hokf2Ajte8I9ahQkjSdsaiHhsYcJz9voagoL0rIqlrHjf9qFm0muJwd12f-UkhhrsJv9E3Q1v2uf-6g5r3gwRPUZ/s1600/Blog+260.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s
the story of a girl too big (Large is a fitting last name), too loud, and not
pretty enough to be popular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the
story of running away from herself, of looking for love in disastrous places
including promiscuity, heroin addiction, verbal and physical abuse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s
also the story of redemption as only Storm could tell it from her gut level
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one scene onstage she
writhes on the floor re-enacting the wrenching physical trauma of self-imposed
heroin withdrawal and her last-ditch cries to God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The audience is becoming physically ill with
her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
theater is nearly dark and silent but for a few exhausted sobs from Storm who
is in a fetal ball on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
Storm begins to enact how the room she was in slowly began to fill with warmth
and light and love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warmth and light and
love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As though life, and the ability to
live, the desire to live, the hope to live, were slowly being transfused back
into her soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No drug induced temporary
high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No hug from a mama bear
caregiver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No Hollywood exorcism by a
priest wearing black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No yoga
meditation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No soundtrack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, a physical and emotional
resurrection that came from completely outside herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warmth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It stayed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gut level God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p>In
early 2007, I had finished my parish internship and all the steps necessary for
some kind of call to ministry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
would that call be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might think that
would be an exciting time of discovery and anticipation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, it was a horrible time of deadly
spiritual warfare that nearly ended me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each day grew worse, and I finally called a couple of friends to ask
them to pray for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a
months-long battle to stay sane long enough to discern God’s call—which wasn’t
going to be what the church thought should be my call at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know the answer, of course, because here
I am.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have grown to love this
ministry in ways words cannot describe and which my extended family will never
understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I now
get something at a gut level that I never did before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>if there is a hell it is separation from God. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hell is not a furnace but a deepfreeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a place of utter cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our best physics tell us that all molecular
motion ceases at a temperature of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">-273 degrees on the Kelvin
scale:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>absolute zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At absolute zero, it is impossible to extract
any more heat from anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hell is
absolute zero of the soul, the mind and the body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Separation from God is a total absence of
warmth and light and love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t
ever want to go there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God wants no one
to ever go there, be there, or stay there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Christmas is a celebration of thanks for the birth of a
child that his parents named Yeshua, meaning God (YHWH) is salvation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus, whom we confess to be Messiah, the
Anointed One, the Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His birth
probably happened in the spring of the year when there was grass on the
hillsides for sheep to graze and when shepherds could endure nights outdoors
without freezing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It
probably happened in a season of a lot more daylight than we experience now
just after the winter solstice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it’s
appropriate for us to celebrate this wondrous event in a time of darkness and
cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the messages of warmth and
light and love make the most sense to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We have a gut level need to understand these things that stay with us.<o:p></o:p> <o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Martin
Luther wrote the poem of our Christmas song today as a way to remember the
Christmas story in verse form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
something we can learn as children and carry with us all our lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s a good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although we are born as children we don’t
stay children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The darknesses that may
assault us in life are far more powerful and life- threatening than the mere
shortness of daylight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need backup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">God’s
story is far more important than a baby’s birth with stars in the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about a gut level God who finds us in
the darkest room, a God who drives away the utter separation of absolute zero
with warmth and light and love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Storm
Large may never give her testimony in church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As she said once, her mouth cop got run over a long time ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she told her story in the most important
place:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>out of and into the real world of
darkness where people live and that God comes to with warmth and light and
love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your story is just as important as
hers or mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a gut level story
because Jesus is a gut level God for all the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warmth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fantastic news!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you, Jesus!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks be to God!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-67990865283376596152014-03-11T22:43:00.002-07:002014-03-16T21:21:39.370-07:00Worship Revolution<span style="font-size: large;">161 years ago last month, a man failed in his attempt to assassinate the young Franz Josef I, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In gratitude for this grace, the Emperor commissioned the building of a neo-Gothic church known as the Votivkirche, the "Votive Church." It's an impressive sight, especially when lighted at night, on the Ringstrasse encircling the core of the old city of Vienna, Austria. It's a stone's throw from the University, the Parliament, the Rathaus (city hall). I walked past it many times during the summer of 1968 when I was a student there and lived a 10-minute stroll away.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But it's a neo-Gothic, not a true Gothic church. It has taken Gothic architecture and given it a strong dose of overkill. It's a church that was built as a gift to "The Church" headquartered in Rome but with political power centered in Vienna and the German-speaking empire that would last a thousand years.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgks3AeT7kJS07qj2Z8HcJSJEzZzxtNNJHQWpuPWBYSwKCM-XwFb90NO0t3TFhCSO4krisTp5dG7Jb65QZQ_6P5UMYX0BAMza2iYtHjzgjchF6zUXusNVETgpM94MPe1fxf5Oz8Nle85hUU/s1600/Votiv1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgks3AeT7kJS07qj2Z8HcJSJEzZzxtNNJHQWpuPWBYSwKCM-XwFb90NO0t3TFhCSO4krisTp5dG7Jb65QZQ_6P5UMYX0BAMza2iYtHjzgjchF6zUXusNVETgpM94MPe1fxf5Oz8Nle85hUU/s1600/Votiv1.bmp" height="400" width="300" /></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The church was not built because Vienna needed more seating capacity for worship, more Sunday school rooms, a men's and women's shelter, or a food pantry. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Like a votive candle, the church was "offered in fulfillment of a vow or in gratitude or devotion." Doubtless, the Austrian Cardinal(s), Archbishops, Bishops and priests loved it. Surely the Pope would have pronounced eternal blessing on Franz Josef and his family.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A tourist guide has this description:</span><br />
<br />
<i><b>The architect was Heinrich von Ferstel. The most beautiful historic relic in the
Votivkirche is its late 15th-century Antwerpian altar, a masterpiece of Flemish
woodcarving, representing scenes from the Passion. The main portal sculptures
depict the four Evangelists and figures from the Old Testament, along with four
patrons of the Empire’s regions. Many of the chapels inside the church are
dedicated to the Austrian regiments and to military heroes. </b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i><span style="font-size: large;">The interweaving of royalty and the priesthood, the reach of military power and the domain of the Holy Catholic Church had been through centuries, a millennium and a half, actually, by the time the Votivkirche was built. There had been fights and struggles and murders, wars among popes, bishops, princes and kings. There had been a Reformation and schisms. There had been the Thirty Years' War and the Inquisition. There had been the black death, famines, the Crusades, colonial empires and the slave trade. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">There had been the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the discovery of America, the Baroque period, the Rococco, the French Revolution and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Imperial Europe was still decades away from the Great War, aka the "war to end all wars." The United States of America had found by 1879 when the Votivkirche was completed, that we weren't so united after all. Five years of Civil War and 600,000 American deaths at the hands of other Americans could only leave us questioning.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">How could such a church be built in a world always astir? And what went on inside such luxurious buildings?</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh587GhWrn_Fv4BUeDd5sxVc7CDYdNL4WLzgbGOQuUeeZ9tr7VReKf7tZhAfbotbh1xRyfd5zd1wPPmeKws8xSh_NPEpVW5RM6PtsMH_7aBDLwfUIXU8IQgGUHZg8jhHe40FMXfgwAIhlJP/s1600/Votiv2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh587GhWrn_Fv4BUeDd5sxVc7CDYdNL4WLzgbGOQuUeeZ9tr7VReKf7tZhAfbotbh1xRyfd5zd1wPPmeKws8xSh_NPEpVW5RM6PtsMH_7aBDLwfUIXU8IQgGUHZg8jhHe40FMXfgwAIhlJP/s1600/Votiv2.bmp" height="400" width="300" /></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">1. Daily masses fed by people convinced that going to mass was a good work and was necessary for their salvation. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">2. A complex and comprehensive sacramental system in which the Church was the sole possessor and mediator of grace. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">3. People were compelled to serve that system because it held the keys of life and death, salvation or damnation for their immortal souls. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">4. And there were elaborate worship services with cantors and choirs and pipe organs and priests and deacons and altar boys lining up in grand imperial processions and carrying on elaborately choreographed movements with censors of incense and monstrances and genuflections and kneeling and prostrations and vestments. All of the prefaces, the Great Thanksgiving, the consecration of the elements of bread and wine (with only the priest being allowed to consume the wine itself) were in Latin, not the people's tongue. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">5. Not to mention kingmaking and sanctions for wars and strategic alliances and land </span><span style="font-size: large;">deals</span><span style="font-size: large;"> and royal marriages and dissolutions of convenience... </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And some modern day people with no knowledge of Christian history wonder why there is a problem with having national flags in church. Oh, my... </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet, somewhere under this grinding weight of a royal institution, a little of the work of serving the poor and the orphan was done, mostly by the sisters who had devoted their lives to Christ's service on behalf of the church... or to the church's service on behalf of Christ. A few bread crumbs trickled down to Lazarus and the dogs while massive amounts of wealth passed through the upper floors of the high-rise hierarchy. As far as most people knew, it had always been that way. And always would be. It was a monopoly. You couldn't know Christ apart from, or outside of, the official church. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">How?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">From a movement that began with Jesus spending time among Gentiles and tax collectors, mentally ill and outcasts, from a small group that met in private homes behind closed doors and were called "The Way," how did the world ever get to the Imperial Church of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, to Notre Dame and Chartres in France, to the Votivkirche and Karlskirche in Vienna? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It all began in 313 AD with Emperor Constantine in Constantinople/Byzantium/Istanbul. When Christianity became not only legal but the official religion of the empire, it became royal and imperial. The prayer circle of two or three gathered together with Christ in their midst became the grand procession of the Imperial Priesthood. It was a worship revolution. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It was then that a large number of humble priests and monks left the city for the desert and the wilderness. They had to get away. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>How could one accept the grace of God and not be humbled and transformed by that? How could one, after all, be wealthy and comfortable and propserous--while others were hungry, homeless and living in filth--and call oneself a Christian, a follower of Christ? How could one be a Christian and not give up nearly everything? How could one be greedy for ever more power and wealth and find no conflict with the way of Jesus? </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>How could worship ("church," if you will) go from neighborhood prayer service to production and performance spectacle? How could it go from gathering in humble homes to building royal "palaces" as sanctuaries--and not have lost its way entirely? </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Desert Fathers wondered that. So have I. So do I. Still... </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, Emperors can build votive cathedrals at taxpayers' and peasants' expense, and be given Divine blessing for their good deeds. Souls of the poor can be held hostage all along the way. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Worship has never been the same ever since...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Next time: <b><i>"The Quiet Churches" </i></b> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-59614390506940445262014-02-15T11:42:00.000-08:002014-02-15T11:55:21.833-08:00Early Worship<span style="font-size: large;">It probably began as a conversation or a song. People repeated in chants what they understood of the Divine and their relationship. Early peoples understood their weakness and vulnerability very well. Heat, cold, floods and famine shaped life profoundly. Not to mention the absolute mystery and unpredictability of diseases. Lifespan was short, and the majority of children did not survive the first six years of life. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Death was always at the door. Some force had power over this. If there was a way to offer gifts and sacrifices to favorably influence that power, people were surely for it. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3OGoDwdRAUsaEKCBelkF26O_aJeDb5EIljythPKNNiCo9nD8PRfbuQwhi7aSqfItqj1Wmr3t98dl0HuSUr5_lbMj3N63BOvKAOw5T95qBT0FuEHT9F3FUoX7LCr_gsVfOXiG-pDDN2IRW/s1600/100_3426.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3OGoDwdRAUsaEKCBelkF26O_aJeDb5EIljythPKNNiCo9nD8PRfbuQwhi7aSqfItqj1Wmr3t98dl0HuSUr5_lbMj3N63BOvKAOw5T95qBT0FuEHT9F3FUoX7LCr_gsVfOXiG-pDDN2IRW/s1600/100_3426.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cycles of life and activity developed around patterns of the seasons and phases of the moon. There were times for the people to gather and reflect on the mysterious powers that shaped the world and their lives. Talking to this power, praying to this power, praising this power, being taught and instructed by this power through the words and deeds of prophets and holy persons became deeply embedded in human life. It created a moral framework in which people understood the rules of life and their place in it. And it moved people to do powerful and courageous things on behalf of the people. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kDVPYyH0p9-nHm_5fGOBvMlsaCrd2tKEQNL5uXYhR7JbQ-OSiKuSyz6HMdAQ2yXUA5EzpW_Ak9qG3SW31dNekL32wjtY4zZf9x3bJ8mtzbWcumKbLaIry_jx_7xvyz5pOpxewCm7yank/s1600/100_3477.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kDVPYyH0p9-nHm_5fGOBvMlsaCrd2tKEQNL5uXYhR7JbQ-OSiKuSyz6HMdAQ2yXUA5EzpW_Ak9qG3SW31dNekL32wjtY4zZf9x3bJ8mtzbWcumKbLaIry_jx_7xvyz5pOpxewCm7yank/s1600/100_3477.JPG" height="400" width="292" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Such as spending time in fasting and meditation and prayer to be open to the messages of the Divine. Also, to trust the Divine power to give them strength in battle against human enemies for the good of their families and neighbors. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kDVPYyH0p9-nHm_5fGOBvMlsaCrd2tKEQNL5uXYhR7JbQ-OSiKuSyz6HMdAQ2yXUA5EzpW_Ak9qG3SW31dNekL32wjtY4zZf9x3bJ8mtzbWcumKbLaIry_jx_7xvyz5pOpxewCm7yank/s1600/100_3477.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Judaeo-Christian traditions of worship that have come to us rely on millennia of human experience and spiritual life that provide much of the framework and vocabulary by which we conceive of spiritual matters and who/what we are as human beings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Every spiritual system in human experience has had one common feature: etiology. That is, the body of understanding and explanation for how things came to be. After all, what's one of the most ubiquitous questions the three-year old asks with each new awareness of the world? Why? Why is the sky blue sometimes but not other times? Why does the moon come and go? Where does the sun go? Where did earth come from? Where did we come from? Why are we here?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We live with those questions and concerns even as adults. We add more to the mix. What is life for? What makes sense of me and my life? Why am I here? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does/doesn't God do something about all this?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Those are still valid questions even today when we know far more about the cause of diseases, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the solar system and universe. Who/what are we in all of this? What does the Divine Creator do these days? What still fits and shapes my life? Who is my neighbor? And what does that mean? Is there good news to be had today? Where does it come from? What does it say?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the worship of the Israelites, there was a deep tradition of reviewing the moral code, or receiving instruction by reading/repeating parts of the sacred texts. And discussing its meaning for the people gathered. There was sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people and to say thank you to God for the gifts of harvest. The song of the people in music and spoken/sung words and notes was a part of that. The Psalms were always a part of the expression of the people--both the joy and celebration in good times and the heartache and wailing in bad times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There was time for singing and dancing. There was time for silence and contemplation. The <i>Selah </i>interspersing the segments of longer Psalms was probably a musical interlude in which the hearers could savor and ponder the meaning of the words just said. Music helps us think with our hearts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was prayer. Thanksgiving and lamentation. All together. Sometimes, the best prayer doesn't ask for a thing. It simply does an adequate job of stating what is. It lays all the junk and brokenness right out there. In pieces. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Water and fire and food have nearly always been a part of worship. Fire for light in darkness and consuming the offerings. Water for washing and cleansing and purifying. Food both for giving and receiving and sharing together. We people are least hostile, most community-like, when we share food together. We are more peaceful, more thankful, when we are fed. Inside and out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It gives us the opportunity to know and care about each other, to punch a few holes in our isolation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We have wise instruction from God in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. We have Sabbath time out for God and each other, not because God is a vain and needy God who will go off to pout and toss lightning bolts if he/she doesn't get praised right on Holy Day. No, the Sabbath was made for us because we need it and all it brings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Early worship established that. But more than once along the way, we've lost the idea. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Which gets us back to that first question again: WHY?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">More to come...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">R. </span>
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-7s7_4zOQeVU%2FUv_EWXCRGEI%2FAAAAAAAABaM%2FFZDzKPDjnFY%2Fs1600%2F100_3477.JPG&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kDVPYyH0p9-nHm_5fGOBvMlsaCrd2tKEQNL5uXYhR7JbQ-OSiKuSyz6HMdAQ2yXUA5EzpW_Ak9qG3SW31dNekL32wjtY4zZf9x3bJ8mtzbWcumKbLaIry_jx_7xvyz5pOpxewCm7yank/s1600/100_3477.JPG" -->Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-46341549204921538132014-02-14T09:33:00.000-08:002014-02-15T10:47:32.217-08:00Why Worship Anyway?<span style="font-size: large;">Over a year ago I went on an excursion. I didn't leave my house but visited a bunch of church websites. What was the first thing churches wanted to show me? Interesting... </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsJq5-S5JVw5UiUIJYrKc_w8tZxuAAXYB7ZScvCfn8gKv5ig_FJfpggwcU5QK-oMeuVVzUxyZTKgHOwDWVKv70ynU9hVjo3RxheFk5yriPsivIufLI4cGQooeJH1AuRYs8lfwrHmPu_idU/s1600/100_3413.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsJq5-S5JVw5UiUIJYrKc_w8tZxuAAXYB7ZScvCfn8gKv5ig_FJfpggwcU5QK-oMeuVVzUxyZTKgHOwDWVKv70ynU9hVjo3RxheFk5yriPsivIufLI4cGQooeJH1AuRYs8lfwrHmPu_idU/s1600/100_3413.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many churches showed me their buildings. Some showed me their pastors doing a kids' message on the step of the altar platform. Some showed me groups of happy workers apparently doing landscaping or yard work around the church building. For some, it was their choir all bedecked in primary colors and smiling brightly. Still others obviously were proud of their massive pipe organs. Some showed me groups of standing worshipers in ecstatic response, arms a'waving. Others, of course, big praise bands. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Often, there was a focus-group designed paragraph about "who we are." Carefully chosen words such as "caring, serving, welcoming, loving, diverse, inclusive" followed as their self-chosen affirmations. All positive, of course. Though, curiously, I never found the word "humble" in any of them. Many had mission or vision statements about "bringing Christ to the nations"--as the old Lutheran Hour radio motto said. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's no wonder church websites look much like those of other community organizations. We are, after all, just that. However, as a friend said long ago, churches are "just the same--only different." I hope. But back to the web search... </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One website stood out from all the rest. Its welcome mat, the first thing a web visitor might see, was not a statement about the church itself. In fact, it wasn't a statement at all. It was a question:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> Why?</i></b> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CjjA70RqVXrpXiKTriSMdUbLHb_k1nwq7W8VufKtkYsQ8HDedy38u6r9UTzHHyUY9waIlcYSKOsyBtvytMiu93BLwwcABcv5Vt5ja8uXRCs001krKPZYCqz7NKVl5LtHw1_dwfFQ4h2u/s1600/100_2427.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CjjA70RqVXrpXiKTriSMdUbLHb_k1nwq7W8VufKtkYsQ8HDedy38u6r9UTzHHyUY9waIlcYSKOsyBtvytMiu93BLwwcABcv5Vt5ja8uXRCs001krKPZYCqz7NKVl5LtHw1_dwfFQ4h2u/s1600/100_2427.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why bother? Why spend time doing this at all?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What followed was breathtaking. It led me on a journey that was far more like a poem than a densely packed self-proclamation or committee-crafted mission/vision statement. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There was space between the lines for me to breathe and ponder. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It talked about life. It wasn't an ideal, idyllic portrayal of a church that had it all together in a world coming apart. It also wasn't a judgmental condemnation of that world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was the most <u>honest</u> thing I found in the entire excursion. It rang true. It sounded like the world I live in. It sounded like the world that Jesus lived in. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Better, it sounded like the world that Jesus <b><i>lives</i></b> in. It sounded real.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was immediately engaged. I wanted to know more about this church. Not because it had better answers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It had better questions. More accurately, because it had questions at all. With Jesus there in the middle of them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've never known answers to come in the absence of questions.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">"Why?" seems like a very good place to begin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus is there in the middle of that. Thanks be to God! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Amen. </span><br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-85834616256920247632013-09-17T09:12:00.003-07:002013-10-25T22:41:37.179-07:00Questions...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvQ7NSeWDZtGc8XHCKXWaJ4XySJtRXO6PHiE3tsL8ldrUM1pZHXkrYaSfAhXwxPDr91BUZsyMl6dQXc_SvBcY2m5CcoSQtDKnjB0SL10OkyLIMccfRKDMfPjC6E1549ghISsDG5IghNdq/s1600/iStock_000001770544XSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvQ7NSeWDZtGc8XHCKXWaJ4XySJtRXO6PHiE3tsL8ldrUM1pZHXkrYaSfAhXwxPDr91BUZsyMl6dQXc_SvBcY2m5CcoSQtDKnjB0SL10OkyLIMccfRKDMfPjC6E1549ghISsDG5IghNdq/s400/iStock_000001770544XSmall.jpg" width="400" /></a><b><span style="font-size: large;">Another mass shooting. Another troubled young man.
Two words: male socialization. There are any number of extra security measures, scanners, surveillance cameras, metal detectors and bullet-proof materials we can put up around everything from preschools to Amish schools to porta-potties to churches and malls and airports and courthouses to military bases themselves. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">All will be at best band-aid diversions from addressing the root cause: male socialization. Let's start today by asking the question at home, in school, at church and at work: WHAT AM I HERE FOR? </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> I love the scene in Rob Bell's short film "Name" in which he describes the wrestling match between God disguised as an angel and the struggling shepherd, Jacob, when the angel asks, "What is your name?" The question really asks, "Who ARE you?"
Then this line from Bell's narration: How much of our pain in life comes from not knowing how to answer that question? </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Indeed. Bullets. Nerve gas. Pressure cooker bombs...
Who ARE we? And what ARE we for? I'm not fearful that the answers would terrify me. I'm more convinced that the silence would break my heart.
</span></b>Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-45525347756093891672013-07-04T22:24:00.002-07:002013-07-07T22:04:45.090-07:00We Hold These Truths...<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-v50440cNNzVR5V9N4lkr9EurPU1VzNAVZM3Sy_xQx3UiRR06cSRvkI94lSw67Ql72iZTQBNwSHHStQaCvInLlGl3AUt54bz2FJCHpMHoMMNr7er-WJTjq_Vb2UjxyHkiwko-Zy1J5WiA/s1600/100_2522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-v50440cNNzVR5V9N4lkr9EurPU1VzNAVZM3Sy_xQx3UiRR06cSRvkI94lSw67Ql72iZTQBNwSHHStQaCvInLlGl3AUt54bz2FJCHpMHoMMNr7er-WJTjq_Vb2UjxyHkiwko-Zy1J5WiA/s320/100_2522.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">...to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The little document drawn up in that hall in Philadelphia back in '76 could have used a few footnotes. It would be nice to know who the signers of the document considered "men."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most likely, they thought the definition itself to be "self-evident." Men???? Why, people like <em>ourselves</em>, <em>of course!</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Certainly not people of color, nor the "merciless Indian Savages" (<em>ref., section 10 of the Declaration</em>), could be considered "men" who had been created equal. <em>Created?</em> Sure! But <em>equal</em>?<em> </em> Equal to ourselves? Not this side of Eternity!!! Or the Atalantic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We are not so different from these men of 237 years ago. We have some grand visions, some very flawed ones. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9RXEpw-dNe9TXN93QS-uy9G6bEwyBahxkVSJk9Wp-Y97A_uirCmDov1NO8b9eRwSmhWNzYSbjJWq0GLAWwAL1kgFUpSpDn8WTNRX2pCtBX8IoAhWLfP5cNQOG8ukTP7mkgtdV8ByfJhz/s1442/100_2876.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA9RXEpw-dNe9TXN93QS-uy9G6bEwyBahxkVSJk9Wp-Y97A_uirCmDov1NO8b9eRwSmhWNzYSbjJWq0GLAWwAL1kgFUpSpDn8WTNRX2pCtBX8IoAhWLfP5cNQOG8ukTP7mkgtdV8ByfJhz/s200/100_2876.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">But here's an oddity for us to consider. They had mutually pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They said in higher sounding words: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>This is how we will live as of today. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>This is worth living for. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>This is worth dying for. </em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>So be it!</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">They did not draw up this declaration after years of war, bloodshed and eventual capitulation by the British. 1776 was years before what we call "The Revolutionary War." The Declaration was not part of the surrender documents signed by the British, after which the American colonists finally sighed, "At last we can think about being free--because we have won a military victory."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No. They <u>became </u>free when they had <u>declared themselves to BE free</u> of George III of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Amen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet, to die for is the number of times we have failed to embody and insist on the most basic concepts of the Declaration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Or when we have willingly let go of them because we were honestly afraid of being that free. Or couldn't be bothered to take the effort. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's wonderful at this national holiday celebrating the birth of our nation to remember that it was not a military victory that founded it. Rather, it was the birth of an idea. Honor members of our military, veterans for sure. Always. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But honor others even more highly: people not afraid to speak and write and live the highest ideals and vision of which we human beings are capable. Honor our best thinkers. Especially the ones who are willing to pledge their lives in the cause of these ideas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Living here requires more of us than being allegiantly inert, dutifully uniformed, steadfastly inactive, loyally blind, unconvinced of the common good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Living here requires more than complacently thinking that we are kept "free" by a volunteer military that over 98% of Americans will never participate in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Freedom is not the same as safety and security with which it is too commonly conflated and confused. Safety and security exist in the <u>absence</u> of threats and violence. Freedom exists in the <u>presence</u> of activity. Freedom exists not in its having but in its doing. It must be exercised or it asphyxiates. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In honor of the visionary forebears who <u>thought</u> their way to freedom before anyone ever <u>fought</u> their way, here's Roger's "Pledge of Performance":</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;"><em>I recognize, and I accept the privileges and the responsibilities of citizenship in these United States of America. And I pledge my very best efforts in the faithful exercise of both my whole life long. </em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">May such truths become self-evident. Soon. Always. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-774713647095512462013-07-03T09:31:00.001-07:002013-07-03T09:45:44.720-07:00Paper or Plastic? No problem!<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvrRX7NAceQAfcV9zMK_H0VjiTNjy2qaXa_ODGomMXGrpG66GZwXmdSisHMDk6zUW7B5PFHUataRluzmDEHdy4RZYinc1z4bP0i9He0F48_xNySOzwOaupa8bwTFdZPahDz23XiqTWaFE/s1600/Blog+145.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="150" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvrRX7NAceQAfcV9zMK_H0VjiTNjy2qaXa_ODGomMXGrpG66GZwXmdSisHMDk6zUW7B5PFHUataRluzmDEHdy4RZYinc1z4bP0i9He0F48_xNySOzwOaupa8bwTFdZPahDz23XiqTWaFE/s200/Blog+145.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><a href="http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm"><span style="font-size: large;">http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This Japanese man supposedly has invented a plastic-to-oil distillery. Hmmmm? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="font-size: large;">Seems simple enough, agreed. Several basic questions that come to mind for me:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">1) How much energy input is required to achieve the output?</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">2) Some plastics are more complex compounds than others. What happens with the residues that surely remain with some? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">3) Some plastics surely give off very noxious gases as they are being heated. I doubt that they simply sit in the retort and quietly transform themselves into gaseous petroleum. Are these gases condensed in the water, or do they escape and themselves become a source of atmospheric pollution?</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhW7kZnvdGLzY05CuzSyPhx_KB25bN-5ZMLojWAcsNc3a4OFVDU80Lg3lHCATlb3q3xAf2kZp7F52-r2gkmEoGr5XJh7bvYf4ntc8EnRaoJ6ze8zggmtKGZh6rPnguepHJMNO2Ci1sz_Z/s1600/Blog+163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="150" oya="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhW7kZnvdGLzY05CuzSyPhx_KB25bN-5ZMLojWAcsNc3a4OFVDU80Lg3lHCATlb3q3xAf2kZp7F52-r2gkmEoGr5XJh7bvYf4ntc8EnRaoJ6ze8zggmtKGZh6rPnguepHJMNO2Ci1sz_Z/s200/Blog+163.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-size: large;">Best way always to "solve" problems is to make as little of the problem as possible in the first place. Nearly all products we make, sell and purchase here are WAY overpackaged and WAY under-durable. I'd like to know more about the plastics distillery, but don't have time to do any research. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Some years back, I looked into the business of motor oil bottles... ugh! What do we do with those? Why the near total absence of recycling available for motor oil bottles? The brand new, unused motor oil that ends up in landfills every year because people are too impatient to completely drain oil bottles before disposing? It's the equivalent of about 3.5 Exxon Valdez oil tankers. Every year. Every... year. <em>Why?</em> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Over a decade ago, the US Department of Energy patented a process for cleaning the excess oil from plastic bottles, even the film residue that remains after thorough draining, using CO2 as the solvent. In the process, the CO2 is captured and recycled, not released. So far as I could tell, only one company in CA was engaging in the process several years ago, operating on state grant money that was probably budget axed after the original 2-year grant. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A friend and I once collected several large cases of plastic oil bottles, flattened them, and shipped them down to CA. Of course, the big question is whether more energy was spent in shipping than retrieved by the recycling process. We felt good for a few minutes, but solved nothing. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">This defies reason, intelligence and civilization, of course. Since motor oil bottles are sold in every community on earth that has motor vehicles, there should be a closed loop system everywhere for the recovery and re-use of these containers. Oil filters, too. Sure... </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you want to hear anger and annoyance on the other end of the phone, merely call a local recycling resources hotline and ask the poor person who answers the phone where to recycle oil bottles locally. The usual response is something bordering on <em>"Stop asking me that @#$%^&* question, you *&^% idiot, before I blow my @#$%^&* brains out--or yours if I could just get at you first! I HATE THIS JOB!" </em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Should be a local, universal system to do this. Just as there should be for things like dry cell batteries, compact fluorescent bulbs, shoes and baby diapers for the people who can't or won't wash cloth ones. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Why not? Simply this. All problems are solvable if we decide we want to. No problems are solvable if we decide that we can't because we have already decided that we won't. Problems aren't problems at all. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">People are problems. Problems go away when our thinking changes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus wept... And I don't think it was over gay marriage. </span><br />
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R.<br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-1823695568379410412013-07-01T08:52:00.000-07:002013-07-01T08:53:58.124-07:00Defense of Marriage: A Prescription<span style="font-size: large;">I've read comments recently that fear a backlash. That is, some people fear that the newly empowered supporters of same sex marriage may now unload on portions of the Christian community in the same way they have felt unloaded on in years past. Maybe. Mostly, I doubt it. The tug of war in the legal arena is far from over since same sex marriage is still not permitted in approximtely 3/4 of the states. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But a little history here, dating back to the civil rights struggles of the 1960's and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For there to be a backlash, there first has to be a lash. Or, to use a term perhaps coined by President Lyndon Johnson, there has to be a "frontlash." I, too, pray that the backlash to the Court's decisions is not a sequel to the frontlash.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Marriage. Civil union. Life partnership. I hope we all ask ourselves exactly what that means. How do we support and encourage durable, healthy human relationships in any form, marriage specifically?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since I now have the recognized authority to perform marriages that pass legal muster, I find it a sobering responsibility, given the flawed nature of humanity. I worked long and hard to be recognized and vested with the authority conferred by the ordination by my church. It wasn't a cereal boxtop version or an online instant thing. Worked my butt off for a decade in classes, CPE and internship while working full time. Much to the neglect of home maintenance and retirement savings. All to do legitimate ministry in a position that does not pay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I can now marry people legally, and also pronounce the blessing of God on couples who wish to have that. I have married one couple, and I felt good about it. I also just "solemnized before God and witnesses" the marriage of a couple who had already legally been married by a judge some time prior. I don't know for sure how to feel about this couple since they both have personality traits that could be very troubling if they don't manage them; plus, they both have a disastrous previous marriage in their past. My prayer is that the sacred ceremony in which they sought God's blessing serves as a sobering incentive to succeed despite their own human faults. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A local columnist who is herself divorced has written several times about the importance of doing things that support and strengthen marriage. I want to call her to account because she has failed to describe what that would be. Should we enact a marriage "death penalty" by making it illegal for anyone who has ever divorced for any reason to remarry... ever? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Absent the columnist's definition, I offer my own. It's the same prescription I give for eliminating poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, low graduation rates, DWI deaths, drug cartels, sectarian wars, terrorism and world wars: character formation. Better formed, better built, more fully committed human beings. Ultimately, we have no other and no higher calling but to make more of us who better qualify for the humbling, lofty title divinely bestowed on us: God's own handiwork.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, how many married people can recite their marriage vows 90 seconds, 90 minutes or 90 days after the wedding? Or say what that vow actually means? Instead of blowing megabucks hiring <u>wedding planners</u>, people would do much better to spend a few hours actually being <u>marriage planners</u> themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How do we make life together happen for any of us? How do we make it better than Civil War? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">More on that subject later this week.</span> </div>
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<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-91531210061090538022013-06-20T09:02:00.001-07:002013-06-20T09:24:33.286-07:00Clothed... and In His Right Mind<em><strong>They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind... Mark 5:15</strong></em><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">November, 2011. It was a sunny but chilly day with a stiff east breeze. In that season of the year, there is nearly always a stiff, chilly wind coming out of the Columbia Gorge when we are fortunate enough to have sun</span><span style="font-size: small;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was on the phone with a colleague as I looked out my home office window overlooking the cul-de-sac north of our house. I blinked, and my eyes confirmed what I had seen first. Yes, indeed. The muscular man, appearing to be in his mid-30's, was indeed walking down the street buck naked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He seemed to be conversing with, or responding to, things I could not see. At one point, he stopped as he entered the alley between the fence of my yard and the chain link fence around the school athletic field. Then he walked to the school fence and began to climb it, fingers and toes gripping the diamond-shaped holes in the fence. He was as agile and strong as a chimp on his play structure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When he reached the top rail of the fence, the man squatted and rested up there a bit before he leaped down into the schoolyard. I cringed. The soles of his feet had been resting atop these sharp, twisted wires supporting the man's full weight... but he appeared to feel no pain at all.
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<span style="font-size: large;">Next, he walked in a circle. Then he returned to the fence, climbed back over and came walking down the street in front of my house. He came down my driveway, stood in my open garage for a few minutes, before returning to the street, going back to the schoolyard and climbing the fence for yet a third time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Oblivious of pain... oblivious of the chilly wind... oblivious of all that most of us are attuned to in our daily relationship with the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had been on the phone to the police dispatcher minutes before, and at last a police cruiser sped across the athletic field and stopped. The officers kept their distance, not threatening the man, thankfully. They engaged him in conversation before finally convincing him to enter the warmth of the back seat of the patrol car. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The man of Gerasa (Mark 5, Luke 8) was clearly in another world from most folks, an alien to them. Jesus apparently engaged him in another way from most people in the man's life. The results are stunning. And I have no doubt that the encounter also changed and informed the way Jesus and his students engaged and related to people after that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What if we did the same?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sarah Thebarge did. It changed her. It changed a family. It changed the world. For good. For goodness. </span><a href="http://sarahthebarge.com/theinvisiblegirls/"><span style="font-size: large;">http://sarahthebarge.com/theinvisiblegirls/</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The divides of culture, class, language and life experience can be every bit as formidable as the divides of mental health and mental illness. Likewise, the divide of mental illness can be as formidable as all of those other things that clearly exist but are not seen as being so formidable as mental illness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus paid attention. He engaged the person first, always before the labels. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sarah paid attention to the invisible girls she met.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What if we did the same? How much more of the world would be clothed and in its right mind?</span><br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-20978899841782379202013-06-12T09:48:00.003-07:002013-06-12T09:57:46.321-07:00A Few Good Men<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Kevin's Dad, Delmar, whom we all knew as "Del" when he also worked at AAR Western Skyways, had been a U. S. Marine. USMC. At Kevin's memorial service, Del talked about teaching his two children, Kevin and his sister Jerilyn, how to shoot and handle firearms. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9Qe3lTnYifKFkA61_IBlD56rBV2x_YSnyR2Gd0hy4bH8qNX0T6N0C68Yh7AaKn4PMxR0irMx-k-buBJAa2bJm0OMsZiMJ3discCKox4axE0JBn2bR8_sxujwvt1yVe7wyqhUMNimVMG_/s1600/100_3293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9Qe3lTnYifKFkA61_IBlD56rBV2x_YSnyR2Gd0hy4bH8qNX0T6N0C68Yh7AaKn4PMxR0irMx-k-buBJAa2bJm0OMsZiMJ3discCKox4axE0JBn2bR8_sxujwvt1yVe7wyqhUMNimVMG_/s1600/100_3293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: large;">Del had taught them well, at least Kevin. Del told us how Kevin and young buddies decided to go deer hunting, armed only with Kevin's .22 caliber rifle. Kevin was too young to get a hunting license at the time--which he hadn't bothered to consider. Nevertheless, Kevin bagged a deer on his first time out... with a .22 rifle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So much for the argument that you need an AR-15 with 30-round clip for deer hunting. When I was young, a high school classmate went hunting for the first time with Dad and carried a .270 Winchester. The kid had such buck fever that his shots were poorly placed and didn't kill the deer until he had fired nine times. Nine rounds... Sounds like a local police shooting. Yet in his first time out, Kevin was able to bring down a deer with the lowly .22. Go figure. Clearly a difference in training. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The .22 is so small and low powered that it's barely useful for more than plinking at cans and taking out small rodents. To be sure, the .22 can kill you. When I was a boy, a second cousin of mine, Alan, accidentally shot himself with a .22 when he was shooting sparrows around the barn. I once scared myself half to death when the single-shot .22 I was carrying discharged a few inches from my left ear. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had a cartridge in the chamber, but the hammer wasn't cocked. But I was foolishly using the butt of the stock to hammer through some ice so I could check a trap I had set under the ice on the Bell Creek. The jarring was enough to nudge the hammer against the firing pin causing the cartridge to fire. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I thank God I survived that excursion into stupidity and lack of judgment. It's not the only time God has spared my life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But Del and Kevin's mother had done much more than teach their kids about guns. They taught them responsibility, judgment, committment, and steadfast relationships. In a word, adulthood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I read about crime, violence and shootings; as I hear the stories of the lives of young children and their home life that Jean tells me when she comes home from school; as I learn of yet more city, state or federal officials whose conduct is anything but mature and responsible, I come back to Kevin and where he came from. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I come back to Kevin and who he came from. I come back to Kevin and who he knew he needed to be: a good man. I had a Dad who was a good man. And a Mom who was the equal of that as a Mom.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9Qe3lTnYifKFkA61_IBlD56rBV2x_YSnyR2Gd0hy4bH8qNX0T6N0C68Yh7AaKn4PMxR0irMx-k-buBJAa2bJm0OMsZiMJ3discCKox4axE0JBn2bR8_sxujwvt1yVe7wyqhUMNimVMG_/s1600/100_3293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" cya="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9Qe3lTnYifKFkA61_IBlD56rBV2x_YSnyR2Gd0hy4bH8qNX0T6N0C68Yh7AaKn4PMxR0irMx-k-buBJAa2bJm0OMsZiMJ3discCKox4axE0JBn2bR8_sxujwvt1yVe7wyqhUMNimVMG_/s320/100_3293.JPG" width="240" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">A number of years ago, I was in class with a female colleague who was pastor of a small Lutheran church in Omaha, Nebraska. The majority of her congregation was female. Over 90%, according to this pastor, had experienced sexual violence, domestic violence, or both. After listening to her grief and the challenge it presented--for not only her congregation but society at large--I responded, "We could fix most of what's wrong with society by fixing a few things wrong with our men."</span></div>
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<span style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">That pastor calmly and quickly replied, "You got that right."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Like the USMC, I think we're all looking for a few good men. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I wouldn't mind if a couple million of 'em were named Kevin. Or Del. Or Oswald. Good men can be named anything. But they need to be good men first, every one of them. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Happy Father's Day!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Amen. </span></div>
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<em><span style="font-size: large;">Roger</span></em></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-49022712883015366072013-05-28T21:23:00.001-07:002013-06-03T07:53:31.745-07:00Somebody Named Kevin...<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>"Somebody should DO something!"</em></strong></span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">People often say that. But who is "somebody?" Kevin always understood that he was somebody...</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeJSUvxLI7-arMBX1MexJ3lySedtTcJ3fFPjikrAH3pPSzLBI7GvnHw6NciSLAQRkrG8Jhk0S4CfR8MbsMcNYcWCQPWYGIw0D_4Nx6Knr4TDdgyd0Hq84uzLeMBxtpxMU5B5BINqyROb2/s1600/Kevin02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXeJSUvxLI7-arMBX1MexJ3lySedtTcJ3fFPjikrAH3pPSzLBI7GvnHw6NciSLAQRkrG8Jhk0S4CfR8MbsMcNYcWCQPWYGIw0D_4Nx6Knr4TDdgyd0Hq84uzLeMBxtpxMU5B5BINqyROb2/s320/Kevin02.jpg" width="291" yya="true" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Sunday morning I received some of the most painful news of my adult life. A good friend, Kevin Hamann, was killed Saturday in a motocross race in Spokane. Kevin was 51 and became a grandpa for the first time in February. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've known Kevin for over 30 years, beginning when he came to work for AAR Western Skyways located at Troutdale Airport, my place of employment for many years and the reason that Jean and I moved to Oregon in 1978. The photo of Kevin at the Stewart-Warner model 2000 balancer, taken circa 30 years ago, is from a Western Skyways Gold Seal engine sales brochure of that era. Talk about a handsome guy! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Kevin was a somewhat unsettled youngster barely out of high school when he came to work in the machine shop I supervised. He had tremendous energy, a sharp mind that wanted to be challenged. Kevin became one of the best machinist apprentices I ever had--and I had some VERY good ones. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This early experience eventually led to work at Boeing out on NE Sandy Blvd, where Kevin was most recently a supervisor in charge of complex hard metal machining of parts used on Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Between stints at Boeing, he also manufactured replacement hip and knee joints that many people walk around on today. Everything he made, he made better--including our ministry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a young man, Kevin had many questions about faith, life and God. On a number of occasions out in that shop at Troutdale, we would wait until the end of the day when most folks had gone home. Then, I would quietly go over to the door, lock it, and we would talk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After I left the company in Troutdale in 1987, I didn't have much contact with Kevin until about four years ago. One Monday morning, after a particularly unsettled Sunday evening at Operation Nightwatch Worship in the old Julia West House in downtown Portland, Kevin sent me an e-mail completely out of the blue. "We need to get together," he said. Indeed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was about ready to pull the plug on worship unless we had someone else to help us mind the guests and the front door. I never expected Kevin to do that. But when he heard what we were doing, he said, "I want to help." For more than a year, Kevin was there most Sunday evenings supporting us in countless ways. He helped calm things down a great deal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One evening after worship, a homeless guest asked if we had a belt to help him keep his baggy pants up around his waist. Belts in our clothes closet were more scarce than hen's teeth. "Sorry," I said. "We have none." Kevin overheard. "He needs a belt? Here, he can have mine. I've got more." Without hesitating, Kevin pulled off his own belt and handed it over. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He'd have given the shirt off his back. No. He gave more...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For the past three years, or so, Kevin and his wife Jackie have been faithful food providers every 4-6 weeks, but they have done SO much more... Clothing. Shoes. Blankets. Gift cards to McDonald's at Christmas time for our guests. Hundred-dollar WinCo gift cards for us to buy food and serving supplies when Jean and I provide the meal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One winter evening, Kevin brought an entire 3/4-ton pickup load of coats and sleeping bags collected from his church. Kevin has provided the cell phone I have in my pocket and paid the monthly bill. He gave me the digital camera that has been an invaluable tool for both my worship ministry and my aviation work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Kevin also provided the cell phone that enabled a man named Rick to eventually contact family in Michigan and end 25 years of homelessness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For several years, Kevin and Jackie have provided us a modest monthly stipend to help offset the cost of our non-salaried ministry. All while living under the cloud of uncertainty about staying in their their home due to the recession's effect on Kevin's motorcycle business. Still, Kevin was one of Nightwatch's most ardent supporters. Few knew what Kevin did for us and for God's people. But God does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Kevin is survived by his wife Jackie, his parents, a sister and brother-in-law, a grown daughter and son, and one grandson. Please give thanks for them and pray God's peace and grace in coming days. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>"Very truly, I tell you," Jesus said, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."</em></strong> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><em>(John 12:24 NRSV)</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Kevin's life bore much fruit. And it's easy for the rest of us to say, "He's in a better place." He is. But for his family, there was no better place than here among them for a good, LONG while yet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For us at Operation Nightwatch, the blessings Kevin gave us are beyond words and description. And surely, there would have been no better place for Kevin than here among us for a good, LONG while yet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm not here to explain God. Or rationalize God. Most days, not even to make sense of God. I trust God to make sense of what I can't and to be faithful to Jesus' promises. Jesus promised to be always with us, that he would be there when the stuff hits the fan. It has. Now the ball is in the court of Faithful God's Faithful Son. That's all I need to know.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because I've already seen what happens when God's Son is in somebody's heart. It's why Kevin understood that he was somebody... </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thanks be to God! Amen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Kevin's memorial service will be Saturday, June 8, 2 PM, at Grace Community Church, 800 SE Hogan Road in Gresham. Jackie and the family request that memorial gifts be directed to Operation Nightwatch, P.O. Box 4005, Portland, OR 97208; <a href="http://www.operationnightwatch.org/">www.operationnightwatch.org</a>. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thank you!</span><br />
<em><span style="font-size: small;">Pastor Roger</span></em><br />
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<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-49698171121353213272013-05-24T09:07:00.002-07:002013-05-24T09:07:51.699-07:0045 Years of Music in My Head<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it was the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater, Jackie DeShannon. Even the Monkees. Maybe the Mamas and the Papas. Could be Beethoven. Or that Bach guy. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Blood, Sweat and Tears...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">BST. You know, musical groups don't name themselves with titles like that anymore. It was a title that may have reflected the time a bit too accurately. In the late 1960's, lot of blood was being spilled. In some parts of SE Asia, over 3 million mostly young Americans would sweat great drops of blood. And there were tears. In Asia. In households and graveyards across America. In the souls and wounded places of people for decades to come. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The time was infused with music. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Music still rings in my head. It still rings true. One little masterpiece movement of a classical orchestral work by Bizet will always suffuse an episode as I neared the end of college and would then go off to military service a year later. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I cannot hear the piece of music without having all the memories come in a vivid rush. Because the music seemed to transcend the fractious world of human events with a divine mystery of beauty. Or a beauty of divine mystery. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was early June 1968. On one momentous day, I had left Omaha on a United Boeing 727--my very first airplane flight--landed in Des Moines, gone on to Chicago, thence to Newark, NJ. From Newark, I'd made my way by buses to JFK Airport. Finally by evening, I had boarded the queen of the skies, an Air France Boeing 707 Intercontinental bound for Paris. After a tired day in Paris, I would board a train for a 17-hour ride to Vienna, Austria, which was to be my home for a summer study of German language and literature and the culture, cuisine and art of Europe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I would live with a host family, visit countless museums, concert halls and churches. I would venture behind the Iron Curtain three times, encounter the sobering reality of the grounds of a Nazi death camp only 23 years liberated, still see the damage of Allied bombing in Munich, visit with men who had been POW's in the USA and the USSR. All with the memory of a friend KIA in Kontum a few weeks before, and with the memory of JFK, MLK and RFK still in the forefront of my mind. All this while never having been east of the Mississippi River, west of the Rockies, or south of Kansas in my life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">With all that awaiting me, the big 707 flew over the North Atlantic overnight, occasionally tipping a wing slightly for a course correction. One of the tracks of recorded music that I listened to over and over on that trans-Atlantic flight included a memorable </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">movement from Carmen. To my dying day, the flutes and strings and harp in this work of Bizet will soar in my mind as a metaphor for the grace of flight and the grace of God in which such stunning heights of creativity and art soar over the equally stunning depths of destruction that is also within human capability and human history. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whose loving hands could possibly span that gulf but God's? And whose mind and eternal Spirit could possibly envision a universe in which the simplest vibrations of air could so clearly embody pure joy? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We hear only the smallest portions of it, and it is more than enough. The music says more than we can ever know.</span><br />
<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-80498163464969410522013-05-20T09:13:00.002-07:002013-05-22T09:09:52.279-07:00Out of Uniform<em><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied..."</strong> John 14:8</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yesterday was Pentecost. Contrary to current perception, early Christians did not invent Pentecost. It was a harvest festival when people from all over gathered in Jerusalem. Just like yesterday's Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon in Portland: runners from 10 countries as well as every state except North Dakota and Montana (hey, you Big Sky and Bakken oil boomers, get outta your pickups and run!). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The suddenly competent and over-reacting Peter gets up and preaches like a pro. Because there was an outpouring of something like fire and wind. Then came the water as converts were baptized. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">For two millennia, the church has lumbered along under that supernatural, charismatic experience, at times celebrating it, at other times trying to explain it. Most of the time, I finally conclude, the church has blown precious time and energy enviously trying to replicate Pentecost in Jerusalem, AD 33. As we joyously sing its praises, we are forced to sheepishly concede that we can't. Because it was never about our power in the first place. As Jesus said, the Spirit, like the wind, blows where it wishes, not when our churchy calendar says so. Not at 10:30 AM on Sundays because that's when our service is planned. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet, we haul out the trumpets, big choirs, pipe organs, handbells, and all the Western/Northern European tropes of music to celebrate a one-shot deal 2000 years old, all the while sidestepping and avoiding a problem that's been screaming at our faces ever since that BIG DAY in Jerusalem way back when. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">What problem? This one: when people start acting strangely because a "spirit" has overtaken them, they give us the willies. We avoid them like the plague. Or at least like herpes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For good reason. Since I've spent the last six years of my life rubbing elbows with people who have varying degrees of mental illness and substance abuse issues, I've seen the lines between sanity, mental illness and unhealthy religion almost disappear. Sometimes, even the lines between healthy religion and mental illness get pretty blurred. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">So yesterday, I did my church thing out of uniform. I didn't wear my red clergy shirt. Couldn't go near the "tongues of fire and the sound of the rushing mighty wind." The sound of the rushing mighty wind belongs in mountains and canyons and gorges, not in meeting halls and unpredictable crowd (mob?) psychology. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Instead, I heard Philip's plea, for once, as a genuine and earnest request: <strong><em>"Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."</em></strong> Amen to that.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>Jesus, show us your God connection in convincing, genuine ways. Jesus, show God to us in ways that make sense for here and now, in my life. Jesus, show me God who meets the struggles I face and in ways that let me "get it" in my head, and my heart, and in my gut. Jesus, make it real! Please, SHOW us!</em></strong> Amen to that. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus says to look at the stuff he does, why he does it. He promises, in the way ahead, another "Advocate". </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em><strong>Advocate?</strong></em> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Absolutely insipid, sterile, inadequate English word for the Greek <em>parakletos</em>. Other attempts to render this word come out equally institutional: Counselor. Helper. Comforter. Are we talking lawyer here or a warm bed linen? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Actual translation: <strong><em>one who comes alongside of</em></strong>. Think of someone helping a runner train or bringing them hydration and cool packs to fight heat stroke. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Better yet, think of the Central Washington University women's softball players who came alongside the injured Western Oregon University player Sara Tucholsky a few years back. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">They came and carried her through what she could not do herself because she was unable to walk or even crawl around the bases. They did it at great cost to themselves: they eliminated their own team from the playoffs by helping the injured girl who had hit the ball out of the park but could not run the bases. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">No tongues of fire... No sound of rushing, mighty winds... Just the sound of cheering fans and players who were witnessing a spontaneous act of grace and kindness that meant more than any victory over an opponent ever had--because it was the right thing to do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.goodsearch.com/search-web?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=injured+player+carried+by+opposing+team"><span style="font-size: large;">http://www.goodsearch.com/search-web?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=injured+player+carried+by+opposing+team</span></a><span style="font-size: large;">+</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was a Pentecost moment in the present. The best kind. Not pre-meditated. Unmistakable. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">A God picture that left people speechless just like Jesus' best parables. The kind that Philip and you and I can get in our gut. Substance, not show.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and it was the <u>injured</u> girl who wore red. The "advocates", the players from Central Washington "who came alongside of?" They wore black. And white. No red. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The "helpers" were out of uniform according to church tradition that is too often backward looking instead of forward. </span><span style="font-size: large;">And they were perfectly suited for the job. </span>Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-52937718213493635052013-05-17T08:33:00.001-07:002013-05-17T08:39:53.843-07:00What 4?<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Got this message in an e-mail yesterday: </span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: blue;">EMBRACE OREGON</span></strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU3YHUtclJJxNY-vj4e-FawhEq3u4yuCjeHVKnUj0spumAiMT9WXUqEN6gdQDE-Yrcew3_zIJ6gjww4W6Rn1PKWhr6pxiCZWWjmOrlEWADwg1cnlgMiK6Q2-ximtfyYr_J1zNq17PXC0S/s1600/untitled.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><strong><span style="color: blue;"><img border="0" pua="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRU3YHUtclJJxNY-vj4e-FawhEq3u4yuCjeHVKnUj0spumAiMT9WXUqEN6gdQDE-Yrcew3_zIJ6gjww4W6Rn1PKWhr6pxiCZWWjmOrlEWADwg1cnlgMiK6Q2-ximtfyYr_J1zNq17PXC0S/s1600/untitled.bmp" /></span></strong></a><strong><span style="color: blue;">On Thursday, May 16th at 7 p.m., Imago Dei will bring together families and leaders from local churches as well as DHS staff for an evening of stories and dialogue about how the church can partner with DHS to care for children and families in Oregon’s child welfare system. Feel free to invite your friends and neighbors! </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: blue;">The event will be held in Imago Dei's sanctuary at 1400 SE Ankeny Portland, OR. Childcare is available by RSVP for children ages 0-5 years old. If you'd like to arrange this, visit the Embrace Oregon Facebook page and send a private message with the number of children you're bringing and their ages. </span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As usual, this bunch of faith leaders is responding to the clear call that echoes (cries out!) from a number of Karen Spears Zacharias' blog posts and comments: <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/karenspearszacharias/">http://www.patheos.com/blogs/karenspearszacharias/</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">About time the church embraced the problem. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, when will we wake up to the other cries sailing past our ears? A couple of "screaming A's" that have come to our fragmented attention spans here lately:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">1) Suicides. Not just soldiers but across the population. Numbers are up.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">2) Sexual assault and harrassment in the military. 3K+ reported annually. Estimates of 20K+ occurring annually. It suggests to me far more than a military culture problem. It suggests to me a raw material problem.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">3) Brothers arrested in New Orleans in connection with shooting 19 people at a Mother's Day parade. Gang members. How macho is shooting into a crowd of women and children--that are your NEIGHBORS? Young man in Portland who survived a gang shooting refuses to testify as a witness. Rather spend a month in jail on contempt of court charges than press charges against his would-be killers... People wanted him dead, but now that he's not, he's afraid to speak up for fear that... people will want him dead?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We seem to be drowning in numbers of people--especially men--who have no clue, NO clue, how to answer this question: <strong>What the heck am I for on this earth? </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What 4? Without an answer, any person is a lost cause. </span><br />
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<em><span style="font-size: large;">Father, help us answer that question. Amen.</span></em><br />
<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-35397263905022069302013-05-09T09:17:00.002-07:002013-05-09T09:22:49.606-07:00Cleveland, USA<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuTt46OXg2WieQh1JHghaYJFk0DjEGvMwKoOeNwNxKsks3OBpZzQ4o3O1HW1FvDNkHqH5jysMjRFUcZmfj76l5uP38-jpO-2qbYHbZWPrPu_vDwJohjRZfU0tFhjU2_sqQ8p7sVhCHqJY/s1600/100_3293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" mwa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuTt46OXg2WieQh1JHghaYJFk0DjEGvMwKoOeNwNxKsks3OBpZzQ4o3O1HW1FvDNkHqH5jysMjRFUcZmfj76l5uP38-jpO-2qbYHbZWPrPu_vDwJohjRZfU0tFhjU2_sqQ8p7sVhCHqJY/s320/100_3293.JPG" width="240" /></a><strong>"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us... I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."</strong> John 17:20-21a, 26 NRSV</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus prayed. For us. Was it effective? Was He praying for the girls in Cleveland? Or not? One? What is that? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Discussions of divine prayer always seem to end in human dilemmas and conundrums--because that's all we know. According to the best theology that two millennia of Christian tradition have produced, I am a human being "conceived and born in sin" and condemned equally by sins of commission and sins of omission. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The sovereign God who allows, tolerates, or permits sin and grievous evil would seem to be as equally implicated, then, as I am when called to account for my sins of omission. How can God come away clean while I am on the hook when, after all, the cards were stacked against me before I was ever born? Who was it again that was "conceived and born in sin?" Seems like God could end the whole sin issue rather quickly by simply making no more of us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Thus we can drive ourselves in vortices by attempting logical, finite answers to infinite questions in turf that is not ours. In reply to my own musings above, maybe God's got another plan that makes no sense through our backward view of the lens. I think so. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So I like to ask questions I cannot answer, stack 'em up before God. I'm not alone. Rob Bell's stunning work in the video "Open" is about the best piece on prayer I've seen in my 6+ decades of life. Just because we can't get exhaustive answers, we have no excuse to stop asking better and harder questions--or to stop living. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicbOXk2jJnFUgkcwElgkuu5YyTAfijlzwfTQ8NVW0f-ksym0k5Y3wzLSTlEi97BTXRW0N7G5lcgWokqHZoqYov2zkeXaksQ3s-pafXV2wDAkFlKHGeM3Po2dENKgZ_DjyjwLFfdUCW74ct/s1600/100_3294.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" mwa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicbOXk2jJnFUgkcwElgkuu5YyTAfijlzwfTQ8NVW0f-ksym0k5Y3wzLSTlEi97BTXRW0N7G5lcgWokqHZoqYov2zkeXaksQ3s-pafXV2wDAkFlKHGeM3Po2dENKgZ_DjyjwLFfdUCW74ct/s320/100_3294.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, I can fret about what makes national news. Here locally, an equally tragic story leaked a few drops in the AM's paper. A man 33 was shot to death at 2:32 AM outside a nude bar. Argument over a woman... </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The deceased had, in his short life, "fathered" five children, according to the paper. Had a bit part in their creation I would say. Fathering them, not so much, I'd bet. Who is fathering them now, and who ever will? While we puzzle over the senselessness of questions surrounding Cleveland, alarm bells are sounding in every community and neighborhood where we live. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Five children conceived and born in sin. Like me. Children. Like their father once was. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How many more? there's a question... </span></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-54661063088108739652013-04-23T08:01:00.002-07:002013-04-23T08:01:39.997-07:00You Can't Pray A Lie<span style="font-size: large;">Recently, my friend Karen Zacharias asked her readers what adventures of goodness we had been on lately? Avdenture of goodness...? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Well, some may not see it so; but it came during the prayer time at Operation Nightwatch worship on Sunday. We, of course, had the people of Boston, the runners and families, the community of West, Texas on our list. Our soldiers and their families. Then, someone led by the Spirit of God piped up and said we should pray for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his family. We did.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFTFZaoVg-9ciaa55XyU18P9Ns1dm4R90hcdUsElWEiZICfqg5vwu2I6S_84G_GBiu0Z1sUvZjSNAE6dVISUccc6DU2KV3_3I39klDgugrmC0zHetptQ1vsQtb3p5Zj5XN4vuOUBOZQ9t/s1600/100_3296.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dua="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFTFZaoVg-9ciaa55XyU18P9Ns1dm4R90hcdUsElWEiZICfqg5vwu2I6S_84G_GBiu0Z1sUvZjSNAE6dVISUccc6DU2KV3_3I39klDgugrmC0zHetptQ1vsQtb3p5Zj5XN4vuOUBOZQ9t/s400/100_3296.JPG" width="300" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">After catching our spiritual breath over the shock of that, the still, small voice of grace finally leads us to ask, "Why would we not?" Indeed. A few seconds later, someone else asked that we pray for the President and his family and advisors. Indeed, why would we not? And just a thought... with the approval of Congress at an all time low, why would we not be praying for them? Instead of complaining. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was Mark Twain who perhaps gave the advice on prayer that to me ranks only a short step below the Lord's Prayer itself. It's actually a chapter title from Huckleberry Finn: You Can't Pray a Lie. Praying for wounded, grieving people comes naturally. Praying for those who cause such things is hard. Because it can't be a lie. But the gospel we had just shared from John 10 is about the voice of the Shepherd who calls together a disparate bunch of sheep who would otherwise never hang together. Whose voice do we hear? Whose voice did the Tsarnaev brothers hear? What voice could they no longer hear? Who are our shepherds? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Good prayer doesn't come easily. It comes hard. I'm thankful for the homeless voice who led us to that hard spot of necessary prayer. An adventure of goodness, you might say. No lie. </span><br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-19540260603653830892013-04-19T09:40:00.001-07:002013-04-19T09:40:33.232-07:00Hearing Voices<span style="font-size: large;">The Lord be with you! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">On Monday, my daughter in California asked that we pray at Operation Nightwatch Bible study (Tuesday evenings) and worship for the tragedy of Boston. She's a runner, planning to be in PDX next month for only a half marathon this time. I told her, "We pray at Operation Nightwatch every time there is good news and heartbreaking news." We pray. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Been thinking again about the sheep metaphor from John 10, as I do whenever the image comes up. Perhaps 15 years ago, a friend brought me a news item from the Capitol Press, an agriculture newspaper published in Salem. A local Jewish man, Dan Florea, had contracted with an area farmer to raise a flock of "Jacob sheep", direct genetic descendants of the sheep tended in Palestine 2K years ago. They were being raised as a source of the ram's horn, shofar, for the call to worship. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Eye opening, this sheep story. Little buggers are only half the carcass weight of modern breeds. Anything but dumb white cotton balls. Brown, white, black, tan, blotchy, spotty, speckled. All different. Rams have huge horns. Even mature ewes do. But mostly, Florea's description of their personality is what struck me. Strong-willed, stubborn, fiercely independent. Pretty well capable of taking care of themselves in the wilderness alone, thank you very much. They bear about as much resemblance to modern day sheep--and our understanding of them--as wolves and coyotes do to lapdogs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jacob sheep would never submit to being herded by a sheepdog. In fact, the only way they could ever be turned into a flock or community of any kind was by learning as young lambs to identify the voice calls, the songs, of their shepherd who led them out in the AM to pasture. That's why sheep of several flocks could all be gathered into a single shelter overnight and separate themselves out as their shepherds called and sang to them in the morning. And of course the shepherd knew his own. No two looked alike! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jacob sheep. Not at all unlike congregations. Not at all unlike the human community that finds itself in the wilderness of chaos, war and strife. Bombings. Shootings. Bickering over everything and going nowhere... </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What voices do the perpetrators hear? What voice can they no longer hear? What voice do they need to hear? What voice do our leaders and caregivers hear? Who are our shepherds? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Blessings in being that voice!</span><br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-84657404494885208452013-04-17T10:08:00.002-07:002013-04-18T13:32:51.726-07:00Whodunnit? Why?<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The list of enemies without is nearly endless, the default list we go to when asking why. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The list of enemies within is more problematic, much more difficult for us to see and confront. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith...</em> 1 Peter 5:8-9 NRSV</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Peter uses the metaphor of the lion only because he didn't know the metaphor of the booby trap, the Bouncing Betty mine, the IED, the sniper, the Stealth fighter, the Predator drone and the Hellfire missile, or the backpack pressure cooker.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At least a lion roars and breathes. The things that lurk inside us are quiet. The first thing they go for is the window shades, the curtains, the blinds. If these can be drawn around our minds and our hearts isolating us from our common humanity, we can be led into anything. We can be walking in the broadest daylight with 20/20 corneas and retinas and yet be stone-cold blind, enveloped in darkness. Let us pray for light and the ability to see. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Over a century ago, Black Elk prayed a good prayer: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><em>"Grandfather (Tunkashila), Great Mysterious One (Wakan Tanka), You have been always; and before You, nothing has been. The star nations all over the universe are yours, and yours are the grasses of the earth. There is nothing to pray to but You. Day in, day out, You are the life of things. Grandfather, all over the world the faces of living ones are alike. In tenderness, they have come up out of the ground. Look upon your children with children in their arms that they may face the winds and walk the Good Road to the Day of Quiet. Sweeten our hearts, and fill us with light. Give us the strength to understand and the eyes to see. Help us, for without You, we are nothing. Hetchetu aloh (this is true)." </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>
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Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk, "Joseph Black Elk" after his baptism) was truly a seer whose words we do well to ponder. One of the most sacred spaces I have ever visited is the little Lakota prayer garden built outside the little Neihardt Museum in tiny Bancroft, Nebraska. It was there that newspaper editor, poet and author, John G. Neihardt, wrote of Black Elk's life and the end of "Sioux" culture, after visiting Black Elk whose life spanned from the Civil War to the candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower. He was nearly blind, but certainly able to see. The composite prayer above written by Neihardt is basically a summary of how Black Elk saw himself, life, the Creator, creation and humankind. It's a timeless creed for life that I know by heart and say frequently to remind myself. <br />
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<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-47941130861967267972013-03-18T08:35:00.001-07:002013-03-18T08:35:12.362-07:00American Idyll<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1d1HBGftOI86LGJh6dpg85hQ-rJHcp87C01RV40IpORdprR7X91N3rodGL2h5vkwVKEQauAGm5v5uhLGB0kRR0sxVme0gRiAfVxFj2OhUypyADbBtc1S3VKA4yRkxf9HDnn9aExwfArOR/s1600/RJ+hike+from+Yalova+to+base+'73.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" psa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1d1HBGftOI86LGJh6dpg85hQ-rJHcp87C01RV40IpORdprR7X91N3rodGL2h5vkwVKEQauAGm5v5uhLGB0kRR0sxVme0gRiAfVxFj2OhUypyADbBtc1S3VKA4yRkxf9HDnn9aExwfArOR/s400/RJ+hike+from+Yalova+to+base+'73.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">In the small apartment building where my wife and I lived in Yalova, Turkey from 1971-73, there was a crack in the plaster above one doorway. The cracked plaster had appeared after a small earth tremor in this very seismically active area. Early one summer morning as we were awakening, the bed shook a bit. We looked up to see the ceiling light fixtures, suspended only by their cords, swinging gently. After several seconds they stopped. Thankfully. We are alive today because that gentle tremor was just that, not the huge shock that destroyed the entire town in 1999. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How we wept when the day came in 1973 to leave this small apartment that had been the only home we had ever known as a young married couple. I would not trade our humble beginnings there for anything. For all around us was a seaside town that supplied everything we needed for life. There were little corner stores and neighborhood bread bakeries on nearly every block. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Hardware stores. Paint stores. Lumber dealers. Flower shop. Butcher shops. Car repair. Ceramic tile manufacturing. Restaurants. Appliances, housewares. All there. Women wore head scarves and more traditional attire--OR current fashion with their hair down and skirts above the knee. Even blue jeans. And five times a day the call to prayer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Best thing of all was what people did on summer evenings before television changed even this part of the world: whole families went out for evening strolls. Mom, Dad and the kids--children walking holding their hands, infants and toddlers in strollers. Talking, greeting neighbors. Eye contact. Fresh air, exercise. Family. Music at outdoor cafes and restaurants along the sea wall. Doors to apartments not only unlocked but even left wide open when people went out to shop or stroll. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nobody looking at glowing displays in their hands. 40 years ago but within living memory. Food, clothing, shelter, basic health care and work that provides these things, or community that does. None of the other "stuff" is really of value unless there is community. Too much stuff, which isn't really all that much, comes at a very high price: our souls. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn't America, yet it was far more like the America that we were--but no longer are--than we might care to admit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What else do we have in common with the rest of the world that we seem to have lost in pursuit of American exceptionalism? Has the thought ever occurred to us?</span><br />
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-7572328240820259972013-03-05T08:55:00.000-08:002013-03-05T09:15:29.429-08:00Farming With Jesus <span style="font-size: large;">Ever since Tabitha Schulke's story ran in Thursday's Oregonian,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/02/monmouth_mom_faced_with_terrib.html">http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/02/monmouth_mom_faced_with_terrib.html</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I've been thinking about her and the questions posed by today's text from Luke 13. In Jesus' own day, the default questions were:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgchrOtlSxSLYwiih0xtyY5_OgM_kA4CqRMD-j3bnewRNC-wv_ClE_bl95kcJACTt15yI139VCOTt-4_nUvaW5JndAkgQcqtoEjIb7e1Kl0FXB2tUpasgKkRkPWo9vSz7uNZgpbLI1j3m/s1600/12341064-mmmain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="301" jsa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgchrOtlSxSLYwiih0xtyY5_OgM_kA4CqRMD-j3bnewRNC-wv_ClE_bl95kcJACTt15yI139VCOTt-4_nUvaW5JndAkgQcqtoEjIb7e1Kl0FXB2tUpasgKkRkPWo9vSz7uNZgpbLI1j3m/s400/12341064-mmmain.jpg" width="400" /></span></a><span style="font-size: large;">1) <strong>Why </strong>did this happen?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">2) <span style="color: black;"><strong>Who</strong> </span>is to blame?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">3) <strong><span style="color: black;">Wha</span>t</strong> is this all for? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">4) <strong>When</strong> will the bad people finally get what's coming to 'em?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why <strong>do</strong> bad things happen to good people? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that's really a stupid question. Why do bad things happen at all? To anyone? But then, we can ask those questions 'til we are blue in the face. And I can ask another "w" question: <strong>Where</strong> do all of those other questions get us in the first place? Nowhere. <strong>W</strong>rong questions. <strong>W</strong>rong letter of the alpahbet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Instead of "w" for why, I like "h" for how. Now that life is this way, whatever way it is, <strong>HOW</strong> do we live with this, whatever "it" is? Tabitha Schulke and her mother could certainly waste their entire lives asking why this gorgeous, loving, 18-year-old got some lethal infection that took her legs in order to save her live. But because there is something else in Tabitha's heart and soul, I predict they don't. I predict they ask the question, "How do we live with this?" And then they proceed to do so: live with it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After questions about human disasters and loss of life, Jesus told a story in Luke 13 about a barren fig tree. And a vineyard owner who wants the barren tree taken out. Now. But there's a hopelessly optimistic gardener who has some sort of miracle grow fertilizer: manure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Until this week, I've heard that story putting God in the place of the landowner. And Jesus in the place of the gardener... Which means that Jesus' whole purpose is protecting us from the God who wants us out of the picture--and who could fire the gardener at any time and finally carry out three-strikes justice. So much for Jesus' revealing the heart of steadfast love... Or...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe the story works better if the "vineyard owner" equals the way much of the world works: Three strikes, you're out. You've had your chance. Time's up. No hope, no forgiveness, no future. Buzz off! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So maybe we could see God as the crafty gardener who has a sly smile on his face and says, "I got a plan. I got this miracle-grow stuff. I don't need three years, just one. I'll bet the whole farm, the entire future on my "fertilizer", because I know that all it needs is just one chance to work. Just one." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Interesting. Cause that makes Jesus Messiah the manure, doesn't it? The natural, organic, life-giving substance that the gardener (God) has been willing to stake everything on, you and me included. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>"For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin: that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."</em></strong> 2 Cor. 5:21 KJV. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That's some high quality manure. Gotta love that divine nitrogen cycle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Back up to Luke 13. After the fig tree parable, Jesus is met by a woman who has been beset by a crippling condition that has kept her hunched over and contorted for 18 years, same span as Tabitha Schulke's entire life to date. Then, instead of going down every rat and rabbit hole with questions of <strong>why </strong>and <strong>who</strong>'s to blame, <strong>who</strong>'s at fault, Jesus does something with that fertilizer of steadfast love and compassion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>"Woman, you are set free from your ailment,"</em></strong> Jesus says according to Luke 13. Nice. She straightens up. Fixed. Cured. Fairytale world of the Bible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that was then and this is now... Does that kind of miracle ever happen today? I think so...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tabitha Schulke will never wake up some morning and find her amputated legs and feet restored. But she, like the woman Jesus healed on the Sabbath, has been freed of her ailment. She is not stuck in the death spiral of asking why. She and her Mom are busy answering the question "how". The fertilizer of Christ has been spread on their hearts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My friend Karen whose father was KIA in Vietnam in 1966 when she was nine will never look across the room and see her father standing there alive. Not until the next life, anyway. Karen, along with her sibs, has lived with the "ailment" of his death nearly all of her life. In pain, denial, anguish and confusion to be sure, her life has taken turns and been transformed into a life of compassion, understanding, healing, comfort and hope for so many people who have also suffered great loss. Gold star wives, parents, children, siblings. Communities and households shattered by the horrible death of battered children. Parents who lost loved ones in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Countless readers around the globe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There's a common ingredient here: the miracle growing stuff of the parable. Tabitha's life and story are yet to be written, mostly. Yet I predict that her loss becomes a source of life and grace according to a script none of us could have written. A miraculous product exists: grace around the roots of our barren fig trees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A wily gardener knew what he was doing back when. Still does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus called on his hearers to repent, to turn around to see the kingdom of God right before them, right beside them, right behind them. He calls them to see life where others see only death; to see a way forward where others see only dead ends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Can you smell the fresh fragrance? Life, I tell ya. Life. Happy farming with Jesus! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There is a way to live with this, whatever "it" is. Fertilizer's guaranteed. Amen.</span></div>
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<em>Pastor Roger</em></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-9085239031913834272013-02-15T10:49:00.002-08:002013-02-15T10:54:26.379-08:00Guns 'n Roses Questions <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">For every specific instance put forth as a general argument pro or con, there is another just as convincing for the opposite view. In a local discussion, a commentor put forth some numbers that are startling. In neighboring Washington State, the number of gun deaths now exceeds the number of motor vehicle deaths by a significant margin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Having a gun in the home of the Newtown, CT, shooter did not keep that young man's mother safe. She was killed with her own gun. Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend, as the allegations now stand, wasn't safer because her lover had a gun in the home--although to be fair, I don't know how many would-be home invaders Mr. Pistorius may have fought off with that gun in the past. Three a day? Any at all? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I always wonder... would the (alleged) killers in either of the above cases have killed the women, would depressed and angry fathers have murdered their wives and their own children, if they'd had to actually touch them, hold them down long enough to shove the knife blade in several times. Does that few feet of remoteness, that powerful extension of self and self-will afforded by firearms make any difference? Does it make all the difference in the world? Does it make the difference between life and death? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think so, and the numbers of suicides by firearm among males tells a story of its own. It's quick. It's powerful. It's nearly always 100% effective.... before there is time to reconsider... Before there is time to feel something. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Even if we had not one firearm related death in this country for the next decade, the sirens of alarm should have our ears endlessly ringing. Why is it that we are failing to socialize so many young males into mature, stable, strong yet empathetic adults capable of taking care of themselves and offering by their character and lives, a human being capable of sustaining a relationship, facing and meeting challenges, husbanding and fathering families? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How many lives are "lost" to us this way because they are still living and breathing on the outside but coming apart or never put together on the inside? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How DO we make better, safer people? What DOES Christ call us to do? What DOES Christ empower us to do? For one look, and since it's Black History Month, we might look at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 book: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? That's a legitimate question. I hear a lot of answers being put forward today, but I don't hear nearly enough questions. I have never known worthwhile answers to come in the absence of meaningful questions. </span></div>
<br />Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-37179846457019226442013-01-17T10:51:00.000-08:002013-01-17T22:17:31.604-08:00Living History Day II<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipq0tRopfpSQOE8O4znCbEz_bRjCx5oPt5TgjRqTeVZ1mrVQNwStnFPSgRhElcdJ0EQCDRJh4xkHG9BXZrIROQ4dF5ess1MuwRCvhGEog1QWiUWjELPKYkGWielVJd5Vd5kXGVBke5LuQA/s1600/Slide+in+Scrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" jea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipq0tRopfpSQOE8O4znCbEz_bRjCx5oPt5TgjRqTeVZ1mrVQNwStnFPSgRhElcdJ0EQCDRJh4xkHG9BXZrIROQ4dF5ess1MuwRCvhGEog1QWiUWjELPKYkGWielVJd5Vd5kXGVBke5LuQA/s320/Slide+in+Scrap.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">It was the day after Veterans Day, November 12, 2012. I walked the National Mall in the sunshine on my way to Capitol Hill. Small groups of visitors strolled quietly past the Wall and the Vietnam memorial sculptures. One group caught my attention. They were a couple of 40-something Moms with a half dozen middle school girls in a group. At one point, the girls posed with three Vietnam vets in their military/civilian regalia: the vests, the patches, the facial hair, an article of olive drab and/or camo colors. Or two. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Moms snapped image after image on their iphones. They continued. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I saw them next on the tree covered pathway leading to the Women Veterans of Vietnam memorial sculpture: the nurses. And the soldier.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The group was met by a vet wearing a black leather vest with lots of patches and insignia on the front. He wore a wide brimmed cavalry hat. There was a little plastic box for his earplugs hanging from one lapel of the vest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">They stopped to talk. The vet engaged the girls for perhaps 10 minutes or more. Not one paused to scroll through her iphone, check for messages, take a picture, tweet or text. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was glad to see it. Living History Day. They were meeting a real war veteran. And they listened. The Moms did, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On the back of the vet's vest in large gold letters: "God is, I am." It works without the comma also. Very Biblical: God is I AM. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So long ago since that day in May 1970 when I first visited Washington, DC. So much war. So much history. So much life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So many decisions made. So many we could have made.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">These young girls will inherit the decisions we have made. The legacy of wars. The costs of wars not paid for. The costs of things not done instead. The consequences of choices made in their lifetimes but long before. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">May we always remember not only the ones who can no longer speak but also the young to whom we will eventually turn over everything. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Absolutely everything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's heartening when they take time out to listen to older folks, to hear and to learn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's even more heartening when the older folks take time to get to know these younger Americans who took time out to go to Washington, DC for Veterans Day and not to Disneyworld or the latest zombie-meets-Harry Potter-flick. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">God is. I am. So are they. So are you. </span></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-85356194696161433272012-12-20T08:59:00.001-08:002012-12-21T09:10:00.833-08:00An Advent Hymn<span style="font-size: large;">Advent is the missing season in most of our churchy lives. The commercial world is pushing Christmas at us before Hallowe'en, and Black Friday has engulfed Thanksgiving. Ever earlier, Christmas music gets piped into stores and airport gate areas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And we decorate our churches so they look pretty... 'cause the whole dang world is decorating and looking pretty. We can't be left behind, can we? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But every now and then the real world, vs. the hyped and cosmetized one, invades our manufactured prettiness. It may remind us that Advent should be a season of earnest longing. Instead of decorated trees and strings of real looking evergreen sprigs, perhaps our churches should be as bare as we can ever make them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So that we can earnestly pray, trusting only the promise of God. Not envisioning the idealized, northern European Christmas, the Silent Night of a manger scene in the Austrian Alps. That never was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe barbed wire, dry sticks, broken pots and splintered boards would be a better decoration for Advent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps a lost mitten missing its child. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The news stories beg us to look outward, elsewhere. And to pray honestly. "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Come, Jesus. My broken heart desperately needs you. This 1969 hymn says it better than I ever could. Do we have the guts to sing it, the humility and honesty to pray it? I hope so.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">EACH WINTER AS THE YEAR GROWS OLDER </span></strong><br />
<strong><em>by William and Annabeth Gay </em></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Each winter as the year grows older, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">We each grow older too. </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">The chill sets in a little colder; </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">The verities we knew </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Seem shaken and untrue. </span></strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">When race and class cry out for treason, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">When sirens call for war, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">They overshout the voice of reason</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">And scream till we ignore </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">All we held dear before. </span></strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Yet I believe beyond believing, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">That life can spring from death: </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">That growth can flower from our grieving</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">That we can catch our breath </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">And turn transfixed by faith. </span></strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">So even as the sun is turning </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">To journey to the north, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">The living flame, in secret burning, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Can kindle on the earth </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">And bring God's love to birth. </span></strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">O Child of ecstasy and sorrows, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">O Prince of peace and pain, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Brighten today's world by tomorrow's, </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Renew our lives again; </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Lord Jesus, come and reign!</span> </strong><strong></strong> <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Mayan calendar never said what many people heard. But the ancient calendar that the church of the centuries and millennia has handed down to us has something we need to hear. The church of old always understood the juxtaposition of the Nativity. God's gift of life born into a world broken and deadly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Consider the dates:</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">December 25.</span> The Nativity</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">December 26.</span> Remembrance of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">December 27.</span> John the Evangelist, exiled</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">December 28.</span> The Holy Innocents. <span style="color: black;">Herod vs. the children...</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><em><strong>Lord Jesus, come and reign! Amen.</strong></em></span><br />
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<em>Advent blessings!</em> <br />
<em>Pastor Roger</em>Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-22651228793085525002012-12-17T11:01:00.002-08:002012-12-19T10:55:26.191-08:00What Then Should We Do?<span style="font-size: large;">There is more to come from Washington, DC. More <strong>Living History Days</strong> to ponder. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But first, "this important message from our sponsor", as they used to say on TV at the beginning of commercial breaks...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It comes 10 minutes into the 1983 film <strong><em>The Year of Living Dangerously</em></strong>. It's that question from the people who have been stung by the truthful words of John the Baptist. At Luke 3, verse 10, they ask, "What then should we do?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"TYLD" is a great piece of work from a great director, Peter Weir. It stars a very young and drop-dead-gorgeous Australian actor, Mel Gibson, in his first big feature. Playing opposite is a striking Sigourney Weaver. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp_yru0kifamLMykF_W64YzFh019p-dUGEgvRam5uzrHhgDBXGBU7UqDid5t2u6-PAwPJ9u3pAegaXjVn1E9TGaQbDe6TT4jF4LAzceUpDBxnsVTNbFYgCrHEWWwgd2p54_DvqlBAVQgk/s1600/the-year-of-living-dangerously-poster-35536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp_yru0kifamLMykF_W64YzFh019p-dUGEgvRam5uzrHhgDBXGBU7UqDid5t2u6-PAwPJ9u3pAegaXjVn1E9TGaQbDe6TT4jF4LAzceUpDBxnsVTNbFYgCrHEWWwgd2p54_DvqlBAVQgk/s400/the-year-of-living-dangerously-poster-35536.jpg" width="293" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">And the central figure, the Christ figure, is Linda Hunt pulling off an Oscar performance for her portrayal of Billy Kwan, a quirky and somewhat mysterious little man who is a free-lance news photographer in Jarkarta, Indonesia during the failed 1965 Communist-led coup against President Sukarno. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Gibson's character is Guy Hamilton, an Australian Broadcasting Service reporter sent to Jakarta without contacts in a business where contacts are everything. He's too naive to grasp how overmatched he is to the task. But Billy Kwan knows the ropes and knows them well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After a couple of drinks at the bar of the international hotel where other foreign correspondents hang out, Kwan takes Hamilton for a nighttime introductory stroll through the slums of Jakarta. Instantly met by street kids and beggars. One feels the tension, the humidity, the turmoil of the world of 1965 when America is escalating to half a million troops in South Vietnam. And Indonesia seems poised to be another falling domino.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As soon as they begin walking among the poor, Kwan quotes Luke 3:10, "What then shall we do?" Kwan tells Hamilton he could give away all his wealth on the spot. Hamilton replies that it would make no difference, like adding an imperceptible drop to the ocean. Kwan says that's the conclusion Leo Tolstoy came to when he gave away all his wealth in Czarist Russia. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then Kwan observes that maybe it's the wrong metaphor. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves as a drop in the ocean, we should see ourselves as light. We can add the light we have right where we are. And our light, however small, will indeed make the world around us a little brighter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's a great film. Romance. Tension. Intrigue. Dense population. Poverty. Suspicion. And the ever-challenging position of being a foreignor living and working in a land one does not understand.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkxee53wPyOVlEJtE0kR0lUyCXWXehG-CkAHa3rJpIuNK4sJBmzfyh4zz_n4OuckRU6buCJNw-NsEUEvRoeTcER-OEL8fKU8OerQMgSSxpLmT0tZgf79iQ8_dnUaHKCNOM2JClXwNBSEgG/s1600/MemDay12+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; height: 238px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 295px;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkxee53wPyOVlEJtE0kR0lUyCXWXehG-CkAHa3rJpIuNK4sJBmzfyh4zz_n4OuckRU6buCJNw-NsEUEvRoeTcER-OEL8fKU8OerQMgSSxpLmT0tZgf79iQ8_dnUaHKCNOM2JClXwNBSEgG/s320/MemDay12+001.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Kwan has a mysterious side. He keeps files on all the foreign correspondents. He has photos, knows their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Relationships. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why? A sense of self-importance? A fantasy? Delusion? Megalomania? Or does Kwan have a higher purpose in mind? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The film does a marvelous job of carrying us along without divulging too much.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then an unexpected scene. Billy Kwan visits a hovel in one of the most densely packed slums and hands a single mother a roll of bills. The mother has a sick child who will die without meds. Billy has adopted this family. It's his way of adding a little bit of light.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Billy is a bit of a manipulator. He pulls strings to arrange a romance between Guy Hamilton and Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver) who works at the British Embassy. Again, why?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then, heartbreak. The poor woman whom Billy had given the money to has had to spend it on other things. Her sick little boy has died. Billy arrives for another visit just as the women are washing the still little body for burial. Heartbreak. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As the story unfolds, things begin to fall apart. Martial law tightens. A coup fails. Repression. Violence against foreignors like the ones Billy Kwan had hoped could help him answer his question from Luke 3...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hamilton is shot and beaten, barely survives, discovers Kwan's files. The foreignors don't behave as Kwan had hoped. One night in his dark little house Billy types the account of how he believes he has failed to bring greater light to his world. Again and again he pounds the keyboard of his typewriter:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What then must we do? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>What then must we do? </em></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>WHAT THEN MUST WE DO?</em></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I won't reveal how Billy Kwan ultimately answers his question. It's a key to the meaning of the film. Remember, I said he was the Christ figure. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I will say this. Thanks to this story, it's the first time in my life I have honestly "heard" the preaching of John the Baptist. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ordinary people ask what they should do. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Tax collectors ask what they should do. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Even Roman soldiers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It isn't just the self-righteous Pharisees. It's us. All of us...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What then should we do? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">John's answers are stunning and sobering. They don't reflect a snotty, nit-picky God who is discontent with the architecture of churches, the length of services or the style of music and liturgy. They don't reveal a God who is constantly obsessed with the bottom line and declares that unless the current 2.5% "tithe" tops at least 5% in the next budget cycle the fire and brimstone are a-comin' before Christmas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They don't show us a God bent on burning at the stake all who are not ideologically or doctrinally pure. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Instead, we get these three items on God's top ten list:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">1. End poverty by taking personal responsibility for it. Neighbor to neighbor. Period.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. End extortion and greed. Not a cent of overcharges. Period. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">3. End corruption, injustice and the abuse of power. Period. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">John concludes by pointing to the powerful work of the One to come who will accomplish God's work of winnowing. He will separate the "wheat" from the "chaff" which he will burn. Now, before we haul off and assume this winnowing is a separation of "good people" from the "bad people" so that the "bad people" can be eternally burned, consider this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em><strong>If God culled out all the bad people, there would be no one left standing. Heaven would be empty. Billy Graham would never get there. St. Stephen and Apostle Paul, damned. Mother Theresa? MIA. Likewise all prophets, popes, priests, preachers, presidents, politicians and pundits. </strong></em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">No murdered children either. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJWi9vDJw6oCh9nzdxBlk851sGE7UNNgHjMDjdWQDKlS0OwC4HDBcicfMBp_34LSvD1GM4suIaB1nmNFBHR7sygSvZIPlXTCJxuufkAyNIFWfMOZZp9bV4AOJrj-6kR3aGZwMYch0BKoXt/s1600/MemDay12+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJWi9vDJw6oCh9nzdxBlk851sGE7UNNgHjMDjdWQDKlS0OwC4HDBcicfMBp_34LSvD1GM4suIaB1nmNFBHR7sygSvZIPlXTCJxuufkAyNIFWfMOZZp9bV4AOJrj-6kR3aGZwMYch0BKoXt/s320/MemDay12+004.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Evil is in all of us. Johnny the Baptizer nailed it. And that's precisely why the crowds stuck around despite his stinging and universal rebuke. No matter how disturbing, the honest truth is worth hearing even if it nails you through the heart. Because it's not half-truths, lies, or telling people what they wanna hear. It's not been contaminated by money. It's <em>not </em>our recent political campaigns. Decidedly not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The good news is that the One whom John says is on people's doorsteps is the One who can and will do the humanly impossible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He will suck the "chaff" out of us and burn it. In a fire that ain't going out. And that chaff ain't ever comin' back. Period. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's the work of Jesus. That's why John's words of universal indictment are good news, not hopelessly impossible bad news.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, the innocent people at Clackamas Town Center. </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, the children in Connecticut.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, the children in a mud brick house in Pakistan hit by a Hellfire missile launched from a Predator drone. Made in USA. </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, the children in homes with addicted, violent, abusive adults.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, children violated by preachers and priests. </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, the people all around us with all kinds of mental illnesses whom we have put on the streets because we wanted to save money. As if human capital weren't infinitely more valuable.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, absolute paralysis when it comes to preserving and restoring the very living creatures and systems of earth for fear (seems to be our sole motivator) that it might harm the economy. As if destroying the living systems of earth did not doom us to a war that will end all economies. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Meanwhile, broken relationships all around us. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile... What then must we do?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've looked at the Greek verb tenses in Luke 3. English struggles to translate. Please do not understand the word "should" to mean "ought". As in, "You oughtta do this. But if you don't, oh well..." </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But here are the ways to hear the questions people asked in response to John' prophetic words:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><em>In light of what you've said, John:</em></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">1. "What then should we do if we were to honestly solve this problem?" </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. "What then shall we do to adequately and properly respond?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">3. "What then <strong>must</strong> we do? What is urgently, divinely called for here? What responses and responsibilities are inescapable."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">4. "What do we see when we stand before the mirror and look deeply inside? Wheat? Chaff? A little wheat, a lotta chaff?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Slaughtered children? Gun control? Well, sure. But way down the list. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Pay attention to John's three items first. </span><span style="font-size: large;">We will make a better, safer world when we make better, safer people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If we believe that John's words truly were good news and that Jesus has something to do with a good news outcome, then I have a question of my own for today:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What in God's name are we waiting for? </span></div>
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">But I'm not givin' in an inch to fear,</span></em></strong><br />
<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">'Cause I promised myself this year...</span></em></strong><br />
<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">I feel... like I owe it... </span></em></strong><strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">to someone...</span></em></strong><br />
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">When I finally get myself together,</span></em></strong></div>
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">Gonna get down in that sunny southern weather,</span></em></strong></div>
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">Find a place inside to laugh,</span></em></strong></div>
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">Separate the wheat from the chaff.</span></em></strong></div>
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<strong><em><span style="font-size: large;">I feel like I owe it to someone... </span></em></strong></div>
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--<em>David Crosby, from the song "Almost Cut My Hair", 1970</em></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFEpawarOnLrxQleTAU1dL9gEMiNOiTScdmQmxb8u7C2x93UZGFS1sYoJ38AV7KPTiEP61NbTPgavUIkL0EdonW3aQ6wOxbdMtOyMpCO5FoYsnsZc-3BpNa1idNI86b5bUScvALtGkXCH/s1600/VVOM+10+09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="cssfloat: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFEpawarOnLrxQleTAU1dL9gEMiNOiTScdmQmxb8u7C2x93UZGFS1sYoJ38AV7KPTiEP61NbTPgavUIkL0EdonW3aQ6wOxbdMtOyMpCO5FoYsnsZc-3BpNa1idNI86b5bUScvALtGkXCH/s400/VVOM+10+09.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Someone... A whole class of them were only 6 or 7 years old.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Other someones are on our streets, cold and wet and homeless. Some kill themselves and almost no one sees or cares. Or weeps. Without community and relationships, without love, how many of us could hack it out there? Alone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mental illness and broken relationships are hiding in plain sight all over the place. People are isolated and alone in the most run-down apartments and the best of developments. Some have taken up weapons and killed before they killed themselves. Others simply suffer alone. How long, Lord?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It doesn't have to be this way. We can help. We must.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus has the chaff business under control. His sure promise. </span></div>
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<em>Pastor Roger</em></div>
Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074601264321297591.post-83365185862214752892012-12-10T10:18:00.001-08:002012-12-10T19:15:18.336-08:00Living History Day 1<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8VMnAG4pNXIS1eEZUEbunK1pzmOFD0i8c5801nUnJOB_VT2p5kGYsJk0BbYWji6T-ESOZRGeZkAgquscq3_apI_Kp-y42VP9A-5I06E3sV5EtG1fgixnoGZuPtWcRofota-AmeLtY5sn/s1600/WashDC12+183.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img bea="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8VMnAG4pNXIS1eEZUEbunK1pzmOFD0i8c5801nUnJOB_VT2p5kGYsJk0BbYWji6T-ESOZRGeZkAgquscq3_apI_Kp-y42VP9A-5I06E3sV5EtG1fgixnoGZuPtWcRofota-AmeLtY5sn/s320/WashDC12+183.jpg" width="240" /></a> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A number of years ago, a local high school teacher, Ken Buckles, founded an event called Living History Day. High schoolers were able to take time out from regular classes to welcome veterans to their school, hear their stories, stage their own USO-style shows. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And to say "thank you" to the living national monuments in our midst: veterans of wars we have either largely forgotten or never wanted to know. I've attended a couple of these. They did my old heart good. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Washington, DC is filled with monuments. Prominently at the foot of Capitol Hill is the Ulysses S Grant Memorial. The general in his cavalry hat and overcoat astride his horse gazes over the battlefield of the Civil War. Below him are steps leading to a reflecting pool. Behind, the Capitol dome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is, of course, a perfectly designed stage for large groups of students to have a group photo. Seat of power of the present in the background; reminder of a troubled past right behind them. </span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: large;">General Grant is flanked by two lower pedestals, each adorned by a male lion resting atop the spear-pointed staff of a guide-on, the battle flag of an army that is now lying on the ground under the paw of the lion. Army of the Confederacy, perhaps? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The lions are in turn flanked, right and left, by two lower and much longer bronze sculptures. To the right as one views the Capitol, a team of four horses at a gallop is hauling a cannon on its gun carriage. The soldier riding on the carriage and driving the horses is hunched over, head down, attempting to stay seated during the spine crushing bumpy ride. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The horses' hooves bespeak the chaos of intelligent, magnificent animals, themselves caught up in the fog of war and obediently doing the bidding of their human masters engaged in frightening explosions of cannon, unspeakable bloodshed. <img bea="true" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDMlbLa71ps1d84315KXOED3s0BvzfmBcETd9n93f7T4wduoJohK3K3ewSrviCvC9RoIp4YNIw9d7DZpUh3htOCTvt2T4iM8tkY2JDDYx6Om99EOXluRWcr36MyFanyuFnLVurtmrpKUB/s320/WashDC12+176.jpg" width="320" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm reminded of one recent artist's statement on an exhibit of work based on the imperial conflicts of World War I. The artist's research found that something close to 20 million horses died in World War I. Horses, just horses...</span><br />
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<span style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">On the opposite flank of General Grant are more charging horses, this time the cavalry instead of the artillery. The squad leader with raised sword that has lost its blade leads the others in the yell of the charge: straight into enemy rifle and cannon fire, swords and fixed bayonets. <img bea="true" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8BekmPF7VXbpiLkfTQGjWrm4zphTg7gUQ0hkiZVfAshs4PbFTPcOvFYock-Qpp5abcI_Bv-XKK1CEV49-oxlEzkFGAOcXop_nTdcu772Eax6w0uVQtAAPv26P2mOafEuYCc8rCK19-rhw/s400/WashDC12+180.jpg" width="400" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">About to be crushed beneath it all is one cavalyrman whose horse has either stumbled or been shot. His eyes are open. Both are about to be trampled, possibly causing another horse to stumble and break a leg. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They shoot horses, don't they?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's ironic. The sunshine was so bright that I didn't even see the face of the fallen rider and his horse until I returned home and reviewed my photos. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hope the students noticed. I hope he shows up in some of their photos. But at least they were there and had a chance to see. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Remember, we weren't defending our country from a foreign invader. We were at war with each other, not really over states' rights but over the understanding of the definition of a human being. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I can only hope for more Living History Days. And I hope that when we look at the memorials we build to human failings, we let more than historians and politicians speak. I hope we also let the artists and the prophets speak, too. I hope we can still hear them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">They might see the face of that man who fell with his horse. They might help us ask the question, "What happened to both?" If that soldier suffered a broken leg or a puncture wound, what were his chances of surviving the amputation and the gangrene? Without anesthetic and antibiotics? Did he fare any any better than his horse? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And what did that contribute to our understanding of what a human being is? And why? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Living History Day. I hope one happens near all of us soon.</span></div>
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<em>Pastor Roger</em></div>
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Pastor Roger:http://www.blogger.com/profile/01033428607604478032noreply@blogger.com0