"In the mid-17th century, Spanish seafarers sailed up the west coast of the Americas to what is now known as the Baja peninsula. The cartographers of the time simply drew a straight line up from the Strait of California to the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Vancouver Island and Washington state. Consequently, the maps that were published in 1635 show very clearly that California was an island. For 50 years, then, the years of the most constant, most crucial explorations of the California coastline, those maps went unchanged because someone continued to work with partial information, assumed that data from the past had the inerrancy of tradition and then used authority to prove it. Finally, after years and years of new reports, a few cartographers, the heretics, the radicals and the rebels, I presume, began to issue a new version, and in 1721, the last mapmaker holdout finally attached California to the mainland. But - and this is the real tragedy, perhaps - it took almost 100 years for the gap between experience and authority to close. It took almost 100 years for the new maps to be declared official despite the fact that the people who were there all the time knew differently from the very first day." - Sister Joan Chittester, O.S.B. (from On Being with Krista Tippett)
Where are the gaps in our lives between experience and authority? Where do our "maps" not match up with reality, with the reality both within and around us?
For the adventure that awaits, may God grant us both imagination and courage.
On the morning of September 11th 2001, I was traveling north toward Washington D.C. on I-395 from our apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. I wrote a poem in the weeks that followed as I sorted through the experience of watching American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon killing 64 people on the plane, 125 people in the Pentagon, and 5 hijackers.
I accelerate; move left, the fast lane, tune in my lifeline, NPR— Terrorists Attack New York City American Airlines Towers. What's this about?
I hear it, then see it play out before me— silver capsule red letters darting through the sky, too fast, too low, the wrong way, sharply veering.
Metal meets concrete, strikes without warning. The nightmare of a soldier- a burst of orange, cloud of black gray is swallowed. A mighty wound, gaping hollowness cannot be touched. Steel, rubber, metal, grind to a halt.
I'm not alone, they see it, too. Hands clutch shaking heads, people bewildered, stopped in a place we do not belong.
I stand in the roadway, reaching. My heart floods with tears, my eyes are dry. I shake with coldness, my stomach burns. I circle my car, there is no safety in this place.
You are with them, whoever they are, I cannot know them, they are gone. Nameless to me— mothers fathers children sisters brothers lovers.
You call them by name; call them by name! Have mercy, deliver them from evil. They are dust, to dust they return.
Give me a balm to heal my sinsick heart.
- The Rev. Gena D. Adams-Riley, Revised September 2011
Pictured: A steel bench from the Pentagon Memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Dr. Remen remembers the medical staff's reaction, "Now, were we in awe? Certainly not. We were frustrated. Obviously, someone had misdiagnosed him."
An intensive study of the case ensued, with expert opinion solicited from around the country. The conclusion of that inquiry was that the chemotherapy that had been discontinued eleven months earlier had suddenly had a delayed effect.
"The embarrassing part of the story," recalls Dr. Remen, "is that I believed this for the next 15 years."
"What do you think now?," asked her interviewer.
"I think that that was one of the purest encounters with mystery that I have ever had in my life. It makes me wonder about who we are, what's possible for us, how this world really operates. I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions. And those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find."
In this week's Word from Grace Street, Wallace+ reflects on the mystery and gift of the 25,000 purple martins ("bird-nados," as his son Nelson would say) that descend on Shockoe Bottom each summer.
"Even as you're standing right there watching, it's hard to believe. And it's beautiful. And a little hypnotic."
In this RTD video from the martin-watching celebration, you can hear an awed onlooker describe the birds' appearance as "a blessing."
"Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminds us of the midrash that an angel walks in front of every person, no matter man or woman, young or old, straight or gay, black or white or brown, Jew or not, an angel walks in front of us and announces, 'make way for the image of God, make way for the image of God.'" -- Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
That every person walking the earth, and every person who has ever been, was and is created to show the world the Divine nature. To show all people what love is. To show what mercy is. What kindness and generosity are.
That we all represent God.
That we are all God's own emissaries.
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Of course we forget this sometimes. We forget it, about others.
And we forget this about ourselves.
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And so God sends a messenger, (angelos, in Greek), to remind us, "Make way..."
"I can only say that segregation is wrong today, it was wrong yesterday. Segregation was never right. But it is one of the most lamentable frailties of mankind that when one's wrong is most grievous, his self-justification is most passionate, perhaps in the pitiful hope that the fervor of his self-defense will somehow prove him right. But this doesn't make it so. And he doesn't fool himself."
Richard Poff spoke these words, in the summer of 1971, as he looked back, with apparent regret, on his anti-civil-rights voting record in Congress, where he represented Virginia's Sixth District. Poff died last month and this passage appeared in his New York Times obituary of July 1.
Back in 1971, Poff was hoping for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination, thus the sincerity of his statement could be questioned. Regardless, there was and still is wisdom in his words, insight into the human heart, and the human condition, insight which, if indeed we are at all awake to our own frailties, we will recognize from our own lived experience.
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Yes, accountability is essential to any healthy human community, be it a nation, a congregation, or a family. Compassionate and mutual accountability. But, of course, for accountability to go anywhere, anywhere at all; for accountability to bear fruit, there must be a receptivity, an openness to receiving new and uncomfortable truth about ourselves.
May it be. May it be so, dear God, in our hearts, and in our own lives. For our own sake, and for the sake of those around us.
We had walked up the brook before, but probably only a matter of thirty or forty yards. This time we went, say, five or six times that far, planting our feet sometimes on the bank, sometimes on a straddling tree, but most often in the clear, jubilant water itself, which reaches two or, maybe, three feet where it pools.
Even with homes and a road just out of sight, there is a surprising and pleasing sense of remove, with a bluff sweeping up above. For stretches, small ferns blanket the ground.
Nelson would hold my hand at times, and occasionally I would lift him over a large tangle of woody debris, up onto the next rock, and we would continue on...
...and as he stepped out through the front door, she called to her husband and said, lovingly, "Don't forget, honey! It's an ego holiday!" He smiled warmly, "Thanks, sweetie! I love you!" "I love you too!," she called. And he pulled the door behind him, and headed down the steps...
What would it be like to give our egos the day off? (I know my ego could use a day off.)
Below are a couple of shots I snapped, on Wednesday, in the youth room of St. John's Episcopal Church in Roanoke, Virginia. (I've been over here at a clergy colleague group meeting). Humor, including theological humor, is certainly a key component of a healthy, well-adjusted life.
"Mid-life crisis, age, the heart gets more interesting than structure. I've got kids, I've got a wife, we're stuck together for a while. And, suddenly, there's an understanding that this is what life is. It's actually the mess, it's the mud, it's the tangle, it's not the clean, hygienic fireworks. It's the little invisible novels that get written between two people everyday of their lives."
And, of course, this Christmas, tonight, and tomorrow, new memories are being made; a Carol sung, pure and exquisite; an old friend; warm, endearing words exchanged; a first Christmas for a new grandbaby; a candle lit, a face aglow, eyes agleam.
More than fifty times, in his published writings, Barth refers to the Grunewald image; and, indeed, usually, it is precisely in reference to John, and John’s relation to the figure of Christ; as he points.
Barth (and Grunewald before him) understood John’s sole purpose to be to serve as a pointer to Christ, a reference to Christ, a witness to Christ.
On any given day, there are those things that would get our attention; those things that would bring fresh perspective; those things would remind us of what is most important, what is most true. If, that is, if we but notice. We never know when those things, those experiences, those people might come. And so it has always been, so it has always been.
The Rule of 72, they call it. It’s a rule of thumb to figure how long it’ll take to double your money. If you know you can get 5%, on your investment, then you divide 5 into 72 and that tells you: it’ll take roughly 14 and ½ years to double your money. That’s the Rule of 72. Now, sometimes an investor doesn’t want to wait 14 and a ½ years, or however long the Rule of 72 tells you that you have to wait and so increased risks are taken. And sometimes you win, and sometimes you loose.
We all want, in the words of St. Paul, to “lead a life worthy of God.” A life worthy of God. Un-like the lives of the false prophets, of Micah’s day, or the false teachers of Jesus’ day, the scribes and the Pharisees, teachers of the law. Their lives are un-worthy of God, we are told, in no uncertain terms. In their hypocrisy, they serve, not God, not God’s people, but themselves.
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