Category Archives: Theology

An Incomplete Truth

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Reading: John 8: 31b-32

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (NRSV)

The truth will set you free.

But not until it is finished with you.

David Foster Wallace

(Daily Peace, Washington, D.C.: The National Geographic Society, 2015, Feb. 15 quote)

David Foster Wallace was brilliant, productive, and curious. He looked into the world, seeking its core and its cohesion: seeking its truth both in the physical sense and in a more societal and communal sense. Suffering from depression for many years, he hanged himself in 2008. He was 46 years old.

I think he’s right – the truth won’t set anyone free until it’s finished with him or her. No one seeking truth comes back unchanged because truth opens eyes and challenges the boundaries of personal and communal understanding and knowledge. It tears apart the partial to replace it with something larger, then tears it apart again in a never-ending process of expansion. For some of us, this is the adventure of a lifetime; for some of us, it is endless striving without relief. In the process, the reality of self emerges just as surely as the nature of the world does – in glimpses, flashes of insight, and hard won understanding. The truth of this whole process will set you free, indeed.

As much as David Foster Wallace was right, his quote is only partially right. The truth as an outer reality or as an inner reality is only part of the story, just as the truth shall set you free is only part of a larger sentence. If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples is the proviso almost always left out. Something critical is lost when the second part is removed from the relationship of seekers to God-With-Us/Jesus. It is perilous to the soul if truth is understood as a solo pursuit, or even as a communal effort, if it isn’t attached to another truth: God seeks us. The truth, or the Truth, isn’t a disconnected reality: it’s the gift of a creator who loves each living thing, each single thing from sub-atomic particle to universe. No one is alone, everyone is loved, and the truth frees us to live with the consequences of this infinite belonging. When truth opens our eyes and reveals us for who we are, we can see it as blessing only in the embrace of the God who created us, seeks us always, and holds us fast. Without knowing how infinitely precious and loved we are, how could we endure our infinitesimally brief existences?

Gracious God, hold my hand and set me free. Amen.

For more reading on this subject:

Heschel, Abraham Joshua; Man is not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1951

Heschel, Abraham Joshua; God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1955)

Changed by Power?

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Reading: Matthew 4:1-11

Hero or Nero? is a meditation from The Daily Stoic – a good rhyme as well as an intriguing read. The point made: whether power corrupts depends upon the character of the person who wields it. In the words of Holiday and Hanselman:

It looks like it comes down, in many ways, to the inner strength and self-awareness of individuals – what they value, what desires they keep in check, whether their understanding of fairness and justice can counteract the temptations of unlimited wealth and deference.

Lent is a time for taking stock of inner resources. Understanding my strengths can lead to a deeper sense of self, greater gratitude for God’s grace, and an expanded ability to serve others. Awareness of my shortcomings gives me a chance to accept my limitations instead of denying them, to remember that they cannot separate me from God’s love, and to refrain from hurting others because of them. I’m better able to act with compassion and love when I am aware of my inner state, with all its pluses and minuses.

At the end of the meditation, Holiday and Hanselman move the focus from those with political power and position to everyone, including me:

Both personally and professionally. Tyrant or king? Hero or Nero? Which will you be?

For Jesus and for us, there is no avoiding the temptation to exercise power to achieve recognition and to remake the world in significant ways. When tempted, Jesus recognized and acted from one eternal and central truth: God-given power can only be exercised properly if done with God’s help and guidance. If I forget this truth, if I act by and for myself, whatever power I have will harm others even as it crushes my spirit.

Guide my feet, dear Lord. Hold me fast. Amen.

Excerpt from: Holiday and Hanselman, The Daily Stoic (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Press, 2016), p. 11

 

Ashes to Ashes

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In two days, crosses of ash will be drawn on foreheads. With the swipe of a finger and a few words, Lent will begin. Some people will give up desserts or alcohol while others will add daily devotional readings and service projects. Whether adding something positive or subtracting a negative habit, a change in behavior is how most people observe Lent. It’s what I’ve done for most years of my adult life. Sometimes these actions have brought about a deeper understanding of my faith and sometimes they haven’t. But each of them created the chance for me to live with greater intention, even if only in a single aspect of my life.

For the past four years, I’ve chosen a particular topic for Lent – specific prayers or poetry, parables, deadly sins or life-giving virtues have filled this blog with words and images. Others have been kind enough to add their art or words to the mix, giving everyone (most especially me) the gift of a different voice and different perspective.

This year, I’ll be looking at some of the word gifts I’ve received over the past couple of months: The Daily Stoic, Daily Peace, and The Book of Joy. The first two were surprises, the third one I requested. All three provide opportunities to get my inner house in order, see the world around me in all its glory, and thank God for the precious life I’ve been given.

I hope you come along with me through this path of words, and perhaps add a few of your own…

Resources:

Holiday and Hanselman, The Daily Stoic: 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Press, 2016)

Daily Peace: 365 Days of Renewal (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2015)

Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (Avery, 2016)

308 miles, 27 hours, and $125.64

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Wareham to Rochester (with a stop in Portsmouth) to New Durham, New Durham to Wareham: 308 miles altogether. My older son and I made the first part of the journey on Friday, and the return trip on Saturday. Measured by clock and receipts, these 308 miles took twenty-seven hours (five behind the wheel) and $30 for gas and tolls to make it up and back. $1.15 went to a parking meter, $12.47 to a market, $42 to a restaurant, and $40.02 off a specialty store gift card – expenses along the way. This trip adds up to 27 hours, $125.64, and 308 miles.

But if you asked me about it, I wouldn’t tell you any of these things. Instead, I’d say:

What fun it was to walk with my son through my old neighborhood in Portsmouth, and to eat scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and peas at the Friendly Toast. How interesting to listen to Colin’s stories about walking around Philadelphia.

The fog coming off the snow was so dense that my mother’s road couldn’t be seen through it. 

Seeing my mother in person is so much more fun than talking with her on the phone. 

Laughter comes easily to all of us at our yearly family get-together. There is a precious ease and familiarity to it – a gift that not all families receive.

I missed seeing my Aunt. I hope I get to spend time with her the next time I’m in New Hampshire. I hope my brother, mother, husband, and younger son make the next family event, too. They were missed.

The gifts and the food were fun, but without the people they wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s been a blessing and a privilege to spend my life’s time with these particular people. I wouldn’t trade my relatives for anything or anyone else.

There’s a richness that can’t be found in receipts and odometer readings. The length of time spent isn’t the measure of its worth. Beyond today, I won’t remember the 308 miles, the 27 hours, or the $125.64 I spent. But I will hold in my heart and memory the immeasurable goodness they brought.

 

Welcome, New Year

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It’s not quite ten hours into 2018. It’s only a degree or two above zero, a degree or two below with the wind chill factor factored in. Birds are flying to and from my bird feeder, squirrels are picking bread crusts and seeds off the frozen ground, and the sun shines down from a brilliant blue sky. There’s just enough snow on the ground and shrubs to make the view out my window an almost perfect vision of a New England winter. Looking out on this downtown Wareham beauty, I wonder what this new year will bring.

I’ve been reading Coates’ We Were Eight Years In Power, a collection of essays written over eight years prefaced with personal notes from the author before each one. In the fifth essay introduction, Coates writes about his joy in seeing his wife, Kenyatta, taking up a new course of study and growing in unexpected ways. Where some would see disruption and the loss of comfortable life patterns and goals, he sees wonder and adventure – a new way to grow together rather than an inevitable (or at least likely) cause of growing apart. What a wonderful way to experience the changes brought to daily life when a beloved leaves behind the old and familiar pursuits.

I don’t think it’s easy, growing together through new directions and stages. It’s easy to become so attached to a specific version of friends and relatives that significant change and growth feels like loss and death rather than gain and new life. There’s something important here for me to learn. With this new year just a few hours old, perhaps I’ve been given my first life lesson of 2018: foster and appreciate the changes and growth of everyone I care about. Love the person, not a particular age or stage. If I can learn how to do this, there’s no telling what delight and adventure I’ll find.

Welcome, New Year. Welcome, New Life Lesson.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years In Power (New York: One World Publishing, 2017)

My Mouth Will Proclaim

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Readings: Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; 2 Samuel 6:1-11; Hebrews 1:1-4

I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever;

with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.

I declare your steadfast love is established forever;

your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one,

I have sworn to my servant David:

I will establish your descendants forever,

and build your throne for all generations.”

Psalm 89:1-4

Offered by Colin Fredrickson, artist, college student, child of God.

An Age of Grief

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Third Sunday of Advent

Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55; I Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

“The Spirit of the Lord God . . . comfort[s] all who mourn . . . faithfully give[s] them their recompense . . . The Lord has done great things for them.”  Isaiah  61:1-3, Psalm 126:3

Five years ago as my beloved grandmother approached her dying transition she told me that she felt as if she was being punished.  This observation had a lot to do with her unhappiness about living her last years in a nursing home, about grieving the loss of more and more physical abilities, and about her isolation from loved ones.  She further said that she couldn’t understand why she was being punished because “all I have done is gotten old. And that is not a crime.”

As I’ve watched how our culture treats elders, I am wont to wonder if, in our culture, it is a crime.  We segregate elders into institutionalized settings with rigid rules and authority figures who tell them how to spend their time.  Sounds like prisons, no, nursing homes.  We make all major and many minor decisions for them, just like prisoners.  We lose patience with their increasing inability to keep pace, understand, and navigate our frenetic world. So, we marginalize their involvement in our lives.  We withdraw our social favor by ignoring them because they and their frailties make us feel uncomfortable and burdened.

I read an outstanding book recently that addresses all these issues and puts elder treatment into poignant perspective:  Being Mortal_by Dr. Atul Gawande.  The author teaches the history of assisted living and end-of-life medical decision making in the context of what his own family experienced during his father’s decline and death.  My main takeaway from the book was that what we, the children of aging parents, want for our parents — that would be safety — is in direct conflict with what they want for themselves:  independence.  This tug-of-war for control reminded me a lot of what occurs between toddlers and their parents.  It is no wonder inter-generational meltdowns abound.

Pondering this strife-filled conundrum, I am reminded of how elders were treated in the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry.  They were given the suggested “choice” of voluntary euthanasia.  It was unclear how many made this choice under societal duress and how many welcomed it as a solution to the misery their long and debilitated lives had devolved into.

Into this situation comes the above quoted verse from Isaiah.  Do the aged feel comforted and recompensed?  My personal experience as an elder caregiver is that there is less grace and more “rage against the dying of the light (D. Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”).  Sometimes it seems as if “the greatest thing” the Lord does for them is to end their suffering when they die.  It is miles above my understanding to see clearly into the life of this exchange, but I want to hope that it is true.

As we live longer, we face more challenges.  I would recommend Dr. Gawande’s book to anyone who is ministering to aging family members or, not even that specifically, to anyone who needs compassion when dealing with the decisions and choices of others.  It is a beautiful love story to his father but it also offers the hope of the Isaiah passage (aptly labeled the Exaltation of the Afflicted).  In the end, at the end, we all need each other.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

Offered by Jill Fredrickson, compassionate nurturer, business woman, child of God.

Beginning in Hope

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The First Sunday in Advent
 
Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
“I wish you would open up your heavens and come down to us.” Isaiah 64:1
Have you ever been warned to be careful what you wish for—it might come true?
On this first Sunday in Advent we light the candle of “Hope”.  Could there be any message more hopeful than Isaiah’s, or the Psalmist in today’s reading imploring God again and again to “restore us” and to “let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Ps 80) or Micah’s reading for today where he prophesies that the Lord is coming down to tread on the earth. Then there is the message from today’s gospel to keep awake because the “Son of Man” is “coming in clouds with great power and glory.”(Mk. 13:26)
I remember, when I was an adolescent, asking my pastor why he didn’t preach about the “Second Coming”. Dr. Triplett smiled the smile of a wise elder and said that not nearly enough people are aware of the first coming and what that means to them to be spending time talking about the second coming. First things first.
It seems we are a hopeful but unappreciative lot. The times I have been blessed to get what I had hoped for, I’m very grateful, of course—for a few weeks, maybe. Then I’m all about “what’s next?”
This Advent, may we all for once just be grateful for the greatest gift ever given to humankind in the coming of our God to tread on the earth, to restore us and lift us in arms of love to everlasting salvation. If we can “get” this, there seems little need to wonder about what’s next. That’s my hope.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Bill Albritton

“There is a truth that lives within us that will be with us forever.” (2 John 2)
Bill Albritton is a church leader, prayer minister, and child of God.

Preparations begin…

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No matter how familiar the Thanksgiving menu, it’s still a lot of work to get the turkey in the oven and the fixin’s on the table. Shopping, cleaning, and making sure everyone gets home are tasks already begun. There are still a few outdoor chores to do as well – getting the leaves raked and bagged, putting away the hose and collecting the garden tools. It’s the same every year before Thanksgiving because it’s time to prepare for the winter months as much as it is time to prepare dinner. Isn’t that the point of Thanksgiving? Giving thanks for the bounty of the earth as we approach a time when the earth sleeps and nothing grows? In the season of canning and drying, storing apples, cranberries, sage, and other herbs for use during the cold months, I sometimes forget what a counter-intuitive act of faith it is to throw a feast when summer’s bounty had come to an end. Would I be as generous with my Thanksgiving meal if I had to depend on what I’d grown and preserved to get me through to Spring? With a market right down the street supplying more than I’ll ever need in the cold months, it’s hard to know the answer.

I think preparing for this Harvest celebration is trying to teach me something more than gratitude for the food on the table and loved ones around it. I’ve been wondering lately about the garden that is my spiritual life. What are the fruits of this harvest? If I’m honest, there have been many times I’ve neglected to tend this inner spiritual space. I can name quite a few of the weeds that choke its growth because I haven’t put in the time to pull them out – impatience, arrogance, and lack of gratitude come to mind. As far as I know, there is no spiritual grocery store down the street: My spirit lives on what I’ve grown in my God-given garden.

The older I get, the more I realize that my inner spiritual garden becomes more and more visible as I age. How I treat others, especially those whose actions or attitudes frustrate me, is a glimpse into the state of my spiritual growth. Like everyone, I am imperfect and easily broken. If I don’t tend to my spiritual life, I will push my own brokenness on others. If I don’t want to do that, it’s going to take some inner work. If I want enough generosity of spirit to celebrate the bounty of this life, if I want to share what I’ve been given rather than hoard it for myself, it’s time to do some gardening…

 

Reaping What Was Sown

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The vegetables keep coming – kale, tomatillos, squash, onions, ground cherries, flowers, and a handful of herbs. My part in this bounty is limited to wise investment: I signed up for this CSA and wrote a check a few months back. That investment, along with the investments of quite a few others, has been returned to me in healthy, tasty, locally grown food. I figured the weekly bounty would end in September, so the last few weeks of produce are a wonderful, welcome surprise. I am thankful for the greens on my table and the ones in my freezer that will make their appearance in the months ahead. Karen’s labor in her garden has created an amazing, edible bounty.

With the cold weather comes the ingathering. I’ll spend some time canning applesauce and some cranberry orange sauce. I’ll pull in the rosemary and sage, hanging them to dry. They will season stuffing and soups, add zing to chicken, and give their flavor to dipping oils.

If I were a romantic, I might stop at these happy, homey words. These blessings are real, after all, and what was sown has become a bountiful harvest. But that’s not all that’s been sown, and not all that will be harvested in due time. I’ve planted emotional and spiritual seeds in my own life and in the life of others; others have done the same. I don’t think it’s possible to walk this earth without scattering seeds. Such seeds bear fruit and what was put out comes back. The question is: what harvest will come of the seeds I’ve sown?

I’ll spend this harvest time taking a good, long look. Who knows what I might find?

I invite you to share your harvest stories as well.

Lord, bless the work of my hands and heart. May my life bear good fruit. Amen.

Diana Krall, Count Your Blessings, Christmas Songs, Verve Records, 2005