Category: Faith

Faith · Life

From a Distance

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When I read the Stream of Consciousness prompt for today — the word “distance” — this song is the first thing that came to mind.

I have a love-hate relationship with the lyrics. Allow me to — stream-of-consciously — dissect them.

On the surface, yes, it’s all so true:

From a distance, the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white
From a distance, the ocean meets the stream

Yep — those pictures taken of the earth from space show our planet as green and blue. We can see water, land. We have to start zooming in, though, to see ocean meeting stream. We have to really zoom in to see the last line of that verse:

And the eagle takes to flight

If we were to really really zoom in, we would see that eagle swoop down and grab a living creature — a fish, a rabbit, or even someone’s pet. Hmmm…

From a distance, there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It’s the voice of hope
It’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man

Well, not EVERY man. I’m so disturbed by the words of our Secretary of War/Defense this week. He initially acknowledged the fallen troops, but then they became a PR problem to him. He accused the press of trying to make the president look bad. Seriously??

From a distance, we all have enough
And no one is in need
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease
No hungry mouths to feed

From a distance, it may look that way, but it’s not true. It’s just not true.

From a distance, we are instruments
Marching in a common band
Playing songs of hope
Playing songs of peace
They’re the songs of every man

I actually like this verse. Music is a uniter. I think about the story from WWII of Germans and Americans singing Silent Night together, in their respective languages, on Christmas Eve. (I think that’s how the story goes.)

God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us
From a distance

Umm…. the Christmas story is that God was born in a stable. The Lenten story is that after a dusty, dirty itinerant life — walking with us, eating with us, teaching, listening, healing through touch — God in human form died for us. God bridged the distance.

From a distance, you look like my friend
Even though we are at war
From a distance, I just cannot comprehend
What all this fighting’s for

I’ll go back to that Christmas Eve story and I’ll say this, You, Iranian mom, are my sister. In 2017, I went to Bosnia and shared meals with people of a different faith. I learned they were also my friend/family. I’ll also go back to those powerful people in the world who move us around like chess pieces. I just cannot comprehend what all this fighting’s for.

The rest of the song is pretty repetitive of what’s already been sung.

It’s a lovely song. It really is.

I just wish it didn’t lean so heavily on God watching “from a distance”.

Perhaps it’s simply saying that God has the best perspective — “from a distance”. Hmm… I need to ponder that.

Faith

What Kind of Blessedness

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It certainly sounds more realistic for people in darkness to dream of God’s day of vengeance, finding satisfaction in the hope that at the Last Judgment all the godless enemies who oppress us here will be cast into hellfire.
But what kind of blessedness is it that luxuriates in revenge and needs the groans of the damned as background to its own joy?
To us a child is born, not an embittered old man.

Jürgen Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless

Okay, it’s not one, not two, but three lines that I’m using for One-Liner Wednesday. I read these words this morning and they spoke to me.

My faith is a struggle these days, what with all that’s going on with our government and the focus on retribution, and the callousness towards humt

Still, I read every morning, trying to start my day off with the right mindset.

To us a child is born. To us a child is born. To us a child is born.

God didn’t come in wrath, seeing to punish. He came as a helpless baby.

Faith · family · poetry

Grammie

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My grandmother was a worrier
(Or, some would say, a prayer warrior)
She fretted all the time
(probably from womb to Easter tomb)
Her immigrant family worked hard
At menial jobs for which they were hired.
They moved up the social ladder.
Education, honesty, and faith would lead her
To a comfortable American life.
You would think she turned over a new leaf!
But she worried and worried and worried,
Though her faith in God never wearied

This is my submission for the W3 challenge this week — brought by the host with the most, David himself.

Here’s the challenge: Write a poem using pararhyme throughout—where consonant sounds match but the vowels shift (e.g., fill / fell, stone / stain). Let this half-matching quality reflect a theme of incompleteness, near-misses, or strained connection.

Can I say that it’s not even a near miss to be a worrier and a person of faith?! The two stand in stark contradiction to each other, and yet, that was my grandmother.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

K is for Knowledge

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Knowing something or somebody isn’t the same as knowing about them. More than just information is involved. …When you really know a person or a language or a job, the knowledge becomes part of who you are. It gets into the bloodstream.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

BUT, Mr. Buechner, what if the person that I am learning about and that I am getting to know is me?

It can’t get into my bloodstream, because it is my bloodstream!

I read a piece by Dorothy Day yesterday that said, “‘How can you see Christ in people?’ … It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope…”

How can I see Christ in me? It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love. It is an act of hope.

It has been a rough few weeks months years. My divorce is final. The papers came in the mail this week. It makes me question everything. How well did I know this person to whom I was married for over forty years? I knew about him, but did I really know him? Did he really know me?

I realize that I don’t even know me — but I’m working on it.

I realize, though, too, what grounds me. It is faith. It is acts of faith, constantly repeated.

I’m extending the A-to-Z Challenge into May. Maybe even June and July – we’ll see how long this takes.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

J is for Justice

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Justice does not preclude mercy. It makes mercy possible. … Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I didn’t see this coming, the way a Buechner book would become a backdrop to commentary on the state of our country — but it has.

If you’ve never read anything by Frederick Buechner, let me tell you a little about him. He is a Presbyterian minister and the author of 39 books. He is witty, funny, insightful, and ultimately so very kind. So kind. One of his last books is titled: The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life. I haven’t yet read it, but I think it sums him up.

I loved this quote on justice when I read it. I can picture Justice and Mercy sitting on a teeter-totter, balancing each other. Yet here, under Trump 2, Justice has leapt from the see-saw, leaving Mercy to crash to the ground with a teeth-jarring thud.

The news is on in the background as I write — a mistake, I know. I’m semi-addicted these days. I can’t look away, even though I know I should. What’s going on in this country is neither just nor merciful. There’s no sense of poetry in anything that’s going on.

I have to confess that I didn’t see what’s going on in our country coming either. I counted on the balance of power in our government and the work of God in people’s hearts.

Yet, here we are, withholding food, drugs, and aid from people in need. Sending aid workers to Myanmar in the wake of a disaster — and then firing them! Canceling student visas and sending them back to their home country, some of them weeks shy of their graduation. Punishing, punishing, punishing anyone who disagrees or has disagreed with this administration.

Almighty and most merciful God
Where are You?
The sky is turning black
As are the hearts of my countrymen
Must we sit in a tomb for three days
Before there is a resurrection?
Or is insurrection on the horizon?
My God, My God — why have You forsaken us?

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it — that 2000 years ago, the Jewish people were looking for an insurrection to free them from Roman rule, and they got a resurrection instead.

What does God have in store for us?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

C is for Chanting

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Words wear out after a while, especially religious words… When a prayer or a psalm or a passage from the Gospels is chanted, we hear the words again… We remember that they are not only meaning but music and mystery. … Of course, chanting wears out after a while too.

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

One of my children said that when people pray prayers together in a service they sound like robots. I suppose it could sound that way.

I like how Buechner refers to them as music and mystery.

They are polished rocks, made smooth and beautiful by time and use.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith

A is for Apologists

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“C. S. Lewis once said something to the effect that no Christian doctrine ever looked so threadbare to him as when he had just finished successfully defending it. … In order to defend the faith successfully — which is the business of apologists — they need to reduce it to a defendable size. It’s easier to hold a fortress against the enemy than to hold a landscape.”

~~ Frederich Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

A is for Apologists defending a landscape, not a fortress.

My faith is pretty threadbare these days. I look at my country embracing “Christian” principles and am ashamed.

Jesus never behaved the way these people are behaving. We’re back to The Crusades, a most shameful part of Christian history.

When we feel that we have to defend God, we are, in a sense, thinking ourselves bigger and stronger than God. He doesn’t need me to defend Him. Seriously.

What He wants is for me to be kind and loving. To emulate Him.

We “defend” God not with a sword, but by being kind. We demonstrate not with angry words and violent actions, but with gentleness. If someone thinks differently than we do, we still call them beloved, not lunatic.

I will defend the landscape that is my faltering faith by planting seeds. My sword has been beaten into a plowshare.

Faith · Grief · poetry · Random Photo Monday

When he died

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When he died,
Oh, I tried
To decide

What came next —
So perplexed.
The subtext

Of my grief,
My belief,
Brought relief

This is my submission for the W3 Challenge this week:

  • Theme: The bittersweet, painful, or unsettling aspects of the past and its hold on the present;
    • Optional Challenge: Use imagery of shadows, cracks, or reflections to add depth to the theme;
  • Form: A “square” (e.g., 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, or any other pattern you choose);
    • “Rows” represent stanzas;
    • “Columns” represent the number of lines in each stanza;
      • For example: 3×3 = 3 stanzas of 3 lines each; and 4×4 = 4 stanzas of 4 lines each.

The idea of a “square” poem intrigued me. I wrote 3 stanzas of 3 lines each. I went a step further, though, and made each line 3 syllables — does that make it a cube?

Faith

Christmas 2024

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The other day I had a woman in my office making the obligatory small talk of the season.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “not even close.”

“Well, have you at least set up your tree?”

“No,” I said, wishing the conversation over, but she was persistent. She told me that she had three trees and their Christmas village set up. She had started shopping in August, and that she just had to buy gifts for her cousin’s granddaughter and her neighbor’s niece and she would be all done.

“No, I haven’t done my shopping either,” I told her.

“You’ve got to do something,” she said.

I thought for a minute and then said, “I’ll get out the nativity set tonight.”

She beamed at me and went on her way.

I didn’t get it out.

The truth is this has been a very hard season. Thanksgiving was rough. December has gone downhill from there.

I could bore you with all details of my messy life, but suffice it to say that it’s like the matted fur of a cat that doesn’t groom itself and becomes impossible to get a comb through. And that matted mess shows up in the worst places. Ignoring doesn’t fix it.

I need to do something — but it’s not Christmas decorating.

The only semi-Christmassy thing that I’ve done is read an Advent devotional called Watch for the Light. It’s a book I’ve read before, but it beckoned to me from the shelf and I heeded its call.

Yesterday’s devotional in it was by Annie Dillard: Bethlehem She describes going to ground zero in Bethlehem, to the very place where Jesus was born.

As if, I thought skeptically, we know where that is.

I have a friend who says the Christmas story is just a fable, a nice tale made up by people, but without a lick of truth to it.

I think he is just as wrong as the ground zero crowd who make their pilgrimage to the place Dillard describes: “A fourteen-pointed silver star, two feet in diameter, covered a raised bit of marble floor at the cave wall. This silver star was the X that marked the spot. Here, just here, the infant got born.”

She goes on a few paragraphs later, “Any patch of ground anywhere smacks more of God’s presence on earth, to me, than did this marble grotto. The ugliness of the blunt and bumpy silver star impressed me. The bathetic pomp of the heavy, tasseled brocades, the marble, the censers hanging from chains, the embroidered antependium, the aspergillum, the crosiers, the ornate lamps — some human’s idea of elegance — bespoke grand comedy, too, that God put up with it. And why should he not? Things here on earth get a whole lot worse than bad taste.”

Things here on earth get a whole lot worse than no Christmas decorations, too. Seriously.

Here it is, Christmas Eve. The bits of red and green in my kitchen are not decorations I got out, but gifts.

  • A Santa tin filled with rum balls. The man who gave them to me apologized, “Usually my wife makes them, but, you know…” His voice trailed off. I did know. Her dementia is more and more evident. “I may have added way too much rum,” he said. We both laughed.
  • A plate of cookies topped with a bow, another gift from one of my regular office visitors.
  • A wrapped gift that is clearly a book. “Put this under your tree,” the person who gave it to me had said. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I had no tree.
  • A few other small wrapped gifts, the kind co-workers give each other. My unfinished gifts still sit on my desk.

And yet, and yet — into this undecorated unholy world, I welcome the Christ.

Lord knows, I need Him this year more than ever.

He doesn’t give one whit about the trappings. He wants to patiently unmat the mess that is me. The question is, will I let Him?

Faith · poetry

In Church

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Praying in a pew on well worn kneeler
Darkness flickers while light streams
Sinner. Beloved. Which?

That shadow in the back — did I see something?
Tiny glimpse of disquiet
Lurking, lurking, lurking

Yet, there is light casting rainbow colors
Through tow’ring stained glass windows
Overwhelming peace

Praying in a pew on well worn kneeler
Tiny glimpse of disquiet
Overwhelming peace

This is my response to this week’s W3 challenge — to write a Garland Kimo on the theme of good vs evil.

The ‘Kimo’ is a short syllabic poetic form of three lines. The syllable count per line is 10/7/6.

Also, the kimo is focused on a single frozen image (kind of like a snapshot). So it’s uncommon to have any movement happening in kimo poems.

The ‘Garland Kimo’ is a series of four ‘Kimo’ verses, in which the fourth Kimo verse is composed of lines taken from the previous three Kimo verses, using the 1st line from the 1st Kimo, the 2nd line from the 2nd Kimo, and the 3rd (last) line from the 3rd Kimo.