Tangled Circumstances
trying to find my way in the maze
Monday, June 11, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Next Step
Monday, December 5, 2011
My First Sermon on the Streets
The person in our gospel, John the prophet, came to his people in a time of hardship. The people of that time were living in fear and loss. They had lost their homeland to a foreign ruler. They had lost children and loved ones. They had lost their freedom. Many lived in terrible poverty. Worse, they were losing hope.
And along comes this guy named John who lives out in the wilderness and eats bugs and wild honey. He comes as a prophet. He comes to tell people that there still is hope. That, in spite of everything happening, in spite of all their suffering, there is hope.
But before John could give this message, he went out into the wilderness. You might say he went on pilgrimage—only it was a rather long one, where John went out into the desert to search for God. It might have been a long search. It is hard to search for hope. I feel like that is what those of us who went on pilgrimage were doing a few weeks ago; it is what we are all doing every day. Searching for God. Searching for hope.
Sometimes hope is hard to find. When I remember the times in my life of pain and darkness, sometimes I can only ask the question that Jesus did on the cross. “Why, God why?” Sometimes that is where we are. We cannot always see hope. Hope is a scary thing. When things seem to get worse and worse, when there seems to be no answer to our problems, we are afraid to hope. I’m sure there were many people who listened to John’s message of hope, John’s message about the coming of Jesus, and simply thought; “I can’t see any way out right now. How can there really be hope?”
I think God understands that. In another story, this prophet John loses hope himself and Jesus has to assure him that it will be ok in the end. Sometimes all we can remember is that God is there, with us, in us, suffering with us, walking with us in our pain. Finding hope is often a long, painful journey. This advent season is a time of hoping against hope. Sometimes it means just grabbing at that tiniest, smallest bit of hope that God is still with us and that things can get better.
There is another thing I find interesting about this gospel reading. When God sent a prophet to announce Jesus’ coming, to give people hope, God did not send a well educated person. God did not send a king or a trained religious leader. God sent John, a man without a home, a man who lived in the desert, a man most people probably thought was crazy. God usually does things like that. God always chooses to speak through people who the rest of world doesn’t think much of. God sends salvation through people who everyone else thinks are nobodies.
In this community, I have met many prophets. Oftentimes, in bible study or in this service, I don’t say much because I feel like I need to listen to the amazing wisdom of this community. You have all taught me so much. And so I want to step back now and do just that, listen to your wisdom.
Monday, November 28, 2011
The Gold Crowned Jesus
There was once a cement statue of Jesus outside of a church. This Jesus wore a gold crown, but under the statue, many people slept. In the morning, rich men and priests would walk past these people asking for help. But they were always ignored. Finally, one morning, one of these poor men was filled with despair. “I have nowhere to live! I cannot bear this cold and misery anymore.” Then he looks up at the statue of Jesus. “This Jesus might be the savior of those who have enough to eat and have a home. But he has nothing to say to me!” The beggar begins to cry and as he does, he feels gentle drops fall onto his own head. He looks up, and lo and behold, the statue is weeping.
Suddenly, the man notices that Jesus is wearing a golden crown and, realizing its value, he reaches for it. At this very moment he hears a voice: “Take it, please! For too long a time I have been imprisoned in this cement. Feeling choked in this dark and lonely prison of cement. I wish to talk with poor people like you share your suffering . How eagerly I’ve been waiting for this day to come. Finally you have come and made me open my mouth. It is you who saved me.’ These are the words spoken by the gold crowned Jesus.
‘Who put Jesus in prison?’ the startled and frightened man asks. ‘Who were they?’ The Jesus made of cement answers: ‘People like the Pharisees did it, because they wanted separate him from the poor in order possess him exclusively.' Then the man asks: ‘Lord, what is it that has to be done for you to be released, for you to live again and stay with us?’
Just then, the priest of this rich church comes by and sees the man take the crown. He raises an uproar and the poor man is arrested and the crown is replaced. The statue becomes cold cement once again.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Moses Complex
At first, I felt shame and embarrassment. People deserved better than that! And, for goodness sakes, I know I can pray!! I have done public prayer before.
Then I thought of Moses. As I have walked a pilgrimage with members of my field ed parish, a song has been going over and over in my head.
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people's cry...
I will speak my words to them.
Whom shall I send?"
Moses wasn't so sure about this call, especially when he realized it was going to involve speaking. He stuttered and stumbled quite a bit, so the story goes. Yet, God uses Moses anyway in a powerful way. Moses' excuse that he could not speak didn't keep him from being an instrument of liberation for his people.
So, that is what I am banking on. That God's work is not simply a performance where the right words are said at the right time in the right way. That God's work makes use of broken, stammering people. That God can use me, even when I stutter and stumble and can't find the right words.
Here I am, Lord. Is it I Lord?...
I will hold your people in my
heart.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Coming Out Redneck: Cross-Country Trip, part 2
The next day started out poorly. We spent the better part of three hours coaxing, cajoling, and finally wrestling the one ton horse into the trailer. We would have never made it without the help of our new friends the horse boarders. Some people might call them rednecks, but they were as helpful and hospitable as everyone else we had met thus far. The soil is so rich in this part of North Dakota that it is sticky; sticky in the sense that it soon covered our shoes, pants, and, of course, the entire truck by the time we hit the road. We were all happy rednecks now.
I slept through Minnesota, since I was driving Wisconsin. We got around our first big city, Minneapolis/St Paul without a hitch. Then on to the rather unkept interstate through the great dairy state. I was disappointed to see more corn fields than dairies from the road. I have a soft spot for milk in all of its forms and for the animals that produce it. As far as I am concerned, milk is just about the most perfect food ever invented. I waxed nostalgic at the memory of making my own cheeses, yogurt, and various other products as a teenager on a small goat dairy farm. It was always amazing to see a vat turn from boiling milk into soft curd cheese just begging for my garden chives and heirloom garlic. I miss those days.
My cheese longing was met at our dinner stop in little Windsor, WI at the Mousehouse Cheesehaus (see picture above). Finally, real food, at least some of it locally produced. I had already begged a stop to buy bread, apples, and cheese to save my stomach the pain of McDonalds. Unfortunately, my only option had been Wal-Mart. What could be local foods produced by local people and feeding the local economy was generally boxed and processed and served by underpaid waitresses who could not find any other job in Timbuktu. But, finally, I got my amazing sandwich with local cheese and ham. What a feast! Of course, we could not leave without their homemade fudge and cheese.
Skirting around Chicago led us to stop in Rockford, though not before witnessing a stunning sunset over a lake on the border of Illinois. It was slightly comical to drive into a cheap inn in the middle of Main Street in a city with "population: 200,000" hauling a trailer and taking up half the parking lot. Two little kids came rushing out asking to pet the horse (who, unfortunately for them was not in the mood for visitors). They had seen one once on a farm, but we were a novelty. “Oh, I wish my four year old was awake,” another woman gushed. “She loves animals.” What was part of life in rural America was a petting zoo novelty to their urban counterparts. We were staying at a cheap inn in the less affluent part of town and I noted again differences between rural and urban poverty. Kids go hungry either way, but inner city kids play on asphalt and broken glass and breathe air thick with fumes.
Indiana and Ohio treated us to corn fields in ever increasing size, a testimony to U.S. obsession with corn. Or, at least, the obsession of agribusiness with corn. I could not help but think of the small farmers who had lost out on this increasing mono-cultured crop climate. I could not help but think of all the small farmers of Mexico and Central America who were losing their small scale, locally developed corn varieties as they were forced to leave their ancestral farms and migrate north when U.S. agribusiness won out on NAFTA and flooded our southern neighbors with cheap corn. These same farmers were showing up in the American heartland to work for poverty wages picking crops for agribusiness. The U.S. consumer is losing too, filling our bodies with more corn than it was ever meant the handle and, according to researchers and doctors, increasing our propensity for heart disease and diabetes. Besides, the food taste terrible. I was also increasingly annoyed by the difficulty I had finding places to refill my water, since I refused to spend money on something so common as water.
I also thought about the small farms that were still left, searching for some way to stay viable. Not far from the highways we passed, the Amish tended crops in an agrarian culture that had survived the Industrial, “Green,” and Information Revolutions. I noticed, even on the commercial book racks in convenience stores, the simple and austere spirituality of the Amish infiltrated popular religious culture. Religion was kinder here, at least on the surface, less about proving points and more about inspirational reading, simple living, and loving the land affectionately known as “God’s Country.”
As the rolling plains and fields gave way to oak decorated hills, we wound our way slowly to Pennsylvania. It was getting dark as we pushed through the state, but the early Appalachian Mountains with tiny towns nestled in them were a welcome sight. A sliver moon hung out above the trees whose names I did not know, trees that looked different from the towering conifers of the Pacific coast, looked a bit tamer and certainly shorter. I wanted more pictures and I wanted to stop more often, but we had a schedule to keep, so I contented myself to watching the deep river ravines cut through the tree studded hills until it was too dark to see.
Our last morning went quickly, after a stop in a small hotel right off the highway in the middle of nowhere, weaving through the last of the Appalachians and into Virginia. Williamsburg, with its fine colonial homes and signs remembering Indian attacks (but apparently not settler attacks on Native peoples), was full of revolutionary nostalgia and horse pastures. We left the horse to one of those pastures before heading off to my train stop.
Now, as I weave my way by train through the urban chaos of the Eastern seaboard, I wonder what brought this small town redneck all the way across the country. Part of what brought me (aside from scholarships and grants) is a search for answers, answers to the pressing problems of my people, the rural working folks of the forgotten regions of the U.S., and a quest for a way to use my faith to answer that call.
The Soul of the West: Cross-Country Trip, part 1
We drove through an enormous mono-cropped farm with a runoff facility that smelled so bad we could barely breathe. Monsanto dutifully had an office nearby, clearly supplying the patented seeds that have replaced the small farm varieties of a half century ago. The only living thing that seemed to survive the invasion of pesticide infested corn and soybeans were the wild sunflowers smiling with bright yellow faces on the edges of the fields. With small farmers pushed out and large, corporate farms dominating American agriculture, our food quality is going downhill. After all, I was standing (or bumping over) some of the richest bottomland in the country (known as the “Red River Valley”), but all there was to eat was highly processed, corn fed hamburgers or chicken on white buns and served with plastic tasting fries that had been trucked in from who knows where and sold by giant multinational chains. Oh, and I could also buy corn syrup sodas flavored with caffeine. My stomach was in revolt.
When we finally arrived at the stable, we were met by a middle aged couple living in between the cornstalks with a small herd of horses. We gratefully left the horse to find a place to sleep.