 |
Lectionary - July 2002 |
| |
Lectionary - July 2002 |
|
7 July 2002 - Year A - Proper 9/Ordinary 14/Pentecost +7 Wesley White -- July 7, 2002 As we listen in to the witness of our ancestors this week pay attention to those spots where weariness would be most appropriate and yet joy and relief abound. Want to help my weariness? Jot a little something and use the reply function (actually "reply," in this case, simply means "post" and you can do so without the U.S. Postal Service's 3-cent addition). Wesley White -- Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 After looking at several websites, I'll use information from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, "On the average, a 7-foot (2-m) tall camel weighs 1500 pounds (680 kg) and can drink up to 35 gallons (130 L) of water at a sitting and about 50 gallons (190 L) of water in a day." Rebekah's offer to water 10 camels could have been a substantial endeavor. While the young can be wearied, they can also keep at endeavors - just because. What might be your young quotient these days? I'm feeling like there are a hundred camels lined up to be watered. Sisyphus is alive and well. Meanwhile, Isaac is waiting to find out with whom he will be joined in marriage. Day turns to day after day. He also spends time by the water. Isaac returns from Beer-lahai-roi. This is the place Hagar opened her eyes beyond her weariness of running away and being sent away. Here Hagar sees GOD seeing her (face to face with no death ensuing) and is able to return to servitude and to move on into GOD's promises. It would be a good place for Isaac to visit (later he settles there, 25:11). Where is your Beer-lahai-roi when you are wearied from waiting? or wearied by other's conflicts. What would happen if in the midst of the current Palestine/Israel conflict they might not simply remember a common link through Abraham, but after Abraham's death Ishmael and Isaac are connected by the renewing waters of seeing GOD at Beer-lahai-roi? What would happen if in the midst of any conflict we might lift our eyes from our weariness to see GOD's seeing of us? Wesley White -- Song of Solomon 2:8-13 Arise, my love, come away. From The Spiritual Formation Bible come these words: "Do you sense something within yourself that is dormant or frozen? Is there a broken relationship, a sin that you cannot seem to put behind you, or an indifference to God's love for you? Whatever it is, in prayer ask that you will be open to God breaking through with the sweet, fresh growth of [God's] presence in you." And beyond all that spiritual stuff, may you know yourself to also be loved by another who hurries to your side to call you away from your particular weariness through the enlivening of your senses. And beyond all this personal stuff, may our culture know itself as loved - that the "enterprise of GOD" is not bigger bottom lines but larger care of one another. It may be that by using only market forces as the measurement of life, we have gotten so far outside the boundaries of care that the only reality large enough to call us back is the environment we cannot avoid dealing with as it gets hotter and hotter. When was the last time you paid attention to a turtledove instead of your debt or your taxes or getting more? From God, from another, from creation - comes the call - arise, come away. Wesley White -- Zechariah 9:9-12 "Zechariah was a major factor in recovering the magnificence from the ruins of a degrading exile. Zechariah reinvigorated their imaginations with his visions and messages. The visions provided images of a sovereign God that worked their way into the lives of the people, countering the long ordeal of debasement and ridicule. The messages forged a fresh vocabulary that gave energy and credibility to the long-term purposes of God being worked out in their lives. "But that isn't the end of it. Zechariah's enigmatic visions, working at multiple levels, and his poetically charged messages are at work still, like time capsules in the lives of God's people, continuing to release insight and hope and clarity for the people whom God is using to work out [God's] purposes in a world that has no language for God and the purposes of God." [The Message by Eugene Peterson] If you were in exile (and aren't you?) how glad you would be to hear: Come home, hope-filled prisoners! - The Message Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.... NRSV Come back to the fortress, you prisoners waiting in hope. NJB The prisoners who wait in expectation will return to you, O Zion. CCB Come back to the Citadel, you captives waiting in hope. REB Zechariah's focus is on the rebuilding of a people who have endured humiliation and exile. To complicate the problem, the people are apathetic about their task of facing a new world and indifferent to the call to life renewed. Does that sound like our situation? Yep. You already know renewal is not easy and takes place in the midst of great pain. You also already know this is a task we can but take our place within. Let's talk about being hope-filled prisoners already home and beckoning others. Wesley White -- Psalm 145:8-14 Interdependence Day A fresh start for those ready to quit! (vs 14) Wesley White -- Romans 7:15-25a "I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?" [The Message] Here are some other "real questions" from a Google search. The real question is, "How should we be measuring and controlling risk?" The real question: Whose world is it, anyway? The real question is... What is student outcomes assessment and what's the connection to Virginia Woolf, anyway? The real question is whether the Internet makes us more stressed. The real question should be: Does it matter? The real question: Will any leader truly re-think the peace process? The Real Question: Which basic principles will sustain Distributed Education over time, and across changing technologies? The real question is: Why should we have to put up with any of this? The real question is what will be the effects of globalisation? The real question is, Would you want to be put on machines if you weren't going to get better? What is your "real question"? How do things get set right in this world of contradiction? Isn't that where GOD and Jesus and Spirit and Church and You come in? Ask a real question, live a real response. sally carter -- Hi Wesley, My company name, filled in where required by Microsoft, but otherwise having no function other than to remind me of who I am, is Kairos Unlimited. I love the 'real questions'- I think some people, myself included sometimes, do not expect our faith to have anything to say to these real questions, and we blunder about counting angels on pinheads. I am struggling this week to articulate the feeling of being at odds with oneself which seems to be what Paul is on about in the Romans passage. His answer to Eugene Pederson's question is tantalising brief - Jesus can! And I believe it! But today it doesnt seem to be enough to say 'Jesus can' without offering some real sense of how it all 'works' - sometimes anyway. By the way, I am a minister in New Zealand, trying to bring spiritual depth to a liberal/generous faith - to integrate our souls and our minds and, especially in light of this weeks readings, our bodies too. Thanks for your site, looking forward to more people entering the conversation - or can i just not find them!? Wesley White -- Sally, I'd appreciate hearing more about "Kairos Unlimited." Perhaps the more we talk the more folks will join in. I like the "being at odds with oneself" image. That can be fruitfully contemplated. Two pictures came to my mind from your comments. One is about Jesus as a response to real questions, even if unasked. It was in the real life of Saul Paul that his unasked question came blindingly upon him - is the violence of control worth it? If not, how does one get off that habit? Out of that question comes the response of Jesus, the way of resurrection. Before the question, in Chapter 6, we hear a rallying cry - sin has no power over dead people, resurrection leads to the boldness of living freely, unhabitually, so be baptized into death and raised to new life. During the question, Chapter 7, we hear how process oriented this is - "at odds" we are. After the question, we listen in Chapter 8 to hope for enough resurrection in the future to know ourselves and resurrection as one and so are encouraged to keep on with the process in the midst of the ambiguity of today. The second image is about that sin so deep within us, the original one. At a recent "Mindful Spirit" workshop following presentations by Sr. Joan Chittister, Sr. Mary Kathryn, FSPA, spoke of the original sin being that of "judgment." Having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad we are constantly making judgments and no longer walking with GOD. Judgment leads to Saul Paul's violence of control for the pre-approved good and against the automatically bad. To get out of being at odds between good and bad is to pay attention to walking mindfully with GOD at each moment. We are not consistently there yet (so Saul Paul's complaint), but when we are we recognize a resurrection beyond conventional morality. In the context of the United States of America, an example of how it can work to not enter into living at odds or participating in unheathy debate/judgment may be found in a speech 150 years old today, July 5, 2002. [Go to "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" by Fredrick Douglass.] Wesley White -- Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 The left-out section is where Jesus might be seen over-trumping the crowd's disrespecting of John and himself by calling down Doom on places that had not responded positively to his presence. You might almost see GOD's spirit at work knowing that "Doom" is not the last or best word. So - abruptly - Jesus breaks into prayer. (Was that GOD's prayer being prayed through Jesus or Jesus remembering his own prayer for forgiveness?) Either way - Oh how I wish our current Doom-sayers or Terrorist-baiters would learn to pray in response to their pronouncements of Doom on others. Jesus' prayer changes things, abruptly. Before prayer, "Doom!" After prayer, "Tenderness" for the listeners. Jesus is willing to say what he has said, one more time and one more time, again. Is it lack of prayer that keeps us from the tenderness of working with people instead of pronouncing upon them and leaving them to their Doom? So, when burned out (like Jesus when he resorted to Doom-talk?), come away with Jesus into a time of prayer about ordinary things and the way GOD is already present in the ordinary. Here are the "unforced rhythms of grace." And don't you really want to live within that freedom and lightness. 14 July 2002 - Year A - Proper 10/Ordinary 15/Pentecost +8 Wesley White -- July 14, 2002 This next week pay attention to the stories you live (no, not the ones others want you to live or the ones you think you should be living, but only to what are you living). Is one chapter an old familiar story? A story of within and beyond - as in GOD within the Law and so far beyond the Law that GOD must be spelled "Grace"? Are you finding yourself in a classic retelling of some epic or saga? Is your plot line a whimpering one, running thin, needing some Peril of Pauline to lead-in to the next episode? What would Jesus or Harry Chapin do with the story of your life? How might it illuminate and sing? Amazingly, your story is better than you know. Wesley White -- Genesis 25:19-34 We are not determined by the way the world is presently organized even if a pronouncement seems to come true that the two wrestling in the womb will become two nations in conflict and the younger will become stronger and the older will become servant. Though we can appreciate how the next generation needs to move away from the combined blessing/curse of an exaggerated emphasis upon first-borns, we also can see the inversion of power simply leading to the power of a different heel, not the healing of power struggles. Imagine a world not fixated on rights or entitlements. What kind of a story will go beyond the good news of inversion to even better news of conversion. How do we claim our worth to be more than a bowl of soup? How do we acknowledge our envy and jealousy that it might not lead us to manipulating another? Are we committed to seeing ourselves and Jacob as heroes? Are we expecting that our enemies and Esau will always be trodden underfoot? Is there not an eternal alternation implied here. Jacob supplants Esau. Later, in Romans 9, Paul uses this story to have the Esauean Edomite Gentiles resupplant the Jacobean Israelite Jews. These days we are almost to another new story to clarify that the institution of privileged church is being supplanted? From where I write a commercial tie-in with the movie Ten Commandments (a "monument" hardly readable) may be coming out of a public park. The cold-war rhetoric of "under God" may no longer break the scansion of a flag-pledge. The failed attempt to merge GOD with Mammon may fall and erase the motto of trusting in God - but really trusting in dollars. Can the church with an Esau claim of birthright, care for those without that birthright without renouncing who its own worth or engaging in entitlement fallacies? May we find a way to break the "last shall be first" routine that finds the latest last shall become the latest first, etc., without falling into the equal danger of first always being first. What story do you know that is opening us to a new stage of human development or a new understanding of GOD's mercy? Wesley White -- Psalm 119:105-112 Where most english translations talk about the "wicked" being our opponents, the Contemporary English Version identifies them as "merciless people." Either way, the psalmist goes on to say that the heritage of GOD's teachings will ground them (the psalmist) and give them peace of mind. In the context of the whole psalm this doesn't keep the psalmist from complaining and asking for redress in the face of wicked mercilessness. It does, however, remind the psalmist that ultimately their life will be found in paying constant attention to the great teaching of mercy and goodness that will be present with them at all times, shaping them into that very same mercy. The immediate context of the story is ouch. The expected resolution of the story is ahhh. May we live the resolution in the context. Wesley White -- Isaiah 55:10-13 So it is with a word that goes from God, it will not return
unfulfilled. As a word from GOD being fulfilled, how is your awareness of joy and safety? What part of the story of your life needs to be viewed from another perspective to see yourself as an "eternal monument," living and lasting evidence of GOD? What part of the story of our life needs to be viewed from
another perspective to see the others in it as eternal monuments,
living and lasting evidence of GOD? Wesley White -- Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13 When overwhelmed with guilt and shame and sin and fault, we find ourselves covered, forgiven, and blessed. What a storyline. When blessed and acting out of our blessing, we are blessed. When experiencing a scarcity of blessing and acting out of that paucity, we are forgiven. Since it takes enormous energy to go wrong forever, eventually we find a springtime in our winter. (How would someone at the equator express this seasonal image?) We have been responded to with the marvel of saving justice. How can we do less than pass that on? How can we do less than participate in the hope of the whole wide earth? And when might we pass on and participate in these gifts if not in this moment of kairos? Wesley White -- Romans 8:1-11 If there is "no condemnation" we are in a new story. The old story relied on Newtonian cause and effect. The new story incorporates the astrophysicist and the quantum mechanic. Their stories add in the expansion and generosity of creation as well as the mystery of uncertainty that spontaneously brings forth new bits and pieces not known before in the game of life. Who else needs to have their voice added to the mix of no condemnation? Poets and prophets? Priests and novelists? What about bio-chemists and environmentalists? Laborers on the line and the poor? Who else will help us catch the new life of no condemnation by helping us break free from simply working harder that we might live healthier (living by the future of a beckoning new enterprise of GOD rather that an extension of the tyranny of habits based on an overly simplistic limitation to the dynamics of earth's surface without including the stars or the atoms)? What ripples forth from "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Can you bring Paul's insight into common language for today? Wesley White -- Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 The same day that Jesus redefines family as relationship with GOD (12:50), he tells a story. The story has GODseed scattered prodigally about. It is scattered on the worn, thin, wild, and receptive places of our life. [Note: "our" is both my or your individual life as well as the lives of other individuals and our common life.] In this model we miss 3/4 of what GOD has already cast into our life. We are so caught with routine and so tired and so angry that the arriving GODseed rolls off and burns up and is overshadowed. Yet GODseed is arriving as much in our worn, thin, and wild parts as in our readiness to respond to it. So it is with others and congregations and cultures. A question for us is how the fertile part of us will interact with the bored and habitual and strangling parts? Will that fertile part put up a fence to keep the compression and erosion and raging of others at a distance? Will that fertile part, having more fruit from GODseed than it can hold, also join in the scattering of good upon the blind and shallow and hurtful? Have you seen grass growing through cement? A tree growing with no soil from the side of a cliff? A flower growing in the wilderness? If so, don't give up on those parts of our own life and that of others where the GODseed has not yet flourished. GODseed can be joined with the blessing of your life and yet make a difference - even where we have labeled that there is no soil, infertile soil, or already occupied soil. Jesus' biological family and GOD-willed family can yet be one. Believe it, live it. 21 July 2002 - Year A - Proper 11/Ordinary 16/Pentecost +9 Wesley White -- Genesis 28:10-19a Dreaming again, for the first time. Hearing again, for the first time. Hoping again, for the first time. Yes, there is a definite reference to Marcus Borg's books. What else needs to move from your typical response to a new awareness? This will be something to pay attention to this next week. Wesley White -- Genesis 28:10-19a A mere tenth of the way into his journey to a foreign land (both geographically and the next stage of life, adulthood) Jacob came near Luz, a place of almond trees, and lay himself down to sleep, perchance to dream. In the midst of questions of being he finds a gift: "YHWH was standing over against him" (Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses - it would be interesting to explore this phrase the next time it comes around). You may think you are journeying into a strange and distant land for a new and great adventure, only to find you are part of a still new and even greater adventure - finding GOD where you are. Rather than having to take everything to GOD - GOD is already present. How does this shift open up life for you? The part we don't hear because the storyline is cut here - Jacob bargaining with GOD and offering a tenth. Jacob returning to Bethel for the confirmation of a new name of Israel. Before death he blesses the "twelve", entrusts his whole future (not just a tenth). And after burial, what was here begun, ends with Joseph's words, "You planned ill against me, but GOD planned-it-over for good' in order to ... keep many alive. So now, do not be afraid! I myself will sustain you and your little-ones!" [Everett Fox] From divisions within family and stealing of birthrights comes a comfort that speaks to our hearts. May your journey lead you to living as though the enmity between us is "planned-over for good" and we can comfort rather than antagonize one another. Wesley White -- Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 Where are you? Wesley White -- Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19 How about a both/and instead of an either/or. A NRSV dialogue of soul (Isaiah) and self (Wisdom). Isa. 44:6 Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Wis. 12:13 For neither is there any god besides you, whose care is for all people, to whom you should prove that you have not judged unjustly.... Isa. 44:7 Who is like me? Let them proclaim it, let them declare and set it forth before me. Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be. Wis. 12:16-18 For your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all. For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power, and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it. Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose. Isa. 44:8 Do not fear, or be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me? There is no other rock; I know not one. Wis. 12:19 Through such works you have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins. ............. From a starting point of "I'm it" that feels like it is going to Lord it over us we find ourselves ending up with kindness and hope. How did that happen? Where do you see the turning point in this conversation? That may have something to do with what else is going on in your life. The New Jerusalem Bible has a footnote on Wisdom 12:16 that reads: "Since God possesses absolute power and has no reason for abusing it, he dispenses saving justice with complete impartiality and freedom; by the same token, his sovereign mastery over all beings allows him to be lenient to all." While having trouble with the male language and the distant theistic imagery of impartiality, I do come to the same conclusion about leniency and appreciate the closing words of kindness and hope that we can continue learning to live into. Wesley White -- Psalm 86:11-17 Teach me your ways -- Lover. Rescuer. Kinder. Tender. Mercy-er. -- in the midst of my dealing with experiences of the opposite type. Give me strength, in the presence of the bullies I face, to continue receiving and passing on your loving rescue through the kindness of tender mercy. Wesley White -- Romans 8:12-25 "I don't think there is any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times....the joyful anticipation deepens" [The Message] This is a call to persistence in the moment. To have a joyful anticipation (perhaps any anticipation at all) is to be able to look at where we are and know we are already moving on. To so know is to see movement where otherwise we would appear to be stuck in repeating the past. To see movement gives us the opportunity to join it. To join a movement gives us courage to prod, push, and pull the movement along one more notch until, bam!, more than can be expected bursts forth. The images of birthing are helpful here. Don't forget that the seeming stuckness and frustration of transition portends not only unimaginable labor but abounding joy. May we, like every hopeful generation, see ourselves ready for the movement of new birth and be willing to take our next breath and push for all we are worth. It is worth our work to get to better times for ourselves and for others and for all of creation. "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." [Galatians 6:9 KJV] Wesley White -- Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 Who among us has not offered what we considered to be a pure gift to the world only to have it ignored, discounted, thrown back in our face, or trampled underfoot. There are enough weeds to do all of this and more to our unalloyed best offerings. Indeed, sometimes, in true Pogo fashion, when we meet the enemy we find it is us. So what are we to do when we wake to find our originally sown goodness always in the presence of weeds from others and even our self? The three general rules of the Wesleyan tradition come in handy here. Continue to "do no harm" - say no to evil (but remember vengeance is GOD's). Continue to "do good" - be active in growing the best you can in your particular weedy place. Continue "attending to the ordinances of GOD" - "do not grow weary when you pray" [Sirach 7:10]. In at least these three ways, continue in what you understand to be the enterprise of GOD. "Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable - Don't ever quit, keep it simple - Do all with patience" [2 Timothy 4:2] for you can still bring forth 30 seeds without worrying about excusing yourself, "If only it hadn't been for those weeds, I could have brought forth 100 seeds." 28 July 2002 - Year A - Proper 12/Ordinary 17/Pentecost +10 Wesley White -- July 28, 2002 Genesis 29:15-28 The picture of an old-fashioned general store may be the best overall image available for this week's readings. Come in and browse the several different areas. What do you need? It's probably available, or something that can be made to work. This is a week to be receptive for gifts rather than programmatic. If you haven't already used it, the Worship section of The United Methodist General Board of Discipleship is generally helpful. Wesley White -- Genesis 29:15-28 The power of the culture booms through. A private agreement between Laban and Jacob comes crashing down with those famous words, "This is not done in our country." The old-story of primogeniture rings out - "First shall remain first." Jacob's experience was that the older will serve the younger. He had the leverage to trick his brother and his father into this new reality. Here he does not and must work a double-share, balancing the birthright double-share. Where else are variations of primogeniture showing themselves? What factor does this play in a strict constructionist view of capitalism that we call by the shorthand of Enron/WorldCom? Where does it raise its head in terms of the continuing bane of racism? Is it not closely related to a sense of majorityism, so heterosexual is automatically good and homosexual is automatically evil? How do you see the presumption of "We've never done it that way," cropping up in your life and the life of the world? Unfortunately Jacob, a second-born become first, will carry this sin of primogeniture on in his own way with the Joseph story to come. Jesus, a first born, come to serve and not to be served, breaks the power of primogeniture through his claim that the last will become first, that those who come after him will do even greater things than he did (and he will aid them in that "more"). Can we see greatness as what GOD has joined us in providing or do we have the mentality of a cowed (rather than liberated) slave who will always be second? May this blessing of eventually being one (mutual greatness, if you will) and a living GOD doing new things - more than balance - the old blessing keeping alive the hierarchy of primogeniture and "this is not done in our country." Wesley White -- Psalm 105:1-11, 45b or Psalm 128 Canaan is where these days? What place of peace will we rejoice in? It is very easy to associate Canaan with some place, with some physicality that can be measured in bars of a gated-community or resources stored away for both immediate and future accessibility. It is also easy to equate Canaan with my family and those like me. If we open up images to things like "commonwealth" or "extended and inclusive family," what does that do to the promise of Canaan? Will the image of Canaan, the promised land, still hold up if a way can be claimed that will hold us together, rather than further divide us? It might help if we reflect on Canaan coming from the humiliation and distancing of Noah's son Ham (used to justify racism) to become a favored place (or does that simply prove a triumphalist view of life that possession is 9/10 of the law and if there is oil on the reservation even that last bit of land can be confiscated?). How can we nudge along a reclaiming of our being bound together rather than continue to anchor ourselves where our differences lie? Wesley White -- 1 Kings 3:5-12 Solomon's disposition in the beginning was for wisdom. You might ask where that went wrong. By the end of his reign things were falling apart. It is difficult to maintain wisdom in the midst of power. Is a part of the issue before the church and world - the continuing constriction of where GOD can be found. Here at one of many local shrines wisdom can be sought. In the one and only temple power can be found. How are we these days constraining GOD through space and scripture and specialness? Solomon begins where Adam and Eve do, looking for the difference between good and evil. They find evil in the blame game (it's your fault). Solomon will find evil in power (it's my right). Where do you find evil? Searching out the difference between good and evil may be a beginning spot for wisdom, but in the long run wisdom needs more than this. It also needs to find a way for the prophetic judgment that difficulties are also my fault and blessings are also your right. Wesley White -- Psalm 119:129-136 "Redeem me from oppression." A worthy call. "Help me redeem others from oppression." Another worthy call. "I weep because your intentions are not kept." "We weep because our intentions are not kept." To work against oppression of any kind is to work out of weeping that faces might shine. Let us work. Let us shine. Wesley White -- Romans 8:26-39 From Eugene Peterson's translation The Message we hear: "Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. "None of this fazes us because Jesus love us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us." So much here. I would point to one little spot - the versification. Why was verse 39 begun in the middle of a list? My vision is that those little numbers 3&9 (trinity and trinity squared) open a place for us and for others. Here we are welcome to add our particular problem of life and love. Not even our problem will separate us from GOD. Try reading it again (NRSV) -- "(38) For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, (39) [nor my particular problem of life and love, _____], nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Wesley White -- Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 The growing edge is a hidden edge. When you find your bliss, you find your call. "Every student well-trained in God's kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it." The Message Being well-trained is an image of openness. Being well-trained does not limit one to right answers. Being well-trained allows one to bring out the best of the many traditions to respond to a current situation. Being well-trained does not limit one only to tradition, but opens up the possibility of new responses to old situations. May we continue to train well for being able to be present where we are, bringing forth old and new to make better. |