Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Processing Brother Roger's death

I had been composing a Lectionary Meditation the other day, when I came across the news about Brother Roger's martyrdom. I had to delete my lame little draft and dwell on this horror awhile. I've never been to Taize, nor did I know him personally, so I should be like the rest of those around me here at Church, not terribly affected by yet another piece of bad news. Perhaps it's because I had recently read the book he co-wrote with Mother Theresa, Prayer: Seeking the Heart of God. and I love to sing the Taize chants we use at one of the services at our church that I have an awareness of Brother Roger's presence that had been in the world, a presence that brought some of Christ's love to so many. And he was slaughtered, like a lamb before the altar... there is always something more shocking about a murder in a church, like Romero, like Thomas a Becket, the real blood spilt upon the altar... And I see in this act the underlying reality that the demonic recoils from the face of love and seeks to extinguish it, love revealing our own unworthiness too sharply. Unlike many other progressive Christians, I think there are evil beings, and I think they are growing very active. Check out Pat Robertson's latest. Claiming to be a Christian and promulgating assassination!!?? God help us.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Lectionary Meditation: meek and what?

http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/1Proper15.htm

I know a lot of people who want to do what they can to make the earth a more peaceful, loving place. They believe that is what they are called, as Christians, to do, and I can't argue with that. But I wonder sometimes about the image of Jesus they evoke. These people want to ignore all the parables and actions of Jesus (like the one yesterday, in which he cursed a fig tree and whipped some people he didn't approve of, or today, where he mentions that the vineyard is going to be destroyed) that don't fit in with their image of Jesus, which seems to come from that Victorian ideal, Jesus "meek and mild." The right-wing Christians go too far in the opposite direction, and are all too eager to point out all the judgmental prophecies of destruction and damnation to those who don't understand God in the same way as they do. But I don't actually know too many people like that in real life (Thanks Be to God) and I do know the other kind, so it's their idolatry I want to talk about. It's idolatry when you create a God you're comfortable with, instead of opening yourself to a God who can't be narrowly defined. I just wonder how they've come up with this meek and mild ideal: it isn't a God after their own image, since none of them, that I know, are quite so sweet and passive. And the Jesus that's coming out of these readings from Mark, seems to be growing aware of his mission, an awareness that is concurrent with a growing anger at the way things are, anger that they aren't listening to him, anger that the vineyard is not operating the way it was intended.

Watermelons rock!

Doc Bubbles has a new diet: the watermelon diet! Now that you can buy truly seedless watermelons, they have become the perfect fruit. Juicy, cooling and filling. The best part, for me, is that they are high in potassium, (http://www.news-medical.net/?id=12199) and since I am trying to control my high blood pressure without all those icky drugs, that is important. I am sorry that stereotypical associations have made some people afraid to chomp into those juicy watermelons (especially since African-Americans are prone to high-blood pressure and like me can benefit from eating them). Eat watermelons freely everyone! Yum!

Monday, August 15, 2005

Lectionary Meditation: random act of defoliation?

http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/1Proper15.htm

Cursing the curse

Jesus sounds like he was in a bad mood that day, cursing a poor fig tree that was only doing what came naturally to it (not bearing fruit out of season), then going in and laying on the moneylenders, who were only doing what came naturally to them (as human beings)--commodifying--fracturing a living relationship with God into objects for consumption.

I always thought it a bit unfair, cursing the fig tree, since it was not its time to bear fruit, after all. But it starts to seem less like a hunger-based temper tantrum (something I am not unfamiliar with) if you start to see trees as fellow subjects of God’s kingdom rather than as simple mindless objects. To figure out what God might be thinking about trees, let's consider other important fruit trees: the ones in the Garden of Eden.

First, God established plant life, saying, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” (Gen. 1:11) then God created Adam and “put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). So picture this as a place of continual growth and fruition, as Milton saw it, when he had Adam say, “Each Tree / Load'n with fairest Fruit, that hung to the Eye / Tempting, stirr'd in me sudden appetite /To pluck and eate; whereat I wak'd, and found / Before mine Eyes all real, as the dream [Paradise Lost Bk VIII, v. 306- 310]. From the beginning we were meant to eat, and be nourished by the Creation. Growing stuff and eating it: that’s Life 101. That’s the world that God blessed as good. The world God desired and loved. But that’s not the world that ensued after the Fall, when Adam and Eve ate the one fruit they were not supposed to eat. Not the world that Jesus entered and worked in, as a carpenter, a man who works with trees that are no longer living (wood), shaping dead objects from that which was meant to be living. And it is this fallen world of sweat and hunger, where plants do not feed us whenever we want, that Jesus is saying is wrong, is not the way it was meant to be… It is this cursing of the curse that we see when we view the withered fig tree, not a random act of defoliation.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Discovery

"Hey, that's a beautiful steam shovel. I never noticed that before!"

--words that can only be spoken by a guy, recently presecribed an SSRI.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

More proof that cars are sentient beings

Why do we flash our headlights to warn oncoming drivers that there's a speed trap ahead? The rest of the time we are cursing them into the farthest reaches of hell. We are angry they are tailgating, passing over double yellow lines and nearly colliding head-on with us, almost mowing us down as pedestrians or cyclists, but we see a police car tucked neatly beside an underpass, waiting to teach an important lesson to a malevolent speeding maniac and what do we do? automatically, without, it seems, even thinking: warn them with our headlights! (By the way, you can get busted for this.) I am telling you--it isn't us. It's the cars. They are communicating with each other. They invaded this planet because it seemed like a good place to drive too fast. (See post from August 6 2005 for further details of this important new theory. )

So the next time you see a speed trap, try, control your fingers. Don't warn the oncoming speeders with your headlights. Instead, let the cars know we still rule this planet. And we say "slow is beautiful."

Saturday, August 06, 2005

The Sanity of Trees

When I first saw how the beavers had turned the part of the trail up by the Brook trail into a lake, where it had been a flowing stream, I was sorry. The trees stand in water, dying, and the tops of the pines are orange-red. The water is murky. But today, when I arrived, a great blue heron arose and flew off, as did a couple other waterfowls. When I approached the water there was a squeak and a splash, and then another, as various frogs jumped from utter invisibility into the water, where they were even more hidden. I stood still, then moved again, trying to see them. Only occasionally could my eyes actually see one of the frogs as it went leaping through the water, like a skipping stone. My vision of this place was transformed. Instead of the nasty result of the too busy beavers like a bunch of manic engineers, I saw a paradise that wasn’t meant for me, but for these others; they delighted in their new home. All was well in the woods.

After a week in which there were two road rage shootings in the east of the state, and I cannot drive five miles from the house without encountering a car honking and trying to jut in and out of cars so it can go 80 in a 45 mph zone, I hear the sound of the train whistle, though I cannot see it from deep inside the late summer woods. How different a train whistle is from a car horn. Though it is announcing that it is coming--fast--and not stopping and get out of the way, all things which would be construed as hostile, and it seems a cry of kindness, of glorying in its own, harmless, energy. How different this country would be if the trains had won out over cars. I know there were many factors, mainly having to do with who could pay off the politicians more handsomely, that made our nation be developed along highways rather than rails, in the 20th century. It seems inevitable in retrospect: a society that values the individual above all, naturally should have gone with the most individualistic means of transportation. But perhaps it wasn’t inevitable, perhaps it is the cars’ fault. Think of it: cars are an alien species and they wanted to talk over the earth so they knew just how to play off on our individualistic tendencies, to cater to them, encourage and stoke them until they were utterly out of control and the cars are really in control. We drive killing machines, we become killing machines, what's the difference, we crash and kill or get out with guns and kill. The cars are happy either way, they win. (OK: I have just finished reading VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Check out www. philipkdickfans.com.)