Thursday Thoughts

The migrating geese have surprised me these past few weeks. As I listen to them overhead and watch them fly in their age-old formations, I wonder how they managed to stay this far into our winter. Why didn’t they turn their focus to warmer climates when the wind started blowing cold in November? Now here they are, just days before our first projected below 0 temps, heading south.

As I watch them fly by, I am reminded of this poem by Mary Oliver:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

The world offers itself to your imagination,

Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

Over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

If my mind is elsewhere, the honks of those geese bring me right back to where I am – to the recognition of my cold hands, my dog pulling on her leash, and the color of the sky. Worry and grief can cause us to shut out the world we are part of – turning us inward where we ruminate on all we cannot control.

In Matthew 6:25-34 we read Jesus telling his disciples not to “worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”  He turns his disciples’ attention to the birds of the air, to the lilies of the field, and to the grass of the field. Look at those birds up there, he points, “they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Look at the lilies over there, he points, “they neither toil nor spin.” Jesus pointed his listeners to things they would have seen regularly – birds, flowers, and grass. Things that are part of the beloved creation. Things that can teach us and remind us to trust God with our cares. Things that can remind us to see the creation around us and to remember our “place in the family of things,” a place overseen by a God whose care for flora and fauna is a constant reminder of God’s care for us.

Look around you today at the natural world – what reminders surround you of God’s ongoing and ever-present care? Perhaps the bulbs that are popping up or the shrubs whose swelling buds promise their ongoing life. Where do you find reminders of God’s care around you?

Blessings, 

Pastor Amy

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In a 1966 Time Magazine interview, the infamous German theologian Karl Barth recalled, on the occasion of his retirement, some advice he had given to young preachers 40 years earlier:

“Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible." Newspapers, he says, are so important that "I always pray for the sick, the poor, journalists, authorities of the state and the church—in that order. Journalists form public opinion. They hold terribly important positions. Nevertheless, a theologian should never be formed by the world around him—either East or West. He should make it his vocation to show both East and West that they can live without a clash. Where the peace of God is proclaimed, there peace on earth is implicit. Have we forgotten the Christmas message?

“The Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other” has become axiomatic to many a preacher. In all honesty, today the newspaper and its online equivalents feel too heavy for me to keep holding. The mass shootings in 2023 alone are enough to take away all the light of hope that Advent managed to shine into our world - the peace candle snuffed out by guns and rolled over by tanks. 

I don’t know about you, but I want the way I live out my faith to make an actual difference in the world - to bring peace into violent places and to shift the direction of history so no one has to say sudden and painful goodbyes to those they love. I want the light of Advent to keep shining - I want the Gospel of God’s peace to be proclaimed and for it to actually make a difference. Sometimes the newspaper casts all kinds of doubt on this - as I’m sure it does for some of you.

Peace making is hard work. It takes all of us. In his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” When Monterey Park, Colorado Springs, or Half Moon Bay are violated as they have been this winter, we are too - for we are all part of God’s beloved creation. I think part of the fatigue we feel with the constant news is because we are all hurt as well - hurt and discouraged and enraged.

Peace is hard work, but peace is what we are called to as followers of the Prince of Peace. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, exhorted his reader to “not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have the opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith” (6:9-10).

Friends, let us be the peace this world needs.

Lord grant us the strength for the work. Help us to not grow weary.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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As I type this, with burns on two fingers and a struggling fire in my wood stove, I just want to talk about what is wrong with this song. Let’s take a look at the lyrics, shall we?

Pass it On

By Kurt Kaiser

It only takes a spark to get a fire going

And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.

That’s how it is with God’s love,

Once you’ve experienced it,

You spread the love to everyone,

You want to pass it on.

LIES! THIS SONG IS ALL LIES!

My issue is primarily with two words: “only” and “soon.” Apparently Kurt Kaiser wrote this song one evening while sitting in front of his own fireplace. Perhaps he had a lot more experience than I do in the whole fire building department - but I am fairly certain that you must have perfect conditions for “only a spark” to “soon” become a pleasant, warming fire. Meanwhile, my fires seem to require a cracked window, paper, kindling, small wood, big wood, dry wood, more paper, a bit of time and patience, and a sprinkling of fairy dust before I have a fire pleasant enough to warm the room. 

Kurt Kaiser wanted us to think about God’s love as something that happens quickly and that prods us on to spreading the Good News to others. Sometimes we do experience God’s love instantaneously and miraculously, but often (at least in my experience) our encounters with the God-who-is-love are much more complicated. Just like fire building takes the right conditions and the right people (I have three folks teaching me how to build a good fire), so does resting in God’s love. It might take time. It might smoke for a while and take careful tending before it actually catches, before we can actually say that we have felt and known God’s love.

The author of 1 John gave us this profound description of who God is and how we create the right conditions for God’s love to warm us:

Beloved, let us love one another, 

because love is from God; 

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. . . . 

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, 

God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (4:7-8, 12)

That’s right - it takes all of us together, loving one another, for the God-who-is-love to be made visible to this world, visible to us. Perhaps sometimes we experience God’s love like a spark setting alight a blaze. Perhaps sometimes we experience God’s love as a slow-starting fire that must be tended by those around us. But, no matter how quick it catches, it takes each of us, we are the necessary conditions!

SHOUT IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOPS! 

That is a line I can get behind - for this world needs to hear how we experience God’s love, no matter how fast it catches us. How have you experienced God’s love this week? To whom will you tell that story?

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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“In 1922, on the first Sunday of the New Year, two young mothers, Edna Spooner and Gertrude Carlson, brought their son and daughter, respectively, to Sunday School at Phillips Memorial, and having to wait for them, looked for a class suitable for themselves. Only one adult class, taught by Mr. Herbert Durfee, was available - a class in which the members were mostly grandmothers. These two joined a third young women [sic] seated alone in the back seat. Feeling rather out of place with such old people, they introduced themselves to each other. . . . The three women agreed to form a Sunday School class.” Hope Circle History Book, 1922 - 1962. 

These three women saw a need for Christian education and fellowship for their age group and being open to doing something new founded what became known as the “Hope Circle.” Since then Hope Circle has taken on a number of support and ministry roles at Phillips, including the Christmas Bazaar that we are most familiar with. 

The history of God’s work in the world is full of stories of God doing new things through willing people. God spoke through the Prophet Isaiah to exiled Israel with these words: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). 

Certainly God is a God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8), but that “sameness” doesn’t mean God is static, instead it means that God is consistent. God is consistently here. God is consistently loving. God is consistently doing new, unexpected, and grace-filled things - just like God did through those three women who saw a need and followed the Spirit’s urging 101 years ago.

God did a new thing through the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who stood up to racism and Jim Crow by declaring that the Church’s work had to include racial reconciliation and justice. God is doing a new thing through Christians who take seriously the cries of the natural world, knowing that God has declared this creation good and that Christ’s redemption extends even to the trees and flowers (Romans 8:22-23). God is doing a new thing now as we at Phillips wrestle with what it means to bring reconciliation and justice to folks excluded from the body of Christ because of gender or sexuality, for we know that all folks are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). 

God keeps showing up with love and grace, always doing something new in and through God’s beloved church. How, church, might we be open to being part of doing that new work in 2023?

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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