Contents 2004:
"Riding the River, and Keeping
Up with All Those Jesuses!"
To me that is the excitement of a rise: the unexpectedness, always, of the
change it makes. What was difficult becomes easy. What was easy becomes
difficult. By water, what was distant becomes near. By land, what was near
becomes distant. At the waterline, when a rise was on, the world is changing.
There is an irresistible sense of adventure in the difference. Once the river
is out of its banks, a vertical few inches of rise may widen the surface by
many feet over the bottomland. A sizable lagoon will appear in the middle of a
cornfield. A drain in a pasture will become a canal. Stands of beech and oak
will take on the look of a cypress swamp. There is something Venetian about
it. There is a strange excitement in going in a boat where one would
ordinarily go on foot – or where, ordinarily, birds would be flying. And so
the first excitement of our trip was that little path; where it might go in a
time of low water was unimaginable. Now it went down to the river.
Because of the offset in the shore at the creek mouth, there was a large
eddy turning in the river where we put in, and we began our drift downstream
by drifting upstream. We went up inside the row of shore trees, whose tops now
waved in the current, until we found an opening among the branches, and then
turned out along the channel. The current took us. We were still settling
ourselves as if in preparation, but our starting place was already diminishing
behind us.
There was something ominously like life in that. One would always like to
settle oneself, get braced, say "Now I am going to begin" – and
then begin. But as the necessary quiet seems about to descend, a hand is felt
at one’s back, shoving. And that is the way with the river when a current is
running: once the connection with the shore is broken, the journey has begun .
. . .
Wendell Berry, "River
Rising,"
from Pamela Michaels, edt., The Gift of Rivers
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This Iraq will go to the end of the graveyard
It will bury its citizens in open country
Generation after generation
And will forgive its executioner.
Iraq, as was known, will never come back
And the larks will never sing
So go on – if you wish – for a long time
Beseech – if you wish – all the angels
All the demons of this universe
Beseech the bulls of Assyria,
A soaring Phoenix,
Beseech them all
And, through the smoke of nightmares,
Wait for the censer’s miracle
-- Sa’di Yusuf, Iraqi Poet in
Western Exile
Our Lent began with Willis Barnstone invoking
Jesus as poet and teacher! There is poetry all through Jesus’
life and work, as Willis sets down so well, and especially in the last
week of his life, a poetry of “palms and passion,” with no power
against all the “powers that be” save for the power to capture
imagination! To fall into the soil of our minds and hearts, our
bodies and souls, and die, says John 12, as a single seed in order to
bring forth much fruit, as we, following him, come alive to our own
nonviolent, resilient, persistent powers to capture imagination in the
persons and relationships, circles and communities, worlds and ways of
life all around us! Beginning today, Jesus so perfectly plans this
week with poetry of word and deed – entry into the city on a donkey,
-- confrontation with money-changers at the temple, -- return each night
to base camp in Bethany with trusted friends, -- parabolic debate each
day with officials of both church and state, -- faith-freshening
interpretations of scriptures, current, and future events,--
scrupulous preparations for Passover with his disciples, --
revolutionary breaking of bread and sharing of cup, -- prayer in the
garden, ignored, interrupted, -- betrayals, denials, abandonments,
trials through the night, -- cocks and cloaks, crosses and crowns, --
surely the most re-membered week since the first one in all of Creation
. . . .
We have been reading in this space each week
poems of “Iraqi Poets in Western Exile.” Iraq is but one of
those desert/deserted places where the poetry of “palms and passions”
passes on to this day. It has been said of the desert poets, they
“are people of theatre in a tradition that was until recent times
without actors or playwrights. The poets stand alone on stage with
only the wellsprings of their own souls of memory, imagination, and
skill to draw on, and the audience’s hunger and applause to prompt
them. They live and die on the big stage by what they can raise up
in their people’s hearts beyond their personal points of view.”
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"Ulysses"
On Malmo’s bridge
I saw the Euphrates
Extending its hands
And leading me –
Where to? I said.
The dream was hardly over
when I saw the Umayyad soldiers
besieging me from every direction.
Farewell to a window
in the land of ruins
Farewell to a palm tree, bombed, stripped of
its greenness
Farewell to my mother’s clay oven
Farewell to our jaded history piled up on
racks
Farewell to a bitter homeland that we leave
behind
but where to?
bitterness of exile?
Nothing is left of the palm trees that shaded
me
except pale images
empty benches
and trunks of gallows
that demand our heads
And the Euphrates, which baptized me with its
pains,
still meanders, coursing with the sorrows of
listless
villages
Oh Ulysses
if only you had not arrived
if only the road to Malmo were longer
longer
longer
Oh stranger
who has not seen
a moment of joy?
How does every exile turn into a prison
without walls?
Adnan Al-Sayigh, Iraqi
Poet in Western Exile
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"My Love Humiliated me"
My love humiliated me
So did my wound that extends from the palm
tree’s braids
To the people’s bread
And when the Tartars one night besieged me
I crossed the wall of the massacred homeland
Anxiety was my provision
Terror was my water
I roamed the fires of the East
The gardens of the West
With no companions
Except residues of my home’s ashes
The clay of the Euphrates and Tigris
Splattered on my clothes
I searched for my childhood
In the memory of days
In the refuse of oppressive wars
Seeking my city
Looking for my beloved among this age’s
captives
Uncovering my roots
A sweet enchanting Euphrates
Suddenly I saw a palm tree on a sidewalk
I shook it
Tears flowed down over my face
And when I shook the earth’s trunk
Oh God
Iraq surges in my heart.
-- Yahya Al-Samawi, Iraqi Poet in
Western Exile
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"Enheduanna"
Oh Towers:
It’s time to leave this Mesopotamian soil
This land of sighs
Too many dead you have buried
While brooding your conspiracies
Your rotten days
Time for emptiness
To fill my veins
Bleeding with remorse
As I lament what escaped my heart
Left me forsaken in the Bavarians’ temple
Like a moon obscured with fleeting mists
Oh Towers, who can defend us
Save my silence and your deceitful desert
Abandon me
Do what you like
Plant me at the wind’s whims
Disperse my joy
Across the map of gossips and clouds
Say what you like
Here she went, there she rested
Out of her conscience rises the jinn’s cry
On her lips rest Uruk’s borders, Akkad’s
secrets
And in her body bloom all the tormented
gardens
On the crown of ruins
She was Sargon’s jewel
And the priestess of dispersion
Forget not to mention
In your cursed tablets:
Enheduanna’s heart was greater than
The tyrants’ gospels.
-- Amal Al-Juburi,
Iraqi poet in Western Exile
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"The Dead Know
No Fear"
I went out like a sleepwalker
Aroused by nightmares
I began searching for my homeland
In all continents
On earth and in heavens
Praying
Reciting every supplication
Carrying shrines on my shoulders
And a generation of orphaned martyrs
And a generation of veteran martyrs
And another awaiting the massacre
All the martyrs and the massacred
Are resurrected
Standing as tombstones above the graves
Fearless as death
The children of death
Are waking up
In their shrouds
With their heads shaven
Crying out:
Oh homeland of the innocent
Were you for us as a graveyard?
Or a homeland?
-- Abd Al-Latif
Ataymish, Iraqi Poet in Western Exile
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"A Homeland without
Friends"
Fates have wronged you
When you were born, oh my homeland
In the age of calamities
Oh land of fertility and water
(Between two rivers or two swords)
You suffer thirst
You suffer hunger
As your Euphrates and Tigris
Turned into blood
For how long, oh my homeland,
Should you suffer?
Scattered are your innocent people
Oh cities of this earth
Stretch your arms
Oh roads of mourning
Branch off
As the heart is torn
By friends’ betrayal
Oh frontiers let your open spaces
Embrace them
As they pitch a tent for weeping!
-- Abd Al-Latif
Ataymish, Iraqi Poet in Western Exile
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Scripture strongly affirms ministries of spiritual healing . . . The
root of the word healing in New Testament Greek, sozo, is
the same as that of salvation and wholeness. Spiritual
healing is God’s work of offering persons balance, harmony, and
wholeness of body, mind, spirit, and relationships through confession,
forgiveness, and reconciliation. Through such healing, God works
to bring about reconciliation between God and humanity, among
individuals and communities, within each person, and between humanity
and the rest of creation. The New Testament records that Jesus
himself healed the estranged and sick and sent out his disciples on
ministries of healing. James calls us also to pray for and anoint
the sick, that they may be healed.
All healing is of God. The Church’s healing
ministry in no way detracts from the gifts God gives through medicine
and psychotherapy. It is no substitute for either medicine or the
proper care of one’s health. Rather, it adds to our total
resources for wholeness.
Healing is not magic, but underlying it is the
great mystery of God’s love. Those who minister spiritual
healing are channels of God’s love. Although no one can predict
what will happen in a given instance, many marvelous healings have taken
place.
God does not promise that we shall be spared
suffering but does promise to be with us in our suffering.
Trusting that promise, we are enabled to recognize God’s sustaining
presence in pain, sickness, injury, and estrangement.
Likewise, God does not promise that we will be
cured of all illnesses; and we all must face the inevitability of
death. A Service of Healing is not necessarily a service of
curing, but it provides an atmosphere in which healing can happen.
The greatest healing of all is the reunion or reconciliation of a human
being with God. When this happens, physical healing sometimes
occurs, mental and emotional balance is often restored, spiritual health
is enhanced, and relationships are healed. For the Christian the
basic purpose of spiritual healing is to renew and strengthen one’s
relationship with the living Christ. . . .
Laying on of hands, anointing with oil, and the
less formal gesture of holding someone’s hand all show the power of
touch, which plays a central role in the healings recorded in the New
Testament. . . . Anointing the forehead with oil is a sign act invoking
the healing love of God. The oil points beyond itself and those
doing the anointing to the action of the Holy Spirit and the presence of
the healing Christ, who is God’s Anointed One.
-- The
United Methodist Book of Worship
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of page
"Not Over and Done With?"
Baptism is not over and done with
When the pastor pours water on our infant
foreheads.
The truth is we are being baptized
By everything that happens to us in life.
We are baptized by trials and difficulties:
In their turbulent waters
We are purified of all that is false and
useless.
We are baptized by suffering:
In its murky waters
We grow in humility and compassion.
We are baptized by joy:
In its gurgling waters
We experience the goodness of life.
We are baptized by love:
In its singing waters
We blossom like flowers in the sun.
To be baptized is to be Christened,
Which means to be made like Christ.
The sacrament, however, only begins this.
It is like the planting of a seed.
It will take a lifetime for the seed to grow
and ripen,
For the image of Christ to be formed in us.
But, formed it shall be!
From,
"Resources for Reconciling Sunday 2004
Watermarked: A
Witness of Assurance"
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Czelaw Milosz,
"Abundant Catch" (Luke 5:4-10)
On the shore fish tossed in the stretched
nets of Simon, James, and John.
High above, swallows. Wings of butterflies.
Cathedrals.
Isaiah, Prophet (eighth
century B.C.E.)
"I was ready to be sought by those who
did not ask for me;
I was ready to be found by those who did not
seek me.
I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’ to a
nation that did not call on my name."
Thinking
Day (Scouting and Guiding movement worldwide)
Thinking Day is the international day to observe and support
scouting and guiding movements worldwide. The Boy Scouts were founded in
England by Lord Robert Baden-Powell in 1908, and the Girl Guides (called
Girl Scouts in the U.S.) by his sister Agnes Baden-Powell in 1910. His
wife, Olave (Lady Baden-Powell), also became active in the Girl Guide
organization and, in 1930, was appointed World Chief Guide. Various
groups within the Scouting and Guiding movement are closely affiliated
with denominations worldwide. Central to the Baden-Powells’ vision was
that this organization would prepare young people for community
leadership, based on a strong faith in God. February 22, Lord and Lady
Baden-Powell’s birthdays, is set aside as a day for all Scouts and
Guides to hold special meetings to think about the worldwide community
of Scouting.
Boy Scout Sunday/Girl Scout Sunday,
The UM Book of Worship
Boy Scout Sunday is observed on the second Sunday in February; Girl
Scout Sunday is observed on the second Sunday in March. When it is not
practical to honor Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts separately, it is acceptable to
have joint recognition in an inclusive service between the second Sunday in
February and the second Sunday in March. Scout Sunday offers an excellent
opportunity for the local congregation to recognize the Scouting program, the
Scouts, and their leaders as an integral and intentional part of the Church’s
ministry. Use Scout members as ushers, acolytes, worship leaders, and
musicians.
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June Jordan,
"Poem for South African Women"
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of
thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow
land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world
The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire
And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open
eye
And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR
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The 7 Ups!
1. Wake Up !!
Decide to have a good day.
"This is the day the Lord hath made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalms 118:24
2. Dress Up !!
The best way to dress up is to put on a smile.
A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
"The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.
Man looks at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
I Samuel 16:7
3. Shut Up!!
Say nice things and learn to listen. God gave us two ears and one mouth,
so He must have meant for us to do twice as much listening as talking.
"He who guards his lips guards his soul." Proverbs 13:3
4. Stand Up!!
. . . for what you believe in. Stand for something or you will fall for
anything.
"Let us not be weary in doing good; for at the proper time, we will reap
a harvest
if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do
good..." Galatians 6:9-10
5. Look Up !
. . . to the Lord.
"I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me". Philippians
4:13
6. Reach Up !!
. . . for something higher.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own
understanding.
Acknowledge Him in all that you do, and He will direct your path."
Proverbs 3:5-6
7. Lift Up !!
. . . your Prayers.
"Do not worry about anything; instead
PRAY ABOUT EVERYTHING." Philippians 4:6
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"The Wedding at Cana,"
Esperanza Guevara
ERNESTO: In the Old Testament the messianic
era had often been described as an epoch of great abundance of wine. The
prophet Amos has said that when the Messiah came there would be great harvests
of wheat and grapes, and that the hills would distill wine. By this miracle
Christ is making it clear that he is the promised Messiah.
MARCELINO: He was coming to bring unity and
brotherhood among people. That’s the wine he brought. If there’s no
sisterhood among people there’s no joy. A person’s birthday or saint’s
day is not a happy party if there’s division.
TERESITA, William’s wife: But it wasn’t at
any old party that he performed the miracle. It was at a wedding party.
ERNESTO: It had often been prophesied also
that the messianic era would be like a wedding with God.
FELIPE: No one will be excluded from that
wedding. That will be true social justice.
"The Reason," Eric Pankey
To clarify and allow
For abundance, for revery.
To be permitted clemency,
A first, if not a second chance,
A taste, a glimpse, the sleight-of-hand
Of miracles and the obvious . . . .
To take what is closest at hand
And set a story in motion.
Not to make something from nothing,
But, as at Cana, to be moved,
Even unwillingly, by need.
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"When the Saints Go Marching In"
(Intro)
We are trav’ling in the footsteps
Of those who’ve gone before
But we’ll all be reunited
On a new & sunlit shore
O when the Saints go marching in
O when the Saints go marching in
O Lord I want to be in that number
When the Saints go marching in
And when the sun refuse to shine . . .
O when they gather round the throne . . .
And when they crown him king of kings . . .
When the moon turns red with blood . . .
On that hallelujah day . . .
On when the trumpet sounds the call . . .
(Bridge, as Intro)
Some say this world of trouble
Is the only one we need
But I’m waiting for that morning
When the new world is revealed
O when the new world is revealed . . .
When there is no call to war . . .
When we all can find a job . . .
When the air is pure & clean . . .
When we all have food to eat . . .
When our leaders learn to cry . . .
(Make up your own verses!)
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Kate Compston:
Beckoning God –
who called the rich to travel toward poverty,
the wise to embrace your folly,
the powerful to know their own frailty;
who gave to strangers
a sense of homecoming in an alien land
and to stargazers
true light and vision as they bowed to earth
–
we lay ourselves open to your signs for us.
Stir us with holy discontent over a world
Which gives its gifts to those
who have plenty already
whose talents are obvious
whose power is recognized;
and help us
both to share our resources with those who
have little
and to receive with humility the gifts they
bring to us.
Rise within us, like a star,
and make us restless
till we journey forth
to seek our rest in you.
* * *
My singing heart, my days’ doxology, my
gold,
I bring for CELEBRATION.
My stillness, my glimpses of serenity, my
frankincense,
I bring for MEDITATION.
My brokenness, my tears of rage and sorrow,
my myrrh,
I bring for SACRIFICE.
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