"A SONG OF MYSELF"

 “A SONG OF MYSELF”

My 79th birthday (November 27) falls on Thanksgiving Day this year – I was born on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1946 in Methodist Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and though I grew up in Arkansas, the city of Memphis was always the urban area to which I related.  So, I’m celebrating myself and my life this week, and I love using the line from Walt Whitman’s poem as the title of the blog.

If you’ve read my semi-memoir “She Made a Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World,” you’ll know my story.  If you haven’t read it, get it somewhere and read it and let me know what you think.  Many people have found it profound and provocative, and have found it to be an invitation for them to enter into reflections about their own journeys.  Short summary – I was raised by a single mom in a white, male supremacist world, and while I drank in the kool-aid of racism and sexism and homophobia and militarism, my mother and others helped to shape me in a different way.  Thanks to my mother and to many others, I’ve had several conversions which have enabled me to move towards a sense of liberation from many of those captivities which I breathed in as a child (to use the Apostle Paul’s powerful image from Ephesians 2).  That captivity is so deep, however, that I am afraid that I always stand in the need of more conversions.  I give thanks for my life and for all those who have loved me, challenged me, comforted me, delighted me, and stayed with me – THANK YOU!

I want to close with a Mary Oliver poem, but before I do, in this Thanksgiving week, I must simply add a feeling of disgust and revulsion at the Trumpster’s and the Republicans’ use of SNAP and food benefits as a negotiating tool in the struggle over the government shutdown.  Though I thought he could no longer shock me, I still must register a fundamental outrage that he would allow people to go hungry in order to win political points.  These first ten months of his reign of terror make me tremble for the remaining 3 years – or at least the one year before the Democrats regain control of Congress.

And now on the poem “Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.  The poem is a familiar one to many of us, but it also reminds me of the great gift of life and the call from God to be grateful and to share that gratitude with others.

“SUMMER DAY”

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean —

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 Mary Oliver

"A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING"

 "A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING"

For my blog this week, I am using a prayer by my colleague, the Reverend Irv Porter, pastor of the Church of The Indian Fellowship in Tacoma, Washington.  He is also PCUSA Associate for Native American Intercultural Congregational Support, and he is a descendant of the Nez Perce, Pima and T'hona O'odham tribes. He and I served together on the Presbyterian Intercultural Network Board.  May we all feel and find this sacred connection to God’s creation, including our own selves and others.

A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

Creator God,

From the rising of the sun in the east to its setting in the west, you have blessed us with life, family, food from creation and spiritual ways drawing us closer to you.

You gave us this land, Turtle Island, to care for, to live in and to preserve for coming generations. Stop our ears when talk of destroying the land for temporary gain is heard. Teach us to respect the land and all her gifts of life. We are all related so what happens to any part of Creation affects us all. We are reminded that the land holds our ancestors, making it sacred.

As we work to end intolerance of people and cultures and our tolerance of historic injustice, open our hearts to reflect your image, your peace and your love to all. Open our spirits to peace and healing with those from all nations.

The wind, the sunrise, the sound of water moving forward, the songs of the bird, the beauty of the butterfly — all these things are where we find you, always. Help us to find you in this beauty and grant us lives centered upon you, Creator of the universe.

For all these blessings and more, our hearts are full of thanks. At this gathering of family and friends, this great feast of blessing, we thank you. Guide us to know your ways with respect. Hear our prayer of Thanksgiving. Let it be so.

Amen.

"WHENCE THE CHURCH?"

 “WHENCE THE CHURCH?”

In his fine 1971 song “City of New Orleans,” Steve Goodman wrote about the demise of the passenger railroad trains throughout the country.  In that song were these lines about the death of the passenger railroad trains:

“And the steel wheels still ain't heard the news

The conductor sings his songs again, the passengers will please refrain

This train's got the disappearin' railroad blues”

“The old steel rails still ain’t heard the news” is a line that reminds me of the situation of the mainline white church in America these days.  As an institution, the church is in hospice care, but some of us are in denial or are simply unaware that the era of the white church in America is ending, with God waiting to birth a new form in the decades ahead.  

In the midst of the rebirth of the church, in which directions can we look?  First, in one of the great ironies of life, just as the church is dying, we as a culture are in great need of a vital church which can speak to the powers about justice and can act in loving and welcoming ways, building community with all whom God sends.   Whatever forms the new church of God takes, it must be grounded in this guideline from the prophet Micah:  love kindness, do justice, walk humbly.  In a time of food insecurity, when the federal government and some state governors act like those passersby in Jesus’ parable of “The Good Samaritan,” the church would do well to be a source of food for the belly and food for the soul for those of us in need.

Second, we need new imaginations about what our worship services will look like.  Covid dragged us kicking and screaming into a virtual technological age, and though I am so glad that I had retired when this occurred, it forced church leadership to think and sometimes act imaginatively about worship.  It will not be possible for the church to go back to a non-hybrid age, when the incarnation of the church meant everyone physically together in one sanctuary.  In our Oakhurst days, we instituted a time of sharing joys and concerns, when people got up in worship to ask for prayers for themselves, for loved ones, for the world.  It was a powerful time of vulnerability, and in an age when we are taught to seek to be individualistic and self-sufficient and independent, it was a profound way of building community.  Though the church membership grew so much that we no longer took the time to have people stand up and share, we still retained the approach by having worshippers write down their concerns and joys and have the worship leader share them.  Those kinds of risky approaches are needed in mainline white church worship in these days.   In a time when the community is falling apart, we must find ways to rebuild authentic communities based on the values of love, justice, equity and compassion.

    In regard to church buildings, there are many options.  Some churches have already started transforming their space into something more useful to the community.  Our friend Richelle Patton has started a company that works with churches to adapt church building space to become affordable housing.  In most of these situations, Richelle’s company,  Collaborative Housing Solutions, works with congregations to convert their property into affordable housing, all the while remodeling some of the space to meet the congregation’s need for worship and educational activities.  If you or your church leaders want more info on Richelle’s work, contact me, and I’ll put you together with her.   There are all kinds of possibilities for churches to share space with other congregations, day cares, elder cares, food banks, and other non-profits.

As I indicated earlier, churches must return to the Christian tradition’s emphasis on weaving spirituality and justice together into one tapestry. In the USA, we split them apart in order for our “Christian” members to be able to hold people as slaves and to exploit others in neo-slavery.  And, notice that I did not say “spirituality and politics.”  While there is an authentic intersection between spirituality and politics, that can quickly go awry, as we see in today’s Christian Wrong movement.  Most of them would not recognize justice if it walked up and kissed them.  No, this necessity for the future of the church is much deeper and wider.  It asks those who claim as Jesus Christ as Lord to begin to witness and to work for justice in the society.  This work is the only way to meet the risen Jesus – otherwise, we are meeting a puppet of Jesus that we have made in our own image.

Where does the church go from here?  These are some of the guidelines for us to follow: building authentic community where everyone is welcomed;  imaginations to see new ways of worship and life together;  sharing our building capacity with those in need in our community;  re-weaving spirituality and justice together so that the tapestry of the church has both threads running through it. In this way, when outsiders look at the church community, they see not a mean, judgmental community but rather a community centered on the God we know in Jesus, a community whose main characteristics are love, compassion, justice, and equality.