We Are All Pilgrims

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the wonderful month of May!  Maybe you remember the riddle from elementary school?  If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?  The answer is Pilgrims.    That is us.  We are Pilgrims.  No. of course we don’t wear the funny hats or have buckles on our shoes.  At least most of us don’t.  Still, we are pilgrims. 

This truth sometimes causes tension in our life.  After all, we are trained from the earliest age to act like we have “it” all together.  What the “it” is varies, for some it is life, for others religion, for others, well, I’m sure that you can fill in the blank on your own.  What we are not supposed to do is honestly admit that we are a work in process, that we are not yet complete, and that a little help on the way is certainly appreciated.  Too bad about that because, actually, eventually, most of us accept the truth that we are in process, that we are not yet complete, and that we can use a bit of help on the way.  What happens then is wonderful, delightful, and holy.  What happens then is that God can begin to work with our cooperation and help us grow into the unique person whom God has intended for us to be from before the beginning of time.  That growing is our pilgrimage.  We experience delightful and sometimes terrible things on our Pilgrimage.   We learn every day from any number of people along our Pilgrim way.

We get to help and teach those we meet on this holy Pilgrimage.   All of these opportunities come to us because Pilgrimage is a way of living that constantly introduces us to new situations, new people, and new needs, and opportunities.   Pilgrimage accepts that we have a responsibility to the land through which we are passing and a responsibility to keep our ultimate goal in mind.    As author Paul Coelho reminds us “The boat is safer anchored at the port; but that’s not the aim of boats.” 

We, willing Pilgrims, following the way of the cross, going where Jesus has gone before, moving on by direction of the Holy Spirit, are not born to stay say in harbor, unused, unfulfilled.  We are God’s people, formed, equipped, and called to travel with purpose and intention, pushing back the darkness of indifference as we let the light of Christ reveal God’s presence in an otherwise dark world.   What a gift, what a privilege.  May your seas and your road carry you safe to your Pilgrim destination and may you bless all those you meet along the way.

Grace for the Journey,

Brad

Reading

Dear Friends,

So there I was, mid-morning January 1.  We’d made the black-eyed peas and turnip greens with bacon.  The cheese grits were baking.  What was it that I had forgotten?  Then I recalled.  During Advent, I’d been doing extra bible reading with a book of daily readings and devotions by Richard Rohr.  These were in addition to what I normally use in a day.  Well, here it was, a week past Christmas and I still looked for that extra time, laid out in a clear, reasonable, and understandable way.  Fortunately, I found a posting that had a simple plan.   There are 52 weeks in a year.  Two of our Bishops, Bill McAlilly and Ken Carter, according to what I read, were planning to read one chapter from the Gospel of Luke on the Sunday of each week and then one chapter from the Acts of the Apostles when they had gone through Luke. 

Those two books have (Luke 24 and Acts 28) chapters in them, so that will be a chapter a week of the great 2 volume church history.  I like the plan.  I also like spending time in the Hebrew Scriptures as well.  Thanks to one of my teachers at Duke, the late Fr. Roland Murphy, I especially enjoy time in the Psalms and Proverbs. 

Well, as it works out, Psalms has 150 chapters of wildly different lengths and Proverbs has 31 chapters of maybe not so wildly different lengths.  That is 151 chapters.  By starting the Psalms on January 5, the day for Luke 1, I can read through both book of wisdom twice in the year.  (Well, sure, the last chapter of Proverbs gets lost, but, hey, I’ll double up on December 31, 2014.)

So, there you have it.  If you want to join me in this plan, we can visit each Sunday for a while about what we might hear God saying to us in this way.  Whatever approach you use, remember, the Bible is a collection of books provided by God through human agency for our wellbeing.  Find a way to spend time with the words and you will find there, the Word. 

Grace for the Way,

Brad

Let There Be Light

"Let there be light"

Those are certainly familiar words.   A Mass by Leonard Bernstein has a song “God Said” with the words “God said, Let there be light, and there was

God said, Let there be night, and there was

God said, Let there be day, and there was

Day to follow the night                                       

And it was good, brother”                                            

Light is good. At St. Mark’s we have new light coming in.  Church members are installing the new energy efficient, high output lights.  The difference is already striking in the hallway.

  

At home we are trying out some of the new “so-called “Edison” lights, modeled on some of Thomas Alva’s first lights.  They are softer than what we normally use, almost gentle, more yellow.  We will see how that works.

The July sun is giving us the expected light. And the heat that goes with it. Wear sun screen.

Meanwhile, though, we still need more light. Light is a traditional image for enlightenment, awareness, understanding. We need all of those qualities in abundance these days. So many of our public conversations and public behaviors lately are marked by some really dark attitudes and assumptions.

We have a way to get through the dark and into the light.  We can walk in the light now.  We have to be willing to work at it some, though.  Traditional spiritual practices increase both our awareness of the light already in the world and our capacity to transmit that light into additional places in the world.   Reading scripture for meaning, not simply facts, prayer, meditation, holy conversation, feeding the hungry, working for justice, and more are among these traditional practices.  John Wesley spoke to his time and ours when he grouped many of the practices into works of personal piety and works of social holiness.

Light is all around us. Only light can drive away the darkness. There is an old story about that work of light:

"A rabbi asked his students: when, at dawn, can one tell the light from the darkness? One student replied: when I can tell a goat from a donkey. No, answered the rabbi. Another said: when I can tell a palm tree from a fig. No, answered the rabbi again. Well then, what is the answer? His students pressed him. Not until you look into the face of every man and every woman and see your brother and your sister, said the rabbi. Only then have you seen the light. All else is darkness."

Under Construction

"Death is so final. Whereas life, ah life is so full of possibilities." Tyrion Lannister

Welcome to the first installment of "Markings". This is a blog related to St. Mark's UMC, located in Memphis, TN. I serve as the pastor here. The quote above, from one of the characters in George Martin's fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, seems appropriate for this installment, "Under Construction". This blog is just beginning and, so, under construction. At my home, we are re-building the kitchen, so we are under construction. St. Mark's has just endured a burst water pipe, so, we are under construction. Since I am not dead yet (cue "Spamalot") I am under construction, in my body, mind and soul. So are you. So are all of us.

What I have been reminded of, during the construction at my home, in the church and as part of my pastoral life, is that being under construction is messy, dirty, untidy and more than a little wearying. A natural tendency is to curtain off the area under construction, that is, keep the kitchen doors closed or the flooded Sunday school office shut up so that none of the mess and dirt that are part of the construction there, get into your life over here. That's just not possible. People come into and out of closed off areas. Review, consultation, re-starts are normal and they open the closed off areas up to the rest of the home, church, life.

There is a way to avoid all the mess, certainly. Stop the work. End construction. Terminate growth. What you have, then, is final. What you don't have, though, is life. Only life is full of possibilities (thank you, Tyrion). And life is "so" full of possibilities, positive and negative, both. In the kitchen at home, I might connect the disposal the wrong way. The result would be a mess. That's negative. Or, I might connect all the pipes and wires the right way and create a nicer kitchen.

Spiritually, I am, we all are, constantly under construction. Prayer, service, reading, reflection, actions, quiet, work, and contemplation are ways of being under construction, ways of participating with the divine in the life long construction of who you are. I find that those practices can't be closed off, shut off, restricted to one part of my life. That's ok. The messiness of life is a good sign that something may be being built. Construction is so full of possibilities.