Life and Death and Resurrection

I've often wondered how Easter might be different in the southern hemisphere.  In Australia right now, it is autumn.  In the southern part of the continent, the leaves are dying on the trees, the days are getting shorter, and the temperatures are dropping.  Everyone is preparing for the long winter ahead.  In the midst of the dying of the season, Christians are walking through Lent, towards Easter.  Ahead lies the deepest part of winter...earth truly stands hard as iron, and the promise of resurrection is still months away.  

Here, of course, is the opposite.  Our Ash Wednesday service is often held while it is still snowy, and the days are windy and cold.  But, by the time we reach Easter, spring is in full bloom. The days are longer, the air is warmer, and truly, we have survived another long winter.  Resurrection surrounds us.  

Of course, this points out that context matters.  Where we stand makes a difference in how we perceive the Easter message.  Sometimes, resurrection comes quickly, as it does here in the northern hemisphere.  But sometimes, there is yet a long winter ahead before the sun once again rises higher in the sky each day.  As a church family, we each stand in different places during this season.  For some, the renewed vigor of the earth is symbolic of the new life within us.  But for some, there is yet time needed.  Resurrection will come, the sun will rise higher in the sky, but our souls must linger for a while in the close darkness of winter.  

Each of us experiences resurrection in our own time.  Don't hurry it,  it will come.   The sun will rise, the son will rise.  All that is needed is patience.  

Pastor Jim 

Virtual Choir

Eric Whitacre's Lux Arumque, a bloody difficult piece to sing when you're all in the same room.  This is just cool.  All the singers are at home, recording their own performance.  Whitacre sent them the music, and a conducting video, and instructions about how to record and send it in.  A new one will be posted tomorrow.

The Naming of Cats

Posted for my friends Beth and Josh, who are about to become kitten parents.  

The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Why Christmas?

A really excellent, succinct and accurate website I found as a source for all things Christmas.

Why Christmas?

What's that Awe-ful Smell?

Most Protestant Christians of the Reformed family long ago gave up the use of incense in worship.  Roman Catholics retained it, of course; Anglicans rediscovered it in the 19th C. during the Oxford movement,  and others such as Lutherans have an indifferent approach to it;  its allowed, but not required.  Other world religions have long used various smoking herbs and other things to enhance worship and to strengthen the connection between this world and the unseen world.

Perhaps, we Reformed Christians should reconsider our abhorrence of the use of incense in worship.

Burning Incense is Psychoactive

All Hail our New Feline Overlords...

I simply can't imagine cats with opposable thumbs...

Natural Disasters and God

It is perhaps the ultimate faith question. Books have been written about it, sermons preached about it, and endless debates have surrounded the issue. It has been expressed in many ways, some of which are very general and perhaps even too general to adequately address. Some years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a very interesting book entitled, Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People. While I think his book is very good, it is probably too general a question to be able to provide a satisfactory answer.

With the recent 9.0 earthquake in Japan, the ensuing tsunami, and now the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the most pertinent spiritual question might be stated something like this: "Why does God allow earthquakes and other natural disasters to happen?" I say this is the most pertinent question because it was not one, but two natural disasters that has created the nuclear crisis.

When we ask about God's involvement with natural disasters, we are asking the wrong "person" the wrong question. Earthquakes, and for that matter hurricanes and tornadoes, occur because pressures build up in our planet and atmosphere that need to be released. When those pressures occur in subterranean tectonic plates, the plates slip across one another causing what we call earthquakes. Earthquakes, when a number of other factors including tides are right, cause tsunamis.

I was asked recently why the planet was "designed" in this way. While I am most definitely not a scientist, my understanding is that all planets are designed in this way. This may be the only possible design that would work, given the truth that our planet is subjected to gravitational forces that hold it in orbit around the sun. To a certain extent these questions, while they may make interesting fodder for discussion, are irrelevant because the planet we have is the one we are stuck with!

What, then, is the role of God? The responsible, progressive Christian view is that we have learned through Jesus that our God is a God who journeys with us - and suffers with us as necessary. It is a simplistic perversion of the Christian story to say that God is an interventionist who sends disaster and then rescues some, but not all, from the very disasters God sent. While it certainly is true that there are parts of the Hebrew Scriptures that do so, it is nothing but anthropomorphism to attribute to God human misbehavior such as rages and revenge to Divinity. We cannot at the same time say that God is a God of love and also claim that God is a God of vengeance and eternal torture.

In short, the disaster is Japan - at least as pertains to the earthquake and tsunami - is the result of living on this planet. There were no misdeeds that brought it on, no punishment that lies behind it, no Divine action involved in the disaster. There  is Divine presence in many places in the recovery, however. Since God lives and acts in us, through us, and as us, God is present in the form of the recovery workers, those who care for the displaced and the injured - and also in the victims of this horrible event. The God of Love and Compassion is always present in human experiences, loving us back to wholeness. We are seeing the truth of this in Japan in a special way right now, but the truth is that the love and compassion of God in and through other human beings is present in every place, every day!


(Reprinted, from the Facebook site of Craig Berglund, a colleague from Wisconsin)

New Blog Design

I figure I really needed to update this blog, so I hope you like the new format.  The new editing options from Blogger are really cool.  I know I have to go back and fix the formatting for some of the previous posts...I'm hoping that Blogger has a fix so that I don't have to move every single picture and video.  

Cat in a Clergy Meeting

here we clergy are
sitting in a ring,
being friendly souls;
ecumenical

making jolly jokes,
nervous of ourselves,
shy of subjects too
theological,
anecdotes and smiles
risking very little
glancing round the room
sipping our Darjeeling,

colleagues of the cloth
some with collars off
sister-brotherhood
staring at the ceiling

might we have a prayer?
in this dark interior
with the light outside
and the glorious weather

shifting in our seats gathering our thoughts
folding of our hands
as we try together,
plump cat on the floor

in a stripe of sun stretches out her limbs
into glorious worship
thanks to God on high;
for the heated spot for the stripe of sun
contented purr-ship

for paws which pad
for claws which hunt
for mouth to taste
and breath to purr

the best prayer
in the room
I felt
came from her

Lucy Berry

This is an extract from the March 2011 issue of Reform.

Well, hello there.

Hmm. Facebook has taken over, and I've completely neglected this blog. If any of you are still subscribers, I apologise. I think this summer I am going to try to be more attentive. In our brave new electronic world, this seems like a slightly more permanent forum than FB.

Buy My Parents' House Please...

This is the house I grew up in.  It is a great house,  but they're moving to Florida.  It would be a great second house for a family with young children needing room to grow.  It has a nice yard,  and is walking distance to the Jr. High School and the Sr. High School.  It is also walking distance to the bus to Ashmont Station,  and a very short bus ride or drive to the Holbrook Commuter Rail station. 

26 Howard St., Randolph, MA

Oh, my ears!

This is cute.

Doh!

Great Obama ad, with a surprise guest.

Keith Olbermann is right about Hillary Clinton.

Which is why I am hoping that Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination cleanly, and we do not have a brokered convention in Denver. Hillary Clinton clearly wants to win at all cost.

Let Me In Cat

From the creator of "Wake Up Cat" comes "Let Me In Cat".

I'm hoping for a whole series of these cartoons. Simon is a genius.

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth.
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

- G. K. Chesterton (1894-1936)

Another Blog

The web is saturated with 'blogs.  We are adding to it. We have a Gloxinia that is in its second cycle of growing.  It grows, blossoms, and completely dies off,  and then lies dormant for several months.  A couple of days ago, we noticed that it is beginning to grow again. 

Follow its growth at our new 'blog.  I think you can subscribe to an RSS feed to get daily updates. 

The Resurrection Plant

Armour for Cats

Simply stunning.

And I can't imagine trying to get Her Royal Highness to wear it.

Click the photo for more examples of this artist's work.

Ban Comic Sans

I have been known, on occasion, to go on rants about things that seem irrelevant.

For instance, the use of the font known as 'comic sans' on everything from posters to worship bulletins drives me absolutely insane. It is a font designed to imitate the hand-lettering in conversation bubbles in comic books. There, it is usually appropriate, but even this computer-generated travesty of a font cannot hold a candle to a beautifully hand-lettered comic.

The use of 'comic sans' for professional communications, exams and most unfortunate of all, worship bulletins in church, is wholly inappropriate, infantilizing, and should be punishable by lashes with wet noodles. The whole-wheat kind, not those wimpy soba or egg noodles.

I am vindicated. Viz.;

Ban Comic Sans

Did You Know This?

The more I learn about our caucus and primary system to select Electors for the party Conventions this coming semester, the more I am convinced that we must move to a direct vote system.

Read these two articles about 'Super Electors'; Governors and members of Congress of the Democratic Party who gave themselves the vote at the 1982 Convention. Barack Obama could win the majority of the voted Electors, (those selected by party primaries and caucuses) and still not get the nomination, since it seems that the majority of the Super Electors favor Hillary Clinton.

There is something just inherently unfair in this.

An article about this at AmericaBlog.

More about this at the LA Times.