The Bible doesn’t have as much authority as people want it to have, at least in certain areas of our life experience.

Think about it. While it continues to speak eloquently in some ways to our human condition, it is a collection of letters and poems, prose and laws, the most recent of which was written around 1900 years ago, with the balance of contributions written over the course of about 1200 years prior to that. 

In the midst of what has been lost in translations, and what has been molded and shaped to support various world views and interpretations of the texts (i.e. the many versions of the bible that exist), there is a desire for scripture to offer guidance and authority on topics for which it is not ideally suited to speak.

For starters, slavery and sexuality. Yes, the references to slavery are numerous in both the Old and New Testaments. But that was then. This is now. And slavery to sin is a whole other thing.

The allusions to sexual preferences and habits have been debated to death, without clear resolution.

We cherry-pick texts that resonate with our gut feelings and perpetuate stereotypes and wrong-headedness, without regard to current conditions on the ground, including in our own families. Without regard for knowledge that wasn’t available two- or three thousand years ago. Without regard for evolution in thought and understanding of what it means to be human.

Without, seemingly, regard for the gospel witness concerning Jesus of Nazareth, whose love for all of creation was made clear in his earthly ministry and his death on a cross.

Saul who became Paul, in his letter to the church in Galatia, claims that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female…”

If we’re going to cling to words of scripture for guidance and direction, we’d do well to move away from the ignorance and naivete of certain ancient understandings and prohibitions, and toward the freedom of the gospel. Toward grace and a release from the weight of judgment of ourselves and others.

Who do we think we are, anyway?

Spoken, written, texted, tweeted. The sheer volume of verbiage that finds its way to expressed form on a daily basis must be colossal.

I remember a seminary professor describing words as being like arrows- once released, there is no getting them back. Things are set in motion, for better or worse. Impressions are made, messages are sent, opinions are formed.

Words heal and wound. They compliment, denigrate, conflate, conflict, clarify, confuse, deflect, distract. Words inspire and anger. They fan the flames or pacify. A command of the English or any language is a formidable tool. Or weapon.

They may not speak as loudly as actions, but words generate their own sound intensity. And through them, we are given glimpses into who people really are.

The word, in certain contexts and variations, really gets under my skin. “This is boring…” “I’m so bored…”  Well, your choice of words is boring. A real yawner.

According to an article in The Guardian, boredom “is not a problem to be solved. It is the last privilege of a free mind.” The tag line that follows suggests that one “lean into boredom, not your smartphone screen. You’ll learn more about yourself and the world around you than you think.”

The “cure” is not a packed schedule or some sort of adrenaline rush. It’s not finding a hobby or cleaning your house. Boredom is not tragic, according to Gayatri Devi. It’s an encounter with pure time as form and content. And we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to avoid it.

Granted, sometimes we just need to get moving and do something constructive, be useful, contribute.

But not always. Sometimes it’s a luxury to have a little while just to…

think.

 

Does everybody have a routine? Not a comic routine, but a repeated, even anticipated and welcome pattern to at least a portion of their day. Even folks who despise routine- are they really that intentional about living every single day differently than the day before? Or are folks bent on living atypical lives really just living a different sort of routine?

There is nothing riding on an answer to these questions. In the larger scheme of things, it’s not worth spending much time on. It’s just something that came to me while I paused to make my morning coffee and the topic for this post emerged.

I am a creature of habit, probably to a fault. I like predictability, which given my current line of work might seem odd. I’ve had the occasional call from a hospital or a parishioner that necessitated an abrupt change of plans, and have never appreciated these unanticipated interruptions. They do come with the territory, but this doesn’t mean I have to like them.

Sometimes routines seem a luxury to me. They are familiar and comfortable. Other times, they seem to be a sovereign with too much power, and I wish to be free of them.

This is going to sound like an advertisement, but I just want to thank the folks at Apple for including the Depth Effect in Portrait mode on the latest iPhone. It’s probably difficult to tell in this picture, but the original is strikingly clear and crisp. It truly pops on a larger screen- amazing foreground detail.

It doesn’t render a regular camera obsolete just yet- still needs a good telephoto option. But one has to wonder what’s in the works.

 

Though 63-plus years have come and gone, it’s still fun- and probably a bit sad- to think about what I want to be when I grow up. There would seem to be a time crunch anymore, and let’s throw timidity and resignation into the mix as well.

My current occupation/vocation is not one I’ve ever dreamed of doing. To this day, Musician or Astronomer or Barista sound much more interesting. It’s not that I haven’t learned things about life and faith and human nature over the last 22 years. My time as a pastor in a mainline/old line denomination has expanded my world view and shaped my politics. And at times I have truly appreciated not being tied to a 9 to 5 existence.

It’d just be nice to know the feeling of working at something that doesn’t feel like work. Maybe this is a luxury out of my reach now. Maybe there’s no small amount of selfishness involved in such a pursuit. Maybe everything feels like work at some point in the day.

Maybe.

I’d like to know the feeling of putting in a 12-hour day and being so totally immersed in tasks at hand that I little note the passage of time. I hear others say they can’t believe they get paid for what they do? I want to know what that is like.

I remember my father asking me, on several occasions, if I thought I’d ever amount to anything. I never took this personally- in context it seemed more tongue in cheek than some sort of put-down. Besides, I seem to recall him asking my brothers and sisters the same question. In retrospect, it might have had as much to do with how Dad felt about himself as it did his desire for his children to know a level of accomplishment and satisfaction that, in his mind, had passed him by.

Or maybe he was just worried about me.

Anyways, I always answered “yes” to Dad’s question, with little basis for such confidence. Besides- to some extent, it’s not up to me to assess whether or not I’ve amounted to anything.

To the extent that it is up to me, I still feel like the jury is deliberating. Like I’m still on the road, as the former Cat Stevens once sang, to find out.

A recent learning was that Edwin Hubble did research at Caltech starting back in the early 1930s. Dr. Hubble, according to his Wikipedia page, played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. He discovered an asteroid known as 1373 Cincinnati. More significantly, he deepened our understanding of an expanding universe.

The orbiting telescope named in Dr. Hubble’s honor settled into its low earth orbit at around 335 miles and became operational in May of 1990. The Hubble has provided a stream of mind-blowing photos, giving us spectacular images of nebulae and galaxies and our own planetary neighbors. This instrument has led scientists to deeper understandings of, among other things, the rate of the universe’s expansion- work for which Dr. Hubble himself helped lay the foundation.

Of all the pictures from Hubble, the first one that made my jaw drop is the Deep Field North, constructed from a series of observations, over a ten-day period, of a minuscule section (one 24-millionth) of the sky in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper), with an equivalent angular size of viewing a tennis ball from a distance of 100 meters, or roughly 110 yards. I seem to recall another analogy comparing this to looking at a dime edgewise from a distance of 70 feet. There have been other Deep Field composites since- the Ultra Deep Field and Extreme Deep Field- but when the first one was made public, it was an attention-getter.

According to Wikipedia, the field of view is so small that only a few foreground stars in the Milky Way lie within it, which means that almost all of the 3000 objects in the image are GALAXIES! Galaxies contain anywhere from hundreds of millions to trillions of stars. The distance across galaxies is measured in light years, sometimes thousands of light years.

A light year is a unit of astronomical distance- the distance light travels in one year at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, or 671 million miles per hour…

Almost 6 trillion miles.

It’s fun trying to get your head around that.

In lieu of a photo of the rocky coast, here’s one of the quaint and picturesque harbor at Perkins Cove, Ogunquit. The rocky coast was just a short walk in the opposite direction, accessible all along the Marginal Way, and it filled the senses. But this is Maine, too- one of the many harbors and inlets that catch one’s eye and beg for some space on a memory card.

OK, here’s a view from along the Marginal Way:

And one more, because this just looked cool:

There’s no place like Maine. Whenever we go there, it’s hard to leave.

 

 

It dawned on me recently that I don’t smile much anymore. It’s in no small part because there is a constant dis-ease with our Tweeter-in-chief and pretty much everyone around him.

I rarely watch the evening news because I know the first 10 minutes or so will include sound bytes of Donald Trump or some administration official attempting to utter something intelligible, or just a defense of the indefensible. More often than not, they only manage to spew something vacuous or mean-spirited. Or The Donald tries to look busy as he signs another executive order undoing some piece of legislation passed during the Obama years.

The incessant desire to repeal the ACA is beyond infuriating. To paraphrase the inimitable Roy Neary, “Who the hell are these people?!” Even now as debate is renewed, I remain hopeful that there will emerge at least a few Republicans who have something resembling a heart.

There is a legitimate chasm, unbridgeable at this point, between Republicans and the majority of Americans who voted for someone else. And there is no meeting in the middle. There is no middle right now. It seems clear that we can’t all just get along, nor should we expect to. It is clear that there are non-negotiable principles at stake, with large numbers of citizens in danger of falling through the cracks, somehow judged expendable, illegal, or lacking in ambition.

Historians will most likely trace the roots of this toxic atmosphere back beyond the Obama years. But it’s difficult not to connect the current state of affairs with Mr. Obama’s time in office and the two-term obstructionist march to the sea unleashed by Republicans who were positively aghast at a black Democrat having been elected President. They were seething for eight years, egged on by Fox News and a host of other media gas bags, and they (and now we) have ended up with Donald Trump, who at every turn claims to know how to “win.”

I don’t remember ever feeling this way about politics, or about previous elections. The differences between parties and platforms are stark. Republican motives seem blatantly self-serving and anachronistic, not to mention callous and cold-hearted, bordering on inhuman. And all of it is couched in a non-existent “mandate” (if by “mandate” is meant a majority of all Americans), along with a pseudo-concern for sound fiscal policy.

 Maybe the scales have fallen from our eyes and all we have witnessed is the reality of “politics in the 21st century.” Except Republicans seem intent on taking us back to the mid-twentieth century, when everyone habitually (robotically?) went to church and coal was king and certain people knew their place.

So there is little middle ground. Factions of the electorate do not like each other, much less trust each other. This is a battle of wills now, of visions, of wildly disparate views of what progress looks like. As others have noted, this is shaping up to be a battle for the heart and soul of the country.

To get things started, I sincerely hope that, with regard to Donald Trump, the other shoe drops shortly. I am not optimistic about this, since he and his cohorts are so adept at changing the subject and filling the airwaves with a much more authentic brand of fake news.

The other night, I sat on the couch in the living room as a thunderstorm barreled through town. One crack of lightning was so close that the almost instantaneous, explosive rumble seemed to ripple the floor under my feet. I can’t remember ever feeling that particular sensation before.

Anyway, thunderstorms fascinate me, though this hasn’t always been the case. They used to cause a loss of appetite and a desire to hide under something. I guess some fears go away and we replace them with others.

One of the current batch manifests itself in recurring dreams where, for example, I walk into a packed church totally unprepared for whatever occasion is about to unfold. I can tell that people are waiting for me, but I have nothing ready- improper dress, no sermon, no idea what should come next. I wake up feeling a sense of relief.

Maybe these dreams have prevented me from ever not showing up for a wedding or funeral… though I have totally missed a few committee meetings along the way.