A Lesson in Devotion and Obedience

Usually, I'm the first person to get out of bed in the mornings -- and that is definitely the case on Sunday mornings. After all, there are prayers to be said in preparation for receiving the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, truth be told, a sermon to be written. Yes, I always intend to do that earlier in the week, but it seldom, if ever, happens that way.

The family dog is "family" in name only. She's my dog -- by her choice. Her name might as well be "Shadow," because when I'm home, she's my shadow, following me just about everywhere I go. One significant exception to this is when it's time for her to eat. If I don't put out her food bowl fast enough to suit her, she'll go around the house and awaken one of our daughters, who know that the only way to get any peace (and any chance of going back to sleep) is to feed the dog.

This morning, as I sat at the kitchen table, setting aside my medication and vitamins for the day (an every-day event), she started to head down the hallway in search of someone to feed her. I called her back -- and learned a valuable lesson. I called her to my side, and told her, "Down." She didn't want to listen -- I could tell from her body language -- but she did as she was told, and remained there until I left the table on the way to my office, with her following me there, as she usually does. Once in my office, the door being closed, those sleeping are no longer in danger of being on the receiving end of a cold wet dog nose in search of its breakfast.

This isn't the first time we've been through this scenario; indeed, during the week, it's my practice to close the doors to the bedrooms so that our daughters can sleep, while I'm fixing breakfast for my wife, so that she can sleep a few extra minuted before heading to work. But as I watched the dog struggle with her desire for food on the one hand (or paw, as it were), and obedience to me as the "leader of the pack/alpha male" (which isn't difficult when you're the only male in the household -- the fish don't count, nor do the birds), it dawned on me that she was modeling for me the way I should be in relationship with God: wanting to be near Him as often as possible, following wherever He goes -- and obedient to what He commands, even when my appetite tells me otherwise.

I have a lot to learn. But isn't it funny how the D-O-G has taught me something about myself and G-O-D...

Scorpions...

A few weeks ago, having just risen from our bed to get dressed and start the day, I looked down at my feet, and was shocked to be a few inches away from a scorpion, whose body was over an inch long, and whose tail added another inch to the overall length. Being barefooted, I couldn’t just step on it, so I grabbed a stick that was nearby the bed, and tried to squash it. I missed; and it scurried under the bed. We spent quite a bit of time moving the bed and other furniture, but never saw the scorpion after it disappeared under the bed. The next few days were a bit anxious at times, and everyone was wearing shoes in the house – just in case. About three days later, as I was fixing breakfast, I turned to the sink, and found a scorpion – perhaps even the same one – perched on the lid from a container we use to make iced tea. I was able to pick up the lid on the side opposite the scorpion, maneuver it over the sink, and, with the garbage disposal unit switched on, used the faucet to knock the critter off the lid and into the disposal. We haven’t seen a scorpion in the house since that morning.

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the scorpion. I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons we had at least one scorpion in the house was because of a billing dispute with the pest control company that had resulted in an eight-month suspension of spraying – and a greatly increased number of crickets both inside and outside the house as a result. Crickets are more than just a meal, apparently, to scorpions – crickets are fine dining, the "filet mignon" of the scorpion’s menu. Fortunately, we had resolved the dispute, and were scheduled for a visit from the pest control company the very same morning that we saw, and lost, the scorpion in our bedroom. The hope is that, with the crickets gone, the scorpions have moved to a new territory where the hunting will be easier. I’ve also wondered whether the feeling I had in one big toe that morning – a feeling that I can only describe as being like the “buzz” you get when you touch your tongue across the terminals of a nine-volt battery – might have been the result of having been stung, although there was no redness, or any other sign of having been stung. I don’t recall, however, having every felt anything like that in my toe before; nor since, once it had faded away about a day later.

At the doctor’s office, I asked about first aid for a scorpion sting, only to learn that there really isn’t anything you can do. On the other hand, when I asked about how many people die here in Arizona from a scorpion sting, I was told that one person is known to have died as a result of being stung by a scorpion in Arizona since 1965. In other words, unless you’re allergic to the venom, or are stung in a particularly vulnerable spot, such as at the base of the neck, where the spinal cord meets the medulla oblongata, a scorpion’s sting isn’t going to be anything really serious, but rather just an annoyance. There are, of course, different scorpion species, at least one of which has a venom that is far more potent, and so far more dangerous; but these aren’t found in Arizona.

In the beginning of the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, our Lord is sending the seventy, two by two, on a missionary journey to every city and village to which He will be visiting. They are to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of heaven, and are given authority to heal the sick and cast out demons to support their proclamation. We read of their journey,

10:17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 10:18 He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. 10:19 Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you. 10:20 Nevertheless, don’t rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Other passages of Scripture make reference to scorpions, but as a way of speaking descriptively, rather than literally, being illustrations of how wicked mankind can be, and of the suffering that can be inflicted by one person upon another. But the passage from St. Luke’s Gospel, very similar to the passage at the end of the Gospel according to St. Mark, which refers to the handling of snakes and the drinking of poisons as actions that will not harm the believers, certainly appears to be stated very literally; and it is certainly possible, here in the desert, to come across a snake or a scorpion while walking – even in your own bedroom!

I haven’t decided yet whether the possibility of having been stung by that scorpion, evidenced by the “buzzing” sensation in my toe, means that I do not possess the faith that our Lord spoke of with the seventy at the conclusion of their journey…

Woodstock: Forty Years Later

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Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going?
This he told me

Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

I wasn’t at Woodstock.

It’s not because I didn’t want to go. Being 15 years old, without transportation – and, although I don’t know for sure, I’d have been stunned if my parents would have given their permission, going to the event was impossible. I’m still fascinated by the event today; all the more so because the 40th anniversary of the final day of the “three days of peace, love and music” will have started by the time I have finished this reflection.

Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning.
And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes, and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

What is it about that time that triggers so strong a response in me, even today? First of all, I know it isn’t the music – although, to be sure, it was the music of my youth, and the songs I enjoyed back then are still enjoyable today. The best I can determine, it is the fact that, for a period of three days, some four hundred thousand people lived side-by-side, sharing an experience, with virtually no friction arising: no fights; only two deaths – one as the result of an overdose of heroin, the other a young man killed while sleeping in a field when a tractor ran over him in his sleeping bag. People were hungry, as the organizers, who had planned for a maximum of fifty thousand people, were overwhelmed. People got soaked as a storm on the second day dropped over an inch of rain in about an hour’s time. People got sick; some "freaked out" as a result of taking drugs. With all of this, almost everyone who attended and has gone on record about the event comments about the peace and the smiles that were shared; how people responded to calls by the organizers to share what food they had with their “brothers and sisters” – who were identified as, “the people on your right, and the people on your left” – in other words, your neighbors. This has always been a point of focus as I reflect on the event: the Biblical connections that arise. There are echoes of the feeding of the five thousand in the call to share food; and there is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ about who is our neighbor. For me, in part, at least, what I have seen and heard of what took place at Woodstock has a mystical component, and is a metaphor for so much of what seemed possible for us at that time. Even as wars raged around the world – the one looming largest at that time was the war in Vietnam, with its very real connections (and potential threat) to the larger, more ominous, if less immediate, “Cold War” – even as our culture seemed doomed to become spiritually dead through the pursuit of material possessions, status and power, the young people who gathered on Max Yasgur’s farm, and those who, like me, wanted to be there, yearned for a different world, a different culture; and we thought, for a time, that the power to achieve a new society of peace and love was within our grasp; a new world was a very real possibility, if only we could work together to achieve it.

That yearning stayed with me into the decade of the 1970’s. Among other things, I immersed myself in the various movements that grew out of the festival at Woodstock, as well as the tragedies that followed, not the least of which was the death of four students at Kent State University, shot by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest. One of the four killed had graduated the year before from the high school I was attending. I didn’t know her; but I knew, and cared for, people who did, people who lost a friend that day – and their grief touched me, and ignited an anger in me. I was involved in a number of anti-war protests in downtown Washington, D.C., and resolved to go to Canada rather than be drafted, if necessary. I also was drawn to the beginnings of the environmental movement, and the “back to the land” movement that was spurred on when I discovered the teachings and philosophy in The Mother Earth News, and especially its reports on the Twin Oaks commune in Louisa, Virginia, not far from where we lived and worked and went to college. When an “outreach team” from Twin Oaks made a visit to our college campus, I was there to hear every word, and always wanted – but could never quite manage – to make a visit to the commune. I wouldn’t say that I did anything consequential. My protesting the war didn’t bring it to an end; and while I would never negate the importance of each person doing what they can to conserve energy and water, and to recycle, and so on, I doubt that my contribution, even to this day, has really made the kind of difference my heart has always yearned to make. As much as I’d hoped otherwise, this is the only honest assessment I can make.

By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devil’s bargain,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time I finished seminary, over twenty years distant from the Woodstock festival, I had started to figure out why we hadn’t been able to change the world, and why the communal life exerted such an attraction. The two are related; and Joni Mitchell’s song about the festival, which was a monster hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, gave me valuable clues. My thoughts along these lines were triggered in part by an invitation a group of us received on the eve of graduation from seminary to consider becoming part of an ecumenical community of Roman Catholics and Episcopalians living and working and worshipping together in rural Maryland, not far from our campus; and by a chance event that took place a few years later while driving along California Highway 99 near Merced, while on my way to a youth ministry event. I happened to look up, and was shocked to see a B-52 flying at a relatively low level overhead. My thoughts immediately flashed to the line in the song: And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes riding shotgun in the sky… There it was – but it didn’t turn into a butterfly. Within a year’s time, I was the vicar of the mission in Atwater, at the time the home of Castle Air Force Base – closed a few years later. Castle Air Force Bases was home to a squadron of bombers; and one of the lay leaders of the mission, and a good friend, was a B-52 pilot.

The song begins: I came upon a child of God, he was walkin’ along the road… There are hints of the road to Emmaus, being traveled by two of the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, who are traveling from Jerusalem after His passion and death on the Cross. They are not aware that He has risen from the dead, even when they meet Him walkin’ along the road. It is not until He accepts their invitation to stay with them for the evening, and reveals Himself when He blesses and breaks the bread, that they realize what has happened. This is what is missing in the song. This is what Twin Oaks didn’t have; and this is why our hopes and dreams for a better world did not, and could not, materialize. Can you hear it? It’s in the last line of the chorus: And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden… What garden? Why, the Garden of Eden, of course! The Garden, the place of Paradise, where we lived in the immediate and intimate presence of God, Who would walk with us and talk with us, and we could, presumably, see Him face to face. We lost our place there by our disobedience – as the song says, We are caught in the devil’s bargain… An angel with a fiery sword was set to guard the entryway to prevent us from trying to get back; and the only way a return is possible is through our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing else will work; our strength alone is not sufficient; nor are we permitted to enter, unless we are joined to the Son of God Who gave Himself to make this possible, because of His great and unfathomable love for us; and Who, having risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, has done so with our human nature still joined to His divine nature – restoring us to living once more in the immediate and intimate presence of God.

Can we change the world? Maybe. The task of doing so begins by changing ourselves; by grasping what has been done for us by our Lord Jesus Christ. By His incarnation, our humanity has been united with His divinity. By His death, the power of death has been brought to an end. By His resurrection, we, too, are raised from death to life. We have been buried with Him in baptism, and raised by Him to a life that will not end. When we accept this incredible gift of God’s love, and yield ourselves to Him in love, and take responsibility for how we live, with the intention of allowing the life of Christ in us be seen in us, through what we say and what we do, in who we are – the hope and the dream of a better life is possible. Woodstock is only the beginning; and the joy of the kingdom of heaven awaits!

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devil’s bargain,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

What Welshmen Do for Fun

I laughed so hard I cried!

Speaking with Conviction

This one is worth sharing...

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I found this at Steve Robinson's blog, Pithless Thoughts - a site worth your time to investigate.

Here's an explicit question that arises from this presentation: What does your life say about your conviction? Do you say that Jesus is your Lord and Savior? Does the way in which you live say that Jesus is your Lord and Savior?

We all need to think about this...