"Changing Sides"

God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.  --1 Corinthians 1:27, NLT   In all honesty, once it was on top and fully part of the establishment, the Church was a bit embarrassed by the powerless one, Jesus. We had to make his obvious defeat into a glorious victory that had nothing to do with defeat--his or ours. Let's face it, we feel more comfortable with power than with powerlessness. Who wants to be like Jesus on the cross, the very icon of powerlessness? It just doesn't look like a way of influence, a way of access, a way that's going to make any difference in the world.   We Christians are such a strange religion! We worship this naked, bleeding loser, crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem, but we always want to be winners, powerful, and on top ourselves . . . at least until we learn to love the little things and the so-called little people, and then we often see they are not little at all, but better images of the soul.   Yes, those with mental and physical disabilities, minority groups, LGBTQ folks, refugees, prisoners, those with addictions--anyone who's "failed" in our nicely constructed social or economic success system--can be our best teachers in the ways of the Gospel. They represent what we are most afraid of and what we most deny within ourselves. That's why we must learn to love what first seems like our "enemy"; we absolutely must or we will never know how to love our own soul, or the soul of anything. Please think about that until it makes sense to you. It eventually will, by the grace of God.   One of the most transformative experiences is entering into some form of lifestyle solidarity with the powerless, by moving outside of your own success system, whatever it is. Move around in the world of others who are not enamored with your world. This is a good way to feel powerless. We don't think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. Lifestyle choices and changes finally convert people. I am not aware that merely believing a doctrine or dogma has ever converted anybody. That should be obvious by now.   Someone once pointed out to me that most of the great founders of religious communities, people like St. Benedict, Francis of Assisi, Mother Katherine Drexel, Vincent de Paul, Elizabeth of Hungary, Ignatius Loyola, John Baptist de la Salle, and Mother Seton, all started out as what we would now call middle class or even upper class. They first had enough comfort, security, and leisure to move beyond their need for more of it; they saw it did not satisfy. Each in their own way willingly changed sides and worked in solidarity with those who did not have their advantages.

~Father Richard Rohr

Gateway to Silence Open my eyes.

Wolves at play...

In process...stay tuned.

 Dr. Toxic

Touchstones

PJs

Goodwill

My objective was a big shirt to paint in.

While I browsed the over-sized XLs, I overheard this:

"Sure don't want no more of that Obamacare.

And Hillary'll just keep that going.

Yep, we need somebody who can take care of business!"

I know I should have kept right on browsing the XLs,

but before I knew it, I had made my way over to the table

where this elderly black gentleman was holding court.

The two young ladies working on paperwork at the table with him

  looked a bit embarrassed by his loud monologue, but continued
to provide him with a ready audience.

"Sounds like you had a bad Obamacare experience?" I offered.

"Sure did!" he growled.

"I'm so sorry. You know we actually had a very good Obamacare

experience before my husband died.

Thanks to Obamacare,

the cost of his very expensive medications

was cut in half for us, and we were so relieved."

"Well, my premiums keep going up!"

"That is a bummer...just not fair, is it?"

And then, in hopes of nudging him just an inch away from his

negative pulpit-pounding, I ventured to say,

"You know, maybe we just have to be grateful for whatever

is good in our lives today." 

"Well, I'm not grateful I'm having to do chemo."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"And I've got all these complications...my hands and feet burn all the time."

"Yes, my husband had peripheral neuropathy too, and he was miserable.

I am so sorry you are having to deal with that.

It is awful!"

For the first time, he looked up at me, held out his hand and said,

"Feel my hand. It's ice-cold."

So I took his hand in mine and agreed with him,

even though it didn't feel cold at all to me.

"I'll be thinking about you," I said.

We debate ideologies, when underneath,

we are just wanting someone to

feel our pain.

Thanks to Rob and his pain, 

a connection was made.

Goodwill indeed!

Birdie Blessing?

Ouch!

Learning to See,

Fr. Richard Rohr

I would have never seen my own white privilege if I had not been forced outside of my dominant white culture by travel, by working in the jail, by hearing stories from counselees, and frankly, by making a complete fool of myself in so many social settings--most of which I had the freedom to avoid! And so recognition was slow in coming. I am not only white, but I am male, overeducated, clergy (from cleros, the separated ones), a Catholic celibate, healthy, and American. I profited from white privilege on so many fronts that I had to misread the situation many, many times before I began to feel what others feel and see what others could clearly see. Many must have just rolled their eyes and hopefully forgiven me! Education about white privilege is the best doorway to help those of us who think we are not racists to recognize that structurally and often unconsciously we still are. Our easy advancement was too often at the cost of others not advancing at all. Power never surrenders without a fight. If your entire life has been to live unquestioned in your position of power--a power that was culturally given to you, but you think you earned--there is almost no way you will give it up without major failure, suffering, humiliation, or defeat. The trouble is we cannot program that. All we can do is stop shoring up our power by our de facto idolization of money, possessions, power positions, superficial entertainment, the idolization of celebrities and athletes, and the war economy. All of these depend on our common enthrallment with being on top. As long as we really want to be on top and would do the same privileged things if we could get there, there will never be an actual love of equality, true freedom, or the Gospel. This challenges all of us to change and not just those folks who temporarily are "on the top." Jesus' basic justice agenda was simple living, humility, and love of neighbor. We all have to live this way ourselves. From that position, God can do God's work rather easily.

Gateway to Silence Open my eyes.

Easter Sunday

Holy Saturday Reflection

Holy Saturday is a day of mourning and reflection. In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion we are shocked and confounded by the brutality of Friday. Who could do such a barbarous thing to another human being? We miss the point, however, if we think we are incapable of doing the same or similar kinds of evil for the same reasons they put Jesus onto the cross.

Reflecting on another horrific event, the Holocaust, philosopher Arne Vetlesen, has written that separating those who commit crimes against humanity and marking them as abnormal actually in the end helps "perpetuate the very conditions which made its occurrence a historical fact in the first place."

And as history has taught us, one condition often present when genocide happens is the condition of war. Genocide is justified as a matter of course, unfortunate or otherwise, simply because it is seen to be necessary. As genocide scholar and social psychologist James Waller has written, "[T]he greatest catastrophes occur when the distinctions between war and crime fade; when there is dissolution of the boundaries between military and criminal conduct . . ."

The distinction between war and criminality dissolved at the very center of Christ's cross. It is tradition that the two men who were crucified beside him were "thieves". But in fact, a better translation of the Greek word is "insurrectionists".  This is the same word Josephus used to describe Jewish enemies of the Roman state. And we know the charge against Jesus was treason.  He was crucified as a matter of course in a time of war -- and two beside him, and how many hundreds of thousands, nay millions, others?e are in jeopardy of missing the point if we fail to see just how possible it would have been for us to put Jesus to death, if we had been told to do so, because it was said to be necessary. We would have just been following orders.

"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" the old spiritual asks. And the answer is: we could have been; and we could be again if we're not careful.

~Ryon Price, 2nd Thoughts

Good Friday

The Least of These

A View from the Bottom

Friday, March 25, 2016

In almost all of history, the vast majority of people understood the view from the bottom due to their own life circumstance. Most of the people who have ever lived on this planet have been oppressed and poor. But their history was seldom written except in the Bible (until very recently in such books as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States). Only in modern times and wealthy countries do we find the strange phenomenon of masses of people having an establishment mentality.   This relatively new thing called "the middle class" gives many of us just enough comfort not to have to feel the pinch or worry about injustice for ourselves. Most of us in the Northern Hemisphere have a view from the top even though we are nowhere near the top ourselves. The mass of people can normally be bought off by just giving them "bread and circuses," as the Romans said. Many Americans can afford to be politically illiterate, hardly vote, and terribly naive about money, war, and power. One wonders how soon this is going to catch up with us.   Only by solidarity with other people's suffering can comfortable people be converted. Otherwise we are disconnected from the cross--of the world, of others, of Jesus, and finally of our own necessary participation in the great mystery of dying and rising. In the early Christian Scriptures, or the "New" Testament, we clearly see that it's mostly the lame, the poor, the blind, the prostitutes, the drunkards, the tax collectors, the sinners--those on the bottom and the outside--that really hear Jesus' teaching and get the point and respond to him. It's the leaders and insiders (the priests, scribes, Pharisees, teachers of the law, and Roman leaders) who crucify him. That is evident in the text.   How did we miss such a core point about how power coalesces and corrupts, no matter who has it? Once Christians were the empowered group, we kept this obvious point from hitting home by blaming the Jews, then heretics, then sinners. But arrogant power is always the problem, not the Jews or any other scapegoated group. When any racial, gender, or economic group has all the power it does the same thing--no exceptions. Catholics would have crucified Jesus too if he had critiqued the Catholic Church the way he did his own religion.    After Jesus' death and resurrection, the first Christians go "underground." They are the persecuted ones, meeting in secrecy in the catacombs. During this time, we see a lot of good interpretation of the Scriptures, with a liberationist worldview (i.e., a view from the bottom). The Church was largely of the poor and for the poor.   The turning point, at which the Church moved from the bottom to the top, is the year 313 A.D. when Emperor Constantine supposedly did the Church a great favor by beginning to make Christianity the established religion of the Holy Roman Empire. That's how the Apostolic Church became Roman Catholicism. As the Church's interests became linked with imperial world views, our perspective changed from the view from the bottom and powerlessness (the persecuted, the outsiders) to the view from the top where we were now the ultimate insiders (with power, money, status, and control). Emperors convened (and controlled?) most of the early Councils of the Church, not bishops or popes. The Council in 325 was held at the Emperor's villa in a suburb of Constantinople called Nicea, where the highly abstract Nicene Creed was composed, in which the words love, justice, and peacemaking are never used once. The Nicene Creed is a far cry from the "creeds" spoken by Jesus three centuries before. ~Fr. Richard Rohr

Maundy Thursday

In Stephanie's Words:

The Greeks called it “hubris,” that arrogance of pride that makes us think we can run our lives all on our own without God’s help.  Hubris is that irresistible temptation to make idiots of ourselves, trying to do something perfectly or tackling the impossible without asking for God’s help.  We all know what that feels like – usually on the way down – as we glance back up at ourselves and realize we were wrong about just how much we could handle.

On that last night they had together, Jesus was thoughtfully preparing his disciples for the challenging journey that lay ahead of them after he was gone.  He had this one last chance to tell them all they possibly needed to know in order to go on without him right there by their sides to plant the Kingdom of God on earth.  Of all the things he had taught them about God and following Him, what did they need most to be reminded of?  Just like us, more than any other lesson, they needed to know how to avoid the pitfalls of their own hubris on the journey ahead.

Hubris certainly was no stranger to the disciple gang.  It was hubris that provoked the disciples earlier that same day to bicker over who would be seated next to Jesus.  It was hubris that prodded Peter to proclaim loudly for all to hear that he would never betray his lord, just hours before he denied him 3 times.  And it was hubris that tempted Judas Iscariot to wager a bet with his own life that Jesus would indeed rebel and take over Jerusalem in a revolt.

What was Jesus’ antidote for their hubris and ours?  Love.  He commanded his closest friends to love one another in the same way he had loved them, not for gain or conquest, but out of a pure spirit of submission and servanthood.  He used his last hour with them to model that submission and servanthood by washing their feet and offering them something to eat, teaching them how to nourish themselves spiritually for the difficult days ahead when he was no longer with them.

Submission is not a popular word in today’s vernacular.  We more often see it as a weakness, not a strength.  The Bible’s references to submission are also difficult for us today – a slave being submissive to his master and a wife being submissive to hers have been abused so much in history to support oppression that the word has lost some of its meaning and power for us.  But submission is actually an extremely important spiritual discipline we should reclaim – or rename – that combats a disease that runs rampant among us all, triggered by the sin of hubris:  our temptation to believe we are too strong to need God’s help, care, or love.

When we come to Maundy Thursday service and read this passage from John each year, our tendency is to focus on Jesus, the masterful servant leader, stripping down to servant’s clothes to kneel and wash his disciples’ feet. But Jesus’ focus was not on himself but on their reactions.  Right on cue, Peter protests that he could not allow Jesus to perform this humbling service for him.  His pride would not allow him to accept hi mater’s intimate care.  I know it looks like humility to reject God’s grace, to protest that you are not worthy of it, but it actually takes a strong dose of submission to allow someone to minister to you, to admit that you need care and then to receive it.  Jesus’ example teaches us that only by submitting ourselves to God’s healing and nurturing care will we have the strength we need to protect ourselves from our own false pride.

Humility and submission have a counter-intuitive effect on pride.  Pride is typically born of weakness and a lack of self-confidence, but ironically humility and submission provide the necessary strength to counter the deceit of pride.  When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus countered him with appeals to God’s strength:  “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” And “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”  In each case, Jesus rejects the devil’s appeals to power with his own dependence on God for strength.

Later tonight Jesus will submit himself to God.  He will pray with great agony and grief, “Not my will but thine be done.” He submitted his own will to live – to God’s will, trusting that God would care for him, the Jesus who was divine and all powerful, through the pain and rejection he was about to experience.  And if Jesus needed to practice submission in accepting God’s care, so do we.  Think of this moment in Gethsemane as the moment when Jesus allows his Father and Creator to wash his earthbound feet, an act of submission to love and care.

I have another thought about washing feet.  I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose feet.  I mean he could have washed their hands, as in a typical Jewish ritual of cleasing performed by servants before a sacred mea.  Or he could have washed their faces, holding each one in his hands and taking one last look at each treasured friend.  But no, he washed their feet, perhaps not only because it was more menial—and therefore powerful – but also because it served as a blessing of commission.  Will Willimon has said that Jesus was always commanding his disciples to GO, that his mission on earth was to send out – to preach a gospel whose destiny was to spread all around the world, but only if someone carried it there.  I wonder if as he washed each disciple’s feet he knew where those feet would take the gospel, to the four corners of the world.  Thomas, the doubting disciple, also promised to follow Christ to the death.  His feet took him to India, where he did indeed die a martyr’s death.  Andrew’s feet would cover a huge region of today’s Turkey, but he too would die a martyr in Greece.  James’ feet would take him to the courts of Herod Agrippa, where he died by the sword, according to the book of Acts.  And of course, there was Peter.  Peter’s feet would take him all the way to Rome, where they were probably pierced by nails just like Jesus’ feet, as he was crucified upside down.  Legend and scripture tell us that each of the disciples, except perhaps John, would die a martyr’s death.  And as he washed those 24 feet that night, Jesus blessed those feet on their courageous journey, which they could not have imagined that night at all.

We, too, bless each other’s feet when we come to this act of submission, a blessing that will carry us into the world to share the good news of God’s love with everyone we meet.  Our mission is no less daunting, perhaps even dangerous, as the disciple’s own journeys, if we take that Gospel seriously, and our own hubris might tempt us to think we can do it on our own.  But, like the disciples, we need this humbling reminder of God’s care for us in order to make the journey.  We know no more than the disciples did of where that journey might take us, and we resist the thought of submission as much as they.  But tonight as I wash your feet, I will be praying that the miles you walk on your journey in the days to come will be blessed by God’s strength and love.

We must remember that like the disciples, we have the blessing of communion with our Lord for the days ahead.  He instructed his friends to remember him each time we ate this bread and drank from this cup, so that by remembering God’s gracious love and sacrificial death for each of us, we will be nourished for the journey.  We will follow his example in this meal as well tonight, remembering with disciples that as we eat and drink, we become one with Christ.  May the blessing of submission to God’s love and to each other make us fit and willing builders of Christ’s kingdom.  Amen.

Everyone is invited to participate in the ritual of foot washing, if desired, by coming forward to have a pastor wash your feet or by joining a friend at the station at the back to wash each other’s feet in this symbol of service, loving care, and submission to God’s love.

~Stephanie Nash, Associate Pastor, 2nd Baptist

And in Ryon's Words:

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day the church commemorates Christ's last supper with his disciples.  This is the meal at which he gave his disciples a new commandment (in Latin "mandatum" -- hence "Maundy Thursday) that we are to love one another just as he loved.

Jesus' last meal was a Passover meal -- a meal remembering that fateful night when the Angel of Death struck down all the first born of Egypt but "passed over" the houses of the Israelites, thus sparing their children and enabling them to escape to freedom.  It was a meal of Unleavened Bread, a reminder that when the Israelites left Egypt they did so in a hurry, without even time to wait for their bread to rise.


Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Weisel has written of the last Passover he shared with his family in Romania before their internment by the Nazi's. It was a time hauntingly similar to Jesus' last Passover:

"The authorities had forbidden communal prayer in the synagogues, so we arranged to hold services in our house.  Normally, on Passover eve, we would chant the melodies with great fervor.  Not this time. This time we only murmured the words."


On this night we remember all those past and present who have lived under oppression and without freedom, all those made to murmur and not chant their prayers aloud. We remember the Israelites in Egypt.  We remember the Jews of Romania and all other countries made to suffer the fate of the holocaust. We remember Christians living in places like Iraq and Iran where they will meet in secret to eat together tonight. We remember Baptists in the Ukraine and Republic of Georgia, where surveillance by the Russian Bear apparatus is a constant harassment and implicit threat. We remember also the Syrian refugees who left their homeland in haste, without having time to bring anything more than the Israelites before them. We remember them and we pray.


Remembering:

The God of Israel, Jacob's God, is still alive.  This is His world. And He is still at work in it. And tonight we remember that this God still has the power to deliver His people from forces of darkness and to set them at liberty in a land of promise and hope.
Tonight we will proclaim this; and whether in great chant or in feint murmur -- it shall be proclaimed.

~Ryon Price, 2nd Thoughts

In Richard's words...

God's Most Distressing Disguise

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

In Jesus we have an almost extreme example of God taking sides. It starts with one who empties himself of all divinity (see Philippians 2:6-7), comes as a homeless baby in a poor family, then a refugee in a foreign country, then an invisible carpenter in his own country which is colonized and occupied by an imperial power, ending as a "criminal," accused and tortured by heads of both systems of power, temple and empire, abandoned by most of his inner circle, subjected to the death penalty by a most humiliating and bizarre public ritual, and finally buried quickly in an unmarked grave. If God in any way planned this story line, God surely intended the message to be subversive, clear, and unavoidable. Yet we largely made Jesus into a churchy icon that any priestly or policing establishment could gather around without even blushing. Ilia Delio, a Franciscan scientist and theologian, challenges us to take the scandal and downward movement of the Incarnation quite seriously and to let it rearrange our priorities. An incarnational bias is evident today in our globalized culture. The "problem" of immigrants, welfare recipients, incarcerated, mentally ill, . . . disabled, and all who are marginalized by mainstream society, is a problem of the incarnation. When we reject our relatedness to the poor, the weak, the simple, and the unlovable we define the family of creation over and against God. In place of God we decide who is worthy of our attention and who can be rejected. Because of our deep fears, we spend time, attention, and money on preserving our boundaries of privacy and increasing our knowledge and power. We hermetically seal ourselves off from the undesired "other," the stranger, and in doing so, we seal ourselves off from God. By rejecting God in the neighbor, we reject the love that can heal us. Until we come to accept created reality with all its limits and pains as the living presence of God, Christianity has nothing to offer to the world. It is sound bites of empty promises. When we lose the priority of God's love in weak, fragile humanity, we lose the Christ, the foundation on which we stand as Christians. Compassion continues the Incarnation by allowing the Word of God to take root within us, to be enfleshed in us. The Incarnation is not finished; it is not yet complete for it is to be completed in us. [1]

~Fr. Richard Rohr

Gateway to Silence Humble me.

In Ryon's words...

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 12 verse 11:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

It is our experiences of exclusion, rejection, pain, loneliness, and suffering which later form the bedrock of our character and being. This was true for Joseph, for the woman at the well, for Paul and the other Apostles, and of course for Jesus himself.  Wisdom has sought to teach this to us in every generation. It shows up again and again in the Bible and in our fairy tales. The Cinderella story would not be true without the scorn and rejection Cinderella suffered from her step-mother and step-sisters. As St. Paul says in reflecting on his own rejection, "Suffering produces character," (Romans 5:3). Diamonds are formed under heat and pressure.

This week we remember Jesus' rejection. Though at the first of the week crowds waved their palm branches in exaltation, by the end Jesus will be left all alone. He will not do or be what the people want and expect him to do and be.  By the end of the week the whole city of Jerusalem will think him a lost cause at best, a traitor at worst, and a fool for sure.
The old spiritual says:
I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned
I’ve been talked about, sho’s you’re born

Jesus was rebuked and scorned and beaten and crucified and left for dead.

And without all that he wouldn't be Lord.


Ryon Price, 2nd Thoughts

In NieNie's words...

I'm holding my babies closer to me and praying God will 

bless, uplift, and comfort the people of Belgium and France.

After I heard about the horrific terrorist attacks I immediately felt confused

and worried about this world we live in. I worried for my children.

Will they have a future?  Will they be happy and feel safe?

 Then I looked to God for comfort and for peace.

I read in 2 Corinthians chapter 1

God cares for and comforts His people-

especially in the darkest of hours. 

"Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them

 which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith 

we ourselves are comforted of God. "

Fear is the opposite of faith.  

I cannot fear the world and teach my children to have faith-

that doesn't work. They do not exist together.
I know there is a plan.  

A bigger greater plan that will one day make complete sense.  

All the pain and suffering and heartache will not be for nothing.

 I have to believe that- it's how I can put one

foot in front of the other each day and continue on.

nieniedialogues.blogspot.com

SPRING!

The Road Less Travelled

Still Zoom-Zooming!

Shannon texted these photos the other day

to let me know that the fire truck is still going strong. 

When we got it for Sawyer's 3rd Christmas,

we had no idea there was another little fireman to come. 

Zooooom-Zooooom INDEED!

Hand-made Critters

Lahppys, of course!

(Law Peas)

I don't know...just did what he told me to do.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

I have seen many of the events of life and I have studied how and why things are the way they are.  I have concluded that much of this life is beyond my control and my understanding.  I try to give reasons to the things that happen but there seems to be no adequate rationale.  I try to understand but it continues to be a mystery.  I am constantly being confronted with experiences that are confusing and over which I have no control:

• The times when we celebrate birth and then we experience death,
• the times when we are active and thrilled to participate in life and then the times when we are quiet and withdrawn,

• the times when our spirits suffer and then when we experience healing,
• the times when we laugh heartily and the times when we weep profoundly,

• the serious times and the frivolous times,
• the times we remember and the times we forget,

• times when we feel successful and those times we feel that we have failed,
• times when we persevere and “hang in there” and times when we succumb and abdicate,

• times when we overtly express our love and times when we love but don’t show it,
• times when our hearts are filled with tears of grief and times when our grief is silent and too tired to give expression,

• times when we are the one who gives support and times when we are in desperate need of someone to hold and support us,
• times when we want to be with others and times when solitude is an oasis.

So what am I to do?  How am I to respond when I am in the middle of these confusing and mysterious times?  What is my purpose?  How do I live through these mysterious and difficult events in my life?

“The end of the matter is this: love God.  Trust the ways of God.  For God knows the plight of man; those things that we are able to see and have some understanding, and those things that are mysterious and hidden from sight.”

~Scripture Interpretation by my friend, Jim Powell

Remembering...

"They probably won't remember what you said,

they might not even remember what you did,

but they'll always remember how you made them feel."

~Maya Angelou

The Gift of Humiliation

To pass through to Wisdom, we need to experience a major humiliation to our ego. This often comes through suffering or failure--anything that brings us to readiness before Grace and Mystery. But that very desire for grace and God is best created by an initial experience of love, order, meaning, purpose, and direction. The easiest path of growing up spiritually, and in many ways the most natural, is to start with some "law and order." Then we must critically recognize that Order cannot solve all or even most problems, especially pain and suffering. Finally, without rejecting either Order or Disorder, grace will move you toward God's Reorder.
~Richard Rohr

Living in the moment...

Daily Lesson for March 21, 2016

Part 1 of 2

With it being Spring Break last week was slow around the church and so I had the chance to go out and visit some people I have not seen in a while and wanted to connect with. In this profession we say, "pay someone a visit," and I do not know why except to think it always costs something -- a free hour or day or week -- to go and see someone. But whatever is paid, I have found I usually receive back two-fold.

On Thursday I went and paid my visit to several friends in various nursing homes around town.  These are the people now living in a different time -- without cell phones, or appointment books or even clocks.  The time they are in is always whatever moment they are in. I knew I could drop in unannounced and would be as welcome that day as any day, and as all days.

One of my stops was to a memory care facility here in town where one of our church members has been for several years now. She lives with dementia and slowly it has eroded her ability to make new memories. When I visit I now have to tell her who I am.  "It's your pastor," I say.  "Oh honey," she says, "it's so good to see my pastor."  I can tell it is.

On this day there's a concert in the commons room where a man in a black cowboy hat and boots is playing 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s western songs. He runs the gamut from Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" to Marty Robbins' "El Paso".  The residents sing along joyfully and with full throats on all the song's choruses and my friend claps appreciatively at the end of each song. But it seems there's special appreciation and meaning found in the chorus of Roy Rogers's "Don't Fence Me In":

O give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in

For a moment we're all riding Trigger on some far away range without fences; we're all either Roy Rogers or Dale Evans -- if only in our minds.

I am about to leave and one of the residents wearing a green sweater looks at me and begins to walk across the commons towards me. I am nervous. She has the look in her eye that perhaps she wants to talk or dance.  I resist the urge to make a break for it and decide to stay and talk.

"Do I know you?" she asks.  "Do you come here often?"  I tell her I am not sure she knows me, but that I am the pastor of Second Baptist and perhaps she has seen me there or here visiting.  She shakes her head.  "I know you from somewhere," she says. "Well, where are you from?" I ask.  "Dalton, Georgia," she says. There is light in her eyes and a smile on her face.  Up to this moment we have been in real time, if I did not know then perhaps I would think we were not in a dementia unit, but at some ordinary concert.  But then she looks again at me with the light of life and says to me, "My mother is coming to visit me."  Now I know it is the dementia that is speaking, for this woman is too old to have a mother still alive. I go along. "Oh, she's coming to visit?  That'll be nice. I can tell you're looking forward to it."  "Yes," she says, "and I hope she takes me back with her."

And, now, I'm not so sure. Is it just the dementia talking? Or is what she said as true and as real of a statement as anyone I will hear today? She's waiting on her mother to come and visit from far away and take her back with her.

"I hope your mother does get to come and visit and that you get to go back with her," I say.  "I hope so too," she says, the light still shining out of her eyes.

I tell her I need to be going. I have some other friends I need to visit, I say.  We hug. "See you around," she says.

On the way out, I stop at the nurse's station and speak with the woman at the desk.  I point back to the commons room and say, "The woman over there in the commons room in the green sweater."  "Yes," she says and tells me her name. "Thank you," I say.  "Well, she says her mother is coming to visit her and is going to take her back with her.  And she would want me to ask; if you see her mother, will you please let her in?"  The woman behind the desk looks back at me knowingly and without even a hint of oddity or strangeness, "I will," she says.

To Be Continued . . .

~Ryon Price, 2nd Thoughts

Random thoughts...

"George Washington was our president.

He's dead, you know.

Dang it! 

I loved George Washington."

~ Sawyer

Telling stories...

My story is just a sideline in someone's else's story. 

The "big story" may be about them and their redemption,
right in the big middle of my failing
or falling.

I rarely get to know.

When I do,

it's a

GIFT!

And I get to step aside

(once again)

with

GRATITUDE,
remembering

(once again)

it's not about

me.

And then, sometimes,
if I'm really paying attention,
I will see that
my failing and falling
(in their "big story")
actually
led to 
REDEMPTION 
in my own "big story" 
as well.

Amazing, isn't it?

A Wide-Lens Look at Love

Mary and I watched NBC's "Sunday Morning" while she was visiting. 

One of the segments had to do with the right to die.

There were people choosing to take pills that would essentially

put them to sleep as a means of ending what was sure to be

a slow, painful death otherwise.

Those who loved them would be at their bedside to say all the last things.

And then they would just go to sleep.

I wish Rob and I had had that choice 

so that I could have been right there with him

before he lost consciousness.

It seems there were important things to say,

feelings to feel,

love to share--

last things we didn't get to say and do.

He left so early.

Mary suggested that I could look at love through a wider lens,

a lens spanning the last several months,

years,

if not decades.

And when I do,

I realize that I was loving him--

we were loving each other--

in the best ways we knew how

right up until the end.

I'm finding photos and Smileboxes that certainly attest to that.

Thank you, Mary.