Readfield UMC

Looking in and on

2012-01-13T17:29:00.000-05:00

For the next few months this blog is an invitation to look over my shoulder as I get ready to attend 2012 General Conference for the United Methodist Church. The Interpreter Magazine has a great article outlining the issues and actions that are lining up. Its alot to try to take in. There are 15 of us from New England: 5 delegates to GC, 5 delegates to Jurisdictional Conference who are reserves for GC, and 5 reserves for Jurisdictional.
As a reserve delegate to GC, I'll be prinarily a resource person to the 5 delegates from April 23-May 5. In June, the 10 of us will become the Jurisdictional Conference delegation. (more on what happens there later).
General Conference is the only official authority of the greater United Methodist Church. No one else can speak for the denomination or act on its behalf without GF authorization. No one person is in charge. Its a crazy, highly structured, full of surprises, organic movement that's been going on since 1784.

pen & ink by Gloria White

The church I serve, Readfield UMC in central Maine, is the descendent of 5 earlier congregations founded by Jesse Lee beginning in 1793. So we've been at this almost as many years as the denomination.
Use the comments box to add your questions or observations as we share this journey. It's an exciting time with lots of changes in the air!

"I am a Witness"

2011-11-01T15:16:00.000-04:00

Today is “All Saints Day” among Christians all around the globe. It’s a chance to celebrate the witness of lives who encourage us in our own faith journeys.

“Witness” is such a powerful word and concept that Nike picked up for their “swoosh campaign. Lebron James became a “star” in one of the Nike commercials The ad campaign’s use of religious language in interesting and, I’m sure, intentional. It builds an origin myth (“Before he was even out of high school, LeBron James was already a household name, and by the time he was taken number 1 overall in the NBA Draft, the expectations for greatness were inevitable …. The eighteen year-old was built like a hardened veteran in his prime and his skill-set and athleticism had arguably never been seen in a player of his stature”) The ad develops a heroic quest narrative (“As we follow LeBron’s ongoing quest for an NBA ring”) It appropriates religious authority (“the King James legend grows daily”). And it rallies disciples (“Since he first came into our awareness, we have all been “witnesses”). * Watch this:

Do you know Jesus well enough to get this excited?

Do WE know Jesus well enough to offer this kind of rousing endorsement?

Is what we're witnessing to worth saying, "watch this?"

It’s easy to settle for a watered down witness, to say what we think we ought to say rather than proclaim our experience of God’s goodness. Sometimes a bumper sticker’s all you’ve got to go by. WWJD is not a bad thought exercise. But it’s not very satisfying soul food. Apparently, Steve Jobs was leery of the WWJD effect. When Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook took the microphone at a memorial tribute to Steve Jobs at the company’s campus last week, he shared a piece of advice Jobs gave him before his death on Oct. 5. “Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. ‘Just do what’s right,’” Cook said. Jobs wanted Apple to avoid the trap that Walt Disney Co. fell into after the death of its iconic founder. The article goes on: [Jeffrey] Sonnenfeld said. “He was constantly breaking glass and moving forward. Walt Disney was surrounded by a cadre of creative people who were every bit the equal of Jobs’s lieutenants, but they became haunted by the question, ‘What would Walt do?’ … Jobs told Isaacson that one of his great hopes was that Apple would remain as innovative and committed to product excellence after his death.

I think that Jesus wanted that too: innovation in the face of challenges, excellance in serving God. Otherwise, what was “I go so that you may do greater things” about? If I had to figure that out just in my own head or with my own hands, I think I’d be in trouble. But the lives of the excellance seeking saints who have gone before, and the community of innovative saints all around get me excited. I see the best of what people are doing in the name of Jesus, and pray “God help me to be one too.”

A Prayer for All Saints Day by Safiyah Fosua

We give you thanks, O God, for all the saints who ever worshiped you

Whether in brush arbors or cathedrals,

We give you thanks, O God, for hands lifted in praise:  

Manicured hands and hands stained with grease or soil, 

Strong hands and those gnarled with age 

Holy hands 

Used as wave offerings across the land.

We thank you, God, for hardworking saints;  Whether hard-hatted

or steel-booted,  Head ragged or aproned, 

Blue-collared or three-piece-suited  

They left their mark on the earth for you, for us, for our children to come.

Thank you, God, for the tremendous sacrifices made by those who have gone before us.

Bless the memories of your saints, God.

May we learn how to walk wisely

from their examples of faith, dedication, worship, and love.***

*Nike as quotations from www.sneakernews.com.

**Peter Burrows, Published: October 25, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apples-jobs-told-cook-not-to-ask-what-would-steve-do-

***www.gbod.org

Calm before the storm

2011-08-27T09:34:00.001-04:00

milestoknowhere.com

Today is probably not the first time most of us mid-Mainers have experieced the calm before the storm. While the ariways are already raging with pictures and projections of Hurricane Irene's impact, we sit under a hazy sky blanket in reasonably cool air, puttering at normal Saturday activities: yard work, art shows, funerals..... that intersect with preparations for what may come.

I think about what my island of calm is and whether its one that will carry me through a storm as well as being there on the other side.

Yesterday, as part of the General Conference Delegation's worship, We Hyun Chang asked us to contemplate "what is saving you?" Hearing it in the first tense, rather than past or future, reframes the notion. What is life-giving in our life, our community, or our world? For me, its emerging partners in ministry and art. What is saving you? What is saving us?
Preparing for a hurricane is a good time to remember how saving the physical body of Christ is. I've been checking in with beloved seasonal residents today, seeing where a hand might help. Others are calling older community residents or those who live independently and might could use some neighborly partnering.
In all things, God is a present island of inspiration and energy, our calm in the storm.

hiatus

2011-08-01T17:17:00.000-04:00

The Blog will be taking a rejevenating break and returning in late August to partner with the new readfieldumc.org site. Blessed Summer Days!

If you need in formation on activites at the Readfield United MEthodist Church, please contact the church office, 207-685-4211

DOWNstairs UPdate

2011-07-12T15:21:00.001-04:00

….everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem. -Ezra 1: 5b

After a very busy couple of weeks, the renovation project is taking a breathe, though not a nap, for a few days. Larry and Paul were in framing windows today. Its been an interesting time of intersections. Most of this weeks' workers are being fed by Sara Munson over at Camp Mechuwana (thumbs up on the pizza). Buzz, who reconfigured our spare front door, is one of our UMVIM co-workers from the Slidell, LA site, though he calls Ohio home.
Dusty (an apt name for meeting over a pile of drywall shavings) came with a group from Pembrooke, VA. His pastor and yours discovered a beloved mutual friend. This group also made the glad discovery that The Apple Shed is now offering nichey cupcakes-yum.

Meanwhile, Jeff and I spent a day with cousin Tom, also from Ohio, a student at the wooden boat school (Ask me for a look at the bronze cast ammonite he made me!). Tom supports a village outside Port au Prince, Haiti and caught us up on life there.
Can you follow the lines of Methodist connection being drawn?
   We arrived back in Readfield just in time to join the Wed. night crew: staining, measuring (2x) & cutting (1x) heating covers, sweeping up dry wall dust, prepping window wells. The storm didn't keep a dozen from ages 12 to ??? from pitching in. We're now up to 49 pairs of helping hands. You can add yours Thursday night, July 14, as we clean up in time for this Sat's supper. Stop by and say hi to this week's Ohio missioners too. They'll be building a new ramp into the Jesse Lee Meeting House.
   Millard Fuller once wrote, "Maybe, just maybe, God wants to use "the theology of the hammer" as a means to draw His divergent family closer together. Perhaps God is calling us to issue a joint invitation to "the strangers" of this world to come in and enjoy the abundant life that Jesus said he came to bring."

Measure Twice, Cut Once

2011-06-16T18:49:00.003-04:00

measure twice

Carpenters have a number of handy rules for making a project come out,,, well, functional. Measure twice, cut once is the one I always remember (having measured once and cut twice way too many times).

cut once

Noah knew, "Build yourself a ship from teakwood. Make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch inside and out. Make it 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high.
-Genesis 6:14-16

gun safety

Project Manager Jeff’s favorite rule for mission teams is ten fingers, ten toes, the same number in the evening as you start with in the morning. I couln't help but think of that one as I watched George give John a gun saftey update in the entry hall.

Another biblical insight, safety first on site! When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof to make it safe so that someone doesn't fall off and die and your family become responsible for the death.- Deuteronomy 22:8
  These other Mr. Munson rules may come in handy as the project moves on:

All work is noble.

Excellence in the enemy of good enough.

Theology of the Hammer

2011-06-16T18:33:00.002-04:00

Clarence Jordan was known for inviting folks into the “God Movement,” It was his term for the Kingdom of God. In the 1950s & 60s, Jordan pointed out that most Christians were more interested in comfortable rituals and familiar scripture readings than actually doing applying holy insights to the world. (My favorite definition of a prophet is not one who predicts the future but one who challenges God’s people to be God’s partners in creating it).

Jordan & Fuller at Koinania Farms

Never one to sit still his friend and follower Millard Fuller began Habitat for Humanity (and later The Fuller Center for Housing-ask Lynn Twitchell about their programs!) and the God Movement picked up the theology of the hammer. Millard left a thriving business a tthe age of 29 to serve the poor. “Our Christian faith demands that we do more than just talk about faith and sing about love.” In other words, we’ve got to get out of our navel gazing kumbaya circles to be Christ’s living body in the world. Once the Spirit “comes by here,” we’ve got to move on out there.

That’s probably why mission trips are so powerful. We get to:

1. get off our duffs

2. let someone else know we love them with Christ’s heart.

teamwork

            Plus there’s no better way to get to know someone than swinging a hammer/washing dishes/sanding drywall/dishing beans/finger-painting with children/________________(fill in the blank). These photos are a glimpse of the theology of the hammer at work among us this summer.
   Every study I know of confirms the common sense wisdom that men build relationship most comfortably and naturally when they are working side by side. (We women are grateful to work as your partners in this community!) What difference might it make if more churches took up crow bars and hammers as faith tools?
   Of course real koinania (Christian fellowship) only begins working side by side. It grows as the community under construction opens itself up and out. Our renovation is a forward thinking exercise in discipleship. The relationships that are also under construction are being strengthened for the next, harder, and even more joyous work of creating a new generations of disciples, of all ages, for the transformation of the world.
   We can count our new disciple growing spaces-1...2....3.
   What can we count on as our goals for their purpose?
   More professions of faith in Christ? What's our 2011/12 goal? The possibiities are practically endless.
   More calls to ministry-I believe we can cultivate the call of 5 new Lay Speakers in the next year and at least 3 ministers in the next five years to serve local congregations as Licenced Local Pastors and Ordained Elders or Deacons. (BTW, when's the last time you sent encouragement to our person in process now, Tom Frey? Please pray for him as he moves to serve People's UMC in South Portland.)
More intentional growth of everyday, extraordinary, side by side gifts as we learn to recognize and encourgae the gifts the Spirit gives us.
   Like those hammering in faith this summer!
The word of God came to Solomon saying, "About this Temple you are building—what's important is that you live the way I've set out for you and do what I tell you. -1 Kings 6:11

Rocko positioning.

insulators

prepping for the next supper?

#1 in a (pre-fathers day) series on Men and Church.

2011-06-02T09:51:00.000-04:00

When we were out in Colorado Springs for a family wedding last June, I overheard several young men talking about going to church with the specific purpose of finding “good” wives. (In the same conversation they were pretty explicit that the same rules of “goodness” didn’t apply to their own behavior.)

Recent articles have me watching for where our men folk tend to plug into church. The steady stream in and out of Fellowship Hall under renovation suggests that anything having to do with deconstruction or power tools is popular. But we also have a higher percentage of men than most small churches singing in choir and participating in committees. So how are our guys’ experiences similar to or different from “averages.”

Why do or “don’t men go to church?” asks blogger Doug Lawrence. David Murrow in his book Why Men Hate Church suggests that many men see Christianity as being incongruous with their manhood. Maybe so, says Lawrence, “but the church is probably at least partially to blame for this. “ He says churches make 3 mistakes:

1. We place a higher emphasis on children than fathers.

2. We forget to celebrate and thank men as much as women.

3. We sing too much!

What do you (especially the men among us) think?

Does our church’s life make room for what helps you grow in Christ and find a place in community? What does and what might?

Are you feeling neglected? If so, what forms of encouragement do you find most meaningful?

Here’s what Lawrence goes on to say: (http://www.churchcentral.com/blog/5791/3-Ways-We-re-Failing-Fathers-in-the-Church)

(1)…churches that place a high priority on having fathers being highly active in their children’s programs appear (general observation in the field) to have larger numbers of men in their general church population. Says Christian researcher, George Barna, "Women are almost twice as likely as men" to teach Sunday school. What’s wrong with women teaching children? Nothing, but what are we doing to give permission to men to also be nurturers and be active role models for children?

(2)….In some ways we play into a feminine stereotype of being all soft and mushy on Mother’s Day, but find it difficult to affirm fathers with at least a modicum of sentimentality and encouragement. Even men need a little motivation toward their personal worthiness and leadership role in the home and church.

(3)—Men sing less than women in general, don’t mind singing if the keys of songs reflect the average range of their voices, don’t mind music that accompanies something else...like a movie for example, hate standing for 20 minutes and singing—period.

-Pastor "Eager to hear your thoughts" Karen

Coming soon #2 in the series, "Millard Fuller's Theology of the Hammer"

The Book that Changed the World

2011-05-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

by Charles Piddock

The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who died in 1986, once said: “I have always imagined that Heaven will be a kind of library.”

Interesting idea. If it is true, at the very center of that celestial library, for English speakers at least, would be one shining work of genius: the King James Bible. Over the past four centuries, this book has transcended numerous generations, impacted millions of people, and greatly influenced our culture. It is simply impossible to overestimate or exaggerate its influence.

The King James Bible was born (maybe we should say “begat”) on May 2, 1611---the product of seven years labor by a remarkable group of 54 scholars. Your program this morning has a brief insert telling the story of how it came to be made.

Let me begin where the insert ends, and focus on its influence in English-speaking America---not at the very beginning in Jamestown (settled in 1607, before the King James Bible) or Plymouth in 1620, where the Puritans used the favorite Puritan text, the Geneva Bible.

An Early Best-Seller

As English settlers began pouring into the colonies, however, the bible they brought with them was not the Geneva Bible, but the King James Bible. In the 18^th century it was universally used in the colonies---and it was a best-seller, although all the Bibles were still printed in England and shipped to America. The first English Bibles printed in the colonies were printed in 1771 by Robert Aitken of Philadelphia. When the American Bible Society was founded in the early 1800s, it distributed millions of King James Bibles.

The Bible quickly became the mother’s milk of the new nation. Despite its old-fashioned and sometimes difficult language, not only was the King James Bible read in churches from New England to the western frontier, but it was quoted by politicians, inscribed on public buildings, taught in school reading classes, and read aloud in homes far and wide, often before each meal of the day. Millions learned from its carefully crafted words how sentences should be written, how stories should be told, and how to use elevated words for solemn events.

(Even at the time it was first put together, the KJB was deliberately old fashioned in grammar and phraseology; an expression like “yea, verily,” for example, had gone out of fashion some 50 years before the translation was made. The translators didn’t want their Bible to sound contemporary, because they knew that contemporary quickly goes out of fashion.)

Made to be Read Aloud

In early America the King James Bible was most often read aloud, as its translators intended. It used simple concrete words and punctuation to establish an oral prose rhythm and pace suitable for the divine story it told, blending simplicity and majesty, as in Luke 2, verses 7 to 10:

“And she brought forth her first born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said until them, Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

The words in the passage are simple; they tell a story, and are just enough words to tell the story as its subject demands, no more, no less.

Luke 11, verses 9 and 10, provides another such example: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he the seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Copyreaders today often say you should never begin a sentence with “and.” And yet the KJB does this constantly: In the book of Genesis, for example, there are 31 verses in the opening chapter. Twenty-nine of them begin with And. And God did this. And God did that.

Auditory Imagination

The effect of the punctuation, and also the use of “and” and “or” to establish a rhythm, is designed to capture the hearer’s ear, and though the ear, the imagination. It is what the poet T.S. Eliot, in talking about the King James Bible, calls the Bible’s evocation of the “auditory imagination,” the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word;…”

The celebrated American journalist Dorothy Thompson was aware of this as a child:

“Every morning before breakfast we assembled in the sitting room and my father read a passage from the King James Bible, followed by a prayer….Somewhere, as my father read, I became excitedly aware of something more than the story: of the beauty and glory of the words; of the images they can evoke and the thoughts they can enkindle.”

Every American president in the early days of the Republic had his feeling for words shaped by the King James Bible, perhaps none so much as Abraham Lincoln:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” used by Lincoln in his acceptance speech for the candidacy for the Senate, was taken directly from Mark 3, verse 25. There is no better illustration of Lincoln’s indebtedness to the King James Bible than his Gettysburg Address. The address is overwhelmingly biblical, with 269 of its 272 words appearing in some form in the Bible:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty…”

The formula threescore and fourscore occurs dozens of times in the KJV, with Psalm 90:10 coming closest to Lincoln’s opening phrase: “The days of our years are threescore and ten. Also, Lincoln’s use of “conceived” and “brought forth” comes from Old Testament prophets and the nativity story in the Gospels.

‘I Have a Dream’

The most famous referencing of the King James Bible by an orator in modern times is found in Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, which he delivered on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

The King James Bible lives on in this speech, partly in the elevated style and affective undertow of the speech and partly in explicit allusions. Amos 5:24 is present as King declaims, “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Isiaih 40: 4—5 asserts its presence when King said: “I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

American Writers

Of course, the King James Bible has also been a major influence in American writers, from Melville to Faulkner to Hemingway to Toni Morrison to many others.

Eudory Welty: “How many of us, the South’s writers-to-be of my generation, were blessed…in not having gone deprived of the King James Version of the Bible. Its cadence entered into our ears and our memories for good. The evidence lingers in all our books.”

Like other major novelists, Toni Morrison has taken some of her novel titles from the Bible: such as Song of Solomon. Her fictional characters often bear biblical names---Magdalene, Ruth, Pilate, and Hagar in Song of Solomon, for example.

“The Bible wasn’t part of my reading,” says Morrison, “it was part of my life.”

Our Common Speech

The King James Bible not only influenced writers and speech makers; it also has entered our common speech through a number of expressions. Biblical phrases have entered the language so seamlessly that many people don’t even realize from whence they come, yet they use them nearly every day. The list is practically endless. In fact, Bartlett’s Bible Quotations---a separate volume of currently used phrases, all taken from the King James Bible---is over 200 pages long.

Here’s just a sample:

sour grapes,

fatted calf;

drop in a bucket;

skin of one’s teeth;

apple of one’s eye;

girded loins;

feet of clay;

whited sepulchers;

filthy lucre;

pearls before swine;

fly in the ointment;

fight the good fight;

eat, drink, and be merry;

Am I my brother’s keeper?

And more:

The Land of the living (Job 28:13)

At their wits end (ps. 107: 27)

There is no new thing under the sun (Eccles. 1:9)

The salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13)

The signs of the times (Matt. 13:57)

In the twinkling of an eye (1Cor. 15:52)

The root of the matter (Job 19:28)

Fire and brimstone (Ps 11:6)

A law unto themselves (Rom. 2:14)

Labor of love (1 Thess. 1:3)

As a lamb to the slaughter (Isa. 53:7)

Fell flat on his face (Num. 22:31)

Divinely Inspired

Why has this book been so singularly successful and monumentally influential? How did a committee of 54 scholars at the beginning of the 17^th century produce such a lasting masterpiece? Without a doubt, divine inspiration played a role:

“The translation was extraordinarily well done,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, himself an atheist, “because to the translators what they were translating was not merely a curious collection of ancient books written by different authors in different stages of culture, but the word of God divinely revealed through His chosen and expressly inspired scribes. In this conviction they carried out their work with boundless reverence and care and achieved a beautifully artistic result…they made a translation so magnificent that to this day the common [person] accepts and worships it as a single book by a single author, the book being the Book of Books and the author being God.”

As a postscript, here are some KJV facts:

· An estimated 1 billion or more copies have been published since 1611.

· It contains 788,258 total words, of which 14,565 are unique

· The original book was very large: approximately 17 inches tall, 30 inches wide when opened, and it weighed around 30 pounds

· The first 1611 Bibles were expensive and were chained to the front pulpit of churches, to prevent them from being stolen.

· 169 original 1611 King James Bibles are in existence today

King James Bible: Origins

2011-05-16T16:30:00.002-04:00

The Making of the King James Bible

by Charles Piddock

Slightly over 400 years ago, on May 2, 1611, a new translation of the Bible came off the press in England. Those opening its covers first came upon, not the book of Genesis and the creation of the world, but a fulsome dedication to King James penned by Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester. The dedication was addressed: “To the most high and mighty prince JAMES by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. The Translators of the Bible wish Grace, Mercy, and Peace through JESUS CHRIST our Lord.”

The newly translated Bible was “the authorized” version, meaning it was authorized to be used in churches by King James, but it wasn’t long before it acquired the name it has today: the “King James Bible.”

James, in fact, had a lot to do with the Bible that now bears his name. He ascended the throne of Scotland as James VI during a time when religious passions were high. In Scotland, he was constantly badgered by quarreling Presbyterians who did not believe in the divine right of kings or the concept of bishops, which they felt was a vile Catholic practice that had nothing to do with true worship.

Religious Differences

When Elizabeth I died, James, who was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the closest living relative of Elizabeth, was elevated to the throne of England as James I. He could not have been more delighted. England, of course, was a much richer country than Scotland. Its climate was a great deal better, and it was a great European power. But England, as Scotland, suffered from religious quarrels and divisions. The country was safely Protestant, due to Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, but the Protestants continually argued and fought amongst themselves. Calvinists and Puritans, in particular, felt that the English established church retained too many Catholic elements and wanted it purified.

This religious difference also included the English bibles churches used. The Bishops’ Bible, published in 1568 by leaders in the Church of England by the authority of Queen Elizabeth, was the official Bible used in churches. The Geneva Bible, produced in 1560 by exiled Protestant leaders in Geneva, Switzerland, had been adopted and embraced as the bible of the Puritans and others who followed Calvinism.

The Conference at Hampton Court

James felt that he was appointed by God to bring agreement and harmony to these Protestant factions. Accordingly, in January 1604, the king convened a conference of church leaders at Hampton Court palace to look for ways to calm religious differences. (The conference was originally scheduled to take place in 1603, but an outbreak of bubonic plague in London caused Church leaders to flee into the safety of the countryside.)

At the Hampton Court conference, John Reynolds, the head of the English Puritan Church, proposed a new English translation of the scriptures. Reynolds said that such a translation would go a long way toward uniting the churches and people of England. James received Reynolds’ proposal with alacrity and the king ordered English church leaders to begin work on the new Bible translation.

The first step was to pick the men who would translate the new Bible from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Later that year, James approved a list of 54 prospective “revisers,” from which 47 Translators (capitalized) were selected. They were divided into six committees, called “companies” working separately at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. Each of the committees was to take a different part of the bible to translate.

A Distinguished Group

The Translators were a distinguished group. They included such men as Lancelot Andrewes (1555—1626), dean of Westminster, later Bishop of Winchester, and a scholar of some 15 ancient and modern languages. It was said of Andrewes that he could have been “interpreter general” at the Tower of Babel; John Overall (1561—1619), dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral and former regius professor of divinity at Cambridge; Miles Smith (1554—1624), expert in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and eventual author of the Bible’s preface. Dr. Smith was a man so impatient that he had famously walked out of boring sermon and went off to a pub; the Puritan leader John Reynolds (1549—1607) mentioned above, who was president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and a number of scholars too long to mention here. The chief overseer of the project was Richard Bancroft (1544—1610), Archbishop of Canterbury.

King James, in his instructions to the Translators said he did not want creativity or invention in the translation. What he cared about was clarity, simplicity and (very important!) doctrinal orthodoxy. The translators worked hard at these instructions; yet they also spent a lot of time adjusting and tweaking each word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph in the text in the interest of euphony and musicality. After all, this was an age when the Bible was to be read aloud. This was also the age of Shakespeare and Marlowe, the golden age of the English language. Time and time again the words the Translators put into the new Bible almost unconsciously fell into poetic rhythm. The Translators also made use of repetition and even dramatic pauses. Notice how the commas require pauses and help create the rhythm: “In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth. And the Earth was without forme, and voyd, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Greatest Monument of English Prose

It took seven years of translating, arguing, debating and fine-tuning until the bible was printed in 1611. What emerged (after most of the typos of the first printing were corrected) is now recognized by some as perhaps the greatest monument of English prose and poetry. According to British writer Adam Nicolson, the King James Bible “is not the poetry of a single mind, nor the effusion of a singular vision, nor even the product of a single moment, but the child of an entire culture stretching back to the great Jewish poets and storytellers of the Near Eastern Bronze Age.” The Bible has “a sense of an entirely embraced and reimagined past.”

“[The] translation was driven by the idea of a constant present, the feeling that the riches, beauties, failings and sufferings of Jacobean England were part of the same world as the one in which Job, David or the Evangelists walked. The KJ translators could write their English words as if the passage of 1,600 or 3,000 years made no difference. Their subject was neither ancient nor modern, but both or either. It was the universal text.”

The Anniversary Year

In the 400 years since its first printing, the King James Bible has consciously and unconsciously influenced just about every American writer from Walt Whitman to Abraham Lincoln to William Faulkner to Toni Morrison. Its phrases have entered into the common tongue to stay. In this anniversary year, hundreds of events are scheduled in Britain, the United States and other English-speaking countries this year to celebrate the King James Bible. They include lectures, reading marathons, symposia, concerts, conferences and television documentaries. Here in America, celebrations are scheduled in Texas, Kentucky and Louisiana. A conference at Ohio State University will explore the influence of the KJB on writers such as William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.

Thoughts of Three Men

2011-05-05T08:33:00.000-04:00

www.EttyPlay.org

Yesterday I sat mesmerized with the student body and faculty of Kents Hill School as actress Susan Stein brought the complex Etty Hillesum to life. “Etty’s” writings, diaries and letters to family and friends, are receiving increasing public attention. This very real young women records her inner struggles and daily challenges navigating the Nazi occupation of Holland. She is no stereotypical saint. Depressed, sexually prolific, guilt-ridden by her work for the Jewish Council, work that allows her to keep her own German/Russian Jewish family off the deportation lists, Etty manages, with great effort, to hold wide open her perspective on the tumble of humanity around her.

DutchJews.jpg

As I walked back to the office, the character in Etty’s reflection I found myself mulling was a young boy, nameless, who hid when it was his time to be put on the transport train. When one refused, or didn’t show up, many were added, an incentive for the Jewish community to cooperate with the process. Virtual fingers wag at this very young man, failing to go along with smooth and certain march toward annihilation. Who is he to speed the death of so many of his neighbors? What Etty glaringly and intentionally does not say is, of course, the point. What power does he have? What power do they have? Who’s really responsible for this horrible assembly line deconstructing a people?

Inescapably, my contemplative context is the death of Osama Bin Laden, another engine of death and destruction, now taken down with members of his own household who he put at risk. I wonder where and when he made the critical choices that turned such obvious talent and ability into tools of hate, instead of the good he could have done.

And wrapped around my whole thought process is the Easter season we are in. Could anyone really expect that young Dutch Jew from the 1940s to go as grace-fully to his death? Should we expect him to do what Jesus did or can we grow in our knowing that Jesus’ death puts God in a new relationship with him, and all those others throughout history who were not themselves God, just human beings caught in horrible situations. One of my favorite resurrection images is of all the human beings that ever lived being caught up in the act of God’s life-remaking leap from the grave. Ripped into redemption, it would be hard to resist the flow of the Spirit, to not be overcome by God’s desire to sweep us along in love’s flow. Hard, but not impossible as long as we are the freely created imago dei, not manufactured clay pots.

There’s been a hubbub in Christian circles recently about the notion that God might love everyone too much to ultimately constrain any to hell’s eternity. Personally, I’m glad the scripture tells us to leave those things up to God. What I do know is that the wounds we carry into God’s presence are healed there. Not as though they had never happened, but as though it matters that they did. Healing can be a painful process. Healing requires the willing cooperation of the damaged person with the healer. May we be open to God’s grace and power so that, in our lives, they move the world toward healing.

Holy Humor Sunday

2011-04-25T08:32:00.000-04:00

He is risen!

photo by Tina Phillips

Worship this coming Sunday will be a celebration of holy humor. Can you imagine Jesus' delight in the world of smiles and smells after three days of sensory deprivation? This Sunday we'll share simple heart lifting joy in living. Please bring a favorite knock-knock joke for the passing of the peace and a whoopie pie in your choice of flavors for a fun fellowship potluck of flavors!

Those who live in grace are freed from the necessity of taking themselves, their circumstances, their morality and opinions, their piety and beliefs, too seriously. They are free to laugh and play as children of God. As important as repentance is, we are not saved by our much weeping, any more than we are saved by acts of penitence. And the expression of salvation freely given and received is not weeping but laughter, or at least a weeping become laughter. Laughter and lightheartedness, at their fullest and freest, are the gift of divine grace. -Conrad Hyers, And God Created Laughter

Pretzel baking activity

2011-04-13T11:38:00.000-04:00

Here's a home lesson for lent, designed for all ages!

Gather family and friends for pretzel baking. Your house will smell wonderful and you'll have a soul feast!

Why pretzels?

In the 5^th century, in the region between France and Italy, a monk was playing with dough left over from the daily baking. While he was playing he came up with a unique twist that looked like arms crossed in prayer. This baked "pretiola" was given to children as a reward for their reverence.   The treat spread to other monasteries over the Alps into Austria and Germany where it came to be known as the "pretzel". Pretzels became more popular with time and even became a symbol in marriage (broken like a wishbone at the ceremony), They became associated with lent, since they contain no oil or fat, ingredients that ran low in northern pantries toward the end of winter and came to be associated with lenten fasting.

In 1652, The first evidence of pretzels in America are in the record of a court case. It seems a baker named Carl Carmer and his wife were charged with selling Pretzels to the Indians. The problem wasn't that the Indians were eating pretzels (which they loved), but that the pretzels were made from the good flour from milling while the bread sold to the good people of Beverwyck, New York was made from the left-overs. As recorded in the town's history "The heathen (sic) were eating flour while the Christians were eating bran."   In the 1850s, a baker in Lititz, PA gave a drifter a free meal. In return for his kindness the tramp gave the baker a recipe for pretzels that eventually became the recipe of the baker's apprentice - Julius Sturgis. This style of Pretzel became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch Hard Pretzel. (http://www.hammondpretzels.com/histpret.htm)

Making Pretzels Wash your hands and clean your kneading surface!

1 package yeast, 4 cups flour, 1 ½ cups warm water, 1 tablspoon sugar, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon salt

Mix the yeast, water, and sugar. Stir in the flour. Knead the dough on a table until it is smooth. Roll the dough out into a “snake”. Shape into a pretzel/praying hands. Brush with beaten egg. Sprinkle with salt. place on grease baking sheets. Bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit until browned.

Pretzel Prayer to share:
Dear God,
Please bless us as we share these pretzels.
Wrap your love around us
and hold us tight
as we learn to pray and to share. AMEN

Mission Moment from Haiti

2011-03-31T08:27:00.000-04:00

Back from Haiti

-Lynn Twitchell

I arrived in Port au Prince and met other team members at the airport. We learned there was a team of engineers going to the same project so we waited outside the airport with them for the rest of our team and to be picked up by Grace International representatives. I learned fast why I was told to wait inside the airport. There were “porters” anxiously waiting for a tip by “helping” us with our bags – whether or not we wanted their help. After a rather long, hot wait and much confusion, our guide and guards arrived with our transport, which we later referred to as “the cage,” picked up 15 members of my team along with 16 members of the other team and our luggage and took us to Carrefour: an hour and a half ride only about 10 miles away.

We pulled up to a locked, metal gate, honked the horn at which the gate was opened and we drove in to see our home: a hospital, still under construction. We stayed on the second floor. I shared a room with the 7 other women on my team.

The view from our window was of the tent city which was non-existent before the earthquake. It’s hard to imagine 15,000 people living in an area of less than 10 acres in size. I don’t have to imagine it, I have seen it. I do still find it hard to believe.

Grace International is an impressive organization. They have accomplished much, especially when you consider all the obstacles they face being in Haiti. (You may check it out and see for yourself by going to http://www.graceintl.org) Our guide and security guards brought us through the tent city at Grace. Tents? Most were tarps (stamped with the organizations that had donated them: USAID, Samaritan’s Purse, UNICEF, etc….) folded over wooden frames. They are quite well organized: there is a “council” which sets the rules for the “city” and deals with infractions of the rules. There are designated areas for showers, toilets, gathering water, washing clothes, and emptying garbage. This all helps with keeping things clean and disease free. This particular tent city has walls all around it and one has to show an ID to the security guard to enter. This has helped with safety in the “city.

On Mon. we started work. We were loaded into “the cage” along with our tools, and security guards, 2 of them armed, and drove to the site: a 7 acre plot which will have duplex homes for 70 families. Our first task was to move dirt from where a truck had dumped it (in a dry area) through the mud and close to the house. We learned to work as a team right away. We set up a line, some shoveled dirt into the buckets, others passed them to those in line and the person at the end emptied them. Sounds easy right? Did I mention that dirt is heavy and we had to pass through thick mud? Just to give everyone a chance at each task, we had a system to move the line and switch every 15 minutes. Rotate has whole new meaning. Thank goodness we had translators to explain to the Haitian volunteers what we were doing. My stomach muscles should be lots stronger from lifting and laughing.

Moving dirt seemed to be a constant need during the week. We did use wheelbarrows when the mud level decreased so we could put down some boards to walk on. We put fill in the house to level the floor and spread gravel that had been dumped on the “road” so the truck could get closer to the house. (It got stuck during one unloading.)

Yes, some of us got to use our carpenter skills. When the supervisor found out we had a “carpenter” on the team, he was put to work making a template for the trusses. That would probably be a straight forward task in the US. In Haiti, it’s a bit more challenging. No electricity, no power tools and no wood. Through a lot of negotiating, Jonny, our coordinating contractor found some plywood and enough 2 x 4’s to make a “table” and one truss. It took all day to measure and cut the wood. We only bent a few saws. It is a great accomplishment when one actually gets through that wood. On Wed. the team put up the first truss. HURRAY!!! That evening we found there were skill saws and a generator that another volunteer team had in storage. We must have looked pathetic after working, as they were very generous and let us borrow them. Boy did that speed up the process. I think we had 8 trusses finished by Fri. (Each home needs 20 so the next team will have plenty of work to do.)

I mentioned we had guards with us everywhere we went. At first this was unnerving, but as we got to know them, and realized they were there to keep an eye on us and to keep us safe, we relaxed and enjoyed getting to know them. Because Haitians are so poor and we have so much, it is easy for people to want what we have … this would include our tools, our water bottles, our cameras, our food and anything else we might bring to the work site. With our guards looking after us, we never worried.

Because the new community is a distance from “Grace Village” and no one lives there yet, we didn’t have much interaction with the future residents. Our homeowners Antonio & Cynthia and Rigaud & Jennette worked with us every day. This meant they were at “the cage” ready to go in the morning as they lived in tent city and were transported with us. Knowing they were working hard to create a new home for their families certainly gave us inspiration to work through the heat of the day.

Our team also was there one day for “The Lord’s Kitchen,” the feeding program where rice and beans are cooked outside in huge pots and over 800 children come with a container and wait patiently to be served their 2 scoops of mixture to take back to their families. For many, this is their only meal of the day. It is not easy to watch the responsibility of a toddler prodded by an older child (of maybe 6 or 8) stand in line so their family may eat.

I had an absolutely wonderful team. We came from all over the US and Canada and ranged in age from 20 to 72. We worked well together and enjoyed each other. Everyone pitched in and did what was needed. Laughter could be heard much of the time. It is amazing that one can work hard, live in conditions with minimal comfort and feel good about it. Of course, it helps put things in perspective when one looks out and sees how much better we had it than the people who live there. It made it difficult to complain about the lack of water or pressure in the shower when one only had to look out and see “tent city.” In comparison, we lived in a palace and ate like royalty. I feel so fortunate for the opportunities I have had to go to other countries and experience all I have. I am already thinking about a trip to Haiti next year to see the progress. My hope is that the people there will have some hope for the future.

For more information about the Fuller Center check out http://www.fullercenter.org/global-builders/haiti My team is in the pictures. If you look very closely (probably using a magnifying glass) you can see me sawing a board.

What am I clinging to?

2011-03-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

So I'm thinking about John 15, Christ the vine & us the branches.
Here's the thing about the branches attached to vines. We need support. We cling to the closest surface: brick, wood, we'll even wrap ourselves around metal when the opportunity presents itself.
When a vine starts to reach in a new direction, though, the branches either have to go along, often stretching toward a new support system, or find themselves stressing out, breaking off from their source of nourishment on the traveling vine.

Could there be a better metaphor for churches? We get lovingly attached to the places where we've encountered Christ, places whose very walls are saturated with years of spoken word and silent prayer, hymns sung well, and, if we're honest, not so well. We love the places where we've been challenged and comforted by the Holy Spirit. That attachment can make it hard to see when the Spirit is moving in a new place, much less a new direction in the world.
And our loving attachments can separate us from those Christ's own heart longs to reach. Remember what the Israelites went through in the desert? Here's a humorous walk down that memory lane with 1970s Christian pop-rocker Keith Green:

Its amazing how tenaciously we can hang on, even when life starts moving out into the desert, especially when manna is all that's on offer. Do you remember why they wanted to leave Eygpt in the first place? Now that consumerism defines us, we should at least have a choice, shouldn't we? Word is that an awful lot of people were finding their church experiences to be more like salvery in Eygpt than freedom on the road. Its the funniest thing, how God seems to beckon from the strangest places just when we're getting comfortable. Have you ever heard of the frog whose pot of water started to get hot?

In the early 1630s, Japanese Catholics were executed, renounced their faith, or were forced into secrecy by the Shabara Rebellion. When the Mejii Restoration began a couple hundered years later, strange practices began to come to light: statues of Mary and her child that looked like bodhisattvas, prayers that sounded like Buddhist chant with remnants of latin, Portuguese and Spanish. When anthropologist Christal Whelan discovered two surviving priests they weren't seaking to each other for some reason.

A new generation found a new way, in the light of freedom to practice their religion. The old ways of the Kakure Kirishitan (hidden Christians) died off. They weren't bad ways. They weren't where the vine was going. That's an extreme example.

Phyllis Tickle, former religious book editor for Publisher's Weekly, says that about every 500 years Western Christianity has a "yard sale." We pull our traditions out of the attic, dust off some that we've forgotten, set aside some that don't seem to inspire us anymore. Would it surprise you to learn that we're well into the "uptick" for this 500 year cycle?

What we know and love about our worship isn't the same image held by many who've lef tthe church, or only seen it in movies. I once had a student who was quite certain that none of his musical interests could possible have any connection to the bible. He was astounded to learn that one of his favorites, "Let us Pray," by Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana, was based on Psalm 23. And it was a stretching experience for me to learn that those same words, "Yea though I walk through the Shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me....." were tatooed in their entirely on his chest. ( I assured him that I trusted his word and didn't need to see for myself). The music carrying the lyrics moves from the chaos of sin through the wrestling of repentance, and into the peace that abides in assurance of God's love.

Could hip hop songs and tatoos really show us places where Christ the vine is leaning? Can spoken word express a fresh experience of the gospel. (find out by seeking out Fred Lynch's beautiful rendition of John 15 in "A Hip Hop Devotional through the Book of John." (I'm happy to loan it out locally.) Or check out the Christian punk band, The Devil Wears Prada, whose heavy metal, Hey John, what’s your name again video is one of the best theological interpretations of John's soteriology, means of grace by which we are saved, that I've ever encountered. These are a new support system for a new generation, pointing to why our churches have alot of dwindling congregations meeting in chilly church basements.
Perhaps this Lent could be a season of stretching toward the Easter light we long for, even if it draw us to explore strange places. It may be the difference between life and a breaking point for some congregations.

Children's message

2011-02-20T12:29:00.001-05:00

In worship this morning we watched (part of this) with the children's Sunday School question in mind, "who is my neighbor?" The internet is really slow on the hill this weekend, so we weren't able to finish the video clip. So for those who saw part and those who saw none yet, here's Sermon Spice's "Set Service."

Thou shalt love the lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.
The morning message is available at the pastor's blog.

See What? Say Who.

2011-02-14T19:08:00.016-05:00

Thoughts on John 3: 1-21

For 2 weeks we’ve heard two powerful healing stories. They're stories that put newly empowered people immediately on the defensive. Local authorities demand they explain themselves. What happened?

To add insult to injury, both the once paralyzed man(from John 5) and the man born blind (from John 9) are called on the carpet because they were healed on the Sabbath, the holy day, the day of rest.

Here’s what I’ve been wondering this week,

why do we still refer to them as the “paralytic” and the “blind man”?

If I’ve been healed, I want to be “the one who can walk.”

I want to be “the one who can see.”

Are we so focused on dysfunction we can’t quite let it go.

Labels do seem to linger, don’t they?

Maybe that’s Nicodemus’ problem. Maybe he and his Council colleagues are so focused on avoiding dysfunction they’re blind, or at least blindfolded, unable to see health and wholeness.

Maybe they really can’t see what’s right in front of them.

Just one, Nicodemus, the teacher who’s supposed to know it all, comes knocking after nightfall. How embarrassing. Nicodemus wasn’t exactly living in the era of “lead learners,” after all.

Is he who is supposed to know enough to judge

really creeping in after dark to the house where Jesus invited his first followers to “come and see?” Those followers sought Jesus in the open, in front of God and everyone. But Nicodemus looks for answers inside, afterhours, when the teacher is alone.

I don’t think he’s using the “royal we,” Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Maybe all the leaders of the council really know, on some level, that Jesus is a God-sent, blessed sign, and they just can’t come to grips with what they should do about it.

But I think Nicodemus is part of group of wonderers who are starting to understand their handicapping conditions. He’s the one brave enough to limp out at night.

Things are different at night.

In our overly ordered minds,

in the simplest of nursery stories,

day is for wake and work,

night is for sleep and rest.

Even in the age of electricity, these categories guide our expectations,

our body rhythms, our children’s songs and prayers.

Night is time for hopes, and fear, dreams and tears.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Night is when the desperate, foolish, and cruel enter others’ homes.

Night is when firemen are called out.

In her most recent book, Kate Braestrup talks about this prayer’s origin in an era when pneumonia struck at night. A child might lay down to sleep and not rise up again in the morning.

Night is when it’s quiet on the hospital ward,

just machines ticking and whirring

interrupted by an occasional siren growing nearer,

a few watchful nurses guarding their patients,

Night is when the veils come off,

when lovers whisper,

when voices whisper instead of shout.

Night is when conversations behind closed curtains

plan protests and shake hands on it.

Night is when candles emerge in public squares,

one, two, twenty, hundreds, thousands,

until they become a mass witness to

the Spirit unwilling to tolerate totalitarian regimes.

Night is when fireworks spray human joy across the sky crying,

yes, yes, yes!

Night is when Nicodemus asks all the right questions

and gives all the right answers,

but does get that he gets it.

[He says], "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."

[and Jesus says], "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom."

Jesus is not telling Nic he has to be born again

so he’ll be able to process it all perfectly in his mind.

Jesus is telling him he has been born again;

he sees the signs,

he walked to the right door.

Christians have spent decades asking the wrong question,

“Have you been born again?”

as though it were a ticket to the big show

or a get out of jail free card.”

What Jesus wants to know is

“Can you see what I’m doing right before your eyes?”

“Are you going to take up your bedroll and get going with me?”

Because if you can see me, Jesus says, you can see God.

And if you are coming with me, you are on the path home.

Jesus doesn’t ask Nicodemus what he’s looking for,

Jesus doesn’t make him say what he wants.

Jesus doesn’t ask Nicodemus what he’s done for God lately.

But there is an important question underlying this conversation.

It’s a question that lingers when Nicodemus goes back out into the night,

a riddle,

how is Nicodemus like the once upon a time paralytic,

like the once blind man?

Answer, we don’t know.

We don’t know,

because we don’t hear

what he says to those waiting for him at home, at work, at school.

The once immoveable man walked out in the light of day

and said to the leaders of the temple,

“Jesus did it.

Jesus made me well.

The once blind man dragged not once but twice, to tell his story,

twice given the chance to justify himself

in the face of growing pressure to disown t

he rule breaking, trouble making Jesus,

looks them right in the eyes and says,

“I don’t know what he did to make me see.

I do know who did it.”

Is Sabbath for rest that atrophies and immobilizes?

Or is Sabbath remind us of the power God intends to heal,

to find feet,

sight,

and voices?

The miracle of the once-blind man isn’t really that his eyes were healed.

It’s that now he can see.

Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, writes about patients whose eyesight has been restored, but whose brains can’t process the information now coming to them. It just doesn’t make sense, the neural pathways are infant, unformed. They are born again.
Nicodemus eyes are wide open. Who will he say he has seen?

2011-02-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

Brian shared this wonderful poem as the 2-6-11 Call to Worship:

by A. R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
     over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
          where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
     into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
     coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
     far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

Do You See What I See?

2011-01-24T12:40:00.002-05:00

This week's readings in John chapter 2 bring us into two uncomfortable conversations. One begins with Jesus talking back to his mother (John 2: 1-17).

But this domestic scene is just an appetizer. The real action begins when Jesus’ get to his God-Father’s house, the temple. (John 2: 18-22)

These two stories cast Jesus in a different light than we are used to seeing him.

We want Jesus to be the good and readily obedient son.

We want Jesus to be the one who never gets angry.

We want the powers that be to “get it.”

During the recent holidays, Andy William’s version of the Christmas classic lodged in my inner ear:

From the night wind to the little lamb, do you see what I see?

From the little lamb to the shepherd boy, do you hear what I hear?

From the shepherd boy to the mighty king, Do you know what I know?

Said the king to the people everywhere

Listen to what I say

Pray for peace people everywhere

Listen to what I say

A child, a child, sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

Do you hear what I hear?

I’m propbably not the only one who finds “Little Drummer Boy” more pleasant to sing than the song another king, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, wove into his “I have a Dream Speech.”

Mine Eyes have see the glory of the coming of the Lord,

He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…

King declaimed peace that day on the Lincoln Memorial Steps,

My people, my people, listen! The battle is in our hands.... So as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed to the struggle and committed to nonviolence. I must admit to you there are still some difficulties ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering.... I must admit to you there are still jail cells waiting for us, dark and difficult moments. We will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power transformed dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. We will be able to change all of these conditions. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.... I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.     How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.  How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.  How long? Not long. because the arm of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice. How long? Not long,'cause mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.
His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat.
He is lifting up the hearts of man before His judgment seat.
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him. Be jubilant, my feet.
Our God is marching on.[i]

Hearing the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the context of this speech that changed the world, that changed my world, that changed your world, brings out a whole new meaning in the words. The wrath is not anger for anger’s sake or for entertainment’s sake, or to make a buck or to fill in some emotional vacuum.

It's only when I hear these words in the voice of those who fight for justice, that I can hear these fighting words as holy words. It's only as we hear Jesus words in the voice of those who fight for justice, that we can hear fighting words as holy words.

When Jesus’ anger pours out in the temple the glory of God is being revealed as the glory of justice.

When John's Gospel was being put on written record, it was seventy some years after Jesus’ crucifixion and death, after the splendid failure of his project in their grandparents’ time, It's some seventy years after Jesus’ resurrection that reframed the project entirely, Judaism was being forced to recreate itself. The Romans had driven them out of the temple and taken the place down behind them.

If God was in the temple,

where is God now?

Where do we worship now?

How do we worship now?

Jewish Communities reshaped their sacred centers. Some regrouped in the synagogues planted in the last crisis, the Diaspora. They met in homes and places of business and simple meeting halls.

Some regrouped around the one who revealed the Glory of God to them.

John’s community, the one forming this gospel wrestles with a fundamental question.

Is Jesus Human, or is Jesus God?

If Jesus is human, life is so much easier. They don’t have to endure abuse and charges of blasphemy from their neighbors and family or torture from representatives of the Roman Empire. They can just say, he’s a great teacher and let it go at that. Sigh of relief.But then, what did it mean when Jesus said, “the temple will be rebuilt.” Why is that they saw their God, saw their lives so differently when Jesus showed up?

So, is Jesus human or is Jesus God.

The answer was then and is now, “Yes.”

Jesus is the glory of God.

Jesus is a human being having a fully human experience.

Yes.

So how do we live with that yes?

How do we live with a man who got up and walked out of his own tomb, who keeps asking us to see the glory of god revealed in what he says and does? How do we do that well?

What is success? That’s a sacred question.

Is success taking on responsibility for the life of the party (and overstepping your role as guest to help your host when he runs out of libations)?

Is success doing what your mother tells you?

Is success the number of projects we manage to finish, the sheer momentum of tasks accomplished?

Is success numerical? Is more merrier, bigger better?

For Jesus, it seems, success is when the people around him sees what he sees: his Creator, infusing all of creation with compassion and beauty, and a hunger for justice, a thirst for mercy.

The Prophet Isaiah says (9:1-4)

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. ….The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, …

Do you hear what I hear?

Do you see what I see?

Asks Jesus.

[i] Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World (Speech given at the end of the march from Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 25 1965)

Do you hear what I hear?

(Hear what I hear, hear what I hear?)

Said the night wind to the little lamb

Do you see what I see? (do you see what I see?)

Way up in the sky, little lamb

Do you see what I see? (do you see what I see?)

A star, a star, dancing in the night

With a tail as big as a kite

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy

Do you hear what I hear? (Do you hear what I hear?)

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy

Do you hear what I hear? (Do you hear what I hear?)

A song, a song high above the tree

With a voice as big as the the sea

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king

Do you know what I know? (what I know, what I know?)

In your palace warm, mighty king

Do you know what I know? (what I know, what I know?)

A Child, a Child shivers in the cold

Let us bring him silver and gold

Said the king to the people everywhere

Listen to what I say! (what I say, what I say)

Pray for peace, people, everywhere

Listen to what I say! (what I say, what I say)

The Child, the Child sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

He will bring us goodness and light .

collecting comments on John

2011-01-24T12:39:00.000-05:00

Your Pastor here, scratching her pea brain to re-collect the great comments made in worship on January 16.
They came in three categories. Help out by filling in what I"ve missed or adding more. (Use the comment box below!)

First impressions of John:

Memorable characters in John:

Questions provoked by the Gospel According to John:

Reading with John

2011-01-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

This year's all church read is the Gospel according to John, the fourth of the New Testament Gospels.
Since this book is structured with conversations, January and February worship services will explore the conversations we find most compelling.

So, on January 2 I asked everyone to go home, read the book, and let me know which conversations they find particularly interesting, puzzling, or otherwise worth spending time with, promising to collect input on January 9. Imagine my surprise when tons of folks (well, ok, LOTS) came prepared. Wonderful conversations ensued about passages, versions of the bible-some easier to read than others.

Since conversation is the theme, I'm hoping that this blog will be a platform for sharing those enthusiams and questions with each other.

Use the comment space below to post the passages you'd most like to explore in the Gospel according to John. This is real need to know....so I can plan worship. We'll also stir up some viritual conversations and actual ones in small group and stone soup lunch settings.

So far we have one request for John 6 (the bread passages) and two for John 17. What will you add to the list? (A word of why would also be helpful!)

Twelfth Day of Christmas Present

2011-01-05T10:56:00.000-05:00

Have the twelve days of Christmas helped you be more present to God, more aware of God's presence?
The story's told of a woman whose friend, wanting to honor what she's learned from her, said, "when you are gone, people will remember the way God was present in your life." The woman smiled and said, "I hope that people will celebrate whatever way I've able to be present in God's life!"

Here's a 12th day gift, with an invitaiton to be present to God in the reading of it.
Tomorrow we'll turn to thoughts about conversation in the Gospel According to John.

I gave this day to God
Mary Oliver, from "Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

I gave this day to God when I got up, and look,
look what it birthed! There, up the hill, stood

the apple tree, bronze leaves, its fallen apples
spilling richly down the slope, the way God spilled

his seed into Mary, into us. In her the holy promise
came to rest in generous soil after a long

fall. How often it ends in gravel, or dry dust.
Blackberry patches thorny with distraction. Oh

I pray my soul will welcome always that small
seed. That I will hail it when it enters me.

I don't mind being grit, soil, dirt, mud-brown,
laced with the rot of old leaves, if only the seed

can find me, find a home, and bear a fruit
sweet, flushed, full-fleshed--a glory apple.

Eleventh Day of Christmas Present

2011-01-04T19:33:00.000-05:00

10+1 + 11 today.

Take a look at Andy Crouch's ten trends of the decade and see if you agree these are the most important factors shaping the context of faith communities. Andy was the keynote speaker at the Glen Workshop I attended in 2009 and an articulate and insightful commentator on the interaction between faith and culture. I've summed his points up as a more and less list:

more connectivity with real people….less virtual reality.

more becoming rooted where we are….less trying to get somewhere else.

more urban renewal.…less suburban sprawl

more ethnic diversification…less majority concentration.

more polarization….less common political meeting ground

more self shots…..less unselfconsciousness.

more porn and idealized body images…..less certainty about how to reduce it.

more informality….less  traditional institutional expectations.

more liquidity….less real assets  

more complexity….less easy answers

I'd add this:
more local and global nonprofit activity....less waiting for governments to fix things.

What do you think??? Post your comment and spark conversation!

Day Ten Christmas Present

2011-01-03T09:47:00.002-05:00

Just imagine those ten lords a leaping non-stop for 231 years.

That's when the "Twelve Days of Christmas" was published as a poem in an English children's book, Mirth Without Mischief. Either before, or shortly after it was published, it became a memory game. The first player recited verse one and each following player repeated what was said before, then added the next verse. If anyone made a mistake, they had to give someone else a gift of food or a kiss.

We are celebrating Christmas present. Its full of memories of the past and hopes for the future. But our celebration is now, in the present tense.

We are moving, now as then, toward Epiphany, a celebration of the star's illumination, revealing God to those who came searching.

The gifts of the past hold moments when we rested with God. At the manger, on retreat, in family celebrations and quiet times.

They guide us toward a present that lives as long as we continue searching for the living God. Have you ever told someone to wait right there, thinking you'd know where to find them when you came back? Ten Lords a Leaping in place for 231 years.....a peaceful baby still lying in the manger over 2,000 years later, same people, same place, I don't think so. We seek and serve a living God, one who moves and calls, nudges and reveals. Not then, not later, but now.

.....if you embrace what is to come from God,

if you live for Christ's coming in practical life,

you will learn that divine things can be experienced here and now,

things quite different from what our human brains can ever imagine.

-Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Action in Waiting

In Joy, Pastor Karen

Catching up: Presents 7, 8 and 9!!

2011-01-02T16:09:00.001-05:00

7th Day of Christmas Present:

In the 1990's, a legend surfaced about the meaning of the 12 days of Christmas.

Although its been discredited as the origin of the song itself, the legend is a great example of how pop culture celebrations (like Christmas trees) can be re-imagined to teach and enliven the faith.

1. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus.
2. The two turtledoves are the Old and New Testaments.
3. Three French hens stand for faith, hope and love.
4. The four calling birds are the four Gospels.
5. The five gold rings recall the Hebrew Torah (Law), or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
6. The six geese a-laying stand for the six days of creation.
7. The seven swans a-swimming represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
8. The eight maids a-milking are the eight Beatitudes.
9. Nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.
10. The ten lords a-leaping are the Ten Commandments.
11. Eleven pipers piping represent the eleven faithful Apostles.
12. Twelve drummers drumming symbolize the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostles Creed.

8th Day of Christmas Present:

Today was "put-away" day at the Parsonage. (I used to call it boxing day, until I learned that boxing day has nothing to do with packing up Christmas. Click here to visit a good description of Boxing Day's origins.

We had a lot of help with our version of boxing; Sara still home from college, our German friend, Alice and helper #3, J.C. (Jeanne Claude) scurrying up and down and all around.Here's an 8th day bit of fun from the parsonage cat:

9th Day of Christmas Present: A Service for the Blessing of A Home

Adapted from the United Methodist Book of Worship

Jesus said, “Behold, I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).

GREETING Friends, we gather here to seek God’s blessing upon this dwelling place, which by the favor of God and human labor has been made ready This home is not only a dwelling but a symbol to us of God’s loving care, and a symbol of our life together as God’s family. So let us bring our praise and thanksgiving for God’s goodness and mercy, and let us offer ourselves as God’s servants and as loving brothers and sisters in God’s family

OPENING PRAYER Almighty and everlasting God, grant the grace of your presence to this home, inhabit and defend this household. Teach them to love, as you have loved us, and help us all to live in the peace of Jesus Christ our Lord. Let your love rest upon this place so that all who enter may know how your love through the hospitality that it offers. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever. AMEN

SCRIPTURE: Joshua 24: 14-15

SYMBOLIC ACTS

+ Lighting a candle

“May the light of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, shine within your hearts”

+ Opening a Bible

“May the Word of the Lord grow within your hearts and minds, guiding your journey.”

+ Lifting up of the Cross

“May the sacrificial love of Christ’s death and resurrection point you toward the promise of eternal life.”

BLESSING all present may extend their hands in blessing.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we bless the family and friends of this dwelling place, committing to God’s love and care all who dwell within these walls.

BENEDICTION

May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, now and forever more. AMEN

Sixth Day of Christmas Present

2010-12-30T21:04:00.000-05:00

Happy 6th day of Christmas! This is the Chrismon Tree in the United Methodist building on Capital Hill, next door to the Supreme Court. To learn about gifts that the United Methodist Board of Church and Society is exericing on our behalf, pay a virtual visit to the United Methodist Board of Church and Society.

Fifth Day of Christmas present

2010-12-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

Your 5th day of Christmas present is located at www.injoy-karen.blogpost.com!

Fourth Day of Christmas present

2010-12-28T09:43:00.000-05:00

Chris Horner is friend and musician from Virginia. Just before Christmas, she shared this encounter with her grandchild.

Husband Colin added, "and this all goes on with four heading out the door to party, a hockey game on the TV, Christmas cards being stuffed and dinner being served to the late arrivers home. The application of faith must be powerful to overcome life's day to day."

Sammy invited me to a church service in the living room this evening. In attendance: two human; two dogs. The order of service was handwritten and is included verbatim below:

1. Entry with song

2 .Daily anonsments

3. prayr

4. song

5. personal silent prayr

6. song

7. hold hands and sing a song

8. exit with a song

Okay, the whole service took ~ 5 minutes. Cissy, who has learned to "shake", actually offered her paw during hand holding. Sam used recorded bits from the piano for the music, except when we sang "Jesus Loves Me". (Little dogs to Him belong) After the service, she handed me another piece of paper...

"need church organist".

I have accepted position and been prepaid 5 cents.

God is good.

Third Day of Christmas Present

2010-12-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

"Listen to this! Laments coming out of Ramah,

wild and bitter weeping.

It's Rachel weeping for her children,

Rachel refusing all solace.

Her children are gone,

gone--long gone into exile."

But God says,

"Stop your incessant weeping,

hold back your tears.

Collect wages from your grief work. "

God's Decree.

"They'll be coming back home!

There's hope for your childre." God's Decree.

Jeremiah 31 excerpt, Eugene Petersen, The Message

...God's angel showed up again in Joseph's dream and commanded, "get up.

Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt."

Matthew 2 excerpt, The Message

His sorrow was a true as bread:

no liar looked him in the head;

if every friend became his foe

he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through the theys of we,

singing each leaf out of each tree

(and every child was sure that spring

danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,

let blood and flesh be mud and mire,

scheming imagine, passion willed,

freedom a drug that's bought and sold

....and nothing quite so least as truth

--i say though hate were why men breathe--because my father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all

(excerpts from e.e.cummings, 50 poems)

Second Day of Christmas Present

2010-12-27T11:29:00.001-05:00

December 27, 2010

Second Day of Christmas present

Winter, and very cold,

and the night at

its deepest. The politicians,

as usual, double-tongued.

The town chaotic, teeming

with strangers.

And tonight, as often

in winter, in Bethlehem,

snow is falling.

I always love how each flake,

torn from the sky,

arrives separately,

without sound, almost

unnoticed in

a flurry of others. How

each one (on a clear

night) lies there glittering

on the swelling breast

of snow, crisp

and intact, as wholly itself

as every radiant star

in a sky sparkling

with galaxies.

How many new

babies tonight

in Judea, coming

like snowflakes?

But plucked,

dazzling, from the

eternal heavens,

into time,

tonight is born

The One.

-Luci Shaw, Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation

snowflake photograph by Kenneth G. Libbrecht

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos/photos.htm

(visit injoy-karen.blogspot.com for a biblical reflection on this poem)

On the First Day of Christmas

2010-12-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

Last night as I was leaving the 7:00 pm service, I got in my car which was facing the Church building. It was a beautiful sight. Luminaries lighting up the walk way and the steps to the church. The lights inside the Church shinning out (one is stained glass). It would have made a perfect Christmas card. So I paused to ponder and enjoy this Christmas card from God. Then I noticed it. The night sky was all dark behind the Church except for one very bright star shinning just above the steeple. It was beautiful. I hung around a while so that I could point it out to the several people who were still lingering inside. It was my Christmas gift to them. The lesson is one that I've heard continually during the Advent season this year. Pause in the midst of the secular Christmas craziness and reflect on the real meaning for the season. And the star came to rest over where the child lay. Merry Christmas Cindy Rosen

Fourth Advent Candle

2010-12-14T09:19:00.001-05:00

Candle of Joy

Fourth Sunday in Advent

December 19, 2010

Read from your bible: Luke 1: 46b-55

This week our candle is pink, symbolizing “Joy.” Mary was full of joy when God told her she would be Jesus’ mother. She knew her baby would bring joy with justice and compassion for all people. Whether it is something God has already done or something God promises to do, we have so many reasons to be full of joy!

Can you think of reasons for Joy that start each letter of the alphabet? For example, “A” is for Aunt Susan who always makes me smile, “B” is for bread baking in the oven, “C” is for Children International who help children all over the world have enough,…….

In worship we light the fourth advent candle in worship sing:

We pray that your Word may be born in our hearts, that we may shine bright with the joy it imparts.

We pray as we wait for Emmanuel’s birth,

The light of our hope may illumine the earth.

Third Advent Candle

2010-12-14T09:18:00.000-05:00

The candle of Faith

Third Sunday in Advent

December 12, 2010

Read from your bible: Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19

The psalms are poems chanted by Jewish people as they worship. Even in hard times, they celebrate God’s faithfulness and practice their own faithfulness to God. People sing these words so often they know them by heart. Jesus grew up singing and knowing them. Jesus is God’s song of faithfulness made flesh, as a real person.

The words of Psalm 80 may be hard to hear. They are words of “repentance.” The people knew they had not been faithful to God. God still promised to be love and care for them. That’s not easy when someone you love has hurt you. Can you remember a time when someone hurt you? Can you remember a time when you did something hurtful to someone else? We all do hurtful things, sometimes by accident. Other times we know what we are doing, and do it anyway. God sent Jesus to help us get past all the hurts between God and us, between us and each other.

We lit our third candle in worship this week with words you can sing or say together now.

As Mary prepares for new life to begin

we trust in your Promise still hidden within.

Transfigure our hearts as from night into day,

that we by our faith may prepare you a way.

As you light the third candle together, say:

“Faithful Jesus, we are ready.”

Second Sunday in Advent

2010-12-04T17:37:00.002-05:00

The candle of Hope

Second Sunday in Advent

December 5, 2010

Read from your bible: Isaiah 11: 1-10

“Advent” means coming. A long time ago, when the words you read were first spoken, God gave them to the prophet Isaiah as a word of hope. The people of Israel were living in hard times. They had to do what another nation’s king told them to. They couldn’t praise God freely or live the way God had taught their grandmothers and grandfathers too.

Isaiah said that God would keep the promises God had made. They would be “fulfilled.” God wants to fill our lives with good things. What are the very best things that God fills your life with? What do you hope God will fill all of our lives with? As we wait to celebrate Jesus’ birth, we hope to see God’s promises fulfilled in our world.

This morning in worship we lit the second candle as we sang together. You can read or sing these words now.

Oh, hear us we pray, God for dark is the night,

and still we are waiting in hope for the light.

Oh teach us to trust you, preparing the way,

until with rejoicing we enter the day.*

As you light the second advent candle, say together,

“Come, Jesus, come!”

Advent Wreath Week One

2010-11-28T18:32:00.001-05:00

The candle of Peace

First Sunday in Advent

November 28, 2010

Read from your bible: Isaiah 2: 1-5

Today we light a purple candle. Purple is a symbol for royalty. It is special color because it is hard to get a truly bright and wonderful purple color to stay in cloth. So it was expensive and saved for special people like kings and queens. Many special people use their power to make life better for themselves and the people they like.

But the purple candle tells us that Jesus is a special person who uses his power for everybody, so that no one will have to fight for what they need. God’s creation is made so that there is plenty for everyone, if we use the power God gives us to share. What do you have to share with others?

Here are the words we sang together in worship as we lit our church advent candle. You can read them out loud or sing to the tune of “Away in the Manger.”

Your advent, Emmanuel, now we embrace,

your peace with all creatures,

your promise of grace.

Your word is made flesh and your blessing you give,

that we too, in peace with all others may live.*

As you light the first advent candle, say together,

“Welcome Jesus, King of Peace!”

Why an Advent Wreath?

2010-11-28T18:29:00.001-05:00

Can you imagine how it was in Europe in “the old days?” Before there were furnaces to keep houses warm and electric lights to brighten dark days, winter seemed like a very long, very cold, very dark season.

Families didn’t have refrigerators or canned food, or grocery stores, and so winter was also a time when people worried about whether what they had dried and stored would last until the days lengthened and warmed again.

People looked for signs of hope, bringing evergreen branches into their homes for the holidays, and lighting candles to symbolize the light of life, tenaciously burning in the dark and cold.

When people in Europe began to follow Jesus, they keep these traditions, knowing that Jesus, the Christ, is the source of life and hope. They made advent wreathes in a circle to show that God’s love is with us all the time and everywhere. “Emmanuel” is an old name (from Middle English) for Jesus that means, “with us is God.”

Christ followers named the candles for gifts that Jesus brings and lit them, one a week, as Christmas celebrations drew near, names like “Peace,” “Hope,” “Faith,” and” Joy.”

Your family can share this tradition too, lighting an advent candle each Sunday to celebrate Jesus’ presence in your home. Remember to pray for all the other families in Jesus’ network of hope as they light the candles too!

*The words for our Advent songs were written by Rev. Steve Garnaas Holmes, Pastor of Bows Mills United Methodist Church in Concord New Hampshire, and are used by permission.

Zaccheus

2010-10-27T09:33:00.000-04:00

UM Pastor Steve Garnass Holmes shares daily creative engagement with lectionary scripture via unfoldinglight.net. Today's is an expecially perceptive view from the wee man's tree. Did you ever meet Zacheus in Sunday School? Check out his story and see if he's grown up! (Luke 19).

You've got me treed,

held in the cross-hairs

of your sharpshooter grace

up here with all my complications,

trapped among these anxious limbs

(we hold each other nervously).

I just wanted to peek,

to keep my distance,

observe and play it safe—

but now you've named me,

nailed me

(I could just die)—

and there is no way to save myself

from this tree of my undoing

(I could just fall)

but through you,

through your grave command,

your invitation

to become the host

in breaking bread

(still clinging, white-knuckled)

where I will recognize myself at last,

at last let go,

and rise from the table

into a spacious place,

a future I can't imagine

until it cuts me loose.

- Steve Garnaas Holmes

(image by William Hole)

Happy anniversary!

2010-09-13T18:28:00.000-04:00

You are invited to join the Readfield United Methodist Church for a very special celebration of the Torsey Church’s 175^th anniversary on September 26, 2010. Bishop Peter Weaver, Episcopal leader of the New England United Methodists will be present as guest preacher. Period hymns and refreshments will help bring history to life and Readfield UMC’s popular musicians are preparing to celebrate in song.

The Methodists on Kents Hill, the second oldest branch of five that form the congregation’s merged history, built the Torsey Church for worship in 1835. It replaced an older sanctuary completed by Luther Sampson, founder of Kents Hill School, then the Maine Wesleyan Seminary. During a later renovation supported by school alumni, the sanctuary was renamed to honor Dr. Henry P. Torsey, headmaster for 4o years, as well as a key figure in emancipation and reconstruction efforts in American History. In more recent years, the site has become well known for generating many mission and outreach efforts as well as hosting popular community suppers.

Sunday, September 26, 10:00am.

For more information contact 207-685-4211, office@readfieldumc.org, or visit www.readfieldumc.blogspot.com

Three Simple Rules to Change the World

2010-05-03T22:13:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday teams from the church scattered around our area to change the world. It was part of the larger United Methodist movement (www.umc.org for more stories). Here's some of the places that groups went, we know that there were many individuals making a difference on their own.
*May basket deliveries
*8 walkers on the Walk for Hunger (on the Augusta/Gardiner rail trail)

*6 Road clean up and recyclers.

*9 finishing Camp Mechuwana staff cabins.

*2 claening out the Camp Mechuwana Village.

*Cub Scout Beach clean up and land restoration

*3 Readfield Community garden raised bed constructors

*24 supporters of the annual Sexual Assault and Crisis Counseling Center fundraiser.

All participants shared a challenge that you can too, wherever you find yourself today.
BE YEAST. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.

John Wesley's 3 simple rules can help, as they guided our local mission teams:
*Do all the good you can. (For all the people you can, in as many places as you can).
*Do no harm.
*Stay in love with God.

Dear Jesus, as we follow you together today, may our hands be put to your work, our hearts be open to your love, and our fellowship be blessed by a spirit that rises to the occassion. Amen.

Heifer Project update

2010-04-19T16:58:00.001-04:00

Yesterday we watched the new Heifer Project International film in worship. It was fun to remember how our own ark project got started with three Sunday School students in 2002. Instead of a carefully planned 5 year project, the ark raising went at break neck, community fueled speed. The Sunday School grew to 23 students.

Five years later, what difference might that local effort be making in a community far away? Watch this shorter version of "12 Stones" and let the Spirit guide your viewing! You can borrow the full (20 minute) video from the church office or order your own (free) from www.heifer.org

There were some great conversations about the film during fellowship time after worship. Many notice that few men appeared in the film, and one woman talked about her father's alcohalism. Charles Piddock, who spent time working in this part of Nepal, said that the men would usually be working in the fields, farming. In his experience, alcohalism was not a wide spread problem.

Have you ever spent time in this part of the world?
Do you have a heifer project story?
Add your comments to the conversation!

Easter flower album

2010-04-07T09:07:00.000-04:00

Seed

by Luci Shaw

(From Accompanied by Angels, 2006)

God dug his seed

into dry, dark earth.

After a sprouting up

in hopeful birth

and healing bloom

and garland grace,

he buried it again

in a darker place.

Twice rudely planted seed,

root, rise in me

and grow your green again.

your fruited tree.

Joy Walters and Elizabeth Reinsborough send these favorite spring flowers.

Rosie's new friend, Paul

2010-04-01T11:14:00.000-04:00

In I got to hang out with Paul ( a retired Middle School teacher from South Bend, Indiana) and we became great friends. At first we just started out as two regular old strangers and insulation partners. But the entire time we where were working on the first day, all we did was talk. We talked about hockey, his grandsons, and Tennesse. We became great friends in like three minutes!!!

At the end of the week we acted like we had known eachother for years!!! He even ended up giving me a book that he wrote and his girlfriend illustrated.

It was a great time meeting new people like Paul, and even getting to hear stories from other people about their experiences through hurricane Katrina. It was also very interesting how different things were from being outside the city, to going downtown. The damage that was done, and could be noticed, was completey different.

Over all I had a wonderful time,

-Rosie Guimaraes UMVIM team '10

P.S. Paul from South Bend is a member of the church my parents were married in.....God's small world! -Karen Munson

From Miles

2010-03-30T21:28:00.000-04:00

I worked with our home owner and learned to respect everyone. She told us some crazy stories about how it's important to respect people and look past what you may have been taught. Through all that she had been through, losing her house, and some family members in hurricane Katrina, she still wanted to help others that were even worse off than herself. Seeing how she cared for others even after things most could never imagine happen in her life was really cool -Miles Carey Snow UMVIM '10

Jeff's rememberings

2010-03-30T21:27:00.000-04:00

So many good stories to share about Louisiana. Do I talk about the pleasure of getting to know Bob after being told that he may be a little difficult? Should I share the pride I felt when Emma, Graham, and Karen B put up a wall all by themselves. Or how cool it was to stand at the bayou and picture the speedboat chase from "Live and Let Die?" Perhaps the sheer relief that Zexin did in fact escape the week with ten fingers, ten toes, his face, and other appendages still intact in spite of some questionable drywall cutting techniques. These and so many more small things get added to the long list of memories that started five years ago when we first drove up Roberts Blvd. Here are the two things that I think I will carry away the most from this trip: The sense of frustration that the mission may be over when there is still clearly so much work left to do on the south side, and my complete and utter inability to articulate how much I missed not seeing Carl's trailer parked at the Aldersgate campus and having him as a valued member of the team. - Jeff Munson, Slidell '06, '07, '08, '09, '10.

Sammy and Brittany work at Peggy's

2010-03-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

Sammy's Story

2010-03-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

One day while we were working Peggy called us down and she had baked delicious chocolate cookies for us. She gathered everyone around while she gave us all cookies and she looked at each of us and thanked us. She explained that her house was better than all of her neighbors. We looked around and all of her neighbors houses were beautifully finished. So we looked back to her inquisitively. She told us that her house was made of love and thats what made it so special. She had groups of people for the past 6 weeks come and give their love and time to help her. She felt the love and caring nature of each person that came to meet and build her home. She explained to us that that feeling alone made everything worth it. She knew her house would get done soon, and that whenever she was inside it would remind her of all the people that love her. Her neighbors couldn't say that, and that made her proud and happy. After telling us all this, there was an immense feeling of purpose throughout us all. That was why we went on the trip, and for her to recognize that was wonderful. -Samantha Herrick UMVIM team '08, '10

Rocko's stories

2010-03-29T10:36:00.000-04:00

Short Story #1. Wednesday night, sitting in the reflecting garden outside the bunkhouse, I hear a very friendly voice say "Excuse me, but are you from Maine?" "Why, yes I am." "Well, I saw the Maine license plates and I just had to meet someone from Maine. I love your state." That's how I met Monty, who had come for the community supper, and the five minutes we chatted reaffirmed how great a state we live in.

Short Story #2. Will never forget watching Peggy, our homeowner, surprise Miles and O'Shea with a kite and a flying lesson.

-Rocko '10 UMVIM Team

Randy's mission trip story (From the Top of the World)

2010-03-27T16:28:00.000-04:00

Randy's Story:

A story from the Mission trip - where to begin - perhaps with a series of memories flashing from the road and our "rolling nest" - six souls in a tin can on wheels stuffed to the brim with pillows, sundries of food and entertainment, good will, and oddments of the lives we left behind, temporarily watching the occasional (were there three or four?) gigantic crosses beside the highway, boastful proclamations of faith and place, roll before us on the way south and behind us on the way north; and reading the billboards asking the clergy of Knoxville what they were doing about the "3000 abortions a year" in their hometown making us wonder if they were the ones responsible and what sort of guilt was being proffered; the cars and the trucks and the folks on the road with us, each with a personal mission, passing the land and creeping up on the Gulf coast until at last we arrived on the immaculate grounds of the place called Aldgate (did I remember it right?) in Slidell ; soon we were at work at Peggy’s; she told us stories of the flood and the wind and the fury of lives torn apart and left in the backwaters of places just off the road to wither in desiccated depression until someone suggested she direct her prayers making them manifest in words to that incarnation of faith - the church! help was there already marshaled by those who tried to restore their brothers and sisters after the deluge; and five years later there I was (grateful to my daughter who insisted I come) happy to lift the drywall sheets to make the walls dry - 17 feet above the ground which was still a few feet less than that flood; like working in a tree house the crew and I measured and plumbed and cut and lifted and screwed and sunk again screws then finally (how funny, how ironic) applied "mud" to the walls we hoped would never taste water again making them smooth sanding them smoother sealing them together with a promise of paint and trim and the finishing touches to be completed by others someday real soon - the last trickle of help restoring a place for Peggy, her daughters, and her sons, and her grandchildren, and a home for her husband, too, when he returns on those infrequent days from labor so far away. At the end, we tour St. Bernard, flat and filled with busy life brimming with business and folks in a hurry to come and go (did water really cover it all?), and we wait on a bridge while a barge passes below before descending to the Ward - a 9th circle of hell then and still – now an opportunity lost … for us … to become a greater nation … lost when we did not mobilize - immediately - a simple, civic devotion to neighbors - fellow citizens; in every empty lot and broken house is a vision of what was, what might have been, what will be resurrected by those who call that place home; and the melancholy, which seeps into me as we turn corner after corner after corner of work yet to be done, is relieved by an echo of a youthful voice silenced too soon so long ago: "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" Bobby Kennedy knew - as privileged as I – he knew and now I knew, watching the passing parade of unreasoning poverty and wondering why only a few had homes rebuilt - with innovation and a committed compassion rendered into action. Now I knew Kennedy’s truth: “It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.” And the task is great – preserve the hope and serve the change begun in the last election … and remember his other words: “Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.” So, then we enjoyed the exuberance of the parade - the joyful kissing and carrying on – (the gift of love … loving and being loved … not a streetcar named Desire) - and then the exotic French Quarter – a reminder that Maine is a place far away – “Hey, man … Maine! You gots to be joking! That’s like … on top of the World!” he shouted … to us in the van … supporting his honest labor outside the bar … on Bourbon Street … when we paused at the light … and as we passed on the green … he knew we high schoolers were “working tourists” … I am certain he could see our “shine”. Then the road home past the same landscape in reverse; more billboards hectoring our eyes, some our sensibilities, telling us what we ought to believe and how we ought to behave … specifically; and I was not mistaken; it was a short wave radio station proclaiming its version of the Word into the electromagnetic spectrum for all the world to hear, if all the world had radios … and were tuned to its frequency. For five years the word on our campus was an invitation … to do a little good. A little good was done. There is more to do – here and there – one day at a time. Let’s choose our tools and continue. -Randy '10 UMVIM team & KHS English teacher.

Meg's story.....

2010-03-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

I remember one day, Miles and O'Shea were working with Peggy, our home owner, in one of the rooms. They were sanding, and as many of you know, sanding is not the most fun job in the world. I was in the other room doing my sanding when all of a sudden I hear laughter and singing coming from the other room. Miles and O'Shea were teaching Peggy how to "turn her swag on" and Peggy was teaching them dance moves from when she was a kid. It was amazing to me that two kids from the city were able to connect with a woman from the Southern countryside through music and dance. We all stopped and watched Peggy as she danced around her house...it was a moment of pure joy and contentment - a simplicity of life - that I don't think I will ever forget. -Meg Richardson UMVIM '08, '09, '10 and KHS Senior

Mission Team update

2010-03-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

photo by Devon Huntley, KHS '09, American University '12, UMVIM team '08, '09,'10.

You missed a spot!

Team work is all about helping each other do good work. And that's what this year's RUMC/Kents Hill School Volunters in Mission were all about.

Team members insulated, drywalled, primed, painted, mudded, sanded, sanded, sanded.....met some amazing people and brought back lots of stories and photos to share. Watch for them at this site. Meanwhile, we watched for developing "fruits of the spirit" as we created a community in Christ.

Walk Away ?

2010-03-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

So I listen to this interesting economics Blog from Public Radio, it's called "Planet Money". A few weeks ago they had a story which was largely about the burst of the housing bubble and how it had changed the way people think about foreclosures. The woman they were interviewing was a lawyer in Arizona who helped people deal with foreclosure. She was explaining that when she started this work people were mostly looking for help in preventing the bank from taking their home, but now people were calling to see if banks could be forced to take their home. There's a lot of interesting economics behind all that, but it's this observation she made that really tweaked me -- we have, she explained, finally seen a shift in society such that there's no longer a social stigma associated with loosing your home to foreclosure. And she compared it to the change in the 60's when divorce became acceptable, when a failed marriage was something that people walked away from without a sense of guilt. And it struck me thus - how did society ever get to a place that it was socially more acceptable to walk away from another person then to walk away from a thing? When a marriage vow meant less then a signature on a loan? Listen to the podcast here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_to_walk_away_or_stay.html

Journey through Lent with Jonah

2010-02-22T10:10:00.000-05:00

"Jonah" by Naomi Spears http://ARTcnet.com

Lord God Almighty can fix the thing.

Can fix hard head

Can fix weak back

Can fix crooked leg.

God can fix anything.

Hear how He fix Jonah.

-Liberian folktale (recorded by Lorenz Graham)

Friday

Naomi Spear's woodcut is hardly the calm image I usually seek to guide me through the end of winter and season of Lent.

But doesn't the sharp contrast of light and dark ring true if we're willing to own up to sin? And the Jonah figure, a crooked little guy with scrawny hair, is humble enough to say, this could be anybody.

Tonight the news is showing video of the Dalai Lama leaving the White House via the back door (as evidenced by the pile of trash bags). There's a flurry of comments, ironic and indignant: how discourteous, how dumb to think no one would notice; what an effort to avoid diplomatic meltdown.

I just keep thinking, what a great image for Lent. Does anyone think it matters to the Dalai Lama what door he goes in or out? With his sense of humor and humility it seems perfect.

Lent opens a backdoor and invites us into Jesus' salvation journey to the cross.

Jonah's story reminds me how strange that salvation journey can be. After all, he's saved by a fish's gaping mouth, hmmm, wonder what the trash situation was in there....

May humble humor accompany you where-ever God provides space for grace this Lent.

hard to remember

2010-01-18T13:43:00.000-05:00

Its hard for me to remember that students who are in high school now grew up with a different set of expectations. In the midwestern town where I went to Elementary school, it was a big controversy when a teacher ended up fired for putting down and roughing up the only black kid in our school. Its hard because somehow the state of the world we grow up in becomes "normal."

Its hard for me to remember the story one my preaching professor told, only once, about being shot on the way to a civil rights demonstration. He was in the hospital recovering when three little girls died in a church bombing. Its hard to remember because its hard to think of him or them hurt like that.

Its hard for me to remember how much further the world has to go in learning to let, (heck to help!) every human being flourish. Its hard because I have a pretty comfortable life, and my kids have all the options they need. ITs hard to remember because I have to slow down and widen my view.

Its hard, but its worth it. -Karen

George's Sunday Sermon: Anticipation

2010-01-11T09:12:00.000-05:00

Amanda reminded me after Thursday’s choir practice that this morning, I would be preaching to the choir.

I got to thinking about that, because I use the term often. Preaching to the choir means that I am delivering a message to a group that is already well aware of the message.

The difficult part of delivering a sermon, for me, is this: I’m always uncomfortable suggesting that I have any special scholarly insights for you. So please understand, this morning, that I know I am preaching to the choir.

In today’s Gospel reading, the multitudes are anticipating the arrival of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist tells them, “he who is mightier than I is coming.”

What are you anticipating as you sit in your pew this morning?

If you are anticipating a profound message from me, you are about to be sorely disappointed!

Let me ask a different question. When Pastor Munson tosses out an open-ended question and looks hopefully at you for a response, do you cringe?

Our faith is not for spectators. We’re not here to be entertained by the folks up front. We are expected to get onto the field, into the game. This is not a one hour every Sunday event. It’s an every minute every hour every day commitment.

Sure, it’s not always comfortable. Sometimes what we’re called to do is well outside our normal boundaries. But it is what is expected of us.

It took a long time for me to understand this, and even longer to act on the understanding. I’m still working at that, actually.

When I was a kid, every summer we attended Methodist Camp in Winthrop. Because I also lived in Winthrop, I would leave camp in the evening to play in my little league baseball games. I was on the field and in the game. But it was the wrong field and wrong game.

Even after Lin and I started attending church here in Readfield, I was still a spectator Christian, happy to deliver our kids into the care of Susan Baker, enjoy the service, and go home. I soon joined the choir, but I got more enjoyment out of the singing than I ever brought to anyone else by my singing. I was in the choir for me.

But then one year I participated in a small group learning about the power of prayer. That led, eventually, to joining the prayer tree. And then the church fair became an eagerly anticipated event in my life, a time for fellowship and service.

No one needs another committee meeting less than me, but I joined the SPRC, and found myself actually enjoying this opportunity to serve. The meetings are stimulating, full of fellowship, offering an opportunity to get onto the field and participate in God’s game.

And finally, after waiting a while for someone – anyone- to step up to chair our Finance Committee, I stepped onto that playing field this month. Of course, if I had known that it included an evening tutorial from our long-time Finance Chair Rocko, for which he brought the Gritty’s, I might have signed up a long time ago!

And believe it or not, this diversion leads us back to my original question: What are you anticipating this morning?

Let me start the confessions. In my pew on Sunday morning, I am often anticipating the writing of my newspaper column. It must be submitted no later than Monday morning and I often write it on Sunday afternoon. And there is many a Sunday morning, as I sit here in church that I have no clue what I’m going to write about. Karen bails me out quite a lot, by giving me an idea for a column subject as she presents her morning message.

Lin always knows when this happens because she’ll glance over and I will be writing feverishly on the back of my church bulletin.

In my pew, I am anticipating the game of volleyball that Robin will be leading from 4 pm to 6 pm this afternoon.

A lot of the things I anticipate as I sit in church are pleasurable, mostly things I do for myself. It’s still, regrettably, all about me.

Anyone here this morning anticipating some fun events in your own life? Maybe an upcoming vacation? The Patriots game on TV this afternoon? How many are eagerly anticipating that?

We drove by a church yesterday that displayed this message outside the church: Come visit our home Sunday before the game.

It is also possible that you are anticipating bad things in your life. Surgery. An unpleasant task at work.

We all bring our anticipations to church on Sunday morning.

And for me, the challenge is to change those anticipations from things for and about me to things for and about God.

You all know that I love to hunt and fish. In my world, God made nothing more beautiful that a brook trout – especially a trout attached to my line.

My favorite fishing quote is this: “the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”

Imagine applying this thought to every minute of your life, spending that life in the pursuit of what God has made attainable for you, a perpetual series of occasions for hope, realizing that God’s playing field may be elusive, but its always attainable, and anticipating those opportunities to play in God’s game. Those opportunities are available, and not just for an hour on Sunday morning.

They are attainable in everything this church offers and does, and in so many places, on so many fields, outside of this church.

I gaze around every Sunday and find occasions for hope supplied by members of this congregation who live their lives on God’s playing field, teaching Sunday school, serving at the food bank, going to Slidell or Cambodia to build houses, traveling all the way to Kaoma to teach children. I admire each of you who sit here this morning anticipating these things.

And I recognize that you spend more of your time on God’s playing field than I do. Most of my time is still spent in my own game, for my own pleasure.

But when I do get out of my own game and into God’s game, I am so richly rewarded as to wonder: why don’t I do this more often?

And then there is that greatest of anticipations: that when the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there. Ah, that elusive goal, but a goal that is attainable. I hope!

I was writing legislative testimony early Wednesday morning, anticipating a very busy day at the State House, and happened to look up from my laptop to see a beautiful sunrise.

Suddenly, the day’s anticipated events seemed far distant, and I marveled at the beauty that God puts in front of me every day. My day brightened, even before the sun rose over Bowen Hill to the east. And I wished I had more time to spend in God’s game. But I had to get that testimony done.

My prayer for you is that every one of your days may be brightened by all that you anticipate, that your feet may be placed down on God’s playing field every minute of every hour of every day. And for me, that once in a while, I will join you there.

On the Tenth Day of Christmas

2010-01-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
fluffy snow out as far as I can see!

Last night "church cancellations" started scrolling across TV screens.

We've only had to "cancel" worship twice here in ten years, that I can remember.
Mainers are a pretty hardy group, weather doesn't stop us. Its just gets us going with ingenuity. Common sense does sometimes divert our energy.

So this morning at 9:00 AM with a clear parking lot, but several feet of powder piled against the doors and up the Torsey stairs, I find myself contemplating what "cancel Church" means.

The Roman Empire tried pretty hard to cancel church permanently just as church was getting started.

If we really cancelled church now, what would the world lose?
(Leave your thoughts in the comment section below!)

Maybe we can re-think church to where we are today, moving it instead of "cancelling it."
In fact, if we try using "church" as a verb rather than a noun,
we could be churching in any number of ways!

Maybe reading today's Gospel, John 1: 10-18, in front of a fire that echos the light of God filling our world.

Maybe humming "O Little Town of Bethlehem" as we clear the streets and sidewalks of our community for travelers. Maybe even thinking about others way to make our homes and world welcome source of God's loving light for all traveling life's journey. (I love the phrase in United Methodist Communication's recent mailing: ACT justly, LOVE mercy, WALK humbly.)

Maybe for those of us who'd really like to be imagining a warmer place, how about re-thinking church in a tropical theme? How would you worship on a light filled beach? hmmmmm.

Toay is the 10th day of Christmas, the end of the first ten years of the millenium. The news is full of dire descriptions of a difficult decade. But the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.

We may not be worshipping the way we usually do (which is, after all, not the way "its always been done"), but that's no reason not to seek Christ's light today. Or, to let that love light shine through our lives as we seek to serve him.

Getting to know Brother Lawrence

2009-11-02T18:31:00.000-05:00

We're being introduced to a fellow who may seem strange at first glance, but whose "claim to fame" is the ordinary nature of his life and approach to faith.

Born in 1614 as Nicholas Herman, poverty forced the young man who would become "Brother Lawrence" into the army where he was promised food and a little bit of money. When an injury made it impossible for him to serve, he became a nobleman's valet. But discouraged by his life, Nicholas entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris as a lay brother. He didn't have the education needed to become a monk.

Among the brothers he became "Brother Lawrence," and was rather dismayed to be assigned to the kitchen crew, another task he felt woefully inadequate to perform. He adapted by grower ever more humble, letting go of common notions of success and putting himself utterly in the service of God and his brothers. No one was more surprised that Brother Lawrence himself when his gentle, unassuming manner began to attract admirers.

Brother Lawrence's attractive "ahah" was that growing close to GOd didn't need to be as hard as we often try to make it. "Men invent means and methods of coming to Gods love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for love of him?"

Don't be deterred by the old fashioned language of "The Practice of the Presence." If you have trouble getting started, try this reading plan:

Begin from behind. Read “Gathered Thoughts” first.

Exercise: What questions come to mind? Make a list.

Next, move on to “The Character of Brother Lawrence.”

Exercise: Write a min-biography of brother Lawrence in your own words.

Third, read the letters, one at a sitting.

Exercise: After each letter, write your own letter, to God, to Brother Lawrence, or to a trusted friend.

Finally, read “The Conversations.”

---------Read more about Brother Lawrence at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Lawrence

image from www.spiritualityandpractice.com/days/features.php?id=16440

Re-Think Church

2009-10-25T20:00:00.001-04:00

This month we've started re-thinking church at our local level. The term comes from the United Methodist Church's 10,000 doors project. It dovetails perfectly with the place we find ourselves in our life together: living in mission, searching for new ways to grow in Christ together.

Strangely, this new stage of growth seems to be simplifying, rather than complicating, our community. We've streamlined our workhorse of a mission statement to: We are a welcoming community of believers seeking to grow in Christ and to serve in mission.

We're re-thinking meetings, opening them up, inviting new voices in. We're rejoicing in worship, re-inventing our adult spiritual growth groups, and remembering with gratitude the work of saints before us who laid faithful foundations to launch this flight into the future.

In everything, we aim to grow together in love and service. Brother Lawrence is our companion guide this year. Pick up your copy of his writings while you're coming and going from worship, or stop by during office hours: Tuesday-Friday from 9AM-noon, Thursday nights 6:30-8:30PM.

summer worship temptation butterflies

2009-08-16T22:09:00.000-04:00

Flutter by season 'tis....

When favorite summer folks show up in worship.

Inexpensive butterfly fans stirred the hot august air in worship today,

creating a lovely, lively, dance pattern across the congregation.

Pollinating visitors have been busy brightening our gardens.

May your heart be as light as the butterfly's wings,

unweighed by worry,

but lifted on prayers of praise and words of hope,

strengthened by pollinating work of justice and mercy.

2009-08-06T23:52:00.000-04:00

Seeing What’s Around Us

By George Smith

Reprinted from the July 22, 2009 Kennebec Journal.

Sometimes it takes more than open eyes to see everything around you.

The black mask covered his face when I glanced his way after hearing him speak. If he expected the mask was sufficient to prevent him from being seen and recognized, he should have paid more attention to the rest of his wardrobe.

From the neck down, he was covered in bright yellow.

I boldly stepped closer, 10 feet, 8 feet, 5 feet, and he appeared unalarmed, continuing to speak to me in a low, gutteral “tchcuk.”

The black mask, white-eyebrow, and yellow belly allowed me to easily identify him as a warbler, the Common Yellowthroat. There’s nothing common about this beautiful bird.

Seeing him in the streamside bush as I waded along in search of brook trout was one of the moments when you are certain there is a God. There’s no other explanation for the perfection and beauty of this tiny bird.

I watched him flit around in the bushes for 10 amazing minutes, thankful that – only recently – I’d become an avid birder – taking the time to see what’s around me. All those years and I’d never noticed all these colorful birds.

Fifteen minutes later, I cast a small fly – a nymph – into a bend pool and saw the quick flash of a trout darting from it’s hiding place to grab the fly.

Quickly bringing him to hand, a sleek 7-inches adorned with red and blue spots and a gorgeous yellow belly, it was another God moment. If He’d only created one fish, the brook trout would have been it. Absolute perfection.

The trout in Sourdahunk Stream are very dark on top to match their habitat. I didn’t used to notice, too busy casting and catching. Now I really study each individual fish, unique in its own way.

Sometimes after he’s released, a fish will fin there in the water beside my foot, unaware that he’s free. Then the dark tail flips and he vanishes. What doesn’t vanish is the smile on my face.

I gaze at Mount Katahdin covered by clouds, at the rapids ahead, into the trees along the shore, drinking it all in. I’m surrounded by beauty and want to see it all.

Three years ago Linda and I enjoyed a “mushroom walk” with Mount Vernon’s Barbara Skapa. Boy, did that open my eyes!

The diversity and quantity of mushrooms seen in a couple of hours, all within two miles of our home, was astonishing. We decided to focus on the tastiest (of course!) and learned to recognize, with confidence, chanterelles.

From late June to mid-August, our eyes focus on the ground, searching for those yellow treats. Last night Lin sautéed two dozen in butter for a delicious pre-dinner appetizer. Wow.

A few weeks ago a lovely lady named Carolyn called. She and her husband Ralph shared a European trip with Linda and me 30 years ago, arranged by the University of Maine Alumni Association. It was our honeymoon.

Carolyn had been looking at an old album of the trip and saw a photo of Linda and me and decided to track us down. We hadn’t heard from her in 30 years, yet she remembered so many details about that trip and us.

Here’s a lady who sees everything around her, I thought to myself.

The conversation with Carolyn was a very pleasant surprise, but made me wish I’d been more observant 30 years ago. She sure remembered a lot more than I did!

There was a time when I only saw what I wanted to see or had to see. As a sportsman, I’ve always thought I saw more than most – but until Linda and I started birding I was missing a lot.

Kids don’t miss much.

The fishing for smallmouth bass in mid-June on a remote Kennebec County pond was slowing so my 5-year old grandson Addison turned his attention elsewhere and pulled up a water lily pad to discover – and show Grampy – frog’s eggs underneath the pad. I’d never noticed them before.

When is it we lose that wonderful ability to see and sense all that surrounds us? When do we become too self-absorbed and busy to really notice what goes on around us?

Wait. As I write this column, I hear a Northern Parula warbler outside our camp window. Now, I’m even hearing all that surrounds me!

And it makes life so much richer.

Amazing things surround us. May you see and hear them all.

Kin-dom n Kaoma

2009-07-23T19:04:00.001-04:00

-Susan Harrington Tedrick

(photo by Lynn Twitchell)

www.wisezambia.org

Pastor Karen emailed me to do a Mission Moment related to her sermon series that is bringing new layers of meaning to the Lord’s Prayer. Her note said that she’d like me to talk about the trip to Zambia in relation to the phrase: Thy Kin-Dom Come.

Say What? I’d only been home two hours and I knew I was jet-lagged but…Thy KIN-Dom Come? Maybe it was a typo.

Then it struck me. I had just spent 3 weeks in glorious kin-ship.

When we were in Kaoma the Kin-Dom truly came! It came as friendships with widows and orphans deepened. It came as the team shed their American expectations & let the joy of abundance sneak in, an abundance of spirit with no material possessions, and when we went to church we celebrated the kin-ship of music & faith.

The message we heard that day is just as relevant here as it was there. It was about power--mata. The power of things we ALLOW to have power over us and the only thing that has real mata--faith in God.

There, the priest held up something that struck fear in many minds, a voodoo-like effigy that had been left on a woman’s threshold to frighten her. The gasps were audible. He then explained, in a very joyful way, that the only REAL power was Jesus. Mata a Jesu.

The US, too, has a history of threatening effigies: burning crosses…nooses. We, too, give power to things that don’t deserve power. Status…income…vehicles…. Another Kin-Ship.

The priest asked the congregation to touch the scary doll and pass it along. That was very hard for some people to do. Most congregants were uncomfortable, but they touched it and let go of the power they had given it.

Mata…power…Only in Jesus…Jesu.

I wondered: Am I ready to look at, touch and release the artificial things that frighten and have power over me? Are we? And to recognize the only real and liberating power? The power of the blood of Jesus? Or as they say: mata mwa mari a Jesu?

I hope that I can let that kind of KIN-DOM COME to my heart, too.

2009-07-18T11:37:00.000-04:00

Here is a "cross-over post" from inward/outward which provides daily soul food for the hungry (inward/outward.org).

Why I Wake Early

By Mary Oliver

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass? In the hope that today is a day you are able to spend less time at the computer and more time “looking, listening and losing yourself” in some part of nature’s beauty and delight, we offer this poem by Mary Oliver from her collection called Why I Wake Early. Now go pray.

Guest Blog: Chuck

2009-07-07T14:25:00.000-04:00

Glory in the gloom

New England weather is setting records for prolonged rain and cloud cover. Why is it that we feel dispirited when skies are grey? The spirit is still there, creating moist miracles before our eyes.

For those of us who like to venture out, wet or not, there is the beauty of jewels of moisture on spider webs and leaves, the smell of growth in the damp woods, the chuckle and gurgle of water over rocks. If you don't feel the need for shoes, enjoy the comfortable coolness of the moist, soft sod.

More of the indoor, looking out persuasion? Revel in the comfort of being warn and dry while watching the rain drip from the eaves and decorate the puddles with rings of wavelets, the light vary with the cloud cover.

Two weeks ago, Acadia experienced very heavy rain overnight. Driving though the Park the next day offered other first hand views of the reconstructive power of the water. Waterfalls were leaping from ledges, to splash from lower levels in great arcs. Ponds rose to levels that had roaring torrents appear where placid streams normally meandered.

From whatever perspective, remember that all of this too is a part of the great creation. Go, glory in the gloom. -Chuck Pritchard

We're Ba-ack!!!

2009-06-23T14:55:00.000-04:00

We're back from this year's annual conference, inspired, refreshed (after catching up with some sleep) and full of ideas competing for attention. Where to start, where to start....

Well, right here of course! On July 5th I'll start my tenth year of ministry with the folks of Readfield UMC. There are different faces than there were then. We've said good bye to Freda, Bob, Bill, Fred, and many others. Friends have

moved on to new places and pursuits (What is Alan Lake up to out there in Arizona these

days? And how's Melinda doing over at Kent's Hill School's office?) There are different challenges than there were then. Remember when we looked out and wondered whether we'd ever get a mission trip up and running? In 2010 there will be three adult/youth ventures to Louisiana and another to Kaoma, Zambia.

Right here is where we'll seek and serve Christ this year, right here- wherever we each find ourselves: in homes and schools, Sunday school rooms and choir rehearsals, the food pantry, the Gulf, Kaoma. Here we are. Jesus has prepared the way and ministry is waiting.

This year its my goal to invite guest bloggers to share their "where we are" stories with us. Meanwhile, here's a sneak peak at where Jeff found himself during the preparations for Annual Conference....designing and building a book for living gospel storytellers to walk out of. What story of God's grace will you carry from here?

Should have and did.

2009-06-15T12:49:00.000-04:00

What are you running toward?

An ad in the Boston Subway proclaimed "Don't ever have to say, "I should have."

Standing in front of it were dozens of i-pod wearers creating islands of personal space.

I wonder when Jesus would have used an i-pod (I'm pretty sure he would have loved the incredible variety of music) and when he would have left the ear buds out so that he connected with what was happening around him.

"Don't ever have to say, I should have."

Even church can become a set of private islands, each plugged into our own pew and our own view, a place to get away from it all. Jesus understood. Everywhere he went people were coming at him with their needs. He plans a weekend on the lakeshore in Gerosene and a crazy guy jumps out at him. Jesus heads back across the lake to Galilee and Jairus runs up, begging him to heal his little daughter. Jesus hardly gets two steps toward Jairus' house and a woman tugs on him hem, embarrassed but desperate for relief form her 12 year hemorrhage.

I guess that's what happens when people get the message that God really cares about them, cares enough to reach out and touch their lives. When they glimpse the real church, the one that knows care is not a list of tasks or even something we do, its who we are. It's Jesus' way of being.

Here's a way to tell whether you're "in or out" of what Jesus is doing. Most folks got really annoyed. The Gerosenes had the guy's craziness safely under control-over there outside town. The people 'pressing in' on Jesus moving toward Jairus' house were disgusted when that unclean woman interrupted their entertainment. When Jesus said "do not fear, only believe," i can do both, most stayed scornfully "out."

Only the real followers, and the child's parents, the woman now healed, went along. "Don't ever have to say, I should have."

What are you running toward?

2009-06-11T09:34:00.000-04:00

An African Proverb says that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

Why is it so hard for us who follow the prince of peace not just to remember but to actually live this truth? Ted Lydden Hatten, Conference Artist this week at the Iowa UMC annual conference, has a creative way to remind us of the relationships in Christ that are deeper and wider than our disagreements. (This may load slowly, but is well worth watching the whole video.)

What chair might you prayerfully find yourself facing today?