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LENTEN DEVOTIONALS
To read a devotional, please click a link below.
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Covenant
Why Musings?
- The Musings Page will be a place to consider thought-provoking, evocative, sometimes polemical but not overtly political, writings, quotes, ideas, and poetry on the Christian life in all its facets: spiritual, religious, ethical, and practical.
Lagniappe
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Shiver of Fear
posted on December 17, 2011 by Musings
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear the God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Filed under: Advent, Christmas, Faith
Touching the Deep Places
posted on December 16, 2011 by Musings
The tamed piety of the conventional church wants an innocent baby who comes gently into our secure lives and keeps everything benign and friendly. It may be conventional and it may be tame, but it is not biblical and it is not Christian. Advent is about both hope and hurt; pain and risk, as well as excitement and joy, are part of the adventure. Christ comes touching those deep places our culture too quickly covers over with glitzy wrapping paper and “Frosty, the Snowman.”
Kyle Childress quoted in Sacred Seasons: Advent/Christmas 2011 by Seeds of Hope Publishers
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Locating Our Lives in the Abandoned Places of the Empire
posted on December 13, 2011 by Musings
Everything in our society teaches us to move away from suffering, to move out of neighborhoods where there is high crime, to move away from people who don’t look like us. But the gospel calls us to something altogether different. We are to laugh at fear, to lean into suffering, to open ourselves to the stranger. Advent is the season when we remember that Jesus put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. God’s getting born in a barn reminds us that God shows up even in the forsaken corners of the earth.
From: Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
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Filed under: Advent, Christmas, Community, Faith
A Note on Advent
posted on December 2, 2011 by Musings
Advent, meaning “the coming,” is a time when we wait expectantly. Christians began to celebrate it as a season during the fourth and fifth centuries. Like Mary, we celebrate the coming of the Christ child, what God has already done. And we wait in expectation of the full coming of God’s reign on earth and for the return of Christ, what God will yet do. But this waiting is not a passive waiting. It is an active waiting. As any expectant mother knows, this waiting also involves preparation, exercise, nutrition, care, prayer, work; and birth involves pain, blood, tears, joy, release, community. It is called labor for a reason. Likewise, we are in a world pregnant with hope, and we live in the expectation of the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. As we wait, we also work, cry, pray, ache; we are the midwives of another world.
From Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
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Filed under: Advent, Faith
Leavings. XI.
posted on November 30, 2011 by Musings
XI.
Though he was ill and in pain,in disobedience to the instruction he would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed, dressed, and went to the barn. The bare branches of winter had emerged through the last leaf-colors of fall, the loveliest of all, browns and yellows delicate and nameless in the gray light and the sifting rain. He put feed in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs, sent the dog for them, and she brought them. They came eager to their feed, and he who felt their hunger was by their feeding eased. From no place in the time of present places, within no boundary nameable in human thought, they had gathered once again, the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog with all the known and the unknown round about to the heavens’ limit. Was this his stubbornness or bravado? No. Only an ordinary act of profoundest intimacy in a day that might have been better. Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed.
“XI.” by Wendell Berry, from Leavings. © Centerpoint, 2010. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
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Filed under: Faith, Nature
Thanksgiving
posted on November 24, 2011 by Musings
Our Thanksgiving post is a meditation on the gospel lectionary text for Thanksgiving day, prepared by Catherine Dodson Goodrich for a meeting this week of the session of Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta where she serves as a resident pastor. Catherine was ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in an ordination service in our sanctuary last month.
Luke 17:11-19
11On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
What are you thankful for? If you made a list, what would make the top 5? My list changes from week to week, depending on what is happening in my life, but right now it includes….read more at Luke 17 Sermon
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In the Lord I’ll be Ever Thankful
posted on November 23, 2011 by Musings
The Stated Clerk’s Column from the PC (USA) by Gradye Parsons November Column
In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful,
In the Lord I will rejoice!
Look to God, do not be afraid;
Lift up your voices: the Lord is near,
Lift up your voices: the Lord is near.
This song by Jacques Berthier (Sing the Faith #2195) is one of my favorites of all the Taizé music. It combines the ingredients of gratitude, joy, fear, and the desire for the Lord to be near.
November is the season when we celebrate the harvest of the year and gather with family and friends to give thanks to God. That joy is diminished by the reality of so many folks out of work, so many neighbors who have lost their homes because of finances or natural disasters, and the many people who have lost all hope.
In the early 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “[Jesus] is the Lord of fear; it knows him as its Lord and yields to him alone. Therefore, look to him in your fear. Think about him, place him before your eyes and call him. …The fear will yield and fade, and you will become free through faith in the strong and living Savior Jesus Christ” (I Want to Live These Days with You, p. 134).
This was a strong affirmation to make in the midst of Depression-era Germany. I especially like the image of Jesus as Lord of fear – a Lordship based on our resurrection hope in the face of our greatest fear, death, and estrangement from God. Bonhoeffer also acknowledges the enslavement that fear can exert on our lives and faith; yet, in Christ we are freed up to live as God’s children in this world.
It may be tough to pray thankfully at your house this year. So pray the prayer that is honest and allows God in Jesus Christ to hear your fears. And may the peace that passes all understanding enter your heart and the hearts of those you love.
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The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak
posted on November 11, 2011 by Musings
Although exact figures are not possible, it is estimated that 60 to 72 million people died in World War II, including military dead of 22 to 25 million. Over 400,000 Americans lost their lives in the war. Two plaques in the narthex of the First Presbyterian sanctuary list the names of 285 members of our congregation who served during World War II. Ten of those names are “gold star” names. Go by the narthex this Sunday and share a moment of your time in honor and memory of those men and women.
Today’s poem is by the poet Archibald MacLeish. ”The poet Archibald MacLeish was especially aware of the importance of this sacrifice. As a young man, he had served as an artillery officer in World War I and had witnessed suffering and death on the battlefields of Europe. During the second World War, he took up public service once again, serving as the Librarian of Congress while still writing poetry. When the Library of Congress held a memorial service for all its staff members who had died in the war, MacLeish contributed a powerful poem that not only commemorated the dead, but also made it clear that those who survived bore a special responsibility to make the deaths of these soldiers meaningful. As you read this poem, think about what the poem suggests as possible ways to live up to such a great sacrifice. You might also think about the sacrifices that other people have made for you.”…. from the website of the Library of Congress.
THE YOUNG DEAD SOLDIERS DO NOT SPEAK
By Archibald MacLeish
Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done
They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.
They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.
They say, We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.
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Ashbah
posted on November 11, 2011 by Musings
As we recognize Veteran’s Day we will feature two poems. Today’s first poem is by Brian Turner, who served for seven years in the U.S. Army. Beginning in November 2003, he was an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. More of his poetry is available at Turner.
ASHBAHBy Brian Turner
The ghosts of
American soldiers
wander the streets of
Balad by night,
unsure of their way
home, exhausted,
the desert wind
blowing trash
down the narrow
alleys as a voice
sounds from the
minaret, a soulfull call
reminding them how
alone they are,
how lost. And the
Iraqi dead,
they watch in silence
from rooftops
as date palms line the
shore in silhouette,
leaning toward Mecca
when the dawn wind blows.
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Poem for Our Dog Afraid of Thunder on a Rainy Day
posted on November 10, 2011 by Musings
Today’s poem by Leroy V. Quintana, a native New Mexican who served in Vietnam in the Army Airborne and a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit in 1967-68. More of his poetry is available at Quintana.
