Month: July 2018

Let us Ramble: Music, Veggie Pulp, and Rice

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

It is Monday morning at the Maine Federated Church. My normally quiet office is filled with the distant beeping of an alert as we have a low battery somewhere in the dark halls of the church. Earlier I was listening to classical music from my favorite philharmonic orchestra (London Philharmonic Orchestra). I was hoping it would be just loud enough to drown out the methodical beeping.

In time the note started to bother me despite the music. I found a chromatic tuner, sat patiently, and learned that the alarm was only slightly off from being a B♭, although it was annoyingly a little sharp and thus out of tune with the music scales. I went on a hunt, loaded up Boccherini’s Streichquartett no. 2 in G minor, opus 27 so that the note would be only slightly out of tune instead of wildly discordant.

Such things may seem strange, but they are part of a fairly normal Monday morning when my energy is low and I need simplicity for my soul’s sake. Sunday is exhausting for me as a minister. I pour my heart and soul into preparing for worship. After I spend my time talking with folks who are loved by God. I try to remember all of the names of people who matter to them, all of the history I know of their lives, and do my very best to be a loving and encouraging person. As someone who increasingly enjoys spending time in secluded peaceful spaces, that effort exhausts me in deep ways.

Monday is about sermon and worship prep for me. I read, I study, I pray, and I seek to get a head start on the week ahead, because you never know when something will happen which will require a few days of concentrated effort. Emergency room visits, deaths, and other life concerns cannot be scheduled. Monday is a time to make certain most of my ducks are in a row, even if that row usually requires a few days to straighten out.

In a lot of ways, as a pastor, Monday for me is about resetting the rhythm from one week to the next, which is something close to what other folks hopefully experience on Sunday mornings. I give thanks for what has happened, pray for guidance for the week ahead, and prepare for meetings, sermons, and even for the prayers I will share in the week ahead. For me, these rhythms of gratitude, prayer, and study are acts of worship.

Let me give a concrete simile. Life on Monday for me is like what is currently cooking in my rice cooker. For breakfast this morning I made smoothies for my family. I juiced carrots, a tomato, and a lot of spinach leaves. I took the juice and mixed in some homemade yogurt. We had a cup and a half of goodness each to start our day.

After my wife went to work, I started to clean things up. I grabbed the juicer pulp of carrot, spinach, and tomato. I scraped it into our smart rice cooker. I added some dried peppers, water, and dehydrated beef broth. I left the pulp cooking away for a few hours. When lunchtime approached, I added a bit more water, some homemade curry powder, and some wild rice.

Now, after a morning of working on worship preparation, lunchtime is approaching, and I will set the table with what is effectively vegetable porridge with rice. Nothing special was added to the pot. I worked with some dried spices, dried broth, dried rice, and leftover vegetable pulp. I simply used what was on hand, but in a short while I will enjoy something life-giving which will hopefully allow me to be a blessing to others.

On Mondays, I scrape out the bits of me that are filled with worry and doubt. I remove the parts and pieces which are covered with gunk and I clean them out. I wash away my irritation with playing the wrong notes on guitar, pick out the bits of me that went to bed wondering if I did well, and I prepare my heart and soul for another week of service. This week I may need to be ready to bring life into conversations around death, bring hope into places where people feel hopeless, and proclaim the gospel with and without words. I cannot do that if I am living in doubt or frustration about things that nobody will remember and nobody will care about in a week, a month, or a year.

On Mondays, I start to look around for what will be needed. I have an appointment this week on Tuesday that will require my heart to be open to listen, to advise, and to care. I have to search the cupboards of my being for my compassion and make certain it is ready to be used. I have (another!) sermon coming up this week and it takes more than time with a commentary to really engage the text with God’s beloved. Today is the day when I get my head into the scriptures, into the plans, and see if all will still be well with what I planned weeks ago. This is the day when I pull together what lifegiving bits of my heart and soul are still healthy and begin to simmer them with the spices of the week. In particular, today I am thinking with joy about sending kids to camp yesterday and mixing that in with a hope for people I will be in ministry with this next week. It should be a great week.

In truth, this is the day upon which a lot of my ministry rests. How does one survive in pastoral ministry for more than a decade with ups and downs? Monday morning is part of how I live into the rhythm of pastoral ministry. As the string quartet hums along with the slowly repeating beeping noise, I find space and energy in the silence to prepare for what is coming and where I will need to go. As such, today is not about making appointments. Today my appointment is with my God and my heart so that I can go about living out ministry throughout the rest of week.

I hope that you find a place of peace today as you go about your life. If you cannot find peace today, I invite you to consider that Sabbath is not entirely about one day a week. Sabbath is also about finding moments to focus on what is truly important. May you find life and love in your silences, your companionships, or whatever feeds your soul this day.

Rob’s Veggie Rice Bowl
(makes enough for several lunches for 3-4 hungry folks)

Okay, so it could be more photogenic, but you don’t know what you are missing until you taste the creaminess of the veggie pulp alongside the nuttiness of wild rice. Also, I really do recommend a dollop of butter!

3 cups Veggie Pulp
1 quart & 1 cup water, divided
1.5 TBSP Dehydrated Beef Broth
⅛ cup Dried peppers
1 cup Wild Rice
2 teaspoons curry powder (I smoked mine with a cold smoker to add flavor)

Combine pulp, one quart of water, dehydrated beef broth, and peppers in a slow cooker, fuzzy logic rice cooker, or an oven proof bowl. Cook for three hours on a low setting (or in an oven at 190℉). Place into rice cooker and cook with the brown rice setting along with water and curry powder. Stir and cook on brown rice setting. Serve warm with a dollop of butter!

Let us Ramble: Prejudice and Wisdom

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

When I was a young boy I visited with my relatives down south in Georgia. My grandfather’s sisters lived in a small town where they spent their days in a house that was quite large and quite ornate. I wondered at the house, the railroad tracks that ran past the front yard, and the massive properties on the side of the tracks on which they lived. As a kid I was more interested and terrified of fire ants than I was of the social situation, but even I noticed that the people who helped my grandfather’s sisters maintain the property came from the smaller homes on the other side of the railroad tracks. As an adult, it took me forever to realize that they looked different too.

I do remember hearing negative things. When things went missing it was never because they were misplaced. The “help” had taken them. Even when those things were found, it was still the fault of the people who came to help the two elderly women in their home. I realize now that there was a world of things going on behind the scenes. There were likely issues of race, prejudice, class, and economics at play. There were also questions of grief as two women lost the ability to control first their bodies and then their minds. I don’t excuse the behavior, but I did have the seeds of my first nightmares about Alzheimer’s disease in those days.

As an adult who is now removed nearly three decades from those events, I do not blame myself for having neither the wisdom nor the education to ask questions. What small child really knows enough to ask those questions? Furthermore, would my proper southern relatives have even taken me seriously? I do my best to act with the wisdom gained in my day to day life now, which is where this post originates.

I identify as a millennial but I am not a young adult. I have three children who I am raising to the best of my ability. I pay my taxes, dutifully pay off massive student loans, and understand that I cannot be bailed out of every challenge by my father. I do my best to be a constructive part of society. I also listen to a lot of complaints about millennials.

Perhaps it is my sensitivity to hearing people complain about my generation that caused me to notice something I found disrespectful the other day. Several folks that I know shared a couple of memes suggesting that eighteen year old students are spoiled. One or two of the folks pointed out that eighteen year old kids used to charge the beaches of Normandy and other folks pointed out that eighteen year olds used to serve in Vietnam. They proceeded to mock eighteen year old kids as being spoiled.

It begged a question in my mind. Who do they think serves in the Armed Forces today? Who do they believe are recovering from wounds from IEDs in hospitals and clinics or leaving children without parents after ambushes? What’s more, when they come to an age where they need care to live out the end of their lives, who do they believe will be the doctors or nurses? Who do they believe will care for the needs of their property? Who will teach their children? Who will serve in the fire departments, police forces, and even on road crews when they are no longer capable?

To me it was mind boggling. I remember my relatives saying that my grandfather’s sisters did not understand what they were saying about other people. I also remember a few choice moments when the generation who raised me made a few choice comments that were not so gracious. For all of the criticism of the people who came before, my own family has struggled to leave behind the bad habit of criticizing others for being different, whether that be in terms of race, age, ability, or education.

The memes gave me pause because it seemed as if another generation had been raised up to sit on their lawn and insult other people for having the audacity to live life differently than they once lived. What’s worse, I am almost certain that somewhere in my life I do the same thing. I might even be doing it now.

So, let me apologize for those moments when I forget the lessons I learned from the mistakes and missteps of my ancestors. Let me apologize for people who do not see what they are doing in their attempt to be funny, opinionated, or simply a part of a disastrous movement who wants to disenfranchise as many people as necessary to maintain the way things have always been. Let me apologize for the things that I will miss in my own heart and my own actions. Please forgive me.

Eighteen year old soldiers, students, and human beings… You have my respect. Please, live a life that is incredible and help me to live a great one as well.

Let us Ramble: Tradition, Worldview, and Action

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

Today I wanted to continue the discussion around the three worlds involved in any reading of scripture. The world inspiring the text, the world we live in, and the world within the text work together to birth something within us. Our everyday life is inherited from the world which inspired the creation of our scriptures and eventually delivered to us our scriptures through faithful transmission from generation to generation. As we open our scriptures, we find ourselves engaging in a conversation between author and reader which has happened before and will happen again.

So, what do we do with that conversation? Do we allow the Jesus of the scriptures to speak with us? Do we allow that Jesus to inform our actions and challenge our own world?

Another layer to this conversation comes into play when we consider the fact that each of us either consciously or subconsciously allow our tradition to enter into conversation. Perhaps we focus on a particular passage like Micah 6:8 or read our scripture through the lens of our culture. All of us come to scripture with some tradition, even if that tradition is so ingrained that it never reaches our consciousness.

I think that the theologian and Biblical scholar George Pixley puts it well in the opening chapter of “Resistance: The New Role of Progressive Christians. Pixley wrote: (5)

“Tradition is present everywhere, and apart from it there could be no shared life. Everyone comes into a community that has beliefs and practices shaped by its history; and all assimilate many of them before being in a position to evaluate them. Everyone engages in some process of selection from other traditions. This process is shaped by what makes sense and by personal and collective experience.”

Regardless of any opinions about Rev. Pixley’s theology, it is hard to argue that he puts the matter quite succinctly. Our engagement with scripture is affected by our relationship with the world around us. A simple conversation with a variety of people including survivors of abuse at the hands of an angry father will reveal that the very conception of God as a male parent can be wildly reassuring in the context of one person and incredibly disconcerting in the experience of another person.

So, to summarize: The scriptures we read come to us from a history we can never visit nor completely verify, are read through the lens of a tradition that can affect the way we read them without our knowledge, and ultimately we are the ones who decide what course we will chart in our journey of faith. Will there be prevailing wind and waves? Of course, but ultimately we are each handed the tiller on the boat of life.

For me, this reality begs a question. What we do with all of this? How do we plot a course through the maelstrom of life? I truly believe that each person must make their own choice, but my own journey has put a priority on observing, emulating, and engaging in a dialogue (through my actions) with the faithful of the past. By living into a course of faithfulness as taught to me through both living saints and the records of those from the past, I find a course that I can plot through all of the winds, waves, and eddies of life.

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We all need guidance now and again!

A great example of what I mean can be found in the scriptures. Consider the viewpoint expressed by the Apostle Paul in the fourth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Paul lived in an age when the church was not fully established, had many places where it needed to grow, and was struggling with conflicts and questions. In other words, the church had a lot in common with modern ministry. Whether we are reforming a challenged faith in the 21st century or establishing a minority religion in the 1st century, I see a lot of similarities in the challenges faced both then and now, although there clearly are differences.

Paul, a leader in those chaotic times, set an example on how to live into ministry. I find Paul’s ministry to be particularly fitting as I am continually coming to understand that ministry is quickly changing from the context of those who brought me into the ministry to a ministry that is unlike any that has come before in the history of the church. Looking at the example of Paul helps me to find a path, because life is clearly difficult at times. We need to find a new way, a new path, and remain faithful to those who have come before us. Paul wrote the following in 1 Corinthians 4:12-13: “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.”

These words help me to find compass points for my own journey. These words (which tie into my understanding of passages like the beatitudes) help me to go on a journey from where I am to where I need to be as a person of faith in a leadership position. Paul did not see to domineer in his ministry, so I follow Paul’s example in not seeking domination within the church. If Paul could envision a world where the minister was not a dictator, then I can seek to live into a ministry focused on similar principles.

What are your touchstones for life? Do you find foci within the scriptures or do you set your course by other sources?

Let us Ramble: Within the Text

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

During this past Sunday’s sermon I referenced the book “Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles.” Written by Walter Brueggemann, “Cadences of Home” does an excellent job at delving into the work of the ministry of preaching. In particular, I referenced the chapter “Rhetoric and Community.”

In that chapter, Brueggemann delves into concepts explored by the French Philosopher Paul Ricouer. In particular, Brueggemann explores the application of Ricouer’s conceptions to the scripture. To summarize that work (with a hearty encouragement to read the entire book), Brueggemann argues that any passage might be seen as an interaction between three worlds.

The first world is the world where the events described in the passage took place. This physical world had people walking around and interacting. In considering gospel passages, this is the world in which Jesus walked, talked, and preached.

The second world is the world in which we live. As people, we read books, walk around, have conversations, and live out our lives. This world is the world in which we act, live, and have our being. This world will be the world of the future’s past and is the future of the past. This is the world of the present.

The third world is the world within the passage. The world is one which is described within the stories of scripture. While it is the inspired word of God, it is also the world described by the authors of the texts. The words are often challenging, purposeful, and occasionally reference other texts and stories which we no longer have access to in our own libraries.

Unfortunately, the world described in the text is the only one of the other worlds which can interact with the present. Unless we invent a means of either time travel or the means to travel far faster than the reflected light headed out into space, we will never see the world of the far past. We can observe remnants and artifacts of the past, but not the events. Without divine blessing, technological innovation, or something beyond our current comprehension, we will never experience the days described in scripture.

I rehash this bit of scholarship from Sunday’s sermon for a reason. I reference it because this morning I was reading a different book by a different author which works hand in hand with this passage. I was reading Robert Alter’s “The Art of Biblical Narrative.” Alter is a large proponent of paying attention to the texts of scripture. Indeed, Alter writes (37) “All of these narratives are presented as history, that is, as things that really happened and that have some significant consequence for human or Israelite destiny.” For the record, Alter immediately points out Job is an exception to this rule. It should also be noted that Alter’s work focuses on the Hebrew Bible.

What is interesting about this concept of the Hebrew scriptures being presented as history is that there are a lot of details about the stories of scripture that are presented as history, but which had no witness at the time of the authorship of these stories. Alter points out that there is a “tension between the divine plan and the disorderly character of actual historical events…” (37).

Alter refers to a lot of this presentation not as a form of historiography accounting for the events of the past as a form of intensely accurate chronicle of events. Rather, the scriptures are written in the eyes of Alter with a purpose. Speaking on the author of David’s story: (40)

“…these stories are not, strictly speaking, historiography, but rather the imaginative reenactment of history by a gifted writer who organizes his materials along certain thematic biases and according to his own remarkable intuition of the psychology of the characters. He feels entirely free, one should remember, to invent interior monologue for his characters; to ascribe feeling, intention or motive to them when he chooses; to supply verbatim dialogue (and he is one of literature’s masters of dialogue) for occasions when no one but the actors themselves could have had knowledge of exactly what was said. The author of the David stories stands in basically the same relation to Israelite history as Shakespeare stands to English history in his history plays.”

Alter goes on to describe how Shakespeare wrote beautifully and powerfully on historical events as a form of dramatic expression. Scripture itself creates a world in which something powerful is expressed. I believe that even if God were to divinely inspire every word and every translation of scripture, we should still pay attention to the world in the text as described by individuals like Brueggemann and Alter.

As readers of scripture, we should spend time within the world created in our texts and in the purposes behind the description of that world because that is the world we can still interact with as a people. We may never see the Sermon on the Mount preached by Jesus, but we can still interact with the Sermon as recorded by the gospels. We may never meet Paul before the day of resurrection or our own journey to that other shore, but we may interact with the concepts presented through his letters. We may never interact perfectly with the world that once was the present, but the world described in our holy texts can still be powerfully a part of our lives.

As time permits I hope to delve deeper into how the texts we read call us into a world influenced by this third world explored by this “rhetorical criticism” which is found within the scriptures, but for tonight, I invite you to ask a simple question. How does the world within the scriptures influence your personal life?