I remember Pastor Miller preaching at Barclay Heights Community Church. We met in the lodge of an old YMCA camp on Esopus Creek near Glenerie Falls. When the lodge became our permanent home, we changed the name of the church to Glenerie Chapel.
I remember Pastor Miller praying; his opening prayers were nearly the equal of his sermons. These were not pithy, punchy, sound-bited perfunctories; his prayers were ten minutes of engagement with God on matters of the day, from local to global.
I remember Pastor Miller’s velvet singing voice. It reminded me of a baritone Andy Williams with a bit of Mel Torme. From where I sat, singing seemed to be pure pleasure for him.
I remember Pastor Miller telling us about Christ’s Passion during a springtime Sunday night service thirty-some years ago. One of the other teens ran out of the lodge, weeping – overtaken by the description of what Jesus had endured for him. I ran after him and listened to his story.
I remember Pastor Miller’s Christianity including humanness. He didn’t try to portray himself as saintly; he wasn’t aloof from his congregation. He wasn’t afraid to laugh.
I don’t remember when Pastor Miller invited me to call him “Bob”. The truth is I never really got used to it. He was simply “Pastor” to me.
I remember Pastor Miller saying he thought I’d become a pastor someday. I didn’t like that, and I fought it for a long time. But over the years, his was among a small number of voices through which God conferred that calling to me. I don’t wear it as comfortably as he did but I try to be true to my legacy.
Today, I’m remembering to remember because it’s the day of Pastor’s memorial service. I wish I could be present. He and his family are very much on my mind. I’m praying they feel the support of their communities as they find their way forward. I’m praying they know they’re not carrying his memory alone. And I’m praying they find grace today to celebrate him with all their might.
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
3/28/2008
9/13/2007
more about crayon scribbles
It’s easy enough to slip into the faulty logic that if we haven’t gotten it all right then we’ve gotten it all wrong. The crayon-scribble metaphor helps me a lot. When a child creates a portrait of a parent, accuracy is not the point. The stirring thing is the impulse to symbolically depict a seeing/knowing event. The parent might not be universally recognizable in the child’s crayon scribbles but that diminishes neither the presence of the parent nor the perception of the child, nor the relationship between them.
Furthermore, the parent delights in these imperfect portraits and posts them proudly on the refrigerator.
Furthermore, the parent delights in these imperfect portraits and posts them proudly on the refrigerator.
9/10/2007
theology
I scribble in crayon
According to me
Your head is oversized
And oddly shaped
I scribble in crayon
According to me
Your head is oversized
And oddly shaped
I scribble in crayon
9/04/2007
Jesus at the Tension Point
Near the end of his book about Jesus, John the Apostle includes a story about transitions. It happened after Jesus had been raised again to life. John and a few of the other fishermen had been working the sea all night long.
The narrative is rich with symbolism though it doesn’t read as the fanciful sort; it reads as real-life that’s saturated with meaning.
Jesus is standing in the sand between sea and land. He is slowly becoming visible as night dissolves into dawn. He is shouting lightheartedness into frustration and fatigue. He is acknowledging futility and offering a surprise of fruitfulness.
This sort of disruptive goodness – this sense-making presence at the tension point of change and uncertainty – is what makes Jesus recognizable to his friends.
The narrative is rich with symbolism though it doesn’t read as the fanciful sort; it reads as real-life that’s saturated with meaning.
Jesus is standing in the sand between sea and land. He is slowly becoming visible as night dissolves into dawn. He is shouting lightheartedness into frustration and fatigue. He is acknowledging futility and offering a surprise of fruitfulness.
This sort of disruptive goodness – this sense-making presence at the tension point of change and uncertainty – is what makes Jesus recognizable to his friends.
4/20/2006
Departure & Return
~~
The journey of faith is a conscious, perpetual departure from cynicism and return to wonder.
1/03/2006
Manure & Ice
I don’t remember why I was chasing the butterscotch cat. It darted out of sunlight into the dusty shadows of my cousins’ barn. I followed at breakneck speed.
My grandparents kept a tidy barn with a floor that wasn’t slick with a film of silt, hay, and manure, but my cousins didn’t hold to such standards. So imagine my surprise when my feet slipped from under me and I found myself falling forward with arms outstretched Superman-style. My flight was not sustainable and I hit the floorboards with a smack and a splat and a long, messy skid.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t the last time I would rush into a place I didn’t need to be, chasing after something that wasn’t mine.
I also had a wintertime adventure at that farm. There was enough of a hill for sledding, and we made the most of it. With a running start, we could get up enough speed to make it across a flat stretch of yard, and then out onto the frozen duck pond.
The more we sledded, the faster the track became, until we were getting as far as halfway across the pond. Late in the day I decided to really throw myself into it and see what would happen. I hit the packed snow at the perfect angle and velocity. I gripped the steering wings of the Flexible Flyer, and held my boots up to keep from dragging on the track behind me. The sled’s red blades kicked up bits of snow and ice that pelted my face and made my eyes water.
When I reached the edge of the pond I could feel that I had enough speed to make it all the way across the ice. I squinted into the stinging draft, scanning for a good place to stop. The far side of the pond was thick with dead reeds that poked up through the mottled ice like big brown straws. It was swampy and not solidly frozen, but this realization crystallized in my mind a blink too late.
I crashed into the reeds and broke through the ice into scummy pond water. Fortunately, it was too shallow for anything disastrous to happen. I was drenched and chilled, and done sledding for the day, but otherwise none the worse for the wear.
Bookend stories of reckless abandon that ended badly, but not catastrophically: I keep retelling them, trying to decipher their meaning. Does wisdom require me to attenuate my adventurous impulses? Should I frame my curiosity within the bandwidth of safe outcomes? Can I touch the sacred without making direct contact with the stuff of the earth? Is there any faith without danger?
My grandparents kept a tidy barn with a floor that wasn’t slick with a film of silt, hay, and manure, but my cousins didn’t hold to such standards. So imagine my surprise when my feet slipped from under me and I found myself falling forward with arms outstretched Superman-style. My flight was not sustainable and I hit the floorboards with a smack and a splat and a long, messy skid.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t the last time I would rush into a place I didn’t need to be, chasing after something that wasn’t mine.
I also had a wintertime adventure at that farm. There was enough of a hill for sledding, and we made the most of it. With a running start, we could get up enough speed to make it across a flat stretch of yard, and then out onto the frozen duck pond.
The more we sledded, the faster the track became, until we were getting as far as halfway across the pond. Late in the day I decided to really throw myself into it and see what would happen. I hit the packed snow at the perfect angle and velocity. I gripped the steering wings of the Flexible Flyer, and held my boots up to keep from dragging on the track behind me. The sled’s red blades kicked up bits of snow and ice that pelted my face and made my eyes water.
When I reached the edge of the pond I could feel that I had enough speed to make it all the way across the ice. I squinted into the stinging draft, scanning for a good place to stop. The far side of the pond was thick with dead reeds that poked up through the mottled ice like big brown straws. It was swampy and not solidly frozen, but this realization crystallized in my mind a blink too late.
I crashed into the reeds and broke through the ice into scummy pond water. Fortunately, it was too shallow for anything disastrous to happen. I was drenched and chilled, and done sledding for the day, but otherwise none the worse for the wear.
Bookend stories of reckless abandon that ended badly, but not catastrophically: I keep retelling them, trying to decipher their meaning. Does wisdom require me to attenuate my adventurous impulses? Should I frame my curiosity within the bandwidth of safe outcomes? Can I touch the sacred without making direct contact with the stuff of the earth? Is there any faith without danger?
9/23/2004
Baptism
The Esopus Creek runs through three hundred years of my family’s stories. It’s easy to imagine my Dutch and Palatine forbears tapping into its store of fish in order to fend off hunger. I used to fish it too on occasion, but happily, my survival never depended on the catch!
The Esopus nearly took my father’s life one afternoon when he was small. He went under, but my grandfather was watching, and pulled him back up into the air.
I was baptized in those same waters, along with my Dad and the rest of my immediate family. It was a chilly sacrament since Indian summer didn’t show up that September.
After a brief testimony, I held my nose and arched backward until fully immersed. Pastor Miller steadied me, but I still felt disoriented and vulnerable in the cold Esopus.
Baptism is a tactile poem about resurrection, which is the spiritual principle of life-from-death, and the current that carries hope forward. Faith isn’t just a wish. It’s more like counting on an unfolding of good things I can’t create for myself – an unfolding that unfolds forever.
All goose bumps and grins, and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, we were pulled out of the water into the air. Life from death: ritually enacted and viscerally understood.
The Esopus nearly took my father’s life one afternoon when he was small. He went under, but my grandfather was watching, and pulled him back up into the air.
I was baptized in those same waters, along with my Dad and the rest of my immediate family. It was a chilly sacrament since Indian summer didn’t show up that September.
After a brief testimony, I held my nose and arched backward until fully immersed. Pastor Miller steadied me, but I still felt disoriented and vulnerable in the cold Esopus.
Baptism is a tactile poem about resurrection, which is the spiritual principle of life-from-death, and the current that carries hope forward. Faith isn’t just a wish. It’s more like counting on an unfolding of good things I can’t create for myself – an unfolding that unfolds forever.
All goose bumps and grins, and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, we were pulled out of the water into the air. Life from death: ritually enacted and viscerally understood.
6/08/2004
Zeroing
Two lava lamps rehearse their unhurried ballet on either end of the big console’s monitor shelf. Studio A is dark beyond the heavy, slanted glass wall that separates it from the control room. I can just make out the shadowed contours of the grand piano. Chrome hardware and brass cymbals glint faintly from the drum booth at the far end of the room.
It’s noiseless out there tonight because this is a mixing session. Basic tracks were recorded a month ago, and overdubbing finished up last week. Now the separate pieces – drums, vocals, guitars, more guitars, piano, strings, finger snaps – wait on parallel strips of two-inch 24-track tape for the engineer and I to shape them into four minutes of integrated beauty.
Each track will want some degree of doctoring, ranging from merely adjusting its relative level, to patching it through a pitch-fixing box. One track might trigger a digital sample of a different sound altogether. Mixing is an intuitive interplay of science and art.
Just as we’re about to get going, the engineer pushes his chair back from the mixing board and shakes his head. He mutters something about interns. The patch bay hasn’t been cleared, and the knobs and faders haven’t been returned to unity. This was the intern’s job following the previous session.
“Zeroing the board” is standard protocol in good recording studios. It’s achingly tedious to undo someone else’s settings, and it’s a momentum killer. An engineer assumes each session will begin with a clean slate.
This offers an analogy pertinent to spiritual health. It’s possible for the fragmented bits of a soul to be shaped into a life of integrated beauty. Periodically zeroing one’s interior is what’s called for. That’s when the Engineer loves to get to work.
It’s noiseless out there tonight because this is a mixing session. Basic tracks were recorded a month ago, and overdubbing finished up last week. Now the separate pieces – drums, vocals, guitars, more guitars, piano, strings, finger snaps – wait on parallel strips of two-inch 24-track tape for the engineer and I to shape them into four minutes of integrated beauty.
Each track will want some degree of doctoring, ranging from merely adjusting its relative level, to patching it through a pitch-fixing box. One track might trigger a digital sample of a different sound altogether. Mixing is an intuitive interplay of science and art.
Just as we’re about to get going, the engineer pushes his chair back from the mixing board and shakes his head. He mutters something about interns. The patch bay hasn’t been cleared, and the knobs and faders haven’t been returned to unity. This was the intern’s job following the previous session.
“Zeroing the board” is standard protocol in good recording studios. It’s achingly tedious to undo someone else’s settings, and it’s a momentum killer. An engineer assumes each session will begin with a clean slate.
This offers an analogy pertinent to spiritual health. It’s possible for the fragmented bits of a soul to be shaped into a life of integrated beauty. Periodically zeroing one’s interior is what’s called for. That’s when the Engineer loves to get to work.
3/26/2004
The Sacrament of Action
I believe in coffee. I believe that, when made with care, it tastes marvelous. I believe its aroma is cause for joy. I believe it assists me in the often-arduous process of waking up in the morning (and staying that way in the afternoon!). Because I believe in coffee, I engage in numerous mundane tasks in order to make it real in the physical world.
My notion of coffee on a metaphysical level might be powerful enough to create a mental image of its flavor, aroma, and effect – but nothing more. At some point, my coffee beliefs have to press through into the physical world if I want to feel the steam on my face and the bracing hot blackness on my lips. I must take authentic action.
I rinse out the dregs of yesterday’s brew (with warm water in order to simultaneously preheat the pot). I toss the spent filter and grounds, and install a new filter in the drip compartment. I fill the chamber with cold water (because cold water contains more oxygen, which enhances the flavor). I open the cupboard and take out the coffee grinder and beans. I put in the right amount of beans, plug in the grinder, hold down its “roof”, and start grinding. About twenty seconds later I firmly tap the side, and then the bottom of the grinder a few times with the heel of my palm (I have found this to be the best way to get any rogue bits of ground coffee down off of the roof before removing it). I remove the roof of the grinder, pour the fresh grounds into the clean filter, close the compartment, set the pot in its place, and push the “on” button.
I can assure you that none of those actions have any intrinsic meaning for me. It is all about the coffee – it’s all about bringing coffee into my physical reality. At 6:00AM the abstract notion of coffee will not do for my wife and me – we want tangible stuff. So, I happily engage in my bleary-eyed routine because of the hope set before me…
Is there any intrinsic meaning in reading a few chapters of Scripture in the morning? How about telling a friend the story of God's invasion into my life? Contemplative prayer? Perhaps tithing?
Maybe there is. If so, it seems like a rather pallid reality to me. For me, the real meaning of such actions is anchored in the reality of my beliefs. These are the more or less mundane acts (among many others) by which I press what is in my mind, spirit, and heart into what can be known by my hands, ears, mouth, eyes, and nose. That is what I think of as sacramental action.
A sacrament is defined as: “A rite believed to be a means of or visible form of grace…”* Baptism and Communion are “official” Sacraments. Jesus knew how important it is for humans to experience and express metaphysical things physically. He gifted us with bread and wine to taste, and water to feel in order to give his message to our bodies – not just our minds.
The life of faith is all about sacramental action. It is all about seeking ways to press the unseen into the seen. And this almost always calls for discipline, simply because moving from one modality to another is usually difficult. In the life of faith, discipline is not an end in itself; it is the force that propels us from the realm of ideas and insights into the world of action. At least, it is the piece we offer into the process; God is always the underlying and overarching force in any meaningful action.
It is good advice to “Wake up and smell the coffee.” But it’s nothing more than that until somebody actually makes the coffee!
“Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” James 2:17 (NIV)
“Faith without action is as dead as a body without a soul.” James 2:26 (Phillips)
* The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
My notion of coffee on a metaphysical level might be powerful enough to create a mental image of its flavor, aroma, and effect – but nothing more. At some point, my coffee beliefs have to press through into the physical world if I want to feel the steam on my face and the bracing hot blackness on my lips. I must take authentic action.
I rinse out the dregs of yesterday’s brew (with warm water in order to simultaneously preheat the pot). I toss the spent filter and grounds, and install a new filter in the drip compartment. I fill the chamber with cold water (because cold water contains more oxygen, which enhances the flavor). I open the cupboard and take out the coffee grinder and beans. I put in the right amount of beans, plug in the grinder, hold down its “roof”, and start grinding. About twenty seconds later I firmly tap the side, and then the bottom of the grinder a few times with the heel of my palm (I have found this to be the best way to get any rogue bits of ground coffee down off of the roof before removing it). I remove the roof of the grinder, pour the fresh grounds into the clean filter, close the compartment, set the pot in its place, and push the “on” button.
I can assure you that none of those actions have any intrinsic meaning for me. It is all about the coffee – it’s all about bringing coffee into my physical reality. At 6:00AM the abstract notion of coffee will not do for my wife and me – we want tangible stuff. So, I happily engage in my bleary-eyed routine because of the hope set before me…
Is there any intrinsic meaning in reading a few chapters of Scripture in the morning? How about telling a friend the story of God's invasion into my life? Contemplative prayer? Perhaps tithing?
Maybe there is. If so, it seems like a rather pallid reality to me. For me, the real meaning of such actions is anchored in the reality of my beliefs. These are the more or less mundane acts (among many others) by which I press what is in my mind, spirit, and heart into what can be known by my hands, ears, mouth, eyes, and nose. That is what I think of as sacramental action.
A sacrament is defined as: “A rite believed to be a means of or visible form of grace…”* Baptism and Communion are “official” Sacraments. Jesus knew how important it is for humans to experience and express metaphysical things physically. He gifted us with bread and wine to taste, and water to feel in order to give his message to our bodies – not just our minds.
The life of faith is all about sacramental action. It is all about seeking ways to press the unseen into the seen. And this almost always calls for discipline, simply because moving from one modality to another is usually difficult. In the life of faith, discipline is not an end in itself; it is the force that propels us from the realm of ideas and insights into the world of action. At least, it is the piece we offer into the process; God is always the underlying and overarching force in any meaningful action.
It is good advice to “Wake up and smell the coffee.” But it’s nothing more than that until somebody actually makes the coffee!
“Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” James 2:17 (NIV)
“Faith without action is as dead as a body without a soul.” James 2:26 (Phillips)
* The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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