Category: devotional thoughts

DAY 23
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner
HAVE NO ANXIETY about anything,” Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track.

Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can’t help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you’ve gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest Mideast crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin announcing that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a terrorist attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you’re not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head.

Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don’t see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twenty-first century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps.

But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. “All life is suffering” says the first and truest of the Buddha’s
Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet “the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything,” Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God’s will or God’s judgment or God’s method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them–even in the thick of them–they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things and also unimaginably transcends the best.

“In everything,” Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The worst things will surely happen no matter what–that is to be understood–but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be “in Christ,” as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, or death can get at us there.

That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, “Have no anxiety about anything.” Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4-7).

my reflections I am a worryer. In way too many situations, the first two words that come to mind are “what if”. What if indeed! There are infinite what-ifs in life, and all of them have a mathematical possibility of happening. This, of course, does not mean that they will. But that doesn’t stop my brain from finding countless what-ifs in any situation. Clearly I don’t have this peace that surpasses all understanding thing down yet. Another phrase I’ve heard frequently throughout my life is let go and let God. Once again, much easier said than done. I wish I was better at all of this. On the other hand, I can’t think of anyone I know who’s great at it either. All I can do is keep trying and maybe someday I’ll get there.

Back doing this after a hiatus of over 6 months.

Beyond Words Day 21
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

MARY COULDN’T SAY she wasn’t warned. The angel came with an Easter lily in his hand and stood so still he could have been one of the columns in the loggia where they met. Mary had trouble hearing what he said and afterward thought it might have been just a dream. Even so, it troubled her.

It was not until later that the real trouble came. The real trouble came when what the angel announced would happen happened, but in a way she couldn’t have dreamed: squatting there in the straw with her thighs wrenched apart, while out of her pain she dropped into the howling world something that looked like nothing so much as raw beefsteak: who was the one the angel had said was to be called Holy, the Son of the Most High: who was the Word itself fleshed with–of all flesh–hers.

my reflection I wouldn’t be surprised if some people would have some issues with this devotional. Describing Our Savior Jesus Christ as a piece of raw meat? Seriously? Yet if he did become flesh of our flesh, the description is quite accurate. Thinking about it, the birthing process is very chaotic, extremely messy, and there’s more than a little ick factor to it. I know, I’ve been there, up close and personal. Yet, even with all of that, I can’t think of a more moving and sanctified event than the beginning of life. And even if Jesus did come out looking worse for wear, it doesn’t matter how you start in life, it’s how you finish.

DAY 19
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

my reflection I have a disagreement with Buechner here. To my way of thinking, there is nothing at all fun about anger. Anger is the most negative of emotions. I fear being on the receiving end of it, but more than that, I fear dishing it out as well. I’ve seen anger modeled negatively by many people throughout my life. It’s only been relatively recently that I’ve come to know that anger, when perceived correctly, can act as a positive motivator. But Buechner is correct when he says the “skeleton of the feast is you”. I’ve heard revenge described as someone taking poison hoping someone else dies. I don’t think there are more corosive emotions than anger and revenge. When not controlled, they can eat you inside out. That is certainly something to avoid. But righteous anger can potentially be channeled to good purposes. The trick, of course, is to discern the difference between righteous anger and corosive anger. And that’s way more easily said than done.

DAY 18
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederic Buechner

“SLEIGHT-OF-HAND MAGIC is based on the demonstrable fact that as a rule people see only what they expect to see. Angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to wish us well. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t. An angel spreads its glittering wings over us, and we say things like, “It was one of those days that made you feel good just to be alive,” or “I had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right,” or “I don’t know where I ever found the courage.””

my reflection More brevity today. I’m actually not sure where I stand regarding angels. In my younger years the thought that there was a guardian angel looking out for us was comforting to me. It was especially comforting to me right after my dad died in 2000. At that time I read many books talking about angels, spirit guides and the like. Ultimately I wound up not feeling comfortable with the concept. It felt too much like leaning into the occult. And yet, Clarence’s interactions with George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life are powerful in their own way. Do we all have angels on our shoulders? When push comes to shove, I can’t confirm or deny. But I totally understand why some people are convinced there are.

DAY 16
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“WHEN THE PROPHET AMOS walked down the main drag, it was like a shoot-out in the Old West. Everybody ran for cover. His special target was the “beautiful people,” and shooting from the hip, he never missed his mark. He pictures them sleek and tanned at Palm Beach, Acapulco, St. Tropez. They glisten with Bain de Soleil. The stereo is piped out over the marble terrace. Another tray of Bloody Marys is on the way. A vacationing bishop plunges into the heated pool.

With one eye cocked on them, he has his other cocked on the unbeautiful people–the varicose veins of the old waiter, the pasty face of the starch-fed child, the Indian winos passed out on the railroad siding, the ragged woman fumbling for food stamps at the check-out counter.

When justice is finally done, Amos says, there will be hell to pay. The happy hour will be postponed indefinitely, because the sun will never make it over the yardarm. The cashmere sweaters, the tangerine-colored slacks, the flowered Lillys will all fade like grass. Nothing but a few chicken bones will mark the place where once the cold buffet was spread out under the royal palms.

But according to Amos, it won’t be the shortage of food and fun that will hurt. It will be the shortage “of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). Toward the end, God will make himself so scarce that the world won’t even know what it’s starving to death for.”

Amos 6-8

my reflection More Old Testament carnage. The Lord is displeased (to say the least) with the Israelites because they have turned away from Him. As a result, He is going to withdraw His protection over them. This is extremely radical, and the God I studied and learned to venerate from the New Testament would have never gone this far, or so I believe. All that said, I’m not sure I completely blame the Lord for His actions. As Buechner illustrates, the Israelites have lost their way. They appear to have turned their worship to material things, and that hardly ever ends well–or maybe never ends well. I can’t help but see some parallels in our current day. Lots of people are accumulating and hoarding wealth, and many others are coveting it. The culture holds up the uber rich as exemplars worthy of emulating. It feels like we are so far down the wrong road that it isn’t hard to imagine a day of reckoning similar to what the Israelites had to endure. I hope and pray I’m wrong, but if it does hapen society will only have itself to blame.

DAY 15
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“x + y = z. If you know the value of one of the letters, you know something. If you know the value of two, you can probably figure out the whole thing. If you don’t know the value of any, you don’t know much.

Preachers tend to forget this. “Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and be saved from your sins,” or something like that, has meaning and power and relevance only if the congregation has some notion of what, humanly speaking, sin is, or being saved is, or who Jesus is, or what accepting him involves. If preachers make no attempt to flesh out these words in terms of everyday human experience (maybe even their own) but simply repeat with variations the same old formulas week after week, then the congregation might just as well spend Sunday morning at home with the funnies.

The blood atonement. The communion of saints. The Holy Ghost. If people’s understanding of theological phrases goes little deeper than their dictionary or catechetical definitions, then to believe in them has just about as much effect on their lives as to believe that Columbus discovered America in 1492 or E = mc 2.

Coming home from church one snowy day, Emerson wrote, “The snow was real but the preacher spectral.” In other words, nothing he heard from the pulpit suggested that the preacher was a human being more or less like everybody else with the same dark secrets and high hopes, the same doubts and passions, the same weaknesses and strengths. Undoubtedly he preached on matters like sin and salvation but without ever alluding to the wretched, lost moments or the glad, liberating moments of his own life or anybody else’s.

There is perhaps no better proof for the existence of God than that year after year the whole God enterprise survives despite the way the professionally godly promote it. If there are people who remain unconvinced, let them tune in their TVs to almost any of the big-time pulpit pounders almost any Sunday morning of the year.”

my reflection Reading this made me want to rise from my chair and cheer. What he says in this devotional is oh so true. In my formative years I had significant exposure to the Catholic faith by virtue of me attending Catholic parochial junior high school and then Jesuit high school and college. I wasn’t raised Catholic, in fact my family weren’t really churchgoers at all. While I’m thankful every day for my excellent Jesuit education, I never felt at home in the Catholic church. I remember attending a funeral Mass for a friend several years ago. I hadn’t set foot in a catholic church for more than 20 years before this. I remember being really bothered by the call-and-response pattern of the service. Everyone saying the same thing at the same time put me in mind of something else far removed from religion or spirituality. “We are the Borg.” I finally understood why Catholicism never felt like a good fit to me. There was just way too much rigid ritual. And how many of those people droning those words really, I mean really, understood what they were saying? I know this ritual is meaningful in and of itself for a lot of people, and I’m not trying to minimize that, but it just never was for me. Going to church and mouthing the same words, week after week after week, in perpetuity, just doesn’t do it for me. For me it has the same signifcance as a first-grader dutifully saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They have no clue what the words mean (except in rare instances), so what’s the point? When religion started to cause me to think, to stretch my beliefs and be open to new ideas and notions, is when my faith really began to take flight. And I’m so glad it did!

DAY 14
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, or A.A., is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can’t pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren’t so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, “I am John. I am an alcoholic,” “I am Mary. I am an alcoholic,” to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, “Hi, John,” “Hi, Mary.” They are apt to end with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can.

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another–to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There’s not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

You can’t help thinking that something like this is what the church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be big business. Sinners Anonymous. “I can will what is right but I cannot do it,” is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).

“I am me. I am a sinner.”

“Hi, you.”

Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the church is all about.

No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.

Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder what is so big about the church’s business.”

See also Lord’s Prayer.

my reflection When I first started contemplating Christianity on a deeper level 20 or so years ago, I had the assumption that churches would actively do whatever they could to facilitate people becoming part of their congregation. I figured all I had to d was call the church’s office, and they would get a ride for me. After all, I was (theoretically, at least) part of their preferred demographic: a seeker wanting, and needing, a place to belong. It took almost no time at all for these assumptions to be proven wrong. It turns out that, while churches are always hoping for more fannies in the pews, they don’t seem to feel any obligation to assist people to get there. And oftentimes it’s still sometimes a struggle to get rides to and from church even when you’re part of the supposed church community. I don’t have any personal experience with AA, but it isn’t hard to believe that such things aren’t as much of an issue with them. No matter what your overall feelings might be about AA, there is no denying that they are a true community. Their whole model is structured on people helping people, being there for one another, trust, and reciprocation. Like Buechner, I believe that the church started out with this model but at some point they lost it. At this point church is indeed big business, marketing to certain demographics as opposed to individuals, way too much emphasis on elaborate appearances, large sanctuaries, pitch perfect music, sermons tailored to certain age groups…in short, the medium has become way more important than the message. The church could, I think, learn some valuable things from AA about the cultivation of community. It’s way past time to start getting back to basics, to focus on individuals other than groups, to become less corporate. I know there are a lot of people who are like I was 20 years ago, having a lot of questions, loking for a place to belong. If I hadn’t gotten some much-needed encouragement at crucial times my initialexperience almost certainly would have wound up with me drifting away from Christianity, never to return. The church is losing people and needs to do better.

DAY 13
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“WHEREAS JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY has a cross to bear, King Ahab had two. One cross was the prophet Elijah. If, generally speaking, a prophet to a king was like ants at a picnic, Elijah was like a swarm of bees. The other cross was his foreign-born wife, Jezebel, who had gotten religion in a big way back in the old country and was forever trying to palm it off on the Israelites, who had a perfectly good religion of their own. Unfortunately for Ahab, the two of them sometimes got to working on him at the same time, one from one side, the other from the other. A case in point was the Naboth affair.

To make a sordid story short, Naboth had a vineyard that Ahab wanted so much he could taste it, and when Naboth refused either to sell or to swap, Ahab went into a sulk. “He laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no food” (1 Kings 21:4). It was the kind of opening Jezebel was always on the lookout for. Was he a king or a cup custard, she asked and proceeded to take charge. Found guilty of a trumped-up charge, Naboth got stoned to death, and Ahab got the vineyard. He also, needless to say, got a visit from Elijah.

Down through the years they’d kept meeting like that, in secluded places, always at critical moments. Ahab arrived incognito–the dark glasses, the Panama hat, the business suit–and Elijah with a ten-day growth of beard. Ahab addressed him in his usual informal way as a royal pain in the neck (1 Kings 21:20), and then Elijah let him have it with both barrels. When God got through with him, Elijah said, there wouldn’t be enough left of Ahab to scrape off the sidewalk, and what there was the dogs would take care of. As for Jezebel, not only because of Naboth but because of all her imported witch doctors and totem poles, she would end up the same way.

Ahab at least said he was sorry, and as a result was allowed to die honorably in battle, the part about the dogs coming true only in the sense that they got to lap the water up that his bloody chariot was hosed off with afterward. Jezebel, on the other hand, continued unrepentant to the end. When the time finally came, they threw her out of the window, and when the dogs got finished, all that was left for the undertaker was “the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands” (2 Kings 9:35).

God is merciful, and if Jezebel and Ahab and Elijah all eventually met up again in paradise, you can only assume that Ahab said if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he’d as soon take his chances in a warmer climate, and immediately put in for a transfer.”

1 Kings 21-22; 2 Kings 9:30-36

my reflection I’m only vaguely familiar with Jezebel and Ahab and Elijah, and even then only in the most basic of ways. Buechner does a good job of tying all of them together. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for Ahab; he wanted what he wanted, and he got it. He could have told Jezebel to forget the whole thing. My modern sensibilities kind of feel on alert. Is it possible that there might be at least a little misogyny at play here? I might need to do a deeper dive into Jezebel’s story, but on the surface it seems to me that she gets the worst of all of it. I think Buechner’s point here is that Ahab was led astray by his desires and his wife encouraged and participated in this. That is really no different than any power couple I can think of. I get the point, we should never let greed get the better of us, but my question remains. Did Jezebel get a raw deal? Perhaps a full reading of 1 and 2 Kings might be in order.

Many of you are probably aware that I am currently writing in two different places. I write here on WordPress, of course, and recently I created another writing account on Substack, Ramblings and Rumblings. Those of you who recognize that title have been with me for quite a while. I’ve been trying to figure out which direction I want to take these separate enterprises, and I have finally come to a decision. I am going to devote this account, kevinlarose.net, to my personal life journey. This will mean spiritual musings (as you have already recently seen), personal happenings and other deep thoughts. I’m going to use the R&R for musings on current events, politics, ranting and raving about same. I think this will solve the problem some have with not wanting to see posts of a political nature. This arrangement is, of course, as with many other things, subject to change.

You also may have noticed that my Beyond Words postings have slowed down a bit. When I started the project of posting reflections to the daily devotionals in Buechner’s book, I had in mind to post a reflection a day. Buechner has seen to it that this isn’t possible. I’m finding that I have to sit with many of these devotionals longer than I anticipated I would. so, rather than putting pressure on myself, I’ve decided to just do the devotionals as I write them, even if there are gaps of days in between. And this will also mean that I’ll have more time to reflect and may even have better things to say. Time will tell.

DAY 12
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“THERE’S SOMETHING A LITTLE SAD about seeing anybody for the last time, even somebody you were never particularly crazy about to begin with. Agrippa, for instance. He was the last of the Herods, and after him that rather unsavory dynasty came to an end.

When Saint Paul was on his way to Rome to stand trial, King Agrippa granted him a hearing, and Paul, who was seldom at a loss for words, put up a strong defense. He described how on the road to Damascus he had come to believe Jesus was the Messiah and how all he had been doing since was trying to persuade other people to believe he was right. He said the fact the Jews were out to get him showed only that they didn’t understand their own Scriptures, because the whole thing was right there, including the prediction that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead just the way Jesus had.

After Paul finished, Agrippa came out with the only remark he ever made that has gone down in history. “Almost thou persuadest me to become a Christian,” he said (Acts 26:28).

Almost is apt to be a sad word under the best of circumstances, and here, on the lips of the last of his line the last time you see him, it has a special poignance. If only Paul had been a little more eloquent. If only Agrippa had been a little more receptive, a little braver, a little crazier. If only God weren’t such a stickler for letting people make up their own minds without forcing their hands. But things are what they are, and almost is the closest Agrippa ever got to what might have changed his life. It’s sad enough to miss the boat at all, but to miss it by inches, with a saint right there to hand you aboard, is sadder still.”

Acts 26:1-28, KJV

See also Felix, Herod Antipas, Herod the Great, Paul.

my reflection You may have noticed I didn’t post yesterday. Among other reasons, I was busy chewing on this. As usual with Buechner, there’s a whole lot packed into very few words. To me his main point here is that it’s sad to get so close, oh so close, only to miss the boat. But really, when you think about it, does it really matter how much you miss it by? Whether you lose the football game 14-13 or 63-0, it’s still counted as an L in any event. Paul is obviously a good debater and an experienced persuader, but ultimately you can’t convince anyone of anything they don’t want to be convinced of. Agrippa would have nothing to gain by being persuaded, and everything to lose. At least that’s how he probably would have seen it. This is actually the main reason I’m careful talking about my faith. I love to share it as much as possible, but I never want to force it on anyone or push anyone before they’re ready. I never want to make anyone feel like they want or need to do anything. To go back to my initial analogy, I can let people know where the boat is and how to catch it, but it’s up to them to climb aboard. I never want to bring anyone aboard kicking and screaming, even unintentionally.

DAY 11
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“AN AGNOSTIC IS SOMEBODY who doesn’t know for sure whether there really is a God. That is some people all of the time and all people some of the time.

There are some agnostics who don’t know simply because they’ve never taken pains to try to find out–like the bear who didn’t know what was on the other side of the mountain.

There are other agnostics who have taken many pains. They have climbed over the mountain, and what do you think they saw? Only the other side of the mountain. At least that was all they could be sure of. That faint glimmer on the far horizon could have been just Disneyland.”

my reflection There Buechner goes, being opaque again. He really makes you think and doesn’t leave many bread crumbs to lead the way. After puzzling over this cryptic entry for quite a while, I think I know what point he’s trying to make here. If one is looking for God, God can be really easy to miss. Many agnostics, not to mention any other seeker, could very easily miss God’s manifestation because they’re looking for some kind of solid proof of God’s existence. You’re not going to find it. That’s where, once again, faith comes into play. Faith, as I think I said in a previous missive, is belief in things not seen. God’s manifestations are way more often than not dismissed as mirages, coincidences, or just random happenings. It takes faith to see God at work in the universe. I’ve seen enough happenings in my life to have that faith.

DAY 10
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“WHEN YOU HIT SIXTY or so, you start having a new feeling about your own generation. Like you, they can remember the Trilon and Perisphere, Lum and Abner, ancient Civil War veterans riding in open cars at the rear of Memorial Day parades, the Lindbergh kidnapping, cigarettes in flat fifties which nobody believed then could do any more to you than cut your wind. Like you, they know about blackouts, bond rallies, A-stickers, “Kilroy Was Here.” They remember where they were when the news came through that FDR was dead of a stroke in Warm Springs, and they could join you in singing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” and “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” They wept at Spencer Tracy with his legs bitten off in Captains Courageous.

As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren’t as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don’t say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn’t invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well.

It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion.”

My reflection I am rapidly aproaching that certain age Buechner refers to in the first line of this devotional, so this one, like some others before it, truly reonates personally. Of course, being of a different generation, I only know of the things he refers to second-hand. I’m trying to remember some things unique to my age group. Iran hostage crisis. Iran/Contra five years later. Invasion of Grenada. KAL Flight 007. Flashdance. Culture Club. Bang your head. Anyway, you get the idea. If everything breaks right I hope to attend my 40th high school reunion next summer. I’ve never been to one of these, and it’s definitely time. I have to admit to having no desire to attend the 10-year reunion. At that point either everyone is still the exact same as they were in high school, or they’re trying really hard to impress, or both. By the time #40 rolls around none of that matters nearly as much. I think that’s Buechner’s point here. Life is a continual evolution; what comes to mind for me is a building under perpetual construction until termination of the project. I am not the same person I was in 1983, or 1993, or 2003, or for that matter yesterday. And that, to me, is a very good thing. Like I said in a previous post, in some ways I feel like I only attained full adulthood fairly recently. I know I’m not the only one who has changed over the years. It’s kind of exciting to me to think about glimpsing how my classmates those many years ago have changed. Certainly, at this stage of life, our commonalities are far more important than any differences.

DAY 9
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“ACCORDING TO THE PROPHET SAMUEL, God wanted King Saul to wipe out every last one of the Amalekites–not just the men, but the women and children, the babies and the residents of the old folks home. When he heard that Saul had decided to spare the Amalekite king, Agag, he was so enraged that he tore the royal robe from Saul’s back and told him to consider it a mild fore-taste of how God would tear the kingdom of Israel from him next. He then had them drag out poor Agag, who was quick to size up the situation. With something less than total conviction, he said, “Surely the bitterness of death is past” (1 Samuel 15:32). Within seconds Samuel had personally hacked him to pieces to prove that God meant what Samuel said that he said.

Since Agag had hacked quite a few people to pieces himself in his day, he may well have been dismayed by the experience, but can hardly have been surprised. What was perhaps new to him was the length to which the friends of God will go to make God enemies.”
1 Samuel 15

My reflection Holy genocide, Batman! After reading this devotional I read 1 Samuel 15. It’s my belief that if this chapter were ever made into a movie it would have to have a rating of no less than NC17. It makes the Game of Thrones Red Wedding seem like a fun, festive party by comparison. It also reminds me why I find much of the New Testament pretty much unreadable. Although I hung around the perimeter of Christianity most of my young life, I didn’t actually fully accept it until maybe 20 years ago. So you might say my Christianity has just passed its adolescent stage. The overarching concept that finally pushed me to fully accept Christianity is the concept that God is love. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). For someone whose entire fuel of life was fear, this was extremely liberating stuff. Then I read passages like 1 Samuel 15, and it feels like the Star Trek miror universe. Where up is down and left is right. This was not the God I learned about in my high school and college Bible study classes, where the seeds of my faith were planted. In so many instances the God of the Old Testament came across as vengeful, spiteful, cruel. Wipe out an entire nation of people? Down to the last infant? Seriously? Not only would I not wish to worship that God, I’d run away from that God, as fast as my stumpy legs could carry me. But I also learned in those Bible study classes, later reinforced in church, that Jesus issued in a “new covenant” with God and we no longer had to live by the old ways. Yay! Problem solved! Right? Well, apparently, not exactly. Particularly recently, I’ve seen more vestiges of the Old Testament God popping up in today’s Christianity than I am comfortable with. The God I worship is nothing like the monster we see in passages like 1 Samuel 15. In fact, He is very much the polar opposite. And because of the New Covenant we don’t have to live that way anymore. So, I am asking, why do we insist on holding onto potentially toxic ideas we don’t even have to hold onto anymore? This is an earnest question, I have no idea of the answer.

DAY 8
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“THE HOUSE LIGHTS GO OFF and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton.

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.”

my reflection When I first looked at this devotional this morning, I was completely baffled. To me it looked like so much word salad. In my defense, I started the day a bit on the sleep-deprived side. I showed the devotional to my wife, and she encouraged me to slow down and read it more slowly. And that’s when it came into focus for me. Buechner offered a set o little vignettes with a common theme running through them. One of the hymns sung at the church I attend has the line “I will be still and know you’re my God.” And that’s the theme of this devotional. Be still. Try to catch the little, almost imperceptable, things around you that you often don’t even give any thought to. I find this very difficult to do. Part of the reason for this, I think, is how my brain is wired. It’s hard, well nigh impossible, for me to tune out extraneous figurative noise. As a result, I often miss little things that turn out to be very important. Perhaps it’s time for me to learn how to be still.

DAY 7
From the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“THE ANCIENT DRUIDS are said to have taken a special interest in in-between things like mistletoe, which is neither quite a plant nor quite a tree, and mist, which is neither quite rain nor quite air, and dreams, which are neither quite waking nor quite sleep. They believed that in such things as those they were able to glimpse the mystery of two worlds at once.

Adolescents can have the same glimpse by looking in the full-length mirror on back of the bathroom door. The opaque glance and the pimples. The fancy new nakedness they’re all dressed up in with no place to go. The eyes full of secrets they have a strong hunch everybody is on to. The shadowed brow. Being not quite a child and not quite a grown-up either is hard work, and they look it. Living in two worlds at once is no picnic.

One of the worlds, of course, is innocence, self-forgetfulness, openness, playing for fun. The other is experience, self-consciousness, guardedness, playing for keeps. Some of us go on straddling them both for years.

The rich young ruler of the Gospels comes to mind (Matthew 19:16-22). It is with all the recklessness of a child that he asks Jesus what he must do to be perfect. And when Jesus tells him to give everything to the poor, it is with all the prudence of a senior vice-president of Morgan Guaranty that he walks sadly away.

We become fully and undividedly human, I suppose, when we discover that the ultimate prudence is a kind of holy recklessness, and our passion for having finds peace in our passion for giving, and playing for keeps is itself the greatest fun. Once this has happened and our adolescence is behind us at last, the delight of the child and the sagacity of the Supreme Court justice are largely indistinguishable.

My reflection I have to say, this devotional really resonated with me. I will turn 58 in two weeks. That seems hardly possible, but we won’t deal with that factor of the equation right now. I remember someone once telling me that you become a full-fledged adult when you turn 30. Come to think of it, that might have been around my thirtieth birthday. Anyway, I always took that to mean that once you become a full-fledged adult you, to heavily paraphrase Paul, put childish ways and things behind you, put on your big boy pants and live your life. In at least some ways, I did just that. While I never had a career, I did hold down a long-term job. I obtained a mortgage. I got married and fathered a child. But, at the same time, a significant part of me was still deeply rooted in adolescence. Ultimately, my adolescent and adult worlds collided, with disastrous results not only for me but for many people I loved. To make a very long story very short, I wound up losing most of the markers of adulthood that I had acquired. But, like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, I’m happy to say I have restabilized my life. I am very contented in a strong, healthy marriage. My health is relatively good. And, yes, I am a mortgage holder again! Many of the things that are still unsettled in my life are out of my control, and in those cases I am still learning to, as they say, let go and let God, doing whatever I can to assist the process along. My inner adolescent still crashes through from time to time, but I think I can safely say that I am no longer caught between two worlds. I’m prayng I live a good long life so I can make up for all the time I wasted. God is good, all the time!

DAY 6
From the devotional book BeyondWords by frederick Buechner

“HE LET THE Times fall to the carpet beside him. It was the usual recital–a new tax plan, the danger of oral contraceptives to women over forty, the mayor’s special committee on child abuse. He pushed his glasses back on his forehead and with his thumb and forefinger massaged the loose flesh under his eyes. Through the club window he could see a fat woman in slacks waiting for a bus, a boy with a ponytail walking a dog. Somebody had the TV on in another room, and he could hear the rise and fall of canned laughter. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke drift out of his mouth without exhaling it. The city sky was turning brown with the approach of dusk. Then suddenly, as if it had been only yesterday, he remembered Eden.

The leopard…the starling…the rose–he remembered giving each its name, remembered the green river, the shy, green girl. He could no longer remember why it was he had felt compelled to leave it except that it had something to do with asserting his independence. Beyond that, he had only the dim sense that somehow a terrible injustice had been done, or possibly a terrible justice.

He saw the flame of what must have been the sunset flash like a sword in the upper-story windows across the street. When the old steward brought him his third martini, he called him Pete. Actually, his name was Angelo.

Genesis 2-3

See also Eve.”

My Reflection This is the first of these devotionals that I feel like went over my head. Buechner seems to enjoy using allegory, and this devotional is definitely allegory. He seems to be envisioning Adam as an older man, his better days behind him, perhaps contemplating on what might, or could, have been. Come to think of it, I’m having those types of thoughts these days. Why not, I’m getting to be of the certain age where, for some people, at least, they are quite common, or at least can be. If only I had done this. If only I hadn’t done that. If only, if only…But in this allegorical tale Adam only has a hazy memory of the Garden. There’s a slight hint that there might be some diminished brain capacity at play, but I don’t want to overthink. I might revisit this one for my own edification. Reflecting on it now, it seems to me that Buechner’s point may have been that it wouldn’t do Adam any good to dwell on being expelled from the Garden. That was in the past. All he can do now is do his best in the present. That seems kind of weak to me, but I’m going with it.

Note When I started this project it was my intent to post a devotional a day, as they are shown in the book Beyond Words. However, yesterday life happened, and I wasn’t able to post Day 5. So here is Day 5, a day late. I hope I won’t have to do this very often, but as we all know, life is life.

DAY 5
Taken from the cevotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

ALMOST FROM THE START, Absalom had a number of strikes against him. For one thing, he was much too handsome for his own good, and his special pride was such a magnificent head of hair that once a year when he had it trimmed, the trimmings alone tipped the scales at three and a half pounds. For another thing, his father, King David, was always either spoiling him rotten or reading him the riot act. This did not promote stability of character. He murdered his lecherous brother Amnon for fooling around with their sister, Tamar, and when the old war-horse Joab wouldn’t help him patch things up with David afterward, he set fire to his hay field. All Israel found this kind of derring-do irresistible, of course, and when he eventually led a revolt against his father, a lot of them joined up.

On the eve of the crucial battle, David was a wreck. If he was afraid he might lose his throne, he was even more afraid he might lose Absalom. The boy was the thorn in his flesh, but he was also the apple of his eye, and before the fighting started, he told the chiefs of staff till they were sick of hearing it that, if Absalom fell into their clutches, they must promise to go easy on him for his father’s sake. Remembering what had happened to his hay field, old Joab kept his fingers crossed, and when he found Absalom caught in the branches of an oak tree by his beautiful hair, he ran him through without blinking an eye. When they broke the news to David, it broke his heart, just as simple as that, and he cried out in
words that have echoed down the centuries ever since. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son,” he said. “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son” (2 Samuel 18:33).

He meant it, of course. If he could have done the boy’s dying for him, he would have done it. If he could have paid the price for the boy’s betrayal of him, he would have paid it. If he could have given his own life to make the boy alive again, he would have given it. But even a king can’t do things like that. As later history was to prove, it takes the King himself.

2 Samuel 13-19

my reflection Another Bible story I’m unfamiliar with. This one is pretty straightforward. Clearly Buechner is drawing parallels between the story of Absalom and Jesus. And he is not wrong. David definitely deeply loved his son Absalom, though he was wayward, rebellious, and ultimately traitorous. Still, if he could have died in his place, he would have. That is parental love. I myself have a daughter. If I could do anything to ease her burden in life and take it on as my own, ease her pain and take it on as my own, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But, of course, I can’t. Nobody can do that for anybody. In all of history, only Jesus, the King of Kings, has been able to pull this off. And He does it for all of us, forever and all time. And in the end that was Buechner’s point in this devotional.

DAY 4
Taken from the devotional book Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner

“IF A SCHLEMIEL is a person who goes through life spilling soup on people and a schlemozzle is the one it keeps getting spilled on, then Abraham was a schlemozzle. It all began when God told him to go to the land of Canaan, where he promised to make him the father of a great nation, and he went.

The first thing that happened was that his brother-in-law Lot took over the rich bottomland, and Abraham was left with the scrub country around Dead Man’s Gulch. The second thing was that the prospective father of a great nation found out his wife couldn’t have babies. The third thing was that when, as a special present on his hundredth birthday, God arranged for his wife, Sarah, to have a son anyway, it wasn’t long before he told Abraham to go up into the hills and sacrifice him. It’s true that at the last minute God stepped in and said he’d only wanted to see if the old man’s money was where his mouth was, but from that day forward Abraham had a habit of breaking into tears at odd moments, and his relationship with his son Isaac was never close.

In spite of everything, however, he never stopped having faith that God was going to keep his promise about making him the father of a great nation. Night after night, it was the dream he rode to sleep on–the glittering cities, the up-to-date armies, the curly-bearded kings. There was a group photograph he had taken not long before he died. It was a bar mitzvah, and they were all there down to the last poor relation. They weren’t a great nation yet by a long shot, but you’d never know it from the way Abraham sits enthroned there in his velvet yarmulke with several great-grandchildren on his lap and soup on his tie.

Even through his thick lenses, you can read the look of faith in his eye, and more than all the kosher meals, the ethical culture societies, the shaved heads of the women, the achievements of Maimonides, Einstein, Kissinger, it was that look that God loved him for and had chosen him for in the first place.

“They will all be winners, God willing. Even the losers will be winners. They’ll all get their names up in lights,” say the old schlemozzle’s eyes.

“Someday–who knows when?–I’ll be talking about my son, the Light of the World.”

Genesis 12-18; 22

See also faith, Hagar, Isaac, Lot, Sarah.”

my reflection Today’s devotional is all about faith. Faith is something, I must admit, I have trouble with sometimes. I suspect I’m not alone in this. In the Book of Hebrews faith is defined as things hoped for but not seen. That’s hard stuff for a lot of people. Working toward a goal not knowing that you’ll succeed, or even come close, would be unfathomable to some. Coincidentally (or are there really such things as coincidences?), I’m currently reading the book Do I Stay Christian? by Brian McLaren–a book I highly recommend, by the way. The chapter I just finished reading this afternoon dealt with this very issue in relation to the church. McLaren posits that, for people disappointed or disillusioned by Christianity, there are four choices: stay compliantly, leave quietly, leave loudly, or “stay loudly.” The fourth option is the most risky one and the one least likely to bring instant results. By staying loudly, he means to essentially work for change from the inside, not being silenced or swayed by those who are content with the status quo. It is the most likely option to give you bumps and bruises, both figurative and, in some cases, literal. But it’s these people who are the most likely to bring about change in the long run. Think about it: Jesus chose Option 4. In the short term, it was a terrible move for him personally. In fact, he paid the ultimate price. But, he also started the ball rolling down the hill, and it’s still rolling down the hill to this day. Like Abraham, he had faith. Those of us who want to affect change in the church need to have that kind of faith as well.

DAY 3

SPEAKING AGAINST ABORTION, someone has said, “No one should be denied access to the great feast of life,” to which the rebuttal, obviously enough, is that life isn’t much of a feast for children born to people who don’t want them or can’t afford them or are one way or another incapable of taking care of them and will one way or another probably end up abusing or abandoning them.

And yet, and yet. Who knows what treasure life may hold for even such children as those, or what treasures even such children as those may grow up to become? To bear a child even under the best of circumstances, or to abort a child even under the worst–the risks are hair-raising either way and the results incalculable.

How would Jesus himself decide, he who is hailed as Lord of Life and yet who says that it is not the ones who, like an abortionist, can kill the body we should fear, but the ones who can kill body and soul together the way only the world into which they are born can kill unloved, unwanted children (Matthew 10:28)?

There is perhaps no better illustration of the truth that in an imperfect world there are no perfect solutions. All we can do, as Luther said, is sin bravely, which is to say, (a) know that neither to have the child nor not to have the child is without the possibility of tragic consequences for everybody, yet (b) be brave in knowing also that not even that can put us beyond the forgiving love of God.

my reflections And today we venture into the extremely thorny territory of abortion. Buechner, I think, handles the topic extremely well, and I can’t disagree with him on anything he says. My own view on abortion is, well, I think the best word is complicated. For most of my adult life, I was squarely in the pro-choice camp, no question. I felt very strongly that nobody, particularly male elected officials, had the right to tell a female to do or not to do anything where her own body was concerned. Then, in the spring of 2003, I sat in a doctor’s office and heard my daughter’s fetal heartbeat. From that moment on, I was incapable of seeing a fetus as just an impersonal grouping of cells. Yet my feelings about politicians and others meddling in the very personal decisions of females, or for that matter anyone else, still remain with me. We are recently seeing the law of unintended consequences play out again and again in states which have implemented draconian abortion restrictions. Some hospitals have delayed treatment of ectopic pregnancies due to legal concerns. Pharmacies have denied to fill prescriptions of needed medications for some women because they “might” become pregnant. The uncomfortable fact is, there is no black and white where abortion is concerned. At the end of the day, it’s a medical issue between doctor and patient that’s extremely complicated and often heartbreaking. Trying to legislate things just makes things multiple times worse.

DAY 2

WHEN KING DAVID was nearing the end of his days, not even his electric blanket could fend off the ominous chill he felt rising in his bones. The fires of life were all but out, and in an effort to rekindle them for the old man and at the same time preserve their own jobs, the establishment enlisted the aid of a beautiful young woman named Abishag. In the hope that she, if anybody, could start his blood coursing again, they persuaded her to join him in the sack. By this time, however, the old man was past rising to the occasion, and not long afterward–perhaps as the result of his unsuccessful attempts to do so–he died. When one of his sons offered to make an honest woman of Abishag by marrying her, the establishment turned him down on the grounds that by taking over his father’s girlfriend, he was just making a play for taking over his father’s throne. What finally became of Abishag is not recorded, and perhaps it is just as well.

This sad story makes it clear that in peace as well as in war there’s no tragic folly you can’t talk a nation’s youth into simply by calling it patriotic duty.

1 Kings 1-2

my reflections I have to admit to being completely unfamiliar with this Biblical story. I can understand why it doesn’t crack the list of most-sermonized passages. Actually, the story made me feel a bit creepy. It’s like something you might find in a bad romance novel. And, honestly, I was completely at a loss to know what Frederick Buechner’s point was in even including this as a devotion, until I got to the final sentence. Buechner was using this story as an allegory to illustrate his over-arching point. “This sad story makes it clear that in peace as well as in war there’s no tragic folly you can’t talk a nation’s youth into simply by calling it patriotic duty.” Oh how true that is, and not just with youth. We’ve sen so many recent examples of this that I don’t even think it’s worth singling any of them out. Patriotism in general, and faux patriotism in particular, is as far from Godlike as it is possible to be.

DAY 1

MOSES WAS THREE YEARS YOUNGER than his brother, Aaron, but starting with the day Pharaoh’s daughter fished him out of the bulrushes and adopted him, Moses was the one who always got the headlines while Aaron got the short end of the stick. Even when Moses had to clear out of Egypt for doing in an Egyptian Jew-baiter, he landed on his feet by marrying the daughter of a well-heeled sheep rancher across the border.

Aaron, in the meanwhile, went quietly off into the ministry, where in the long run he didn’t do so badly either, except that the only people who ever heard about him were the ones who turned to the religion section on the back pages. Moses, on the other hand, was forever making the cover. The payoff came around the time Moses hit eighty, and out of a burning bush God himself voted him Man of the Year. As usual, Aaron had to be content with playing second fiddle, which he did well enough until he got the break he’d been waiting for at last, and then he blew it.

With Moses lingering so long on Mt. Sinai that some thought he’d settled down and gone into real estate, the people turned to Aaron for leadership, and in no time flat–despite an expensive theological education and all those years in denominational headquarters–he had them dancing around the Golden Calf like a bunch of aborigines.

Nobody knows whether this was Aaron’s way of getting even with his kid brother for all those years of eating humble pie, or whether he actually believed with the rest of humankind that a God in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Exodus 32:1-4

my reflection Nobody knows more than me how easy it is to get one’s head turned from what’s important. Aaron spent all his life doing what was right, living life the right way, and here his little brother was, getting to bask in glory time after time. I think even the most humble person would struggle with that, at least internally. And then Aaron finally had his chance for his place in the sun, and in the dazzlement of the moment he forgot living life the right way. He went after the accolades instead. I see some echoes of the Prodigal Son parable in this devotional. It would certain be understandable, though not right, for Aaron to harbor some resentment and jealousy toward Moses. In the end, it really didn’t matter; as Mr. Buechner said, Aaron got his chance, and he blew it. At some point, I think, many of us will get our chances, perhaps when we least expect it. For my part, I plan to do everything I can to not blow mine. I’m hoping I’m successful.

Last week I wrote about my reading of Henry Nouwen, particularly his emphasis on solitude. Reading Nouwen spurred me to introduce myself to the writings of Thomas Merton, whose copious journals have been published in several books. Merton was a Trappist monk, and he always strove for perfect solitude and prayerfulness in his life. I’m currently reading Dancing in the Water of Life, which encompass his journal entries from the time period 1963 to 1965.

In reading this book I find myself struck by the constant conflict Merton appears to feel in his daily life. There is a constant tug-of-war for him between his desire for silence and solitude and the pressures and, as he refers to them, trivialities of the life outside the monastery. It’s hard to see Merton, or anyone like him, succeeding in living the full Trappist life in today’s day and age. Merton felt constantly distracted in his time, and there are infinitely more potential distractions in today’s world to pull even the most devoted prayerful heart off course. I’ve read and heard for many years about the precipitous decline in those choosing to enter the monastic religious vocations over the past several decades. I don’t know if Gethsemani, where Merton lived for much of his adult life, even exists anymore. It seems to me that today’s world, with its smartphones and 24/7 news cycles and the perpetual need to stay “plugged in”, can’t sustain a monastic, prayerful lifestyle. To me, this is a shame. As much as spirituality and deep thinking is dismissed and sometimes even maligned in today’s society, there is a real need for contemplators and those who dare to go deep these days. To me it feels very much like a dying skill. I very deeply admire Thomas Merton and those like him, who eschew the hustle and bustle of daily life to pursue what ultimately really matters. I’ve always felt a pull to do this, but I know I don’t have what it takes to stick with it. For one thing, as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, I’m as much wed to my smartphone as anyone. I get something very much akin to a panic attack if I’m separated from it for even a little while. This doesn’t make me happy, but it’s reality. Also, I’m too much “of the world” to divorce myself from it. As much as many things frustrate me, strike me as frivolous or inane or just plain stupid, this is the world I live in, and attempting to remove myself from it would be hurtful to those I care about and who care about me, not to mention, ultimately, myself. With that in mind, I’m going to continue to work on my contemplative self within the framework of my life as it exists today. What this probably means is I will continue to use this blog as a sounding board of sorts, which will result in continued lack of focus, at least for a time. I’m thinking maybe if I stick with it a focus will emerge in time. Regardless, I invite you all to stick around for the journey, wherever it leads. And I will continue to gain inspiration from the likes of Nouwen and Merton. I could do a lot worse in the inspiration department.