smoking fire pot
This morning, Tassy's birthday, begins with an exchange of texts, then turn on coffee and stick my head out the front door, Beck side, into NNW wind, strong at 22 mph. Last evening I basically cleared 7H porch against the overnight tornado watch, the living room is still alive with outside plants.
Sun's out now and clouds clearing off to the east, some blue sky. If chilly and March wind, if not a swimming pool day, should be pleasant for birthday dinner out and dessert afternoon. March wind, April showers, May flowers, what actually comes to mind is that this would have been a day to get outside with my kite and a long string. Probably several rags tied on as a tail to keep it upright and from diving.
Mary Poppins, eh, Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height, up in the atmosphere, up where the sky is clear, Oh let's go fly a kite. Nearly sixty years ago, I was twenty-something, we were living in Japan, and first saw the film at a theater in Tokyo. But my own kites I flew from high in the back yard at our home on Massalina Bayou, out to the east and over the house; the other direction was tall trees, thick woods for kids to play in. Tossing the kite up until the wind caught it and up.
But I wander. If, as with Emily in Our Town, I could go back and visit an ordinary day, I might stand and watch me there in the back yard trying to get the kite into the sky, and see if it was as real then as I visualize it this morning. March yet, barefoot and no shirt waiting for the first week of May, when I started begging Mama.
Barefoot, you had to know where not to walk, because a certain patch of the back yard always had stickers. Sandspurs. Not as bad as stepping on dry chinquapins under the trees where the garage was later though.
Whitecaps on the Bay, wind driving them east. Wind 25 mph shifting slightly to NW, 43° feels like 33° going to 34° tonight and down to 29° tomorrow night. Right now I'm cold, how are you?
Fr Richard's regular Saturday morning wrap-up (scroll down) of daily meditations for the week. Sort of down on organized religion compared to what, reading the Gospels, we imagine the Gospel was meant to be: is it what the evangelists made of it, or what the institutionalized church has done to it (all members of the Catholic community are welcome to come forward, all others please remain in your seat; no unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this church), or what Paul made of it, or what we think it ought to be? I see our church's living of it as near to the Word, not far from the Lord, but then I'm a lifelong church insider with my own perspective, unable to see it from the outside.
Anyway, to share again (scroll way down) the great Bible story of God renewing his covenant with Abram; the terrifying darkness, the sacrificed animals, the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch. Our Bible story for tomorrow morning.
Note the extent of GrosserIsrael, from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Sunday
The church is at its greatest vitality as the “Jesus Movement,” and the institution is merely the vehicle for that movement. —Richard Rohr
Monday
The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. That might be a perfect motto for all reconstructive work. It does not destroy machines or monuments but reinvigorates them with new energy and form. —Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Has the Church become mechanistic like so many other world systems? Is it “stuck in a rut,” and if so, can it find its way out of the rut into a new future?
—Ilia Delio
Wednesday
Founders are typically generous, visionary, bold, and creative, but the religions that ostensibly carry on their work often become the opposite: constricted, change-averse, nostalgic, fearful, obsessed with boundary maintenance, turf battles, and money. —Brian McLaren
Thursday
Spiritual outbursts almost always precede real reform. Might spiritual discontent be today’s prophetic edge, needling institutions to listen, to change, to be more responsive and relevant? —Diana Butler Bass
Friday
The gospel always wants to dislodge itself from the places where it gets stuck and embedded in the narrow, cultural structure. So, we all take steps to free it, find our way, again and again, to an expansive tolerance and a high reverence for paradox. We need to allow the Church to become a movement again.
—Gregory Boyle
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."