Presby-Musings

  As we enter into an Advent season like no other that we've ever experienced, I'm finding myself reflecting more and more on grace and how much I need it.  And this morning I got to thinking more deeply about it.   You see, here in Austin, the schools have all been shuttered for a week in an attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID after the Thanksgiving holiday.   So once again, we're having to navigate the changes with our kids, breaking their routines, negotiating new norms, and reminding them (and ourselves) once more that nothing is certain in this new world that is emerging.   What I  have discovered in all of this is that one of the many side-effects of the constant strain and stress of uncertainty is that I am finding it harder to summon grace-filled feelings toward people with whom I'm disagreeing.  Based on the conversations I've been having lately with friends, church members, and colleagues, I think that I'm not alone in this discovery.   Yesterday,

Today is the First Sunday of the Season of Advent---Advent is a season of expectation when we begin to look forward to the coming of the Messiah, and the promise of hope for a troubled world.  I don't know about you, but I am expecting something a whole lot better than what we had this past year.  That's what I want for Christmas, y'all! So over the course of this Advent season, we will be living into the expectation of a better world, the expectation of a Messiah who will set things to rights, the expectation of better days, better news...   Today I am going to be talking about what it means to be awake, and alert to see what God is doing in the world around us---so we can live in expectation with some measure of awareness that it's going somewhere good!     First, we're going to watch a video.  What I want you to do is to watch this video and count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball.  Pay close attention to the people in the white s

Grace and Peace Everyone!  I want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours... in hopes that despite our circumstances each of you has been able to find connections, share, discover new joys and begin looking forward to better tomorrows.   I am grateful today for so many things.   I'm grateful for the opportunity to do what I do each and every day.  It is my greatest joy to serve as a pastor not only to a particular community of faith, my local congregation here in Austin, but also to serve as a pastor to so many others from far and wide.  For those of you who know me, I still believe I am the last person I would ever pick to be a pastor.  Every day feels like grace when I  realize what I am constantly called to do and to be for the sake of God's kingdom.   My heart is also full today because of the love of my family and the many friends who continue to support me and lift me up---especially when I have struggled, lately.  It's true that so many of us have ha

Generosity done for the wrong reasons is easy to spot.  It looks inauthentic.   According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, over the past two decades,  charitable giving by U.S. companies has declined at an alarming rate, dropping to 15-year lows in the early 2000s and descending even lower to date. Despite the fact that overall charitable giving by companies has decreased, what has increased is what is known as "cause-related marketing." In other words, companies will strategically engage in philanthropy as a form of public relations, increasing their brand exposure in ways that will provide positive impressions among consumers as well as increasing employee morale. While there may be some good that is done through the charitable contributions of companies who are engaging in this form of marketing, it has begun to come off as inauthentic. According to the Harvard Business Review, cause-related marketing may lead to an overall sense of cynicism on behalf of t

All good things must come to an end. Have you ever heard that before?  Maybe you've even repeated it on occasion. Probably when something good was coming to an end. I actually grieve when my favorite TV series come to an end.  When I watched the finale of the Office the first time, I actually cried.  Yeah, I know.  I am a wuss.  I also probably cry every time I've watched it since.  Probably.   I remember once my wife and I ate dinner at this really fancy restaurant with some friends on New Year's Eve.  It was one of those meals where they kept bringing out course after course--every one of them looking as if they were prepared on Food Network for one of those cooking contests.  None of us wanted that dinner to end.  And we sort of grieved when it did. All good things must come to an end...  That's what we tell ourselves, isn't it? But what if I told you that there are some things that don't come to an end?  And that this one thing assured that all of the really

According to a Pew study from a couple of years ago, 78 percent of people said they felt strongly thankful at least once a week.  The same study also revealed that most of us are more anxious, less hopeful, and more distrustful than ever.   And that was before COVID.   Clearly, there's a disconnect here.  Diana Butler Bass believes it comes down to the fact that as individuals we value gratitude as a virtue, and we strive to express it in our own lives.  But as a society, we are becoming less and less thankful.  The same gratitude we feel individually is not making that much of a difference in our common life.  Check out this bit of amazingness from Psalm 8:  3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  "What is man, O God, that you are mindful of him..."  You are small.  You are dust.  You are only here for a breath of tim

Today we are going to be concluding the sermon series, "What's Next?" a series that has been focused on this particularly challenging question:   How do we discover purpose and direction in life when everything we used to use as a guide to doing just that has changed?  I'm going to make a bold statement that I know might be a bit controversial... are you ready?  Things are kind of messed up in the world right now.   I know, I know... you're shocked by this.  Sorry to say something so provocative on Sunday, church.   Actually, that's a Captain Obvious moment if there ever was one.  We all know that things are messed up.  And all you need to know about just how messed up things are is by the number of conspiracy theories that are abounding in our society.   For example...  You've all heard about the Flat Earth Society---people who believe that the earth is actually flat and that there is some kind of dome over it, and that we might be some kind of experiment

I woke up this morning with a deep feeling of foreboding, mixed with dread, peppered with anxiety, and topped off with a tad of mild depression.  It's a familiar feeling, that I've come to understand a bit more lately.   My mind was racing through all of the things I have to get done today, all the things I haven't started that need doing, the tasks that lay before me, meetings I'd scheduled and needed to attend.   I wanted desperately to be energized by this---to bound out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and get moving.   But that familiar feeling was owning the moment.  Then I started thinking about all of the uncertainty of the world around me---COVID cases rising, the never-ending election foolishness, and about a hundred existential crises that loomed in my mind as a result of all of it.  I thought about what it would be like if I just stayed in bed all day.   In the end, I got up (without bounding out of bed, though).  I trudged slowly to the coffee maker, sighed abo

I've shared this here before but I often will discover a phrase, a poem, a snippet from a song that I resonate with, and I'll write it down.  Typically, it takes me some time to truly understand why it resonated with me, and sometimes I have to be in the right mental and emotional space as well.   I have this amazing anthology of poems about impermanence and beauty that I read from fairly often.  The following poem is one that I wrote down weeks ago, and I have been looking at it almost every day since.  Under cherry trees  there are no strangers. - Kobayashi Issa   Today was the day... when I read that poem this morning for probably the twenty-first time, I was struck with an image that has been in my head ever since.  Let me see if I can describe it.  I am standing under a cherry tree near the National Mall in Washington, DC.  I can see the Jefferson Memorial off in the distance.  The blossoms are drifting down softly all around me.  One lands on my arm and I stare at it, ma

There's so much bad and troubling news lately, so I have been on a mission to find and read news stories that are more uplifting and inspiring.  It's a lot harder than I thought it would be, but not impossible.  Also, I feel like the more I read these stories online, the more the social media and internet search algorithms will learn to show me more.  That'll teach 'em.  Today I read a story that left me with an awesome feeling of hope.   Hope, I've learned, is a particularly powerful antidote for the gloom that usually hovers over me when I read the most recent news about the election ridiculousness or the seriousness of the latest COVID spikes.   The story I read was about a guy in Kansas City who launched an artisan furniture company right before the COVID crisis.  When things started looking bleak, he quickly decided to begin making masks in his workroom, taught himself to sew, and started marketing them.   When he couldn't keep up with the demand, he decide

I recently watched the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma , and I can't stop thinking about it.  If you haven't watched it, you should.  It's both enlightening and frightening at the same time.  The Social Dilemma explores the problems that have occurred in society with the largely unregulated and unfettered tech industry, media outlets, etc.   One of the claims that the documentary makes is that people aren't really  choosing the content they are consuming online or through the so-called news media.  Their content is being chosen for them by algorithms designed to keep them connected based on what they want to see/hear .  What is the motivation behind all of this?  It's not political, actually. It's simply all about monetization.  The more we stay tuned in, logged on, scrolling... the more money we make for news outlets, social media giants, etc.   And what better way to keep us engaged than by keeping us fearful and outraged?  What better way to keep the m

As we all wait for our national election to finally and blessedly come to a close, the one thing that will probably not happen is the kind of concession speech that we're used to from political candidates who ultimately have to face the fact that they lost.  In 2008, Sen. John McCain conceded the presidential election to Barack Obama in a speech that included these words:  “I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating [Obama], but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together…Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.” I have been thinking this week about how hard it must have been to deliver that kind of speech.  Hard things get said during an election, and some of them are personal.  Accusations are leveled.  Antipathy can run high.   And yet, in the end, McCain, like so many presidential candidates both before and after him, acted graciously in defeat---putting the needs of the many ahead of his o

Today we are going to be continuing the sermon series that we started last week---a sermon series entitled, "What's Next?"  This series is focused on a challenging issue that we are facing in our current culture.  How do we discover purpose and direction in life when everything we used to use as a guide to doing just that has changed? Today we're going to be talking about the idea of true freedom---the freedom to hope, the freedom to dream, and the freedom to become the people God longs for us to be.   Before we dive into our text today, let me just take a few moments to talk about decision making in the age of COVID.   During seasons of stress and uncertainty, it becomes difficult at times to make decisions that we feel confident about.  If you are feeling the weight of this challenge, I salute you, because I definitely feel the same.   I've discovered that even the simplest decisions have become more challenging lately.  Like which mask to wear...  What kind of

So you're having a rough day.  I feel you.   There are more of those to be had lately, it seems.  The news of the world isn't great right about now.  It's hard to move forward with confidence when everything seems to be in flux, and there's more uncertainty than we can handle all at once.   As I write this, I am staring at a mountain of tasks, a full schedule, and am now dealing with a series of unexpected challenges that are threatening to derail the rest of my day, and probably tomorrow, as well.    I need to confess that most days I feel as though I am working from behind if that makes any sense.   I have this little whiteboard that sits directly in front of me and it is filled with all kinds of to-do's, reminders, and even a few notes that are so cryptic that I  can no longer remember what they mean.   Also, the only dry-erase marker I can find is red, so everything seems more urgent.  I feel like I need to make a note to get a new marker.  Blue would be a good