Presby-Musings

One of my favorite moments in Monty Python's classic Life Of Brian, a not-so-subtle critique of organized religion,  is when two of the main characters in the film stumble upon Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount.  Unfortunately, they are so far behind the crowd that they can't hear what Jesus is saying, so they keep getting it wrong.  Here's one of those exchanges from the script after Jesus declares, "Blessed are the meek."  MAN #2: You hear that? Blessed are the Greek. GREGORY: The Greek? MAN #2: Mmm. Well, apparently, he's going to inherit the earth. GREGORY: Did anyone catch his name? MRS. BIG NOSE: Oh, it's the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that's nice, isn't it? I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause they have a hell of a time. That scene cracks me up every single time I see it.  To begin, it's gently poking at how we tend to romanticize the moments when Jesus taught the multitudes, and then it also hits pretty har

  How often do you notice God in the world around you?  It's more complicated than it seems, made even more so because so many things distract us from experiencing the Divine in our lives.  I love a routine more than most people, I imagine.  I like waking up at the same time every day, getting my coffee, and going through my morning rituals.  I even enjoy eating the same thing for breakfast most days; it cuts down on the time I have to spend thinking about it.  But I also know that getting too stuck in a routine can result in my spending most of my time focusing on the six inches in front of my face and not taking the time to stop, look around, and pay attention to the wonders of the world. Many of us can get so task-oriented that we neglect our souls.  We worry too much about what needs to get done that we lose sight of why we are doing it all in the first place.  And there is also a fair amount of noise in our lives, the noise of emails arriving in our inbox, the TV blaring awful

Today we're continuing our journey through the Season of Epiphany, which ends the season of Christmas (the famous "12 Days") and lasts until Lent.   To recap: "epiphany" is a word that essentially means "realization" or, more specifically, "inspired realization."  When you have an epiphany you know it.  You feel it in your bones.   It's more important than realizing that you took a wrong turn on the way to Albuquerque and ended up in Hoboken.  That would be a seriously wrong turn.   An epiphany is when you realize something that has the potential to change your life, the way you think about things, your future, and maybe your past... in other words, it's pretty momentous.   So why should we care about an entire season in the historical church traditions dedicated to having an epiphany?  It comes down to what it means concerning Jesus and, more specifically, what it means because of the Incarnation.  The Incarnation is the theology of

When I was in the first grade, the Sunday school class I attended had a poster board hanging on the wall with everyone's names to keep attendance.  Every Sunday you were present, you got a little foil star to lick and then stick on the line by your name.  If you went a month without missing a Sunday, you got a big star to stick on the board to note that achievement.  The kids who had the most of those big stars at the end of the year would get a pin and a certificate and stand with the winners from the other classes, smiling broadly in front of the congregation on some random Sunday.  The prize should have been cash.  That would have motivated me more than a pin I'd never wear and a certificate my mom would keep in some album.  But what I learned from that attendance board and the foil stars, and the affirmation of the congregation on some random Sunday (yep, I won one of those awards) was a misguided lesson that I carried with me for much of my life:   God likes me better when

The other day I read this beautiful and evocative poem by the 13th-century poet Rumi.  It spoke to me of the mysterious nature of grace.   if you desire grace  lose your selfish self till you can taste  the sweet essence  in the blackest of your moments  wait with no fear  I've been thinking about that poem ever since I read it.   It's unsettling and comforting at the same time.  It speaks of how we keep ourselves from experiencing grace because of our willfulness and inability to keep from white-knuckling life as we attempt to control all the outcomes.  And then it turns to the way that grace falls upon us, often when we're in our worst moments of self-doubt and self-loathing.  I don't know about you, but I get that more than I'd like to admit.  I tend to be my own worst critic when it comes to just about everything.  I seldom give myself a break for mistakes or missteps, and as far as showing myself grace--forget it.  The blackest moments tend to be when I sit wit

One of the many things that I struggle with (and I'm positive I'm not alone) is that I tend to project my own biases and beliefs onto others, measuring their behavior and actions according to my personal scorecard.  My unspoken assumption is that I am right in my biases and beliefs; if others hold different beliefs, they are wrong.  We all do this to some extent.   And most of the time, we do it with the best intentions.  We want to believe we are on the side of the angels regarding our thoughts and actions.  We also tend to hold ourselves accountable for our intentions, even while we hold others accountable for their actions.  This is just another fine example of how dualistic thinking clouds our judgment.  And by "dualistic" thinking, I mean that many of us tend to see the world in black and white, right or wrong, or our way or the highway.  So by extension, we often see those who hold different beliefs from ours in a bad light.   Seldom do we take inventory of the

There is a verse from Matthew's Gospel that I got to thinking about the other day for some reason, and I couldn't stop pondering it for a few days.  Things like that happen to me from time to time, as I have shared here before.  I used to feel weird about it, but I've grown to like that I get these things in my head sometimes that I can't stop thinking about until I write about it.  So anyway, this verse or a fraction of the verse kept running through my head, so I looked it up to see the whole thing in its context.  I wasn't sure where to find the verse.  I had to look it up based on the fragment I kept repeating.  Here's the whole thing:  When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36, NIV) There's something about that verse that speaks to me.  The Greek word interpreted as compassion denotes an emotion far more profound than its English counterpart.  Translated

  Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35, NIV) The above verse from Mark's Gospel is one that I've always been fascinated by, and it has served as a source of inspiration for me more than once.  In this verse, we get a glimpse into the private life of Jesus, which is significant because most of what we see throughout the Gospel witnesses is his very public ministry.   And what do we see exactly?  We see how vital solitude and prayer were for Jesus.  We see how he got up early in the morning to do both---knowing that he needed to do so before his disciples awoke and noticed he was gone.  Once they woke up, Jesus' disciples immediately went looking for him with the message: "Everyone is looking for you!"  And then, Jesus was off to teach, heal, minister to those in need, and much more.  He needed to be alone to pray and nurture his inner life because the demands

Today we're continuing our journey through the Season of Epiphany, which lasts until Lent.   But what does "Epiphany" mean, and why should we even care about this stuff anyway?   To begin with, "epiphany" is a word that essentially means "realization" or, more specifically, "inspired realization."  When you have an epiphany, you know it.  You feel it in your bones.   An epiphany is when you realize something that has the potential to change your life, the way you think about things, your future, and maybe your past... in other words, it's pretty momentous.   So why should we care about an entire season in the historical church traditions dedicated to having an epiphany?  It comes down to what it means concerning Jesus and, more specifically, what it means because of the Incarnation.  The Incarnation is the theology of God-With-Us, the idea that God took on human form and became one of us to rescue all of us.  And over the next several wee

Author, marketing maven, and leadership guru Seth Godin recently mentioned something in a blog post that I have been thinking about since I read it.  He was talking about what happens when you switch gears in a car that is a stick shift or manual transmission.  This immediately had my attention because I drive a Jeep Wrangler, which happens to be a six-speed, stick shift.  Sometimes when I try to valet park my Jeep at a restaurant or hotel, they have to go find one of the "older" valets or a manager to drive it because none of the younger ones know how to drive a "stick."   This has very little to do with my Devo today.  But I find it amusing.  Back to Godin's analogy...  When a car is switching gears, the engine provides no forward power. And it’s more challenging to steer, brake, or otherwise control the car's forward motion as you change it from one gear ratio to another. In other words, you give up some control over the vehicle when you push in the clutc

In his fantastic book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig creates a dictionary full of words to describe emotions that we all feel but do not have the language to express.  It's one of the most imaginative and evocative books I have read. Koenig doesn't just dream up new words--he paints them if that makes sense.  What he does is beautiful, full of incredible imagery, and pure poetry.  At the outset, Koenig explains what he means by the words "obscure sorrows" in his book's title, which I found both fascinating and inspiring.  Koenig writes:  The word sadness originally meant "fullness," from the same Latin root, satis , that also gave us sated and satisfaction .  Not so long ago, to be sad meant that you were filled to the brim with some intensity of experience... It was a state of awareness--setting the focus to infinity and taking it all in, joy and grief all at once.  I found this reframing of what it means to be sad both refreshing and l

  It's not easy to navigate our feelings when we're trying to chart a direction for our life.  They can both confuse us and confound us.  I've spent years fighting my feelings when I'm facing the challenges of life and work. I've denied them when they were uncomfortable to face, given in to despair when they've taken me to dark places, and been afraid to trust them when they're positive and good.  Or I've allowed myself to be influenced by others, shamed, guilt-tripped, or over-analyzed when I've shared my feelings.   We all do this to some extent, and it does us great harm when we do, no matter our motivation.   First, let me say that each one of us is entitled to our feelings.  We should be allowed to feel them and not be told by others what to feel when we're feeling them.   But we need to understand something significant:  Feelings aren't facts.      While we ought to give ourselves the space to feel what we are feeling, we shouldn't

I tend to refrain from quoting significant passages from authors, theologians, or other sources of inspiration for these daily reflections. Still, I discovered one that was just too amazing to not share.   Before I share, let me ask a couple of questions first.   Do you often wonder if there is more to life than what you are experiencing?   Or do you sometimes find your faith wavering because you have difficulty connecting the dots between what you say you believe about God's love and goodness and the reality of what life has brought to your doorstep?   I know that I do, more than I would like to admit.   This is why the following quote from author Christian Wiman's "My Bright Abyss" is so meaningful to me:  Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life—which means tha

I've been watching way too much news lately, mostly surrounding the political machinations that are taking place in Washington DC as the 118th Congress took days to perform what is usually a simple task: elect the Speaker of the House.  Not surprisingly, the algorithms for social media picked up on this, and suddenly my social media feeds have been flooded with all kinds of political posts. Sigh.  I can't recall a time in my life when things have been so fractured and messed up in American politics.  The level of acrimony between the political parties is at an all-time high.  There's more grandstanding than governing.  There are more stunts than substance.  And on top of everything, far too many politicians assume that God is on their side and only on their side when it comes to the various issues they decide to champion---most of which have little to do with the well-being of our country and its citizens.  There have been so many times over the past week when I've wat