Table
Author: Rev. Eric Anderson
#healing for #lookinlent
After fever, cough, and chills
#healing comes and I am grateful.
It’s not so swift as it used to be.
I guess #healing aged as much as I;
We both move more slowly than we did.
#healing comes with time.
How long, I wonder, will it take to heal from grief?
And grief, and loss, and loss again?
Too, too many gone who had a place within my heart
And too, too many gone whose place was in the hearts
Of others.
#healing comes with time – long time
And time, of course, given to #healing
Not frittered to distraction.
I’m much better at the latter.
Worse still, I find, is #healing from betrayal,
Betrayal in a promise given,
Betrayal in a trust conferred.
Betrayal, if I’m honest, which I have committed
As well as that which I still suffer now.
Now: there’s the word.
Why does #healing take so long
When the hurt is so, so deep?
#healing comes with time
The Kiss of Judas by James Tissot
#healing needs much time
Which leads me then to wonder
How long after the creatures God had made
Betrayed the trust implanted in their souls at birth,
How long after we rejected God’s out-reaching
Hands and arms and grace,
How long after we denied, or ran,
Or for silver’s sake
Betrayed
Did it take
For God’s own #healing to arrive
And dry the tears
Of the Divine?
#cloud for #lookinlent
#cloud is an ephemeral creation
Rather like its element of water
It wisps across the sky in lacy veils
Sunset over Silver Lake
Incarnadined by sunset
Then settles greyly, grimly onto a groaning planet
Which then rejoices in life-bearing rain.
Even photographers cannot agree:
A grey day on the beach muffles drama
But lends softness to the portrait.
The fog bank settles like a wall
But parts to let the traveler pass –
Which the unwary captain may regret
When reef proves less permeable than mist.
I’m still most captivated by the rarest view of #cloud
(At least in my experience)
Looking from the odd side, as it were,
Above the cloud.
They float, I float,
Far above the ground.
I may not walk among the angels yet
But what a dance that will be!
When soft mist bears the weight of foot
And cold wall parts so hand and hair can fly
Away in celestial exaltation.
So I tell myself, knowing full well
That whatever life may be when this one ends
It is more difficult to define in the here and now
Than a #cloud.
#stubborn for #lookinlent
I really don’t want to talk or to think about Fred Phelps.
Demonstrators counter-protest the WBC on August 1, 2013, as same-gender marriage takes effect in Rhode Island.
By following the extreme logic of their extreme beliefs, he and his family – hardly the worshipful gathering that would dignify the name of church – succeeded in gaining attention far beyond their deserts. Their primary tactic was – sadly, is – abominable behavior. And the society they would have us create in their image would be hellish: either an endless sea of incoherent rage, or lock-step automatons all following the same deadly creed.
I do not want to think about Fred Phelps.
I do not want to think about a trait we have in common. We’re both #stubborn.
I recognize that piece of myself in the relentless efforts to hold back the tide. I do believe that, however long it be, the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice for the disenfranchised, and that includes persons of color, women, those with disabilities, and Phelps’ sworn enemy, those who are LGBTQ. In some ways the arc is bending faster than I’d expected – I never expected to see legal marriage between same-gender couples in my lifetime – and in some ways the arc is bending slower – why, oh why, do African-Americans suffer so much worse than their white counterparts from poverty, unemployment, and violence?
Unlike some, I do not believe in universal salvation. I believe in the forgiveness of God, but also in the righteous judgement of God. I believe that what we do in this life matters. I believe we have a part to play in coming to a reconciliation with God. As my New Testament professor Charles Carlston said many years ago, universalism denies two things: the sovereign power of God to judge and the full capacity of human beings to screw up.
I may have paraphrased him a bit there.
The next critical step, of course, is to remember that the judgement doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to God. So I’m trying to be cautious of judging Fred Phelps himself, even as I have no difficulty condemning what he did. I wonder just how #stubborn he is.
You see, I expect that when I meet God face-to-face (if that’s how it works), I will learn about a whole raft of things that I’ve been wrong about. Many of them, I hope, will be trivial. I’m pretty sure that more than a few will not be. What will that be like? Can I let go of those critical things in order to be reconciled to God?
I hope I wouldn’t be so stubborn that I wouldn’t.
And Fred Phelps? When he comes to the Pearly Gates (if that’s what they are), I believe he’ll find the souls of those he’d picketed waiting for him there: soldiers, Fred Rogers (whose birthday is today), and Matthew Shepard. How will he react? It almost seems that he’d prefer to picket outside the gates of Heaven rather than enjoy its joys with them. Perhaps.
If a person brought to heaven the view that some were there who should not be – and was too #stubborn to let that go – would that not turn Heaven into Hell?
#home for #lookinlent
I’ve never been, precisely, homeless.
I’m securely (so far) settled in the 1%
(Not in this country,
But certainly in this world).
When I’ve had a long day
And I suspect there’s viruses at play
I have a comforter
Of bright cranberry tones
To wrap my weary corpus.
I don’t care for it, much,
This place I live,
But the rain that’s falling stays outside
And my comforter does not need
To turn aside the chilly wind.
And yet I’ve felt the empty space,
The yawning gulf within that yearns
For #home.
A place refreshing to the body and the soul.
A place where shelter makes a space of calm.
Pull up the cranberry comforter, then.
This son of earth, and stars, and spirit
Needs refreshing, needs renewing,
Needs a #home.
What Makes a #holy_mountain? For #lookinlent
#water for #lookinlent
It is a curious element, #water.
It quenches thirst.
It bows the head of fire.
It cools hot feet.
But I can’t quite help seeing
What they saw when looking out to sea
In Indonesia and Sri Lanka,
Echoed later on the eastern shores
Of Japan.
Or on a different horrid day
In ancient Crete when the great wave
Left an empire floundering.
Liquid water, snow and steam
(Did you know that water waits for dust
So it can “remember” how to freeze?),
I am a creature made less from the dust of earth
Than from earth’s great waters.
Stuff of life, stuff of rescue,
Stuff of balm, stuff of destruction.
#protector for #lookinlent
A column of the Somers Congregational Church lies blackened after the fire of Jan. 1, 2012.
Where was this community’s #protector
When the fire was kindled,
When the flames exulted?
Where was this community’s protector
When the tower sagged,
And the beams groaned low,
And the bell’s cast bronze softened and cracked?
Their #protector remained
Just where the Spirit always lives:
In the icy wind,
In the tear-filled eye,
In the resolute heart.
Somers’ protector grieved
And held a grieving people close,
And fed their hearts on grace and courage.
Last spring a new bell rose, and waits,
Waits for this spring when they will praise
Their loving, faithful #protector
In a house they’ve built for worship.
The frame of the rising Somers Congregational Church UCC in May 2013.
Stone of Help – #stones for #lookinlent
Samuel raised an Ebenezer,
he raised a Stone of Help
when his people were preserved
from the powers of war and death
So people place their stones today
to honor those they’ve known
And all those souls who’ve shared this life
and called this earth their home.
[Chorus]
Place a stone for memory
A stone of help create
Recall to us the love we’ve known
And what love yet awaits.
Love, like stones, seems tiny
Yet builds planets out in space.
Living stones are we,
Made of dust and grace.
[Chorus]
Samuel raised an Ebenezer,
out of the bones of earth
to celebrate the end of war
and give to peace its worth
With our stones today, Lord
we pray that you’ll console
your planet with your justice
and peace for every soul.
Samuel raised an Ebenezer
a stone upon a stone
at the summit of a hill
where its shadow fell alone;
Raised it on a stony planet
Spinning around the sun
Samuel raised an Ebenezer
Remember everyone.
[Chorus]
“Stone of Help” was written by Eric Anderson in 2008.
#offering for #lookinlent
Which rebuke do I prefer?
The rebuke of the empty plate,
Which comes to me demanding that
It carry away my gift when it moves on?
Or the rebuke of the brimming plate,
Which comes to me and smugly says,
“Will you be one with us or not?”
No, the hardest rebuke is the one I hear
In the sounding telephone.
“I need some help,” I hear,
And cringe.
“How much this time?” I wonder, and
“How much next time?” because
It never really ends.
I cannot claim a particularly fortunate life
Yet among those whose paths run far more torturous than mine:
My caller.
“Yes,” I say,
Because there must be friendship, trust,
And the willingness to give
Or there can be no #offering.
ordainedgeek 
