Kilauea, whose peak rises just around 30 miles from my home, resumed erupting in the summit caldera in December 2024. As September begins, there have been 32 eruption “episodes,” including some very dramatic fountaining reaching heights of over 1200 feet. Of the 32, I have observed 14 and captured a very large number of photos and videos. I began to create summary videos, and have settled on producing them in three month intervals.
My great thanks to Scott Buckley, composer of “Snowfall” which I’ve used as the background music for each video, both for writing a great piece and making at available for use with a Creative Commons license.
December 2024 – March 2025
This video includes material filmed from seven visits to the caldera during eruption events.
April 2025 – May 2025
This video includes material filmed from four visits to the caldera during eruption events. It probably includes footage of the highest fountains I have observed to date.
June 2025 – August 2025
This video includes material filmed from two visits to the caldera during eruption events.
Simon Peter went to see a man A Roman centurion with power in his hands. “Speak to us, Peter, we’d like to hear news of a new way of living, one we can choose.”
[Chorus]
Who are the people of Spirit? Open my heart to see. Who are the people of Spirit? Is it you? Is it me?
[Verse 2]
Simon Peter told his story to them How a crucified brow bore a bright diadem. Then he gasped as those Romans, unashamed Displayed in their bodies the Spirit unchained.
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
Simon Peter brought the Council the word That even in Gentiles the Spirit had stirred. “Who am I, who are you, to hinder our God?” In the grace of the Spirit their spirits were awed.
During my sabbatical, which ran from February 1, 2025, to April 30, 2025, I had two major projects. In the end, I made progress on both but did not complete either.
I have a tentative list of stories which I will be preparing and submitting for publication. Just reading them took longer than I’d anticipated. I also didn’t make it to the islands of Maui or Moloka’i, in part because I’d had to schedule other needed appointments during that time. I do have a plan to complete that, however.
Something which hadn’t been on my list became enormously important: photography. Capturing the beauty I encountered really lifted my soul, and became the most restoring activity of my sabbatical.
For the time and for the wonders of the world formed by its Creator, I am deeply grateful.
On February 1st, I begin a three month sabbatical, a time to lay down my responsibilities as Pastor of Church of the Holy Cross UCC in Hilo, and to use the time to learn, to renew, and to take on some projects that I haven’t been able to accomplish amidst the daily tasks of ministry. I described my sabbatical objectives in today’s edition of What I’m Thinking embedded above; there is a transcript available here.
What, if anything, does my sabbatical mean for Ordained Geek?
I will be posting less material here. The weekly #lectionprayers are a part of my sermon preparation process. With no sermons to write for three months, I don’t plan to compose those poem/prayers. Likewise I don’t expect to write new stories for worship during this time. Again, I prepare those for worship services I won’t be leading in February, March, and April. The stories and the poem/prayers will certainly return in May, when I resume both my preaching responsibilities and my preparation practices.
That doesn’t mean I’ll have no posts during that time. I may share a story or two that I haven’t before. There are some stories I’ve written elsewhere, or never actually written in full, that I want to consider for the collection which is one of my sabbatical objectives. I anticipate posting them here to help me review them.
I also expect to write some other reflections. I have committed myself to commenting on injustices when I see them, and I already see them. It’s possible that I may turn to poetry for those, and it’s possible that I will write additional essays. One is taking shape in my head, and I expect to post it before long.
I may also prepare some other pieces arising from my sabbatical experience. I didn’t do that when I last took a sabbatical in 2014, but in those days I worked in electronic communications. I had to set much of that aside in order to find refreshment in the time. That’s less true now, so we’ll see how that goes. Besides, I rather hope to share a few photos from my travels around the Hawaiian Islands.
It is also vaguely possible that I’ll write and share new songs during this time. It’s not a part of my sabbatical plan, but I hope that some of my refreshment may come through music. If so, I may post them here.
And finally, I will commit to a Lenten discipline of some kind. I don’t know what it will be, but the chances are good it will be visual (for me, that usually means photography). If it makes sense, you’ll probably see the results here.
You’ll see less from me these three months, but there will be new things coming during that time, and certainly once May has arrived.
The word may come on the phone or in print, or over the ether. The news I’ve been fearing too long, and a loss beyond my bearing. Come sit… with me… Until… the word comes… And wait with me in the silence.
I’ve been longing to know the answer: Maybe yes. Maybe no. My heart is beating so swiftly, and my veins are leaping and pounding. Come sit… with me… Until… the word comes… And wait with me in the silence.
This is the night of shadows and I know what will be. Until then I will weep my prayer for deliverance I won’t receive. Come sit… with me… Until… the soldiers come… Just wait with me in the silence.
Come sit… with me… Until… the dawn comes… Wait with me in the silence.
I had set a goal to write a new song for this Holy Week. I was pleased to have this song to play today.
I originally wrote this reflection in April 2011, shortly after I’d shared my most successful April Fool’s Day gag ever: a claim to have been summoned as an “ethical missionary” at a major American corporation. I’ve slightly changed the essay to reflect the fact that since then, I’ve moved from my work with the Connecticut Conference UCC to Church of the Holy Cross UCC in Hilo, Hawai’i. I’ve also inserted a video of the song I wrote about the event, performed in April 2012.
Bear with me a moment, for I must begin this blog post with an apology.
To my friends on Facebook: I sincerely apologize for distressing you with my April Fool’s Day prank last week. I’d never actually intended it to deceive, only to amuse: but it was harder than I thought to create a gag that was both plausible and transparently impossible. Or in other words, I failed to create a fiction that was stranger than truth, and so I deceived, and so I distressed. I’m very sorry.
So what did I do?
I posted a note that I’d be moving to a new job — I hasten once more to say this is NOT TRUE — as the UCC’s first “Ethical Missionary” to a major American corporation. The note included more spurious details, many intended to reveal the joke for what it was, but that’s the summary. A number of my friends responded, and a startling (to me) number took it seriously. I learned a great deal.
I learned again that I have wonderful friends. I’d posited a move across the country, and without exception people expressed two heart-warming things: that they were very happy for my exciting new challenge, and very sad that I’d be so far away. Holding that sense of joy for another with that feeling of loss is, I think, a very deep mark of friendship.
And let us not ignore as well the fact that (so far) all have forgiven me for deceiving them!
I learned again that reality is much stranger than the human imagination — or at least my human imagination. I honestly believed I’d weighted the note with too many impossibilities to be credible. I hadn’t. Let’s face it, on a planet in which both the duck-billed platypus and the giraffe exist, I hadn’t much chance of doing so.
More striking, however, than these two reminders was the revelation of a sudden hunger. My friends sincerely wanted to believe in an ethical missionary, and in a major corporation willing to accept such a person. A friend who is ordained in another denomination praised the forward thinking of the UCC. Another called it “the coolest job EVER.”
It makes me think: maybe it’s a crazy idea, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea.
An ethical missionary to a big corporation faces an enormous challenge, because corporations already have an ethical code which has the advantage of being both clear and compelling. It’s about “the bottom line.”
The bottom line refers to the last line of a particular financial report in a corporation, the line which describes the return to shareholders, the company’s owners. The company’s managers, who may not be among the owners, see it as their duty to keep that number healthy (growing, increasing, certainly above zero). There are plenty of other ethical touchstones as well, about transparency and such, but many of those function to serve the primary goal of returning value to the stockholders.
Jesus, of course, told a story about precisely this situation. We call it the ‘parable of the talents:’ a master going on a journey assigns three servants to steward portions of his fortune while he is away. The two who successfully increase his wealth receive commendation; the one who fails (though without suffering loss) receives condemnation. Ethical managers of a corporation emulate those two faithful stewards.
I think, however, that that model is no longer sufficient (and possibly never was). The group of shareholders, however large, is not an adequate community to consider in making ethical choices. The owners’ interest is served by keeping finances transparent within the management team, but they are also served by making them opaque to customers, employees, and the general public. We have laws to prevent fraud in those interactions, but the laws that exist actively conflict with the primary ethic which guides business decisions day-to-day.
The great theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr noted this problem nearly eighty years ago in Moral Man, Immoral Society. His brother H. Richard Niebuhr considered the problem of inadequate circles of concern in The Responsible Self, published posthumously in 1962. People in groups act strongly in their own interest; they fail over and over to consider their impact on those around them: the customer, the neighbor, the public.
The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 illustrates this truth over and over and over again. It rose from a game of “pass-the-risk,” one marked by layer after layer of deception, justified by the interests of the shareholders (and not unmarked by the interests of the managers, too). As one might notice from the lack of public prosecutions, it seems to have been legal.
But ethical? Is it ethical to place the global economic system at risk in order to bring maximum return to your shareholders?
I will not, anytime soon, become an ethical missionary to the world of corporate America (or corporate multi-national). If such a job exists, I haven’t heard about it, and though I’ve shifted my ministry from the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ to Church of the Holy Cross UCC in Hilo, Hawai’i, I’m fully committed to ministry in the church setting. It’s a crazy idea.
ordainedgeek 