this afternoon at the Ecumenical Council's Reformation Day celebration the choir sang this song:
Make Our Church One Joyful Choir
Make our church one joyful choir on this glad and festive day
and by song invoke the fire that invites our hearts to pray:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.
Bend us low by song and prayer, low enough to lift the cross
and to take the weight and bear love's uncounted final cost:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.
and our acts and words of care trace the pattern of your cross:
Shape us, Christ, to bear your name.
Bend us, lift us, make us strong, send us out with wind and fire,
so the world may hear the song that we offer as your choir:
Shape us, Christ, to live and claim all it means to bear your name.
Amen, amen, amen!
Thomas H. Troeger
© 1994 Oxford University Press, Inc.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Culture Bound
Culture, identity, home, belonging, etc.
As those cultural anthropologists insist, each of us inhabits a range of cultures; more than a single culture encumbers each of us. We see, hear and feel; we remember, dream and hope through the senses our cultures have given to us and we've inadvertently received; and to some extent, our cultural identities constrain and limit us.
Wednesday evening, August 18, 2004, I watched The Reunion, on our local ABC affiliate, KGTV Channel 10. The subject struck me extremely: present-day interviews and retrospective reminiscences of the experience of some Shaker Heights, Ohio residents who'd been part of an intentional racial integration project beginning with their kindergarten class and continuing through high school in the Shaker Heights public schools. Those were the identical years I spent experiencing blockbusting, white flight and redlining in Boston; those same years some of the neighborhoods around me blazed with anger and rage at the same time Watts, Detroit, Atlanta and too, too many U.S. inner cities became furious conflagrations and locales of supercharged and globally publicized citizen/police interactions.
But that's almost a digression, since lately I've been thinking I need to go home, and although there's no way I can return (or would return) to Big Tree Place or any of those other physical dwellings, no way could I return to First Mariner's Church (especially since it disbanded a while ago), I can return to my *home* culture, the culture that's my Muttersprach, my cultura franca - to invent an idiom - and I need occasionally to do so! Besides, in the same way you never step into the same river more than once, because both of you and the river have changed, the home you return to cannot be the home you left, so even if I had a physical option to go back there, I still wouldn't be able to relive something that's no longer there, a location that even in terms of my heart's identity I've rationalized, streamlined and simplified.
As those cultural anthropologists insist, each of us inhabits a range of cultures; more than a single culture encumbers each of us. We see, hear and feel; we remember, dream and hope through the senses our cultures have given to us and we've inadvertently received; and to some extent, our cultural identities constrain and limit us.
Wednesday evening, August 18, 2004, I watched The Reunion, on our local ABC affiliate, KGTV Channel 10. The subject struck me extremely: present-day interviews and retrospective reminiscences of the experience of some Shaker Heights, Ohio residents who'd been part of an intentional racial integration project beginning with their kindergarten class and continuing through high school in the Shaker Heights public schools. Those were the identical years I spent experiencing blockbusting, white flight and redlining in Boston; those same years some of the neighborhoods around me blazed with anger and rage at the same time Watts, Detroit, Atlanta and too, too many U.S. inner cities became furious conflagrations and locales of supercharged and globally publicized citizen/police interactions.
But that's almost a digression, since lately I've been thinking I need to go home, and although there's no way I can return (or would return) to Big Tree Place or any of those other physical dwellings, no way could I return to First Mariner's Church (especially since it disbanded a while ago), I can return to my *home* culture, the culture that's my Muttersprach, my cultura franca - to invent an idiom - and I need occasionally to do so! Besides, in the same way you never step into the same river more than once, because both of you and the river have changed, the home you return to cannot be the home you left, so even if I had a physical option to go back there, I still wouldn't be able to relive something that's no longer there, a location that even in terms of my heart's identity I've rationalized, streamlined and simplified.
Monday, August 09, 2004
from Psalm 119
from Psalm 119:
10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
14 I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches.
16 I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
17 Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word.
19 I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
44 So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever.
45 And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.
57 Thou art my portion, O LORD: I have said that I would keep thy words.
72 The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.
89 For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.
103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
127 Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold.
159 Consider how I love thy precepts: quicken me, O LORD, according to thy lovingkindness.
164 Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.
from Psalm 73
from Psalm 73:
25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Wonderful Song!
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing!
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Words: Robert Robinson, 1758; in his A Collection of Hymns Used by the Church of Christ in Angel Alley, Bishopgate, 1759.
Music: "Nettleton," in Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, by John Wyeth, 1813
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
Words: Robert Robinson, 1758; in his A Collection of Hymns Used by the Church of Christ in Angel Alley, Bishopgate, 1759.
Music: "Nettleton," in Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, by John Wyeth, 1813
Sunday, July 04, 2004
4 July 2004
Sunday, July 04, 2004...Independence Day!!!!!
"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." –Henry James to Edith Wharton
"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." –Henry James to Edith Wharton
commonplacebook notes
Sunday, July 04, 2004
from The Other Side, May 1988, page 15:
"A spiritual revival means a revival of confidence, of hope, of the ability to affect one's own future.
"That, of course, is a synonym for power..."
–John Heinemeier
Psalm 16:7
God gives me counsel...so does my heart!
Joseph Brodsky on freedom:
"When you forget the spelling of the tyrant's name."
A Promise:
God will not send you
beyond where you Heart can defend you
God will not lead you
beyond where the Spirit can feed you
and a reality:
Our survival depends on the health of our environment.
from The Other Side, May 1988, page 15:
"A spiritual revival means a revival of confidence, of hope, of the ability to affect one's own future.
"That, of course, is a synonym for power..."
–John Heinemeier
Psalm 16:7
God gives me counsel...so does my heart!
Joseph Brodsky on freedom:
"When you forget the spelling of the tyrant's name."
A Promise:
God will not send you
beyond where you Heart can defend you
God will not lead you
beyond where the Spirit can feed you
and a reality:
Our survival depends on the health of our environment.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Early Light
♪ The peril of the night is gone ♫
♫ And far across the distance range ♪
♪ I see the road to freedom ♫
♫ There are many paths you can follow ♪
♪ And many fields to roam ♫
♫ So I walk free beneath the stars ♪
♪ Yet shining over our land and home ♫
by Jonathan Elias; I heard this in a PBS commercial 2 December 1993
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Street Evangelism
Street evangelism!
During the years I served in very inner-city Boston I did a whole lot of street evangelism (called it that, too!) and it wasn't Bible-brandishing, sin-convicting and hellfire-threatening in style or substance; I was about getting people at least to talk about something, about anything, and then to get them into some church-related activities, eventually to Worship, Word and Sacraments.
Here's a story related to that time:
When I was on staff there, we had a new church musician who was a recent graduate of the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois (as opposed to the secular Wheaton College that's in Norton, Massachusetts). One day this particular young woman approached me and said, "I need to talk to you! This isn't very evangelical!!!!!" But by my standards our proclamation and service to the congregants and to the community was extremely evangelical; her expectations seemed to be tent meeting/circuit rider!
During the years I served in very inner-city Boston I did a whole lot of street evangelism (called it that, too!) and it wasn't Bible-brandishing, sin-convicting and hellfire-threatening in style or substance; I was about getting people at least to talk about something, about anything, and then to get them into some church-related activities, eventually to Worship, Word and Sacraments.
Here's a story related to that time:
When I was on staff there, we had a new church musician who was a recent graduate of the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois (as opposed to the secular Wheaton College that's in Norton, Massachusetts). One day this particular young woman approached me and said, "I need to talk to you! This isn't very evangelical!!!!!" But by my standards our proclamation and service to the congregants and to the community was extremely evangelical; her expectations seemed to be tent meeting/circuit rider!
Books
• William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and other Aliens in a Strange Land
• Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Powers, Volume 1
• Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, Powers, Volume 2
• Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Powers, Volume 3
• Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium
• Martin Buber, I and Thou
• Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations
• Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now
• Paul Tillich, The New Being
• Anthony T. Padovano, Dawn without Darkness
• H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture – Christ Against Culture; Christ of Culture; Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; Christ the Transformer of Culture
• my amazon wish list
• my amazon book and other reviews
• Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Powers, Volume 1
• Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers, Powers, Volume 2
• Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Powers, Volume 3
• Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium
• Martin Buber, I and Thou
• Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations
• Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now
• Paul Tillich, The New Being
• Anthony T. Padovano, Dawn without Darkness
• H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture – Christ Against Culture; Christ of Culture; Christ Above Culture; Christ and Culture in Paradox; Christ the Transformer of Culture
• my amazon wish list
• my amazon book and other reviews
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Step by Step
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days
Scriptural basis:from Rich Mullins,
- Genesis 15:5-6
- Psalm 34
- Psalm 63
- Hebrews 12:13
The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One
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