1 Peter 2:9

Isaiah 35:1-2

I love this text but this design seriously needs redoing in Illustrator; nevertheless, I wanted to post this original version:

2 Corinthians 12:9

Self-explanatory...a few weeks ago I preached on this text:

1 Peter 3:8

Here's an old freehand graphic I scanned and tweaked:

Fifth Evangelist

Once upon a warm summer weeknight, we held a liturgical celebration of JS Bach; here's the bulletin cover I designed...

city_fence

Here's a collage I did in my very first ever semester of Photoshop; some time ago I posted it over on city delights. Seems as if it also belongs here on my faith journey/testimony site, since I so tend to ride fences about almost everything. Usually urban ones, of course...

Lions Lambs Eagles Doves

This blog-title happened because I remembered a greeting card (I think) with a quote from Weston Priory about the lion lying down with the lamb. Thinking it might be from a Weston Priory song, I tried doing an internet search, but found nothing. Most likely it's on a Christmas card I've saved, so when I find the card I'll amend this blog with the exact passage.

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Well there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove

~Stephen Stills~

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From the album Absolutely: ABC—"One Better World"

One better world
One better world
One better world

Someway – Somehow – Some place – Somewhere
Let the lion lie down with the lamb
Someway – Somehow – Some place – Somewhere
Don't use the color of the skin to judge a man

~Martin Fry and Mark White~

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On the news this past Monday, the Rt. Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop-Elect essentially said she could form a relationship with just about anyone through dialogue and conversation. But that's what I'd always imagined about myself, and it had happened close to countless times—but what about now? Oh, I know, "overdeveloped skills in reconciliation, accommodation and peacemaking," but the world would have no social workers, pastors, therapists, teachers or much of anyone else in that kind of direct service profession were some of us not somewhat codependent! Before writing codependent I hesitated and came close to saying "people-addicted," but instead I consulted Microsoft Word's synonym list and found mutually dependent, mutually inter-reliant and mutually supporting. Those words sound just fine to me!

starfield

Monday we formally presented our videos; Tuesday we started Flash. I've learned some Flash before, so I was ready to do something really fun. Here's my first Flash movie, presented as a GIF:

Attachment and Loss

Got a blog, gotta blog, finally, but first, let's see how this semi-ASCII horse looks here:

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//    \
This blog-title reminds me of our discussion of Water Buffalo Theology a couple years back on the old UCC online forums. Kosuke Koyama wrote WBT as a threefold offering: Christian-Buddhist dialogue, ecological theology and liberation theology. Even before I finally made the connection, such passionate attachments and devastating losses so have been informing the thinking, feeling, journaling and more formal writing I've lately been doing.

Blog

The early church always...always baptized
The 21st century church always baptizes
The early church baptized in the river’s flowing waters
River runs high and river runs low river runs through the land from source to destination
Rivers of baptism's bountiful streams ripple through our lives from source in Christ to destination in Christ
You know how I love paradox, and I love polyvalent images (and symbols) almost as much!

Like high summer's blush of fresh new love's blazing intensities and obsessive near-trances I was passionately in love with The Church; I still love the Church passionately--despite these past more than a dozen years.

The church had given me life! Oh yes, of course the sacraments, but when I say life I don't mean baptism and I'm not referring to the Bread of Life and Cup of Salvation.

Hospitality, hospital – hospitality industry! God's industrious hospitality in cross and sacrament. Sacraments, cross? But how about community--the church as the exhibition of the Reign of Heaven? The sacraments depend on the church for their existence.

Hospital=healing place

Cross=healing place, healing grace, healing embrace, hospitality place

The Cross is God's "been there, done that, have (bought) the scars as proof." But is not the church, born at the cross and energized at Pentecost--the community bought, purchased at the cross proof of God's being and doing, as well?

Here's some of Fred Pratt Green's song we sang last Sunday to Cyril Taylor's tune, Abbot's Leigh, which always sounds so Anglican to me:

God is here! As we your people meet to offer praise and prayer...
Here are table, font and pulpit; here the cross has central place.

Those words remind me of Marty Haugen, "Gather us in":

Here we will take the wine and the water;
here we will take the bread of new birth;
here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.

From a newer favorite I've posted at least a couple of places:

I, the Lord of font and cup, covenant to lift you up; splash the water, break the bread; pour out your lives!

Time to prepare for tomorrow...

Reach Out of the Darkness

Feelin' nostalgic:

Friend & Lover: Reach Out Of The Darkness, summer, 1968

I think it's so groovy now
That people are finally getting together
I thinks it's so wonderful and how
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend

I knew a man that I did not care for
And then one day this man gave me a call
We sat and talked about things on our mind
And now this man he is a friend of mine
Don't be afraid of love
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid to love
Everybody needs a little love
Everybody needs somebody
That they can be thinking of

---

Interesting:

With its captivating bass line, anthemic chorus, male-female vocal interplay, and lyrics entirely in tune with the swell of cooperative spirit engulfing American youth in the late 1960s, Friend & Lover's "Reach Out of the Darkness" became a Top Ten hit in the summer of 1968...[and] would be Friend & Lover's sole album, though the male half of the duo, Jim Post, went on to a long and ongoing career in folk, children's music, and the theater...Like hundreds if not thousands of fellow American folk musicians of the '60s, the pair would soon move into rock music as Friend & Lover, Post (who wrote their material) being the "Friend" and [Cathy] Conn the "Lover." ...

Post's composition "Reach Out of the Darkness" was recorded in Nashville, the production credited to Joe South--not long before South, already an established session musician, songwriter, and producer on the Southern recording scene, would himself become a star artist--and Bill Lowery...Ray Stevens" --also a busy session musician, in addition to recording hit records under his own name-- "played all the keyboards, and arranged the strings."

The single took a long time to take off, adds Post, as initially, "the only place that played 'Reach Out of the Darkness' was [the small Northern California town] Chico. It sold about twice as many as the #1 song normally sells in a little town." Nationwide, however, "the record just sat there, I don't know, six, seven months, and didn't do anything. We figured the record was gone and dead. But they had a Selective Service sit-in in California, because there was a hearing on Selective Service or something like that, and they arrested 3,000 people. They took them out to Kezar field [then used as the San Francisco 49ers' football stadium, in Golden Gate Park]." As Jim remembers, it was at that point where a promo man who "had had faith in 'Reach Out' for a long time sent copies to every radio station in the Bay Area with a letter. Then he grabbed a sound truck, went out to Kezar field, and started playing the music on the sound truck. About six o'clock that afternoon, they were playing it almost back-to-back in San Francisco, and that's what started it."

After the ball was rolling, continues Post, "it hit up and down the west coast, and hit in the Midwest. The first time I heard it, we were driving down the Outer Drive in Chicago and turned the radio on, and there's 'Reach Out of the Darkness.' It totally blew our minds. But New York wouldn't go on it, so it started down the charts. Then someone shot Martin Luther King, and it went back up the charts. It sold enough to be a #1 record, but hit at different parts of the country at different times. So it never got to be #1, except on certain radio stations."...Much of the album boasted full arrangements drawing from various influences in late-'60s pop-rock, soul, and psychedelia...Post hardly gave up on music itself...More information on Jim's music, concerts, and other activities can be found on his website, Jim Post dot com.

--Richie Unterberger

Here's the liner notes complete.

Word Salad

Today's Topic

Word Salad?! Maybe I'm running of blog ideas? Fat chance! However, this'll go on my testimony site rather than with my more formal theology on desert spirit's fire.

Pondering Word of Life, Bread of Life, Eschatological Feast (manna, milk, honey, wine, figs, lamb, goat, sheep, Lamb, et al.) gets me thinking about the colors, varieties, mixes and textures filling each of our lives--not only culinary events, but every aspect of each day: sound, sight, smell, tactility. But what about my expression "culinary events"? Does the local fast food emporium serve up anything qualifying either as true cuisine or viable event? Or, for another stretch, both event (measurable in time and space) and cuisine (intentionally imagined and passionately created) in a single portion?! In the Church we recognize glossolalia as one of the more demonstratively eschatological Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, but word salad's not quite the same as glossolalia; the phrase Word Salad also has some currency in the computer world. From a clinical standpoint, word salad...do a search and find out for yourself!

As my Boston friend Nick (there's a pic of Nick's back steps and part of his garden on my blogger profile) would insist, this topic is both a stretch and a shrink, but I'm going with it anyway. Oh, by the way, Nick is a PK and the brother-in-law of a preacher, and despite the fact he doesn't read theology or even spend much apparent time reading the bible, he doesn't often miss Sunday worship and he's astute in matters of the Spirit. However...at times my theology seems far more earthbound than heaven-bound, but I'll assure you that's the Reformation influence! To continue briefly with Word Salad:

Word of Life

Jesus is the Living Word, the Word made human flesh that lives, breathes, walks, teaches and talks! Some of us even get to preach what we trust and pray will become a Word of Life. Word of life has to be something that accompanies our every breath, thought and step; it must be something that generates living! Word Salad points to the variety of interventions and the variety of venues in which the Word of Life acts.

Bread of Life

That's not only Johannine, the idea goes way back to the Hebrew scriptures and probably further back than that into prehistoric times. Close to a million times I've written about Israel receiving manna from heaven in the Exodus Desert.

Eschatological Feast

To conclude, check out my blog for Earth Day 2006.

Resurrection 2006: Easter, Tucson, Arizona

[Ava] April come she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again...Paul Simon, 1965

Ava April is a 2 ½ year old Husky mix, finally adopted, and just in time for Easter! Now she lives with seven Husky and Husky mix siblings (even numbers of girls and boys), including Easter Angel, adopted four Easters ago, 2002. In nature's realm plentiful newness happens during spring every year; rivers grow beyond winter's seemingly harsh limits, increasing with water--gestation's essential and necessity of sustenance; spring of the year is when trees and flowers bud, bloom and flourish. Always replete with life, though often at least somewhat concealed, during spring desert habitats extravagantly display abundant glory.

On Easter the Church proclaims,

Love's redeeming work is done!
Where, O Death, is now thy sting!

Sadly, again this year I missed having an opportunity to participate in an Easter Vigil, but Easter morning we worshiped at Casas Adobes United Church of Christ--wonderful music, and preaching I needed to hear.

The Lord went before them in a cloud by day and fire by night. This year I missed keeping Easter's Vigil, but I have intense memories of kindling the new fire at Easter Vigils long past. Possibly you can miss a Cloud by Day, especially if you don't look upward or outward, but Fire blazing amidst night's darkness is unmistakable. Baptized with the HS and with Fire? Baptized into the fire of the cross and into the fire of the constant, unmistakable and irrevocable Divine Presence. Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? Immersed in Fire and Spirit? Think about it!