by Lilly Lewin
Waiting on the Holy Spirit.
I often say that I would have missed Pentecost.
I would have missed the promised Gift of the Spirit, God’s power and light that Jesus told his followers he would give them.
Why?
BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE TO WAIT!
I am really bad at waiting!
Jesus gives his followers a mission to Go into ALL the World and make disciples!
Tell AND show people all over the place about the LOVE of God in JESUS.
That’s amazing! That’s a mission I want to participate in! That gets me motivated.
But Jesus says WAIT…STAY in Jerusalem and wait for the Gift I will give you!
I am Not so good at STAYING and WAITING.
How about you?
Too often, I have found myself impatient with God’s timing and I get antsy.
I pray for wisdom and direction, but too often, I run ahead and try to do things on my own.
I’m not sure the disciples liked waiting either. But, they had the honor of hanging out with Jesus over time. They’d now witnessed his death, resurrection, and his ascension so they were probably ok with being surprised by whatever Jesus asked them to do, or not do.
So they stayed in Jerusalem, praying and doing life together in the upper room where so many marvelous things had happened.
Am I willing to stay still and wait?
Am I willing to wait on God’s timing for things rather than my own?
Can I be willing to be willing?
Today is the day before we celebrate Pentecost.
The day before the Gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out.
Maybe you too are in that “DAY BEFORE” season.
That season of wondering and waiting on what God is going to do.
That day, that season of uncertainty….about what’s next, about when God will act, about what God is up to in your life. Know that God is with you in this. Know that Jesus hasn’t forgotten you!
On this day before Pentecost, I am announcing to myself and to Jesus that I am willing to be willing. I am willing to wait on the Gift. I am willing to understand that today is all I have. Today is a gift from Jesus to me. What can I do to love more today? What can I do to receive God’s love in my life today? And what can I do to bring love and joy to my world today, right now? Not running ahead, not wishing I was somewhere else, but willing to just be present in today.
Even in the waiting! Even in the Day Before!
ACTION: What can help you receive the gift of the Spirit during Pentecost this year?
I often use ceiling fans or window fans as reminders of the Holy Spirit. When I see a fan, I ask for God’s Spirit to blow over me and fill me again.
I do this with the wind too! I love to go outside and just let the wind blow over me. To know that I’m not in control of this, God is!
Do you have a symbol that represents the Holy Spirit to you? What is it? Or what might you choose it to be for Pentecost this year? One year I chose this red bowl from the Cincinnati Art Museum (way before I had the image of enough from my Freerange Friday post) This year it’s a Jar of Honey. Jesus is reminding me that he is Good and I need to live in his love and sweetness.
I’d love to hear what symbols help you connect with the Holy Spirit.
Happy Pentecost to you!
By Talitha Fraser —
Jon Cornford’s recent publication Coming Back to Earth: Essays on Church, Climate Change, Cities, Agriculture and Eating offers ideas confronting, but necessary, to consume if we are to respond as disciples to the challenges of our time such as: “climate change; species extinction; resource depletion; pressure on the global food system; widening international tensions and conflicts; economic instability and fragility; persisting poverty and economic exploitation…” (p.9).
Part of what is provoking and perceptive about Cornford’s work is the requirement to look critically at Christianity and the personal practice of our faith. There is seemingly a crisis of confidence amongst Christians about whether the “Good News” really has any good news to offer – Constantine developing the Christian Empire, the Reformation that made our faith individual rather than relying on Church, the establishment of capitalism and its model of accumulation, and the age Enlightenment that created self-sufficiency from God, leaves followers wondering about religion’s relevance (p.22-27). How might this be reclaimed and animated to speak to our minds and hearts, and to our times?
There can be an implied meaning to the word “sustainability” that is about maintaining a status quo, keeping things chugging along, but Cornford extends an invitation to understand our relationship to created order and land differently. We have been given a vocation (Gen 2) ‘to work (for) it and keep it’ – here “keep” is the same usage as “the Lord bless you and keep you”. We have an ongoing creative role to play in relationship to and with the land – to observe and serve it.
Counter to modern anthropocentric thinking, Cornford asks of us: What does it mean for us to live human life within economic limits? The Bible has a lot to say about law relating to property, land, animals, Sabbath, harvest and reaping. What responsibility, and what power, do we have to respond to the needs of our world? What are the ways we might consume less and consume smart? Buy secondhand, recyclable or renewable products, repurpose what you have, buy in bulk where you can to reduce single-use packaging… these are not new ideas. What is a new idea is the motivation. Climate change isn’t going to be cured by everyone recycling – especially when China isn’t buying it off Australia anymore. Because that 619,000 tonnes of materials per annum used to be worth $523 million to our economy and now it has no value and we have no where to put it but landfill.
See an illustration of the “four levels of thinking” below (Fig.11 WWF Living Planet Report (2016) , adapted from Maani and Cavana (2007) “showing that events or symptoms are only the tip of the iceberg in the overall dynamics of a system. Meanwhile the underlying determinants of the system’s behaviour are less apparent. The deeper we go below the surface events, the closer we get toward “root causes”. In this way we might come to understand that China not taking our recycling [event] is the good news. In fact, it’s great news because it puts the responsibility for managing our waste back on Australia and makes us think about ways to manage and address that by requiring us to look at some of our other levels of thinking.
There are systemic issues that aren’t going to be addressed in this political climate. The system is broken. The system will not change until people start changing. The challenge is to start acting in faith that change will come and to believe that we can participate in and take responsibility for that. No matter how long later or even whether others follow suit or not.
We pay so little for what we buy new that there is no incentive to re-use or repair it. We need a cohort of people to take the environmental crises seriously and create the demand for items made from recycled materials. The process costs of making items from recycled materials needs to come down and a larger market needs to be developed to compete with new-made. We need to be lobbying for this market to be subsidised or an appropriate ‘tax’ to be paid on new-material items.
It is clear to environmentalists and ecologists that it is not enough simply to stop what we’re doing to the environment – say, stop logging. Humankind need to actively intervene toward restoration, like native plantings in National Parks, to work together with the created order for wholeness and balance.
“Work without conceptual meaning is hard” an activist said to me recently of societal apathy, perhaps this is a gift that Christian faith has to offer a world struggling to respond to the desperate cry of our earth. “Belief for so many Christians has become an exercise in rationalising the cognitive dissonance between what they read in the Bible and what they encounter on Sunday mornings” (p.13). If instead Christians have an understanding that The Word must always become Flesh, if we read the news, local and global environmental reports, WWF and other animal and ecosystem reports, research papers by climate scientists as well as our Bible – world and Word together – what might that do for our both our comprehension and capacity to respond?
Jeremiah 6:16 says: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls…
But in the very next statement this hope is dashed: “but they said: ‘We will not give heed’” (p.45) Christians need to acknowledge our call to confession, our grief… our guilt. “we have done this”. (p.43) but our faith and the resurrection tell us we cannot be nailed down by our sin. What action then is demonstrably living into the freedom our faith invites us to?
One of Cornford essays unpacks seven dimensions of an alternative economic life that would express God’s counter-cultural good news… Rejection of the idols of ‘more’ and ‘me’; care and nurture; work; responsible consumption; household economy; generosity; and economic interdependence (p.29-36) these focus on the individual lives of Christians but other sections of the book also call for the Church to act out of its moral authority to speak to these serious issues of our time.
God has appointed us to be stewards of this earth, its water and land, its trees and flowers, its animals and birds. To work it and keep it. To observe and serve it. God created it and saw that it was good – what do you say that it is? what do you believe it could be?
Copies of Coming Back to Earth are available from Wipf and Stock from $12
By Jodi Hansen —
WHY WE FAIL
Common sense and common business practice tell us that every once in a while, businesses, nonprofits, churches, community groups, and pretty much every organization needs to step back and ask some hard questions about their operations. Questions like, “Is this consistent with our mission?” and “Is this sustainable?” are key to evaluating organizational health.
Those who fail to take a hard look at whether their organization is living into its intended mission and doing it in a cost-effective way, will fail. Those who fail to make the necessary changes in operations and infrastructure to ensure they are living into their intended mission in a sustainable way, will fail.
I am presently watching this kind of drama unfold as the Newberg School District attempts to address a $4 million budget shortfall. The leadership failed to answer these kinds of basic questions about mission and sustainability in the past, and now the school board is scrambling to save the district by cutting staff and school days to get back on track.
What about our criminal justice system?
Who steps back and asks the hard questions about organizational health in this system?
Is it living into the mission to protect public safety while rehabilitating those who threaten it?
Is the way our criminal justice system operates cost-effective and sustainable?
EVERYONE’S A CRITIC
Books by insiders such as Kamala Harris, Jens Soering, James Kilgore and Adam Benforado describe how our very expensive system is failing to protect our communities from violent criminals and failing to rehabilitate those who commit trauma and addiction driven crimes by addressing the root causes of criminal behavior.
Samantha Bee and John Legend are among a growing group of celebrities using their platforms to alert the public to the inordinate power held by prosecutors and elected DA’s in administering justice. They stir us to ask the question, “How can we say that our citizens are innocent until proven guilty when too much power with too little oversight lies in the hands of an elected few whose focus is to WIN the prized guilty conviction?”
Others like Jay-Z have produced compelling YouTube videos about how the War on Drugs has failed, while law professor Michelle Alexander and pastor Dominique Gilliard expose the racism deeply imbedded in our system.
So, no, our system is not living into its mission and it seems everyone from celebrities to journalists to law professors to legal nonprofit leaders to pastors, and even those who have intersected with the criminal justice system themselves, are asking the important questions.
A BOAT LOAD OF CASH!
But, we also need to ask if our present way of operating is cost-effective and sustainable. The criminal justice system is complex and a cost/benefit analysis is much more difficult to evaluate in a web of federal, state, and local agencies—all charged with the same mission—than it is in a better contained organization like a business. But, it is worth asking the question, “How much does this really cost?”
The Prison Policy Initiative, has done the hard work of pulling together all the different ways we spend money on criminal justice in our communities. They report that our criminal justice system costs the government and families of justice-involved people $182 billion each year! That’s a lot of money being spent on a system that is failing to deliver on its mission.
But, whenever I see anything described in billions of dollars I get lost in the bigness. What does that big number mean and how much does that big number really impact my life? Sometimes, I need to break the big issues down into smaller, more manageable, concepts. So, I decided to work with numbers I do understand.
WORKING WITH WHAT I DO KNOW
As a Home for Good in Oregon community chaplain and reentry mentor, I know that there are 85 men and women releasing to Yamhill County from our state prisons in 2018. I also know that we spend approximately $47,000 per person per year to incarcerate these people. That means that keeping the 85 folks in prison for just the last year of their sentence cost the state of Oregon around $3,995,000.
This number doesn’t consider all the services they will need when they release like PO supervision, food stamps, mental health, addictions services, and housing assistance. This number doesn’t factor in how many years they served and what the total cost was to incarcerate each of these neighbors to be. It’s just a snapshot. But, it got me thinking: if all 85 of these folks had just one year of time taken off their sentence, it would have saved the state almost exactly what Newberg Public Schools is trying to cut from its budget.
COMMON SENSE
So, I wonder, if we shortened sentences just a bit, could we pay teachers better and have smaller class sizes? If the government spent less on perpetuating a failing criminal justice system, would we have fewer drop-outs and maybe less addiction-driven crime in the future? What would the impact be of diverting some cash out of that $182 billion a year that it costs to keep this failing system alive to fund schools? Heck, the US Department of Education only got $68 billion this year.
Living into Mission? NO
Sustainable? NO
Time to Change? YES
By Ana Lisa de Jong —
I will rest under your canopy.
Branches letting in just enough light
that I am shaded
but able to feel the sun.
I will rest under your weight.
Providence allowing just enough pressure
that I might burst my seeds
and learn my strength.
I will rest under your care.
My harvest, the simple pleasures
of living at peace within your domain,
and lining its walls with praise.
‘They will be God’s holy people. And the land will produce for them its lushest bounty and its richest fruit. Then the Lord will provide shade on all Jerusalem – over every home and all its public grounds – a canopy of smoke and cloud throughout the day, and clouds of fire at night, covering the glorious land, protecting it from day time heat and from rains and storms.’
Isaiah 4:4-6
‘My little town is homely as another,
But it is old,
And it is full of trees,
And it is covered with sky…’
From the poem Daily Bread, by Karle Wilson Baker
by Christine Sine
Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and beyond is the long season of ordinary time when we live into the life God calls us to. Tom and I are about to go on one of our quarterly retreats , a great time to rethink, refocus and re-energize ourselves.
This morning in preparation for the retreat, I have been rereading Desert Fathers and Mothers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings, Annotated by Christine Valters Paintner. It is a delightful book that quotes from the writings of these wise desert dwellers who chose to renounce the world in order to deliberately and individually follow God’s call. Their writings were first recorded in the fourth century and contain much spiritual advice that is still applicable today.
One characteristic of the desert fathers and mothers was their desire for a “word”. They were not asking for a command or a solution but for a communication that could be received as a stimulus to growth into a fuller life. Sounds like what I am hoping for as I head out for our retreat time. Though I am not sure I take these “words” as seriously as the monks did. The word would be pondered on for days or even for years. I love this story that Christine shares from Benedicta Ward Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. xxii.
A monk once came to Basil of Caesarea and said, Speak a word, Father” and Basil replied, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and the monk went away at once. Twenty years later he came back and said, Father, I have struggled to keep your word now speak another word to me” and he said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also.
It is so easy for us to read the word of God and not really absorb it into our being. Or else we want to dissect it and work out what the author or the translator really wanted to say. To dwell in the word the way that the desert dwellers did we need to release our thinking minds and enter into a space where we can hold the word in our hearts, turning it over and over, pondering it but not trying to pull it apart.
This morning as I prayed the word that came to me is “God is love”. It is a phrase that I have pondered many times in the past. It has brought me healing as I imagined the love of God seeping into my broken soul. It has brought me encouragement as I pondered the love of God flowing out through me to touch the hearts and lives of the refugees and marginalized people I have worked with. And it has drawn me into greater intimacy with God as I have imagined the wonder of God’s love abiding in the depth of my heart.
The knowledge I have in my head of a loving God will never transform me unless I allow it to seep deep into my being so that it becomes the air I breath, the food I eat and the ater I drink. God can only respond in a loving way. If we allow that thought to guide us always it will transform the world. It will have us always on tiptoe looking for the loving things that God is doing. It will have us rising up in righteous anger against the unloving and hateful things that are done in the name of God. And it will have us always seeking to be loving towards God’s entire human family.
What is the word that God has lodged in your heart and wants you to ponder on? I pray that you will take time today to enter into that word in a way that allows it to speak to you.
By Ana Lisa de Jong —
I am at the root of all things,
hidden
under a ground in which lies
a myriad of tender growing things.
I am the root for which you need to delve.
Your journey both a growing up
and a lengthening out, into the soil
which holds the sustenance of your life.
I am the dark secret passages
where no light shines
and all progress is slow,
and made by feel.
Until the breakthrough,
and the seedling,
proof of all that’s formed in the dark,
emerges through to the light.
I am the bird at the tip of your living tree.
Singing for the gift of life
that brought the dark hidden things to the surface,
and then grew them to their heights.
Towers of green
sustained by their rooted links,
and burrowed depths,
which hold them anchored to the earth.
And I am the wind,
that moves through your branches.
Gentle breeze or wild maelstrom
to shake the ground, and root you even deeper in to me.
Yes I am the root of all things hidden.
Come search for me in the dark.
This passage to the light, to which you feel your way,
is the treasure hidden in a field.
And that crown that is your foliage
on which birds alight and rest,
is the evidence of things not yet seen
but which bring you life.
by Christine Sine
The mayor of Cape Town, South Africa predicted in October 2017 that the city would run out of water by the following March. Since then, the date for what officials are calling “Day Zero” has shifted. May 13th was another potential date, but fortunately, due to drastic water cutting measures in the city, the threat us been postponed to sometime in 2019. For a while residents were restricted to using 50 litres of 13 gallons of water each per day, considered the absolute minimum needed for people to continue daily life, without increasing the risk of waterborne illness.
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
I grew up with these words from Samuel Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but I never thought that they would have so much significance for our lives. Cape Town is not the only part of the world that has faced a water crisis in the last few years. Droughts in Australia and California, water rationing in Rome, flooding in Jakarta are all symptoms of a changing climate. Growing populations, increasing industrial demands and mismanagement of water all contribute. Some people believe that the wars of the future will be over water not land. Yet we undervalue water. The average American uses 1,800 gallons/day of water – more than twice the global average. So try the Water footprint test. The calculator doesn’t just evaluate the water that we use in our toilets and showers. It also looks at the water footprint of travel, production of our food and other energy consuming activities. I found it educational just to see where most of the water is used.
Water and the Transformation of Life.
Water is incredibly important in the Biblical story too yet we rarely think about its importance. I love the imagery in Ezekiel 47:1-12, repeated again in Revelation 22:1-2 of the river of life that flows from the throne of God throughout the new Jerusalem nourishing the trees on its banks. “Life will flourish wherever the water flows… Fruit trees of all kinds will grow along both sides of the river. The leaves of these trees will never turn brown and fall, and there will always be fruit on their branches. There will be a new crop every month, for they are watered by the river flowing from the Temple. The fruit will be for food and the leaves for healing” (Ez 47:9, 12).
Emerging from water always symbolizes a transformation from death to life, from chaos to new creation. In the baptismal service of the Book of Common Prayer we read:
We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel our of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
Through Christ creation is renewed. Water is no longer symbolic of the threat of chaos but has been transfigured by our loving God into a cleansing force that takes away the sins of the world. In the flood of Noah, sinners were drowned and wiped out. In the cleansing baptism of Jesus sin itself is drowned and the sinners are cleansed and made whole.
Water is essential to life, but unless it is transformed by the blessing of God, it creates floods, devastation and chaos. With the blessing of God however, it cleanses and gives life to the entire creation each day and in every moment. From the moment of our conception, we are wrapped in water’s tender embrace, but we must emerge out of the waters to find true life out in God’s world.
Born Anew Out of the Water
Every use of water transforms and renews like a mini baptism. When we drink it we rehydrate dry and thirsty cells, we cleanse toxins from our bodies and we revitalize our energy. When we sprinkle it on our gardens it renews the dry and thirsty ground and gives life to every plant. When it rains from the clouds it refreshes and renews the very air we breathe.
Every use of water can be seen as a form of baptism, an opportunity to offer prayers of thanksgiving and appreciation for the gift of water and of life. We can so easily take it for granted, however missing the richness of these prayerful and sacramental moments that using water affords us, reminding us constantly of our covenant with God and reassure us of the cleansing of our souls that has taken place through baptism. Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian in his delightful book of garden mediations Inheriting Paradise comments: When we bless water, we acknowledge God’s grace and desire to cleanse the world and make it paradise.
Thanksgiving prayers for the gift of water and the renewal of our baptismal vows should not be confined to a baptismal service. A morning shower and a refreshing cup of tea, these too are baptismal moments, refreshing, renewing and bringing life. As I head out with my watering can onto the porch, here too I experience baptism and as I sprinkle my plants with water and give them life. As I sit and watch the waves crash on the seashore or stand in awe of the breathtaking beauty of a waterfall cascading onto the rocks this too speaks of baptism and the incredible cleansing and renewing experience of water.
Every Drop Of Water Is Precious
I grew up in Australia, a land that is subject to severe droughts, often followed by devastating floods. I quickly learned that water is precious. Every drop is to be treasured and used wisely. Now I live in Seattle, Washington an area that is known for its rainy weather. I don’t just take the rain for granted, sometimes I resent it.
However Seattle often has little rain over the summer. As the first rain of autumn falls, the brown parched lawns that are such a hallmark of the Seattle summer, give way to verdant green. I sit watching it fall gently on my thirsty garden and drink in the fresh fragrance of the rain cleansed air. In that moment my heart rejoices. Baptism I think. God has drenched the whole earth with love and faithfulness this morning. God has touched me too with a cleansing rain that has seeped into the dry and parched areas of my soul.
What Is Your Response?
Prayerfully consider your own attitude towards water.
How careful are you to conserve this wonderful gift that God has given us without which life would not exist? When was the last time you thanked God for the gift of water?
Read through this prayer which I wrote a couple of years ago for World Water Day and give thanks to God for the gift of water.
Now think about your life. How often do you confess sin in your life without acknowledging the places where you have already been cleansed by God’s baptismal waters? It really is like a morning after rain when the light shines more brightly, the air smells more fragrant and song of birds fill the air.
Take time to confess before God, not the places where darkness still needs to be uncovered but those wonderful places where God’s light is breaking through. Bask in the touch of God’s approval and love. Hear the gentle voice that whispers: well done good and faithful servant. I suspect that as it was for me, this will be like a cleansing rain, a moment of baptism and a very intimate meeting with God.
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