Dismissals

The history of the Torah scroll: Lovingly restored, Hebrew letter by Hebrew letter, this Torah scroll lives now with the Cleveland Kol HaLev Reconstructionist Jewish Community. The scroll is more than one hundred years old, though no one knows for sure. The scroll belonged to a Polish congregation. During World War II, the people of the congregation hid the scroll away. At the war’s end, no one reclaimed it. This only G-d can fully comprehend. Amen. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

I was in Detroit, driving through what was once a pleasant neighborhood. In most blocks, there remained one or two homes with neat yards and a car in the driveway. The rest was overgrown, save for the shells of the few abandoned houses still standing. Driving was hazardous. In the middle of each street were neatly stacked piles of debris: Old Christmas trees, crates, tree branches and rusted trash cans. I cursed this strange maze that made me weave about until, at last, perplexed, I stopped. Each pile of debris covered an open manhole from which the cover had been stolen and sold for scrap, each pile of debris a warning to a motorist like me. Go in peace to…

A lemonade stand on a quiet street, a young girl at a card table. I pulled to the curb, “I’ll have a glass.” With great deliberation, she took a styrofoam cup from the stack and carefully poured lemonade from the plastic decanter. She peered into the cup. With a practiced movement, her finger went into the lemonade and brought up an errant speck of dirt or tree bark. She showed it to me on her finger tip, her finger wet with lemonade. Her smile faded, we looked at one another and said nothing. Then she brightened. “Wouldn’t you really prefer a new cup?” I took the new cup of lemonade, I thanked her, paid my tab and drove away. That…

He sat on the curb by his old car. I asked, “What’s going on?” He told me that a late payment had triggered an insurance lapse. Today the police pulled him over because his license was suspended. He said, “I’m stuck, man. I can’t drive till I get my license back, but I gotta drive to go get it.” I offered to take him where he needed to go. We went to his friend’s house to borrow money, to the insurance agent, to the local license bureau, and then to the state motor vehicle office in Canton to have his license reinstated. He walked out a new man. We did it! He thanked me and he thanked God. I thanked…

When I was a kid, I took up the notion to read straight through the Bible, beginning to end. As long as I was at it, I would mark with a red pencil all the rules for living, all the dicta and the laws. By mid-Genesis, my little pencil was worn to a nub and I ran out of steam. Reading the Bible straight through is a less-than-helpful idea yet I hear people say, “I am going to start at Genesis 1:1 and not stop until Revelation 22:21. Then I’ll know what’s in that Bible!” Please, let us have an intervention for these poor souls. Invite them to church! There’s plenty of Bible reading every Sunday. Invite them to Bible…

A year ago, in Sojourners magazine, I read an article by Danny Duncan Collum on the late civil rights activist and author Will Campbell. I saved that article and went looking for it as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ferguson unfolded. Collum, a Southerner like Campbell, wrote this: “Will Campbell gave me a grasp not only of the Southern tragedy and my people’s place in it, but of the larger human tragedy. Once I accepted the fact that even the vicious racists all around me didn’t make themselves and were not ‘the enemy,’ it was a pretty short step to the insight of the filmmaker Jean Renoir: ‘The really terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons.’ And…

A young man, perhaps ten or eleven, came to me after a service and said, “I’d like to be a deacon.” I replied with encouragement and asked him why. “Because if I am a deacon I can wear a cross and read the Bible to everybody in church and then go around and help people.” That’s it! … an excellent, albeit bare bones, understanding of being a deacon. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

Last Sunday found me in a Lutheran church in Loudonville, Ohio. There we read from the 85th Psalm, that God will “speak peace” to his “faithful people.” I have heard words of this psalm elsewhere, in the film of Isak Dinesen’s story, “Babette’s Feast.” The people of that tiny Danish congregation, quarreling and contentious, come together and find peace at the sumptuous feast provided by Babette. General Lowenhielm lifts his glass and offers words of thanks, ending his toast with the 10th verse of the 85th psalm: “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

In my Bible, in the Letter of James, I keep a scrap of newspaper titled “The Daily Scripture.” In big type, it bears this quote from James 4:4a: “Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?” My sister, Lorinda, thrust that clipping at me years ago. She asked, “What is that supposed to mean?” She was displeased because she loved this world, with all its beauty and possibility, with all its delight and despair. My attempt to answer her question – “What is that supposed to mean?” – was my first real reckoning with the Bible. I found some answers but I never did share them with her. She is gone now and I am still…

“Never war, never war. Please stop. I ask you with all my heart, it’s time to stop. Stop, please!” These are the words of Pope Francis, spoken this week, about the terrible, ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We do not often hear ‘words from the heart’ but these words are precisely that, a plaint, a lamentation, a soft wail. I am not confident that the leaders in the conflict will hear these words, or even acknowledge them. But I do. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, lived one thousand years ago. Among other writings, Bernard wrote of the Four Loves. Therein, an understanding of our passage to the fourth stage of love, the love of self that God intends for us all: Loving yourself for your own sake. Loving God for your own sake. Loving God for God’s sake. Loving yourself for God’s sake. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

My father told me stories. I do not know where they came from, whether tales he heard, his own inventions, or stories from his own life. I wish I could ask him…. A schoolboy was summoned by the principal to come to the school with his mother. The principal said to the mother, “Your son is keeping company with an unruly and disreputable crowd. Please speak to him about this.” “Very well,” said the mother and turned to her boy, “Son, you must continue to be a good, Christian influence on these ruffians.” Go in peace to love and and serve The Lord! Josh