Dismissals

In a long ago Bible study, we read from Isaiah: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news …” (Isaiah 52:7a). Peace! Good News! Yet, the group seized upon the messenger’s feet. How can the dusty feet of the messenger be beautiful? The talk turned to pedicures and bunions. At last someone said, “It’s a metaphor.” A retired English teacher added, “It’s a synecdoche, when part of something represents the whole, when feet represent the entire person.” We read on, keen to identify the metaphors (and synecdoches!) we had not seen before. That day, the messenger brought peace and good news to our Bible study. Go in peace to love…

Drifting toward sleep, I asked God, “If you made me in your own image, do you have any regrets?” No reply. God might have other people to worry about so I let it go and nodded off. Later that night, God said, “It’s your craw. If I had a do-over, I wouldn’t give you a craw.” In the dark, God could see me blinking. I said, “Craw? What’s a craw?” God said, “The craw is where things get stuck. People say something is ‘stuck in my craw’ and bad things happen. Anger. Revenge. Annoyance. Unloving Behavior. Next time, no craw. Now go back to sleep.” Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Josh

One wintry Sunday long ago, watching a football game, I saw the man sitting in the end-zone with the sign: John 3:16. Thinking that it might be good to refresh my memory, I rummaged about for a Bible and flipped through it, John… 3rd chapter…. 16th verse. It was not as I recollected (“For God so loved the world…”) but it was close, it was powerful and it was personal: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” As I eventually learned, I had read from The First Letter of John, not The Gospel of John. No matter. I have long ago forgotten…

Every Sunday, in church, we read a portion of one of the Psalms. Yet there are Psalms that are never read in church. They are too violent, sad, or personal. The 39th Psalm this past Tuesday (see Forward Day by Day) is one such Psalm. The first verse: “I said, I will keep watch upon my ways,* so that I do not offend with my tongue.” But the psalmist cannot keep it in and the anger and frustration are directed at God. God takes it all in, as God will, and the psalmist lives to write again. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Josh

He lived at the shelter, on and off. He told me, “I never get mail except from the government. I never once got a Christmas card in the mail that I can remember.” So I set about sending him postcards. I might have sent a dozen over several months but I never heard back and never saw him again. I asked about him at the shelter. They said he moved on, no one really knew, but they remembered the postcards, that whenever a postcard came to him in the mail, he carried it with him and showed it to everyone. Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

The Hubble Space Telescope is 25 years old! Hubble recently re-photographed one of its early, iconic images, the immense “Pillars of Creation.” [See the images] These are gaseous formations where stars are birthed. I am in awe of images so beautiful, so unearthly. There, 6500 light-years distant, in vast clouds of dust and gas, I see God. Yet God is also near and I am drawn to the words of Saint John of the Cross, 16th century Spanish mystic and poet: “You fled like a deer after wounding me, and I went out calling for you and you were gone.” Go in peace to love and serve The Lord! Josh

I have a New Year’s Resolution. It came about as I went through old files and found resolutions made long ago by my three sons. The resolutions were written in restaurants on paper placements. In one year, son Joseph resolved to become a Ninja. Charles wanted to be a champion skateboarder. Henry wanted to conquer every level of a difficult video game. My own resolution for 2015 is to send these placemats to my sons, before the next New Year, so they can see what it is to make a promise to oneself. No son of mine ever became a Ninja, or a professional skateboarder. I don’t recollect about the video game but there were other resolutions written on those…

He lived alone, in a small house. It was a few days before Christmas. All around the living room were piles of shirts with the straight pins still in them. There were new pants, neatly stacked, winter coats, sweat shirts and laundry baskets of new socks. I thought him a hoarder but he told me, “When I was a boy, we were dirt poor. Now that I have more, I give to those in need.” Under a small tinsel tree on an end table, there was a can of Dinty Moore Stew and I had to ask: “Are you going to give away that can of stew?” He said, “That’s my Christmas dinner, like when I had nothing. That can…

I have been to Nashville. There, I visited President Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage. I bought two post cards. One is a portrait of Andrew Jackson, astride his white horse, looking presidential. On the back of the postcard is the horse’s name: “Sam Patch.” The other postcard is a photograph, taken in 1867, two years after the abolition of slavery. It is the image of an aged African American woman with her two, small great-grandchildren. She looks into the camera’s lens. Her fingers are gnarled, her face is weary but determined. On the back of the postcard, it says she was “one of Jackson’s servants … the cook,” and that her name may have been Betty. There is no last…

A man in a wheelchair rolled slowly downhill in the middle of a busy road. Traffic in both directions moved past him. Some honked, some slowed and rolled down their windows: “You OK?” “You’re gonna get hit!” The man did not respond. At the bottom of the hill, his chair came to a stop and I stopped. Cars swerved, horns blared. A big pickup truck pulled crosswise and blocked both lanes. More horns. The man in the wheelchair looked at the ground. I helped get him and his wheelchair into the pickup. I asked the driver, “Where are you going to take him?” The driver said: “Anywhere. Anywhere this man wants to go, that’s where I’ll take him.” Go in…

Years ago, in the sheep barn at a county fair, I saw a dozen men compete to be the fastest to sheer a sheep. They had electric shears. Each man worked rapidly, holding the animal to the floor. The heavy wool rolled off in dense, thick mats. When the sheep came to its feet, there were spots of red from small cuts on pink skin. It was so with all the men, until the last. He was old and spoke to the sheep he would sheer, then set it on the ground and began, in long, slow motions, still talking. When, at length, the sheep was shorn and on its feet, there was nary a knick or scratch. The gathered…

Her name is Barbara. She moved out of the apartment next to mine a few weeks ago. She could not make the rent. The landlord came by several times and I overheard: “I’ll get caught up soon. Just a few more weeks.” I helped Barbara move in a year ago. She and her sister were trying to get an old mattress up the stairs, too big for the elevator, too heavy for them. I took one end and the three of us dragged it up to the fourth floor. When I moved in, I bought a new mattress. The store delivered it, set it on the bed-frame and I gave the men a tip. Now I was at one end…