Lent and Coronavirus For many of us, the coronavirus now consumes our thoughts, our dreams, our livelihoods, and even our bodies. People feel betrayed or abandoned. Though there are pockets of the world the virus hasn’t touched, chaos is widespread. While some of us are working round the clock to supply overwhelmed medical systems, and others are struggling to keep grocery stores supplied and stocked, and still others are caring for the sick and vulnerable, millions of us have lost jobs or businesses. Our gig economy has shattered. We are forced inside, left with little but our electronic communities, and those without internet connections don’t have even that. Ironically, it…
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The Power of Love Versus Hate
The Air You Breathe When you grow up feeling loved, you don’t notice it. At least not at first. After a while, you begin to understand your home is different from the homes of your friends. You realize that other mothers, for instance, don’t call their girls “dear darling daughter,” that sometimes they call them cruel names you never heard before, and they chastise them in front of you and invade their privacy, breeding shame and insecurity. As you come to understand this, you feel shocked. You start to be grateful that, though the polite stillness in your own home sometimes drives you crazy, and though you sometimes feel lonely…
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Ash Wednesday and Opening Our Hearts
Ash Wednesday My mother, who died in 2015, has been turned to ash. The remains of her cremation sit in a box on a shelf in my room. The ashes aren’t her, nor do they symbolize some essence of her nature. Still, I’m in no hurry to spread them across the scattering ground at the cemetery where she bought a place to rest. One day I will do so, when I no longer need her quiet reminder that I am destined to end up as ash myself. Whether we are talking about the dust out of which the Hebrew God formed us or the carbon created in the belly of…
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Enlightenment and the Bird who Sang
A Sad Bridegroom The story dates from Medieval days, a Jewish cautionary tale told for those who seek the secrets of the gods. It does more than warn us about the dangers of hubris, however. “The Bird That Sang to a Bridegroom” also suggests that once we see the true nature of the universe, we cannot remain on earth. Normal human relationships will be impossible, and God will send Death to bring us home. It is as if, once enlightened, we might feel a generalized love for all humanity, but our individual loves will fade. In this tale, a couple have just gotten married. The bridegroom escorts his new wife…
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“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and Valentine’s Day
Baby, It’s Cold Though usually sung around Christmas time, Frank Loesser’s song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has nothing to do with a holiday. It does mention snow, which we don’t get much of in the Willamette Valley, but February is still winter. So as Valentine’s Day approaches and our minds turn to love, let’s take a look at this jaunty piece that was so popular in its day and has been so criticized now. Originally used by Loesser and his wife to entertain their friends and business associates, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” tells the story of two characters named Wolf and Mouse. It became popular when, Loesser sold the song…
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Prayer, Power, and Love — Martin Luther King, Jr.
History as Story I’ve written before about how our stories create us, how the memories we hold make us who we are. [1] This is true for us as individuals and as a society. Now, as we in the United States prepare to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, we explore this topic again, because how we tell the story of this man’s life and ministry affects how we either carry on, or obstruct, the work he did. Perhaps King’s story doesn’t seem complicated enough for multiple interpretations. After all, he led a Civil Rights movement, he believed in beloved community, and he said we shouldn’t…
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What Is Hidden in the Parable of the Leaven
Myth as Self-Creation We invent ourselves with our stories. Not that we would cease to exist in body or form if we lost our memory, but we would not know who we are. Instead of being embedded in history and culture, we would be so caught up by the sweep of the present moment that we would lose hope, purpose, and intention. To be fully human, we need stories. Humans have always passed down stories through an oral tradition, whether among families or communities. These tales create us as individuals and give us an identity as a people. When communities put their stories on paper, though, something changes. In Nicole…
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Grateful for Everything
For Everything in Our Lives Lyricist Bruce Findlow, in his song, “For All that Is Our Life,” said that we should offer “thanks and praise” for everything that happens to us. Whether it’s sorrow, failure, fear, or other pain we experience, we should be grateful. [1] He’s not the only spiritual teacher who has proclaimed this. For instance, Rumi, in his poem “The Guest House,” tells us to “welcome” everything that comes to us, and not just welcome it, but also “entertain” it. Each experience is a guest whom we should treat with hospitality. No matter if that guest is a sadness so deep it takes from us all the…
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Free Will and Microbes Among Us
Not Captains of Our Souls The more we learn about the creatures who inhabit this planet with us, the more obvious it seems that, regardless of what William Ernst Henley believed, we are not the captain of our souls, nor can we master our fate. [1] Yes, to some degree we can choose how to respond to adversity, and this is really what his poem is about. Written when he lay ill with tuberculosis and feared he might lose a foot, which was especially worrisome because he’d already had one leg cut off when he was sixteen, Henley’s poem honors his courage and his “unconquerable soul.” His words have inspired…
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Choosing Redemption, Choosing Life
Choosing Redemption Last month, while talking about forgiveness and redemption at the Recovery Church circle, the question came up of whether or not we can be redeemed from God’s love. Hearing that phrase, I imagined a demon bargaining with God to gain control of some poor peasant’s soul, as if God were in the business of buying and selling. Originally, redemption meant to buy back what one had sold. In ancient Mesopotamia, as Robert C. Ellickson and Charles DiA Thorland point out, life was precarious. Families were vulnerable to “crop failures, illness, and attack by pillagers.” [1] Families often had to borrow money, then were unable to pay it back.…