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Month: April 2006

mike nobel

mike nobel

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I had the privilege yesterday of meeting Mike Nobel and the privilege of hearing a group of talented and enthusiastic elementary school students perform some of his songs. Mike Nobel is a singer/songwriter/composer from Gorham, Maine, near the place in Maine we used to call home. When we still lived in Maine, my wife used his stuff with her primary students and my daughter grew fond of singing his songs at home.

Mike Nobel has produced a number of different collections of songs for school children: songs about smoking prevention, songs about abuse prevention. But the songs I know and love, the songs my daughter still sings are the songs from Color Me Green, a collection of songs about environmental awareness and environmental activism. Here’s an excerpt:
Color Me Green album cover

Come on people all around the world
Mommas and daddies, boys and girls
This old planet’s in a terrible state
Getting more polluted day by day

In every city, in every town
You gotta stand up (Stand up!) and look around
The earth is in trouble, you know that it’s true
Well this is the future talkin’ to you

You got to stand up (Stand up!) for mother nature
Stand up (Stand up!) for a greener future
Got to stand up! (Stand up!) Stand up! (Stand up!)
And help the world to be pollution free (Pollution free) Pollution free!

For the birds and the bees, for the fish in the sea
For the fuzzy little animals hiding in the trees
For the earth and the water, for the air we breathe
Don’t wait ’till we face an emergency

Hand to hand, and brain to brain
Little by little we can make a change
Across the nation, around the globe
Workin’ together, ’till everybody knows ….

You got to stand up (Stand up!) for mother nature
Stand up (Stand up!) for a greener future
Got to stand up! (Stand up!) Stand up! (Stand up!)
And help the world to be pollution free (Pollution free) Pollution free!

The music is fun and often exquisite; the message is powerful and passionate; and the subject matter — this beautiful earth, God’s good creation — is a subject near and dear to my heart! Thank you, Mike, for sharing your passion for the earth with us through your music. Thank you, Lynne, for bringing him to Iowa. Thank you, children of Price Lab School, for making the songs (and I hope the passion for the earth they express) your own!

You may find out more about Mike Nobel and his music at http://www.freewebs.com/mikenobel/.

fighting terror … a different way

fighting terror … a different way

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“I realize now how precious life is,” said Anthony Aversano, whose father, Louis, was killed in the World Trade Center. “How I fight the terror in me today is to live my life well.”

That quote comes from a Los Angeles Times account of the witnesses called yesterday by the defense team for Zacarias Moussaoui. Each of the six witnesses provides powerful personal testimony of a journey from grief to forgiveness, from fear to faith, of living the truth of Paul’s admonition in the letter to the Romans: Do not let evil defeat you; instead, conquer evil with good. They give me hope!

The article begins this way:

Defense attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui on Wednesday presented their own group of Sept. 11 victims, whose message of forgiveness was strikingly different from what had been heard in the courtroom so far.

None of the half-dozen defense witnesses — parents who lost children, a wife missing her husband, a son without a father — was asked whether the jury should spare the life of the admitted Al Qaeda terrorist. They spoke instead of the changes in their lives over the last 4 1/2 years and their refusal to, as one put it, “get caught up in a whirlpool of frustration and sadness and anger.”

Whereas family members testifying for the government had described broken lives and monumental despair, those called by the defense said they were finding ways to move past their grief …

Read the entire article: Families of 9/11 Victims Testify for Moussaoui, Los Angeles Times

william sloane coffin

william sloane coffin

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The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. died yesterday. Rev. Coffin was university chaplain during my time at Yale, and many years later has won my admiration as a genuine person of faith and a powerful voice for truth and justice and peace — God’s truth, God’s justice, God’s peace. The stories told about him and the stories told by him (see Credo, a collection of quotations and excerpts from his writing) have prompted me to do some serious re-examination of my self-understanding as a minister of the gospel.

A year ago, Yale Divinity School brought together Rev. Coffin and some four hundred of his friends, colleagues, and students to celebrate “The Public Witness and Ministry of William Sloane Coffin, Jr.” Here is an excerpt of the remarks given by Rev. Coffin at that event. I strongly suggest that you click on the link at the end of the excerpt and read the whole of his address! As Jesus’ followers and as Jesus’ church, we need to listen carefully to this voice of wisdom and courage and faithfulness.

Arthur Miller, of blessed memory, once wrote “I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.”

I feel the same way about religious faith; it should want to change the world. The “blood-dimmed tide” loosed in the last century claimed more lives than all wars in all previous centuries, and the present century is filled with violence and cruelty. We seem more intent on fighting God’s will than doing God’s will. Therefore, the most urgent religious question is not ‘What must I do to be saved?” but rather “What must we all do to save God’s imperiled planet?”

Spirituality takes various forms. In many faiths some are very profound while others, particularly these days, appear to be a mile wide and one inch deep. Urgently needed for our time is a politically engaged spirituality.

I believe Christianity is a worldview that undergirds all progressive thought and action. The Christian church doesn’t have a social ethic as much as it is a social ethic, called to respond to biblical mandates like truth-telling, confronting injustice and pursuing peace. What is so heart-breaking is that, in a world of pain crying out for change, so many American churches today are basically down to management and therapy.

A politically engaged spirituality does not call for theological sledgehammers bludgeoning people into rigid orthodoxy. Nor does it mean using scriptural language as an illegitimate shortcut to conclusions, thereby avoiding ethical deliberation. We have constantly to be aware of hard choices informed by the combination of circumstances and conscience. We insult ourselves by leaving complexities unexamined. But never must we become so cautious as to be moral failures …

Read the rest of Rev. Coffin’s address.

something worth waiting for

something worth waiting for

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We are impatient people. We are used to solving problems, not living with them. If we can’t solve the problem, we move on to something else. If we can’t “fix” the relationship, we move on to someone else.

But sometimes, things take time. Things like raising children, building character, growing faith, building trust. Sometimes, you have to wait to see how things turn out. Sometimes, in the long run, you see that all the pain and hard work and frustration and seeming failure were worth it after all.

And that’s just from our limited perspective! But what about God’s perspective? We fret about everything in our world that is not as it should be, and question God’s goodness in “allowing” such evil to persist. Is it possible that God is waiting … waiting for us to grow up, waiting for us to get it right, waiting for us to learn virtue and justice and love, instead of doing it for us? Is it possible that what we sometimes interpret as God’s indifference is really God’s patience?

That’s what faith is: taking the long view, seeing things from God’s perspective, putting trust — complete trust — in God’s wisdom and goodness, believing that the power that raised Jesus from death is indeed even now at work among us. We may not always see the results we want when we want them, but faith believes that God’s power is at work and will one day bring to us and to our world new life — a new life, a new existence, a new way of being, a new way of being with God — that will last forever! Now that’s something worth waiting for!

stoney

stoney

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puppyThe latest addition to my life … not anticipated, but many of life’s greatest joys are unanticipated. He found us, or rather he was found for us by our daughter! He came home with us ten days ago, and life hasn’t been the same since! Earlier to bed, earlier to rise, always needing to be attentive to the needs of this new member of the family … and much, much love and affection in return.

It has been a long time since we have had a dog — seventeen years. The interim has been spent raising creatures of the human sort! But we are glad to have him with us now, to be able to share our lives with him, and to discover new things and new places and new experiences along with him.

The energy and exuberance and eagerness of a puppy is an unmistakable reminder of the goodness of this life. God is most generous, providing for our enjoyment, entrusting to our stewardship, a world of such wonder and beauty. Run and jump, breathe and smell, taste and see how good it is! Let’s go!