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Author: Tim

Senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ. Ordained in May, 1983. Called to First Congregational UCC in August, 1994. Retired July 1, 2018.
A different kind of communion

A different kind of communion

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This morning, in the meeting of our Deer Isle Writers’ Group, we were prompted to write about an animal encounter. This is what I wrote …

 

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving, exploring the cerulean waters of the remote Catalina cove.

I was there because of my father.  He came to mentor university students in the way of following Jesus and brought his family of five with him.  We had driven five days from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, then taken an hour shuttle across the bay to Avalon, where we were taken by launch to Gallagher’s Bay and Campus by the Sea.

Campus by the Sea was one of several summer leadership camps developed by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  There was also Bear Trap Ranch in Colorado and Cedar Campus in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Campus in the Woods in Ontario.  I had been to them all with my father, but Campus by the Sea was my favorite.

Because it was rustic and primitive and wild.  We slept in tents, one-room half-walled wooden platforms with tattered canvas roofs and no amenities: no kitchen, no shower or toilet, no running water at all.  We used outhouses and ate in a common mess tent and had to keep watch for rattlesnakes and wild boar.  I loved it.

I was there because of my father.  And I was there, in the water, because of my father.  At the age of four, he taught me to swim and the waters — the clear and soothingly warm waters of Sebago or Winnepesaukee or Saturday Pond, or the clear and exhilaratingly frigid waters of Prentiss Bay on Lake Huron or Dog Lake in Ontario or Penobscot Bay — have been like a second home, another realm for me to live in and move in and be in, ever since.

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving and exploring.  I spied something, something bright and shiny, maybe it was a bottle cap, on the bottom, five or six feet below me, and I dove for a closer look.  As I reached for that serendipitous treasure, I happened to look up.

And I saw and I was seen.

The truth of the matter was that I straightaway swam up and away in adrenaline-infused alarm, but that is not really the truth of the matter.  There was the moment of seeing and being seen, an almost timeless moment, sharing space, sharing consciousness, sharing being with something wild … almost endearing, almost a kind of communion, almost the making in that moment of a cross-species friendship, my face and its face just inches apart, I and the stingray.

What if snow were purple?

What if snow were purple?

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What if snow were purple or pink
          or robin’s egg blue
painting every spruce and fir with a pastel palette
          pleasing perhaps but pert too pert?

Or what if snow were burnt umber or raw sienna
          or van dyke brown
a seamless segue from November’s leaf-strewn landscape
          to the sucking sepia sloughs of March?

But snow is white wondrously winsomely white
          winter dressed like a bride
earth adorned in beauty and light
          a promise made and kept.

The Hill We Climb

The Hill We Climb

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Oh, my … What beauty, what grace, what truth, what timely words for this moment, for us …

Here is the text of the poem …

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

Relay

Relay

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I had an epiphany this morning.

I was running on the treadmill, listening to Louise Connell and Andrea Von Kampen on my Nano, mind wandering among memories of summer hikes in Baxter State Park and New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Acadia, when a sudden recollection of another run, another race, came into my head.

It was the spring of my sophomore year in high school. It was the season-ending Cape Ann league track meet hosted by my school, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. It was the meet’s final and deciding event, the mile relay. And it was the highlight of my brief career as track and field athlete.

In the mile relay, each of four teammates run a quarter-mile, once around the four hundred forty yard oval, passing a short metal baton from one runner to the next. I was selected by our coach to run the second leg.

The first leg was run by Neil Smith, another sophomore, a distance specialist, a miler. He ran a brave race, hanging tough with the sprinters. When he passed me the baton, our team was in third place, three or four yards out of second.

I turned and threw myself into a dead sprint. I shot past the runner in second place and fixed my eyes on the back of the runner in the lead. For fifty-three seconds, I saw nothing the back of his singlet, straining with everything I had to catch him. I closed the gap to three yards, but no closer, and as we came off the final turn and headed down the home stretch to where the next racers awaited us, I could push no harder and he began to increase the distance between us.

I do not remember the name of our third runner, but he blew away the rest of the field. When Dave Belton, our senior anchor, took the baton, he had a thirty yard lead and by the time he finished his lap, it was fifty. We won the race! We won the meet! It was an exhilarating, intoxicating, most proud moment.

And yet, over the years, the sweetness of my recollection of that race has been tempered by some doubt and regret. We won, but it was our third and fourth runners that brought us the victory. I failed to pass the lead runner. I closed the gap so quickly, but could not finish the job.

But I held my ground. That was my epiphany this morning. I held my ground. I held my ground and did my best. I did my job and put my team in a position to win. I didn’t win the race, but my team would not have won without me.

History is a relay. This moment in our nation’s history is a relay and we are the runners. I do not win or lose on my own. You do not win or lose on your own. But we must, each of us, hold our ground, give our best, do our job.

When we do, when we keep our eyes fixed on the prize, when we run the race, each of us, with everything we have, not giving up, pushing hard until the end, we will win.

We will win.

On Seeing the Half American Half Confederate Flag Waved above the Capitol Steps

On Seeing the Half American Half Confederate Flag Waved above the Capitol Steps

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          it broke my heart seeing the hybrid flag
chimera
          half stars and stripes half southern cross
unholy marriage
          of the promise of human liberty and the obscenity of human bondage
          as if the union Lincoln fought to preserve is no union at all but only a monstrous
amalgam of oxymoronic ideals
          or is my heart is breaking because that is
who we are?

A Christian Insurrection

A Christian Insurrection

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I recommend an article released this morning written by Emma Green for The Atlantic magazine, entitled A Christian Insurrection.  Ms. Green addresses similar concerns to those I raised yesterday in my blog post, Disturbing Images, namely the  confusion and distortion and degradation of the Christian witness brought about by an unholy alliance with a ungodly demagogue.  Her article begins,

The name of God was everywhere during Wednesday’s insurrection against the American government. The mob carried signs and flag[s] declaring JESUS SAVES! and GOD, GUNS & GUTS MADE AMERICA, LET’S KEEP ALL THREE. Some were participants in the Jericho March, a gathering of Christians to “pray, march, fast, and rally for election integrity.” After calling on God to “save the republic” during rallies at state capitols and in D.C. over the past two months, the marchers returned to Washington with flourish. On the National Mall, one man waved the flag of Israel above a sign begging passersby to SAY YES TO JESUS. “Shout if you love Jesus!” someone yelled, and the crowd cheered. “Shout if you love Trump!” The crowd cheered louder.

Shout if you love Jesus. Shout if you love Trump. As if the two belong on the same dais, merit the same praise, deserve the same allegiance. And notice which of the two received the greater acclaim. This is a dangerous confusion, a toxic conflation of loyalty to Jesus with loyalty to a political leader, a confusion which Mr. Trump has only encouraged. Recall what he said at a campaign rally in October …

A friend of mine said, you know, you’re the most famous man in the world. I said, no, I’m not. No, I’m not. No. He said, no, who’s more famous than you? You are the most famous man in the world. What are you talking about? Who’s more famous? I said, Jesus Christ.

[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

And I don’t want to take any chances, so I looked up and I said, and it’s not even close.

Mr. Trump defers to Jesus, but he is the one who dares raise the issue and speak his name and the name of Jesus as if they belong in the same conversation. Mr. Trump has said of himself, “I am the chosen one,” and also drew attention to the remarks of a radio commentator who claimed, “The Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.” Jesus himself warned his followers not to be fooled by such pretenders …

Watch out, and do not let anyone fool you. Many men, claiming to speak for me, will come and say, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will fool many people.

Ms Green’s article continues,

The group’s name is drawn from the biblical story of Jericho, “a city of false gods and corruption,” the march’s website says. Just as God instructed Joshua to march around Jericho seven times with priests blowing trumpets, Christians gathered in D.C., blowing shofars, the ram’s horn typically used in Jewish worship, to banish the “darkness of election fraud” and ensure that “the walls of corruption crumble.”

The Jericho March is evidence that Trump has bent elements of American Christianity to his will, and that many Christians have obligingly remade their faith in his image. Defiant masses literally broke down the walls of government, some believing they were marching under Jesus’s banner to implement God’s will to keep Trump in the White House.

Christians have remade their faith in his image. Shame! This is nothing more than idolatry. The peoples of this world are watching and it grieves me that when they see the name of Jesus lifted up, this is what they see.