“Glory to you for oceans and lakes, for rivers and streams. 

Honor to you for cloud and rain, for dew and snow. 

Praise to you for the Duwamish and Cedar and the glaciers that feed them;

for Longfellow and Fauntleroy Creeks, and the waters of the Salish Sea.

Your waters are below us, around us, above us: our life is born in you.

You are the fountain of resurrection.”

– Thanksgiving for Baptism

Beloved of God,

Rivers are on my mind these days.  And one river in particular: the Duwamish.  After reading BJ Cummings’ book:  THE RIVER THAT MADE SEATTLE: A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish, my eyes have been opened to the rich and tortured history of the Duwamish watershed and the people through time who have made it their home.  During the first three Sundays of this month we’ll be focusing our attention on the Duwamish and other watersheds and creatures that inhabit them, seeking to make connections to our faith lives during our SEASON OF CREATION: RIVERS.  And we’ll do so with the aid of special guests like watershed theologian John Rosenberg, author and river advocate BJ Cummings, and Duwamish Tribal leader and Superfund manager James Rasmussen.  We’ll go on a walking tour (June 12) along the Duwamish; we’ll visit Paulina Lopez of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition and learn about ongoing efforts to revitalize both the river and the communities that live adjacent to it.  Some of us will ply the river in kayaks and canoes!

The Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Skykomish, the Green, White, Black, Cedar and Tolt—these rivers have been ferrying fish, feeding fauna, and shaping the Westside landscape for many thousands of years.  The names themselves remind us that Native Communities had to come to terms with their seasonal behavior over thousands of years before new immigrants started calling this region home. The great rivers of this land not only return the rain and snow back to the sea, they are life-bringing highways, concentrating and distributing nutrients, feeding wildlife, irrigating crops, transporting fish, and shaping the landscape; they are the sources of the fresh water upon which all life—including our own—a depends.

In our short-sighted zeal to master rivers for human industry we have turned vital streams of life into noxious streams of death.  Industrial wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, prescription medications, leaking oil and sewage run off each contribute toxic ingredients to the mix, polluting the very marine estuaries that enable complex and complimentary life forms to thrive.  Earthkeeping calls us to a renewed understanding of our relationship to the rivers and waters of our region, and it all starts in our own backyard.  What is your relationship with the rivers and watersheds in the place you live?  This is what we’ll be exploring with the help of special guests over the first three weeks in June.

“Rivers,” says James Rasmussen, “are living things.”  The stories they tell are complex.  Our lives of faith are also complex, and too often have been lived at a remove from the natural world around us.  To be a living thing, faith must meet the challenge of the time in which it is lived.  Linkages must be made between our sacred traditions and the natural processes of the living planet we call HOME.  This is the great work of faith to which we are being called in our time.

Plenty has gone wrong with the Duwamish over the past 165+ years, culminating in the river becoming a Superfund cleanup site in 2001.  But as Eric Wagner points out, while the Duwamish may be a dirty river, a ransacked, violated and neglected river, it is not a dead river.  In his book, ONCE AND FUTURE RIVER: RECLAIMING THE DUWAMISH, Wagner writes:

“There is abundant loss and disconnection to be found.  Yet every time I settle into a kayak or wading boots and push off and away from the city’s hard ground, into the flow of  the Duwamish River, it feels like belonging… To see the evidence of injurious human choices that have been made during the past hundred years is to wonder what whose people were thinking and whether we are much different.  But to accept the evidence that wildlife and plants and people are at home on the river these days is to allow ourselves wonderment… In its present state, [the Duwamish] embodies the tensions between man-made and natural, between competing visions for the future, between dying and living.” [1]

I hope you’ll join us each week for this series—and tell a friend, too.

With you, on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Essay by Eric Wagner (University of Washington Press, 2016) https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/reclaiming-the-duwamish-river-is-about-reclaiming-ourselves-theres-a-lot-left-to-save/

“Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them out of the temple…

He told them, ‘Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”

– John 2:15-16

Pilgrims on the way,

Misplaced religious zeal has done much, through the ages, to dishonor the name Christian: The Crusades; the Inquisition; the witch trials; the religiously sanctioned system of racial caste; century upon century of wars in which confessors of Christ drew swords or fired weapons at one another across battle lines or, with weapons as instruments of “Manifest Destiny,” seized—as gifts from God’s hands—the lands and resources that had sustained New World peoples for thousands of years.  Such zeal continues, newly resurgent, in our own time—especially of the quasi-religious/political variety, as the Capitol insurrection of January 6 attests. All too often in the long history of humanity, being zealous has translated into being dangerous and destructive.

So we have good reason to be cautious when, partway through Lent, we come face to face with acts of zeal on the part Jesus himself.  Jesus goes to a Sacred Place, and finds instead a market place.  He sees how love of God has been replaced by a system of commerce makes relationship with God a transactional affair.  His reaction is immediate and visceral: Jesus is outraged  Filled with passionate zeal, he acts—tables fly, money scatters, and out comes a whip to drive the whole operation—man and beast—out of God’s House.  STOP MAKING MY FATHER’S HOUSE A MARKET-PLACE! he shouts.

Zeal is not a word we tend to want to associate with Jesus, much less our Lutheran selves.  Zeal may be OK for Pentecostals, or Southern Baptists. But Lutherans?  “Dogged”—that’s a good word; or “staunch.” Staunch Lutherans.  And maybe, on occasion, like our namesake Brother Martin, “bold.”  But we steer clear of “zeal,” don’t we?  And after the long history of zealous religion gone bad, we have a right—an obligation—to be more than a little cautious, don’t we?  Besides, living under the pressure of a pandemic, it seems that we have to hedge a bit on everything we do, even if that means chastening our faith’s bold feathers and clipping its sharp claws.

Here’s the question then: Is there any room in today’s church for the kind of ZEAL we see in Jesus, the kind of HOLY HAVOC that calls systems of injustice what they are and seeks to overturn them?  Is there a way to be zealous that doesn’t involve dehumanizing the other?  That doesn’t involve attacking or denigrating?  A way that doesn’t depend on violence to achieve its ends?

Nobel laureate (and Lutheran) Leymah Bgowee, who with other Liberian women—Christian and Muslim—started a movement that ultimately brought peace in their country after fifteen years of brutal civil war and the deaths of 200,000 people, tells her story in her memoir, Mighty Be our Powers.[1]  This is what she says:

“During the years that civil war tore us apart, foreign reporters often came to document the nightmare. [Their accounts] are all about the power of destruction [and inevitably focus on men.]  In the traditional telling of war stories, women are always in the background.  Our suffering is just a sidebar to the main tale… During the war in Liberia, almost no one reported the other reality—[the reality] of women’s lives.

• How we hid our husbands and sons from soldiers looking to recruit or kill them.
• How, in the midst of chaos, we walked miles to find food and water for our families.
• How we kept life going so that there would be something left to build on when peace returned.
• And how we created strength in sisterhood, and spoke out for peace on behalf of all Liberians.

“This [story I tell] is not a traditional war story.  It is about an army of women in white standing up when no one else would—unafraid, because the worst things imaginable had already happened to us.  It is about how we found the moral clarity, persistence and bravery to raise our voices against war and restore sanity to our land.”[2]

Read her story and then ask yourself, is not the zeal of Leymah Bgowee and the women in white who stared down unjust, self-serving war lords, who PRAYED THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL,[3] is not their zeal the very kind of zeal we find in our gospel?  The kind our world needs in order to get to a place it’s seldom if ever been?

Coming in the heart of Lent, Women’s History Month is an excellent time for becoming better acquainted with the lives and stories of women of faith who, like Leymah Bgowee, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, and on and on, lived out their calling with a zeal that was life-giving instead of life-taking.  You have names of your own to add to that list.  Some whom you know personally.  Some whom you aspire to know—and emulate.  According to the gospels, Jesus’ engagement in holy havoc set in motion his adversaries’ desire to be rid of him permanently.  What they couldn’t see is how the zeal that ultimately led to his death was a necessary step in midwifing God’s dream to birth.  What no one could see is that his death was not the final act but rather the prelude to what would take place “on the third day.”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Mighty Be our Powers (New York: Beast Books, 2011)

[2] Ibid.  Prologue, p. ix, x.

[3] A film by this title tells the story of the Liberian women for peace who successfully pressured their leaders to engage in peace talks.  Bill Moyers Journal featured Leymah Bgowee and the film’s producer Abigail Disney in an interview on June 19, 2009.  Find it @ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06192009/watch.html The film Pray the Devil Back to Hell can be purchased through this website: http://www.forkfilmsdvdsales.com/

Artist Ric Darrell, based on Zeffirelli film,
Jesus of Nazareth

“Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them out of the temple… He told them, ‘Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”

– John 2:15-16

Pilgrims on the way,

Misplaced religious zeal has done much, through the ages, to dishonor the name Christian: The Crusades; the Inquisition; the witch trials; the religiously sanctioned system of racial caste; century upon century of wars in which confessors of Christ drew swords or fired weapons at one another across battle lines or, with weapons as instruments of “Manifest Destiny,” seized—as gifts from God’s hands—the lands and resources that had sustained New World peoples for thousands of years.  Such zeal continues, newly resurgent, in our own time—especially of the quasi-religious/political variety, as the Capitol insurrection of January 6 attests. All too often in the long history of humanity, being zealous has translated into being dangerous and destructive.

So we have good reason to be cautious when, partway through Lent, we come face to face with acts of zeal on the part Jesus himself.  Jesus goes to a Sacred Place, and finds instead a market place.  He sees how love of God has been replaced by a system of commerce makes relationship with God a transactional affair.  His reaction is immediate and visceral: Jesus is outraged  Filled with passionate zeal, he acts—tables fly, money scatters, and out comes a whip to drive the whole operation—man and beast—out of God’s House.  STOP MAKING MY FATHER’S HOUSE A MARKET-PLACE! he shouts.

Zeal is not a word we tend to want to associate with Jesus, much less our Lutheran selves.  Zeal may be OK for Pentecostals, or Southern Baptists. But Lutherans?  “Dogged”—that’s a good word; or “staunch.” Staunch Lutherans.  And maybe, on occasion, like our namesake Brother Martin, “bold.”  But we steer clear of “zeal,” don’t we?  And after the long history of zealous religion gone bad, we have a right—an obligation—to be more than a little cautious, don’t we?  Besides, living under the pressure of a pandemic, it seems that we have to hedge a bit on everything we do, even if that means chastening our faith’s bold feathers and clipping its sharp claws.

Here’s the question then: Is there any room in today’s church for the kind of ZEAL we see in Jesus, the kind of HOLY HAVOC that calls systems of injustice what they are and seeks to overturn them?  Is there a way to be zealous that doesn’t involve dehumanizing the other?  That doesn’t involve attacking or denigrating?  A way that doesn’t depend on violence to achieve its ends?

Nobel laureate (and Lutheran) Leymah Bgowee, who with other Liberian women—Christian and Muslim—started a movement that ultimately brought peace in their country after fifteen years of brutal civil war and the deaths of 200,000 people, tells her story in her memoir, Mighty Be our Powers.[1]  This is what she says:

“During the years that civil war tore us apart, foreign reporters often came to document the nightmare. [Their accounts] are all about the power of destruction [and inevitably focus on men.]  In the traditional telling of war stories, women are always in the background.  Our suffering is just a sidebar to the main tale… During the war in Liberia, almost no one reported the other reality—[the reality] of women’s lives.

• How we hid our husbands and sons from soldiers looking to recruit or kill them.
• How, in the midst of chaos, we walked miles to find food and water for our families.
• How we kept life going so that there would be something left to build on when peace returned.
• And how we created strength in sisterhood, and spoke out for peace on behalf of all Liberians.

“This [story I tell] is not a traditional war story.  It is about an army of women in white standing up when no one else would—unafraid, because the worst things imaginable had already happened to us.  It is about how we found the moral clarity, persistence and bravery to raise our voices against war and restore sanity to our land.”[2]

Read her story and then ask yourself, is not the zeal of Leymah Bgowee and the women in white who stared down unjust, self-serving war lords, who PRAYED THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL,[3] is not their zeal the very kind of zeal we find in our gospel?  The kind our world needs in order to get to a place it’s seldom if ever been?

Coming in the heart of Lent, Women’s History Month is an excellent time for becoming better acquainted with the lives and stories of women of faith who, like Leymah Bgowee, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, and on and on, lived out their calling with a zeal that was life-giving instead of life-taking.  You have names of your own to add to that list.  Some whom you know personally.  Some whom you aspire to know—and emulate.  According to the gospels, Jesus’ engagement in holy havoc set in motion his adversaries’ desire to be rid of him permanently.  What they couldn’t see is how the zeal that ultimately led to his death was a necessary step in midwifing God’s dream to birth.  What no one could see is that his death was not the final act but rather the prelude to what would take place “on the third day.”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] Mighty Be our Powers (New York: Beast Books, 2011)

[2] Ibid.  Prologue, p. ix, x.

[3] A film by this title tells the story of the Liberian women for peace who successfully pressured their leaders to engage in peace talks.  Bill Moyers Journal featured Leymah Bgowee and the film’s producer Abigail Disney in an interview on June 19, 2009.  Find it @ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06192009/watch.html The film Pray the Devil Back to Hell can be purchased through this website: http://www.forkfilmsdvdsales.com/

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies…”

– Romans 8:22-23

Companions on the Way,

February is a bridge month, split between the brilliant light of Epiphany and the ensuing descent into Lent.  The last burst of Epiphany comes in a mountaintop vision of a transfigured Jesus holding council with Moses and Elijah—stand ins for Israel’s covenant and prophetic traditions.  Dazzled by the light, the three awestruck disciples who’ve made the hike with Jesus struggle to understand what it all might mean.  Peter finally settles on the idea that they ought to set up tents and stay awhile—why not let the adulation sink in!  He mistakes the martyr’s white Jesus is wearing for party attire.

I don’t blame Peter.  After all the day-by-day slogging through fear, loss, trauma and fickle internet connections the pandemic has brought upon us for twelve months running, I’m eager for a celebration, too!  The vaccines are beginning to do their thing, to slowly turn the tide.  But there is no magic by which we will be transported back to our pre-pandemic lives.  Even when the road ahead is lined with hope, the losses are real and close at hand; no inoculation can sweep them away. The bridge we cross this month moves us off the stage of luminous light and points us down the hill to the road leading to Jerusalem.  Over the threshold of that bridge are the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Never, in this generation, have these words bespoke such truth.

In a prose poem entitled WARNING TO THE READER, Robert Bly writes:[1]

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.

But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat’s hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!

I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed . . .
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor . . .

On the Mount of Transfiguration, limned by such awe-full light, one could imagine—as the disciples did, as the birds in Bly’s poem did—that in those slats of light lies freedom!  But the downward wending trail of Lent testifies to the deeper truth: the only way out is down and through—through the rat’s hole.  The only true gateway to resurrection is the cross.

Our hope for this life and the next, finally, comes not from any power we have nor attribute we possess, but from trusting that we do not journey alone.  Christ journeys with us; we have each other; and are accompanied by the Spirit “who intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  And that, dear ones, is enough.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] From his collection, What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) p. 65

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

– Philippians 4:8-9

Dearly Beloved,

It all started with an older gentleman who pulled up to the Dairy Queen drive-through in Brainerd, Minnesota, at the height of the lunch hour.  “I’d also like to pay for the car behind me,” he told the cashier.  “Whatever they’ve ordered, I’ll cover it.”  Darla Anderson rang up the two orders and thought that would be the end of it.  But two days and hundreds of cars later, she and the rest of the crew were still ringing up “pay it forward” orders as each person who came to the drive-through offered to pay for the car behind them.  “I’ve seen ‘pay it forward’ chains that went on for about 20 cars, but never anything like this,” said store manager Tina Jensen.  In the end, the chain spanned more than 900 cars over 2½ days. [1]

After a year filled with news assaulting us at every turn with stories of selfishness, injustice, violence, and the ever widen­ing effects of the pandemic, reading this story in the paper was balm for my soul.  Nothing earth shattering.  Nothing that will turn the tide on the coronavirus or wipe away systemic racism.  Yet, a sign that it is still possible to choose to “pay it forward” in the best sense of the phrase, rather than to choose revenge or “pay back.” The fact that 900+ cars over multiple days partici­pated in what one single man initiated says something about how hungry we are for acts generosity and simple signs of hope and caring.  As far as I know, the gentleman who started it all didn’t check with the occupants of the car behind him to see whether they shared the same politics as himself before he paid for their meal; he didn’t quiz them about their faith stance, where they came from, or other features of their biography, in order to ascertain whether they DESERVED a free lunch or not.  He simply gave freely, graciously—gratis.  And his so doing, inspired others to do the same.  Generosity became contagious on that day.

The words with which Paul closes his letter to the Philippians (above) seem an appropriate way for us to begin this new year.  Instead of dwelling on what is incomplete in ourselves and wrong in the world, Paul says, train your thoughts on the higher virtues, higher goals.  And don’t just go there with your mind—let your feet, your hands, your hearts come along, too. “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

In his reflection for January 1st, Father Richard Rohr wrote something that gives me great hope.[2]  “Even after fifty years of practicing contemplation,” he writes, “my immediate response to most situations includes attachment, defensiveness, judgment, con­trol, and analysis. I am better at calculating than contemplating.  A good New Year’s practice for us would be to admit that that most of us start there.” I find his utter transparency inspiring.  When he goes on to talk about his “hour-by-hour battle” to embrace the True Self, which is always controlled and blinded by “the defensive needs of the separate self,” I nod my head in recognition.  Then he goes on:  “I cannot risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers… The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of divine intimacy is really all I have, and all I have to give, even though I don’t always do it.”  In this second gaze, which God ever invites us into, “critical thinking and compassion are finally coming together,” allowing us to see the other “with God’s own eyes, the eyes of compassion.”

When Rohr, a fellow Christian I admire, speaks freely about his own limitations and God’s constant invitation to taste and see God’s goodness and compassion, then there is hope for me!

I expect no miracle cures for myself or the world in 2021.  But I hold fast to the promise that the One who chose to pitch his tent among us in Jesus will continue to companion us along the way, inviting us to “pay forward” with no small measure of delight the undeserved favor we have received from his hand.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] See the article by Cathy Free in the 12/14/20 edition of the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/12/14/dairy-queen-drive-thru-chain/

[2] You can find his full reflection here: https://cac.org/the-second-gaze-2021-01-01/?utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dm&utm_content=summary

Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live!” 

– Ezekiel 37:9

Dearly Beloved,

As November arrives, there’s a deep sense that we Americans (and others around the world) are holding our collective breath as we await results from the most contentious election season in our lifetimes.  With so much at stake, there is plenty to keep us up at night contemplating alternative futures.  My bedtime reading over the last month has been a book entitled: BREATH – The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor.[1]  It’s a fascinating read that relates the history of breathing as told by the skulls of our evolutionary forebearers, explores breathing traditions and techniques from cultures ancient and contemporary, unravels why we modern day human beings are plagued with so many breathing-related illnesses, and offers concrete suggestions for dealing with—among other things—snoring and sleep apnea.  Here’s one teaser on why nose breathing is better than mouth breathing:  “The nose filters, heats and treats raw air. Most of us know that. But so many of us don’t realize — at least I didn’t realize — how [inhaling through the nose] can trigger different hormones to flood into our bodies, how it can lower our blood pressure … how it monitors heart rate … even helps store memories. So it’s this incredible organ that … orchestrates innumerable functions in our body to keep us balanced.” [2]

Since I began reading Nestor’s book at bedtime, I’ve dedicated myself to being more conscious about my breath, and becoming a concerted nose breather. (Survey my family and you’ll find them weary of my daily enjoinder: “Remember to breathe through your nose!”) Thus far, I can say without a doubt that this new habit has me reaping benefits!

Over the past two months Nestor’s insights into breathing have become more profound as I’ve contemplated the impact COVID-19 has on the lungs of its victims and the deadly refrain uttered by victims of police brutality—“I can’t breathe!”  My reflections took on an even more personal dimension when I learned in September that my brother Peter, after years of declining lung capacity, was taking steps to become eligible for a lung transplant.  On the heels of having his eligibility confirmed mid-October, he received word that a compatible set of donor lungs was available.  The transplant surgery took place on Reformation Sunday while we were in the midst of Live Stream worship. One of the many challenges Peter faces as he recovers is learning to breath more deeply.  Coughing hard is a necessary and critical regimen which will help him do that.  (Your prayers that Peter cough harder and inhale deeper each day are solicited and appreciated!)

In the Valley of Dry Bones story from the book of Ezekiel, the bones of God’s people cry out in despair, “Our hope is lost; we are cut off completely!”  With COVID-19 cases once again surging; with mounting evidence that the results of the November 3^rd election will be contested; with the cumulative cannibalizing effects of administration policies upon the health of air, land, and sea[3] and the institutions essential to our democracy, it would be easy for us to arrive at a place of despair—OUR HOPE IS LOST!  OUR BREATH IS GONE!   But for we who place our trust in THE ONE whose animating breath brings even dry, desiccated bones back to life, giving up is not an option!  No matter what may transpire on November 3^rd, we are not alone!  We are part of a community, a great procession of God’s people through time, who have held up—and been held by—the stories and testimonies of God’s faithful accompaniment in their lives, come what may.

Last week, as I prepared for All Saints Sunday worship, I found a painting by John August Swanson that spoke of the vast community of saints, past and present, who walk beside us on this pilgrimage of life.  Immediately, I wanted to use his painting for the cover of our All Saints worship guide. The painting is entitled THE PROCESSION.  When I called the phone number given on the artist’s website to inquire about permission to use the art in our publications, who should answer but Mr. Swanson himself.  What followed was a delightful conversation in which we spoke of his work, discovered personal connections, and talked about art’s role in providing new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.  Of his work, THE PROCESSION, Mr. Swanson says:  “The places that inspired this image are the beautiful cathedrals I have seen in Europe and Mexico… sacred places used for procession.  There are sacred places throughout the world for all beliefs, places that have special meaning in the lives of people who journey to get there.  We, in our communities of faith, are a procession of stories, stories both unique and shared, stories connected to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us.”  Theologian Alejandro Garcia-Rivera says that when we imagine ourselves being part of this great PROCESSION, we begin to realize that “our story is part of a larger story, a Big Story of Heaven coming to Earth and bringing forth new life.” ⁴

In the times such as these, when we find ourselves holding our collective breath, God’s Spirit becomes present among us. This SPIRIT—literally God’s BREATH—awakens us to the PROCESSION God is leading and calls us to seize upon the invitation to join it once more.  For to be part of this PROCESSION is to be numbered among that great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language,  which is making their Way to where “all things are being made new.”

We cannot choose the times and circumstances in which we live, nor determine on our own the outcomes of elections.  But we can choose to gird ourselves with hope and to walk the WAY Christ showed us, even when the odds are against it.  Historian Howard Zinn, author of The People’s History of the United States, puts it this way: “What we choose to emphasize in [our] complex history will determine our lives.  If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.  If we remember those times and places…where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act…  And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.  The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 

We’re all in the procession together—so let us BREATHE DEEPLY, ACT BOLDLY, LOVE FULLY!

Pastor Erik

[1] You can find Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interview with Nestor HERE.

[2] Nestor has a whole section linking nose breathing to a reduction in the need for orthodontic intervention.

[3] The latest casualty: the Tongass National Forest, America’s last “climate sanctuary” and the “lungs of North America.” https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/trump-to-strip-protections-from-tongass-national-forest-among-worlds-biggest-intact-temperate-rainforests/

[4] You can find the painting and his commentary on it, with quotations used here @: http://www.johnaugustswanson.com/default.cfm/PID%3d1.2-22.html

“I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat.” – Matthew 25:35

Beloved of God,

October is a harvest month.  The pumpkins and squash are getting rip, the last of the summer garden produce is being harvested, fresh apples are being picked and making their way to the market.  It’s time for “bringing in the sheaves”—the harvested grain—a sign of God’s providence and plenty.   Our family has long had a tradition of traveling to Jubilee Farm  in the Snoqualmie Valley to join in making fresh apple cider, ride in a wagon behind a team of horses to the pumpkin patch, and witness the hourly hurling of the sacrificial pumpkin using the farm’s famous trebuchet. What fun!  We come back each year with renewed appreciation for what the good Earth produces and for those who work that fertile land so that others may eat.

Yet, in the midst of this time when we celebrate Nature’s plenitude, as Bishop Shelley Wee notes in her column below, nearly 1 in 8 families in our country doesn’t have enough to eat.  The pandemic has only increased the “food insecurity” that many had already been experiencing.  There are a number of ways we can respond to this.  One is through our steady relationship with the White Center and West Seattle Food Banks, both of which have seen a huge uptick in demand since last spring.  Our last Sunday of the month collection of food during worship isn’t an option right now.  The Seafarers Garden helps to fill the gap.  In addition, our AGAPE FUND serves people in desperate need through grocery gift cards as well as other funds for bridging a gap when no other resources are available.  You can read also ready about the importance of ADVOCACY via the Offering of Letters campaign in the pages that follow.  And now, there is another avenue for reaching out:  THE LITTLE FREE PANTRY.

Over a few weekends in August and September, a crew of Peacefolk, using materials donated from Dunn Lumber (arranged by Karl Coy), and seed money from a Thrivent Action Grant, constructed a free-standing, moveable, weatherproof pantry for the neighborhood and anyone in need.  When God calls us to care for the neighbor, God provides what we need to fulfill that call.

Look for the pantry on our westside patio soon!

With you, on the Way.

Pastor Erik

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

– Matthew 16:21

Beloved of God,

I don’t know about you, but our household is approaching September and the resumption of Fall schedules  with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.  In a normal year we’d be shopping for back to school clothes and classroom supplies.  Not this year.  In a normal year there’d be excitement about reconnecting in person with friends, and swapping stories about summer adventures.  Not this year.  In a normal year we’d be anticipating school bus schedules, marching band performances at football games, ultimate frisbee tournaments, music concerts, fall festivals and auctions.  Not this year.  September feels decidedly different.  The same is true for the life we share as Peace Lutheran community.  We’re being forced to adapt normal rhythms to new realities, hoping that—at the end of the day—it won’t simply feel inferior.  The excitement and anticipation we experienced one year ago as we counted down the weeks to our 75^th Anniversary Celebration seems like a lifetime ago.  I can’t tell you how often I have offered prayers of thanksgiving that this milestone landed in the fall of 2019 and not in 2020!

Each fall, it’s been our custom here to mark special emphases on a half dozen Sundays—from Rally Sunday to St. Francis’s Feast Day, to Offering of Letters Sunday, Reformation, All Saints, and Christ the King.  What will things look like this year, with in-person worship not be an option for the foreseeable future?  As I write, our worship planning team is in the thick of addressing this question.  One thing’s for certain—though our worship life this Fall may not resemble what we’re used to experiencing, our faithful Lord will continue to show up—and unleash creative gifts, via the Spirit, among us.

In recent weeks, Fr. Richard Rohr has focused his daily meditations on what he calls “the universal pattern” that connects and solidifies our relationships with everything around us.  This pattern, he says, begins with ORDER, moves into DISORDER, and finally to REORDER.^[1]  The laws, rules, and traditions we inherit help to establish the sense of safety and identity which is the rightful first focus on our life journey, but these cannot deliver the deeper meaning we long for.  “Sooner or later some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our lives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired knowledge, or our…will power. We must stumble and be brought to our knees by reality…we will and must ‘lose’ something.”  This is, Rohr writes, “the necessary pattern.” Only by being forced out of the driver’s seat can we set our feet onto the further and larger journey.

In many ways, this is what’s happening to our lives right now—individually and collectively—as the pandemic, our nation’s racist foundations, a contentious election year, and nature’s warning alarms push us further and further into DISORDER.  There is no work-around for this process; no shortcuts that can get us from ORDER to REORDER without going through DISORDER.  The only way forward for Jesus was through—through disorder, through suffering, through rejection, through death.  Only then was the stage set for resurrection—the ultimate expression of what the final stage—REORDER—is about. Having been down that road, Jesus is perfectly positioned to be our guide as we put one foot in front of the other through these uncertain times.

Being bound to him in baptism means we can count on the chaos of DISORDER intruding into our story, as it did his.  But we can also trust that DISORDER is not the final place where this unfolding story is meant to rest.  The courage we gain from having him as our companion enables us not to flee the DISORDER, but to call it out, to name it, to see it clearly; and then to commit ourselves to respond with compassion and justice—holding both together as Jesus himself did.

With you on the Way, Pastor Erik

[1] You can find Richard Rohr’s daily reflections on this topic here: https://cac.org/order-disorder-reorder-part-two-weekly-summary-2020-08-22/

There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces…but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.  – 1 Kings 19:11b-13

Beloved of God,

For many of us, living through the pandemic has meant letting go of life rhythms we’ve known and counted on—people, places, and habits that once grounded us.  This letting go, for some, has led to significant isolation; while for others it’s led to the rediscovery of walkable neighborhoods and creative ways of staying connected.  Our family has particularly enjoyed brief camping forays to Lutherwood and elsewhere, and physically distanced backyard dinners with friends.  The safety calculus—avoiding the virus—has become the dominant lens for all of us.  And while there are many things we miss—for me in-person Sunday worship is first among many; even at its best, live stream worship is no substitute for being with the physically gathered community!—we have grown accustomed to our forced flexibility.  And perhaps are less apt to take things for granted.

Where do we expect to find God these days?  How do we expect God to show up for us? 

The Scriptures record many stories of how, through the ages, people and prophets have had to come to terms with new ways of understanding who God is and how God might show up among us.  The quote above comes from the story of the prophet Elijah, whose battle against Israel’s worst king on record—King Ahab—and his evil wife Jezebel had taken its toll.  Even after pitching a shutout against the 450 priests of Baal in one of the most celebrated contests recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, (check it out—1 Kings 18:20-40) Elijah was feeling more vulnerable than confident.  So when, in the aftermath of that encounter, Queen Jezebel puts a bounty on his head, Elijah flees for his life, journeying 40 days and 40 nights to the holy mountain of God – Horeb. Elijah arrives there feeling depressed, defeated, fearful and alone.  He wonders whether all his efforts for God’s sake have been for naught.  Exhausted, he crawls into this cave and he waits for a sign.[1]

There’s a lot packed into this story, into what precedes it and what comes after it, but three verses captured my attention this week.  Elijah is commanded: “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”  And so Elijah, bone weary, looks toward the mouth of the cave.  This is what happens next:

There was a great wind, so strong it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind;

and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake;

and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire;

and after the fire, a sound of sheer silence…

It’s when Elijah hears that SILENCE—so deep, so pervasive that it tugs at his ears—that he wraps his mantle around his head, crawls to the mouth of the cave, and he stands up before the LORD. Elijah has been around God long enough to learn that God may just show up in ways we least expect—not through outsized events or huge natural phenomenon or feats of strength, but in the form of sheer silence (RSV: “still small voice”).

The answer to the question: WHERE WILL GOD SHOW UP FOR US DURING THE PANDEMIC? may surprise us.  The story of Elijah invites us to not come to conclusions too quickly about where we can find God, but to remain open to how and where we see God manifested during this vulnerable time. To listen for that “still small voice” which can only be heard when we learn to filter out all the other loud, boisterous, public, competing voices which vie for our attention.

With you, on the Way.

Pastor Erik

[1] Sidebar: Some of the ancient manuscripts, in verse 9, call it “a cave” where Elijah found refuge. That’s how it’s translated in the NRSV.  But others name it “the cave”; definite article  What’s the difference?  The first version suggests it was any old cave.  Version two suggests that this could be the very cave where Moses hid when we saw the backside of God.  See Exodus 33:17-23.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; 

then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

– Matthew 13:44

Beloved of God,

Massive shifts are under way in our society and world, and it remains to be seen how it all will sort out.  As we mark Independence Day, the symbols and sound bites that traditionally accompany our celebrations—like phrase “liberty and justice for all”—are sounding differently on our ears. The Black Lives Matter movement and the question of how or whether to “defund” police department budgets; the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases around the nation and the ongoing economic turmoil that attends the pandemic; the looming election; the question of what school and college education will look like in the fall—the list goes on and on.  It’s too much, really.  With no relief in sight.  What are we to do?

Reinhold Niebuhr, the great mid-20^th century theologian, who became known for an approach of Christian engagement in the world known as Christian realism, once articulated the human task this way:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. (The Irony of American History)

While personally and collectively we are called to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6), we must understand that our conclusions and actions our neither perfect or pristine.  Shades of grey cover the field.  Motives are mixed.  Hazards abound.  We cannot see clearly.  Yet, choices must be made.

Thomas Merton, in a letter he wrote to young activist named James Forest, says it this way:

“Do not depend on the hope of results.  When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no results at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.  As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself.  And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people.  The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real.  In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything. . . The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.  If we can do God’s will, we will be helping out in the process.  But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand.” (1st Vol. of Merton’s Letters).

Personally, I’m going to try to channel a bit of the wisdom that I picked up from a dear colleague of blessed memory, and recommit myself to being a less anxious presence in a world turn asunder by turmoil.  I have a notion that, focusing first on that task, I’ll be more likely to stumble upon that treasure hidden in a field.

With you, on the Way.

Pastor Erik