Yes, today I am back at work–still at home of course–but doing my thing remotely.
The gospel lesson yesterday was the loaves and fishes story in Matthew 14:13-21, a straightforward telling of one of Jesus’ miracles.
(I have been to this site near the Sea of Galilee where the loaves and fishes episode took place. I have the magnet to prove it.)
Five thousand fed and baskets of leftovers–all from five loaves of bread and two fish. There will always be enough if we share with our neighbors as Jesus commands us. Remember, Bunyan’s rhyme is true spiritually as well as providentially:
“There was a man and some did count him mad, The more he gave away the more he had.”
Here’s a sermon on the topic from Charles Spurgeon.
In other news, not much has happened on the homefront. We’ve had a lot of rainy days and so I haven’t ventured outside much and I haven’t seen the wee babes in weeks except for a brief visit when they dropped off my belated Mother’s Day present.
Thanks, guys!
I finally ‘drove my Cooper’ after three weeks of not in order to go to Michael’s for a curbside pickup. It was easy-peasy. We also took a drive to Lone Elk Park for something to do, but never saw a single bison. Ho hum. Par for the course.
FYI August is always “Summer Under the Stars” month at TCM, so there are lots of good movies to DVR this month. Olivia de Haviland has her day on August 23.
Try to enjoy your Monday.
*It’s home from work we go…(Frank Churchill and Larry Morey) The expression “heigh-ho” was first recorded in 1553 and is defined as an expression of “yawning, sighing, languor, weariness, disappointment”.
It is the last day of July. Baseball has (kind of) started and I can’t say I care much. But here’s a throwback from 1966 when our Big Brother was in 9th grade and played on the CODASCO “C” team.
They look so young. Our BB is in the front row, third from the right. His best friend is next to him in the middle of the row. He has at least 7 inches to grow! His other friend Mike is directly behind him (obscured) and had about a foot to grow! Such babes. Our brother played third base.
I remember going to see several Cardinals games at the old Busch Stadium with all three of those boys. It was always so much fun to be around them! Though pushing 70 now (!), they are still nice boys.
Well, besides looking nostalgically backwards, I have been reading more Lovejoy.
“Cheerful adversity is vaguely entertaining, but even friends steer clear of doom.”
(Gold By Gemini)
I also searched high and low for my copy of Knowing God, having read about the passing of J.I. Packer last week. I have yet to find by book, but I have read a lot about Packer and listened to an interesting interview with Packer and John Piper. Packer was an evangelical and a lifelong Anglican, someone with whom I can identify. He spent the first half of his life in England and the second half in Canada but was perhaps most popular in the United States. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential theological popularizers of the twentieth century. Like the Puritans he loved, Packer believed that the Christian faith is based on clear thinking while at the same time engaging the heart. According to Justin Taylor, he saw himself as “a voice that called people back to old paths of truth and wisdom.” His entire life was spent resisting the idea that “the newer is the truer, only what is recent is decent, every shift of ground is a step forward, and every latest word must be hailed as the last word on its subject.”
Knowing God was given to me in 1976 as a Christmas present by a young man at Williams College who was in a Bible study I attended. He was a little older than everyone because he had taken a year or two off to travel in Africa. He was certainly not your typical Williams student. He was the first person outside my family who recognized that I was perhaps spiritually deeper than the flakey chick most people saw. I’m not sure what became of Joe, but I’m pretty sure he was headed to divinity school. It is good to be reminded of such people–the ones who encourage and nudge you along the way.
We all have our coping mechanisms. People tend to credit me with being a very calm person, but let me tell you, that is only because I have been practicing/pretending to be calm for years. Indeed, I have become quite good at controlling my blood pressure, and if watching Steve McQueen drive very fast keeps me from crossing the line, so be it and yay me.
The thing is, metaphorically speaking, if SMcQ is the green Mustang, I am the green VW Bug that keeps turning up in this scene. Men like the OM wish they could be the Mustang, but I am content and happy to be the VW.
Lately I have been entertaining/calming myself by watching British war movies from the 1950s, mostly black and white ones starring John Mills and a host of great British supporting actors. I watched Dunkirk (1958) and TheColditzStory (1955), the latter which I had never seen. It is the true story of allied prisoners in Colditz Castle who made many attempts to escape captivity from the arrival of the first British prisoners after Dunkirk in 1940 until the liberation of the castle by the Americans in 1945. Colditz was a “special” camp, designed by the Nazis to hold high-risk and politically important prisoners.
Next on my list** is Reach For the Sky (1956), the amazing true story of RAF Group Captain Douglas Bader who, after losing both legs, flew a British fighter plane during WWII. He was also, coincidentally, a POW at Colditz.
Anyway, these are all good movies and I recommend them. Of course, if you prefer the Big Hollywood rendering, there is always The Great Escape (1963) which boasts a British cast and SMcQ.
Well, the point of this blog is to say that we all need to find our coping mechanisms during this more than usually difficult year and indulge in them. Hopefully you find some equally innocent and healthy way to deal with your stress. The following scene just says it all.
If that doesn’t help, maybe this little story from Henry Ward Beecher will:
I remember when I was a young person attending school in the vicinity of Mount Pleasant. One day I sat on the side of the mountain and watched a storm as it moved through the valley. The skies were filled with darkness, and thunder began to shake the earth. It seemed as though the lush landscape were completely changed, and its beauty gone forever. But the storm passed quickly and soon moved out of the valley.
If I had sat in the same place the following day and said, “Where is that intense storm and all its terrible darkness?” the grass would have said, “Part of it is in me.” The beautiful daisy would have said, “Part of it is in me.” And all the other flowers, fruits, and everything that grows in the ground would have said, “Part of the storm has produced the radiance in me.”
Have you ever asked the Lord to make you like Him? Have you ever desired the fruit of the Spirit and prayed for sweetness, gentleness, and love? If so, then never fear the fierce storms that even now may be blowing through your life. Storms bring blessings, and rich fruit will be harvested later.
(Henry Ward Beecher quoted in Streams in the Desert)
*Psalm 4:8
**These films are all available to rent on Amazon Prime for $2.99.
This weekend the wee babes came over to play while their Mommy went to the sofa store and the wee laddie found my toy Mini Cooper high up on a bookshelf (quelle eagle eye.) No amount of telling him that it was off limits would prevail, so I said, fine, play with it. (Am I becoming a push-over?) He played with “my Cooper,” along with his “special cars”…
…and his “special book”.
When it was time to go home, however, he made quite a scene when told the Mini Cooper had to stay at Mamu’s house. (I am not a complete push-over.) He was tired, but he put up quite a fight. Later when his Dad got home from work and asked him what he had done that day, he told him all about “my Cooper.” His Dad asked if he played with the Beanie Babies etc and he said, “Yeah, and I drove my Cooper. I love that car.”
I was glad that daughter #1 had come home for happy hour, so that she could help wrangle the nutballs. We deserved those margaritas we had when they left.
Later the OM ordered take out from Amigo’s and we watched The Pajama Game (1957) and sang along with Doris Day and John Raitt.
On Sunday morning I drove my Cooper to an estate sale where I got some needlepoint coasters (can a person ever have too many coasters?) and a book. Daughter #1 found some sewing paraphernalia. She headed back to mid-Mo soon thereafter.
I FaceTimed with the infant and her Mommy. Life is quiet and our joys are simple.
I leave you with these thoughts about Life from Frederick Buechner:
The Temptation is always to reduce it to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race. Amino acids. Even to call it a mystery smacks of reductionism. It is the mystery. As far as anybody seems to know, the vast majority of things in the universe do not have whatever life is. Sticks, stones, stars, space—they simply are. A few things are and are somehow alive to it. They have broken through into Something, or Something has broken through into them. Even a jellyfish, a butternut squash. They’re in it with us. We’re all in it together, or it in us.
Life is it. Life is with. After lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. “There is only one miracle,” he answered. “It is life.”
Have you wept at anything during the past year?
Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?
Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die?
More often than not, do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?
Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself?
If your answer to all or most of these questions is no, the chances are that you’re dead.
So another weekend is upon us. June is nearing its end! The year is already half over! Good grief.
But it is tiger lily season here in all its glory. And fireflies are back! Summer is definitely here in flyover country! I’ll toast that!
In other news, I liked what Paul Walker said in his daily devotional the other day:
Christ Church, Charlottesville, is taking its Sunday morning service outside this week. I don’t know if that means they will not be recording it. If so, I will miss them. But it is a good thing that more and more churches are getting back together in person. I salute them.
I liked this too, written by Sam Bush, who plays the guitar at the Christ Church services. (The bit by John Mulaney is pretty funny too. I haven’t watched SNL for 100 years.)
While rummaging in the basement, I found some smocked dresses made by my mother (and two store-bought) plus one made by my grandmother. I washed and ironed them this week and sent them to daughter #2 for Katiebelle.
Here’s Katiebelle’s Mommy wearing one of them!
I didn’t do anything else too interesting this past week. The OM and I watched Patton (1970)–all three hours of it!–and enjoyed it, but not that much. Patton ends on a depressing note. As usual, journalists come off badly.
We also watched The Train (1964) an American/French WWII film with Burt Lancaster getting to do all the physical stuff at which he excelled.
The story takes place in August 1944 when masterpieces of modern art stolen by the Wehrmacht are being shipped to Germany by train. The Nazi officer in charge of the operation is determined to take the paintings to Germany, no matter the cost (in other words, he’s a nut.) The French resistance members (led by Burt) save the paintings but at quite a loss of French lives, begging the question, is art worth human lives? The obsessed art-loving Nazi in this story would say, yes, without hesitation. But Burt doesn’t agree–very existential, and in black and white too (unlike the poster above, of course).
I will note that on this day in 1977 Elvis Presley held his final concert in Indianapolis, Indiana at Market Square Arena. We might want to watch an Elvis movie and raise a toast. Jailhouse Rock (1957) anyone?
Another week almost gone with the wind. They do go by. I had a busy week “at work” and I went to a Vestry meeting. Yes, the Vestry meeting was actually at church, in Albright Hall, where we sat 6 feet apart and wore masks. It was a little ridiculous, but at least we were together all in one place. It felt kind of normal. We are the only Episcopal Church in the diocese that is meeting together on Sunday and I am proud of our Rector who is jumping through a lot of hoops to do this. I have a feeling there are many ministers/priests who are sleeping through this period and glad of the excused absence.
I liked Paul Walker’s daily devotion (from Charlottesville) the other day, which read in part:
I also went to the dentist (high fives all around) and drove to pick up a Victorian chair I won on the online auction held at our local auction house. It is a needlepoint rescue and nothing special, but it felt good to be back in the game.
Of course, there has been much FaceTiming and cooing over our sweet Katiebelle. She has changed so much in her first week!
And look how confident DN is getting compared to 3 years ago when he practiced holding the wee babes.
The wee babes at six months are about the same size as Katiebelle at one week!
Meanwhile the OM and I have been watching The Last Ship, a series on Hulu that was originally aired on TNT back in 2014, about the crew of a U.S. naval destroyer that is forced to confront the reality of a new existence when a pandemic kills off most of the earth’s population. Timely, right? It stars Eric Dane and Adam Baldwin. We are enjoying it and I recommend it if you are in the mood for an action series that has some depth to it. And the leads are handsome.
We also watched 49th Parallel (1941), a British war film made by the Pressburger/Powell team with the help of Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier and Raymond Massey to help sway American opinion in favor of joining the war effort. It is pretty good and maybe it was considered tough stuff back then, but the Canadians seemed rather dim-witted and trusting next to the dirty Nazis who are trying to escape the RMP. I guess that was the point.
It was a busy week. Daughter #2 came home and between going to work, trips to the NICU at the hospital and an ice storm, we managed to trim the big tree
and watch Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). We even made several fires in the fireplace without the aid of our Eagle Scout who did come and help us wrangle the tree into the tree stand. Merci beaucoup.
Daughter #2 graded 29 papers and the OM gassed up the cars.
We went to church yesterday, the fourth Sunday in Advent, and sang the rest of the advent hymns. The rector gave us all high fives for showing up. In fact, a lot of churches were closed because of the weather and very cold temperatures. This is a new thing. On Saturday night you see the names of church closings scrolling on the bottom of your television screen, just like school closings during the week. [Insert eye roll here.] Please.
Today we will go back to work for a few days and visit the hospital and get ready for daughter #1’s arrival on Friday. And we will “rejoice! rejoice!” because, you know, “Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!”
No, that isn’t a saying originated by Neil Young (“it’s better to burn out than to fade away”). Indeed, this aphorism is attributed to quite a few people, but one of those people who firmly believed it was George Whitefield (1714–1770), an 18th century Anglican clergyman who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement, “The Great Awakening.”
It is said that Whitefield preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners in Great Britain and the American colonies. Impressive.
He is honored today, together with Francis Asbury, with a (lesser) feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church.
Francis Asbury (1745 – 1816) was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. In 1784 John Wesley named Asbury and Thomas Coke as co-superintendents of the work in America. This marks the beginning of the “Methodist Episcopal Church of the USA.”
For the next thirty-two years, Asbury led all the Methodists in America. Like Wesley, Asbury preached in all sorts of places: courthouses, public houses, tobacco houses, fields, public squares, wherever a crowd assembled to hear him. For the remainder of his life he rode an average of 6,000 miles each year, preaching virtually every day and conducting meetings and conferences. Under his direction, the church grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members and 700 ordained preachers.
Holy God, who didst so inspire Francis Asbury and George Whitefield with evangelical zeal that their faithful proclamation of the Gospel caused a Great Awakening among those who heard them: Inspire us, we pray, by thy Holy Spirit, that, like them, we may be eager to share thy Good News and lead many to Jesus Christ, in whom is eternal life and peace; and who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Boy oh boy, both the Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church could really use these two today.
Photo courtesy of the Missouri Dept. of Conservation
“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
We’ve quoted Bonhoeffer before on the subject of thankfulness, but can we ever say it often enough? Probably not. It is so central to our well-being.
November is a good month to take a look at the things for which we are thankful, so I plan to do that.
Meanwhile, here’s a poem by W.S. Merwin:
Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me
for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
And I am thankful for the flyover view.
“Grumbling and gratitude are, for the child of God, in conflict. Be grateful and you won’t grumble. Grumble and you won’t be grateful.”
―Billy Graham
dual personalities 