O God of eternal love, we are here again needing your amazing grace. We’re half way through our Lenten journey, and to be honest some of us have lost our way. The distractions of life keep pulling us off track. There are taxes to do, gardens to prepare, and our houses, offices, and even our lives need a good spring cleaning.
Spring break isn’t long enough, and quite frankly we often come back from vacations more tired than when we left. Those school assignments or work deadlines are still lurking on our lap tops and in the back of our minds. Instead of focusing on what you would have us do for others we get turned in on our own fears and doubts about the future—concerns about our own health or the well-being of our loved ones.
Gracious Holy One, we know you have told us over and over again to put our trust in you and not in things that thieves or natural disasters can take from us. But we still have to buy expensive food and watch our retirement accounts shrivel up. Those fears are real, God. And they make it hard to trust in the future.
So we’re here seeking hope and assurance. We need forgiveness for the times we have strayed from the narrow path that leads to salvation and for the times when we self-righteously look down our noses at others who are just as lost as we are. Speak to us again your words of grace that tell us and show us that we can never wander so far that you can’t find us, for you are with us and your spirit is right within our hearts.
Remind us once more, O Holy One, that you are not the judgmental, angry God many of us grew up learning about, but you are the Good Shepherd, the mother hen, the eagle parents nurturing their young. You love us unconditionally forever. There’s no fine print, no preexisting conditions in the new covenant we have with you that was signed and sealed in Jesus’ own blood on Calvary’s cross.
So with grateful hearts we the people of your kindom reaffirm our trust and offer again the prayer Christ taught us to pray …
Art often speaks more profoundly about the challenges of life than ordinary words can convey. And just as often most of us don’t have ears to hear what the artists and visionaries are trying to tell us, at least until fiction becomes our reality. Among other dystopian prophets I am thinking of George Orwell’s “1984,” Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Or from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures Amos and other prophets pronounce judgment on their own people for their violation of their covenant with Yahweh. Here’s a sample from Amos:
“Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes, but they have been led astray by the same lies after which their ancestors walked. So I will send a fire on Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.
Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals— they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way;” (Amos 2:4-7)
Anyone tempted to bow down to the idol of Christian Nationalism would do well to ponder these warnings.
One of my favorite musicals has always been “Fiddler on the Roof.” Its theme of love conquering oppression never seems out of date and is all too relevant today. In fact when I thought about the symbolism of Fiddler I discovered that I wrote about it, not coincidentally, in 2019 during Trump’s first term. The parallels today are even more stark. In “Fiddler” the Jewish village of Anatevka is being forced to flee their beloved home because of Russian persecution. We are living through such terrifying times right now in our once beautiful democracy.
Here’s what I wrote about Fiddler during Trump 1.0: “Some of Fiddler’s insights are so good I am tempted to call it the Gospel according to Tevye. I was in a discussion the other day about praying for President Trump, and all of us present agreed we should and he certainly needs it. His erratic and delusional Messianic references to himself since then only confirm that conclusion.
One of the first things that came to my mind about praying for the President is a line from Fiddler where a Rabbi says this prayer: “God bless and keep the czar—far away from us.” On a more serious note I think one of the best parts of Fiddler is the opening where the title and its metaphor for life are explained.
“Away above my head I see the strangest sight A fiddler on the roof who’s up there day and night He fiddles when it rains, he fiddles when it snows I’ve never seen him rest, yet on and on he goes
{Refrain} What does it mean, this fiddler on the roof? Who fiddles every night and fiddles every noon Why should he pick so curious a place To play his little fiddler’s tune
An unexpected breeze could blow him to the ground Yet after every storm, I see he’s still around Whatever each day brings, this odd outlandish man He plays his simple tune as sweetly as he can
{Refrain}
A fiddler on the roof, a most unlikely sight It might not mean a thing, but then again it might!”
And then Tevye says, “A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!”
Our traditions of love, compassion, hospitality and justice are under attack, but they are the solid rock and anchor we can cling to in each and every storm; and if we do we will still be around after the perils of this present age are no more.”
Today in 2025 when the prospects of anyone stopping the fascist overthrow of our democracy seem pretty slim I need to amend that last sentence. I no longer am so confident “we will still be around” when this nightmarish storm is finally over. I continue to hope that enough Republican members of Congress will find the courage to stop the carnage. They are the only ones standing between us and a total dictatorship.
Just this weekend Trump has begun ignoring court orders to stop illegal deportations. He has also revoked pardons for some on his political enemies hit list that were issued by President Biden. Can the Fiddler keep scratching out a simple tune or has that metaphor shifted to fiddling while our democracy burns?
And most tragic to me is that it is not just democracy burning. Among his more than I can count acts of treason Trump has destroyed the departments and the international efforts dedicated to fighting climate change. Mother Nature is no respecter of political ideologies. Red and blue states are suffering the ravages of extreme weather disasters caused by climate change, and this administration simply doesn’t care. Trump, Musk and their billionaire class only care about personal wealth and power. But if we fail to preserve our only home in the universe nothing else is going to matter.
So here we are, and so far there is a thread of hope symbolized by a bunch of courageous protestors who are individually and collectively fiddlers on the roof, and the question hangs in the air now as it did in Anatevka:
“A Fiddler on the roof, a most unusual sight…. It may not mean a thing, but then again it might.”
I was not in the mood for Lent this year. With everything going on in the world and my own ever-nearing 80th birthday in just 19 months the last thing I wanted to hear was “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I already felt lost in the wilderness and didn’t think I needed to add any more of lostness to my weary soul.
But even good habits die hard and this annual tradition kept nagging at me; so my wife and I decided to attend our church’s Ash Wednesday service on line, and I’m very glad we did. On-line worship is not usually the best way to worship for me, but I am grateful for that option when I need it. The service at Northwest UMC on Ash Wednesday was an exception to the rule for both Diana and me. It was a very well done service that was contemplative, and being at our kitchen table with only candle light to illumine the room was ideal for that particular kind of worship.
Our church had provided packets for the service that included ashes and a small piece of clay. At one point in the service, after hearing the traditional Scriptures for Ash Wednesday read, we were asked to take the clay and form it into something symbolic that would have meaning for us during the 40 day journey of Lent.
We were give time to pray about that assignment while soft guitar music played. Thanks to the wisdom of several authors I’ve been reading in the chaotic days since January 20 (Richard Rohr, Kate Bowler, Diana Butler Bass, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Brian McLaren, and Sarah Bessey) my mind was led to think about the one constant and trustworthy thing in any time of crisis, namely God’s eternal love.
So I formed my clay into the symbol for infinity which always looks like an 8 lying down to me. Then as I had time to ponder that a little longer it came to me that what I was thinking and feeling was not just a mysterious concept of never-ending infinity or even in Buzz Lightyear’s famous quote “To infinity and Beyond.”
What I was trying to capture in clay was something quite tangible and real – Love. I’ve felt that love more powerfully than ever before through my family and friends who rallied around me during my health crises in the last 8 months. I discovered that my village is a lot bigger and deeper than I realized before. The ministry of presence took on a more beautiful meaning for me in the physical and spiritual companionship that surrounded me and got me through a wilderness journey of my own.
So I decided to shape one end of my clay infinity symbol into a heart (pictured above), and it is still sitting on the kitchen table to remind me several times a day that St. Paul got it right in I Corinthians 13:7-10 when he wrote: ” Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”
That worship experience was a much needed reminder for me of that eternal love which is the constant, solid ground under our feet even when the foundations of everything we thought we could trust are shaking like an earthquake, to borrow a phrase from the great theologian Paul Tillich. The Ash Wednesday service I didn’t think I wanted helped me to surrender a lot of the anger and frustration I’ve been dealing with about our current political crisis, and I am very grateful.
Today I put that picture of my clay symbol on my watch and phone as wallpaper to be an even more frequent reminder for me the power of eternal love.
A funny thing happened after that Ash Wednesday service. When my wife Diana looked at my art work she said, “I like your fish.” After I explained to her what I intended my symbol to be I realized that the fish is also a great symbol for eternal love. I was also reminded that art is also mysterious and can mean different things to different people at different times.
The fish symbol has been a Christian symbol for 2000 years because the early Christians used it as a secret code to identify themselves as Jesus followers to one another in a way that they hoped would not be recognized by their Roman persecutors. The origin of the symbol came from the Greek word for fish, Ichthus. It was and still is used because the letters of the word ichthus are the first letters of the Greek phrase “Iēsous Christos theou hy ios sōtēr”, which translates to “Jesus Christ Son of God Savior”.
So whether I see a fish or an infinity symbol when I see this piece of clay doesn’t matter. They both speak to me of God’s eternal love that will sustain me through these 40 days of Lent and through whatever the future holds until I return to dust and beyond. I hope it might do the same for you.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Jesus, Matthew 5:9
If you haven’t seen the video of the Trump-Vance vs. Zelensky “negotiations” in the Oval Office yet, please stop here and see it for yourself. Try to suspend whatever opinions about the encounter you have heard or read about from commentators, although I know that is hard to do. It is even harder to divorce oneself from personal bias, and if you have read any of my posts in the last few months you probably know my political bias. These thoughts however came to me as I watched the White House meeting live and before I had heard other commentary.
President Trump has said repeatedly and again today that he wants peace in Ukraine. By that he means he wants the killing to stop; he wants the credit; and he also wants to be paid back for what the U.S. has provided to Ukraine in the last three years, even though that was never part of the deal. The Biden administration and a bipartisan Congress gave armaments to Ukraine so they could defend themselves from a Russian invasion. Yes, Russia is to blame for this war, even though that is not the case in Trump’s alternative facts universe. The point here is that the military aid was a gift, not a loan. There is nothing to repay to the U.S. or the other nations who have supported Kyiv through these three long, bloody years. We did it because it was the right thing to do, period.
And yet here we are again with Trump trying to coerce a deal with Ukraine for some rare earth minerals in exchange for continued support just like he did in his first term when he tried to get dirt of the Bidens from Zelensky as pay back for U.S. support. That was the reason Trump was impeached the first time, remember?
So enter these three key players today – Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. I said to my wife as soon as I saw J.D. Vance was there that he had no business being there, and if Trump really wanted peace he would not have included his Vice-President in this delicate meeting. The inexperienced Vance has already insulted Ukraine and most of Europe in his disastrous speech in Munich a couple of weeks ago. He has so little political experience that his fellow Republicans called his Munich blunder “a rookie mistake.” So why have this rookie even in this critical meeting in the first place? Apparently so he and Trump could gang up on Zelensky, and in fact it was Vance’s intrusion into the conversation when the meeting was nearly over that set off the shouting match. Vance is the apprentice who should be fired.
Side bar: I heard later that someone had the audacity to criticize Zelensky for how he was dressed, saying it was disrespectful for him not to wear a suit and tie for this important meeting. Have you seen how Elon Musk dresses for cabinet meetings and other events in the Oval Office? Methinks Zelensky was set up to be ambushed from the get go, and that’s what bullies do, not what peacemakers do.
The other Scripture that came to mind as I watched is the very familiar passage from I Corinthians 13 where Paul says, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” Both our President and VP were boastful, arrogant, and rude. They both insist on their own way and keep records of every real or imagined wrong ever done to them. And let’s not forget the matter of truth. Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. has provided Ukraine $300-360 billion in aid when the real number appropriated by Congress is less than $200 billion. Trump was caught on video last week calling Zelensky a “dictator,” but when asked by a reporter Thursday if he still thought the Ukrainian president was a dictator, Trump straight-faced said, “Did I say that? I can’t believe I ever said that.” He never did answer the question. As for the demand from both Americans that Zelensky needed to be grateful for our aid the fact checkers tell us the Ukranian President has already expressed gratitude publicly over 30 times.
You will of course get two different assessments of how President Trump did in this made for television spectacle. His Republican allies loved his “tough” handling of Zelensky while his Democratic critics saw what transpired as a disaster for our country and for our former Western Allies. But here’s all you need to know about the impact yesterday’s events will have on the future of democracy. First, a Russian reporter was allowed into the oval office for this delicate meeting (which should have been held in private) so Trump’s reprise of his role in the Apprentice could be reported directly back to the Kremlin. Second, the loudest cheers for the Trump-Vance tag team performance came from Putin and his oligarchs in Moscow, and all the while the bombing and destruction of Ukraine continues into a fourth year.
My father and all the other brave men and women who risked their lives to defeat fascism in WWII are turning over in their graves.
Peacefully Harsh 