Wailing and Loud Lamentation #67

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Government Reform

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.”  Mass killing in Bethlehem, Mathew 2:18

67 for 45.  If that was batting average or shooting percentage or my record playing Wordle it would be truly amazing!  Unfortunately after the latest gun violence insanity 67 is the number of mass shootings in our gun-crazed country in the first 45 days of 2023.  How can we not be outraged or at least motivated to do something by this unbelievable statistic?  Because it is just that, another statistic that doesn’t move us because we have become desensitized by the frequency of these stories.  These dead and maimed young people have become just another number and not real live human beings leaving parents, grandparents, and siblings to mourn.

Even more tragic is the fact that the numbers of those who are actually killed or wounded by weapons of war are just the tip of the iceberg.  Hundreds or thousands are traumatized by living through and surviving these attacks.  Young people have seen and felt their friends and classmates bleed out in their arms.  One of the survivors last night in East Lansing had been through an active shooting nightmare in high school in Oxford, Michigan, and another almost unbelievably was a student at Sandy Hook elementary on the day the students and teachers there were used for target practice nearly 11 years ago.

And what are our brilliant “leaders” in D.C. doing about this plague?  Of course, they are taking partisan pot shots at each other over anything and everything instead of actually addressing the problem.  No matter how futile it seems I will write yet another letter to my senators and representative to let them know how I feel about this, and I would urge all who read this to do the same.  It may not make a bit of difference, but who knows when it might. 

I am especially sad about this recent incident because my father died 5 years ago this week, just two days before 17 students were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  When I went back to read what I had written about my dad that week I also found several posts about the students at that high school and what they were doing to demand changes in gun safety legislation.  They were so articulate and passionate that I wrote hopefully about what they might do to change things that my generation has failed to address.  But five years later nothing has changed, except the killings are becoming more frequent; more than 1.5 mass shootings per day is just unacceptable.  If we keep up that pace for the rest of 2023 we will have over 1800 mass shootings this year.  That’s 152 per month!  Are those more statistics that don’t mean anything?

I know there are a majority of us in this country who are in favor of common sense gun regulations like universal background checks and reinstituting the assault weapon ban.  We live in a democracy.  If a majority of us want something done that should make a difference.  But this is a complex problem.  Until we fix gerrymandered Congressional districts; until we fix campaign financing laws so special interests like the gun lobby can’t buy senators and representatives things are not going to change.  We the people are not going to have our voices heard on Capitol Hill until Citizens United is overturned, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court I know that isn’t likely to happen in my life time, and that really pisses me off.  But beneath my anger is a spark of hope that will not be hidden under a bushel.

But I am not going to let my despair stop me from speaking up, and I hope it won’t you either.  If my words can inspire my grandchildren to help create the just society we the people deserve then I will have done my job.  How about you? 

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING and Transfiguration

by Steve Harsh, posted in Lectionary Texts, Lenten devotion, purpose, Transfiguration

Two mountain-top experiences in Judeo-Christian Scripture are highlighted in the texts for February 19, the last Sunday before Lent, aka Transfiguration Sunday. Because of that latter designation I have usually focused on the Gospel lesson when preaching on that Sunday.  As Matthew’s Gospel puts it, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.”  This year I also noticed the text from Exodus 24 involves being led by God to a time of solitude by climbing a mountain in response to a divine call.

The closest I’ve come to mountain climbing in recent years has been to walk up a paved path to an observation tower on Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 6643 feet, Clingmans’s Dome is the highest point in the Smokies, but in full disclosure, as with most tourists visiting there, I only hiked the final half mile which is a gain of 332 feet in elevation. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is a fairly steep climb that requires some effort; even though it would never be confused with scaling Mt. Everest. The question these two texts raise for me as we approach the season of Lent again his year is “How much effort am I willing to make in order to put myself in God’s presence?”

Moses responds to God’s call and scales Mt. Sinai, which at 7497 feet is just a bit higher than Clingman’s Dome. Exodus does not give any details on how hard that climb was for Moses, but I am struck by two things it does say. First, after Moses climbs the mountain he has to wait 6 days before God appears. I get really frustrated if I have to wait 30 minutes in a doctor’s waiting room. So what does that faithful, patient waiting tell us clock-driven Americans about what it takes to experience the Holy?

Isaiah tells us that “Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength,” but that text doesn’t say how long that wait will be. It may just mean that we have to surrender our own agendas if we want to be fully in God’s presence. The final sentence in the Exodus text says Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. We know that’s Bible speak for a very long time. In other words we don’t measure our time with God in chronos or clock time. Those mountain top experiences can only be described in Kairos time, which means in God’s good time and as long as it takes.

On a clear day you can see for 100 miles from Clingman’s Dome, but Moses got no such photo op on Mt. Sinai; and that’s the second detail that got my attention from the Exodus account.  It says, “Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud.”  Moses is totally enveloped by God’s Holy presence.  There’s no multi-tasking if we want to feel God’s manifestation.  We have to be fully committed and open to whatever God is calling us to do and become.

I get a lot of inspiration from music lyrics, and the song that I’m hearing as I ponder these biblical stories is “Climb Every Mountain” from “The Sound of Music” by Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein.  The lyrics to that song say,

“Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every byway,

Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

‘Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need

All the love you can give,

Every day of your life

For as long as you live.”

If you remember the story this song is sung by the Mother Superior to a young Maria who is wrestling with her vocation, her call from God which seems to be pulling her away from the religious life in the convent to a totally different purpose.  To surrender to God may take us in very surprising directions, but whatever that path is it will require struggle and effort, not just one mountain-top experience.  The song says climb every mountain, search high and low, and follow every rainbow to pursue a dream that requires “all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live.”  Every mountain. All the love.  Every day. As long as you live.  God doesn’t ask more of us than we can give, just all we have.

Lent is a great time to ponder such things.  Jesus translates that all-in commitment to “Let the dead bury the dead.” “ Leave your nets.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” We need mountain-top experiences to refuel and renew our souls, but we don’t live on the mountain top.  Moses had to come back down to his golden calf worshipping flock.  Jesus and the disciples had to come back down the mountain and set their faces toward Jerusalem.  We need solitude and close encounters with God to empower us, but we live in the lonesome valley of dry bones and the shadow death. 

Spend time alone with God this Lent, as much time as it takes, and wrestle with whatever is on your heart about what God requires of you in this time and place. 

February 11, 2023

Imaginary Boundaries

by Steve Harsh, posted in Sermon

Because the Scripture for today is so familiar I wrote a contemporary parable to illustrate the central theme of the sermon, hoping people would hear the text in a new way before preconceived notions could kick in.

Olena and her little brother Anton had been on the run for almost two weeks.  Their father was off somewhere fighting the Russian invaders.  Olena was almost 11 and Anton 6.   There had been constant air raid sirens for months in their suburb just west of Kyiv, but the Russian missiles had always gone elsewhere– until that awful Thursday.  Their apartment took a direct hit that day, killing their mother.  Olena somehow found strength she didn’t know she had to find Anton in the rubble and drag him away from the only home they had ever known.

Olena knew her grandparents had fled to Poland when the war began.  If she and Anton could make it there she hoped they would be safe.  They had traveled almost 500 kilometers and helpful strangers had given them what little food and water they could spare and directed them toward the Polish border.  Anton’s little legs were worn out, and Olena had carried him as much as she could.  People in the last village had told Olena that they were only 5 KM from the border; so instead of stopping for the night she decided to push on thru the pain and exhaustion.  

In the fading twilight she tripped over something in the woods and fell hard with Anton on her back.  As she caught her breath she heard a moan.  She froze and shushed Anton.  Then she heard it again and realized what she had tripped over was not some thing but some one.  She crawled toward the sound and found a badly wounded soldier – a Russian.  Olena’s first reaction was to run away from this hated enemy as fast as she could, but after taking a few steps she stopped and looked back.  Anton was tugging at her to keep going, but she couldn’t.  She just couldn’t leave that poor man there to die alone. 

She went back and knelt down to check if he was still breathing.  He was wheezing and had lost a huge amount of blood.  She looked at his dog tag and saw his name was Dimitri.  When she called him by name his eyes fluttered briefly.  She took the last water she had and bent down to wet his lips.  He choked and sputtered, but his eyes told her he appreciated her effort.  

When she put the water bottle to his lips again she noticed a gold chain around his neck and pulled it out from his shirt.  She found a Russian Orthodox cross on the other end, and she placed it in his hand and held it there with her own hand.  That seemed to calm him, and within 15 minutes his grasp went slack and Olena knew he was gone.  She hated to just leave him there but knew she and Anton had to continue their journey to freedom.  

John 4:5-30, 39-41

When I learned to drive as a teen ager I got the usual parental advice about driving safely, and I even heeded some of it.  In those days before seat belts I’m surprised my friends and I survived our adolescence.  But here was one piece of advice I always took seriously, even into young adulthood—that was a stern warning to never go into the south end of Lima!  You see I grew up in a small town in NW Ohio, and Lima was the closest thing we had to a “big city” for miles around.  It was also the only community with any people of color for 60 miles or more.  You guessed it; the south end of Lima was the black ghetto.  I don’t know that we were ever told why that part of Lima was so dangerous, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. My parents had drawn an imaginary boundary around that neighborhood so effectively that I never dared cross it. 

I was back in Lima a couple of weeks ago to conduct a funeral for one of my uncles, and as I was riding back from the cemetery with the funeral director I realized we were driving through the south end!  And you know what, that neighborhood didn’t look much different than the middle class one I grew up in. 

As we continue this sermon series on “Intentional Neighboring” we need to be reminded that we can’t be about the Jesus business of loving our neighbors unless we remove the imaginary boundaries that separate us.  Some of those are geographic boundaries, and some are mental and emotional.  In our text for this morning Jesus takes on both kinds. There are dozens of lessons that can be learned from this text from John, but I’d like for us to focus on two things this morning from Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in Samaria.  First, notice at the very beginning of the story John tells us “Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria.”   

Is that true? You know how your google map gives you alternate routes and highlights the one that is the quickest? Well if Jesus used that app the direct route certainly would be the fastest.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jesus had to go that way.  My GPS will always tell me that the fastest route from here to Cleveland is up I -71, but there are dozens of other routes I could take that would get me there eventually. 

Jesus had choices, too.  And a big one had to do with Samaria.  We know the Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies.  They had been feuding for over 200 years about whether the proper place to worship God was in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria.  No self-respecting Jew would set foot in Samaria if he or she had a choice – and Jesus had options.  Instead of going north through Samaria he could have gone east a little way, crossed the Jordan river and traveled north until he got past Samaria and then crossed back over the river into Galilee.  Scholars say it would have taken about 6 days to go by foot on that longer route as opposed to 3 days through Samaria.

So one can make a case for the Samaritan route, but for many devout Jews spending an extra 3 days walking was a small price to pay for avoiding any chance of contact with their enemies.  But there’s another way to look at the phrase “He had to go through Samaria.”  In the Scriptures the Greek verb used here usually refers to something that has to be done because it is according to God’s plan.  So John may be telling us here that Jesus “had” to go through Samaria because it was a necessary part of his mission, namely to share the good news with all of God’s children and not just the Jews. 

Intentional neighboring as followers of Jesus means crossing imaginary boundaries on a map and those in our minds. And it often means going in person.  Jesus could not have had this encounter at the well via text message or on a zoom call.  As convenient as those modes of communication can be true neighboring often requires a personal touch, a willingness to go out of our way to meet someone in person. We see the sacrifice Jesus is making when he stops at Jacob’s well because he is tired and thirsty.  He had walked about 60 miles from Judea.  Of course his feet hurt, but notice when he’s tired he doesn’t give up; he rests and asks for what he needs to carry on his mission.  We busy beaver Americans can learn an important lesson from that.  Rest is not a luxury, it’s a spiritual discipline called Sabbath keeping, and is so important it’s one of the 10 commandments.   

Now let’s look at something most of us think is in this story but just isn’t there.  In verse 16 “Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 

Do you hear what isn’t there?  When I read the commentary about this story I was embarrassed to realize that there is nothing here but simple facts.  The woman has had five husbands, and she’s living with a man she’s not married to.  Period.  Those are the facts, but for centuries the church, myself included, has read into this story a moral judgment.  This woman has been married five times!  What woman of good character does that? 

But that’s not in this text.  If we could hear the inflection in Jesus’ voice as he utters those words we would not hear judgment and rebuke.  He is simply telling her that he knows all about her and still is asking her for a drink.  Just the facts.  He does so to convince her that he is the Messiah, and when he does, she recognizes his love and is able to open up her whole life to him.  Jesus does not judge or condemn her.  And here’s the good news; Jesus doesn’t judge and condemn us either. So leave whatever guilt or shame you may be carrying today at the door on your way out.

Now, let’s look at the reaction of Jesus’ disciples when they find him talking to this Samaritan woman.  They are totally shocked, and if we aren’t also shocked then we don’t understand the radical nature of this story.  Jesus is breaking not one but two sacred rules at once.  Good Jewish men did not interact with Samaritans, nor did they talk to a strange woman.  Crossing boundaries is often dangerous because it offends the powers who create and maintain those boundaries for their own benefit. 

The other familiar story in the Gospels featuring someone from Samaria is of course the Good Samaritan, but there’s one important difference between these two stories.  One is a parable about a fictional character that Jesus tells to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  That’s a great story, but in this account about the woman at the well Jesus takes things up another notch.  He is not telling us how a neighbor acts—he’s showing us.  This time Jesus goes in person and puts his life on the line for the truth- that all of God’s children matter regardless of which zip code or which side of an imaginary boundary  they live on. 

We are so familiar with these stories and Jesus’ teaching that we usually miss how dangerous and radical they are.  We have domesticated Jesus so much that we may miss the point that he is a subversive influence trying to replace the law and order of the temple and the empire with the Kingdom of God.

The church ever since the 4th century has played down the revolutionary nature of the Gospel.  When Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 C.E. and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire the church became a servant of the status quo instead of a prophetic voice proclaiming liberation of captives and salvation for the oppressed. 

Theological boundaries are by definition somewhat imaginary because we can’t experience God directly.  The problem is we want so badly to understand God and to be right about what we believe that we let our beliefs harden into exclusive ideas about God, and we judge other people who have different but equally definite beliefs.  As Jesus tells this woman God is Spirit, not a material being we can see or confine to some geographic place like Jerusalem or a church building.  God’s Holy Spirit is what lives in each of us to give us life.  That Spirit became flesh in Jesus and the closest we can come to seeing God is to experience Jesus and the grace he extends to all people represented by this outcast Samaritan woman.

Stories like the woman at the well are so familiar we may need to put them in fresh wineskins to appreciate their challenging message.  That was what I hoped to do with the story about Olena and Dimitri earlier – to show an example of being a good neighbor before our preconceived notions about the Scripture for today could kick in.  By coincidence, or Godincidence, there’s a movie in theaters right now that is a perfect example of intentional neighboring.  “A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks, his son Truman, and Mariana Trevino, could have been made with our sermon series in mind.  Mariana Trevino is marvelous as Marisol, the new neighbor who moves into Otto’s neighborhood and intentionally and persistently refuses to give up on being a good neighbor to a grumpy old man.  That’s all I’m going to say about the plot, but I urge you to see it as part of your homework for being an intentional neighbor.

Speaking of homework, I want to finish today by suggesting some action steps we can all take this week to be more like the neighbors Jesus is calling us to become.

  1. Examine and question any imaginary boundaries we encounter in our daily lives. Christians should be in the business of tearing down boundaries – not building them or preserving them.
  2. Ask hard questions about our own assumptions and beliefs that divide us from others.  Katy Wright had a devotion this week on the church’s Facebook page about this very thing.  Intentional neighboring usually means moving out of our comfort zone which is hard because it is by definition “uncomfortable.”  But Katy posted a diagram of a circle with 3 rings.  At the center of the circle is our comfort zone.  The outer ring she calls our panic zone.  None of us want to go there because we can’t function in panic mode.  But in between those two is a space called “the stretch zone,” and that’s where we can learn and grow.  The stretch zone is where we feel safe enough to open our eyes, ears, and hearts to let new visions of God’s kingdom stretch us. 
  3. Take time to pray this week about this transformational story of the woman at the well. Do we dare hear it and stay in Jesus’ presence long enough to let him change us, or will we retreat to familiar thoughts and ways when the going gets tough?

That’s an urgent existential question.  Our cities and nation and world are dying from hate and conflict and mistrust; and the only solution is more intentional neighboring.  It’s never easy, nor was it for Jesus.  Yes, we live in a scary, broken, troubled world; and so did Jesus. 

 It’s Ok to rest awhile when we’re tired and thirsty, but it’s not acceptable to give up.  Jesus didn’t give up all the way to the cross, and he needs disciples today with the courage and faith to do the same. 

Rev. Steve Harsh

Northwest UMC, Columbus, OH, January 29, 2023

Prayer to Heal Our Addiction to Violence!

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, prayer

Late tonight (Monday), when I should have been going to bed, I heard about yet another mass shooting in California. Not the one Saturday, but a new one on Monday, at least the fourth in the U.S. in three days. I don’t know what to do with my frustration and anger about this uniquely American problem; so I let my heart pour out to God:

Dear God, as you know the bad news of hate and killing just keeps crashing in on us like a tsunami. Monterrey Park, Baton Rouge, Des Moines, Half Moon Bay-all names added to the shameful litany of American gun violence in just the last 3 days. We humans are violent. We’ve known that since Cain killed Abel, but Cain couldn’t reload and kill dozens of people in a matter of seconds. We are tired of the “guns or people kill people argument.” People with guns kill people, and people with access to weapons of war can kill indiscriminately.

Why, O Lord, do we Americans have more guns than any other nation in the world? Yes, we confess our nation was born in violent revolution, oppression of black humans, and genocide of Native Americans. Gun ownership was carved into our Constitution because Southern slave owners feared their human property would rebel against their cruelty. Give us courage, dear God, to face those harsh truths or we will never stem the red tide of innocent blood that stains our collective soul.

Holy One, the fratricide at Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Chattanooga didn’t quench the thirst for American violence. And when the gun manufacturers couldn’t sell their deadly wares to the military after the Civil War they cleverly used racism and fear of “others” to market more and more sophisticated weapons to American men eager to prove their manhood and protect their property and loved ones by owning the latest guns.

God, we are so tired of the discomfort that creeps upon us when we are in a crowd of people and begin to look around to see who might be the next gunman! This is no way to live! The gun lobby has purchased the votes of our elected officials so that no common sense gun control legislation can ever see the light of day. In my state and in others people can now carry concealed weapons without a permit! We are regressing instead of addressing our problem.

What will it take, Lord, to bring us to our senses? How many more innocent people will die before we find the courage to put an end to this madness? Why can’t we learn from what other countries have done? American exceptionalism blinds us to the wisdom and experience we need to glean from other cultures and nations!

Lord, we do have a mental health problem, that’s true, but the paranoia, rage, and desperation are more than individual problems. Our whole culture, economy, and system of government is mentally ill and in denial. Wake us up from this nightmare, Holy God. Bring us to our senses so we can stop doing the same thing (nothing) and expecting different results! We obviously don’t have a clue as to how to stop the madness on our own. Bring us humbly to our knees and give us ears to finally hear and obey the voice of the Prince of Peace. In whose holy name we beg for your healing mercy and love. Amen

On Kingdom Fishing

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Government Reform, spiritual discipline

I discovered the work of Diana Butler Bass last year and continue to be challenged and inspired by her writing. Her training as both an historian and a theologian gives tremendous new insights into how to read Scripture. One of the most helpful of those commentaries on a familiar passage about Jesus’ call of his first disciples to follow him and “fish for people” broke open for me exciting and challenging new ways to read those texts in their historical context.

I urge you to read her short article at https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-f5c?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0OTI5MDAwOSwicG9zdF9pZCI6OTgxODE1NjksImlhdCI6MTY3NDM3ODIwMiwiZXhwIjoxNjc2OTcwMjAyLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNDc0MDAiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.MJ9jJmdaJPiOUGhPHuWGvwVoS3I21lN-cTvriOfXfKo&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email. I hope you will, like me, be inspired to wrestle with this new way of experiencing the call of Christ to be about challenging the injustice of our worldly empires and joining Jesus in the work of building a just and loving kingdom.

The Dream That Will Not Die

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, mission, purpose

They say “misery loves company,” whoever “they” are, and I experienced a little “comfort” from being in the majority yesterday, MLK Day. NPR did an excellent job all day of doing interviews about people who influenced Dr. King and vice versa. I was listening while driving so couldn’t take notes, but I was struck by one professor’s comment. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s important to remind people today who rightfully honor King for being the great civil rights leader that he was that he was not loved and was even reviled by a majority of Americans while he was alive. He cited stats indicating that about 60% of white Americans regarded MLK as a rabble rouser and trouble maker during his lifetime, and a bit surprising, that 50% of black Americans disagreed with King’s tactics and felt he was making their lives more difficult.

Those stats helped ease some guilt I’ve carried for 50 plus years for being one of those whites who dismissed Dr. King as a troublemaker. I even remember thinking the horrible thought that “he got what he was asking for” when he was assassinated. Given my upbringing in an all white, very conservative family and community where in the words of a Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song from “South Pacific” I was “carefully taught to hate all the people my relatives hate” that is not too surprising. In fact I learned just a few years ago that there was a KKK chapter in my NW Ohio community and that one of my great uncles was one of the leaders in that ugly movement. My younger self had no chance but to breathe in the putrid stench of racism.

I was a senior in college, however, when King was gunned down in Memphis and should have begun to know better. My old worldviews were being stretched a bit at that point, but I still remember hearing a sermon the Sunday after Dr. King’s murder where the preacher referred to King as a “Christ figure.” That was more than my puny mind could handle back then, and in hindsight I think it might have been too much for his congregation too since he was soon forced out of that church after only two years there. And that was one of Methodism’s more “liberal” churches. Ironically that pastor became a good friend, colleague, and mentor to me 5 or 6 years later when I was appointed associate pastor to that same congregation after graduating from seminary.

By then I had been converted to a social gospel theology by my seminary professors, and I too got in some hot water for crossing the imaginary line between church and politics. A few years later when I went back to grad school to study rhetoric, which classically is the art of persuasive discourse, I wrote a paper I titled “They Shoot Prophets, Don’t They?” That paper was partly my excuse for not being a more outspoken social critic and partly my more scholarly attempt to understand the very real historical phenomenon I had lived through in the assassinations in Dallas, Memphis, and L.A. in just 5 years between 1963 and 1968.

Prophets are much easier to love from the perspective of history — when they are not goring our current oxen. Lincoln was reviled and hated in his lifetime. Gandhi was assassinated. And let’s not forget about Jesus. We’ve sanitized his crucifixion with the flawed doctrine of substitutionary atonement when the cold hard truth is that Jesus was executed because he was a thorn in the side of the Jewish and Roman authorities who had to go.

One other thing I remember about grad school 30 plus years ago is that I wrote a different paper analyzing the rhetorical effectiveness of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. My argument then and now is that the reason that speech was so powerful is because the dream MLK delivered so eloquently on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was not a new dream. King’s dream speech was brilliantly built on the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition all the way back to Amos and Micah and Isaiah. Those visions of “righteousness rolling down like waters,” of “doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God” were also woven into the founding documents of our nation by Jefferson. King reminds us all in his powerful voice and vibrant images of those very values our common life aspires to.

That dream has survived crucifixion, persecution, crusades, pogroms, Holocaust, genocide, and systemic racism for over 2800 years. It is so easy to be discouraged that the forces of evil have risen up in recent years to seemingly defeat that dream, but the lesson of history is that truth and justice will prevail someday. It’s very frustrating that we have regressed in our pursuit of the dream Dr. King lived and died for. Our schools and neighborhoods and churches are still segregated. Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate Robert E. Lee day on King’s birthday. White supremacy has polluted the political mainstream and taken over the party of Lincoln. But we still have a dream that is stronger than hate, and “deep in my heart I do believe, that dream will overcome someday.”

Practice Gratitude, Part 2

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, purpose, self-care, spiritual discipline

[Note: This post was written on January 2 but not posted until January 4. It will make more sense with that timeline in mind.] My year of practicing gratitude literally began with a tough challenge. For almost all of my adult years the new year has begun with watching the iconic ball drop in Time Square. Thanks to my own and our cultural addiction with football, 2023 was different. Along with a group of friends I watched a different ball drop this year—a ball that will linger in Ohio State fans’ memories as “wide left.” 2023 was literally just a few seconds old when what would have been a game winning field goal over #1 Georgia sailed like a wounded duck far left of the goal post.

That was almost 36 hours ago, but today as I read several articles about the game in today’s Columbus Dispatch I relived that moment and the frustration of a controversial call that dramatically affected the outcome of the game. I should not have subjected myself to that memory, but I was unable to let it go.

For me, that is a prime example of my biggest obstacle to practicing gratitude. I mentioned one of my mentors, Dr. Bill Brown, and his rhetorical theory called attention shifting in my last post, and this is exhibit A for 2023. In the larger scheme of problems on the world stage or even in my personal life the outcome of a silly game should not be my prime focus. The Peach Bowl is over and done. My dwelling on a terrible call by the refs does not deserve the amount of my attention I am choosing to spend on it. And it is a choice. I can shift my attention to a whole host of things that deserve my attention so much more if I choose to do so. [Remember, I wrote this a few hours before the near fatal football injury to Damar Hamlin, but that tragedy underscores in spades that all football games and other athletics must be kept in proper perspective.]

Notice I did not say that this is a simple or easy shift to make. The local media, my friends, and my social media are full of conversations about the Ohio State game. It is not easy to shift my attention away from all that chatter, but it can be done. I can choose to not read about the game. I can literally switch the tv channel when discussion of that game comes on. Unfortunately I don’t have a remote that can switch the channels in my brain when I think about that loss or my own aches and pains, or other negative and depressing problems in our world. But attention switching is a skill that I can learn if I choose to do so. And making practicing gratitude my priority for 2023 is step 1 in that process

2023 Words: Practice Gratitude

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, Faith Development, hope, purpose, self-care, spiritual discipline

 I had the privilege again this past Advent to create liturgies for the lighting of each advent candle for our church. When we got to the third Sunday and the candle of joy (12/11/22 post) I asked some of my fellow fans of Dr. Brené Brown to help me find what she has said about joy.  My friend Jean Wright came through with this gem from Dr. Brown: “In our research we found that everyone who showed a deep capacity for joy had one thing in common: They practiced gratitude…A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean in to pure joy without denying the struggle in the world.  It’s not always easy or comfortable – but what makes joy possible is a front made of love and a back built of courage.” 

There’s an old joke about someone asking how to get to Carnegie Hall. The answer is “practice, practice, practice.”  Well, apparently the way to get to Joy is also, like any other life skill, to practice. Since I am by nature a skeptical, glass half empty kind of person, learning gratitude for me is something that requires lots and lots of practice. Practice is hard.  Playing scales on the piano is work. Practicing on the putting green for hours is not nearly as much fun as hitting the crap out of a ball on the driving range.  But no one will master the piano or lower their golf score without those basic practices.

It is no coincidence that my friend Jean Wright’s daughter, Katy, recently shared her wisdom about gratitude that she learned from podcasts with Kate Bowler and Kelly Corrigan who indirectly address the practice of gratitude by dividing life experiences into two categories, the “happies” and the “crappies.” The trick, of course, is paying at least an equal amount of attention to the former as we do the latter. 

One of my mentors in grad school, Dr. Bill Brown, developed a rhetorical theory that helps with this task. He calls it “attention shifting,” which I will oversimplify here by saying it means intentionally shifting our focus or attention from one thing to another. I was reminded recently of another related skill for keeping things in perspective and practicing gratitude when my wife and I attended a high school production of “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” produced by the excellent Theater Arts Department at Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, OH. Our great nephew Ryan Buckley has been part of that program for all four of his high school years, and we have enjoyed many plays there; but one scene in this production really resonated with me.

The Kindergarten play is based on the book by the same title by Robert Fulghum. I have read most of Fulghum’s stuff; so this story was familiar, but I must have been ready to hear it again. It’s a little long for a blog post, but I am going to include it here in full because it is so good.

Fulghum writes: “In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California.  A resort environment.  And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables.  The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment.  He and I do not get along.  I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far.  I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own.

One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day.  Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls.  To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check.  I was outraged.

On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty.  I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.

That tears it.  I quit!  For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him.

I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs.  Something like that.  I’m still mad about it.

I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here.  You get the drift.  My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity.  A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.

As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes.  Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman.  He’s got good reason to look sorrowful.  Survivor of Auschwitz.  Three years.  German Jew.  Thin, coughed a lot.  He liked being alone at the night job–gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to–all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted.  To him, a feast.  More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do.  In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time.  The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream.  Our shifts overlap for an hour.  And here I am again.  A one-man war party at full cry.

“Fulchum, are you finished?”

“No.  Why?”

Lissen, Fulchum.  Lissen me, lissen me.  You know what’s wrong with you?  It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”

“So what’s wrong with me?”

“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire–then you got a problem.  Everything else is inconvenience.  Life is inconvenient.  Life is lumpy.

“Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems.  You will live longer.  And will not annoy people like me so much.  Good night.”

In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.

* * *

Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard.  Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant.  There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.

For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks:  “Fulchum.  Problem or inconvenience?”

I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality.  Life is lumpy.  And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump.  One should learn the difference.  Good night, Sig.

As I reflect on the year 2022 it is very easy for me to see the entire year through the lens of the last couple of months which have been rather crappy for me. Following my 76th birthday at the end of October my 77th trip around the sun began with an unexpected hospital stay because of a very serious urinary tract infection. That urinary infection has turned out to be one that is very hard to get rid of and has been bothering me off and on for about seven weeks now. Because of that it has been easy for me to throw a pity party for myself if I forget to keep my focus on the larger scheme of things. This illness is just an inconvenience. Other than the time I spent in the hospital and I a few days after that, I have been able to continue my normal daily activities. Those activities included the aforementioned opportunities to create Advent liturgies for worship in our church. And by sharing those liturgies in my blog, they have also been used by a number of other readers and worship leaders, for which I am grateful.  I even got a bit of a chuckle each week during Advent when I noticed that the number of clicks on my Advent liturgies always seemed to go up about Thursday or Friday. I remember from my days of active pastoral ministry those were the days of the week when I suddenly realized I needed some help with worship resources for the coming Sunday.

I also realized this week that part of the attention shifting/gratitude practice is keeping my focus on the big picture and not just what is immediately in front or behind me. By paying too much attention to my recent illness I had completely forgotten about an amazing therapeutic golf program I became a part of this summer. That program is quite appropriately called “Fore Hope.“ In brief, this program pairs a wonderful volunteer “caddie” with each golfer. These caddies help the golfers with whatever that individual needs, from loading clubs on the golf cart, putting the ball on the tee, hunting for wayward balls, or literally holding the golfer up while he or she swings if there are balance issues. Having the opportunity to be a part of that program has given me a lot of hope and a new lease on life because I have been able to do something that I dearly love, which I thought was gone forever because of my health concerns. It has enabled me to play golf again with my son, and for the first time with two of my grandsons, and to my surprise as an introvert it also made me a part of a whole new community of friends.

I played my last golf with that group in mid-October and could not have written a more satisfying script for that evening. It was chilly, as October evenings are want to be in Ohio, and I almost wimped out and didn’t go; but I am so glad that I did. You see it turned out to be one of those magical times on the golf course when every putt found its way into or very close to the cup. And what is so special about the Fore Hope Golf community is that everybody is a cheerleader. We don’t keep score; so there is no insidious competition, and when any player makes a good shot everyone genuinely affirms that accomplishment.

But here’s the thing—about three weeks later I was flat on my back in the hospital and in the ensuing recovery from that experience, because I did not practice gratitude, I forgot all about the sheer joy I felt sharing those days on the golf course with my new friends. So for me, at least, an important part of the practice of gratitude is paying attention more often to the happies, and not letting the crappies which come along for all of us knock those moments of joy out of my awareness.

A PRAYER FOR INTROVERTS

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, prayer, self-care

Even though I had 9 good hours of sleep last night I still woke up tired.  So I’ve been thinking a lot all morning about how exhausting the two week holiday marathon at the end of December can be for introverts like me.  When I was a full time pastor I blamed my tiredness on how busy the Advent/Christmas/New Year’s season is in the life of the church.  Now that I am retired that explanation doesn’t work; especially this year when we celebrated Christmas Eve on line because of the nasty winter storm which canceled in person worship for many churches.

And then I read on Facebook that today, January 2, is actually World Introvert Day.  Here’s what I found in a quick Google search: “Introverts worldwide will be able to celebrate World Introvert Day on January 2. This is the day following the dreadful celebrations of the previous year has ended. It allows them to enjoy solitude finally and recharge their social batteries.  World Introvert Day started when psychologist and author Felicitas Heyne published this blog post calling for a day for us quiet ones.”

And so I wrote this prayer:

Holy One, I am grateful for the spiritual lessons of Advent and Christmas and for the changing of the calendar as a time for reflection and renewal, but I’m worn out.  I enjoyed time with families and friends and lots of good food and fellowship.  But I’m tired; I’m tired of people and parties.  I’m tired of hearing the same holiday songs on a continuous loop.  I need some peace and quiet, solitude and time to just breathe and be. 

I need a sabbatical, and I know you get it, God, even if my extrovert friends never seem to run down.  You took a day off after creation and rested.  You included honoring Sabbath rest in your Top Ten rules for living.  So thank you for that.  Please help me to not feel guilty for putting my feet up and taking a nap today.  Please help me set healthy boundaries on my energy levels; to remind myself and others that we introverts need downtime and solitude to recharge our batteries. 

We can do the party circuit.  We can prepare holiday meals and clean up.  We can play games with the grandkids.  But it drains our energy, and we need time to refresh, especially this time of year when the calendar is super full of events we want to attend.   I even surprised myself this year that I was able be more present and active with family and friends, even when I didn’t feel like it beforehand.  And then I crash when the party is over. 

Please help me be gentle with myself; to not give up or get frustrated, but to rest when I’m tired.  I think Isaiah must have been thinking of us introverts when he said, “God does not faint or grow weary; God’s understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;  they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (40:28-31)

Thank you, source of all energy, for Sabbath moments or days when we can simply wait on you.  Amen

Thank You 2022 Readers

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Faith Development

2022 has certainly been a roller coaster ride in many different ways. Many of the intangibles in life are impossible to quantify. That’s why I am drawn to have some hard, countable things in life, and thanks to WordPress this blog is one of those things. In that regard 2022 has been an incredible success for peacefullyharsh, and I have all of you readers to thank for that.

When I started writing these posts 11 years ago I was thrilled if I had 50 views per month of my posts. In fact it took me 4 years to break the 1000 mark for total views in a year. That was 2014, and now 8 years later 2022 is on track for over 12,200 views, a 20% increase over last year’s previous best record of 10,057. Those views in 2022 came from 103 different countries on six continents. I am so humbled and grateful that our sometimes troublesome technology makes all that possible.

One of my many blessings in 2022 was to discover “The Cottage,” a blog written by theologian Diana Butler Bass. I highly recommend her provocative and inspiring work. For her final post of 2022 Diana listed the posts from “The Cottage” that have attracted the most readership. Her top five are much more profound than mine, but she got me wondering, mostly for my own curiosity, what my top five posts of 2022 were.

So, for what it’s worth, here are the five posts from peacefullyharsh that had the most views in 2022. I’ve included the date each was originally posted in case you want to look any of them up:

1. Schism: Ecclesiastical Divorce, posted September 12

2. Respectful Disagreement, February 12

3. Dis-united: Realism vs Aspirations, May 30

4. Prayer of Lament as War Begins—Again! February 23

5. Things I Never Asked My Father, June 18

Thank you, dear readers, and to you all my wishes and prayers are for a blessed new year of peace, joy, hope and love.