The writer of the daily meditation asked:

“Do we want to get useful information?

“Do we want to conquer knowledge?

“Do we want to show that someone else is wrong?

“Do we want to grow in wisdom?

“Do we want to find a way to sanctity?”*

The reader pondered:

“Do I want to be honest?”

*Henri Nouwen

“Racism is palpable in 2014,” his friend wrote.

“Hey, 1964 isn’t that long ago, just fifty years,”

he wrote back. And then he just mumbled:

But apparently, long enough

to take us back to the halcyon days of

Ozzie and Harriet

and Jim Crow.

Dubya’s Supreme Court must be watching ME TV.

We have arrived, those white guys and one black

guy with a big identity problem must believe.

The Roberts’ solution:  “The way to stop

discrimination on the basis of race

is to stop discriminating

on the basis of race.”

Nice, John.

Here is another super profound thought:

“Come on people, everybody get together

and love one another right now.”

and how about “Make love, not war”?

But, of course. Why not? The Chief Justice

as an old dippy hippy.

And why wouldn’t we all just

get together

and sing Kumbayah?

Well, when we did sing Kumbayah back

in the day, we were all white kids at

church camp singing an African

song without any black kids

in sight.

Today, they are in sight and those

young, white kids are now scared to

death old, white men, who don’t sing

“Come By Here,” but “Keep Out of Here.”

The way to stop accidents at

intersections

is to just stop at intersections,

so let’s just take away

all the stop signs

and voluntarily hit those brakes;

everybody get together and stop

at the corner, right now.

And Rod Serling has just announced

that we have entered

the Twilight Zone.

endlessly painting the foundation,

shoring it up, tweaking it, admiring it,

defending it,

clobbering others with bricks

left over from it …

and over and over

going down into it

to live in the

dank, darkness

as they pull the

tarp over it

peering out one last time

with eyes filled with

a fear that contains

no wonder….

they forgot, as sappho and

salinger advised, to

“raise high the roofbeam,

carpenters.”

—- a poem by Tom Eggebeen and Bob Dahl

In a state surrounded by great lakes

known even more for its crumbling

infrastructure (as experienced par-

ticularly in its ubiquitous pot holes)

than for the bumbling legislature,

which lets the infrastructure crumble,

it is comforting to know that there

still exists equality under the law.

On a harrowing spring-time drive

on a lakeside road, a couple

noticed the only patched-up pave-

ment on the many mile drive along

a lovely inland lake was directly in

front of a billionaire’s waterfront

compound, proving once again that

the law is better than equal; it’s

even more equal for some than for

others. Well, isn’t that the

AM-erican WAY?

The day after the Sunday when pro-

fessional golfers knelt in prayer near

a sand-trap and prayed the prayer that

wealthy, white, evangelical, Christian

golfers pray while kneeling near a sand-

trap of a posh, top-drawer, super expen-

sive, exclusive, private golf course, thirty-

five thousand runners of every (and

some no) spiritual stripe stood Boston

strong in a simple moment of silence

and nonviolence to honor those who

were injured or killed one year before

in that place and to remember their

families. Jesus was spotted standing

somewhere toward the back of the

pack wearing bright chartreuse com-

pression leggings and those new max-

imalist running shoes which look like

clown shoes but which are all the rage.

The pros went out golfing on an Easter Sunday, but not before a young, white, evangelical, pietistic, golf pro conducted an Easter Sunrise Service on a hole close enough to the clubhouse so the devote professional devotees could slip away unnoticed to grab a cup of hot coffee. Those pros knelt in pious prayer

near a sand trap, for what reason no one is sure except perhaps a few eagles and birdies and no bogies and, for sure, no double bogies let alone triple bogies, but it all looked super sincere and the corporate sponsors loved all of it in the hope that such a demonstration of athletic piety would boost

the dwindling numbers of golfers nation wide and help every last one of those duffers to buy drivers promising lengths beyond anyone’s imagination at those ridiculously high prices for a game of primarily rich, idle, elderly, politically conservative, white guys. In the club house

when it was all over, the assuredly pious wife of a loser, caught on camera giving a perfunctory kiss to her loser husband, then looked at the winner and his wife and made her way with a huge smile toward them apparently hoping to be caught on camera with the winning couple on an Easter Sunday

afternoon when a really rich, affable, young, white guy (on his way toward being a really rich, old, white guy) won the tournament which, in reality, was won or, perhaps, was lost by old, corporate, white guys desperately hanging on to something that was slipping away faster than Tiger Woods’ knees

and any chance he might have of beating an old, conservative, white guy’s record. There go the minorities. They didn’t have a prayer anyway — couldn’t afford the green fees let alone those supersized, titanium drivers.

The author mentioned, in an

interview at the back of one

of his books of short stories,

the practice of conflating wealth

with virtue.

.

“How does he know my West

Michigan town?” the reader asked,

“The writer grew up in the south

suburbs of Chicago and teaches

out East.”

The reader hadn’t made the “virtue

connection” in quite a while, but

“That really gives it all credibility

now, doesn’t it?” he asked rhetoric-

ally.

In this Bible belt along the

eastern shore of Lake Michigan,

the wealthy love to quote the

validating proverb and the masses

just say, “Must be God’s will.”

And so it goes: wealth = virtue

and wealth = power and power

corrupts and absolute power

therefore absolutely corrupts

whatever virtue may have been.

Too bad the wealthy have never

been very good at Aristotelian

logic and simple syllogisms.

They still think wealth =

virtue.

And so do the masses that

say, “The Bible says it, I

believe it, and that settles

it, don’t jah know,

too yet?”

(Here is something a bit different from the poetry I blog. It harkens back to my days of preaching. Maybe the thought on Thursday of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday brought it on. — R.E.D.)

James Pennington, senior pastor, First Congregational UCC, Phoenix, AZ speaking from the pulpit to his congregation this past March, said (to paraphrase), “You may be taken aback by my use of the word queer. You see, I am queer…but…then…so are you; each of us is queer in some way.” After the momentary awkwardness, we all had a good, hearty laugh.

To start, everyone was thinking that he was speaking about being gay in what some would consider a slang or disparaging way. Many see it as pejorative. It certainly is not a word one would expect to be uttered from the pulpit.   However, we knew he was speaking about himself in a literal sense, because he is openly gay.

But he was using the much older definition of queer, that is “strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different.” He was making a play on words to help us understand that in our peculiarities, we aren’t so different from each other and therefore in no position to judge each other. His broader use of the word put us all in the same boat.

It was a gotcha moment, a good, gotcha moment.

A symbol of the universal church is a boat. We, in the church, are all on God’s boat weathering the storm-tossed seas of life. We hold onto each other and trust God to carry us through.

Jesus made use of the ancient concept of Kingdom, which today we would call “Realm.”

I thought about how Israel was called to be a “holy” people. The word means “peculiar.” The people of Israel weren’t to be like the people around them; they were to live as God’s children, not children of the world and they were to be a light unto the world.

Jesus called that holy living, that peculiar living — living in the Kingdom of God. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was different from the kingdom of the world. The Kingdom (Realm) of God was characterized by trust, justice, peace, mercy, forgiveness, agape (sacrificial) love of all unlike the fear, selfishness, oppression, greed, divisions, hate and wars of the world’s kingdom.

I have to admit my idiosyncrasies, which, when I am honest, remind me that I am just one human among all other humans.  And thanks, in part, to Rev. Pennington, I know I am queer, a queer straight; I am a peculiar person like all the peculiar people sitting in the pews that day. Our personal peculiarities keep us humble.

In the biblical sense of the word peculiar, I am a passenger on God’s boat weathering the storms of this world with my fellow peculiar (holy and idiosyncratic) passengers and, at my best by the grace of God, I am living in God’s Realm with the living spirit of Jesus guiding me to live that justice, mercy and peace for all, for in the peculiarity of Jesus, we know that we are all God’s holy children.

Happy Holy Weekend.

Recently,

they caught up with

a movie

from

1993,

“The Remains of the Day.”

His wife said, “That

is why.” “Why?”

Because at the time

they both were

remains of the day,

their spouses having

died in that year

one day.

They noticed Christ-

opher Reeves could

move his arms and

legs. When they

awoke several years

later, he was a

quadriplegic because

of a fall from a horse.

He was the remains

of the day.

Back then he could get

up and play

on the English country-

side, at a fox hunt back

in the day,

in 1993,

the year the

couple were amnesiacs;

Had they seen it? They

couldn’t remember

anyway.

It still seems very

recently,

but at the same time,

“Remains of the Day,”

still seems eons away.

In light of the DSA’s surveillance

program, he read that the majority

of Millennials believe that the

Whistleblower was right and should

be welcomed home warmly.

In light of all the news about

gay marriage, he read that the majority

of Millennials couldn’t care less and

think it’s just plain fine.

In light of the dust storm of racism

that has kicked up as a backlash to

the first half black/half white president,

the Millennials appear to be wearing

gas masks and goggles.

In light of the news of a United

Nations’ panel of scientists

that global warming is worse

than imagined or believed,

he, as a senior citizen, believes that

if something could be done about

those CO2 emissions, there just

might be a bit of hope out there

for his grandchildren.