Honeymoon shot

It's all warm and spring time now - actually it's a bit cool today for it to be early May. Here's a phot from back in January during our honeymoon in London. Jami is standing on the porch of the National Gallery, Trafalger Square, with Nelson's Column in the background. She's the loveliest part of a lovely picture.

Last August we went to a ball game

Here Jami and I are, probably at the Cubs game, enjoying a day at the ball park. I look like a cyclops. Jami is just beautiful. I think the Braves might have won this game - but I can't remember.

Our IKEA artifact

The pictures say it all.

Sermon discussion

Last Sunday my friend, Joe, was installed as an associate pastor. We met the Friday before at Twain's to discuss this and to drink beer and to read over sermons and drink beer. This is Joe's technique. Notice the economy of motion. From the moment the glass is lifted from the table there is no doubt: beer is being consumed.
You may point out to me that the beer glass becomes a water glass, as if that were some kind of inconsistency, as if my montage lacked continuity. Well it's like in the gospels where Herakles cleans out the Augean stables with a butter knife and other places where Theseus rescues the Minotaur from the wicked witch after a long sleep in a Procrustean bed - which in ancient times was the most comfortable of all beds and now - not so much.

Yin and Yang kittens

Thelma, on top, and Louise, on bottom, have a lot to teach us about relaxation. Notice the open book on the chair's arm. Neither kitten has any curiosity about its contents (yes, it's probably Barth - I'm taking some time with Barth lately, but this doesn't mean that I don't relish all life has to offer). They are as relaxed as possible. I ask, "how is it possible to be so relaxed?"

Jami with mit

When we went to the ball game, Jami came prepared to snare a foul smash behind the visitor's dugout. Only a couple of balls were hit near us. Sure the Braves lost. Redman pitched miserably and those who followed him weren't much better. But the seats were great. I could practically reach out and yank Miguel Cabrara's hat over his face - not that I would do such a thing. In the stands, to our right, some fan threw a ball out on the field during one of Willis's pitches. It was not taken as an act of subversion or games-man-ship and he was escorted out.
As I said, Dontrelle Willis pitched and he was masterful. I tried again and again to capture that leg kick of his with my camera, but the downside of digital cameras is that the shutter is so delayed.
Again, the woman in this post with the ball glove: I love her.

My Easter sermon

Isaiah 65:17-25 ¹⁷ "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. ¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. ¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. ²⁰ No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. ²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²² They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. ²³ They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD, and their descendants with them. ²⁴ Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear. ²⁵ The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain," says the LORD.

Luke 24:1-12 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. ² And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴ While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. ⁵ And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? ⁶ He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise." ⁸ And they remembered his words, ⁹ and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, ¹¹ but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

“These words seemed an idle tale.” That is what the disciples thought. And our old testament passage, with its new heavens and new earth, rampant vegetarianism in the animal kingdom, seems fantastic as well. How do we get from an idle tale to this new creation? How do we get from an idle tale to Christ resurrected from the dead – never to die again? To many living in the world today the thought that there is more to life than what we have now seems an idle tale. Isaiah word that they shall neither hurt nor destroy on my holy mountain runs counter to current notions of how to secure nations. Isaiah paints a world where people live in their own houses without fear of being homeless; where people work without fear of being jobless. God does this – we are not told how.

In our passage from Luke's gospel we are not told how Jesus has risen from the dead, but we are shown something. We are shown that something about the world is changing. The women at the tomb see a vision of angles and are told not to seek the living among the dead. Well to them it was only reasonable to seek Jesus there, among the tombs. He was after all dead. They are told though to consider that this dead man now lives. This is a new world indeed. And Jesus is not just any dead man who now lives: he is the embodiment of Isaiah's new heaven and new earth. He is the embodiment of a promise that had been killed. When the women visit the tomb that morning they have in their minds ,”this is where the new heaven and new earth we'd hoped for is buried. We thought for a moment that it was ready to be fulfilled on earth, but now it is gone. Now things are as they have always been and they will never change.” Then something unpredictable happens: the tomb is empty.

The empty tomb is unpredictable. It is a sign that the assumptions we make about God and the world and other human beings are conditioned by predictability. It is a sign that God is not predictable. To the people of Israel that Isaiah writes to, a people in exile, it is incredible that they will ever inhabit Zion once again, much less that they will dwell in non-violent security, safeguarded by God. This text to them told a story that seemed unpredictable, an idle tale. Even so, the resurrection of Jesus is even more unpredictable. But to us today, having heard this story so often over the years, have we lost an appreciation for this unpredictability? Has the resurrection taken on an appearance of predictability for us. Study of the old testament shows us a God who is unpredictable. God is passionate, angry and loving, changing his mind, describing himself as a father and a mother, a warrior and a shepherd. This God, who Jesus calls Father, avoids being pinned down. He is always loving and faithful. But. He will not be predictable.

But if today God seems predictable to us, and therefore amenable to the way of the world, supporting whatever the national agenda is, whatever the apocalyptic expectation is, and the God of the old testament is different, and the God of Jesus is different; then we have to wonder how we arrived at the point. Because at this point, if we are worshiping a God who is agreeable to whatever the world wants to do, endorsing consumerism, building a large military state, then we are not worshiping the God who said ,”you shall have no other gods before me.”How have we strayed so far from a God who is unpredictable, not quiet, not willing to sit in the back of the room while we adults do the important work? Such a God is surely safe and comfortable, but such a god is surely a hollow idol, a projection of our own desires. How do we get back to the God who loves us and is faithful, but in unpredictable ways? This God of Jesus who will not be quiet and go along with how things are. This God of Isaiah who wants to remake all of creation into a vegetarian, anarcho-collectivist theme park? Talk about unpredictable.

The way to find God is through the resurrection. In some churches today they repeat the phrase that the resurrection is the renewal of creation. This should fill us with wonder, not just at the natural coming of spring, but wonder at the power of God, loving and unpredictable, at work in this world and in our hearts and lives. This is the wonder of Easter.

The wonder of Easter is that Jesus rose from the dead.” Think about that, “from the dead”: what does that mean? We know the full story now, but that first Easter, the disciples knew only that Jesus was dead. Really dead.

I thought: how quickly we skip from the cross to the resurrection. In our imaginations do we leave time for Jesus to be really dead? What does it mean for the Son of God to be really dead? Is God faking it? Is Jesus only pretending to be a corpse and then when the stone is rolled over the tomb's door, he springs up and amuses himself with whatever you'd amuse yourself with in a cold,dark tomb? He would bide his time, and then, on the third day, as the stone was rolled away, walking out of the tomb with a yawn and he would say, “hey, look at me. I'm risen from the dead.”Or did his cold body lay there and his spirit go off on a holiday, visiting his Father in heaven, catching up on what happened while he was away? Or did his spirit prowl the caverns of hell, bursting open locks to infernal dungeons, liberating souls pressed beyond hope in a death that seemed unending?

Such thoughts spring from an ancient heresy called docetism.: the belief that Jesus only appeared to suffer, only appeared to be dead. Like all heresies it is a weed that never is eradicated from the garden. It springs from the desire to protect God from things that seem undignified, as if God were a child that needed protection from bad things. Such a God is the god of the Greek philosophers, an unmoved mover. They imagined a god who never feels or desires – such human responses were the result of the corruption of matter. To the Greeks matter is evil and must be overcome. One way to overcome matter is to practice being unaffected, to face death and loss showing as little concern as possible – and also to treat success and triumph the same way. In this way, matter is overcome and the person begins to resemble God, an unmoved mover.

Such a god is not the God we meet in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament God creates matter and revels in it. God is passionate. God loves and regrets, is angry and weeps. God's relationship with Israel and Israel's relationship with God is like one of those relationships where a couple is throwing plates at each other one minute and planning a second honeymoon the next. If you think I'm exaggerating, read Ezekiel 16 for God's side and Psalm 88 for Israel's. These texts are extreme in their bitterness, but they show how deeply held the passion each has for the other is. As Judaism and later Christianity encountered the Greek world, the tendency was to say, “our God is like your God.:” to soften the hard edges of Israel's God. And so well meaning theologians have created ways in which the language of scripture, where God regrets, hates and loves, is read metaphorically, necessitated by our limited human understanding. God only seems to regret, love and hate. The Greeks are superior to the Hebrews and so this unmoved mover, that's got to be right. It sounds so right. So respectable. And best of all predictable. As omnipotent, omniscient, immutable and eternal as such a God is, such an unmoved mover is predictable – and if some thing's predictable, then it can be manipulated. And if human beings can manipulate god, then we can control God – pretty clever.

But the Old Testament God, Yahweh, Abraham-Isaac-and Jacob's God, the Father Jesus prays to in the garden, is unpredictable. While an unmoved mover might pretend to like matter and might pretend to die, this God of Israel actually loves matter and actually would pull a stunt like dying. The unmoved mover blinks but God doesn't. God drives straight for the edge of the cliff and slams down on the gas. And so, when the women go to the tomb on Easter morning, followed by Peter and John, Jesus is, for all they know, really dead. Their teacher , their brother, their friend has died. How deep must their grief have been when they arrived at the tomb that morning? How exhausted by sorrow they must have been over the past two days. Jesus had gone to the cross and there had been no last minute reprieve, no legions of angles, no angelic host wiping out the Roman army and restoring the Davidic blessings and monarchy to Israel. Jesus kept driving straight for the cliff and the results had been predictable.

Or not. Not predictable: the resurrection is unpredictable. It seems an idle tale. Jesus is risen from the dead; he is risen indeed. And just as he was really dead, he now really lives. He was dead, like we're really afraid of dying. What will it be like for each of us when our hearts stop and our brains turn to dust: the sound goes off, the screen goes blank? Jesus knows. As scripture says, “he tasted death for all humanity.” And Jesus lives in the way we're really afraid of living. Jesus lived with unpredictability. He did not seek comfort. He did not seek a home. He talked about God clothing flowers and feeding birds, and acted as if that was as much concern as he needed to devote to such things. He claimed it was more important to pray for enemies and help difficult people. That fear about what people might do or think and worry about tomorrow: these were a waste of time. He claimed that the way to handle the Roman occupation was to ask if they needed any more help. He forgave sinners their sins left and right too: all kinds of sinners, all kinds of “not our kind of people” - he went and told them that they were OK with God and OK with him. And then he warned the authorities, the very people you want on your side, that they probably were not OK with God or with him – at least just as they were. When you think about it, it's obvious that he's pedal-to-the-metal towards the canyon rim – and he's having just a normal conversation: “some weather we're having. Have you considered the lilies of the field? What if we offered to carry a burden an extra mile, no charge, for these Roman soldiers – that'd freak them out wouldn't it?”

And it's obvious that he's courting death. You don't live a life that displays the powers as weak and ineffectual without making them mad. Jesus is setting a bad example and they must stop him. Jesus is giving people the idea that they don't have to be imprisoned in the system; they can just step out. They don't have to live in fear; they don't have to crave security; they don't have to get a little more; they don't have to get ahead. . If people ceased to voluntarily put themselves under control of the powers, then the powers, the systems, would starve. So the leaders: pharisees, saducees, and civil authorities push back, hoping that Jesus will resort to their weapons. If Jesus will just adopt the tactics of violence, the tactic of giving a little to get a little – well the systems of the world understand that. The systems – the banks, the armies, the bureaucracies – hope Jesus will meet them on their terms, because then he'd be just one problem among others instead of The problem.

So Jesus has to be treated as an enemy of religion and an enemy of the state. He has to be crucified and certainly he'll blink there. Certainly facing crucifixion he'll succumb to fear and fall under the sway of the powers and world systems. Of course they'd kill him anyway, but how delicious his ruin would be. Except that Jesus doesn't blink.

But at least he's dead and things can go back to where they've always, predictably, been. Except something unpredictable happens. That Jesus is risen from the dead means that victory belongs to us and not to the systems, the powers, the “way the world works.” That Jesus lives means that all that talk about not fearing, not being anxious, not craving security but being generous, loving, and non-violent is bed-rock truth, while the world's promise of better living through greed, fear, and violence is a house built on sand. It's an impressive house made with $100 screw-drivers and the best things money can buy. Every day great carloads of people and materials are pumped into it. This house almost seems to block out the sky, but it is built on sand and one day it will tumble down into the desert. A rusting hulk, an oddity to travelers. How do I know this? Because Jesus is risen from the dead.

Jesus is risen from the dead and Jesus is the same after the resurrection as before the resurrection. And this Jesus will come again. Jesus's life is the defeat of the powers and systems -those things that say, “come to us for food, come to us for security, come to us for what you need. Play by our rules and we'll feed you; fight our wars and we'll secure you; repeat our slogans and we'll put a roof over your head.” But all these promises the world makes are hollow. For all the fear, for all the willingness to spend on the next big thing, for all the sacrifice of our lives and for all we promise to do for scraps of bread – the promises of security, prosperity, predictability have no real capital backing them up.

Jesus is risen from the dead, and he comes again in judgment. But not judgment as popular imagination might have it: shoveling sinners by the thousands into a lake of fire. Jesus judges the powers and systems that have captured the people of the world and that scar God's good creation. Jesus has judged and he will conquer the false promise of the world's systems and powers. Jesus does not conquer by violence. Good reformed theology, and theology as ancient as the early Church, says that Jesus conquers not because he is mighty, but because he is worthy. This is what Revelation says, “the lamb is worthy.”

The last hope of this world's systems and powers is that we may be mislead about who Jesus is and what his rising from the dead might mean. The world hopes that we'll think God was just pretending. But we do not think this is an idle tale do we?

A Sermon from way back in Lent

Genesis 15:1-21 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." ² But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" ³ And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." ⁴ But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." ⁵ He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." ⁶ And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. ⁷ Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." ⁸ But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" ⁹ He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." ¹⁰ He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. ¹¹ And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. ¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. ¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; ¹⁴ but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. ¹⁶ And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." ¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.

I find this passage endlessly compelling. I almost couldn't begin composing a sermon. Every time I wrote a thought down, I read a bit more, and then I thought a bit more: I wrote and erased. I began and began again. You may think that this passage is straightforward: a man in the desert has a vision from God; God tells him that he'll have a son and possess a land. His, Abraham's, descendants will become a great nation – in fact, many nations. Some of his descendants will even be in a land “not their own” and be enslaved. But then they will be rescued and come into this land to possess it. And what a land: stretching from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.

Much has been written and rewritten about this text. In Romans and Galatians, Paul uses verse 6, “the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness,” as a means to describe how believers are brought into covenant relation with God. James quotes this verse when he writes that faith without works is dead. So this verse tells us that faith is more than mere assent or the mastering of a systematic theology.

Walter Brueggemann has written a wonderful book called The Land. I found it in a stack of books in my studio while I was preparing this sermon. Or I should say that it found me. Anyway, I've sat in his class in seminary and heard him talk about land, among other things, but it was while reading his book that this text in Genesis became refocused for me. I say refocused because the connection to Paul's argument in Romans and Galatians is more in the forefront of my protestant mind. Indeed it's hard to hear this passage without hearing it through the filter of 500 years of reformation history with 2000 years of church history. From Paul to Augustine to Luther to Calvin to Barth – and more in between and coming after we're conditioned to almost not hear this text. Justified by faith, not by works, and smacked down in the middle of the covenant – God's ray of sunshine beams down on us amidst a world of rain. Or so seems the popular expression of what this means: condensed for rapid consumption, reduced to bumper-sticker sized thought for today's consumer.

So I came back to this text over and over, each time trying to erase more of the overlaid interpretations of history to arrive at the moment itself. What moment? The moment where Abraham, having left home and taken his family out into the wilderness, wandering to a land that God would show him, has a vision from God. When he has this vision he is already old and he asks God what will God give him since he has no son. You can tell it's been on his mind: this sonlessness thing. And God says what are you worried about? Here look at the stars and try counting them, that's the number of your descendants.

Right here Abraham believes God. Abraham is utterly taken in by God's promise. In the face of all the questions that Abraham could ask: where have you been all this time? How likely is this? Do you know how long I've already waited? Abraham believes. He believes as one who knows from experience the character of God.

Could Abraham have had this vision and promise years earlier. Say when he and Sarai were still young? Before they'd lost so much time? Before the birth of Eliezer of Damascus in his house? Before so much experience of the world's difficulties? But all this time Abraham has experienced the world, he's also experienced God: God's steadfastness, God's loving-kindness, God's unpredictable presence. He never knows what God will do, but he knows that God will do something, say something, encounter him with something that will knock him out of complacency, change his direction, and bring him to a new way of seeing the world. God doesn't do any of this all at once, and so it's only here, over 90 years old and with Sarai old and barren as well that God brings up the notion of a son and inheriting the land.

Abraham's faith doesn't cause God to reckon him righteous; Abraham's faith is a sign that his thinking, his heart, is right in line with God. How could Abraham have known that he had faith until this moment when God tells him this incredible tale: you'll have a son and your descendants will inherit this land. Such faith is not a work because it is not the result of conjuring up an emotional state – it just is; it's existence is as effortless as the existence of love in the presence of the one you love. Faith results from being intimate with God. Such intimacy has had this effect on Abraham over the course of his life, that now in his 90^th year when God tells him something unbelievable (that the laws of nature you've witnessed over a lifetime don't apply), Abraham is in such a state that he believes him. And so- Abraham has righteousness.

This word righteousness as we encounter it in the rest of the Old Testament, especially the prophets, has an ethical quality. Righteous people care for the poor and the land, they seek justice for the alien and the widow, they deal honestly and don't lie. Indeed these are the very things that God cares about. Abraham has been with God long enough that he knows what God cares about. Abraham believes God's justice is directly connected to the promise of a son and to this promise of land.

The land is important to understanding God’s character in this passage. The land promised to Abraham is currently filled with iniquity. Injustice fills the land. The righteous God does not directly give an unrighteous present. Instead Abraham's descendants will go to a land “not theirs” where they'll be enslaved until the day when this land of promise is ready for righteousness. So there are two lands: this promised land and this land of enslavement. Notice how righteousness and iniquity are differentiated: Iniquity loses the land; righteousness possesses the land. In the history of the covenant: iniquity loses the land. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah all state this theme. God's righteousness is found in pursuing justice for the margins of society, for the weak, for the dispossessed. God seems upset when Israel gets lost in pleasure while widows are kicked out of their homes, while poor people are trapped further in debt. God doesn't blame the victim, he blames the person with the biggest pile of cash – that is, if the epistle of James is to be believed. And so Israel goes into exile when they no longer resemble Abraham but instead resemble the Amorite. This is exactly what happens: Israel possesses a land in righteousness; Israel is told do righteousness, and then Israel is distracted. Israel is distracted by pleasure, sure, but also by business, by war, by the need to get ahead, by the need to expand. In all its working hard and playing hard there was bound to be some collateral damage. But if they would not listen to their society's cry for justice, God did. And Israel found itself in exile. Back where they started, but this time on the river Euphrates. It's interesting isn't it, how in our text, the two rivers mentioned as the boundaries of God's promised land are the two rivers along which Israel suffered separation from God. They hadn't suspected anything was wrong, but now they know.

In both exiles, they are not so separated that God isn't with them, that God doesn't hear them, that God doesn't passionately yearn for them (read Hosea and Ezekiel). Indeed Israel enters the land not once but twice. The second time under Nehemiah and Ezra they're going to get it right. Well up to a point. What is the New Testament about but a new entering the land and a new exile. What does Jesus talk about but how God's cause is with the weak of society: those who have no defense in law courts or with banks; those who are easily trapped by market forces. Jesus doesn't talk about getting tough on crime or family values; Jesus doesn't talk about celebrities or how to invest for retirement. And this is most distressing for me: Jesus doesn't talk about the new baseball season or some new movie opening. When Jesus is presented with his day's version of the 6 o'clock news (the tower of Siloam fell and people were crushed; Herod's been up to no good again) his response is that “if you don't repent you'll likewise perish.” Jesus is focused on God's righteousness like a laser beam.

God's righteousness is not an abstract quality. Jesus constantly points out that it's a matter of how people treat each other. Are enemies being prayed for? Are neighbors being loved? Are the hungry being fed and the homeless housed? How about widows and orphans and prisoners? Is the resort to violence being denounced? Are people treating their possessions like a hot potato? Jesus knows God like Abraham knew God.

And so Paul tells us that it's this kind of knowing faith, this faith of Jesus that places us in the covenant. It's this faith that makes its power felt in acts of love that shows we've had an encounter with God's righteousness. We read in Paul that we've been taken from a land of enslavement and exile to a land of promise. Jesus desires to gather us together as chicks under his wings in a land where righteousness abounds.

Just as God never forgets Israel, he never forgets us. God's love and steadfast care are always with us. Jesus invocation to come is not a one-time offer, but an encouragement for every day. Come to God's land of abundance where there's enough for everybody. Come to God's land where there is justice for all, no matter how weak or obscure. Come to God's land where fear of scarcity is abolished by a generosity that never ends.

This is my thought for Lent: how can I fully show my gratitude to God in God's land of plenty, and how can I live less in the land of scarcity and exile.

Peonies from heaven

We have a large purple flower in our front yard. It bloomed over night. Jami is very excited by its presence among us, gracing the strip of lawn next to the mail box and between the sidewalk and the street. My knowledge of horticulture is limited. I love looking at nature, but I don't think about the names. So whenever I am able to place a name with a plant I have an inner satisfaction: now if ever in the future I am presented with a strange blossom, I can perform the "peony/not peony" test. I can say, "this is a peony" or failing that, "whatever this flower is, it is not a peony." Unless perhaps it might be a mutant peony.

A Ridiculous Painting

This is the ridiculous painting I made reference to some days ago. It's a wonderfully painted painting: lots of free brushwork, each square inch meticulously attended to, and it's chock full of symbolism. Is it patriotic? Is it an allegory of spring? Is is about prayer and abundance? Note the speckled snake along the bottom of the painting (an allusion to Sherlock Holmes' story of the speckled band?) and behind her head, in one of the blue fields, a crescent moon and between the moon and her head, a green star. It's a lovely painting.

Braves vs Marlins in early April

If it's April it must be time for me to beat my head against a wall - baseball season has begun: that wonderful season of fascination where I project my childhood dreams of athletic prowess onto fallible individuals, who actually possess such prowess, only to be frustrated by their failure to hold a lead or to hit a small horsehide ball pitched very fast. I'm learning to not care - as Eliot wrote: "teach us to care and not to care." Still this is a happy night for me. I'm at a Braves game in early April with my lovely wife, Jami. She loves baseball. She can love baseball without all the baggage that I grew up with. I see Mark Redman giving up five runs to start off the game - she sees a poor man who is in search of his dignity.
Here we are at the game: Jami radiates happiness in the moment - a beer, a New York dog, sitting in the stands with me as I shout at the Marlin's third baseman. What fun we're having and you can see it in her face. Meanwhile, by the sixth inning, with the Braves safely out of the game, I'm thankful that I had the foresight to bring Barth's Church Dogmatics IV,iii,2 along with me.

Most beautiful woman in the world

A year ago Monday, Shakespeare's birthday, I proposed to Jami and she said yes. A fateful day for both of us. Every day, the happiness of sharing life with her, rushes through my soul, like a spring gust through the trees.

Two paintings that are now different than a month ago

Talk about bleached out. Above is a madonna that I'm now repainting. The face will be the same, but the child, the pose, the weight, the color of the compostion are being radically reworked. I'm a mad scientist. Actually I was unhappy with the results, and though Jami loved this painting the way it was, I felt uneasy. I needed to change it. I liked the face as well, so I tried to save it. Soon I'll post my re-working.
Further above, at the top of this entry, is a view of my studio. The painting with the standing dark figure on a yellow disk is now entirely different. Now it is a single figure in profile that fills up the canvas - in a Hippolyte Flandrin kind of way, flanked by flowers, stars, a kitten and a bunny. It may now be the most ridiculous thing I've painted.

My Sherman story

The Story of how my great great grandfather met Wm T. Sherman

One hundred and forty years ago, Sherman, the former 1^st president of LSU, was incinerating his way across the green northern reaches of the Altahmaha watershed, when his western southern Union army came upon my great-great grandfather's, William Augustus's farm. As the Union soldiers coursed through the surrounding woods searching for livestock, provender and victuals, they confiscated William Augustus's masonic apron When Sherman saw the apron he vigorously sought its owner, my great-great grandfather, William Augustus.

Sherman came to William Augustus's in the darkest moment of the night. When he had awakened and came to the door, Sherman greeted him saying, “in travel the coarsest shoe leather is smoothed.” To which William Augustus responded, “and in travel the thickest soul is punctured.” William Augustus continued, “how is is you know so much about shoes?”Sherman laughed, slapping his thigh, and, pulling out the apron from a leather saddle bag, said, “I found this that was yours.” And so it transpired that my great-great grandfather and Sherman spent the night, coupled in conversation and arcane intercourse.

At dawn Sherman took him to the Union camp and displayed for him all that the grand army had gathered from civilization: concubines labored over great cauldrons of meat and vegetables; the air was thick with garlic and the music of saltimbaques, gypsies, and native Cherokee. Everywhere William Augustus saw fire and smoke, light and sound: the accompaniments of invention. Yet he kept a stoic wonderment as the grand general, his friend, led him through the vast union encampment to his head-quarter's tent.

Immediately the sons and daughters of the great Mississippi plantations took their coats and shoes and gave them slippers and robes. Then, as they were seated on camp stools, the South's Saladin paraded before William Augustus specimens of ancient animals, frozen in stone; ancient documents; gold from Ophir and gems; and wonderful machines: devices that projected moving pictures, reproduced music and speeches, and displayed the nature of the soul.

William Augustus spent the day enjoying the company of Sherman and his military savants. As evening came William Augustus was escorted back to his humble farm house. Sherman hugged him and blessed him. From that moment on a gnostic heritage has passed through the family: a great richness cloaked in poverty. This light in August resides in our wise blood.

I listened to my great grandmother tell this story to me and I was dubious. She took me to the edge of our farm where the soldiers camped, where the old road ran before it was paved. “This is where the soldiers camped” she motioned, “where the road bent towards the creek. Then there were not so many trees. When I was a girl we were still finding bits of burnt wood and leather, an old coin, a metal fragment of a jeweled fibula.”

But by my time the smells of horse and gun powder had washed away in a century of rain. The masonic apron had also disappeared. And all that might have remained was either a cuneiform bill of lading for a long lost cargo or more probably a ceramic ostracon burned by time.

I probably already have posted this

I've probably already posted this. But I'm posting it again for no good reason. I haven't posted anything in over a week. Where does time go? I've spent some time in my studio. I'm repainting a Madonna that I had painted earlier - and as Jami asserts, "there was nothing wrong with it." So I plan on posting the old and new versions as soon as I get it repainted. As an artist I find it helps to have a bit of the mad scientist approach in my painting. At some point I have to do things to a perfectly good painting - in order to make it better Or in order to conquer the elements.
People ask me: What does this painting mean? "Well," I think, "what do you want it to mean? What could such an occurrence as God becoming incarnate Other than as a man say about the person of God? What would the prospect of God pregnant and being crucified have for an understanding of atonement?" Sure, it happened the way it happened - but I think meaning can be enhanced by conceiving of alternate modes of incarnate life.

Out of Chaos

Two Summers ago I stretched a canvas that was about 4 by 5 feet and had it set up in my dorm room at the seminary. I began my typical searching out method to see what would emerge on this canvas, but I was dissatisfied: the room was too small to get anywhere on such a large field. I prayed, "Lord, I need a big room." And I thought that I might be able to find a spare room on campus that someone would let me use for a short time.
At this time I was preparing for and taking my ordination exams. During this time Katrina hit New Orleans. That such a disaster could hit a modern city and that the national and state response could be so tentative, faltering and lax, astonished me as well as others at the seminary. Brian Wren, the professor of worship, was planning a week of chapel services devoted to this disaster and he came to me, wondering if I had any artistic conceptions that could be incorporated. In the past I had done visual representations on dry erase board of a text. This time I realized that I had the perfect sized field for representation: the canvas I'd stretched in my room.
I brought the campus to the chapel and set it up, engineering it to a dry-erase board with lots of tape and twine. Over the course of the week's chapel service I painted a large abstract canvas, which resulted in the image posted above. I would come into the chapel at odd hours and work on it, so that it would be constantly changing. What people had seen was being constantly submerged under new layers of paint.
When I had finished the painting hung in the chapel of a month or more. For most of the the year it was displayed at the seminary bookstore. Eventually it was bought by a classmate of mine and now is displayed on a wall in her house.

Signs of the Times

I preached at a church just off the Parkway a week ago. When we got to the hotel there was this sign "welcome mr and mrs wise." Jami said, "shouldn't that read mr and dr wise? or better 'dr and mr wise?'"

piano

London Chicago

Jami, at Trafalger Square. Raining in London - who'd of thought. She's beautiful.

From our trip to Chicago last Fall, a Braque (I think): you'd think that I could distinguish a Braque from a Picasso, but I can't always. Something about Braque's composition is formal and stiff -whereas Picasso's compositions move and have more a lower key of color. Braque's more likely to use black to outline forms. So it seems to me. So Braque.

The Most Beautiful Smile

In early January Jami and I patrolled London looking for the best cozy spots to eat and drink. Here she is smiling with shear delight in a pub, probably in Hampstead.

Meditation on Cape Anne

I had a show recently: 17 paintings and 40 drawings water colors, and this is one of the water colors that sold. I only sold three pieces. This is one of them. Sure, I'll miss it. But it feels good that something sold. I was hoping for better success, but the process of building the business end of art is incremental.

Christa Gestalt, Jami and Grace, Sign of the times, Whitney

Another provocative painting taken under non-optimal circumstances. Yes that is my foot.
Here's Jami with Grace - the apple of her Aunt's eye.
This is a sign we saw in Nashville. Jami and Jennifer, her sister, thought it an audacious pun.
This is Whitney playing guitar in the back section of the bookstore. By the window is my cousin, Cheryl, and in the upper left corner is the lower right corner of a large painting of mine.

I've got to get a photographer

Atlanta Traffic

Atlanta traffic is much like the sea. The sea, though, constantly flows. The sea provides a sense of calm, a sense of wonder - there are many songs extolling the power and grandeur of the sea. We never say that about the traffic. Traffic though has a grandeur. Especially when some of Philip Glass's music is in the background: serialism has the effect of enhancing the sense of flow and the speed, where everything is changing but remaining the same.

Three Graces

This image of the three graces was a gift to one of my groom's men. I can't remember who got this. Still the three graces provide a strong mythological image: femininity, mystery, beauty, and transcendence.

Annunciation Macabre

I imagined a darker, more brooding Gabriel, bringing his message of orgasmic theophany, to Mary, a young jewish girl. That's her looking in the mirror. Mirrors provide a speculative function. The photo is a bad photo with lots of background junk - we laugh at this kind of presentation in galleries and art schools, but I've got my MFA, so there.

Louise, the Hoskins place, Jami

Piranessi and modern times

A washed out shot of a New Mexico painting

This photo was taken by a photographer for the AJC using a very expensive camera, and it doesn't show the richness of the color or texture of the paint I'd gotten here. Photography of artwork is a tricky thing, and I'm not anal about it myself, except when faced with the limitations of what is possible. A painting is superior to a photograph exactly for those elements of surface manipulation and image integration that a photo, when done by a professional art photographer, provides a metaphor for what is seen. A photo of a painting is a double metaphor, the painting being the first metaphor.
Now I know that I said "superiority of painting to photography" and that's bound to cause a stir, but photos have their own surface manipulations and image integrations: perhaps I should have said that the vocabulary of painting doesn't translate well into the vocabulary of photography and vice versa. That is: it's asking a lot of a photograph to reproduce a painting.
Well that was unnecessarily complicated.
What I painted here was a spot near the middle of nowhere. Those from New Mexico know just where this is: near nowhere, insight of the mountains, covered with scrub, the road indistinguishable from the surrounding dust and rock. Overhead is a cloud that appears to be raining, but the rain is evaporating high in the air. Or else there is a cloud 100s of times bigger than the mountains it looms behind. At your feet there is a bit of bone, and in the blue shadows of the thistle a small creature rustles away, out of sight.
A map says that there is a watercourse around here, but you don't see one: but not being one to argue, you call it a draw.

Here are our wedding pictures

http://www.wscottchester.com/darkroom/proof/?client/fredandjami

2 honeymoon photos, one blurry, one focused

Dad, me and Jami at my M.Div. graduation, May 2007

This is one of the best days of my life. I'd won the preaching award - and burst into tears, and here were my dad and Jami, who is now my wife. Later we celebrated with oysters and beer. A raw bar had just opened in Oakhurst and we were just beginning to enjoy it.

More fun with John the Baptist and Salome

JB "When Salome's dance caused me to lose my head, things seemed bleak."
Sal " I was young and I didn't always anticipate my actions' effects."
JB "But thanks to support from our families and community, we've been able to move beyond our initial difficulties.--We're expecting our first child in November."

Annunciation

If only I had a better reproduction of this painting. I painted it back in 1999. It now resides in Birmingham, AL. Gabriel comes down in a flame of fire. Mary, well imagine: a young girl receives an angelic visitation and becomes pregnant. There's more going on here than meets the eye: it begs to be portrayed in a sensual, fantastic way.

Apollo and Daphne

Eight years ago I painted this. Mythology gets me going - the whole gods and mortals doing incredible things, turning into trees, etc. is captivating. And here Apollo almost grasps Daphne only to be thwarted by Zeus who turns her into a tree as an answer to her prayer: "Zeus save me."
In my version Daphne turns into a field of kudzu - that's a southern twist. The woman I sold this to didn't know anything about the myth. She bought this painting because it went well with her sofa. She claimed to have lived in Pensacola, FL but when I mentioned kudzu to her, she looked at me and said, "I've never seen anything like that. I don't know what you're talking about."

Today's Water Color and Drawing

I have got to get some better reproductions. The bottom pen and ink drawing is a Salome and John the Baptist. Not that this is what actually happened: for me, Sal and JB exist in a realm of symbols; their lives continue, intertwined by history and myth. She, the dancer and lover, and he, the prophet and authority figure. But see, he looses his head. JB exists as a bifurcated person: his head and body are disconnected, and can only reconnect in the presence of the dancing girl. Or alternately: the dancing girl needs the head of the prophet to authenticate her own existence. Or this is an embematic story of the delphic oracle: Salome, a dionysian ecstatic conjures prophecy as a cutting off of human function.
The water color on top is about the church being released from its bureaucratic functionaries.

Felix Culpa

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I painted this last fall. Now it is hanging in a show I'm having in Decatur. My wife, when she first saw this immediately took this from the studiio and put it in the house. I like it for its interracial Adam and Eve, the exoticism of the coral snake Satan, and the feel of a Rousseau painting.

An Amusing summer interlude

Some months ago, when Columbia Pres next door had a yard sale, I bought a set of seats. This was no ordinary set of seats: this set was arranged together like theater seats. They were three simple seats grouped together. The frame was iron and the seats were wood veneer. Attached to the back was a hymnal holder and a holder for tiny communion cups. I could not believe my good fortune at coming across such a thing. It was a prize and evocative of an era when churches experimented with practical alternatives to pews. I figured that this alternative was about 1935 - 1940. Immediately seeing the possibilities of such a seating arrangement, Geza, who was with me, helped me move it back to my dorm. We set it out in the hall, across from a blank spot on the opposite wall. Geza and I sat there and toasted our good fortune to be in such a place and be sitting in such seats. He later told me that as he sat there he had a revelation: he saw how it was possible for free men and women, under the eye of God, to sit on folding theater seats, made of wooden laminate, and dream visions and see thoughts of visions, and visions unthought of, and dreams unthinkable. For that moment we were the most fortunate of men. Geza and I weren't the only people to sit in these chairs. Others told me of their experiences. Some spoke of recovery, others mentioned a feeling of peace. It was a pacific set of ecclesial theater seats, iron framed and wood laminated. It welcomed all. Late at night I would hear couples speaking in low murmurs; old friends would come during the day and reminisce. Often, when I was coming back to my room, I would espy evidence of solitary contemplation: a prayer written on a small paper scrap and inserted in the iron-work, a tear-stained handkercheif left on an armrest. Some might say I was mad, and I can be easily faulted for leaving these seats out in the hall. Like the Moor, I loved not too wisely but too well, and out of a tender heart I left them there. Their vulnerability pinching my heart with a sweetness transcendental and immanent - and now I am bereft of them. Mistaken for derelict and cleaned out with the other hallway detritus, they were removed to the dumpster's vicinity, and from thence further removed by annonymous hands into obscurity. This removal occured while I sat in a theater, in stadium-style seating,watching a space opera. How much I feel my infidelity, as if I had traded the form fitting wood laminate for the cold companionship of a cup holder and the mesmerizing thump of dolby stereo. How now I ache for the simple welcoming appearance of this set of seats in my silent hall? What dark force now grips myheart? A force of memory at once bitter and at once sweet. Sweeterbit? I asked, "Oh ecclesial theater seats, can it be that you are lost to me forever?" The night drew me out and I searched. The thickets of the brambles among the trees scratched and tore at my skin. I stumbled along stream banks and thrashed my way through kudzu. At last I came to my senses in an open field under the stars. I looked up at Orion and the Plieades. I navigated the zodiacal signs and my own ignorance rebuffed me. What is left for me now but to continue on, to live with my loss, and to let this minor grief merge with all the sad grieving that runs through the great world like a river with uncountable tributaries.

My Award Winning Sermon

Acts 26:1-24 NRS Acts 26:1 Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak for yourself." Then Paul stretched out his hand and began to defend himself: 2 "I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, 3 because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews; therefore I beg of you to listen to me patiently. 4 "All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. 5 They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. 6 And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, 7 a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews! 8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? 9 "Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. 11 By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities. 12 "With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' 15 I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. 17 I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' 19 "After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. 21 For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. 22 To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: 23 that the Messiah must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles." 24 While he was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, "You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!"

Much learning has driven you mad. All the little letters have accumulated in your head until your brain is clogged and now you’re disoriented. I know that I’m a little shaken myself. I don’t think I can stand right now. I haven’t even started drinking but I could use one now. You know a little lubrication of the gyroscope and I’ll be right as rain. But you Paul, seriously, the mid-day sun has effected you. I know a cool place you could go. We could all go there now and get a fine porter or ale. I’ll buy. They know me at this place and know that I’m good for it. It’d be a fine respite from our troubles and now I’m thinking you’re the most troubled of us all. I didn’t know. But come and we’ll talk in a more convivial circumstance and get you back out on the street in no time. This is what I do. I do this for people. That’s how you get to be procurator. Not by knowing too much and – really – not by doing too much. Yet here I am and there you are. Chained and knowing too much. All the words and all the letters zooming in at once.
And what do I wish to say, “that little learning has kept me sane?” Well if you must know, I don’t do more than I need. I read and know what I need to know. Although in truth, it’s not that I don’t know nothing. I did pass the procurator’s exam: laugh at the right times and voice assent without hesitation. I have been educated. I know some passage is from Livy and another from Horace. I know my Aneid too.
Where was I? Yes, Much learning has driven you mad. The letters and words approaching an interchange in your head are jammed together and unable to exit. Like some great circular highway, filled with vehicles, there is no stopping off place. That is, I’ve not followed you. You’ve left me dizzy with your talk of messiahs and resurrections. It’s not incredible that God should raise the dead, to me, but that God should care. Why should I care that God should care? Should it matter to me that the world was created good and that the creator still creates goodness – though frankly what I see is pretty crappy It doesn’t take much learning to see that we’re living in a desert and that enough people here are more concerned about killing those they disagree with than improving the living conditions of a desert. I know for instance that a cool place to talk and have a drink would help us all here.
Did you say that we must turn from darkness to light? From the power of Satan to the power of God? That we should have faith in this dead man, Jesus? See this is where I fall off. I can’t see how faith in this man, (Jesus?) will make a difference for me. But I can see that it’s put you in chains. That’s how I know that you’re mad. It’s the desert and this word heavy culture, all these people with their books and history, fighting to do what? To continue living on a rock in the desert by a still stream. No one here is disobedient to a heavenly vision – would that they were.
Much learning is driving mad. Madly driving you and all these people. And what can I say, that if you try to keep the learning down, you might do something more practical than having heavenly visions. I have no doubt that heavenly visions are occurring right now and that if I knew too much I might feel compelled to obey one. But let me tell you that ignorance, when properly applied, is a good and powerful thing. A bush is still burning in the desert but I don’t want to know it. Let me stupidly gaze at this bright light and then continue on my journeyings.
What I want to say is that much learning is getting you killed. Doesn’t that drive you mad? Heavenly visions; history; salvation: Wouldn’t it be nice to build a home, tend a garden, father a family? You don’t have to know much to be like the rest of us. Disobey the heavenly vision a bit. It gets easier each day – I imagine. Soon you’ll be walking down the street having conversations about the weather and wishing people a nice day. You won’t be here, chained, mad.
Great, learning is driving you mad and me a little tipsy. Did you see the apple orchards on the hillside north of here? They’re blooming and full. Is there nothing more beautiful than hills covered in olive groves? I turn a corner and see the chalky white blocks of houses and villages, sheep herded along the road, and I think: What’s to know? We’re in a quiet corner of the empire, far enough away that government doesn’t bother us, but not so far away that we’re not protected. Imagine there’s no Satan and no God. A little ignorance and we’re cozy. Snug.
Ignorance, quiet, pacific, assuring, holds me safe. I see no vision. I work for no historical outcome. I neither obey nor disobey and the faith I have is in my position and that in a few minutes I’ll have a drink and you can walk out with me and Agrippa here and we’ll be right as rain, unchained. We can know what we know, but why more. And we’ll not talk of dead men walking among us or of Satan and God possessing us and we’ll just worship the night and day that surround us. See no madness, no troubling of the waters.
Paul, why are you mad for this Jesus? Haven’t you learned from your experience and what I’ve told you that things could be better for you? You won’t see Caesar and you won’t lose your head. You’ll see the sunrise and the nightfall. You’ll see the olives grow, pressed and flowing, bread dipped and eaten in the shade.
Let’s say I heard you. I’d be mad for sure. Would I suddenly feed the hungry and help the poor? The empire wouldn’t tolerate a population of well-fed poor people. We have to keep our insurrectionists few and ill fed, not add to their numbers. When the hope of a people is no hope, peace reigns. This is the peace we enjoy: We eat and enjoy our selves without being bothered or fearing for our lives. So you see: The very hope of people without food or clothing, who sleep in fear of the rain and the open road, is to not have hope. Would this dead man, Jesus, save me when they rose up in arms demanding a place to live and sleep safely, when suddenly well-fed and clothed they began demanding rights?
I’m sorry I can’t hear you. I’m mad for safety. I see you’ll go on and I’ll stay here. Your great learning drives you madly. You won’t take a break from Jesus. You’ll obey a bright light and voice that met you in the desert. This dead man’s way will be your death. And his life? If I could have faith in such a life. But then I wouldn’t be a procurator. I wouldn’t be sitting with kings and having some lamb and greens afterwards. The dates here are marvelous.You won’t find them where you’re going.

More is coming

More is coming. I know that it's been several months, but I've been busy. Well, I've not really cared enough, and I find this whole blog process daunting. I lost my password and recovering it today took some time. But more is coming. I may post some of my writing, some sermons, some vignettes, anecdotes, adumbrations of stories, narratives, speculations, conspiratorial rants, plottings, schemings.

Let's see if I can add an image:

I can, and it's an image of my wife, Jami. We married this last December 30th. I love her.