The Corner

if there's ever an answer, it's more love

At our worship gathering at the warehouse yesterday, it was all about love.

it made me think of 3 great bits from lovers I like:

• Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, an international organization which creates communities where people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them share life together, writes in Community and Growth:

It is important that [those] who hear the call of God or of the poor come into community to be there as a sign of the Kingdom, a sign that love is possible and that there is hope.

• my beloved Dixie Chicks say it oh so well with More Love:

• Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and writer,

Nothing in this world is an end in itself, including Church, pastors, priests, bishops, popes, laws, Bible—nothing! Only God is an end; everything else is a means. Only God can save us, not the Church and not any formula, technique, or pious practice. The Church is a beautiful gift given by God to preach that word which will set us free. But when we instead preach "Church" itself, we are not necessarily proclaiming the Great Mystery. We often are preaching ourselves. Jesus never preached Israel, he preached Yahweh. He preached the absolute transcendence of Yahweh and fidelity and obedience to Yahweh. At the same time Jesus never put Israel down. He loved Israel. Insofar as Israel was true to the covenant and true to the prophets, Jesus was obedient to Israel, obedient to the priests, obedient to "the Church." But he wasn't afraid to keep knocking on the door. He kept inviting Israel to be true to itself. Jesus taught us to love the unlovely, exactly as it was. If we simply love that which is worthy of love, we will never love at all. The Lord loved "the Church," Israel, exactly as it was. You cannot love the Church as it was fifty years ago. That's a cop-out. The only Church you must love is the Church today.  New Great Themes of Scripture

When you’ve been involved in something like this, no matter how long ago it happened, no matter how long it’s been absent from the news, you’re fated, nonetheless, to always search it out. To be on alert for it somehow, every day of your life.

America America By Ethan Canin

today, live in a moment

yummy web goodness

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

in praise of psalms & common prayer

This summer, we visited a few worship gathering at faith communities across the country.  While we were there, I missed our feral community. 

When we returned to that community this past Sunday, I realized how much I have missed reading the Psalms & praying together in common prayer. The Hebrew word ‎, תהילים, or "praises" describes a set of songs & prayers that were bound into a book, providing a common tune & tongue for communities of faith & practice all the way to the time of time of David, the second king of Israel in approx. 1100-900 BCE. 

That is 3,00 years of people singing & praying together, in poetry and mystery - rather than doctrine or statements of fact.  In rabbinical traditions, there is a long history of emphasizing communal prayer - rabbis often say when prayers are offered in a congregation God will never reject them.

velveteen rabbi - aka Rachel Barenblat - points to a gorgeous translations of one of my fav psalms

Yah! You are my light.
You are my savior.
Whom need I dread?
Yah, with you as my strong protector who can make me panic?
When hateful bullies gang up on me, wanting to harass me, to oppress and terrorize me
They are the ones who stumble and fall.
Even if a gang surrounds me my heart is not weakened.
If a battle is joined around me my trust in You is firm.
Only one thing do I ask of You, Yah:
Just this alone do I seek, I want to be at home with you, Yah,
All the days of my life.
I want to delight in seeing You.
Seeing You when I come to visit You in Your temple.

You hide me in your sukkah on a foul day.
You conceal me unseen in Your tent.
You also raise me beyond anyone's reach
And now, as You have held my head high despite the presence of my powerful foes
I prepare to celebrate and thrill, singing and making music to You, Yah!
Listen, Yah, to the sound of my cry
And, being kind, answer me!
My heart has said, I turn to seek you.
Your presence is what I beg for
Don't hide Your face from me.
Don't just put me down, You who have been my helper.
Don't abandon me, don't forsake me, God my support.
Though my father and my mother have left me
You, Yah, will hold me securely.
Please teach me Your way.
Teach me Your way and guide me on the straight path.
Discourage those who defame me
Because false witnesses stood up against me belching out violence.
Don't let me become the victim of my foes.
I wouldn't have survived
If I hadn't hoped that I would see, yet,
Your goodness, God, fully alive on earth.
So I tell you, my friends: you too hope to Yah! Be sturdy!
And make strong your heart. And most of all, keep hoping to Yah.

Psalm 27, as translated by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

happy parents' day

today is parents's day around here - our 13 year-old goes back to her school O Henry Middle School

parents' day - when summer concludes, school begins, routine returns, the world re-establishes it gravitational pull

the experience of parenting a middle schooler is often what I imagine vacationing in the khyber pass region between afghanistan & pakistan to be like - tribal, dangerous, filled with exotic weapons & rumors of insurrection.  something that seems much safer before & after than it does whilst you are in the deep muddy.

on my bike ride yesterday, I realized we have 4 more parents' days. 

man, that just rips my heart out.  in 5 years, my baby goes to college.

this parenting thing is odd - the point is be in relationship, to lift them up & out - and then POOF they go off to college
.

Austin wall art

Under Lamar Street bridge

Did someone say that there would be an end,
an end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
not the gift ungiven.
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing.
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -
only the strands grow richer with each loss
and memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flow to some real haven,
we who find shelter in the warmth within,
listen and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
as the lost human voices speak through us and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end.
- All Souls,  May Sarton