What Is Wrong in Indiana?

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Put women's rights over bishops' wrongs

Nuns Drive for Faith, Family and Fairness

There is a fight going on in the American Catholic Church regarding control between the Wall Street Money Guys, the Bishops and the traditional “love your neighbor” nuns and other progressives who actually believe in Jesus’ message of humanity.

Vatican orthodoxy does not represent all American Catholics    

  

In the Los Angeles Times of 4 July, a full-page advertisement similarly announces that "It's Time to Quit the Catholic Church" and urges liberal and nominal Catholics to vote with their feet and "please, exit en masse." In March, a similar ad also appeared in the New York Times, and in May, it appeared in USA Today and the Washington Post. 

The controversial billboards and advertisements are directed against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' recent "Fortnight for Freedom" and Catholic dioceses that are currently suing the US Department of Health and Human Services over its ruling that US women be offered birth control as part of their insurance plans. This campaign to leave the Church appears on the heels of the Vatican crackdown against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents most of America's approximately 57,000 sisters. In April, the group of sisters was reprimanded for reportedly supporting women's ordination to the priesthood and the rights of homosexuals. The nuns also were accused of not taking strong enough stances against abortion and euthanasia.

The billboards and newspaper ads are sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a watchdog group founded in 1976 by Annie Nicol Gaylor and her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, who is the Foundation's current co-president and author of Women Without Superstition: No Gods, No Masters. The Foundation and its 18,500 members should be applauded for promoting women's rights to access contraception apart from religious interference. The group should also be commended for its nearly 35-year commitment to erecting a higher wall separating the church and the state: it seeks to end government funding for religious activities and works to halt illegal religious instruction in secular institutions. … 

… This week, a group of bold nuns, who envision economic justice as God's will, is concluding its nine-state bus tour to protest the budget proposal of Congressman Paul Ryan (Republican, Wisconsin) that would cut social services like Head Start, food stamps, and housing subsidies.

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Santorum - When You Mix Faith and Politics

What you get when you mix faith and politics - Santorum.

Avatar vs. Limited Visions of Warlords

Warlords reshape people, territory, wealth, and loyalties according to their vision of a more perfect world – more perfect because the warlord thinks himself  to have more total control which is a dillusion.

I finally got to see the movie Avatar and was bored. All the hype and it was just a blue tinted rerun of hundreds of cowboy and Indian movies I have seen all my life.

All the fearful rhetoric from the church about “pantheism” and the worship of nature was overstated. While nature is worth restudying and in some ways reconnecting to in this plastic present world, it will never return us to the awe and importance it had in the hearts of our ancestors.

Putting the movie aside, I jotted a few notes while watching it.

Can you imagine a new world that nature created in the form of Pandora?

A new exotic uncorrupted world. North America with its virgin forests back. Cut down a forest. Plant a farm. New plants, new foods, new insights.

Goddess. It must be something fearful in that name. Mention of a goddess brings fear into hearts of the man-made religion of the Roman Army. Lack of a penis is potential for a heart.

Eywa. Network of energy. Thought provoking for a brain dead humanity numbed by hundreds of channels of cable TV, cell phones, Blackberries, Ipads etc. etc. etc.

Borrowed energy. You have to give it back. Perhaps the church knows that it has borrowed energy from all the faithful through the ages and are at present not using that energy wisely. The contract, or covenant made with God is on shaky ground. In the past the faith ran itself and a few princes got fat on the results of hard work by those of the faith. Now the princes are all fat and corrupt and there seems to be more princes than faithful.

The movie Avatar’s script is simple, contrite, predicable – cliché. Cameron knows how to bake a good puff pastry.

It is not so much mono-god – one god, so much as it is one Warlord or mono-warlord (corporation) and his demand that you believe in his personal god (and quarterly statement).

A hostile place can also be a place of beauty. A sacred tree scares the shit of the church. It thought that it had burned all the forests down centuries ago in terms of the Celtic belief in such things centered around nature and trees.

Civilizations rise and fall. So too for blue people on distant planets. Better to die in battle than live a thousand generations trapped in the dream of the Warlord’s personal vision.

Better to have a vision of your own…

I suppose in the overall scheme of things, and on a timeline, mono-warlordism has been a way to unite tribes under one title or one faith. As the world shrinks I can only see conflict as the unique visions of the warlords Moses, Constantine and Mohammed try to gel together.

Better to be a frog on a lily pad than want to help various Mono-Theistic faiths find fictional common ground.

In the spirit of Avatar, this Unitarian type believer sees the simple faith of the Native Americans, and their forgotten culture as a good and simple belief system. It is right to thank animals that we eat, for their sacrifice. It is right to stay in balance and not take more than we need. And in the end a happy Hunting Ground to go to when we die.

Not much of a faith, but it is my vision that counts and not that of any unholy warlords whose ghosts still haunt our global culture.

Fighting to Pray in Cordoba

Here is a real odd one that challenges all the phony PR press releases from the RC church about interfaith dialogue.

Two arrested after fight in Cordoba's former mosque

Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain.

Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building when security guards ordered them to stop.

"They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence," the bishop's office said in a statement.

Bishop Demetrio Fernandez Gonzalez of Cordoba is a new hard ass bishop installed in February and is not allowing Muslims to do a prayer thing in the museum attached to his cathedral.

If you look at the picture above the ancient Mosque of Cordoba once occupied all the interior space of a flat roofed mosque. No airy space but good solid bones of beautiful architecture. The cathedral got plopped down in the middle of the Mosque. The mosque as an indoor space is not part of the cathedral. In fact, the former kings used the mosque space as office space and part of the royal court for conducting business.

Like most RC houses of worship with historic importance in Europe, you have to pay a fee to see the architecture of belief in God in another age. Is there belief in God these days by the owners of this once sacred Real Estate? I have to wonder.

The conflict arises these days when tourists, Muslims in particular do not want to wander through church property labeled as museum space when a growing Muslim population would like access to a part of their religious heritage.

Escudero said a space for Muslim prayers would not inconvenience visitors or disturb the cathedral and would promote dialogue and understanding between the two religions. He said there were frequent incidents of Muslims being prevented from praying.

"They argue that canon law does not allow Muslims to pray there, though they have been happy to permit visiting Saudi princes and other dignitaries, including Saddam Hussein, to pray," he said.

"A new bishop was appointed recently and one of his first public statements was to say that Muslim prayers would not be allowed as this would create confusion," he said. "It seems the guards have instructions to prevent prayers with violence, if necessary."

Cathedral authorities reiterated their ban on prayers. "The shared use of the cathedral by Catholics and Muslims would not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the two beliefs," the statement from the bishop's office said.

There’s that “Confused” word being used again by the Catholics. They used it in Father’ Breslin’s parish in Boulder Colorado where two children of gay parents would be “confused” by church teachings on homosexuality and the entitlement to salvation only to heterosexuals.

Now mere belief in one God would no doubt “confuse” catholics if they see that a world, a whole universe is saved within the Muslim part of the spectrum and without the use of Roman clergy.

Get a life. Get tolerance. Get sincere belief in your own belief system and stop issuing PR reports about interfaith dialogue when you lock the house of God off to believers in God.

...my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. ISAIAH 56:7

Words do not count in faith. Actions do!

Obama Overtones on Faith and Religion

Caught this item on CNN last week. Did you catch it too?

How Obama's favorite theologian shaped his first year in office

In the summer of 1943, when Adolf Hitler's armies marched unchecked across Europe, a pastor in a remote New England village decided to write a prayer.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," he began, "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

It is now known as the Serenity Prayer.

In grade school this prayer was on back of a holy card of St. Francis of Assisi. I think the nuns even told me that St. Francis wrote it. Well perhaps not, if documentable current history can be depended upon.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Obama’s minimalism in politics, if it is such, matches something to his approach to faith and religion. Faith and religion can be two separate things. Perhaps too his seeming minimalism in the hard art of politics might also extend into the realm of agnostic in that of his religious beliefs.

He apparently is impressed by the history and words of:

His name is Reinhold Niebuhr, and he was a Protestant pastor in the mid-20th century whose words tended to unsettle people, not offer comfort.

Niebuhr is getting attention again because he has a fan in the Oval Office.

I never heard of him before I read this article of a man that many including Martin Luther King Jr. were fond of quoting.

Obama is said to attend church services at Camp David in a military chapel and out of the eye of the media. His motorcade of thirty something vehicles is somewhat embarrassing if he shows up at a formal church setting in Washington D.C.. He has done the church thing very little. He has been to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the “Presidents’ Church”, across the street on Lafayette Square before the Inaugural and on I believe at Easter. The man’s faith and the public display of it he has been kept largely private.

In the fishbowl world of the presidency and with the Pharisee Media Hypocrites ready to equate any religious overtones as within the legitimate forum of politics, I believe he has backed off in that sense since the Reverend Wright thing and Rev. Wright’s old fashioned and perhaps divisive rhetoric that does on occasion mix politics with religion.

So there we have it, our CEO in chief is fond of a New England preacher and some of his writings including the “serenity prayer”.

Niebuhr was a blunt critic of morally complacent Christians. He thought the church was full of idealists who believed that progress was inevitable and that love alone would ultimately conquer injustice, some Niebuhr scholars say.

"He said there was a difference between being a 'fool for Christ' and a plain damn fool," says Richard Crouter, author of the upcoming book "Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics, Religion and Christian Faith."

It sounds like a book worth reading. I invite you to read the full article above.

Of gods, Monsters and Intelligent Design?

I don’t know what to make of all the fake science that is trying to get endorsed or believed these days.

Intelligent Design is supposed to tell us that the universe is not a random chaotic thing, which it is. They would have you believe that there is an intelligent design (by God) to the whole mess. The Vatican and or its German speaking surrogates such as Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna back Intelligent Design.

There is supposed to be some international meeting of minds or conference on Darwin sponsored by the Vatican on the calendar right about now. Don’t hold your breath expecting any intelligent outcome or pronouncements. One critic, the former head of the Vatican Observatory Father George V. Coyne, a real scientist, got fired over his views about real rational science, which is opposed to fake science or Intelligent Design. I don’t think he was invited to this Darwin Conference thing.

The whole folly comes within the realm of Voltaire from his book Candide and the philosophical falsity that this world is “le meilleur des mondes possibles” – the best of all possible worlds. Délusion. Délusion. Délusion.

If the earth is of an intelligent design then why did the Intelligent Designer waste hundreds of millions of years on the Dinosaur Project ???

The Creationist theory will tell you that the Bible, being the exact and perfect world of God, proves that science is wrong in determining the age of the earth. They will tell you that all physical evidence must fit into the five thousand year old timeframe of the Bible. That is why if you stop off at some GOP endorsed Creationist Museum, you will see our ancestors, as cave men and women, living in harmony with the dinosaur things.

The Bible is a flawed document. The bible is a human document. The New Testament is a committee written document. Jesus changes from a human being to a god in the time frame of three hundred years. Jesus’ words, wisdom, divine inspiration and divine mission have been subordinated to politics since his death almost two thousand years ago.

Did he rise from the dead ? Definitely. As a Christian I believe that. God can do anything including raise the dead. To believe in Jesus is to believe in the higher powers of an evolved, evolving species called man. I have faith in the non-tangible abilities and powers of God and his servant Jesus.

These religious screamers call faith, faith, faith. I do not think they believe or have faith. They need an exact user manual for life – a rule book. If anything, the day to day struggle of Jesus to get imperfect people to listen to his more perfect evolved message for the human race seems at times to have been wasted on many deaf human ears.

So too the flaws of the Old Testament are obvious. The Hebrew Testament does not get written or fully consolidated until after the Babylonian captivity. Along the way to consolidation several non-communicating committees manage to lose ten tribes and the Ark of the Covenant.

Tangible things such as fake relics like the Shroud of Turin or a Jesus Ossuary - speaks of non-faith in the original person and the true message of the teacher of Jesus.

What I have found or sensed along the way of this study of my own beliefs is the negatuve reception or reaction of others to the Gnostic concept of a divine spark within. Negative belief too in the possiblility of Jesus as a bearer or in his own recognition of that divinity. The role of bearer and of recognition connotes great responsibility to go forward in life as bearer of the light of God within and with that light to be given freely to others. Few of us now or in the generations past have come close to the ideal of Jesus as evolved enlightened being and creation of God.

There is hope - the human race continues and “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”…(W.B.Yeats)

The problem with the Gnostic belief approach is that 99.9% of humanity do not seem to want responsibility. They want to be sheep and they want to be led. As such, the P.T.Barnum types in the Vatican and the far right fundamentalists need road shows, conferences, freak shows, museums, literal interpretation of myths - tangible proof of their so-called faith – which is not faith but seems so much more like superstition.

The show goes on.

Popcorn! Peanuts! Cotton Candy!

Luke 18:31-43 - Quinquagesima (Feb. 22, 2009)

Do you know yourself? Simple question, isn't it? When you leave here today will you know who you are and in terms of your relation to friends, family, the community?

So much of Jesus' ministry in those ancient times was in trying to make people see things differently. A business psychologist in college once stated the definition of what it takes to be great to us, his students.

He stated that a great person makes the whole world turn around and look at the world differently. Great men and or great women move the world. They change the world. My teacher cited the examples of Einstein, Gandhi, Darwin, Buddha and of course Jesus to name a few.

It is a crowded field for great people. The world is changed not every decade these days but every day. I detest the term 24/7 because it connotes business every hour of the day, seven days a week. When do we rest from the labors of our life? Even God rested on the seventh day.

Indeed, the secular nature of our culture pushes out, eradicates or even discounts the value of things that some of us can remember. Half a century ago, there was little or no business done on a Sunday. Sunday was for family and a rest from the everyday workaday world and a day for church. God is not that important anymore to the secular world. God and or Jesus have to be in the secular rat race of life everyday to get any recognition or respect. It is a sad commentary on our times.

I look back at the past and am not all that nostalgic for it. Rather, I am looking down the road to better days ahead. What we here today are doing is recognizing the greatness of God and his Son and his mission to earth. How great thou art. How great thou art indeed.

In the opening reading from Samuel, it would appear that God was not happy with King Saul and he is telling Samuel to go to Bethlehem and seek out a son of Jesse. Samuel is to anoint this son of Jesse with oil. God is looking for a new ruler of his chosen people. And going back to my opening question - do you know yourself? - I think that perhaps God saw beyond Saul's great abilities to be a king and warrior. Perhaps he saw into the heart of the man and knew that Saul was not fit for the job or was losing his grip.

Time for change is coming down the road. Why not let a few people starting with the prophet Samuel know that change was coming in the form of King David. King David would one day lay the foundation stones of the first temple not by building the temple itself but by choosing Jerusalem as a permanent Jewish city and a permanent home for the wandering Ark of the Covenant. His son Solomon built the temple. David picked its location.

Jesus, perhaps in his temporary role as prophet, is standing there in front of his apostles and telling them what is about to happen to him. He is to be taken by gentiles, mocked and killed. And in three days he will rise. Their eyes glaze over. They do not see what he sees. No doubt Jesus might have been thinking this about his Apostles - Do you know yourself? Do you know who you are? Do you really know who I am?

Communication then was as difficult as it can be today. There is the theme of the great man to make others see the world differently. Besides predicting the future, Jesus is trying to make people to stop looking at outward appearances. He is in so many ways trying to appeal to people to look inside to what their hearts tell them. He is in so many ways trying to tell people to change religious beliefs from rules and outward appearances and obsolete rituals.

Saint Paul in first Corinthians thirteen is evaluating perhaps his own person and the human condition as well. It is difficult to turn around and to see ourselves differently. But in Jesus, in his teachings, in his grace from on high, we can change our lives in so many ways. Go thy way and sin no more. Recognize our faults, our sins, ask forgiveness, receive forgiveness. Change the way the world sees us. Move the world! Be a great new person.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels - and have not love, I am nothing.

Jesus is traveling and there are the crowds following him. The quiet of the country side is disturbed. Crowds, noise, talking, shouting. The circus has come to town? No. Just Jesus. Just Jesus?! More like the most truly greatest show on earth that has ever been or ever will be this side of eternity.

A blind man hears the hubbub and asks who is in town? To which they reply Jesus of Nazareth. The man is excited. Jesus' reputation has preceded him. Like Samuel looking to anoint a new up and coming king, most of the prophets of the old testament talk in some futuristic way of this man and his mission, of this special anointed by God man, of this Jesus.

The blind man is shouting. He wants attention. He wants something from Jesus. The blind man who cannot see shouts and anoints Jesus with a proper title - "Jesus, Son of David". Finally the blind man gets the direct attention of Jesus. And Jesus says something remarkable as far as I am concerned. He asks the blind man what he wants from Jesus.

"What do you want me to do for you?"

It should be obvious. The blind man wants to see. Right? Or does he? Do you know yourself? Does the blind man know himself? Jesus does not assume that the blind man wants to see. So he asks. The blind man might want forgiveness for some wretched sins from his past. He might have wanted something for his child or grandchild.

Jesus looks the blind man in the eyes and asks. What do you want me to do for you? The blind man asks to be able to see. Jesus restores his sight with the words "You are healed because you believed".

Do you know yourself? Do others know you? What do they see? What do you feel? What is inside of you? What do you want from Jesus? These are fair questions. Only you have the answers. Faith can cure you. Restore you. Change the way you look and see the world.

From Jesus today I want the whole world to turn around and look first at themselves and to see themselves inside and out in a different manner. I want you to be great people. I want you as Christians to change the world. That is what Jesus wants from each and every one of us. Not too much to ask. Is it?

How great thou art! How great thou art!


For more homilies: http://www.amazon.com/Lenten-Homilies-Lectionary-Cycle-ebook/dp/B0077QUHA8/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329408622&sr=1-3

Face of God

What does God look like? Does he have to look like anything? Does man’s visual ability apply passed death when the spiirit separates from the body?

There are a thousand different questions about the basics of religious and or spiritual beliefs. If you sat down and had the average Christian, asked them to fill out a questionnaire, you would likely get many different answers to the same question.

While I know what traditional Jesus looks like with his Nordic ashen blonde hair, blue eyes and perfectly chiseled face, it might not be the person I get to meet in the afterlife. What if I walk up to the gates of heaven and see a long line and sit down on a cloud and then start shooting the breeze with a stranger taking a smoke (smoking is forbidden in Heaven – don’t you know that?), then the stranger walks back inside the employee’s gate without having to slide his ID card through the gate-key and then I find out that that was Jesus (for Christ’s sake!). And then I have to go through St. Peter’s gate and metal detector. What if Jesus talks about my contempt for organized religion? What if my name magically appears on a “do not admit” list? All this because I did not know what J.C. looked like?

Of course anybody might get the boss’s son wrong in a line up but what if I encountered God up there or even down here.

There is this concept of a “personal God” I have heard about for many years and I never looked up the definition because I thought I knew what it meant. The definition is something like giving human attributes to a non-human entity. It is not unlike making cartoon characters and giving them animation and voices and well you can fathom what I am talking about.

I always thought that a personal God was the person, God, I was talking to inside of me when debating the direction of my moral compass. Heresy you say. Well let me say this. There is an awful lot of money and power out there in the name of the creator of the universe. There is not a lot of heart among the bureaucrats feeding off the good life in God’s name. I think I can at least trust the good inside of me and not the wolves in sheep’s clothing out there.

Going back to something I have probably said before, faith in somebody else’s faith is extraordinary faith indeed. I may be standing alone on a street corner so to speak in my quest for spirituality in a very non-spiritual materialistic world. The organized meal-ticket christians may sneer at me but do you know what?

The divine spark within me is lot more comfortable and real than the whole cacophony of religions today. I may only have my own faith in what I perceive to be the divine things of this world. I am not worshipping the personal Gods and obsolete insights of long dead prophets, biblical kings and saints.

I know what God looks like. He, or she if you prefer, looks a little like every one of us.

In Search of Jesus

In one of those rare moments of coincidence, I ran into an old copy of U.S. News and World Report April 1996 in the laundry room of my apartment complex about a month ago. The title of the magazine was In search of Jesus.

A great deal of the article had to do with the Jesus Seminar, a group of christian scholars who with their various historic research and linguistics decided by committee vote what parts of the New Testament seem more valid than others.

If you in fact get some new bible and words in red denote the words of Jesus you probably have this professional elitist meal ticket christian enterprise to thank.

It is quite easy to dissect the faith. I have done it here and as a hobby for many years. I want to know the basic Jesus. I try to live the simple Christian message.

What irks me most about finding this magazine is how it got published and how only a few elite made a significant mark on modern cultural society and then blended back into the academic woodwork. That I on my own personal journey was perhaps mirroring some clues spewing out of the Jung’s cosmic unconsciousness related to the same subject.

What irks me is that as an elder in a Lutheran church, over a decade ago, I mentioned to the Pastor how I had read something in the past about this red balling and black balling of the so called words of Jesus. He did not throw any crumbs back to this dog in any part of the dialogue as if he was ignorant of the Jesus Seminar. He was not. I did not have a collar and was not part of the comfy smug club member’s only section of elites in the Christian church.

Well so much for elitism. I believe there is a job application out there on the Internet if you want to join the Jesus Seminar to add prestige to your scholarship and resume. First question is how many PhDs you have and in what areas are they in. That leaves me out in the cold for that job. Of course it may not pay anything to speak of. It is the prestige.

Why if you can chop the Lord’s prayer into three or four iffy segments of who was likely to have said this or said that – isn’t the Jesus Seminar more an autopsy of the Constantine Christian church and if so – why are some of you elitist ministers attached to this project – why haven’t you taken your collars off if all that is left of Christianity is you and your sterile academic input? Salaries and pensions would seem more valuable than the simple words, message and heart of Jesus’ ministry of so long ago.

Where is your faith?
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Perception as a Building Block of Reality

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We each build our own reality amid a stark universal background.

What came before came before. Only the present, the now, seems to matter most.

The culture surrounding us - instinct and mother's milk - sustains us or we drift to other perceptions of reality.

How big or small the universe is perceived relates to how we see our place in the scheme of things. The size of the building blocks of reality does or does not matter. It all depends on the individual to determine the measure.

Recognition and comfort with self flows into and out of cosmic tides, like our breath keeping time with the heartbeat of THE ALL!

It is so easy to miss a beat.

We all live our lives in canyons of sorts - small walled off areas with a small view of the world.

Sometimes the water is in a difficult place to reach within our little canyons.

Sometimes the water is within reach.

How difficult sometimes to perceive, to see, to reach or to touch.

If we travel away from the canyon and into another canyon we keep on seeing the first canyon in our brains since most canyons tend to look alike.

Some can see beyond the personal prejudice that states that all canyons look alike. While others, no matter where they travel, only see the one canyon.

We all build our own reality. Nobody really knows what is inside the next guy.

Go with social flow or get jettisoned into the storm.

Wash up on a deserted beach and start all over again.

And what might we find there?

New perceptions?

New faith?

New realities?

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Matt 15:21-28

It is Sunday and maybe anyone who reads this is not in a church today. There is something not working in the formula for perhaps some of us that has worked in Christianity for hundreds of years.

I believe there is an adage of sorts that says that the best way to learn a subject is to teach a subject.

I am fumbling with my faith in my quest to do something or get someplace other than where the (forgive me for saying this) cookie cutter religions what us to go, accept, purchase and not complain about the product etc.

This practice and or theorectical homily was assembled in accordance to a one year lectionary and in conjunction with the second Sunday of Lent.

A bit abstract for me but a great learning tool for myself and for one who in retrospect being so painfully shy in his youth as to think he could not get up and deliver somthing like this.

It also got a large number of hits on another site. Odd/Curious thing?

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The opening reading from Psalm 121 is something that really brings home some very specific memories to me.

I had been, and very briefly, an elder in a congregation that used this Psalm as the cornerstone of it's being.

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth."

That congregation started over sixty years ago on the edge of the desert. It had then a majestic view of mountains to the north. Now it is sandwiched in between parking lots, fast food joints and office buildings.

Though I can visualize when in something like 1948, a dozen families made a commitment to buy a small parcel of land. On that land they built a church and a grade school. I have met some of the children educated at that school over the years. One stands out in memory as having been in the Peace Corp.

If you think of all the good that affected the human race and coming from the children educated there, well the possibilities stagger the imagination. I think of the promise of God to Abraham about how the number of his descendents would number more that the sands of the earth or the stars of the sky.

For those of you, who have never lived and worked in the desert, let me tell you something. It can get hot. How hot? Very hot. But they say it is dry heat.

Ladies and gentlemen. One hundred and twenty degrees in the desert in the summer is comparable to being a dressed up Thanksgiving turkey coming out of the refrigerator at five in the morning and being rudely placed into a preheated three hundred and fifty degree oven. And they call it dry heat.

The desert reduces you and your psyche to some bare minimums. There is a line from a popular song "A Horse with no Name" of many years back. "In the desert you can remember your name, cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

Little wonder God chose Jesus to wander about a desert for forty days to get his head on straight for the difficult task of his brief but revolutionary mission to preach the good news of the coming more freely of the spirit of God into the human race.

And following through with the reading of Roman 5:1-5

"Since we have been made right with God by our faith, we have peace with God. This happened through our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought us that blessing of God's grace that we now enjoy."

Romans is always very simple and clear in saying what we as Christians are all about.

I could stand here and talk about faith or grace. But most of you know what those things are about. Or so we think we know.

Today's gospel reading is an obscure passage. I say obscure because when I read it to make comment, I did not remember this text with any clarity. I probably read it once, was speed-reading or the like. It did not strike a chord in my gut. It is not the most familiar or popular group of lines in the Christian testament.

In fact I had to read this passage several times and went back and forth between my New Century Version Bible and then back to the old standard, a rock of ages, the King James version. Even then, I only got a light feeling about what seems very not in character with our familiar view of Jesus. I finally got some insight from a few lines of Martin Luther in one of his sermons to feel comfortable enough in my skin to talk to you about it.

A woman of Canaan, a non-Jewish woman, comes to the miracle worker Jesus to beg a cure for her sick daughter. Jesus ignores her. He does not answer. She makes a big fuss and his followers want him to send her away presumably with her request fulfilled.

Jesus stands pat and states that "God sent me only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel".

This harkens back to Matthew 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill."

So here is this predicament. Jesus does make exceptions as to who he might help outside his primary faith of Judaism. But here I think he is reading the mind and heart of the woman badgering him for a small miracle for benefit of her daughter.

Jesus quite ungraciously calls her or refers to her as a dog in the line "It is not right to take the children's (of Israel) bread and give it to the dogs."

But the woman is persistent. She wants a favor. She loves her daughter. How can she, a gentile and a pagan, reach into the heart of this very Jewish rabbi?

The woman concedes that she is a dog when she says that "Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table".

Jesus liked her response. And so he replies "Woman, you have great faith! I will do what you asked." The woman's daughter was cured.

We can knock at God's door and hope that he opens that door, or he can stand on the other side of the door and say that he doesn't know you. If one, or any of us, in our true hearts, can prayer long and hard and request grace to get through the day or a difficult phase in our lives, it is only God who can bestow grace.

Faith, faith, faith in our hearts opens the door to grace and the peace and love of God.

Never forget that.

Always remember that.

- -

On the Road of Life

Some strange guy once waved to me in a nearly empty parking lot at the Mall in Arizona. Hey I do go to the mall sometimes.

I did not know the guy. He started to give me the spiel that he waved to me because he thought he knew me. I looked like someone he knew. Well not actually.

“Are you a Someway salesman?” I asked. “No.” he replied. This had happened to me before. People who sell some really junky soap powder for your clothes want to sell the same crappy soap suds to you and your friends and then start selling everything imaginable from their little catalogue. Sounds like a good deal. Cheap soap and its gets cheaper as you build a network of buyers for the products.

After a few more questions I hit pay dirt. I did not know the right questions. Then I switched the nouns or the verb tense and finally I got a “Yes, I am with Someway but I am not a salesman. I am a distributor.”

The guy was Hindu. I did not mention it sooner because it might have triggered a cultural reaction in you and ruined my intended line of thought and writing. He was dark skinned and before he spoke too much, I thought he might have been Mexican American. After all it was southern Arizona near the border. I didn’t know he was Hindu until he spoke with a slight accent.

Well I am a curious fellow and I like to chew the fat like anybody and in spite of the blazing hot summer sun, I continued in conversation. In a few more lines of conversation, I was asking him cultural questions about being Hindu. I was curious about their religious feasts. And the best I got out of him was yes he had a lot of relatives and yes they had holidays but mostly Hindu families like to get together to eat and eat and eat.

In many ways, this distributor was not much different that anybody else I knew here in America. I think of that random meeting in a parking lot and of course he gave me his card in case I changed my mind or if my brother in law wanted to sell suds.

I harken back to an earlier time when a man is standing in front of a synagogue and is engaging strangers in chit chat and conversation. This man is a stranger in town. Until he speaks, the natives have no clue who he is or where he is from. His dress is quite common for this town along a Roman road in Asia Minor, the country of Turkey in today’s geography. His accent is a little strange but you can’t quite put a finger on its origin. The man is Jewish in outward manners and wants to talk about some local gossip or a phrase that the local rabbi dropped in the synagogue on Sabbath.

Paul calls himself an apostle. He talks about having been a tentmaker. Do you have any tents that need repair? He could do it very cheaply. He had learned the trade when he spent two years in the far away exotic place of Arabia. He disclosed this without much explanation. The Arabia thing goes over most people’s heads. If they had ever heard of Arabia they knew that is was outside the realm of Roman control. Pirates abound in the waters off this exotic sounding country. If anything, a man or two of the world might think of that destination as the end of the line in terms of caravans snaking their way all around the Middle East and all the way to even more exotic sounding places like India or China.

“You say you studied Mosaic Law under the great Gamaliel?” Paul was forever careful. There were spies everywhere. With a simple question and a simple answer he might be labeled a trouble maker and thrown into a Roman jail but only after the locals had beaten him up. He was a Roman citizen. That was enough most of the time to get a Roman soldier or magistrate to give him the edge and the benefit of the doubt in any local dispute with natives that did not have the same rights of a Roman free man.

“I heard him talk a number of times. He is a brilliant man, a great scholar and a true man of the Almighty.” In truth he had not studied for long at the Temple. He had heard of Gamiliel and his defense of the new cult of Jesus before a local Temple administrative hearing.

“And now I tell you: Stay away from these men, and leave them alone. If their plan comes from human authority, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them. You might even be fighting against God himself!” Acts 5:38-39

“I am busy right now Paul from Tarsus. I have errands. Come to my house later. We will talk. Join me and my family for an evening meal.”

“Thank you kind sir. Thank you. I will come to your house”.

Paul was relieved. He was also hungry. He had not eaten for two days. Fasting is good for the spirit but it wrecked havoc on his stomach. Maybe tonight he would just talk about Gamiliel. The conversion would always somehow turn to Jesus and what he thought he had to say.

In a way of atonement, this man had many debts to pay back to men, to Jesus and his followers and to God himself.

Having been young and fanatical and vested with papers that gave him and a bunch of hired thugs authority, he had set forth to Damascus to bring some men to Temple justice. Talking with his fellow traveling companions, he realized that any prisoners this well spoken, well educated Jew could manage to get arrested, those men were not likely to live to see Temple justice.

As if in imitation of the energy of that blinding light and a realization, along with his anger and his hatred of the people he set out to get and in anger and disgust of the people he had once traveled with, he could reflect on many things, and look into the dark caverns of his soul.

At the end of a long day of trying to find people who were willing to listen to his messsage, he could relax a bit. He could look into a mirror in a darkening room at twilight and see his face in guilt reflecting the life he set out to build and he could also see the face in the mirror of the man he had become.

Redemption for him was to continue the mission of people like the stoned and martyred Stephen. He saw that young man killed for his beliefs. Jesus in a direct and indirect manner had set in motion a whole new life for this sinner now known as Paul.

Beware of the strangers you meet on the road of life. Some might actually change your life for the better and forever.