A Wandering Ark for a Meandering God

(on reading I Samuel 5.6-6.16)

We would contain Thee,

Fix Thy location and Thy bounds.

This far, O God, and no further

Mayst Thou intrude,

Insert Thy Presence into our domain.

When we need Thee, we will call,

Even cry out from the depths of our despair

and hopelessness.

Nor do we truly believe that Thou will be able

To do much about it at all.

Our cry is short.

We do not desire much intervention,

Least of all, from Thee.

So it was, even then.

The Ark of God, captured,

Captivated those ancient Philistines.

“Here is their god!”

And then, dumbstruck with horrors –

Tumors, rodents, plague –

They drove the Ark of God from place to place,

Hoping for power,

Desperate for respite from their pain.

At last – at long last –

Eli dead, and his sons with him –

The Philistines sent the Presence home,

Though not directly.

Two cows, udders heavy, bereft of calves,

Pulling a cart along a meandering path:

The lords of the Philistines witnessed at a distance.

And, the wandering Ark,

Bellowing bovines, golden mice and all,

Found its way home –

To a people like us:

Who would contain Thee,

Fix Thy bounds, and forget Thee once again,

Until needed.

© 2007   Nancy Baillie Strong

Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me.

Matthew 16:18

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual-but-not-religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is a daring insight, unique to him and bold in its reaction against the religious status quo; I am left wondering if it’s really just self-justification.

Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in sunsets. These people always find God in sunsets, and in walks on the beach. Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do out-of-doors.

Do such folk believe that people who go to church don't see God in the sunset? Do they think we are monastics who never leave the church building? Do spiritual-but-not-religious-sunset people think we cannot see God in nature, as though we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition?

Being privately spiritual-but-not-religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself.

What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you, and yet you say your prayers together, in authentic loving humility, week in and week out. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

When spiritual-but-not-religious-sunset person identify themselves, they join a comfortable self-centered bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull, but find themselves uniquely fascinating.

 Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply loving me through it, just like we try to do in church.

Prayer

Dear God, thank you for creating us in your image and not the other way around. Amen.

© 2009   Lillian Daniel

Beyond Michelangelo’s horrific representation of Bartholomew holding his own flayed skin, there is precious little to be known about the Apostle Bartholomew. The neophyte or the latter-day cynic may well quip: ”So what? Why are we keeping a major Feast for a guy about whom we know nothing more, really, than his name?” Fair question, I suppose…not terribly gracious and perhaps hip-shot when silence would have served better, but a question worth pondering.

Speaking for myself, I am more heartened by observances like Saint Bartholomew’s Day than by some other saints’ days where more is known about the individual being commemorated. I am heartened because Bartholomew looks more accessible and therefore perhaps more human than “the big names” of the Church’s calendar. Bartholomew looks a lot more like me than some others, and I am grateful for the similarity. I am heartened because Bartholomew represents for me anonymous intimacy as the Holy Spirit understands such a thing. Bartholomew stands where I will stand in the family portrait of Jesus’ family, the Church.

Think of your old family photographs...the ones found in the attic or cellar…the ones we bring out so they won’t be lost completely. Think of the person in the back row of any of those photographs- the person no one now can recall.

That’s Bartholomew.

Bartholomew is that relation who stood with the family for the picture at so-in-so’s wedding or funeral, and a generation later folks are struggling to remember his name. Bartholomew is the one whose closeness includes him in the photograph- blood kin and close enough to be surely included…and yet forgotten quickly…accounted fully worthy in the moment, and utterly forgotten in a short time.

As it was with Bartholomew so it will be with the life and ministry of most of us. Worthy at the time, and included in the back row of the family photograph, and anonymous a generation later- that’s Bartholomew, and us.

There’s a comfort and a hope in knowing that even the forgotten person in the back row of the family photograph is honored.

Thank God for Bartholomew, and for his holding a place for you and me in the back row of the family photograph.

© 2011   Frank B Crumbaugh III