Journey with God, Weeks 35-36 combined: EfM 2025-26 is History

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Worship and Gathering
We'll be meeting in person Tuesday for worship at St. James Church in Marietta, GA, so Scott began Monday's session with the collect for Pentecost. The gathering question was about what we'd like to remember from our Memorial Day weekend. The cool and affecting exhibit of portraits by Amy Sherald at the High Museum... The sound of the GA Symphony Orchestra and Youth Orchestra doing The Planets and the roar of approval at Symphony Hall... quiet time at home with rain... the infant granddaughter smiled with recognition. Scott made a musical theatre detour to talk about a mother's plea, "Stop, Time!" (from the musical Big) when she thinks back on all the stages in her 13-year-old son's growth so far.

Yr. D, 1st yr: Michael, Mason; 2nd yr: Lanie; 3rd yr: Joyce, Susan; 4th yr, Jessica, Rita; 5th yr "Wide Angle," Kaye. Mentor: Scott. Absent Monday: Mason was moving his parents.

Respond
Questions for discussion, given in advance:

Some say the church’s history can be viewed as a third Testament. From the perspective of your reading, watching, and listening this year, what is your response to this idea? There's so much disagreement and backsliding and unfaithfulness in Church history that it would go very well with the history of God's people in both the Old and New Testaments. All agreed that different denominations would be unbending in negotiations for what history would go in and how it would be told -- which is pretty much what happened when councils fought over what books would be included in the Hebrew and Christian canons. Joyce agreed with Susan: "We already have too many things to fight about!"

Kaye said "History is the key to the whole picture that we don't get at church." Lanie said, "Let's just make everyone take EfM!"

Susan recommended a new book that focuses on church history to answer the title question, Why Study the Past? Scott liked a third testament updating church history would counteract the commonly held belief that God has had nothing new to say to us since the first century.

What might God be saying to you through your EfM study this week or year? Revelation used to be really scary, but now it's comforting. What we learn in Scripture now must become a habit for each of us. It is our mission to go out in the world we have and be the person we are here to become. The God who keeps welcoming the Israelites back is a comfort to those of us prone to wander. (An allusion to "Come Thou Font of Ev'ry Blessing"). Especially this year, with the monastic essays, we've had an emphasis on quiet and listening. Also growth and joy: Kaye recommended the three videos of "Joyful, Joyful" in different styles.

Joyce heard a strong message through the story of Martin Luther who stood up for his beliefs. (He came up in a couple of sermons recently for enduring attacks from all sides by repeating "I have been baptized!")

This Particular Group is now History
We gathered at St. James for worship "in early evening" (BCP 139), selecting prayers from our booklet of original collects of the year. Then we walked in rain to 7 Tequilas for dinner. When Joyce couldn't join us, we sent her a photo from the restaurant. Baby Liam had a great time! (Inset: Joyce!)

For the Future:
Please do let me know if you plan to enroll for next year. I've heard that the process will be simpler. We can only hope.

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Journey with God, Wk. 34: "Leviathan...for the Sport of It"

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Worship and Gathering
Michael assembled prayers from an variety of sources that somehow came together to be a fitting prayer for the group.

For a Gathering Question, we told of something our parents taught us to love: reading (3 votes)... family (2)... outdoors and camping (2)... records and music... trivia (Mason still has his Presidents' placemat).

Yr. D, 1st yr: Michael, Mason; 2nd yr: Lanie; 3rd yr: Joyce, Susan; 4th yr, Jessica, Rita; 5th yr "Wide Angle," Kaye. Mentor: Scott. Absent: Jessica.

Respond

Before we responded to questions from the web site, we had a chance to share anything from the reading that struck us. Rita sees that Year Four is channeling EfM graduates to "go into all the world... They will know us by our love for one another." She also reacted to a video about endangered species that children of the future may never know. Joyce saw herself in a video of little black girls going off to church with gloves and purses and a quarter for the offering plate. Mason was interested in the way Greek philosophers influenced the wisdom literature from the second temple period. Mason brought up Sirach's disdain for women; Scott cited a chapter in Sirach about various artisans and tradesmen whose worship is in their work, no less important than students in Sirach's school who have the luxury to do religious things. (This resonated later with the idea of everyone's being a "holy mystery.") Michael saw The Wisdom of Solomon as a challenge to leaders, still relevant.

That got us to politics, a topic Susan chose, with questions that Archibishop Rowan Williams raised: The “Christian disciple is not seeking to make the state into a church, but is proposing to the state and to the culture in general a style of direction and common life.” What are some examples of religion integrated with politics in your studies this year? How do you integrate your faith? What are the consequences of that integration? Where does that lead you?

Susan sees an evolution from "top down" politics among Christian rulers in early church history to something more like the Archbishop's idea. Lanie says if we follow the letters of the N.T. and treat every individual as a "holy mystery" then our commitment to human rights would transcend law and petty policy. We connected that to "self-evident" truth in the sacred text of our "Civic Religion."

The other questions was about liberation. “To be a person of faith, to be a body of faith, is to be about the business of liberation,” writes Henry Louis Gates in The Black Church. How does your assignment connect with the concept of “the business of liberation?” How does this compare with your understanding of liberation? What do you see as the relationship between liberation and faith? What are some examples?

From "Let my people go" to Paul's preaching about Christ's freeing us from sin, we saw liberation on lots of levels. Joyce pointed out that life up north during the "Great Migration" was "same old same old" of the South "until churches got involved." She was reminded of her own mother's work bringing liberation to families through her work with children.

Scott wondered about the many readings we've all shared about the "rule of life" in monasteries and convents. Is that a model of strict rules also somehow "liberation?" Lanie could see that. "I've come to appreciate the quiet" as she understood it from Sue Monk Kidd's book.

Reflect
Lanie's son Scott Baxter kept a shark's jaws up in his bedroom, and he cried when his parents gifted him with a tooth from a Megaladon. Our focus shifted to a quotation that Lanie presented with her story, "There is that Leviathan that You created for the sport of it!" (By coincidence, that's the Psalm that St. James choir chanted on the following Sunday.)

Far from horrifying, the "created world" of Leviathan struck us as beautiful, joyful. Was Leviathan created for us? For its own sake? For the heck of it? Mason brought an alternative translation that suggested Leviathan was itself "sporting" with the ships.

When we thought of brokenness or sin in this world, we took for granted that the huge creature would destroy a ship or kill a human. Redemption then seemed limited to hunting, killing, maybe exploding, maybe eating, Leviathan. Was there any other kind of redemption? We had a notion that saving Leviathan from revenge would be a kind of redemption, maybe.

Connecting, we thought of the big fish, instrument of God, in Jonah. Before we were created, the world was "good," with Leviathan in it. We thought of Jaws. We invoked Ahab's obsession with the white whale that bit off his leg. We thought of 17th century philosopher Hobbes whose ideal government would be a "Leviathan" -- an autocrat that controls the chaos of existence.

A question about why Lanie's son would keep the jaws of a fearsome creature brought up memories for many of us, how we would be fascinated of the things that scared us (spiders and snakes, for instance) and would read about them, gingerly handling pages with photos so as not to touch the dreaded creatures. We speculated that our childhood selves were participating in the power of our "enemies" -- making part human, part beast. We thus lessened its power over us. When we wear a crucifix, image of violent death, we strip death itself of its power.

Michael closed the evening with a great piece that we wanted to see again.

For Monday:
Questions for discussion:

Some say the church’s history can be viewed as a third Testament. From the perspective of your reading, watching, and listening this year, what is your response to this idea?

What might God be saying to you through your EfM study this week or year?

For Tuesday: Set your GPS to 161 Church Street Marietta GA 30060. Ring the doorbell at the glass door under the portico; Scott will open it for you! We will walk a block up Church Street to 7 Tequilas Restaurant after a worship service at St. James. Scott's cell number is 678-521-2135 if there's a problem.

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Journey with God, Wk. 33: Yellow and White

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Worship and Gathering
Rita brought worship from Enriching Our Worship, edited to fit our group. I saw an emphasis on Wisdom, personified as "she." We were concerned for our missing friends.

Rita asked for our favorite snack. Pretzels got three votes, at least. Apple with peanut butter, peanuts (in the shell, shared with Brandy the dog), popcorn, vegetable chips and rice cakes, chips and salsa, and "anything salty."

Yr. D, 1st yr: Michael, Mason; 2nd yr: Lanie; 3rd yr: Joyce, Susan; 4th yr, Jessica, Rita; 5th yr "Wide Angle," Kaye. Mentor: Scott. Absent: Kaye and Joyce.

Respond
Kaye wasn't feeling well, but she sent us our questions in advance.

First, we brainstormed associations with the color yellow. It's the color of cowardice, caution, some great foods and flowers, and some disease. It's gender-neutral. "I feel sorry for yellow." Lanie was dressed in yellow!

It was a great exercise of imagination to associate yellow with our materials of the week. Daniel's friends danced in yellow-hot fire. Daniel also stands for truth against yellow-bellied liars. Peter and Jude give CAUTION signals about false teachers. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made Black Gospel music central to his history of a Black culture all its own, not dependent on, nor a problem to be solved by, whites -- and Scott associated this with a memory of African-American women singing gospel in matching yellow dresses.

Another question had us consider a diagram that related modes of prayer circling "written liturgy." Lanie saw that the modes of prayer, read clockwise, corresponded to the Lord's Prayer. Mason connected prayer with the song of the three young men in our liturgy. Michael gave us a concise version of the Apocryphal story of Bel -- a funny tale of how Daniel caught the Babylonians faking their own "miracle" for their "god." The story was written in Roman times, but must have seemed to Roman officers to be just old folk tales.

Rita, near the end of four years with EfM, took the long view. It's time to take faith out into the world. She was especially moved by the hopeful thought that "we may still be the early church." She took comfort from the improvisational nature of so much in our tradition. We don't have to know the answers or to solve all the world's problems. She agreed, she is not a "doomer," to use a neologism that cropped up on NPR this week.

Reflect
Susan brought a poem by Richard Wilbur, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World." It sounds pretty rarified, but the subject was laundry. We focused on a prayer that emerges around the middle: "Let there be nothing on earth but laundry."

Clean, fresh, extra-crispy, simple, uncomplicated: even our youngest friends had strong recollections of laundry on a line. What can "break" that world? The stiffness of the towels, a rain, a high wind, smoke, or bird poop (second week in a row for that to enter our discussion).

We connected this to our tradition through Linen Guild, Mary and Martha (laundry surely was a point of contention for them), the blessing of new choir robes at St. James, and the idea of the saints in their white robes, "washed in the blood of the Lamb." We thought of Lazarus and Jesus in their burial sheets.

In our culture, there's a shady aspect to white linen. Criminals "launder" money, and scandals are called "dirty linen." Unpleasant truths "will all come out in the wash." Immigrants have made their living laundering dirty clothes. Some of us are old enough to remember early washing machines with wringers attached: clean cloth would be "run through the wringer" by hand crank to squeeze out every drop of water.

We don't always have a lot of connections to the "Position" source, but this time? Cleanliness is next to Godliness, we were taught, though John the Baptist sounds not very clean. A hymn tells us that we are spirits "robed in flesh." We are Body AND Soul, Lanie said. We had a side discussion about the camaraderie that one finds in a laundromat.

Insights and applications? If your soul is pure, you'll be in those white robes. Like the laundry, you didn't start clean. You must be "wrung through" the "wringer," go through a process -- and it's not something you do for yourself.

At this point, we often write a collect, but Wilbur got there first. He ends his poem with a prayer for those who need to be forgiven, for those at the start of life's journy, for those who balance "body" and "spirit":

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
 keeping their difficult balance.

For Monday:
Michael brings worship; Susan chooses questions; Lanie brings kindling for the TR.

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Journey with God, Wk. 32: X-ray, X-clusion, and X-pression of Love

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Worship and Gathering
Lanie led opening prayers from the New Zealand BCP. It felt wonderfully new and yet somehow familiar. It was the Lord's Prayer re-imagined through NZ Maori culture!

Lanie asked us about memorable Mother's Day gifts. That eventually played into the theme of our TR! We shared about earrings delivered by infant son and new dog...being a mother to cats... Father's plan to have the family bond in raft rides down the Chattahoochee (and it worked!)... a handmade card, and cards each year bearing three brothers' (growing) handprints... a lovely gift from the husband to his wife on Father's Day, the year he became a father... the first Mother's Day as a mother... a dachsund rescued and given by Jessica and Jeremy... and, after years of trying to have a child, the adoption (on Mother's Day) of a daughter.

Yr. D, 1st yr: Michael, Mason; 2nd yr: Lanie; 3rd yr: Joyce, Susan; 4th yr, Jessica, Rita; 5th yr "Wide Angle," Kaye. Mentor: Scott. Absent: None. We were all on time!

Respond
One of Rita's chosen questions was to imagine an "X-ray" of the material we engaged with this week. We took a moment to X-amine the X-ray of a hand to think of what it shows: underlying structure, a clear look at what's hidden, a transparent ghost of surrounding soft tissue, the connections.

We spoke generally. Michael connected the book of Tobit to "hidden," as it is one of the "Apocryphal" ("hidden") books from those gap centuries between Malachi and the time of Jesus. Mason X-rayed the sophisticated structure of the story, its foreshadowing and parallelisms. Noting that the story was written close to Jesus's time, Scott X-rayed this tale of a kind Jew struggling under cruel Assyrian masters to be an expression of encouragement for Jews under the Romans.

Lanie wondered about the "hidden" fate of Peter, crucified upside-down (so as not to be equated with Jesus). (I was mistaken: It was Andrew, not his brother Peter, who was crucified on an X-shaped cross.)

Kaye had read Rowan Williams who connected properties of our minds (understanding of the present, memory of the past, anticipation of the future) to spiritual qualities, love, faith, and hope. Love is not just doing good things, but a deep abiding respect for the world. Scott remembered being taught in an evangelical Bible study to hate the world. This Bishop's teaching is so different!

Joyce and Susan had read Year 3, about the rise of the evangelical right in late 20th century America. We got into a side-discussion of how Clinton, Bushes I and II, and Obama all developed close friendships that were evident at Bush I's funeral, and that remain to this day. For details from a book called The Presidents' Club, see Scott's blogpost from August 2012, Partners Across Party Lines. (Also, Scott pointed out that he's practically W's cousin, as Scott's dad named him for Scott Pierce, W's uncle and Tom Smoot's fraternity brother. You can see Scott in biking gear visiting cousin W's birthplace Cycling Virtually Across America: Midland TX)

When we wondered about Rita's second question, about exclusion, Tobit again came up. Mason said, "The story gives voice to four women!" When did that ever happen before? Scott was delighted that a friendly faithful dog follows Tobit's son Tobias throughout the story - the only friendly dog that Scott has found in all of Scripture.

Lanie connected exclusion to both James and Peter, both excluded from the Jewish communities that they had been faithful members of, and also excluded as foreigners by the Roman Empire. Kaye cited a statement by Bishop Desmond Tutu that shocked some people, "God is not a Christian!" (For one thing, He was God long before there were Jews or Jesus on earth.) Jessica had read about the marginalized homeless people of our society, and how their presence affects the spirituality of Christians as we all respond in different ways to homelessness.

From this discussion, Scott posed this question: We know parts of Scripture that call for exclusion and even extermination of groups (every man, woman, child, and animal) while other parts of Scripture call for love and service to "the alien" and tell us that God's plan is for ALL nations to be drawn to Him. "After a year in EfM, how do you deal with these contradictions?"

We had very thoughtful answers. Mason started, "You try to contextualize why certain scriptures were written certain ways." Our recent reading by Sue Monk Kidd gave a good answer, that we should approach the Bible as "more of a person than a book." It develops, it goes through phases, it reaches maturity, it relates to us.

Reflect
Jessica brought us a four-leaf clover that her father picked on the grounds of her beloved summer camp on her wedding day. She explained that she had always liked four-leaf clovers. We saw it, pressed in a frame, along with a photo of her father (described as a "softie") on the day, holding the clover up to the camera. He had searched the field for it, dressed in his tux. We focused on the blessing that he gave by his effort.

The blessing, if put in words, would be something like, "I'm giving you away, but you will always be my baby." We had done a good job of exploring the created nature of the world of this blessing. But what would be sin (or brokenness, or separation) in this world? Landscapers mow the ground, poison the clover that they would call "weeds." Father could've given up on the search too soon. He could've taken himself too seriously to crouch in his tux -- so undignified! Redemption is in the connection that this humble gift created that has lasted all these years.

Connecting to our Tradition, we thought of many parents' blessings to children - Isaac to Jacob (by Jacob's malfeasance!), Eli as foster father to Samuel. We could've mentioned Naomi blessing her daughter-in-law Ruth. Jacob forced the angel to bless him and he got a new name with his new life -- as a daughter gets a new name in marriage, perhaps. Where is the element of the token, such as the clover? Kaye wondered about the oil pressed on our foreheads in Baptism -- passed down from generation to generation, "like sourdough starter," to leaven our lives and all the Church through the centuries.

From experience and culture, we thought of Mason's Mother's Day card blessed by handprints of three sons, and "Luke, I am your father." Scott told the anecdote from psychologist Carl Jung who handed his patient a scarab beetle that had just entered the window -- the very object of a dream she had been struggling to explain. Joyce told us about bringing her daughter on a long road trip to Atlanta where her grandfather was able to find her the toy she wanted most for her fifth birthday, Thomas the Train. The blessing was not only in the toy, but in the grandfather, so touched by her joy.

Insights and applications: in a hypothetical sermon on this subject, how would you answer listeners' unspoken question, "What does this have to do with us?" We can give people things much more valuable than they seem to be... Small gestures can mean so much, especially when they connect past to present, one to another... Value goes way beyond cost... Time and patience are gifts in themselves -- "Gifts we all need more of!" ...You have to get out of yourself to know people well enough to understand what will be precious to them.

Collect relating to blessings Father of us all, You who know us in the depths of our being, before we were in our mother's womb (Jeremiah). You know what we need before even we know.... thank you for providing it. Thank You for loving us in a way more than we could ever deserve. We know that you express your love for us through the actions of those around us. Thank you for the shared experiences that hold us together, those precious things we value that come from you. Grant us loving hearts and perceptive minds to know and serve one another; help us to love like you love, with deep contemplative regard for others, for the world, for you. In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

For Monday:
We engage with materials for Week 33. Rita leads worship, Kaye selects the questions, and Susan will provide kindling for the TR.

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