Praytell

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Once upon a time, a long time ago, we were asked to be “fishers” of men and women.  The request came with so many stories that fish became the symbol of a Christian household, or safe house in times when the designation was anything but safe.

A few fish and loaves of bread fed five thousand.  Stories of nets being thrown into a place where a moment ago there were no fish, and finding so many the nets could not hold them all capture our imagination every day.  Do we dare change our ways and fish from the other side?

But there are not many stories about getting snagged.

We throw in the line, looking at a deep hole that must be teaming with fish.  “That’s where I’d go if I was a fish,” we say to ourselves.  Sometimes we use a lure, sometimes a fly, and once in a while, if nobody is watching, a worm.

We watch the line cross the water and land over there by the log.  Or over there below the willow bending over the river, or in the rapids where water pushes against the same rocks it has been pushing against for eons.  Over there we throw our line.

We reel in.  There’s a problem.  What should be simple isn’t simple at all.

We’re snagged.

Two branches got there first.  Three rocks got there first.  The log had been there all along, we thought it wouldn’t be a problem but it had dibs on our bait.

We pull this way.

We pull that way.

Sometimes we walk downstream just to change the angle.

In the end, we have no choice but to pull until the invisible line breaks.

We’re snagged.

All kinds of things snag us.

Expectations.  Fear.  Emotional buttons that go off every time they’re touched.  Sometimes we say, “Oh no, there I go again!”  Sometimes we say, “Oh no, there he or she goes again!  We suddenly realize we are far more vulnerable than we ever thought, and more protective as well.  The snags help us realize how much healing lies ahead of us.

All we wanted to do was go fishing.  But everytime we do we snag a time or two with fears, memories, impossible situations, that cause us to break the line and start over again.  We go upriver a bit.  There are no snags up there, we say.  But there are.

It’s a funny thing, these snags.  Sometimes we find the branch that took our hook is not even an eighth of an inch thick.  And those wicked stones, they’re just a few stones doing what stones do when lying on the bottom of a fast moving river.  That log, its just a tree, the fish, the birds, and those of us who fish kind of like its presence.  It’s familiar.

It’s a funny thing, our fears, our “buttons,” our predicaments, they do get in our way, but they are rarely as fierce as we think they are.  If we are to go fishing we’ll find them.

Love, churches around the world will hear again this week, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all thing, endures all things.”

What’s true of love is also true for its ever-s0-necessary companion, forgiveness.

Up in those hills there’s a river.  It’s called the River of Life.

It’ll snag us for sure.

But let’s go fishing.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Today we navigated two utterly separate drama.  Each of them made enough sense to be compelling.  But they were as separate as the night is from the day.

The first was set in a hospital.  The main actor was a computer.  My wife is was the patient, but  the doctor looked not into her eyes, or into her life.  He looked at the computer.  I do not blame him, he needed information.  But the information he needed was not there.  Her history, her life, her cares, her fears were not there.

“What happened?” I asked my wife as we drove home.

We tried to process it.  We tried to figure out what we should do about it.  We wondered, if the truth be told, if we should give up.  Last fall, when I met with a diabetes specialist, he talked with me for 35 seconds, picked up his phone and began dictating notes right in front of me.  He wanted to get his notes “right.”  I wanted to get my life “right.”

I vowed to never go back to such a place.  If the computer, or the notes are the dominant player, I want nothing to do with it.

Is that rational?

No.  It’s not.

Are you prepared to take the risk of healing without computer input?

Yes.  Absolutely.  Health is mind, body, and soul.  If you treat me like computer information I do not wish to be your patient.  I’ll seek healing elsewhere.

And so, we tried to figure the morning out as a prelude to going to the hospital tomorrow.

Dinner time came.

Our nephew Chris called.  He has just moved to Minneapolis.  More important, he is a reader, a thinker, a carer.  Last summer he traveled solo through the wilderness areas of China.

We often have him over for dinner.  Fried rice tonight.  It was good:  rice, leeks, ginger and garlic a la Bittman.

After dinner I began painting again, trying to come up with a possible cover for the book.  (Two new colors and some paper arrived today!  Eureka!)  Chris does oils.  I have never done them.  I do not like this idea of “covering paper” with oil.  I want the paper to work, and the water to lead the way.  We took out some paper and I showed him how beautiful it is when French Ultramarine Blue touches a bit with Burnt Umbel.  And what happens when you put Turquoise on half the brush and Cadmium Red on the other half and draw it across a horizon.

“Watercolor is like life,” I said to Chris.

“Water follows water like life follows life.”  Touch a bit of paint to water, and it will spread.  When it gets to a dry area, it stops.  Life is just like that.  When we’re in a desert life stops.  When we’re alive things connect.  One color added to another forms something entirely new.

There are some white spots on our mountain ranges.

“Let them be,” I say.  There is no need to cover them up.  A piece of paper is not a parking lot.  Let it breathe.

Watercolor is alive.

So are we.

When I think too small, and try to get everything “right,” I mess up.  As it is with painting so it is with grace.  To justify my life with works is to no avail.

Instead, life follows life.  Life, death, resurrection, and grace along the way.

Tomorrow, Connie and I will follow life once again as we find a way around physicians who know more about computers than healing.  Which is to say, we’ll find a way to heal by letting  life follow life.

May you do the same.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Shadow River

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We are beginning to wonder what to about Lent this year.  Which means we’re asking anew what it means to “observe” Lent.

For some congregations Lent is a “big deal.”  It means Wednesday night suppers, followed by an hour or two of reflection.  I confess that I loved those Wednesday evening gatherings.  One year, wanting to increase attendance if we could, we decided to offer not one but three different sets of classes–one for the kids and two for the adults.  To our astonishment it worked.  Instead of cutting back, we doubled what we’d done before and our attendance almost trippled.  What fun!  In such a way, we were observing Lent.

But the question remains.  Just what does it mean to observe Lent?

Should it be a season of deeply personal work in which we purge distracting habits, and all-too-easy rationalizations.  Should it be a season of confession, a season of renewal, a season in which we take searching and fearless inventory of our humanity.  That’s what they did in Ninevah when the summoned the courage to repent.

But Scripture doesn’t entirely buy this pastoral domaine.  The Lent God wants, we read, is not a solemn season but a full-scale observance of justice.  We even heard that God “hates” (yes, that’s the word . . . hates!” our feasts, our liturgies when they are done as an escape from the pursuit of justice.  We never think they are, as we meet each week, but neither did the Israelites so long ago.

And so, once again, we have two truths in a single word.

We are tempted to turn Lent into a cause.  Perhaps this year we can actually do some good and create some change.  The problem is that causes are problematic.  We can be used by causes, and we can use causes.  I say that because I’ve done it.  My enthusiasm does run away with me too many a time.  I believe there is a scene in Dr. Zhivago in which when one of the most strident revolutionaries found the extremism of the revolution suddenly going against him.  When taken to be shot he is called by his nom-de-guerre. Just before he is killed, He will not allow it, and he calls out his own true name, speaking of the man he really was not the cause he carried.

But we are also tempted to turn lent into a private retreat that may, or may not, inspire change.  Just how private do we go?  Just how public does this private work go?  Is it an escape or is it meaningful for the common good?

Lent.  How are we to observe it?

How are we to connect?  How are we to find meaning?  How will we be inspired to “do something.”  How will we speak of hope?  How can it be a blessing?

I don’t know just yet.  But I’m hoping that whatever we plan will have just a bit of humor.

I happened to be in South Dakota, at a retreat center during the great blizzards of 1997.  The snow drifts were five or six feet deep.  I asked the pastor how her congregation observed Lent, figuring I’d go to whatever service she had.  l.

“Larry,” she said.  “This is South Dakota.  This is February.  We are an older congreagation.  We do not go out on Wednesday nights.”

“So how do you do Lent?”

“Easy,” she said.  “We do Lent in September.”

I have been quietly laughing ever since.  It’s not a calendar season, it’s a season of the heart that begins, and ends, whenever one wants.

My thoughts about Lent are the thoughts of the day, whatever the day may be.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

I Look Unto the Hills

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I missed the Haiti telethon, and the pantheon of celebrities doing all they could for a good cause.  But I read about it in this morning’s paper.

From the report, many of the songs were full of sorrow, as well they should be in such a time as this.  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, frames the plight of so many children whose parents were lost during the tremblement de terre, as the French say it.  At some point, a Haitian musician evidently said the equivalent of, “Come on people.  We have the people of Haiti going for us, we are strong, we have survived.  Not all is lost.”

He did not say, “Get on with it,”  or “move forward.”  After 9/11 those words were said so many times they lost meaning.  They asked us to march ahead as though nothing had happened.  But the Haitian’s words pointed us in the opposite direction.  He moved us towards the heart, towards the spirit, towards life, towards compassion, towards courage.  He did not ask for a change.  Instead he asked for recognition.

And just what does this have to do with Habakkuk? you may be asking.  Let me spin a response.  There are but three chapters in Habakkuk.  One could read them all in 15 minutes.  Doing so would set the stage for a lifetime of reflection.

Habakkuk the prophet is not given to denial.  He refuses a pie-in-the-sky God.  He looks around him and sees justice perverted, violence on all sides, and the incessant ascendance of the wicked.  “How long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?” he cries.

God pretty much answers by saying, “Do you think it’s bad now?  You haven’t seen anything yet.  Wait until I release your enemies upon you.  “I am rousing the Chaldeans who march through the earth to seize dwellings not their own.  Dread and fearsome are they.”

Habakkuk isn’t satisfied.  What kind of God would do such a thing?

There is not space enough here to give the whole of the dialogue.  Suffice it to say it is complaint, counter punch, complaint, counter punch and then a listing of the violence Habakkuk complained about in the first place.

But then the book makes its move and points us towards beauty as Habakkuk writes a song for the choirmaster, and specifies it is to be played on stringed instruments.

It’s words?

Yea, though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord.  I will exult in the God of my salvation.  God is my strength, he makes me feet like the feet of a deer and makes me tread upon the heights.

Me too.

And you too.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I notice how often I am disheartened when a bit of media news filters its way through my imagination. I always wonder what I can do to change the course of events.

I remember, with affection, the advice of teachers who promised that, “The value of one well-written letter to a Senator cannot be underestimated.” The thought has carried me though the troubled waters of democracy.
I have never quite known if I am a Jeffersonian (let the people have their say) or a Hamiltonian (mobs rule nothing but the moment.)

But when I sent letters, there was no response. I learned that after 9/11 all letters to Senators are impounded for several weeks just to make sure they do not contain anthrax. And so, I resorted to e-mail. But then I learned scarcely anyone reads e-mail. Computers do. The computer looks for key words. If Libya is in my text, I’ll get a response related to Libya. Maybe. Often, I have found the response I receive has absolutely nothing to do with my eloquent thoughts

And so, I wonder what path can be taken. What can I as a citizen do?

There was a time in my life when I felt beset from every side. It matters not whose fault it was. No matter what I tried to do, my hopes fell on deaf ears. Such is the plight of our president. No matter what our president he tries to do, it falls on deaf ears. His gestures towards his opponent, Mr. McCain, after the election were quickly rebuffed. Whatever he proposes is wrong. It is not liberal enough. It is not conservative enough. It is not enough for those who do not have a sword hanging over their head. It will never be enough for pundits who know exactly how things should be.

There was a time when I, as a pastor, was up against such a conflict. One Sunday I said I would be a the church each morning at 6:00 o’clock to meet with anyone who had concerns about my leadership. The meetings came and went. The brewed coffee came, and went. Very few showed up. One morning, there was an envelope that had been dropped off at 5:30 or so in the morning. In it were a handfull of small shells. The shells said both, “We hear you,” and “listen.” It was an exquisite gift, that stays with me. I still have a few of the shells in a box, more than a decade later. The next morning there was a verse of scripture in the envelope, that contained the word “hope.” I did not know who gave it, but it lifted the depth of my spirits.

I thought, at the time, that what I was going through was somehow “abnormal.” So did those I called for help, who kept wondering what I had done to cause such a problem. I did not realize the conflict was inevitable, necessary, and useful. In waters over my head, with no idea how to “fight back” when I’d been called by the prince of peace, I had something to learn. Something elemental, something important, something about grace.

I share this only to say that my heart and my mind goes out to our president in these days when everyone has a sharpened idea that erases the all-too real complexity of the problems we face, and the fluidity of truth itself. Once I thought this . . . but then I learned. Such a thought is at the heart of Christian faith. I once was lost, but now am found.

If I could, I would creep to the White House early in the morning and leave an unsigned envelope, full of very small shells. Each would say, “Listen to yourself, listen carefully, there are oceans out there. These shells are for you. Thank you for lifting them to your ear. Many blessings.”

That’s all.

These trials are our calling. We need each other to see them though.
That’s all.
And, who knows, perhaps, that’s enough.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

There times in life we see something so beautiful, so necessary, and so elemental it grows rather than recedes in our imagination. Square Butte, Montana is such a sight for me. But so was a hospital an an all-too drab Moscow some years ago.

The news from Haiti speaks of collapsed hospitals.

Then too the word “collapsed” made its way into life. Instead of an earthquake it was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Curious about the return of the mission arm of the Russian Orthodox church after its years of persecution I went as an un-hired reporter thinking that perhaps we could learn from the resurgence of the churh

A translator and I went into Moscow’s Hospital Number Three, if my memory serves me correctly. Long before the Russian Revolution the hospital had been built by the Orthodox Church to serve the people. The state took it over to get religion out of public life.

But the Orthodox church has a long and trusting memory. It knows that once ground is consecrated, the consecration lasts a very long time. Nothing can undo it. So while the state “had” the hospital it spiritually belonged to the church that somehow knew it was just a matter of time until it would renew its chance to heal.

The nurses, the helpers, and perhaps even the doctors, were volunteers. There was no more state support. Whatever would be done they had to do from the ground up. The wages paid was nothing more than a meal provided by Church World Service food. I ate with them in a large room, whose walls were lined with boxes marked CWS. Churches always find a way to feed people. It is what we do.

I noticed teenagers, mostly girls, in the hallways with mops and buckets. Each looked a bit like Cinderella. The orphanges had also closed. The orphans, like those in Haiti, had to find their own way. There were no more three meals a day. And so the church “adopted” them to clean the floors, to help return the hospital to health. They, the teenagers and the church had a healing purpose. It might not have been the one they chose, but they were bound together in both surviving and healing.

I remember the broken windows. I remember seeing families bring in food to their loved ones on the orthopedic wing. What we expect in our hospitals–warmth, food, nurses, machines, MRIs and the rest, was nowhere in sight.

What was in sight was a church that claimed its call. I have a picture that I’ll try to find and post, showing church members standing on the steps of Hospital Number Three. “We’re here,” their expressions seem to say. There is not a trace of arrogance, hospitality or futility. The mission was not too big.
But it was deep enough to include patients, orphans, citizens who needed a square meal, International aid, and a blessing given almost a century before.

What has happened since then I do not know. Perhaps the hospital was been bought out. Perhaps it is for paying patients only. Perhaps it has gone out of business. Perhaps orphanages are back in business. I do not know. In our United States many church-related hospitals have been sold, economics being what economics are.
But this I do know.

I saw, for a moment, what happens when a group of Orthodox believers said, “We have not forgotten. We will be here when the state has left.”
For me, that moment continues to find itself into my imagination, as I, like you, continue to ask, “What good can be done? And by what means?”

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I would like to live in a rational world.

But reason will not allow it.

If-then thinking tends to be problematic.  Its version of truth tends to be certifiably unassailable.  It tends to close arguments as it sizes up the world.

We were at the Egg and I, a cafe in virtually the same building as our church.  The Egg and I has a room that we use for Adult Education on Sunday mornings.  The Adult Ed group has been meeting regularly for well over twenty years.

Our current theme is Liberation Theology.  Just what is it?  And just whose is it?  What is the feminist take on it?  What are the African American and Native American takes?

Our text was an essay by Vine Deloria, Jr, chairman of the Institute for the Development of Indian Law in Washington, DC.

The gist of his argument is this:  “An old Indian saying captures the radical difference between Indians and Western people quite adequately.  The white man, the Indians maintain, has ideas; Indians have visions.  Ideas have a single dimension and require a chain of connected ideas to make sense.  The vision, on the other hand, presents a whole picture of experience and has a central meaning that stands on its own feet as an independent revelation.”

Whereas we can own ideas, we are owned by visions that call us to a deeper experience.  They bless us precisely because we cannot control them, try as we will.

Plenty Coup had a problem.  Whites were invading the lands of the Crow, taking them, using them, needing them, settling them.  Who would the Crow be without the land?  He went into the Crazy Mountains in my home town.  The wind was blowing.  You have never heard the wind blow until you’ve been to Big Timber, Montana.  He noticed the Chickadees.  When the wind blew, they hopped to another branch.  It blew again, and they hopped again, taking whatever temporary shelter they could find.  They adapted.

With this vision, he led the Crow to also adapt.  It was all about the land; it was about adaptation; it was about life.  There is nothing dreamily romantic about such a vision.  Crow scouts led Custer’s troops.  But in the end the Crow reservation kept more of its land than many other nations.

Jesus had visions.  Many of them.  Each one informed his actions.  When he was tempted in the desert, the devil said, “IF you are the child of God THEN turn stones into bread.”  It would be the rational and logical thing to do.  On the cross, it was said to him, “IF you are the son of God, THEN jump off this cross and save yourself.”  That too would be the logical and rational thing to do, unless circumstance was informed by vision of forgiveness.

Or so it seems to me.

There are so many times in my life that death has been at the door.  So many times the IF THEN thinking of medical science proved to be inadequate in the visionary science of healing and its embrace of life.

Sometimes we hear this word vision, and we say to ourselves, “Oh dear.”  But sometimes it leads us, stays with us, nurtures us, calls us, and brings us to life.

We’ll be at the Egg and I next week too, as the vision of loving God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, claims us once again.

Sunday, January 16, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

There is a verb you may not know about.

Its not your fault.

Hardly anybody would turn the name of a small Montana town into a verb.  Ballentine is over there east of Billings.  I suppose Google would show it on a map.  It is not a Montana resort community.  I doubt its horizons or its streets have ever appeared on one of the Montana calendars used to entice out-of-staters to vacation in Montana.

There is a church in Ballentine.  It is a small church, a mostly elderly church.  It is one of those churches that, like so many rural  is hanging on by the skin of its teeth.  The churches in neighboring Warden, seem to be doing okay, and have leadership that loves doing something beautiful and well in an out-of-the-way place.  Ballentine (pop 346) doesn’t have the resources or population of Warden, or so it would seem.  The existence of the town, and its churches, was kind of “iffy.”

I have learned, however, that “iffy” places are often the scene of extraordinary power and beauty.

I had returned from Paraguay full of inspiration.  There is a camp in Paraguay.  Everyone knows about it.  Camp Jack Norment, named after the child of a missionary of died when he was ten or so years old in 1948, is a training ground, a worship ground, a place of leadership.

One day, when I was in Asuncion, I asked the director of Friendship Mission, Dr. Inez Sarli, about the camp that centered so many ministries.  I knew she was working with street children, many of whom are sent from the countryside into the city to fend for themselves or find ways to send some money home.  I asked if the street children are sent to camp.

“No,” she said.  “We do not have the funds.  We would like to, but can’t.”

“How much does it cost?”

“Six dollars a day,” she said.  Six dollars a day for three square meals, a bed, sheets, fellowship, and daily contact with the people for whom working with these kids is a ministry.

“Eighteen dollars for three days?”

“Yes.”

“We will send 100 kids to camp for three days this fall,” I said.  I had not checked with the trustees.  I had no idea if we could do that.  But to love a camp, and know its importance in the life of Paraguay, and to know the poor could not attend would be neither right nor just.
A few months later, we sent $1,800.  And the next year.  And the next year.  And the next year.

So, you’re asking, what does this have to do with Ballentine?

One Sunday afternoon, the Ballentine church invited me to come and share the stories of our trips to Paraguay.  And so I went.  In the late afternoon, I went.  The sharing was the sermon.  After the sermon and slides, we did what people in churches do–we went downstairs and shared a pot-luck dinner.

At that point, a trustee of the church came up to me and handed me a check.

“You don’t need to pay me,” I said.

“We’re not,” said the Trustee.  “This is for the kids.”

They had not taken a special offering for the kids during the offering.  There was but one offering.

The trustees counted it, and decided to give it to the kids.  Not some of it.  Not a bit of it.  They gave ALL of it.

They Ballantinezed the offering.

To Ballantinize an offering is to give ALL of it.

Isn’t it odd.  An iffy church gaves a confident offering that was more then they could afford.  The widow Jesus spoke of was also in an “iffy” situation.

There are those who are not in “iffy” situations.  The receivers of Wall Street bonuses are not in iffy situations.  The Tonight show hosts are not in iffy situations.  They all have already received more than most of the world will ever imagine.

I wonder.  Is there a way to inspire them to Ballentinize what they reap?

I don’t know.

But for me, Ballentinize has become a verb.  An active, transitive verb.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Words have a way of migrating from one meaning to another.

So do stories.

In church circles, the word “stewardship” is often fraught with various levels of fear and dread.  The fear is, “We might not make it.”  The dread is, “Oh no, you mean I’m on the stewardship committee?  And I’ve got to make some calls to ask people for a pledge?”  The reality is that most churches have budgets that exceed pledge numbers.  And so, to a certain extent, stewardship drives are exercises in failure.  It is perhaps one of the reasons when I went to Big Timber, Montana, I said I’d accept their call if they’d agree to forgo a pledge drive.

Did we survive?  We did.

Without fear?  Without fear.  (Well, a little.)  But not much.

We would trust each other and the God of providence, not scarcity.

I have written in these columns that my uncle Harold Myers, Jr., was a pastor.  Once upon a time, he decided to introduce a new members’ class to the Stewardship Board of his church.  It’s chair looked at the new members and said, “We look at you like revenue!”  Oh dear, he said.  My uncle didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as a balance sheet sold stewardship down the river.

Here in Minneapolis, I attend Lyndale United Church of Christ.  With my uncle’s story in mind, it always amused me when a member from the Stewardship Committee greeted the congregation and its visitors each Sunday morning.

Out of curiosity I decided to ask about it.

I learned that the Stewardship Committee is actually the church council, its governing board.  Years ago they  decided to call themselves stewards of the church.  They look after, tend to, and care for, the life of the congregation.  They seek to be good stewards of the trust given them by the congregation.  The good steward takes care of visitors, exercises hospitality, works from a sense of responsibility towards creation itself.  The good steward thinks about the future, and tends it the way a good shepherd takes care of her sheep.

Now I know why a member of the Stewardship Committee greets us each morning.  It is an act of stewardship, a way to connect, to share, to welcome.  It had nothing to do with sources of “revenue.”

Once the word revealed itself, the church revealed itself.

In these days, as Haiti teeters on the brink, we are called to exercise stewardship that respects, and builds on the human and financial resources available to us both here and there.  May we all be the best stewards we can be.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

I write with the news behind me, update after update of the people of Port au Prince, Haiti.

There, as you know, the buildings are over their head.

The logistics are over every one’s head as airplanes cannot land, water does not flow, government does not exist, and hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of aid groups scramble like worker bees when the hive has been attacked.

Once again, the earth that seems so solid turns out to be fluid.  Those sandstones, they were once part of an ocean.  That hill, the earth itself pushed it up.  That retainer wall, wait a few decades and it will begin to lean.  It has no choice but to do so.  The earth is alive.

When the earth shifted, and its shock waves turned rock into water, it took but a second to knew we were in waters that are over our head.

A Haitian on the streets spoke about people taking things into their own hands.  He was referring to gangs that evidently were beginning to loot, which is precisely what happens when we’re in water over our head:  think, Baghdad, Los Angeles, Detroit, the list is endless.  Human beings do not like chaos, do not like being in waters over their head, and so we do something about it:  we’ll get food, we’ll get water, we’ll take it.

But there are times that this very instinct leans towards the good.  With no help avilable, many chanced their own lives to crawl into fallen buildings and rescue others.  When something had to be done, somehting was done.  The Red Cross evidently didn’t organize a huge cellphone campaign.  People with cell phones did, they just decided, like a flock of a million birds to suddenly turn their attention towards Haiti.  Ten dollar donations.  Millions of them.

We do not want to be in water over our head.

And so we do something.

Over My Head is the title of the book David Gumm and I have written about spiritual life in the aftermath of strokes.  For the past week I’ve been painting possible covers for the book.  As it always does, painting reveals the spirit’s work.  I realize I am drawn to what happens in the sky, up over, over my head.  When I try to paint letters, I am suddenly constricted.  I want the letter boundaries to be porous, to flow, to merge as gently as two rivers that suddenly flow into each other, or a sky that touches earth.

Over My Head.

Over our heads.

Over our head there is hope in the air.

Over and again, it brings us to life.