The Simon Chronicles continue

           It's been a while since I've had time to do any blogging. I mean, my life is incredibly busy, given that I have to supervise my Chief of Staff, her assistant, AND the dogs. It's a wonder I manage to work in my 20 hours of sleep every day and still keep my paw on top of things around here.

          My Chief of Staff is always taking pictures of me, of course. Who could resist me?

Here I am in my normal handsome self.

Here I am in my spooky version.

 Freaks humans out when cats' eyes do that. 

Why do you think we do it?

Here are my dogs, keeping watch from inside the house while my Chief of Staff reads the newspaper and drinks her morning coffee.

And here they are, keeping watch on the front deck. Like they could scare anybody. Oh please.

Here I am supervising Ms. Wiggles and Toby.

Sometimes I amaze myself with how patient I am with those human kittens my Chief of Staff adores.

They always seem to want to touch me. Sigh. I AM irresistible.

Catching a quick nap on the floor next to my Chief of Staff's desk. She's "working."

She does not like it when I leap onto the roof. I can't imagine why. It's not like I'm going to fall. I'm a CAT, for heaven's sake.

I DO enjoy teasing her, though.

This is my buddy Mike. He's getting old and can't hear very well, but I still like to hang out with him. He's a border collie, which means he is almost as smart as a cat. 

This is one of my favorite places to hang out. I can see what's happening inside the house . . .

and outside in the garden. Have to keep a close eye on the birds and squirrels.

I do work, though. Here I am inspecting the new bench in the Chapel Garden. Looks like my Chief of Staff has created another great place for me to take a nap.

And here I am occupying the exact middle of the couch -- keeps the dogs on the floor.

I like my basket too. It's up high, where little boys and silly dogs can't bother me.

My bowl is here too, so I don't even have to get all the way out of bed to eat. Nice, huh?

Don't tell my Chief of Staff, but my favorite place of all to sleep is at her feet. 

I have to inspect the bathtub occasionally.

And take a bath in it. That's what it is for, right?

I figure if people are going to leave water in such convenient places, I am going to drink it.

Sometimes I day dream by the window.

And sometimes I dream on the dogs' beds.

And now that Mike is older, he sleeps almost as much as I do.

I  like the big round window -- makes a great place from which to monitor the garden in air-conditioned comfort.

I helped my Chief of Staff clean out a storage area.

There were tubs and interesting boxes EVERYWHERE!

.

And a mirror big enough to capture my splendid self.

Well enough of all this. It's time for another nap. 

Relic

Early Sunday morning, I met my daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons on the plaza between the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. 

We were there for the opening of the exhibit 9/11 Tribute on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of that unforgettable day. The Museum of Science and History was chosen to receive the largest artifact in Texas from the World Trade Center -- a full facade panel that once supported the three floors (101 -103) of the North Tower, located two stories above the center of the impact zone.

Prior to the opening of the exhibit, the community gathered to  honor those who perished that day as well as those who lived on, carrying that unfathomable loss forward in time with them for the rest of their lives. We remembered men, women and children who died that day simply because they boarded a plane or went to work. We remembered the first responders who ran toward the peril as others were fleeing it.

As we waited for the program to begin, we talked with my grandsons, ages 9 and 7. The oldest had been in his mother's womb on September 11, 2001.

 She and I told them how she had called me and Gayland, awakening us in a hotel in Las Vegas where Gayland was attending a conference.

As soon as she heard my voice, she burst into tears. I couldn't understand what she was saying and was terrified that something had happened to the baby or to Michael, her husband. I could not imagine what else could have so devastated her.

She finally was able to gasp out, "They've attacked the World Trade Center. Turn on the TV right now."

I told that to Gayland, and he got up and did so while I asked her, "Are you OK? Is Mike OK?""

"Yes, yes," she said, "Turn on the TV. Call me later."

So I hung up and we watched in horror as the second tower collapsed. It was as if our brains could not process what we were seeing. We reached for each other's hands and just held on to one another as we listened to the news that is so sadly familiar to us all now. We rented a car that day and started for home. I could not rest until I was holding my child in my arms. 

As we told the boys this story, we had our arms around them. All over the plaza parents and grandparents were holding onto children and grandchildren, the already precious made even more so by the date's reminder of how fragile life is.

Then we watched the Fort Worth Police's Mounted Patrol Unit arrive and line up. The boys love those horses and always make a point to greet them when we encounter them. To see all of them lined up was a special treat.

After the formal program was over, the large crowd began making its way into the building to see the beam, which is displayed in the museum's atrium until the outdoor memorial is completed. As the line moved slowly and steadily toward the entrance, we walked past the statue of Sacajawea, her face turned to the rising sun, her baby on her back. Gavin thinks her name sounds funny, but he assured me he knows who she is -- "She showed the men the way west."

Just inside the door was the model of what the completed exhibit will look like. 

Inside the atrium, the words "Bent, but not broken" are painted on the wall above the beam.

 I talked with Van Roman, president of the museum, and he said the reason they displayed it horizontally instead of vertically is that people want to get close to it, touch it, always with reverence. He and his staff, and apparently most of the members of the public viewing it are very much aware that microscopic human remains might still reside on the beam.

Watching people encounter it on Sunday made it clear that this twisted beam has become a sacred relic, transformed by fire and the death of innocents into a holy thing. 

Pray for peace.

Speaking of forgiveness on September 11

Once again I am pleased to host a sermon by my good friend Bruce Coggin. Enjoy.

A Sermon

Preached at Trinity Church, Fort Worth

September 11, 2011

The Rev. Bruce Coggin 

I’m mighty grateful to Fr. Wright for the opportunity preach to you this morning—or I think I am.  I’m away a lot of the time, sowing and reaping in other parts of the vineyard, and I’m always happy to be with you just to pray; but it’s special to get to preach to this congregation, so I readily accepted his offer.

Then I had a look at the lessons for today and began to wonder . . .  Here we are commemorating the attack on our country that happened ten years ago this day, and the lessons are all about . . . forgiveness.  That’s a conundrum, to put it gently.  But he asked, and I said yes, so let’s see how we do.

You won’t find a stauncher defender of the separation of church and state, but there’s no way on earth what we’re doing here today is not part of a great national commemoration of a great calamity.  Even the Star-Telegram had a leader, FW Clergy Looking for Words for 9/11 Services.  I checked the article to see if there were some, but no such luck!  This is the anniversary of one of those days people mark time with.  When I was a baby, it was Pearl Harbor Day, then maybe V-E Day or V-J Day.  Where were you when . . . ?  Then the day President Kennedy was shot, then maybe when Challenger blew up.  Now it’s September Eleventh.  (I think 9/11 is kinda tacky.  We don’t call the Fourth of July 7/4!  Anyway.)

I hope that today, though the eucharist is a joyous thanksgiving—and this will be a joyous one—I hope that you’ll remember that at the very beating heart of our joyous gathering is a solemn, aching hurt, brought on by the cowardly attack on innocent people that happened ten years ago today.  I’ve been told that the men flying those planes weren’t cowards.  Why, after all, they flew right into those buildings!  Yeah, right.  Those men went up in a flash.  They didn’t have to decide to jump off that collapsing building.  They didn’t have to watch the fire come after them, choke on the smoke.  They were cowards.  But, oh, the people who faced it!  I hope in your prayers you’ll hold up the souls of all those who died—although they’re now in Abraham’s bosom and praying for us, better off than we are.  I hope you’ll hold up all those who didn’t die but still lost so much, whose lives were changed forever on that day, those who lost husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and children and and and.  A lot of them aren’t healed yet, may never be.  Pray for them.  And for the brave, the unimaginably courageous fire fighters and police and medics and nurses and other responders who, God knows how, raced up those stairs straight into the maw of Hell.  Pray too for this whole nation, still not healed, many of us still angry and thirsty for revenge.  And as the Prayer Book teaches us, pray for our enemies that God may turn their hearts and give them better minds.  All that pain is part of our offering today, a solemn lesion at the center to our joyous thanksgiving.  Hold that up to God today.

Now.  Having said that, I need to preach about forgiveness.  That’s a big order, so pray for me too.

I don’t know if it’s just ironic circumstance or maybe even the work of the Holy Spirit that on the day we remember a great sin that all over this country Episcopalians and Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians and Disciples and just lots of others are hearing God’s word about forgiveness.  The Old Testament lesson from Exodus, the Red Sea story, speaks of people freed from the toils of a wicked power from whose grip only by an act of God, divine intervention, could loose.  That action is recalled in the first words of the thanksgiving over the water at Holy Baptism, the sacrament of forgiveness, the sign that we too are freed from a wicked power by a divine act, by God’s own eternal overcoming mercy.  And in the gospel lesson, Jesus doubles down on what he said to St. Peter in the gospel two weeks ago and last week to all the disciples, to you:  what you bind on earth is loosed in Heaven; what you loose on earth is loosed in Heaven.  Three Sundays in a row and counting.  It’ll come up again.  The Word could hardly be more insistent.  We need forgiveness on both ends of the stick, giving and receiving.  And the two seem inextricably laced together.

Beyond that insistence, the very prayer that identifies us as the Lord’s people, the one everybody can say, asks God to forgive us as we forgive others.  Give and get; get and give.  Consider:  the very fact that we mention forgiveness is a confession, an admission that there’s something wrong with us, that without a divine action we can never be whole, never attain the Kingdom prepared for us from before the foundations were laid.  That’s a sweeping admission.

Think of it this way.  Take puppies.  What is cuter, more fun, sweeter, more oogledy-googledy wonderful than a puppy!  I mean, I’m a cat lover and I love kittens, but they’re hardly even in it up aside of puppies!  Well, what happens to puppies?  They grow up and dig in flower beds and chase cars and do a good many more equally unattractive things.  Next take babies.  Lord, babies rule the world!  Everybody with a drop of heart and soul loves babies, and nothing gets the oohs and aahs going in a church quicker than baptizing a baby.  We baptized my last grandson right back there in that font, and it was yummy beyond description.  Well, what happens to babies?  They grow up to be just like you and me.  Fact is, we can’t help it.  We need help, and it’s gotta come from God.

Forgiveness is a word we often use fairly lightly, like when a favorite dog, say, roots up that flower bed.  The gardener almost always says, “Oh, but I forgave him.  He’s such a good boy!”  And that’s the end of it.  The dog’s more important than the uprooted nasturtiums.  The flower bed, by the way, stays dug up until somebody redoes it.  Or a good friends visits, and you’re showing him that beautiful new vase or some other wondrous object you just got, and dadgum!  He drops it and it busts.  Well, of course, you forgive him, maybe with tight jaws, but you do forgive him.  The friendship is more important than the doodad.  The vase stays busted nonetheless.  Lots of examples offer themselves, but you get the point.  We use the word so much we’re often in danger of forgetting how serious a matter forgiveness is.

Just as often we’re tempted to think of forgiveness in caricature.  I grew up in a bigoted little town about an hour from here, where we didn’t have no dadgum kathlicks!  They all lived up north in the county and had Eye-talian names and raised grapes and made wine!  We all knew, and said smugly, they could just sin all week long and then go confess to a priest and be good as new!  Of course, it was unfair and ignorant, but it’s a risk you run when you reduce forgiveness to merely righting the balance.  You been puttin’ too much over here in the bad side, so you gotta put some in the good side for a while to even it all up.  Forgiveness is more than a guilt management system.

And we’ve got plenty of things masquerading as forgiveness these days, too.  Far be it from me to take away from the genius of the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve step program, but it has spawned a whole litter of twelve step programs I’ve had experience of—and at least one I’ve been the victim of—that like to “rethink” the past, go back through your misfortunes, laying blame for this here and blame for that there, and when you come out the other end, why, you didn’t do anything bad at all!  Not.

Now that I’m old enough to have a history, maybe a too colorful one at that, I think I’ve learned something about the past.  You know I’m an English teacher, and one who’s taught me about the past is Faulkner.  In his Nobel Prize speech he noted that the dead past is not dead, in fact is not even past, and the whole corpus of his writing shows how both the sins and the virtues of the Old South live right on in the New South.  Another thing I think I know about the past, especially the bad past:  you can’t make it unhappen.  You did it.  I did it.  We did it.  It hurt.  It caused damage.  It was horrible.  We cannot undo it.  But we can overcome it.  With forgiveness.

At this point, I think we have to do a little theology.  That word scares some people, but don’t make for the door.  Theology is the attempt—attempt—to articulate our experience of the mystery of God, and it’s not definition.  God cannot be defined, limited.  Words can only try to open a way into the mystery.  They never capture it entirely, though it captures us and our words.  So don’t be scared.  I don’t know how many of you watch Chris Matthews’ TV show Hardball—if you do you’re a Democrat, and I know the house is right down the middle today, but I think we all love the country, we love our home—where they talk about politics, but I like to say to a congregation, “Let’s play Godball!”  Let’s try to talk about God.

Seems to me everything always comes back to the question, What is God up to?  What does God want?  What does God want me to do?  What is God’s will, or as some say, God’s plan?  If you were here a few Sundays ago at the Adult Forum, you know me on God as planner.  It’s not a way I can think about God, and it’s not original with me.  In seminary back in the last millennium, I listened to a conversation between one of the faculty and a student who’d asked, “But, Dr. Casserley, don’t you think God has a plan?”  Dr. Casserley was a cockney and a lot of fun to mimic, but not today.  He said, “I don’t know if God has plans.  I do know that God has loves; and if God has a plan, it’s to incarnate that love in you and me and through you and me to show that love to the world.”  God’s plan, according to Dr. Casserley, is for us to be a light to others, a sign that God is love, self-sacrificing, forgiving, merciful, overcoming love.  That’s a tall enough order, seems to me, all by itself, no need to go any farther; and the working out of that order in our lives is the story of our journey with God and to God.  The same with God’s will.  God is eternal, not whimsical, not capricious.  His will is always to love and incarnate that love in us (and who knows where else?), and living according to that will is not such much “bringing in the Kingdom” as it is living and trying to love and waiting to see the Kingdom revealed in us.  At times we live that way, gloriously, joyously, and great wonders are revealed.  At others, though, we bind right up, hanging onto hurts and offenses and injustices, even get to likin’ it.  In either case, it’s not God holding up the game; it’s us.

Another way to get at it is to remember that God and God’s will are eternal, not ephemeral, not reactive.  We don’t sit and wait for God to do something; rather we strive to get in synch with God’s will.  The phrase whatever you bind, whatever you loose, might lead us to imagine the heavenly scorekeepers waiting for us to cross the goal line before they change the record.  I think that’s backside front.  God’s vision of you is eternal; forgiveness is one of God’s root attributes, changeth not.  When you bind on earth, your link to God is blocked; when you loose, it’s open again.  God is forgiveness; we must practice it.  God gives us the model in Jesus who forgave, comforted and consoled, healed, invited, loved.  Even the soldiers who nailed him up, who were really just doing their job and did not ask his forgiveness, he forgave.  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”  We often don’t know either.  We’re either weak or dumb or wicked, or maybe it was just the fatal shake of the potter’s hand.  It seems, nevertheless, crystal clear that not to forgive and not to accept forgiveness is to block the stairway to Heaven.

So now, that’s about enough speculative theology.  Now some practical theology.  How does forgiveness work then in your life and mine?  How do we make it a habit?  How do we do it when we do not even want to?  Somebody in this congregation asked me that just today.

I’m gonna tell you a story about me and leave out all the details I can to protect the guilty, me included.  Once a person did me a great mischief, a great offense, the kind of thing people sometimes get killed over.  I got a letter asking for my forgiveness to which I snarled back, “I’ve forgiven you, but the next place I want to see you is in the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Which meant I had not forgiven.  Time and tide separated us, though we were aware of each other’s movements to some extent, and after a while I figured I was going to get my wish and forget about it.  But.  Not.  Quite.  Something was bound in earth that put a kink in my place in Heaven.  Curiously enough, the next place we met was face to face and at a church doodah, in front of other people.  My enemy says to me, “I think this must be a God thing.”  What was I to do?  Run away?  And I learned next that my enemy was dying and that fairly soon, and I was who was wanted to do the laying away.  I remember thinking, “God, this is over the line!”  But somehow that tiny opening was all the Holy Spirit needed, because, by golly, I did it.  Teeth gritted, but I did it.  And you know what?  I can hardly tell you how lifted I felt after that, not that I was such a great guy but rather that somehow all that load of junk was off my back.  Give God the glory.

Now you.  Some of you here have known forgiveness from both ends, I don’t doubt, and God bless it to you.  Some of you also may be doing some binding right now, may have had it on your gut a long time, wish you could get rid of it but then maybe not.  Well, believe me, if you’ve got grudges, you’ve gotta get rid of them.  Bearing grudges will kill ya quicker than cream gravy!  When your spiritual bowels are bound, you’re standing in the need of prayer.  A way to start, even if you don’t want to forgive, even if you’re afraid of what you’ll lose if you do, is to pray to want to.  Ask God to help you want to.  That’s all.  That may be, very likely will be, all the Holy Spirit needs, just a little opening where a little love . . . just a little love . . . can get through.  After that, God’s love will eventually flood through, raging and roaring like the Red Sea waters, and heal and overcome and make you whole again.  Or at least a lot wholer than ya were totin’ around a lot of old, nursed wounds.  It can be scary, it may be right painful, but, oh, what a relief it is!!  You don’t have to wait to be asked.  You can get back in line all by yourself, and let God deal with the details.  Vengeance is mine is just another way of saying it’s none of our business.  And it’s likely not vengeance either, since God brings heavenly good from our worldly bads.  Well, I recommend it to you.

Beyond that then, this day in our prayers—this day when we hold up in a kind of spluttering indignation a great great sin—in your prayers, pray for the grace of forgiveness, for our creator God’s overcoming, overpowering, overwhelming love to flood us and through us and out into the world.  Yes, even the likes of you and me, we can pray that way.  It’s God’s plan, God’s will.  And pray that God the Holy Spirit will go before and behind us to nudge and shove and drag us into the narrow places of our souls and there find just enough space to wing through to victory.  Above all pray to the Lord Jesus, who wept over our warring madness, pray to the sacred heart of his compassion, that we may find the courage to follow him and lay our burdens at the foot of the cross upon which all glorious hangs our only healing.  Come, Prince of Peace.  Make us whole!

Susan testifies!!! You go, girl!

My sister in spirit, the Rev. Susan Russell, has written a blog I think needs to be widely disseminated.

It is entitled "Testify" and here's an excerpt:

Whether you call it the road to Zion, to wholeness or to "thy kingdom come" it is unarguably a long and winding one. But it's the road we've been called to to journey -- as individuals and as a community of faith -- as we follow the One who went before us. And last Sunday our friend and former-All Saints colleague Maggie Cunningham was in the pulpit and gave us this great beginning to a wonderful sermon with some fascinating food for thought as we make that journey together:

The [Road to Emmaus] gospel concludes with the two disciples returning to Jerusalem where they find the eleven and others exclaiming excitedly, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” They have no doubt about the veracity of Simon Peter’s report – but it is a different story in the verses immediately preceding our section of the gospel.

There, we are told that “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them” had gone to the tomb first, found it empty, and heard two men (presumably angels) say to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” The response of the eleven to this report was predictable: “These words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.”

In the first century, the testimony of women was not only inadmissible – it was impossible. The words testimony, testify and testament are etymologically related to the word testicle. In the ancient Near East, a man would grab his testicles when swearing a solemn oath. Lacking the necessary equipment, women were incapable of testifying.

As fascinating and amusing as this information is, it would be more so if that belief system behind it had completely disappeared – but that is a topic for another day.

Read it all here.

Happy Lent

This is another in the occasional series I post of sermons by my friend, the Rev. Bruce Coggin. Bruce is a retired priest of the diocese who does heroic service taking care of two congregations whose buildings are still in the control of our former bishop, a circumstance which has caused them to be very creative about worship space and ministry. This past Sunday, however, Bruce preached at all four services at Trinity, Fort Worth. Two of his own grown children and their spouses and children were in the congregation, an added joy to the day.

And the photo? That's the absolutely shameless Mexican Plum abloom right now in my garden. Bruce and I were admiring it just yesterday.

---------------------------

A Sermon

preached at Trinity Church, Fort Worth

Lent I, 2011

Happy Lent!

Does that surprise you? Well, I promise you, this is really a happy moment for me, a chance to be back with this family I get to see so rarely, since I'm still back and forth between Wichita Falls and Hillsboro most of the time. So I am particularly grateful to Fr. Wright for inviting me to preach today--and doubly so because it's the first Sunday of Lent, a great Sunday for preachers. And before we're through, I hope you'll have some reason to think of Lent as . . . well . . . a surprisingly enjoyable time.

Of course, it’s a challenge to preach to this house, especially today. I look out and see two of my children and their families, and I can see no fewer than four other priests among you; so the pressure’s pretty considerable. Aside from that, it’s the first Sunday of Lent, and how many first Sunday of Lent sermons have you listened to by now? I mean, you know all about Lent, don’t you? It’s that time of the year when our mother the church asks us to consider—pray about, read about, hear about, do about—all that in our lives which leads us to be less than God created us to be, to fail of our mission to glorify God by serving others and letting the divine light of Christ shine through us. You know what I’m talking about. We call it sin, and depending on our level of psychological sophistication, we can explore that pretty dispassionately—but we all know it’s real. I’m talking about the ways we behave, the things we do that get us off track, that “separate us from God,” the stuff we do out of foolishness or weakness or ignorance or even when we knowingly and willingly cooperate with that which we call evil—another reality we can discuss intellectually but which we all know is real.

So the church is wise to turn our attention to all that, and she offers us a whole batch of traditional tools for doing it: we give something up, take something on, come to church without fail, read the Bible, go to a class, pray the Stations of the Cross, and especially we try to feel really sorry about all the stuff we’ve been doing all the rest of the year we know we shouldn’t. It’s all supposed to be a kind of spiritual calisthenics to pump up our will power to resist the devil and all his pomps, to make us able to resist temptation. And all that’s good, and I commend it to you, and I hope God blesses your every act of spiritual discipline to you this Lent and every Lent. But, y’know? The degree of seriousness with which people take all that, I find, varies. Years ago in a little parish somewhere else in this diocese, I asked the senior warden what he’d given up for Lent, and he came back with, “Oysters.” Mercy. I used to give up cuff links with stones in them. Oh, the agony!

But though I am for all that, the fact is that the religious practices with which we at least ostensibly honor God each Lent can, if we’re not careful, turn into a distraction, a way to avoid taking a hard look at some of the more intractable problems within us that lead us to fail of our mission, to be less than God created us to be, to sin. I mean, look: my experience is that no matter how rigorous a Lent I keep, I’m still putty in the tempter’s hands most of the time. Lifting spiritual weights doesn’t seem to give me great spiritual abs. My suspicion is that there’s a lot more going on in me, in us, than just learning not to go to the picture show on Sundays or stay up late smokin’ cigarettes and playing cards or chasing after wine, wimmin, and song. I mean, look at the Bible lessons today, especially the Old Testament and the gospel lesson. Those are two of the greatest temptation stories ever told, and there’s nothing chintzy about the temptations there, nothing tawdry about getting another bath tub and buying some of those little pills. It’s serious stuff, high dollar temptation with everything at risk.

In the Garden of Eden, you recall, God gave Adam and Eve absolutely everything they needed, a perfect world—daily communion with God, no sickness, no death, all the world at their feet—so naturally they responded with a “Yes but.” And sensing an opportunity, along comes the old slithergadee and sidles up to Eve and gives her a line about the apples (the knowledge of good and evil), how she could whomp up an apple tart with those that would knock her husband’s socks off! (Did ya notice, by the way, he’s her husband? I don’t remember them getting married.) And, of course, she’s a pushover, as is he for the tart. In the textbooks on moral theology, there are whole chapters about the various moral steps between first temptation and the willing entry into the occasion for sin. Not with Eve. Nossiree. She’s right in there—just like most of us, certainly me. Temptation to action, theory to practice, one straight shot. Oh, I know that story’s true, because it’s mine—and if you’re anything like me, and I think you are, it’s yours too.

Not so in the gospel story. This critical moment in the story of Jesus comes right after his baptism. When I was rector of Cleburne some years back, it dawned on me that when we baptized somebody on Sunday morning, I could count on lunch at the Country Club, because that’s where we went straight from the font. Not Jesus. When he was baptized, he headed out into the desert, the metaphorical equivalent of that little room down inside you where nobody but you and God can go, where you can’t lie because you know you’re lying. He goes out to face temptation, the chance to fail of his mission from God, the chance to do less, to be less. And this time the old slithergadee doesn’t even come in disguise. Jesus knows him. And the opportunities he offers Jesus aren’t any thirty-nine cent stuff but rather real possibilities, ways Jesus could have taken to do, to be something other than God created him to do, to be, the incarnation of divinity.

First, the devil suggests a cheap stunt, to do trick religion, sensation religion, show-biz religion. And Jesus could have done that. Lord knows, trick religion works. People eat it up, and it can make you a whole bucket of money, get you a nice place out in the country near Azle and a private plane and a landing strip! What I mean. We know plenty about that today, but Jesus rejected it out of hand. Next we’re up on the temple and talking about jumping off to see if God means what he says, to which Jesus points out the folly of playing gotcha with God. Finally the devil plays his last card, his grossest offer of all: all this gorgeous stuff, the world and all its joys, they are mine, and I will give them to you if you’ll just play on my team! And Jesus says the equivalent of, “Buzz off, Buster, ya bother me!”

Now, do you think it took Jesus all those forty days of fasting to get his will power all reared back and pumped up and flexed to meet the devil’s challenge? Do you think it took a great act of moral fortitude for him to send Satan packing? I don’t. I mean, I don’t think he had to think twice. I think he finessed all the devil’s cunning, not by what we’d call second nature, but by his first nature. I mean, for Pete’s sake, his nature was, is, one with God’s nature, so all the tinsel the devil offered him looked downright tacky, and he recognized it at once. “You’re offering me what? Fuhgeddaboutit!”

Seems to me there’s something a lot bigger going on that Jesus Just Saying No to the tempter. I think he’s checking himself, seeing if he’s still on track, seeing if the various options to doing and being what God created him to do and be can pull him off his mission, off track, out of line. And when he makes himself vulnerable—forty days and nights without food, and I’ll do anything you ask, believe me!—he finds out that the so-called temptations are hardly worth thinking about. I don’t think it was will power at all. I think it was just his sense of himself as God’s servant.

Well, that’s how Jesus handled temptation. But how does it work for you, for me, for us? How do you conceive of temptation in your own case? What do you think is going on? I know that a lot of people—including me when I was growing up—have a notion of God sitting somewhere before a vast screen with a dot, a pip, for each and every one of us, watching to see somehow that we all get “tested,” to run something tempting and (usually) salacious in front of us just to see if we’ll trip up and break a rule. I know people think that way, because they tell me they do. But isn’t it pretty unappealing? Lord, when I was a kid growing up I loved to go spend the summers with my Coggin grandparents in Brownwood. And since we didn’t have no teevee, we sat in the evenings out on the front porch and talked about everything under the sun. My father’s brother, Uncle Shorty, was not particularly pious, but I remember when I said something about things in the Bible that didn’t make a lot of sense, didn’t add up, he cackled, “God just put that in there to fool ya!” Well, don’t know about you, but the notion of God somehow laying land mines for us, little traps for us to fall into along the way, just doesn’t add up for me. Can’t conceive of that. God is either always loving and caring or he’s always whimsical and sneaky, but he’s not both. I think we’ve got to find a better way to think about what we call temptation.

I like to think of temptation as an opportunity to test the system, a signal that there’s something wrong, static in the transmission, something out of alignment that makes the machine rattle and buck and veer in ways that eventually add up to a clear signal that I need to wake up and smell the rubber burning. A wheel out of alignment not only makes the ride rough; it’ll ruin your tire. When I notice my behavior going way out of the ordinary, especially if I like it, I’ve learned to run a test pattern and see what’s going on inside me.

I don’t always do very well. Ordinarily, the tempter has to do little more than wink, and I’m snagged. And I don’t reckon I’ll ever get there, as it were, but I do think I’m learning as time goes on. One sin I’ve had a lot of trouble with all my life is anger. Now, I don’t think anger is really a sin. It’s an emotion, just surges up from our innards any time we’re scared and perceive our sovereign will challenged. Anger’s not a sin, but the ways we react to anger can be profoundly sinful. And for a great deal of my life, I liked it. I mean, ever since I was really little, I liked it. It made me feel powerful (which was a delusion), it made me think I was in control (another delusion), it made me think I was winning against whatever, whomever crossed me (yet another delusion). I lived right into it, worked myself up into a real good dudgeon, got all puffed up. My Grandmother Yeager used to laugh and tell me I looked like a pouter pigeon! Well, after about half a century of that, somehow, God knows how, it dawned on me how really dumb that was and, somewhat later, how really profoundly sinful. It’s not over. I still have a hair trigger anger gun, and there are times I live right on into it, sometimes for days at a time. And finally when I’ve made myself downright sick, I figure out that I’m acting like Hell and creating a lot of Hell for myself and lots of other people. And then, finally, I have learned to stop and check my alignment. I ask myself, “What’s the matter with you? What are you not seeing? What gift is in front of you that you’re missing? What cheap something has got your eye off the ball? Look at the hurt you’re doing yourself and others. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Who on earth do you think you are?” And sometimes I get clarity, not through an act of will but through . . . well, the way I pray. I fail a lot, but over time I think God’s making some progress with me.

I look at temptation and giving in to temptation not so much as a pop quiz from a whimsical schoolmaster divinity but rather as clear evidence that somehow God the Holy Spirit is sending me danger signals, not so I’ll pump my pitiful will up to resist some bad but rather so I’ll get my head and heart back on straight, remember who I am and why I’m here and what God hopes for me, expects from me, promises me, has given me. You see, I believe our salvation, our destiny in God, does not depend on us, is an absolute gift from God. We look at Jesus and through his transfigured face we see God and, like John says, we either turn to it or away from it; and once we’ve turned to it, repented, then the splendor of God shines through Jesus and into us and through us, and God the Holy Spirit, like some kind of tractor beam, just draws us in like a trout on a Minnesota wiggler. When I am tempted and am cooperating with the tempter—a metaphor for fooling with stuff that might be titillating or gratifying or otherwise rewarding for a moment but that in the long run is utterly contrary to my calling to live in and from God’s always loving, always caring, always self-sacrificing nature—when I am in that mode, the Holy Spirit never fails to send those signals, delightful at first perhaps but afterward excruciating. I’ve come to see temptation not so much as a test of my will but of my alignment. My will, shoot, I know all too well about that weak member. But when I recognize temptation, I know the correction has already begun—and I’m grateful for that.

So Happy Lent! This is the season in which we remember poignantly that we have an eternal calling, a divine destiny to which God called us before the foundations of the earth were laid. And we use Lent to call ourselves back to taw, to check our alignment, to remember that we are caught up in the divine love that means to draw us to the light of Christ in Jesus, into the beam of the Holy Spirit’s love that will eventually bring us all into God’s splendor where we’ll spend eternity. Lord, with all that given to us in full measure, what could the devil offer that would be even vaguely “tempting”? I mean, when we’re seeing straight and praying straight, we can look at just about anything that wants to take us off course and say, lightheartedly like Jesus did, “What? That stuff? You’ve got to be kidding! What would I do with that mess when I’ve got God?”

Happy Lent!

Happy face

If you are having a bad day, just look at this face. Have you ever seen anyone happier over a bunch of flowers?

I plan to refer to this frequently. Thanks to my nephew's husband for pointing this out.

Women or the State?

Who will control women's reproductive lives? Women themselves, or the State?

Republicans want the government to be in control. Planned Parenthood wants women to be in control.

Here's what Planned Parenthood is doing to help women.

The United States has one of the highest teen birth rates in the Western world, and North Texas has the most repeat births to teens in the United States.

Planned Parenthood of North Texas if the only nonprofit network provider of family planning services in Tarrant County.

Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the United States. Approximately one million Texas women have no access to reproductive health services, including Pap smears.

Planned Parenthood of North Texas provides vital preventive healthcare -- birth control, family planning counsel, well=woman exams and more -- for its patients, most of whom have no insurance or not enough.

Children of teen mothers are more likely to be born prematurely and at low birth weight, and twice as likely to suffer abuse and neglect. Texas has the 44th lowest rate of women receiving prenatal care.

Planned Parenthood of North Texas uses medically accurate sexuality information -- providing health information and outreach programs to prevent unintended pregnancies and protect maternal-child health.

About 10,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually and 4,000 of those die of the disease, which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths to women worldwide.

Planned Parenthood North Texas performs more life-saving cervical cancer screenings than any Texas healthcare provider.

Abortions comprise only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood-provided services nationwide. Eighty-two percent of their clients receive services to prevent unplanned pregnancies, services that help prevent 621,000 unplanned pregnancies. Other services included Pap smears and breast exams as well as tests to detect sexually transmitted diseases and treatment if needed.

The bottom line?

Planned Parenthood works to give women control over their reproductive decisions. And that's what makes it anathema to Republicans, who want to cut all funding for the organization.

Republicans say abortion is a "forever decision with forever consequences."

Well, so is an unplanned pregnancy -- even more so now that Republicans are cutting health care for children, education for children, food stamps for children, and on and on.

So speak up, women. Your right to control of your own body is at stake here.

While I wasn't looking

While I was busy at Executive Council, my garden was busy too. When I left home for the meeting, things looked pretty brown and barren around here in the wake of all that cold weather. But while I wasn't looking, Spring's scouts arrived.

The snowdrops were what I spotted first. Their spiky leaves had been frozen to mush by the Arctic weather of a couple of weeks ago. And yet, this week, tiny white and green blossoms reared their teensy lovelinesses above the browned leaves and brought tears to my eyes. Such valiant little beauties deserve applause!

Many of the leaves on the ancient winter honeysuckle were blasted by the frigid weather and left looking as crisped as if they had been singed by a fire. I worried that we had lost all the just-budding blooms. But oh me of little faith. This strong grande dame made use of this last week of warm weather to put out a whole new generation of tiny white blossoms that sent sweetness wafting through the garden like whispers of young love.

And her friend the Japonica was not to be outdone. She is steadily covering herself with red blossoms that will begin opening tomorrow I am sure.

The Lenten Roses laugh at these two laggards. They began blooming just prior to the arrival of the Arctic weather and haven't stopped since.

And now the daffodils are joining the list of blooming gifts -- God's grace notes as we await the turning of the season.

Go God.

Dwight Eisenhower on organized labor

Telephone Broadcast to the AFL-CIO Merger Meeting in New York City.
December 5, 1955

"You of organized labor and those who have gone before you in the union movement have helped make a unique contribution to the general welfare of the Republic--the development of the American philosophy of labor. This philosophy, if adopted globally, could bring about a world, prosperous, at peace, sharing the fruits of the earth with justice to all men. It would raise to freedom and prosperity hundreds of millions of men and women--and their children--who toil in slavery behind the Curtain.

"One principle of this philosophy is: the ultimate values of mankind are spiritual; these values include liberty, human dignity, opportunity and equal rights and justice.

"Workers want recognition as human beings and as individuals-before everything else. They want a job that gives them a feeling of satisfaction and self-expression. Good wages, respectable working conditions, reasonable hours, protection of status and security; these constitute the necessary foundations on which you build to reach your higher aims.

"Moreover, we cannot be satisfied with welfare in the aggregate; if any group or section of citizens is denied its fair place in the common prosperity, all others among us are thereby

endangered."

Read it all here

More on Wisconsin

Here's some more information:

Read 12 things you need to know about the uprising in Wisconsin here

-------

and Paul Krugman here.

For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.

In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.

But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.

--------------------------

And that last point is the most important one -- without unions, there will be no countervailing power against that of corporations and yes, even government.

Yes, some unions need reform, but doing away with them would be much worse than most people can imagine. Remember, unions are the folks who brought you the weekend -- and safer work places -- and child labor laws . . .

And even Walker isn't opposed to all unions -- note that the unions that supported him financially are given exceptions in this bill.

Two quotes

Here are two quotes that I think sum things up nicely.

My daughter was following the debate in the Texas Lege this week as Republicans try to force Texas women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram and to listen to the heartbeat. She texted me the following comment, which I think is best summation I have ever heard of the Republicans' war on women.

State Senator from San Antonio to Sen. Dan Patrick on the Senate floor this week:

Leticia Van de Putte: "I imagine you have the votes to suspend or you wouldn't be bringing it up. It is our responsibility to protect that child once that child's born too. When we start debating a budget, let's make sure we don't cut 100,000 vaccines. Let's make sure we've got health insurance. We seem to worship what we cannot see, but as soon as that baby's born, oh no, we don't want to be intrusive. Texas is going to shrink government until it fits in a woman's uterus."

-----------------------------------------------------------

And another, on the Republicans' war on the middle class:

Joshua Holland from AlterNet:

"The Right has made great political progress getting Americans to ask the question: "How come that guy’s getting what I don’t have?" It’s the crux of the politics of grievance. Progressives need to get Americans to ask a different question: "What’s keeping me from getting what that guy has?" At least part of the answer is the Right’s decades-long assault on private sector workers’ ability to organize, and the latest battle is being waged in Wisconsin."

Holland is right on target.

Wisconsin had a surplus before the Republican gov cut taxes for businesses. The employees union didn't cause this crisis -- the tax cuts did.

When will middle to lower class Americans get a clue that the Republicans do NOT have our best interests at heart?